An Art Practice
As attention becomes a new form of capital in the networks of contest, art can function to turn attention from flowing within the channels of accumulation and competition, to focusing on them instead–to suss their mechanisms and effects. Art must remain a critical enterprise (and resist being a spectacularized one). If art employs the ubiquitous techniques of computation–as it will more and more–then it must do so self-consciously and critically, making visible the connection between the technical, social, political, and intellectual circumstances of its context.
Abu Ghraib
The infamous photos of Abu Ghraib came to light in 2004. Now, four years later, we are still debating the ethics of torture, and are still apparently unable to really process the contents of the images we received from the American dungeons of Iraq.