----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Dear all,
Although with less of a philosophical lens, and at the risk of separating into
another corner of the party - I thought I would post some initial thoughts on
the last few posts, and raise a few questions that have occupied my mind
through my work, and pose more questions.
I wanted to offer, alongside the discussion of the definition of the digital as
both discretized and the holistic, as the previous post put it, a way to ground
or reground this in practice, "in the wild, on the ground” so to speak.
Specifically, I want to ask: what does a definition of the "digital" allow us
to talk about, or help us to conduct practice in different, new or more
productive ways? And what “difference” does this make to users of these
computational systems – if any at all?
Part of this begs the question - what is an object, and why are these
important? One way to describe them, is that digital objects, as many people I
work with would say, "just" representations of existing objects, for example,
material heritage, and whether it is through a film camera or a computer, serve
the same function and therefore are both described in the same way?
The first question, I think, is an interesting one. For example, some of my
research has been to look at how computers and the Internet have enabled
Indigenous communities who are interested in doing research on their cultural
heritage located in museums, and who are geographically dispersed from these
sites, a practice that has been happening for the better part of 20 years. For
many individuals who seek this kind of access, viewing to the "Real" objects is
of utmost importance, but images and representations on computer screens seem
to be good enough placeholders for communities to identify objects that may or
may not belong to them, and begin the process of repatriation or loans, or
begin a dialogue with the museum about viewing the collections in situ. In any
case, the ultimate goal is to be in presence with the "original" object - and
any distinction made between an image taken with film versus one on the
computer may not be relevant at all in this context, because as I said, they
are talked about as if they are the same.
It is my suspicion that defining a digital object is of little consequence in
these places - however these same communities are seeking greater control and
power over these digital representations and therefore, at least recognize the
power (and danger) of the digital object to be endlessly repeated, duplicated
(one of Goodman's criteria, I recall). This has potential ramifications,
specifically when some individuals who carve/make these objects have relied on
the income that comes with making and copying their own works with their hands
and tools.
Another interest of mine, and which falls in line with the original question
concerning the historical or political forces that lie behind this definition
of the "digital", is how the there has been some interesting push back to work
to realign the histories of Western philosophical discourse of the "digital"
and the notational, and situate them in alternative "digital" practices that
are not necessarily considered part of the canon as of yet, that very much use
the "finger" metaphor to describe digitality. This is just a thought, and a
paper called "Wampum as Hypertext" by Angela Haas comes to mind, although I'd
be interested to hear if there is anything else from other subscribers to help
me think through this point.
On Oct 8, 2014, at 2:25 PM, sally jane norman <normansallyj...@googlemail.com>
wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> excellent - who's serving the cocktails anyway? I'm intrigued by your notion
> of "ubiquitous cryptography: digital objects so tightly wrapped we’ve
> excluded, perhaps, even the trace of the voice" - am wondering where theories
> of the voice (including Derrida's Phonocentrism?) might come into this, but
> also Stephen Connor's work on ventriloquism - playing with provenance, which
> is also a "cryptic behaviour"...
>
> a quick caveat re Auroux/ Derrida: Auroux in the cited work devotes a rather
> harsh section (to say the least) to Derrida's Of Grammatology, so it might be
> risky to say that this lies "behind" Auroux - rather, it's directly in his
> line of fire... though fortunately for those of us outside of the target
> range, we can pick up on the best of all worlds...
>
> I'll pick up on the Kittler with pleasure; lots here to mull over - including
> the Van Helmont glottis (yikes!). Maybe you'd enjoy Simon Penny's
> astonishing "Phatus" work in robotics?
> http://simonpenny.net/works/phatus.html
>
>
> all best
>
> sj
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Quinn DuPont <isaac.q.dup...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Dear Sally Jane, et al
>
> At the risk of responding so quickly, turning a cocktail party into a hushed
> dialog over in the corner of the room, I simply can’t contain myself!
>
> It is like you have read my mind! Although I have only read Auroux’s English
> work (a few articles, here and there), I think the reference is absolutely
> spot on. And, as you reference, Auroux and his concept of grammatization is
> critical to Stiegler, who I think is very much part of this discussion (and,
> for the week on MEMORY, I hope becomes part of our dialog). Especially in
> Stiegler’s *Decadence of Industrial Democracies* this process of
> grammatization comes through epochal shifts, from orality to writing (yes,
> Ong!), from writing to printing, and… to the contemporary computer? (for my
> own research, this is the coming epoch of ubiquitous cryptography: digital
> objects so tightly wrapped we’ve excluded, perhaps, even the trace of the
> voice?)
>
> There is a short passage in Derrida’s Of Grammatology (which lies behind
> Stiegler and Auroux) where he claims to be enraptured by “cybernetics” and
> DNA (the “writing” of life). I’m far from a Derridian, but I can’t help but
> think that Derrida was foreshadowing the grammatization process, which I see
> as a technicized version of the ideality of Goodman’s notation.
>
> I’ll return the favour of citations with another: Friedrich Kittler’s
> splendid analysis of “The Mother’s Mouth” as an important technology for
> forming the “discourse network” 1800 (Discourse Networks 1800/1900, 1990).
> Van Helmont’s 1667 “Short Sketch of the Truly Natural Alphabet” offers, I
> think, an interesting attempt at discretizing the voice by literally fitting
> the Hebrew letterforms into the mouth apparatus
> (here’s an image:
> https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/62c84c30-49e0-4f95-9cc2-f7e79b548c36/d3de9ea5dfbf58e4d31e333d2abbef28)
>
> ~ Quinn DuPont
>
> On October 8, 2014 at 12:41:08 PM, sally jane norman
> (normansallyj...@googlemail.com(mailto:normansallyj...@googlemail.com)) wrote:
>
> > I like the fact/ way you're seeking to develop connections across the
> > discretisation of architectural/ algorithmic systems and of language/
> > linguistic systems, as per Kramer's argument. Am wondering how this /
> > Kramer's work (which I don't know, other than that she's an architect) fits
> > in with that of language specialists (more names, can't help it) like
> > Sylvain Auroux (La Révolution technologique de la grammatisation), for whom
> > grammar emerges as a cognitive tool that modifies modes of communication,
> > more or rather than as a describer of natural spoken language. His focus is
> > thus not on the "notational" breakdown of orality to the visual (cf. also
> > Walter Ong?), but instead on the advent of mechanisation and automatised
> > language processing through tools that extend from historical construals of
> > "grammar" to computational "expert" systems. I get a little nervous when
> > orality and musicality are too categorically opposed to visuality and
> > calculability, even though I realise we must sometimes resort to
> > cut-and-dried conjectures to get thoughts moving. Auroux's thinking is no
> > doubt anchored in a (French?) tendency - I'd say gift, in his case - for
> > trying to freely span and bridge pre- and post-digital cultures, whilst
> > mobilising an extremely robust set of disciplinary perspectives.
>
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