----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Dear --empyre-- members and invited discussants,
Thank you for an engaging start to this month's conversation!
I have a bit of a follow-up question that I feel engages several of the
entries thus far and that, I hope, might get us talking about how to
reconcile function and appearance. After posing my question, I will provide
some context for it.
***
Is framing digital phenomena as "objects" worthwhile? What work can the
concept of "digital object" do for us, that an acknowledgement of perpetual
processuality cannot?
***
Because computer programs are largely founded upon the “presupposition of
representation” (Hui 2012:345), much of the scholarship on digital objects
has been limited to things that could be made visible to a user (Ange’s
comment regarding his reason for back-end “crafting” seems relevant here).
As several of the recent posts (Dragan, Andres, Hannah...) have
articulated, this is a regrettably limited approach that is not able to
account for the depth and processual complexity of digital
objects/things/stuff/whatever.
>From hidden communication between smart devices to the algorithmic
computation of actionable futures, many of the processes inherent to “the
digital” are taking place outside of the phenomenal field of human
perception. To this end, not only is the performative “stuff” of the
digital functionally evasive, but the reiterative and regenerative
executions that drive its operation also suggest that even when we do “see
something,” it is nothing more than an ephemeral apparition.
Now, with this being said - As Chun (2008) has discussed, and as Kristie
and Dragan commented in their closing remarks (I think), despite the
cascading complexity of the digital, and the dispersed apparatus that props
it up, digital “stuff” *does* endure and frequently adopts a form that is
remarkably easy to objectify, if only in appearance - the mouse pointer, an
MP3 file, the selection tool (http://www.selectionasanobject.com/), a
series of electronic gems (http://nicolassassoon.com/GEMS.html)… These
things look like objects, act like objects, and (increasingly, as the
distance between the digital and the physical closes,) feel like objects.
Whether this is merely an ideological function of engineering or a matter
of socio-cultural hallucination, the fact remains that "digital objects"
are emerging as a contemporary phenomenon in need of critique...
At any rate, I suppose the question now becomes whether the term “object”
is merely a skeuomorphic metaphor used to make sense of the “stuff unlike
any other,” or if an case can be made for the existence of digital objects.
(I think several of us participating this month would like to make a case
for the latter!) Furthermore, what work does and can the concept of
"digital object" do for us? What insight might a conceptualization of
digital objects provide us with that an understanding of the brute
technicalities of computation cannot?
***
Until next time,
A.
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