Re: [-empyre-] digital Objects and MEMORY
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks, Quinn,
I'd like to pick up this question of digital objects as memory aid or
receptacle, specifically the role of or status of computer source code.
For the past eight years, I have been working in the realm of Critical Code
Studies, which applies humanities-style hermeneutics to the interpretation
of the extra-functional significance of computer source code. More
recently, I've been saying simply that CCS is the study of culture through
code and the study of the culture of code.
For the past 5 years, I have been collaboratively reading one digital
object with two other scholars, Jeremy Douglass (UCSD) and Jessica Pressman
(SDSU). Our object: William Poundstone's electronic narrative Project for
Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit}.
(
http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/poundstone__project_for_tachistoscope_bottomless_pit.html)
The finished (?) project -- or part of it -- will be published this Spring
by University of Iowa Press.
My role in the collaboration has been to explore the Flash files (primarily
the .fla), first using decompiled .swf files and then using the original
files shared with us by Poundstone himself. For those not familiar with
Flash, the .swf is the animated file you encounter on the website; the .fla
is the file the author worked in while developing the piece in the Flash
authoring environment.
One of my discoveries in the proecess of analyzing his code has been the
remnants of Poundstone's creative process. For example, (and here I'm
simplifying for clarity) Poundstone's carefully arranged levels of visual
effects (1 movie per effect) have been given different numbers than the
number of the levels on which they appear in the code (e.g., the movie
level 3 is used for effect called level 4), suggesting that they have
been moved in the process of creation. (Poundstone is fastidious about his
coding, as illustrated by his careful naming and numbering.) For another
example, the library of assets in the .fla also contains numbered versions
of sound files that are never used in the final .swf.
The .fla file (decompiled or original) therefore becomes a material site of
the memory of the creation of that project, a set of remnants, footprints,
of a creative process. If he had used a source repository or other version
control system, imagine how much more information would be available.
The code has become imprinted with cues for memory as well as discarded
artifacts, and perhaps this suggests one of code's larger roles as
hypomnema, as reminder. In fact, if we take into account Wendy Chun's
correction about the difference between source code and executable code,
this role of source code as reminder seems to become more primary. Consider
the role of comments, which most obviously take on this function of
reminding -- but again, I see this role more broadly across many aspects of
code from function and variable naming conventions to the structure of code
across multiple sections or methods or files to its very existence in a
level higher than machine language.
So, for now, I'd like to raise this inquiry as a question to you all as to
what is the role of source code to memory within the circulation of digital
objects. I look forward to your thoughts.
Best,
Mark
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--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Today's Topics:
1. Start of Week 4: Digital Objects and MEMORY (Quinn DuPont)
--
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 20:42:49 -0300
From: Quinn DuPont isaac.q.dup...@gmail.com
To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: [-empyre-] Start of Week 4: Digital Objects and MEMORY
Message-ID: etPan.544ed879.507ed7ab.8b2@MacBookPro.local
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
For the fourth and final week of the exciting month on digital objects, I
offer the following provocation on our theme, MEMORY:
?I hesitated // before untying the bow?? so begins William Gibson?s
unravelling of his youth, his relationship to his father, his draft-dodging
(Agrippa). A fitting material metaphor for a digital memory that would
require cracking cryptographic code to untie; memory encased in code.
Gibson?s poem is thus like our myriad digital detritus: snapshots from
holidays, videos of cherished family events, but also ?sexting? and
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear all, I would like to address a special thanks to Alexander, Quinn, Dani, Ben, and John for discussing together the notion of process. It was very valuable and I hope to continue to exchange further with you on that topic. I would like to briefly develop what I meant when I drop off the notion of “timeware view of science” few days ago. At the core of what is still an intuition concerning the time-specificity of experience, reside both the notion of randomness and openness. By randomness I mean a dynamic potential based on non-probability: what is not systematic and yet can be part of a system. By openness I mean the greatest possible freedom of knowledge access, or to put it with Simondon and from the realm of his technical object, the greatest possible freedom of functioning of an object that shapes experience. Here “knowledge access” is not to be understood from an authoritative anthropological figure, but as a categorical scheme that has both an agency of its own and effects on how the world is experienced. When talking about a “timeware view of science” I am refereeing to Chaitin’s “software view of science”: a scientific theory that is like a computer program, which predicts observations and conceives of a world without emergence. Because of the fundamental diachronic dimension of experience, I wonder if the digital realm (that which is about chronic synchrony) allows precisely to conceiving of a timeware view of science, that is a time where both scientific formulas and categorial objects (from Husserl’s temporal/mental objects to Simondon’s technical object) meet. A timeware view of science is directly tied to Bachelard’s phenomenotechnics where process is understood as dynamic and productive discontinuities and where time is a relational perspective that allows to thinking about randomness and openness as condition of knowledge formation. Given my pretty obscure explanation and the work that needs to happen concerning the digital realm, I hope this small contribution opens perspectives for further discussions. Thanks to all, Anaïs ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- I’m sorry John and Anais about not responding to your comments. I receive the “digest” version of the list, and was referring to the online archive for responses. But it seems your messages got truncated there, so I had not read them: http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=633sid=7b7e89f94e2207fdfad45ef1b62ac026 Anyway, there is a similar idea that comes up in both of your posts. John refers to the model and its varying effectiveness from context to context, and may be of greater or lesser quality. Anais, referring to Galloway, Thacker and Wark, noted that the programming language used to construct mathematical objects like Omega, does have an effect on the result. This is true, and I did hint at this in my comments. Arriving at any model does require a procedure. This is why I suggested the “bit” comes into existence post-procedure or post algorithm. There is a primacy of the process or procedure. In this I appreciate ecological theorist Robert Ulanowicz’s arguments for what he calls “Process Ecology,” somewhat indebted to Whitehead’s Process Philosophy. He suggests that the fundamental unit or building block in the universe is not the atom, not the substance or material, but the process: a configuration of influences. In the same way, I think the process, the procedure, comes before the individualized unit of information, the bit. Indeed, he suggests, using Elsasser’s statistical work in biology, that the universe is not a homogeneous isometric field of deterministic causality. There are limits to our scientific capacity to resolve the details of complex systems, formal constraints incurred by virtue of statistical considerations. The crucial move is here is that it “ontologizes” the notion of contingency, displacing the human observer from the central position of privileged observer. The chance event is thus given its own ontological status; it is no longer merely an effect of the “limits of observation”. It interrupts the deterministic course of causality within the real, despite human observation. I do appreciate the metaphysic Ulanowicz proposes: there are holes in the “fabric of causality”. To this effect he suggests replacing the common “fabric” metaphor, with that of the sponge: causality is populated with exceptions, holes, of every scale, offering the influx of radical contingency. There is something in this very close to Meillassoux’s argument. This brings me to Anais’ worthy critique of the feedback loop. Can we conceive the recursive process from the point of view of ontogenesis? Well, process ecology certainly does suggest that we can. In fact I feel it gets us very close to what Simondon was striving at: his anti-hylemorphic stance was geared against both substance and form. In a sense, he was positing process itself, individuation, as the primary primary “building block”. The interesting thing in process ecology is that it gives us a precise way of characterizing different kinds of individuation, as well as metastabilizing forces. Simondon was influenced by cybernetics and thermodynamics the whole way, and I think the feedback process is implicit in his discourse on individuation: the metastability of individuation is much like a dynamic equilibrium. I think Anais is right that the technical object in Simondon (its continuity of ontogenetic formation through transduction) doesn’t translate well to the digital domain. This I think is for reasons already brought up in the discussion. In a sense I have been displacing the common critique of the digital as being devoid of “continuity” or “materiality” to a critique of the digital as being devoid of process. In a sense amenable to views expressed in K. Hayles and M. B. Hansen, namely that the emergence of the digital has brought the question of “embodiment” into full light, I believe the digital has given “process” its full importance. As Anais suggests, openness is key to unlimited process. And in the closure of the procedural abstraction, where an algorithm selects only that which it is “pro-grammed” to see, there is somehow no possibility of deviation. However, the digital, as people like Chaitin and Wolfram continually repeat, is the realm of the prefect copy: it is therefore possible in the digital realm to repeat a certain specific algorithmic procedure with precision, as well as possible to make a specific change in the procedure, say, by adding another line in a script, without changing the rest of the program. In the continuous realm, it is difficult to see how to change the procedure: in the continuous mathematics of topology, for example, a topological form is malleable in different ways (a coffee cup is topologically identical to a donut); the only way to really change the space is by some sort of “catastrophe” (Thom). A topological “break” needs to take place, which amounts to changing the connectivity of the points in the system, adding holes
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi all, I would like to respond to Alexander’s fruitful post as well as to share some considerations raised by Quinn’s invitation to dig more into the so-called algorithmic information theory. My first thought concerns the feedback loop. As a retroactive process that generates itself through phases of finite states, can we conceive the feedback loop in terms of ontogenesis? At the level of the phase, yes. At the level of what circulates within technical cycles, yes. However, what do we need to achieve critically to bring Simondon’s mechanology into the digital realm, within the realm of the in-betweenness of discontinuities and cuts? I am not skeptical that we can. However, I am concerned that the technical object in Simondon is an operational category that doesn’t fully translate into digital objects. In other words, if Simondon’s transduction is the movement of a particular problematic from a medium to another, what does this transduction do to thinking about the contemporary situation of digital platforms? In Simondon, technicities are schemes of pure-operational continuity. What are the critical tools we have to transduct these schemes into thinking the pure-operational discontinuities of algorithmic structures? One suggestion I would like to discuss is that the feedback loop seems to deal with processes of selection not only based on complexity and randomness (a shared characteristics with any field of study whose concerns are creation, invention, and the limits of knowledge). It seems to deal also with the question of openness raised by Simondon, especially as this dimension of a technical object questions the functionality of a machine not in terms of its uses, but precisely in terms of its potential. The openness of an object (its greatest possible freedom of functioning) is thus a dimension that allows for a rigorous and yet speculative approach to thinking about what is now acknowledge as both computationally and logically irreducible. With digital processes and computational coding, are we facing the development of what we could call a “timeware view of science” that is a digitalogist approach to science? An approach that comes after the sociologist, psychologist, technologist, and even mechanologist approach? Could this “timeware view of science” be the transduction of Simondon’s temporal coordination of the three levels of the technical object (element, individual, ensemble) within the digital realm? In other words, I would like to think of digital processes as having an operative potential that has very much to do with a shared claim that there is a human reality in digital reality. Am I being too axiomatic while not using my reason enough? Side note to engage with John Hopkins' post: Concerning the language of mathematics, what is crucial concerning algorithmic info theory is that the concern is not so much about semiotics but about operations of thought. The programming language of computational coding does have a direct impact of the algorithmic information content. Here, I turn to the publication of Excommunication, co-written by Galloway, Thacker, and Wark. The new master signifier is the system. Best, Anaïs ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks Ben and Quinn for your responses. I would like to address certain points raised. Ben is interested in the link I was alluding to between discretization and the digital. It seems to me the movement from the prediscrete world--that of our archaic ancestors, for example, who did not have a word for each object around them--to the progressively grammatized world, can be modelled almost identically to a simple analog-digital converter, where a continuous (unified) flow is sampled and transformed into a series of discontinuities. I agree with Ben that discretization opens up new possibilities; these are related to the mobility afforded by the discrete. The atomists believed that the void, the space between atoms, explained movement. In much the same way, the breaks between the discrete bits of the digital, allow them to become mobile within their space of possibility in a way a continuous flux simply cannot. Digital information can be copied precisely, whereas analog information can only be copied at a loss. These abilities of the digital realm stem from the follwoing fact: as “individualized” objects, bits are disconnected from their surroundings, they are mobile. I say individualized to reiterate what I think Ben is noting about Stiegler, which is perhaps more attributable to Simondon, namely that once individualized, a process has exhausted its preindividuality. Its potential to become, to change, for Simondon, is predicated on this preindividuality. Thus there is a sense in which, once an object is perfectly objectified, that is, once it can be specified (copied) with absolute precision (as with a collection of digital bits), for Simondon it elides process, change, becoming, individuation. This comes back to what I was alluding to: process is something outside the digital. I find myself continually coming back to this idea when I think about the digital. This is the point Ben is not convinced by. It just seems to me that when we have digital bits, or when we have purely defined objects, we still don't have an account of change or time. This is a big problem with object oriented ontology, for example. It is also related to what Quentin Meillassoux describes as hyperchaos: interestingly, he arrives at the conclusion that contingency (ungrounded, unmotivated, indeterminate change) is necessary, because of the non-totalizability of the cosmos (the whole), as per the paradoxes of set theory. If the cosmos itself cannot contain itself, or if there can be no absolute whole of everything, he reasons, then we must posit the necessity a kind of ungrounded change that escapes the determination of any holistic set of possibilities or laws. In Deleuze, I find further support for this idea. Pure difference, difference in itself, is a positive concept for Deleuze; it is not subordinated to representation, identity, negation, and basically all the features required for the digital domain’s ability to be specified to absolute precision (or precisely copied). This is why I was saying about the term “analogue”. At issue is more than just a relation between digital and analogue or discrete and continuous. The pivotal relation is rather between “difference” and “difference that makes a difference”. In Deleuze, difference is never given; rather, it is that which gives the given. Difference has an ontological necessity to give us discrepancies and identifiable distinctions. What is given is discrepancies, distinctions, relations of identity and contiguity: scientists will call this “information”. Deleuze insists that as things individuate, difference never gets “used up”. Only *diversity*, he says, is truly reduced in the processes. Difference stays intact, he insists, surviving all possible transformations. Process, change, time, stems what we might call the “ontological incontinence” of difference in itself, that is, before it gives the given or “makes a difference”. This is also related to his concept of “quasi-causality”, which conditions events through “surface effects”, yet, which is “unproductive” in a way amenable to how difference does not get used up in causal process. Notably, he claims, after Valery, that the deepest level of being is the skin, implying that such surface effects, which are “causally unproductive” are that which give us causal relations in the first place. Which brings me to my point about Chaitin’s Omega. Thanks to Quinn for underlining its main aspects. Omega is really a formal mathematical object, constructed in order to show the “probability” that a given program of N bits is decidable or undecidable. This is in the spirit of Turing and the decision problem, formulated as a question of whether a device churning through a computation would ever come to halt on a definitive “yes or no” result. We know since Gödel that mathematical systems are “incomplete”, because they allow expressions that are consistent yet cannot be
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?
--empyre- soft-skinned space--(here is the missing part of my earlier contribution. thank you) One suggestion I would like to discuss is that the feedback loop seems to deal with processes of selection not only based on complexity and randomness (a shared characteristics with any field of study whose concerns are creation, invention, and the limits of knowledge). It seems to deal also with the question of openness raised by Simondon, especially as this dimension of a technical object questions the functionality of a machine not in terms of its uses, but precisely in terms of its potential. The openness of an object (its greatest possible freedom of functioning) is thus a dimension that allows for a rigorous and yet speculative approach to thinking about what is now acknowledge as both computationally and logically irreducible. With digital processes and computational coding, are we facing the development of what we could call a “timeware view of science” that is a digitalogist approach to science? An approach that comes after the sociologist, psychologist, technologist, and even mechanologist approach? Could this “timeware view of science” be the transduction of Simondon’s temporal coordination of the three levels of the technical object (element, individual, ensemble) within the digital realm? In other words, I would like to think of digital processes as having an operative potential that has very much to do with a shared claim that there is a human reality in digital reality. Am I being too axiomatic while not using my reason enough? Side note to respond to John Hopkins: Concerning the language of mathematics, what is crucial concerning algorithmic info theory is that the concern is not so much about semiotics but about operations of thought. The programming language of computational coding does have a direct impact of the algorithmic information content. Here, I turn to the publication of Excommunication, co-written by Galloway, Thacker, and Wark. The new master signifier is the system. Best, Anaïs ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Thanks to Anaïs, Ashley and Quinn for inviting me to take part in this discussion. Just to pick up a point in Alexander's very productive post. I am interested in the connection Alexander is forging between discretization (in Stiegler's sense) and the digital. It is certainly useful to compare the process of digital 'sampling' with the process, for example, by which the continuous movements of hand weaving are turned into the discrete automated steps of the mechanical loom. But discretization can also open new contingencies rather than fix them statically. In Stiegler's terms there is a loss of individuation, a homogenisation, a reduction of singularity but there is also the possibility, as with grammatization, of new individuations. So I am not entirely convinced by the move that simply opposes the digital to 'process' or to a 'monstrous radical contingency that hides in each sampled interval, in between the quantized cracks of our pixels and voxels.' (although I like that formulation). best, Ben -- Dr Ben Roberts University of Bradford http://www.brad.ac.uk/ei/s/?u=blrobert On 21/10/14 04:34, Alexander Wilson wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hello to everyone on the list. Thanks to our hosts for organizing this discussion (and for inviting me). I've just caught up on the discussion sthus far. I thought I'd give a go at the first question proposed: What is a digital process? The term process usually connotes continuity. The canonical heraclitean river, different each time one enters it, presents the essential character of process: it flows. Digital processes, however, are characterized by cuts, breaks, and jumps. The digital is given as a series of discontinuities. We look at the river flowing: it seems continuous, a unified flux. It is highly entropic, meaning it exceeds our capacity to resolve the minuscule details we assume compose it (water molecules). Every time you walk into it though, it feels decisively different. It may be warmer today than yesterday, the current might be stronger or it may have waned. Process implies change. But change in the digital realm can only happen discretely: one moment we have one state, the next we have another. One moment the water is warm, the next it is cold. There is nothing in between, no process to speak of. In this sense the digital neatly elides change. It is as though nothing has changed at all. The state space in the digital domain is finite; it is as though the various moments in the digital process are given all at once, and for all eternity. Indeed, one might say they are outside of time, for these states, in themselves, are not affected by the process; each time they are taken up, they are exactly the same. The process hence seems to move the digital from the outside. The digital is inseparable from processes of discretization, as Bernard Stiegler observes. It is simply the process which cuts continuities into discontinuities, making unified, homogeneous mixtures discrete, nameable, mobile, functional. It is true Stiegler usually looks at this as a (pre)historical or anthropological process (ie: grammatization). I, like Simondon, am more interested in seeing this process as an ontogenetic one. Simondon, remember, envisions the evolution of technology somewhat like thermodynamic process: a crystal propagating through a supersaturated solution, where the unified mixture of molecules is progressively organized, and structured, put to the service of the reproduction of the given symmetries ad infinitum, mechanically and algorithmically, until the favourable circumstances, or preindividual potentials, are exhausted. The digital is intimately related to such an ontogenetic process of selection. It is as though the algorithm prefigures the digital. The if-then decisional procedure of the algorithm gives rise to the series of cuts typical of the digital process, as the ebbs and flows of the unidentified, unresolved chaos outside is sampled, once a threshold of potential is met. Snapshot. The digital emerges in the moment of sampling; it is in the only moment a determinate system touches an indeterminate, un-incorporated preindividual outside, that a bit comes into existence. Without this moment, the digital is not connected to any process: it is, like the crystal in the mind of the crystallographer, an eternal and infinite expanse of symmetries. Hence, the digital is moved by processes outside of itself. The digital process, therefore, always implies the analogue. But the crude term analogue is hopelessly inadequate for signifying the monstrous radical contingency that hides in each sampled interval, in between the quantized cracks of our pixels and voxels. But what is this outside I have been referring to? The outside, in a cybernetic sense, is simply that which interacts with a given system through its inputs and outputs. A system is
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Such a rich and complex post, with many points of resonance to earlier posts! I think Alexander’s reference to Chaitin’s “Omega” number really needs some underlining, since I suspect most of us aren’t too familiar with the concept. I was only informed of its existence a year back, and while I can’t pretend to do any justice to the complex idea, I must say that I think proper understanding of it would likely prompt serious soul searching for those involved in the ontological foundations of computing. To the best of my knowledge (I would love a better explanation), Chaitin’s Omega is a number made up of random digits that cannot be computed, or put another way, there is a *process* to create the number (a list of computer programs that “halt”), yet it cannot be *computed* (it cannot be computed because you can never know when any one program will “halt”). Chaitin aligns this interesting computational result with physics, suggesting (against Leibniz) that some things do indeed occur without sufficient reason. Similarly with mathematics, it too has an infinite number of facts that cannot be proven in any reducible way. Saying that something is “irreducible” (be it computational, physical, or mathematical) is, according to Chaitin, akin to saying that it is not rigidly, (reductionist) “scientifically knowable. Still knowable, but only “quasi-empirically”. So, here’s the rub, and the link to our earlier discussions (especially during the week on MATERIAL): computation is “quasi-empirical”. We were calling it “sub-phenomenal” or “sub-medial, but is this a limitation of human perception, or a limitation of the subject matter itself? I’ve probably butchered this all. Apologies: it’s well above my pay grade, but for anyone with the stomach, Chaitin does a good job of describing the technical specifics in this Scientific American article from 2006: http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/sciamer3.pdf ~Quinn — iqdupont.com On October 21, 2014 at 1:26:05 AM, Alexander Wilson (cont...@alexanderwilson.net) wrote: ... It is true that mathematics is plagued by a fundamental randomness: Chaitin's famous Omega exemplifies this; it distributes all possible decidable and undecidable computations in an algorithmically random manner. ... best, Alexander ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- On 22/Oct/14 17:13, Quinn DuPont wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Such a rich and complex post, with many points of resonance to earlier posts! I think Alexander’s reference to Chaitin’s “Omega” number really needs some Having suffered through (up to) matrix algebra and some nonlinear stuff in engineering school, argh, I couldn't stand math -- I did much better with 'fuzzy' orders-of-magnitude/off-the-cuff touchy-feely applied 'potential fields' geophysics... I think it boils down to the paradign: The map is not the territory except in the asymptotic case where the territory itself is a subset of the map (i.e., the map has *everything* the territory has more) which has obvious limitations. And there is a sprinkling of something like 'God' in there as well -- the inexplicable, the Void, whatever it is we are dancing around pointing at and trying to explain what we see to our proximal (or distal!) neighbor... Not to mention that mathematics is a symbolic 'language' and in this it has (imho) the same limitations as language generally. The noun is not the thing. Having made that huge reduction on Chaitin's article and maths reasoning, it is possible that reductions (such as writing a text The map is not the territory about the issue of modeling reality) may be of greater or lesser quality -- more or less applicable to the local or general conditions that they are applied to. The 'elegant' model covers more ground (i.e., Newtoncalculus did a damn good job describing a lot of stuff), but to cover it all you need an infinite variety of models (dammit, that asymptote again). This is probably what drives most 'innovation' pesently -- from DV to HD CRT to Retina screens, from 8-bit to 64-bit sound editing, etc, ad nauseum -- that we try to force the digital to accede to or even subsume the analog -- something it will never do because, once again, there is the asymptotic The map is not *ever* the territory. Oh, is this an infinite recursion? No, I'll stop here. End. jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
[-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hello to everyone on the list. Thanks to our hosts for organizing this discussion (and for inviting me). I've just caught up on the discussion sthus far. I thought I'd give a go at the first question proposed: What is a digital process? The term process usually connotes continuity. The canonical heraclitean river, different each time one enters it, presents the essential character of process: it flows. Digital processes, however, are characterized by cuts, breaks, and jumps. The digital is given as a series of discontinuities. We look at the river flowing: it seems continuous, a unified flux. It is highly entropic, meaning it exceeds our capacity to resolve the minuscule details we assume compose it (water molecules). Every time you walk into it though, it feels decisively different. It may be warmer today than yesterday, the current might be stronger or it may have waned. Process implies change. But change in the digital realm can only happen discretely: one moment we have one state, the next we have another. One moment the water is warm, the next it is cold. There is nothing in between, no process to speak of. In this sense the digital neatly elides change. It is as though nothing has changed at all. The state space in the digital domain is finite; it is as though the various moments in the digital process are given all at once, and for all eternity. Indeed, one might say they are outside of time, for these states, in themselves, are not affected by the process; each time they are taken up, they are exactly the same. The process hence seems to move the digital from the outside. The digital is inseparable from processes of discretization, as Bernard Stiegler observes. It is simply the process which cuts continuities into discontinuities, making unified, homogeneous mixtures discrete, nameable, mobile, functional. It is true Stiegler usually looks at this as a (pre)historical or anthropological process (ie: grammatization). I, like Simondon, am more interested in seeing this process as an ontogenetic one. Simondon, remember, envisions the evolution of technology somewhat like thermodynamic process: a crystal propagating through a supersaturated solution, where the unified mixture of molecules is progressively organized, and structured, put to the service of the reproduction of the given symmetries ad infinitum, mechanically and algorithmically, until the favourable circumstances, or preindividual potentials, are exhausted. The digital is intimately related to such an ontogenetic process of selection. It is as though the algorithm prefigures the digital. The if-then decisional procedure of the algorithm gives rise to the series of cuts typical of the digital process, as the ebbs and flows of the unidentified, unresolved chaos outside is sampled, once a threshold of potential is met. Snapshot. The digital emerges in the moment of sampling; it is in the only moment a determinate system touches an indeterminate, un-incorporated preindividual outside, that a bit comes into existence. Without this moment, the digital is not connected to any process: it is, like the crystal in the mind of the crystallographer, an eternal and infinite expanse of symmetries. Hence, the digital is moved by processes outside of itself. The digital process, therefore, always implies the analogue. But the crude term analogue is hopelessly inadequate for signifying the monstrous radical contingency that hides in each sampled interval, in between the quantized cracks of our pixels and voxels. But what is this outside I have been referring to? The outside, in a cybernetic sense, is simply that which interacts with a given system through its inputs and outputs. A system is said to be operationally closed implying boundaries and definite topological connectivity. It will typically be composed of various (continuous) flows, feeding back upon themselves, according to a certain topological arrangement, implying certain thresholds, minima and maxima, varying ebbs of potential. The feedback loops themselves imply recursive processes. For digital cuts to emerge, loops in the process are necessary. The digital bit is born out of a specific decision implied by the structural coupling of some chaotic outside with some defined inside: physicists will call this measurement or observation. In order for a proper digital process to be conceived as a series of cuts, these cuts and breaks have to be recorded or inscribed in some context. The system must somehow change to receive the event. If it does not change, then nothing has happened. As people say on the web, when someone posts an unbelievable claim: picture, or it didn't happen. Indeed, nothing happens that is not somewhere inscribed in some context. For something to happen, it must happen to something. This is the very structure of information: difference that makes a difference to use Bateson's famous adage. If it does not get
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- FYI on the topic of digital art algorithms, etc, there's a great talk by my friend Dr. Frieder Nake, a radical German pioneer in the field, talking about early algorithmic work in the 1960s -- he's an engaging and empathetic speaker -- the video is from the Eyeo Festival in Minneapolis this past June ... http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/76735 Cheers! John -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
[-empyre-] Digital Objects. Week 3. PROCESS
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear group, Thank you all for your incredibly rich contributions, you made this past two weeks so fascinating as we try to unpack collectively the potential of digital objects. I would like to circulate the introduction for our third sub-theme, PROCESS as well as to introduce our participants Dani Robinson, Alexander Wilson, and Ben Roberts. Please feel free to join us, the more the merrier! Best wishes, Anaïs Nony On Process *In analytic philosophy (as represented by Alfred North Whitehead), the “event” represents an ontological being that is not a static object but a process. Such a processual ontology is close to the essence of media technologies itself (because only when in operation is a medium in its medium state).* (Ernst 184-185) This week, from the 19th to the 25th of October, we will discuss ongoing processes of modulation and variation with respect to digital objects. In the wake of computational technologies, our goal is to pinpoint the specificity of digital processes. Process generally refers to, but is not limited by, the operations proceeding from phase to phase toward the concretion of an object, and leading to the expansion of a universe composed of relational entities taking place between and beyond digital objects’ relation to one another. This week, we will analyze both aesthetic and philosophical productions in which the becoming of a digital object is at the core of the research. Our main interest is to address how digital processes shape our experience and how artists have composed with the time-based quality of digital objects. Accordingly, we will explore questions such as: · What is a digital process? How can it be defined and can it be differentiated from a non-digital process? · What is the time specificity of a digital object? · What is a digital phase? And how can we experience it? · Does digital process offer a critical model to unpack our extremely complex and increasingly virtual contemporary visual environment? · What are the theoretical tools we have with which we can analyze digital processes? Dani Robison http://danrobisonart.com/ is an experimental stained glass sculptor and digital object creator working in Oakland, California. Her work deals with religion, sublimity, mental illness, alcoholism, and isolation. *Alexander Wilson* is an artist and theorist based in Montreal whose work intersects media studies, cultural studies and philosophy. His dissertation (2014) tackles the concept of aesthesis within an expanded scope beyond the faculty of human judgment, through the lens of contemporary theories of emergence, complexity, computation, meta-mathematics, systems theory and cybernetics, chaos theory, contemporary cosmology, evolutionary theory and 20th century philosophies of process. More recently, he has been investigating the connection between aesthetics and ecological thinking with regard to technology and media. His interdisciplinary art practice deals with related concepts in various videos, sound and multimedia installations. As co-founder of Parabolik Guerilla Theatre, he has also directed several experimental multimedia works for the stage. He has held an appointment as assistant professor in Intermedia/Cyber-Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. *Ben Roberts* is Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Bradford. He has published widely on the work of Bernard Stiegler and recently edited a special issue of New Formations dedicated to his work. He is currently working on a book entitled Critical Theory and Contemporary Technology. ** Anaïs Nony Ph.D. Candidate in French Studies and Moving Image Studies Institute for Advanced Study University of Minnesota 290 Northrop Minneapolis, MN 55455 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects
--empyre- soft-skinned space--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”doesendure 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...Let me point to this 2006 work of Marcin Ramocki:http://i.imgur.com/G35I6o7.png(Couldn't link to his website, all Flash.)The examples for digital objects above follow the object logic of the social media stream. They become units because the social media software cannot divide them into smaller units. They can be posted as pictures, or addressed via an URL.In the case of the mouse pointer and the selection, they are bared from all process and life, like stuffed animals, they became pictures. However, since they are distributed on the Internet, there will always be a use for them. They can be reposted, commented on, manipulated with an image software. But the activity is enabled by their surroundings, by the system. Any picture can become a "digital object" when it is digitized, any visual aesthetic can be declared digital via usage. So I don't think these frozen elements are inherently distinguishable as digital. Only their creation process is, they never existed outside the computer and were created with digital tools, not by digitalization.So I think objects are only a useful unit for when the computer is turned off. Apart from that, we deal with performances and activities.-- Dragan EspenschiedDigital ConservatorRhizomeat the New Museum235 BoweryNew York, NY 10002212-219-1288 x 304http://www.rhizome.org/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear Ashley, all good question indeed - I'm wondering whether looking at Thrift and Dewsbury's non-representational theory mightn't offer some useful insights? This entails focus on practices and relations (across human and non-human actants), rather than on their results per se... insofar as the latter are even ascertainable or vaguely useful, a doubt which seems to underpin your question, Ashley? Remains the problem of ascribing some kind of temporal framework to the observed process (rather than stuff or object), in order to be able to analyse it as a salient entity. But at least the problem itself is differently framed. I see Dewsbury/ Thrift's philosophy as aligning with positions evoked in Daston and Galison's objectivity, where they draw distinctions between historic regimes of value in scientific imaging traditions, roughly aligning with a representationalist system (18thC truth to nature, 19th mechanical objectivity, 20thC trained judgement), and with / versus the contemporary presentational mode - which mobilises manipulation of objects (data as generator of knowledge) and aesthetics (including multimodal apprehensions). Also with the issue that's frequently been broached in philosophy of science, of representation and intervening (Hacking at al) as means to knowing. Keen to hear how you might make a case for digital objects, and whether this might be bound up in framing systems that allow for their openly processual attributes to be more explicitly taken into account (my obsession, which I clumsily try to link to elusive notions of 'liveness'). Etienne Souriau talks about the need to think in terms of multiple, simultaneous modes of existence, where psychological, fantasmatic, virtual, fictitious modes of existence might be at least as important as those we tend to enthrone as supremely concrete. He suggests that if we look at the relational rather than ontological qualities of the different entities that exist, we might be able to come up with a more fittingly dynamic vision/ sense of the world... all best sj http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-representational_theory#cite_note-5 On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 10:23 PM, Ashley Scarlett ashley.scarl...@gmail.com wrote: --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
Re: [-empyre-] Digital Objects
--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. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
[-empyre-] Digital Objects
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Dear empyre, thank you very much the invitation to participate in this discussion. In my work as a conservator of digital art (mostly internet art), I am often confronted with the term 'object'. On the Digital Preservation 2014 conference in Washington, an event by organized by the Library Of Congress, the following terms were used for what digital conservators deal with: - objects - content - stuff - petabytes - stuff unlike any other - executable content - cruft - live object - digital landfill - master The only term that actually makes sense to me is 'stuff unlike any other', as Matt Kirschenbaum described software. A digital 'object', in all forms that I encountered it, was always a metaphor out of control. There are no objects in a computer, only symbols, but these symbols make absolutely no sense unless something happens with them. A text file can maybe treated like an object, but it is useless as an object unless there is this complex process of mapping the symbols contained in there to an incredible processes that in the end moves a bitmap generated from rendered vector outlines of representations of symbols that humans can visually decode to an OpenGL texture map that makes up the 'content' area of a GUI window ... grossly simplified. -- So the object is what stays when the computer is turned off, something that can be printed, buried in a mountain vault. Especially when taking into account networked computing, objects seem like a rather misguided attempt to define boundaries, so that infinity can be divided into understandable pieces. And the objectification of the digital (in the form of for example 'apps') has proven that this idea is very successful. However it is impossible to represent digital culture in the form of objects. It is more productive to think about performances (for what computers do), activities (for what humans do), how time passes for each actant, and what are the potentials at any of these possible points. Still, in the end, after doing all this, I will need to conserve it in a form that -- stays when the computer is turned off. AMA! -- Dragan Espenschied Digital Conservator Rhizome at the New Museum 235 Bowery New York, NY 10002 212-219-1288 x 304 http://www.rhizome.org/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
[-empyre-] empyre DIGITAL OBJECTS october introductions
--empyre- soft-skinned space--*Welcome to October, 2014 on --empyre-- soft-skinned space: * *DIGITAL OBJECTS * Moderated by Quinn DuPont (CA), Anais Nony (FR), and Ashley Scarlett (CA) with invited discussants to include: Ange Albertini (US); Dragan Epstein (DE); Andres Ramirez Gaviria (CO/At); Yuk Hui (DE-based); Jan Robert Leegte (NL); Kristie MacDonald (CA); Mark C. Marino (US); Nicholas O’Brien (UK); Christian Pentzold (DE); Ben Roberts (UK); Dani Robison (US); Daniel Rourke (UK); Sean Rupka (CA/US); Phil Thompson (UK); Hannah Turner (CA); Alexander Wilson (CA); and others to be announced as the weekly subthemes are posted. October 6th to 12th Week 1: *PRACTICE* October 13th to 19th Week 2: *MATTER* October 19th to 25rd Week 3: *PROCESS* October 26th to 31st Week 4: *MEMORY* *Welcome! * During the month of October, --empyre—soft_skinned_space will be discussing DIGITAL OBJECTS as our over-arching theme, with Practice, Matter, Process, and Memory as weekly sub-themes intended to facilitate an intersectional approach to this emerging area of scholarship. We would be thrilled if you joined us!! Please find our introduction to the month’s conversation below, followed by a few provocations for your consideration! (Introductions to the weekly sub-themes will be posted on Sundays, along with the bios of the invited participants.) *ON DIGITAL OBJECTS* Deciphering the ontological underpinnings of digital objects has become an increasingly pressing line of inquiry within numerous disciplines, spanning the humanities, social and hard sciences. Informed by the terms and political impetus of (digital) Materialism, investigations into the status of digital objects offer grounded means through which to conceptualize the “submedial space” of 21st century media. To date, these projects have been driven in large part by such questions as: what kind of thing is: a digital file? (Kirschenbaum 2010; Vismann 2008); metadata? (Hui 2012); the selection tool? (Leegte 2010); or 3D scans and prints? (Sportun 2013). As this list suggests, developing a rich and reliable understanding of digital things has theoretical implications for how contemporary computing is being conceptualized, while also posing practical consequences within fields such as copyright legislation and digital repatriation. This current interest in digital objects mirrors a recent and overarching academic reorientation around objects and materiality more generally (Morton 2013; Harman 2011; Bennett 2009). While a considerable amount of this scholarship asserts the historical necessity of an object-oriented (re)turn to the material realm, these projects have been unable to contend with digitality, focusing instead on the physically robust supports of computer interaction (screens, hard-drives, network wires). According to Jussi Parikka (2012), the recent turn to object-oriented inquiry has emerged at precisely the moment when a series of mediatic phenomena, such as ubiquitous computing and algorithmic futures (Hansen 2015), are systematically undermining established perceptions of what an object is at all. Complicating the matter of objects further is the sense that digitality has given rise to new forms of techno-relational substance that philosophy is not yet equipped to account for (Bryant 2014). While 20th century philosophy incorporated an analysis of technical objects into the long history of meditations on natural substance, we are now contending with the digital by-products of technical objects. To this end, the emergence of digital objects does not only pose significant implications for digital culture at large, but it also marks a novel moment in the history of philosophy, as we navigate new (and increasingly hybrid) notions of objectivity (Hui 2012). While a number of scholars, artists and practitioners have begun to account for the status of digital objects, their performative suspension, between software and hardware, as well as the processual and cascading grounds from which they perpetually emerge, greatly complicates efforts at developing a solid account of their underlying parameters. During the month of October, we are hoping to engage a multi-scalar, intersectional approach to Digital Objects. In an effort to ground the conversation in practice and existing literature, we will begin the month with discussions of PRACTICE and MATTER. During the 3rd week, we will explore PROCESS as both an essential and seemingly insurmountable component of digital objects; the processuality of digital objects poses one of the most significant challenges to developing a stable analysis of their ontological underpinnings. In the 4th and final week, we will analyze how the intersection of MEMORY and digital objects problematizes matters of memorialization and rationalization. Our hope is to assess how digital objects might necessitate an altered conceptualization of memory. Through our
