[-empyre-] MATTER, mysticism and modes of existence
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear list, Thanks for inviting me to add to this discussion. I enjoyed reading the posts from the previous week and found the perfect bridge in the final paragraph by Sally Jane, and would like to post a “mode of existence” I commonly use in my work regarding the digital object. To introduce myself, I entered art school in the mid nineties at the sculpting department after a couple of years studying architecture. After discovering the browser as stage / studio / exhibition space / canvas / something to make art in, I swiftly exchanged my physical material for this new “stuff”, one reason being its inherently embodied material dilemma: being immaterial and material at the same time. (http://www.leegte.org/work/theimmaterialmaterialised, 2014) Here a recent work of mine to illustrate these thoughts. I would like to encourage others to also illustrate their thoughts with their own (or others) work, to offer a parallel image based thread to the mainly theoretical discussion so far. Cyberspace is often brought forward as metaphor for the magical or mystical realm. The concept of Mara or Maya in respectively Buddhism and Hinduism as the deity responsible for the illusionary world we live in, has been interpreted in many science fictions f.i. “The Matrix”. It seems that all the dreams within classic mysticism and occult practices have been answered by cyberspace (haven’t used this word in a long time… it’s fun! ;-) I often talk with my students about the dual nature of the digital object. It has the unique property of being a passive programming code as well as the executed program. It is the invocation as well as the invoked. I often use terms like invocation or emanation, due to the similarities between software and the various traditions of mysticism. The history of trying to manifest material through language in forms of chants, spells, scrolls, etc. are as old as humanity. Though here we seem to have created a platform, which does nothing but that. It’s like we’ve deliberately created an invocation machine. Through thought in the form of code, we are currently applying apportation, psychokinesis, astral projection, precognition, etc. etc. (Have fun running through the list, and yawn at the fact that most of it is what we do now every day.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_psychic_abilitie Ok, so the digital is not Real Life. But the whole premise, on which mysticism is based, is that Real Life isn’t real either. It’s an illusion, and by piercing through the veil, you will be able to control and manipulate it. So cyberspace could be seen as a Real Life construct + open source tools to manipulate it. And in contrary to mystical experiences, which hardly anybody ever encounters first hand really, everybody on the planet can experience the cyber magic. And even better, everybody can also manipulate them… So in reply to Dragan, I think the “Matter” question should be answered in relation to in digital object, that comes to life after the execution of the code, instead of the code itself. Our favorite hyperlink emanates from the executed software as wondrous teleporting material after having been invoked into existence. Before that it was just another dead piece of text. Jan Robert Leegte --- http://www.leegte.org https://www.facebook.com/leegte https://twitter.com/JanRobertLeegte m...@leegte.org ---___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hello empyre: Thanks so much to Ashley and the other moderators for inviting me to be a discussant this month. I’ve been following the conversation and am definitely excited to contribute! As a way of getting started I wanted to pick up on two things that Ashley wrote with regards to the materiality of digital objects: *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… * *As I mentioned in an earlier post, much of what we refer to when we speak of “the digital” takes place outside of the field of human perception.* This statement makes me think about driving in nature. I live in NYC now and don’t really get to act on the “Did you know New York has 10,000 miles (or whatever amount) of snowshoe hiking trails?” as much as I’d like to. That being said, The “ephemeral apparition,” - or as I like to call it, experience - of the digital reminds me of taking the offramp on the highway to observe a scenic overlook. I grew up in Northern Virginia and my family didn’t have a lot of money when I was young to go travel or book hotels for long weekends. Instead we would go down US interstate 81 until we got to the historical scenic route Skyline Drive. We would cruise up and down the windy road, listening to tapes on the car stereo or playing guessing games until my brother and I would get tired and fall asleep in the back seat. From time to time, however, we’d pull over and take a look out into the Blue Ridge Mountains and rolling hills of the lower Appalachian Trail. More recently, whenever I make long car trips (in that ever-so-quintessential Americana way), I rarely remember the mile marker, or the commemorative plaque, or where I was on my journey, or even the actual view. What I do remember is that I turned off the road and interrupted my trip - and that this interruption is often a way of reminding myself of my journey through the “stuff” of the road (or information superhighway if you will). So, then, what is the objectification of that experience? What is the matter that consolidates or crystallizes that moment of rupture? It could be a photograph, or a video, or a tweet, or a sound recording, or a text to a loved one - some digital artifact of remembrance, a keepsake of data. But I’d wager that the real substance of experiencing the ephemeral occurs in the moment of interruption. With a slight nod to Kev Bewersdorf, I’d say that the materiality of the digital only happens AFK - removed from the torrent of being plugged in, reflecting on it only when one has fully stepped away from its monotony. The moment in which one pulls off the road, interrupting their electronic activities, is the moment when the digital becomes material. It is when the onslaught of digital stuff becomes sublime. For me the experience of the sublime is the elusive moment of terrified separation from humanity/civilization. In that moment of (self) recognition away from the digital, I am deeply troubled by what I see in front of me. I see the sublime as a terrible thing, or else a thing of terror (ala Burke). It is terrifying and horrific to reflect on the digital - and it is in that moment of terror that the digitial becomes “real,” or else it becomes “matter.” The “terribleness” - as described by Burke - of that feeling transforms the ephemeral into the actual, and in doing so it shapes the digital into an object. *** Perhaps the terror that I see during (self)reflection away from the digital speaks to the dangers that occur within a disappearing submedial space. The invisibility of surveillance and the political work that goes on within network culture is often only visible en masse - as is the case with OWS, the Arab Spring, and the current Hong Kong protests. The problematic posed by Groys’ analysis of 21st century submedial space suggests not only that the presence of such a space is becoming hard to perceive but also its affect is becoming harder to feel. This lack of emotional (or psychological) tactility that occurs from observing these mass-produced (or mass-represented) forms of political action from the outside creates a dangerous type of association - one that is inherently built on distance, absence, and othering. When affect has been evacuated from social exchange a different type of objectification happens, one that I don’t actually know how to define, but certainly feels different. The matter of a digital object is one that is quickly losing its affect, one that gets subsumed into an infinite scroll. It doesn’t feel like
Re: [-empyre-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--More echoed thanks to Ashley for bringing us all here and each of the previous occupants of the conversation for kicking things off... Reading Nicolas's thoughts on interruption I was reminded of a text very much* not *about digital materiality, that is Bill Brown's playful treatise *'Thing Theory' *(2001). http://faculty.virginia.edu/theorygroup/docs/brown.thing-theory.2001.pdf Eschewing Heidegger's definition of a 'thing', in which objects are brought out of the background of existence through human* use*, Bill Brown marks 'things' through the jolt, the interruption, the encounter. An object becomes a thing when it stops working for us; when the smear on the window halts our treatment of the window as something we merely 'see through'. I can only consider the MATTER of the digital through similar encounters, no doubt one of the main reasons why I am drawn to (digital) art that engages with interruption, failure, glitch, and jam in its conception and/or making. To blend Brown's ideas into Nicolas's analogy of a journey, I don't experience interruption as the choice I make to drive off the road, to knowingly halt the journey. Rather, that decision is only the first step I make in my search for the 'elusive moment of terrified separation from humanity/civilization'. Glitch artists do not *create *glitches, rather they manifest behaviours in environments (physical or mediated) that are more likely to lead them towards the elusive glitch, the sublime interruption. If one smears the window on purpose then the window+smear continues to function precisely as you wished it to. Your making of the smear cancels out any chance it has to jolt you into thingly confrontation with the window. Glitch artists flirt with this problem in their work, and the further problem that comes from most glitches leading to absolute failure. One must therefore court the glitch, whilst not letting it take over completely. Artist Daniel Temkin http://danieltemkin.com/ has talked extensively on this. If we consider 'the digital' to be more than zeroes and ones, to exist in the relationship between materials and software/hardware protocols, then the idea of a digital 'thing' is intimately bound up with an idea of human autonomy and mastery (or lack of). Entropy marks all physical processes in the universe, and so in order for digital processes to carry on carrying on we invented certain protocols and rules of parity. In short: error checking routines are fundamental to what constitutes the digital. Again, the thingliness of the digital comes to the fore when these error checking routines fail, when the parity bit is not parsed correctly and the jpeg won't load. In that moment, as the OS repeats its message of apology and the jpeg continues to remain unvisible, only then do I encounter the jpeg as thing, the computer as thing, the digital as thing. The glitch artist, of course, does not want the jpeg to fail absolutely, rather they want it to fail *just enough* to produce a file that still opens, but has been radically transformed. This opens up into a larger set of political questions concerned with the privilege of 'flow' over 'interruption'; of 'signal' over 'noise' in our digitally mediated world. As Mark Nunes has noted https://www.scribd.com/doc/58881843/Mark-Nunes-Error-Glitch-Noise-And-Jam-in-New-Media-Cultures, following the work of Deleuze and Guattari: This forced binary imposes a kind of violence, one that demands a rationalisation of all singularities of expressions within a totalising system... The violence of information is, then, the violence of silencing or making to speak that which cannot communicate. Is the will we have to encounter the digital object / to radically transform it / to impose an aura onto it - perhaps a violent one? How do we render this violence productive, without also rendering it inert? I am going to end there I think. Hopefully the distinction between the terms 'object' and 'thing' is a useful one for our discussion, and also perhaps the distinction between an intended interruption and a stumbled upon encounter. Really looking forward to seeing where this conversation takes us. Daniel On 13 Oct 2014 16:44, Nicholas O'Brien nicholaso...@gmail.com wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hello empyre: Thanks so much to Ashley and the other moderators for inviting me to be a discussant this month. I've been following the conversation and am definitely excited to contribute! As a way of getting started I wanted to pick up on two things that Ashley wrote with regards to the materiality of digital objects: *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
Re: [-empyre-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Nicholas! Thanks for the great ride. Very nice writing. Some feedback. I’m a bit confused how reflecting on an experience is the same as matter or becoming objectified. Could you try and explain from an practical point of view, how you see the digital becoming material when moving AWK? What proces of objectification is happening here. Is it reflection? Memories? Or missing limb syndrome? From a practicising point of view, I try and define matter as something you can work with. How could you work with this objectifying experience you mention? yours, Jan Robert --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hello empyre: Thanks so much to Ashley and the other moderators for inviting me to be a discussant this month. I’ve been following the conversation and am definitely excited to contribute! As a way of getting started I wanted to pick up on two things that Ashley wrote with regards to the materiality of digital objects: 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… As I mentioned in an earlier post, much of what we refer to when we speak of “the digital” takes place outside of the field of human perception. This statement makes me think about driving in nature. I live in NYC now and don’t really get to act on the “Did you know New York has 10,000 miles (or whatever amount) of snowshoe hiking trails?” as much as I’d like to. That being said, The “ephemeral apparition,” - or as I like to call it, experience - of the digital reminds me of taking the offramp on the highway to observe a scenic overlook. I grew up in Northern Virginia and my family didn’t have a lot of money when I was young to go travel or book hotels for long weekends. Instead we would go down US interstate 81 until we got to the historical scenic route Skyline Drive. We would cruise up and down the windy road, listening to tapes on the car stereo or playing guessing games until my brother and I would get tired and fall asleep in the back seat. From time to time, however, we’d pull over and take a look out into the Blue Ridge Mountains and rolling hills of the lower Appalachian Trail. More recently, whenever I make long car trips (in that ever-so-quintessential Americana way), I rarely remember the mile marker, or the commemorative plaque, or where I was on my journey, or even the actual view. What I do remember is that I turned off the road and interrupted my trip - and that this interruption is often a way of reminding myself of my journey through the “stuff” of the road (or information superhighway if you will). So, then, what is the objectification of that experience? What is the matter that consolidates or crystallizes that moment of rupture? It could be a photograph, or a video, or a tweet, or a sound recording, or a text to a loved one - some digital artifact of remembrance, a keepsake of data. But I’d wager that the real substance of experiencing the ephemeral occurs in the moment of interruption. With a slight nod to Kev Bewersdorf, I’d say that the materiality of the digital only happens AFK - removed from the torrent of being plugged in, reflecting on it only when one has fully stepped away from its monotony. The moment in which one pulls off the road, interrupting their electronic activities, is the moment when the digital becomes material. It is when the onslaught of digital stuff becomes sublime. For me the experience of the sublime is the elusive moment of terrified separation from humanity/civilization. In that moment of (self) recognition away from the digital, I am deeply troubled by what I see in front of me. I see the sublime as a terrible thing, or else a thing of terror (ala Burke). It is terrifying and horrific to reflect on the digital - and it is in that moment of terror that the digitial becomes “real,” or else it becomes “matter.” The “terribleness” - as described by Burke - of that feeling transforms the ephemeral into the actual, and in doing so it shapes the digital into an object. *** Perhaps the terror that I see during (self)reflection away from the digital speaks to the dangers that occur within a disappearing submedial space. The invisibility of surveillance and the political work that goes on within network culture is often only visible en masse - as is the case with OWS, the Arab Spring, and the current Hong Kong protests. The problematic posed by Groys’ analysis of
Re: [-empyre-] week two - MATTER - introduction
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Everybody, I am actually working with Yuk on many of these themes and have been trying to feel out the problem of the material in fact we have a monthly meeting here in Berlin, and we are organizing a quarterly conference https://www.facebook.com/events/912789665415547 my background is in flimmaking, I came into material concerns through the challenge of integrating video and computer-based video practices with my training in film. Since I am not one of the invited respondents I will keep it short here (for now :)) and I will try to briefly respond to Ashley's opening questions. Beyond citing the physically robust supports of computation, how might we account for the materiality of the digital? What makes the digital material? In this regard, I would like to throw up the challenge to reconsider the use of the definite article the in front of digital. What I mean is this... there is no digital without hardware, and each and every moment of every instance of digital media is a unique manifestation on unique hardware, therefore there is no the (general) digital only particular digitals. I say this with a wink, but still I contest the general condition of digitality every instance of digitality is material-bound and unique. What are the conceptual and political ramifications of attributing materiality to digital objects? the political ramifications, to my mind, are mostly addressed with called historical materialism. i.e. with the affirmation of materiality, there is affirmation of scarcity, there is affirmation of location, there is finitude to the digital economy. Personally, I cannot abstract concepts from politics, since they are mutually embodied in my limited corporeality. How might we respond to Kirschenbaum and Drucker's assertion that digital materiality is a matter of modeling, appearance, and interpretation? If we are in agreement with these terms, what implications does this have for the terms of materiality? What implications does this have for conceptualizations of 21st century computing? I think these metaphors can be relevant in the construction of software, but politically they do not seem so promising to me. What insight might contemporary new media artists, artworks and making practices provide into current debates regarding digital materiality? From my long experience in the field, artists are highly sensitive to changes in the environment, as McLuhan said the D.E:W. line so basically we can see what is happening by encountering art. for anyone who would like to learn more about where I am coming from, please see the panel and paper and artwork I presented on the persistence of hardware at ISEA2011 https://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/panel/persistence-hardware http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/paper/materiality-digital-utopias http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ISEA2011Uncontainable-Gottlieb.pdf looking forward to encountering digital materiality with all of you :) Baruch Dr. phil. Baruch Gottlieb IZM Institut für Zeit-basierte Medien Universität der Künste Berlin On Oct 13, 2014, at 4:57 AM, Ashley Scarlett wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Dear --empyre-- community, While I hope that our conversation on PRACTICE will continue, (there are still several engaging threads on the go,) I would like to circulate the introduction for our second sub-theme, MATTER. Please do join in on the conversation, if you feel so inclined! Kindly, A. ON MATTER “Without a basic understanding of the material constraints under which computing systems operate, essential dynamics that animate the built environment of the virtual will remain invisible and unaccounted for” (Blanchette 2011: 1055). According to Matthew Kirschenbaum, digital materiality refers to “the multiple behaviors and states of digital objects and the relational attitudes by which some are naturalized as a result of the procedural friction, or torque, … imposed by different software environments” (2012: 132-133). Distinguishing between forensic (physical) materiality and formal (symbolic-digital) materiality, Kirschenbaum explains that the formal materiality specific to digital objects is one of durable appearance – it involves the “simulation or modeling of materiality via programmed software processes” (9). Reading Kirschenbaum across Johanna Drucker, this formulation of formal materiality suggests that digital materiality emerges through “a process of interpretation rather than a positing of the characteristics of the objects” (Drucker 1994: 43). From October 12th – 19th we will be discussing the terms and implications of digital materiality further, particularly as it relates to digital objects. Digital Materiality, as concept and phenomenon,
Re: [-empyre-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Welcome Nicholas! On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Nicholas O'Brien nicholaso...@gmail.com wrote: More recently, whenever I make long car trips (in that ever-so-quintessential Americana way), I rarely remember the mile marker, or the commemorative plaque, or where I was on my journey, or even the actual view. What I do remember is that I turned off the road and interrupted my trip - and that this interruption is often a way of reminding myself of my journey through the “stuff” of the road (or information superhighway if you will). So, then, what is the objectification of that experience? http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/windows-and-mirrors I recommend checking out this publication. Bolter and Gromala describe transparency as a value in contemporary interface design: the user should forget that they're using a computer or an interface, they should just think about the task. When this transparency, which is quite difficult to achieve design- and engineering-wise, breaks, because of an error or interruption, the user is thrown back to reflect on the computer. But maximum transparency is just one line of interface design ideology, and has brought many problems with it as well. (In interface design, transparency is used akin to network transparent, which means that information travels through a layer without this layer being noticeable. So instead of thinking i am using a software application on my phone that manages a database of contacts to find Bob's phone numer, users think I'm looking up Bob's phone number.) This moment of reflection, when a computer doesn't perform as expected, was exploited by glitch artists the most. -- 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
Re: [-empyre-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thank Ashley of bringing us together for this discussion. I just came to the list so I may repeat some of the points that others have discussed. In case, I excuse myself for this. I have written a PhD thesis titled On the Existence of Digital Objects dedicated to a reading of Martin Heidegger and Gilbert Simondon, so what I am going to say may resonate with Daniel's previous comment. I guess the thing and object distinction is one that every modern philosophical treaty on thing or on object will encounter, indeed. I think it is possible to study the thingness of a digital object, a thing has more possibilities than an object, but probably less powerful than the object. This reminds me of a recent conversation with Tristan Garcia (author of Object and Form - A treaty on things), where he makes a paired distinction: thing - ontology, object - metaphysics. My interest in digital objects comes out of my interest in the question of formalisation. I think, this is also largely the distinction that Heidegger has made, in which a object always stands against (Dasein) (he takes it from the german word Gegenstand), while a thing (especially in his 1951 essay Das Ding) - in his own philosophical project - disrupts such tendency of formalisation, hence we have the four-fold (das Geviert), namely heaven, divine, mortal and earth. Digital object is always about formalisation, at least, from the computational level. Sure when we speak of formalization, there are different ways and also levels. I took digital object in a much narrower sense (otherwise it wouldn't be possible to finish the thesis...), namely objects with formalized metadata. This allows me to study the mark-up languages and the evolution of digital objects from the 1960s until now. The question of matter for me is one of the trickiest one. The blurb written by Ashley reminded me immediately of J-F. Lyotard's 1985 exhibition Les Immatériaux. Lyotard has chosen the name not because that he thought there is something material, instead, he claimed to be a materialist, wanted to show the the immaterial is the new materiality brought by telecommunication technologies. Lyotard has an inedited text that he has written as kind of report or letter addressing his colleagues, in which he wanted to propose a new metaphysics after the technological development (for interested parties, you can check out a colloque that I organized in May with Andreas Broeckmann dedicated to Les Immateriaux, titled 30 years after Les Immateriaux: art, science and theory. Lyotard has tried to analyse this new material according 5 categories (matériau/medium, matériel /receiver (destinataire), maternité /emitter (destinateur), matière / referent, and matrice/code). This interlude of Lyotard emphasized the relation between this new materiality and language. I think Lyotard was right, in fact, not to focus on binary rather than language: symbols and grammars. This violence of the binary, I won't take it too serious, since it is clear if we study Leibniz carefully, that the binary is like the minimum ontology, which allows to develop a metaphysics which with simplest hypothesis, produces the richest phenomenons. Deleuze and Guatarri indeed, tend to emphasize the numérique than the binary. This is also the order of magnitude that I have chosen to work on, data objects. I prefer to talk about materiality than matter, since materiality gives us different order of magnitudes, while matter, for me, implies an endless reduction. Hence I come to the last point of this post (I know I shouldn't write too long). In search of the matter of digital objects, we can perform a reduction down to the hardware and finally to the quantum activities, which may not give us an explanation of the other orders of realities above it. This partly explains, to my own reading, that Aristotle in Metaphysics Book Z has decided to grant the primary being to *eidos* instead of matter. Materiality for me is not something we can get rid of form, indeed, I have tried to show in a recent article Form and Relation https://www.academia.edu/7782458/Form_and_Relation_-Materialism_on_an_Uncanny_Stage, that the hylomorphism should be abandoned following Heidegger and Simondon, while it is also not productive to revive the 18th century metaphysics that reappear in the recent works of some speculative realists. The materiality also implies a constant process of materialisation, which is always technical and technological, Simondon in his Du Mode d'existence des objets techiques has a very interesting take on this process of materialisation, which I have also described in the above article. Best, Yuk 2014-10-13 19:29 GMT+02:00 Daniel Rourke therou...@gmail.com: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- More echoed thanks to Ashley for bringing us all here and each of the previous occupants of the conversation for kicking things off... Reading
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-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks for the lovely responses and questions Daniel and Jan! I wanted to first attend to something that Daniel says: I don't experience interruption as the choice I make to drive off the road, to knowingly halt the journey. I think that the journey is not necessarily halted, merely rerouted. I can see that when I used the word interruption it implied a kind of cessation, but instead I wish to suggest that the pulling off the road is choosing to explore other options that the road has to offer. In other words, I don’t want to break the highway, I just want more off-ramps. If I were to go off-road, I’d be committing act of violence that I think Daniel borrows from Nunes. Not only would I inherently undermine the thoughtfulness of the engineers who designed the road, but I’d also be risking the safety of my passengers (or myself). But perhaps dropping the metaphor (as much as I relish playing with it) would allow me to address Jan Robert’s concern/enquiry about the practical application of turning the digital into matter through AFK experience. In some ways I think it’s certainly connected to what Daniel brings up about “things” - that their existence only becomes manifest when they cease the function. When I’m AFK, a process of self-reflection and contemplation about the ways in which I experience the digital come to shape the ways in which that “thing” becomes matter. It stops becoming interface, data, software, hardware, and telecommunication infrastructure and starts to take on meaning through affect. The ways in which I respond to the affect of those “things” is when I feel as though the digital becomes an object. (This is what I was trying to say about the digital being “objectified.”) Occasionally I think literature better explains the process of translating affect into matter than theorists. I think of the way that Flann O’Brien described the troubling relationship of a man and his bicycle in *The Third Policeman*. In his story, one of the constables of the small town of Dalkey rides his bicycle so much that he is turning into one. Through his riding he is becoming more and more “part bicycle,” and at the current state he might be more “part bicycle” than “part policeman.” In other words, his “thing-ness” is being transformed by the experience and affect of riding his bike. Though the absurdity of O’Brien’s statement is on the surface delightful and strange, it does somewhat approach a kind of poetic approach to (a certain reading of) cybernetics - the more we use our machines the more we become them. In this way the matter of a digital object - a kind of manifestation that I attribute to its affect and experience - can be measured through its use. However, one cannot evaluate that usage in the midst of applying its function. Only at the point of reflection - interruption, rupture, breakage - does the object become material. In that way, the digital becomes matter (as an object) when we are AFK. Hopefully that kind of rounds out some of what I was discussing before. I know I haven’t had a chance to respond to everyone’s thoughtful remarks as of yet, and I intend to do later in the week! On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 2:09 PM, Jan Robert Leegte m...@leegte.org wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hi Nicholas! Thanks for the great ride. Very nice writing. Some feedback. I’m a bit confused how reflecting on an experience is the same as matter or becoming objectified. Could you try and explain from an practical point of view, how you see the digital becoming material when moving AWK? What proces of objectification is happening here. Is it reflection? Memories? Or missing limb syndrome? From a practicising point of view, I try and define matter as something you can work with. How could you work with this objectifying experience you mention? yours, Jan Robert --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hello empyre: Thanks so much to Ashley and the other moderators for inviting me to be a discussant this month. I’ve been following the conversation and am definitely excited to contribute! As a way of getting started I wanted to pick up on two things that Ashley wrote with regards to the materiality of digital objects: *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… * *As I mentioned in an earlier post, much of what we refer to when we speak of “the digital” takes place outside of the field of human perception.* This statement makes me
