Re: [-empyre-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Much of our conversation thus far has been bound up with digital objects/quasi-objects/objectiles. Before we wrap the week up, I’d like to look a little more closely at (a slight reformulation of) Daniel’s last question, namely: *Where does our illustrious digital MATTER reside?* At the heart of this question lies a certain amount of ambiguity regarding how to (where to) even begin attributing materiality to the digital. From forensics to actor networks, it is hard not to resort to the physical when trying to account for the materiality of digital objects and processes. In an effort to push this line of questioning beyond the physical, and drawing upon the works of Kirschenbaum and Drucker that were cited in the introduction, a question that I would like to put to the group is: Is digital materiality something that can be properly accounted for if we approach it as (merely) a matter of interpretation? Jan’s account of digital matter and mysticism seems in some ways to espouse this approach to materiality. I guess I wonder: if digital MATTER is a matter of interpretation, what work does asserting this type of materiality do for us? If, as Rollin Leonard (below) states in exasperation, is is just a sense that you get in your own head, is thinking and looking and talking about it still worth it? (Of course I would side with Drucker's reasoning behind her own engagements with materiality, but I'm wondering what the group thinks...?!) If digital materiality is *not* merely a matter of interpretation, then I am lead to the following line of thought/questioning, which I am also interested in putting forward to the group: In a series of interviews that I recently conducted as part of my doctoral research, several of the respondents drew upon touch, and metaphors of touch, as a means of talking about the materiality and perceived immateriality of the digital. Through the proliferation of haptic devices, rising popularity of 3D printers, and increasing awareness of our “cyborgian” status, touching “the digital” seems eminently possible. To this end, I would like to ask the group, what role does “touch” play in attributing materiality to the digital? How might touch be leveraged as a means of locating the whereabouts of this material? For those who are interested, I have included brief excerpts from interviews that I conduced with Phil Thompson :-) and Rollin Leonard below. These excerpts speak to the two lines of thought that I’ve picked up on above in ways that I find particularly interesting and engaging. Ashley – Given what you've said about the sculptural qualities of your digital works http://www.pjdthompson.co.uk/index.php/project/insertions/2/, where or what would you locate as the materials that compose these sculptures? Phil Thompson – I think potentially in two places. First, I think that you're obviously dealing with an image on a screen. Even though that image may not be material, it has a materiality that you can alter it with. This is especially if you're talking about curve. Also, with iPads and other haptic things, touch - *touching the screen and touching the objects* - is something has very much been brought back into computing. This is an incredibly sculptural way of working with anything. Even though it's an image, it involves a very sculptural method. Then, at the same time, I would also locate this sculptural material as being within the file that is saved. If I save a file in a difference format, I know that it's going to be different and I know that its' going to, in a way, be a different thing. It's this kind of thing-ness that is interesting to me. It occupies a different space within a hard drive, and I know that when I open it in different programs it's going to corrupt differently in each program. So, there's something very unique about every file, which is exposed each time it's opened in each program. Ashley, in reference to Crash Kiss (2012) http://vimeo.com/47861307 – What would you say are the materials that you used to create this work? Rollin Leonard – I don’t know… I guess it’s kind of hard to point to something that’s properly material… In that work I guess I’m treating pixels as it if they are material… yeah if there’s material in that image it would have to be the pixels. Ashley – LOL. Do you feel reticent to say that there’s something material about the images? Rollin – I don’t know – it might just be a bad definition. It reminds me of people getting hung up on metaphors. They’ll hear a metaphor, and they’ll confuse it for being an actual description of a process. This kind of thing happens, for example, in the sciences when someone is trying to describe something. Science news reporting relies heavily on metaphor to help the general public understand scientific concepts which are abstract. […] These analogies are useful and help you understand, but it’s just not how
Re: [-empyre-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Spheres 1-20 // Sara Ludy http://www.saraludy.com/spheres120.html In both of their emails, Phil and John called attention to the role of hardware and software, as structural means through which “data files” are attributed a “representational form” (whether visually, sonically, haptically, etc.). As many of us have acknowledged, this formalization of data is necessary in order for the submedial messiness of digital processes to become *an object* of (potential) experience, or as Jan said “something you can work with”. Within this formulation, three intersecting components come to the fore as relevant to our conversation, namely: structure, process, and representation. Of course these are not surprising – as Kristy discussed, and Dragan’s work http://bw-fla.uni-freiburg.de/ demonstrates, debates surrounding digital preservation frequently revolve around which of these should take precedence and why. (This being said, does anyone know of an instance where “process” was the central focus of preservation? I’m afraid I don’t know of any examples that aren’t reductive and/or code-centric…?) What interests me in this case, somewhat counter-intuitively, is how centrally the question of loss factors in here; digital preservation seems to be necessarily bound-up with questions concerning what or how much can be lost while still conserving the “Thing Itself http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182814”. (Daniel's discussion on entropy seems relevant here as well, but in more immediate terms.) While I don’t want to discount the archaeological value of collecting and preserving physical devices https://www.medienwissenschaft.hu-berlin.dphysicadevices, or suggest that “the digital” is not an irreducible tangle of the components listed above, even the richest instantiations of “ zombie https://www.academia.edu/1182981/Zombie_Media_Circuit_Bending_Media_Archaeology_into_an_Art_Method media http://www.recyclism.com/refunctmedia.php” seem to miss what is really at stake in a discussion of digital objects and matter. Despite their importance, talk of game consoles, server farms and e-waste falls remarkably flat when trying to account for the digital phenomena that these devices are composing, mediating and making available to us (or not). By focusing too rigidly on the structure(s) that support the experiential component of the digital, you inevitably exorcise the weird and haunted http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo14413838.html attributes that make these things desirable and worth engaging with at all. (Unless you're a tinkerer, hanging with a busted piece of tech isn't usually all that much fun...) In the closing remarks of his last email, Daniel quoted Erwin Schrödinger as saying, “the code script contains only a description of the executive function, not the function itself.” Similarly, in an earlier email, Jan said, “the execution is a totally different entity, which needs a totally different framework to describe.” I think that it is precisely this that a conversation regarding digital objects is aiming to achieve – an account of the function, the execution, the formalized representation. While accounting for these frequently lapses into talk of the physical and the metaphorical, I would agree with Jan that what we are (or should be) in search of, is a totally different descriptive framework. I would be interested in hearing Yuk's sense of the feasibility and relevancy of this, especially given the assertions that he made here https://www.academia.edu/2241486/What_is_a_Digital_Object - starting from a phenomenological perspective, how do we account for object(ification) of data? You mentioned that you selected metadata as a means of (superficially) limiting your object of study - what other parameters might you have set? It is for this reason, that I find the notion of “representation” (and corresponding notions of image and appearance) that is the most intriguing, and in need of reconsideration, particularly when taken in tandem with a quote of Yuk’s that I cited in an earlier email/post, namely that “computer programs work on the presupposition of representation” (Hui 2012:345). The digital object (as such) exists only in its representation - its appearance marks the passage of data from a mode of pure potentiality to concretized actuality. Through this process of emergence (which is successful regardless of whether or not a glitch appears), it stands as a testament to the relational coherence of its corresponding system (structure processes), and yet it is not this system. It is precisely because it is not this system that I think we need to question what is it, apart from this system. Exploring the physical substrates, networked apparatuses, and textual descriptions that enable the emergence of digital objects has been and is being undertaken in many fields - I am interested in investigating the punctal and perpetually
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-] 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
[-empyre-] week one - PRACTICE - introduction
--empyre- soft-skinned space--*October 6-12* *PRACTICE* Much of the current and most pressing work on digital objects is being taken up within professional and creative contexts through practice. In an effort to ground a largely theoretical discussion on digital objects, and furnish it with political and practical urgency, from October 6th-12th, we would like to open with a conversation regarding encounters with and impressions of digital objects “in the wild”. Of particular interest are conversations regarding how digital objects are being encountered and conceptualized within practices of: curation; exhibition; preservation; archiving; and design. In addition to our overarching provocations, we will explore such questions as: · Drawing upon your experience, how do you conceptualize digital objects? How does this conceptualization fit into the work that you do? · How have historical, political, experiential, and ideological forces factored into this definition of digital objects? · What consequences does this definition have within your line of work/research? And more broadly? · How would you characterize your relation to and experience of digital objects? · Why does a conversation concerning digital objects matter? What is at stake in this conversation? While we will hopefully make our way through each of these questions this week, as well as other emergent ones – we would like to extend a special invitation to the --empyre--soft_skinned_space community to share your own “definitions” of digital objects. From your perspective, what kind of thing is a digital objects? *INVITED DISCUSSANT BIOS* *Ange Albertini *is a reverse engineer, professional malware analyst, developer, and author of http://www.corkami.com. Ange has been experimenting with computer internals more than 20 years. More recently, Ange has become interested in the visualization of digital objects, attempting to document various binary file formats visually (current images can be found at pics.corkami.com). Additionally, Ange manually crafts files to present particular characteristics by combining file formats, compression and cryptography. Ange has been called a 'digital alchemist' and a 'binary artist’ for his work in creating a valid PDF that is also a valid TrueCrypt container, and a JPEG that encrypts with AES to a PNG file which decrypts with 3-DES to a PDF file. *Dragan Espenschied *(*1975 Germany) is a media artist, digital culture researcher and 8-bit musician living in New York City. Starting out as a net activist in the late 1990’s, he created several online interventions concerned with digital power structures and live network traffic analysis/manipulation together with Alvar Freude. In his artistic career, Espenschied focuses on the historization of Digital Culture from the perspective of computer users rather than hackers, developers or “inventors” and together with net art pioneer Olia Lialina has created a significant body of work concerned with how to represent and write a culture-centric history of the networked age. Since 2011, he has been restoring and culturally analyzing 1 TB of Geocities data, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Espenschied worked with the transmediale festival’s archive and the Vilem Flusser Archive to conceptually and technically integrate large-scale emulation while working as a researcher at the University of Freiburg and the University of Applied Arts in Karlsruhe. Publications include papers on large-scale curation of complex digital artifacts, emulation and digital culture, the influential reader Digital Folklore as well as musical releases on Aphex Twin’s label Rephlex and several underground/net labels, performing and lecturing in between raves and museums in Europe and the United States. Since April 2014, he is leading the Digital Art Conservation Program at Rhizome. *Andres Ramirez Gaviria *Informed by processes of translation and transference, and building on the forms, figures, and discourses of art, design, and technology, Andrés Ramírez Gaviria’s work addresses such disparate, even contradictory, notions as autonomy and communication. Through the interaction of forms and connections, Gaviria’s work emphasizes moments of discord and dialogue between the constantly changing perspective of historical references and an experiential notion of the contemporary. Andrés Ramírez Gaviria (born 1975 Bogotá) lives and works in Vienna, Austria. His work has been exhibited in BA – CA Kunstforum, Vienna; Kunsthaus Graz; Kunsthaus Dresden; Caribbean Biennial, Santo Domingo; Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo; Arte Camara – ArtBo, Bogotá; the ARCO International Contemporary Art Fair, Madrid; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Sonambiente, Berlin and Transmediale, Berlin. *Kristie MacDonald* is a visual artist and archivist who lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. She holds a BFA from York University specializing in Visual
