Re: [-empyre-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Sorry just to be popping in occasionally... but this was just so interesting and wanted to ask a question. Ashley, the metaphors of touch used by your respondents, or of some kind of haptic experience with screen technologies are, I think, extremely telling, but I'm wondering if it is that designers or the individuals building these technologies are indeed leveraging the sense of touch that is so fundamental to all of our interactions - so that we aspire to create systems we can touch or at least can use the metaphor of touch to connect with or alter the objects/systems/outcomes. So that it is not a coincidence that the metaphor of touch is employed. Not to take this into the realm of science fiction, but if we relied on other senses entirely what would these systems or objects appear like? This is articulated, I think by Rollin in your question to him about the materiality of pixels - the building blocks are what we need to use in order to make these processes intelligible to us, within the framework of our existing sense-capabilities (haptic, optical, affectual) etc. And further - perhaps we can take material as a historically located term - not an description of things as such. So that now, in this moment, it can include not only the act, but the metaphor of touching, feeling, sensing. Don't know if I am off on a tangent, but I'd be curious to hear what you think - H On Oct 17, 2014, at 11:59 PM, Ashley Scarlett ashley.scarl...@gmail.com wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- 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? ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
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-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--hi all intriguing examples - I enjoyed the Flann O'Brien bicycle, am wondering whether Deleuzian objectiles might have a place in this discussion, and also wonder how tuned non-francophones might be to Serres' example - the furet being a ferret, a furtive animal par excellence cited in the children's nursery rhyme and game which inspire this reference (probably anticlerical, tangentially erotic, etc). Serres makes the furet analogous to the rugby ball: the player with the ball is identifiable, to be reckoned with, literally tackled, as opposed other members of the team who remain anonymous by virtue of the fact they are not carrying the ball; they're bereft of any useful, strategic identity. In short, and I think what Serres is getting at and what might be useful here, is the fact that the furet, like the ballon oval, is above all a relational object. best sj On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 7:49 PM, Phil Thompson philjdthomp...@gmail.com wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hi all, I will again echo the thanks to Ashley and also to all the previous discussants who have made this conversation so interesting. Nicholas' metaphor as well as the conversation on Heidegger's concept of the transition from ready-to-hand to present-at-hand through rupture, brought to mind the networked existence of digital files. In his essay 'From Image to Image File—and Back: Art in the Age of Digitalization' (http://www.altx.com/remix/Groys.pdf), Groys writes about how we never experience the original data file, rather we only ever experience its representation through varying hardware and software, which in turn has multiple variations of settings. For this reason he states that all performances of data are original unique events. Therefore if these glitches or ruptures to data that allow us to perceive its thing-ness can only be experienced through their representations on the screen, through the speaker, or through other forms of hardware is it possible to talk about the materiality of data without having to account for the entire network? If not, then Nicholas' wonderful example from Flann O'Brien brings to mind Michel Serres' concept of quasi-objects as a way of accounting for digital files. Serres defines the quasi-object with reference to the game 'pass the furet', 'The quasi-object is not an object, but it is one nevertheless, since it is not a subject, since it is in the world; it is also a quasi-subject, since it marks or designates a subject who, without it, would not be a subject. He who is not discovered with the furet in his hand is anonymous, part of a monotonous chain where he remains indistinguished. He is not an individual; he is not recognized, discovered, cut; he is of the chain and in the chain.' This definition seems to echo the same revealing that happens when Heidegger's object becomes a thing. This could then potentially open up the debate as to whether a quasi-object has some form of agency within the network (quasi-agency?) ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] week two - MATTER
--empyre- soft-skinned space--The problem Phil outlines with Groys's conception of digital things is crucial. In Groys's sense, the digital is neither a flowing circuitry, nor a poor image of an originary world. Auras abound, everywhere we turn, indeed, Groys's digital allows new objects to arise whenever a screen is fired up, or even within each of the 60 refreshing frames crammed into every visual second. There are no 'things', with their own being, only encounterers encountering. The quasi-subject is another great idea to bring into play, but it must be evacuated of all appeals to human autonomy to be useful. Like Sally says, digital things are relational. They are not the rugby ball nor the rugby players, but more like a network that is enacted amongst them. I am currently reading up on Craig Venter, the scientist best known for his work on the human genome project. His current pet idea is that we are about the enter an age of 'digital biology' in which chromosomes will travel around the world at the speed of light. It is a stunning collapse between various levels of materiality. The analogy is worth unpacking some more I think. This brief summary is from 'Nature' on a problem Venter (and his predecessor Erwin Schrödinger) propagates: Turing invented the stored-program computer, and von Neumann showed that the description is separate from the universal constructor. This is not trivial. Physicist Erwin Schrödinger confused the program and the constructor in his 1944 book What is Life?, in which he saw chromosomes as architect's plan and builder's craft in one. This is wrong. The code script contains only a description of the executive function, not the function itself. (source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/full/482461a.html) I like this because it seems to both undermine and complicate our questions at the same time :-) What are cells, flesh, human beings without material substrates encoding information? Information that can be copied, parsed and now - according to Venter - encoded in a digital form and copied, parsed and propagated in another set of entirely different material substrates and networks. At this point my head is hurting. Where does our elusive 'digital MATTER' reside within this extended analogy? ___ 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-] 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
