[...]
It is a self-defining system of signs referring to signs.
a quiet listener. we have yet no idea what is speak. how taking transforms the mind that talks. conditions of thinking in relation to talking, before or after the mouth that talks. thinking in other languages. if intimacy is saying before thinking, how fits the acts of maulwurfe?
work on shyness, I have to start (slowly) with what i (kind of) know.
“...Nudged on the scene as a kind of shivering being, anxious and shy,..” (kafka, test)
There is the suggestion here, as in Holderlin, that timidity might be a dialect of stupidity. (Finding no way of testing out of these subtle complicities, one falls asleep, exhausted by the distress of proving one's most minimal merit.) (Avital Ronell, The Veils of Servility)
According to Silvan Tomkins, “shame operates only after interest or enjoyment has been activated.”
as Sedgwick has argued, for some people, and most often queer subjects, “shame is simply the first, and remains a permanent, structuring fact of identity: one that ... has its own, powerfully productive and powerfully social metaphoric possibilities.
the idea is that the performance that avows its performanceness acknowledges the difficulty of fitting into roles, finding identities, and managing a self, especially a self vulnerable to the effects of stigma.
is there a queerness in me and my performance? is shyness, they way i do it, queer?
turn the spectator to the reader.
does shame intertwines with queer?
this affect and mode of performance (which normative euro American culture would rather eradicate) can be queered, twisted and turned into endless artful enactments.
queer, as experimental linguistic representational and political artistic performance.
shameless in my shyness. (at the level of affect theory?)
shyness: looking otherwise and feeling differently
to act shamed of exactly that which he is excited. (is this a queer subject?)
queer is not isomorphic with gay or lesbian or any other fixed identity, rather, queerness undoes all identities into an endless multiplicity and unbecoming. (liquefaction of any solidification)
queer seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a person’s undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception on a filiations.
Indeed, the performativity of both queer and shame can be reiterated differently; the subject can disidentify from such interpolations and re-deploy the abjecting and/or disciplining of the terms in unforeseen ways, which Warhol did.
In surrender the head bends and meets the heart. The head that does not bend has no value, and the head that is stiff will have to bend sometime, either in surrender or in shame. The head that bends in surrender will never have to bend in shame. Shame accompanies arrogance. Shyness accompanies Love. See how children are endowed with shyness, that is natural. Shyness is inherent. Shame is inflicted by society and is acquired. Shame brings guilt and shyness adds to one? beauty. Retain your shyness and drop your shame. (?)
shame is simply the first and remains a permanent, structuring fact of identity: one that has its own, powerfully productive and powerfully social metaphoric possibilities.
deciding not to care how people thing (or feel?), because those are the things i don't want to change! (or i don't think i should want to change) (warhol)
what do i want to change? just having fun with my stuff. can i decide not to care what people think? shyness...
in shame i wish to continue to look (or talk, or make or perform) and be looked at (or spoken to or seen in my performing of myself), but i also do not wish to do so. (Silvan Tomkins)
i am embarrassed to show the shy singing.
chronically embarrassing my self. (Aula presentation, shy singing, ...)
on passivity, note for the reader: not to mistake it for endurance in this discourse. here we are talking about a philosophical term, in relation to the “being” and the “other”...
an architecture that tries to be modest, a performance that tries to be intimidating as much
as it can.
just in time shyness
what are the pitfalls and abysses of philosophical reflection on and with shyness?
what am i trying to shortcut?
was Socrates intruding in his punk philosopher, stopping people at back allies and perform philosophy. he doesn't hold back, he intrudes, tattooing the body of the other, questioning.
the problem of his project?
i am not shy in the work that i am trying to present publicly (?)
where am i shy?
posture of position or gesture
the moment you stand in front of the audience you stop being authentic.
when we listen to something very carefully and allow ourselves to be moved we can tune in ti=o the art work and absorb its methods. i have found myself moved when i allowed it, by the most childish and stupid works of arts.
open minded and eager to make connections
(jane jacob,) (1) community is spontaneous, the tissues of community are not something that can be planed, that they happen spontaneously. (2) and this only happens when you are at the local scale. so in this sense, design is suspect, because design is set to be post spontaneity.
find a way to think locally, and thinking about the city as a product of spontaneous interaction between people who are different. but the design can also make something that has a social character.
we perform an experiment to prove or disprove a hypothesis, we are working within a framework of a closed system, the original proposition governs our procedures and observations, at arriving at yes or no. but when performing the experiment we come across something unforeseen, or prompted by evidence to jump tracks and think about a different issue. then we are working within the framework of an open system. we move beyond yes or no to exploring something emergent, something whose elements was there but whose form was unknown to us. a fancy and careful way of saying “something new”, because it is new to our understanding.
William Empson
art results from overcrowding(?)
when one is responsive rather than assertive one can't imagine where one will end Up: thinking. this responsiveness is different than the state of being active or passive. a passivity that motivates and mobilizes the subject into places that are yet unknown to her/him.
Thinking, as Heidegger says, may be much the same as wandering. my lectures are like wandering.
someone who studies paradoxes, poetry and philosophy
(keeping what you know away from society, history and away from art, not to acknowledge what you have learn)
incompatibility between a particular love and a particular social arrangement for love.
when you play with others, not try to shine and not try to shy. (shyness is dangerous to society)
it is like being lynched by kukluksklan.
curios about somebody else rather than identifying with them.
i really learned how to work with people by learning how to keep people from killing each other in street.
if we are very sympathetic, saying “i know how you feel” is privileging solidarity: “we are all in this together”. but well we can't all be in this together in the same way, so what is it that we do together, despite this fact.
instead of the declaring voice “i believe this or that”, we can say “i would have though” or “perhaps” introducing a zone of ambiguity in people's relationship with each other you might get something social. subjunctive mood (konjuktiv) not only is to zusammenbinden the elements of semantic also to zusammenbinden the the people who are speaking in these terms.
cooperation is a rehearsal not a performance.
public real made of people who don't argue in behalf of their own interest but to think most disinterestedly.
my talks/works is about how we make sense of our environment, the network that we live in and the texts and discourses that we are reading and writing.
how shyness (even) look like? can we recognize it when we see it?
what is feeling comfortable in the presence of strangers? not verbally i mean, physically.
df class='thdf'>the notion of | df> being comfortable in the
presence of
difference. being physically comfortable in
presence of the people who are not like yourself.
the subjunctive is the
language that the shy uses
naturally, which is one of the necessary elements of cooperation. in contrast to subjunctive speech, there is
declarative speech is a form of
declaration invites sub
mission, an
d it invites sub
mission because somebo
dy else
defines for you clearly what something is about. there is almost an
erotic of that, they really now what they are on about, they really know who they are, an
d you become a
spectator to their
de
finiteness. giving yourself up to somebo
dy who seems more
define
d an
d more purposive.
cooperation in islam is not a personal experience, it is something that is en
code
d in very strict ritual. it is not an act of choice. cooperation is not a
duty but a
desire.
my talk is a fancy and careful way of responding to the voices of other. the ones that are sounding in my ear. (inslam, shakespear, math, that girl in enghelab square, etc.). i am not good at immediate reaction, so i respond with a delay and a lot of playfulness and black holes that come in to be of the part of this, by this relationship to the Other, that is manifesting itself through the language of the Other (islam)
In my performative practice, I seek a way to approach thinking about things that arrests my curiosity. It is a form of commitment to what comes forward and calls for thinking, an attention before what I do not know. My Talks are fancy and careful responding to that otherness, to the voice or face that speaks to you from somewhere that you cannot yet locate. This call could be from a sadistic super-ego inside or Shakespeare or kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat.
i am not just interested in my own foundational metaphors.
is there an amateurishness at the intersection of art and philosophy that i am drawing?
what is amateur?
the fact that i am giving talks is very much related to the social culture around me, in Germany the culture has a taste to listen and there is an interest for speech. now i get it like in the case of warhol he is rethinking his surrounding culture which is dominated at that time by pop, media and celebrity. i am rethinking the academia and philosophy that is in relationship with the arts, my issues and interests are different than warhol for that matter. i am enthusiastic and extremely interested in the material that i am working with, and at the same time overthrown by it and i believe in it, in the same way that maybe warhol believed in pop culture and business.
the nightmare after performance
df class='thdf'>the notion of | df> skill in art, performance, life, work
trauma, in the experience of the trauma, the source mixes, and articulate in metaphors and hubric signifiers.
relationship between older works and performances, the issue of skill and technology.
it took 60 years after the developments in tempering metal, for barnors to learn new nigf techniques. this is common in the history of technology, that a tool appears before people know how to use it. do we know how we can use computers? when we master a technique, its uses are not immediatly clear.
getting interested in the wrong answer in the four answer question.
no skill develops without a good dose of curiosity. which enables us to think about what might be, rather than what is.
There is a half-remembered discussion of Sigmund Freud I read once in a book and which I have been paraphrasing regularly ever since. It said that for Freud dreams were a way of thinking by doing. You run, you cry, you kiss, you love, you cheat, you argue, you fall, you kill, you eat, you sing, you get lost, you travel back in time, you become somebody else – but you do it all in your head. You do it in your head and so it is thinking, just not a thinking we recognize as thinking. When I am dreaming I am composing thoughts in the way an artist composes a painting or a witch a potion – an assemblage made of bodies and places and actions. An embodied thinking, that is no less eloquent or extraordinary or transformative for being so.
...................................
...One can chat and gossip but it is forbidden to preach, lecture or instruct.”
Claudio Magris’ Micronismi
...................................
(butler)
the structure of a
ddress itself
although I
di
d not know in whose voice this person was speaking, whether the voice was his own or not, I
di
d feel that I was being a
ddresse
d.
To
respond to this a
ddress seems an important
obligation
during these times.
It is about a mo
de of
response that follows upon having been a
ddresse
d, a comportment towar
d the Other only after the Other has ma
de a
demand upon me, accuse
d me of a failing, or aske
d me to assume a
responsibility.
The structure of a
ddress is important for un
derstan
ding how moral
authority is intro
duce
d an
d sustaine
d if we accept not just that we a
ddress others when we speak, but that in some way we come to exist, as it were, in the moment of being a
ddresse
d, an
d something about our existence proves precarious when that a
ddress fails.
...the
demand that comes from elsewhere, sometimes a nameless elsewhere,...
We think of presidents as wielding speech acts in willful ways, so when the director of a university press, or the president of a university speaks, we expect to know what they are saying, and to whom they are speaking, and with what intent.
...perhaps we should think more seriously about the relation between modes of address and moral authority. (also one of the issues in today's performance art)
narration is always judgment
affective intervention
why should i listen to you?
because i have a voice!
visual culture has different strand from lecture culture. people are able to express themselves with verbal signs long before they can draw anything, using visual sign (picture: a drawing by ds class="frds scrmbld">Hannods>). verbal language because of its easy everyday usage has become mundane and instrumental to communication, visual sign due to its learning curve and skillfulness belonged to the art domain.
...................................
transitive
verb constructions are the ones that require a
direct object in or
der to complete the meaning an
d to be grammatical. Use
d in theater, between
director an
d actor, by
communicating with
transitive
verbs actors can perform the
language of the
director.
my work embodies an
d communicates a
desire to
read (an
d write) texts
[steiner
]
in
Greek mythology the
poet an
d the seer are blin
d so that they may, by the antennae of speech, see further.
One thing is clear
: every
language-act has a temporal
determinant. No semantic form is timeless. When using a wor
d we wake into resonance, as it were, its entire previous
history. A text is embe
dde
d in
specific
historical time; it has what
linguists call a
diachronic structure. To
read fully is to restore all that one can of the imme
diacies of value an
d intent in which speech actually occurs.
The process of
diachronic
translation insi
de one’s own native tongue is so constant, we perform it so unawares, that we rarely pause either to note its formal intricacy or the
decisive part it plays in the very existence of civilization. By far the greatest mass of the
past as we experience it is a
verbal construct.
History is a speech-act, a selective use of the
past tense. Even substantive remains such as buil
dings an
d historical sites must be ‘
read,’ i.e. locate
d in a context of
verbal recognition an
d placement, before they assume real
presence.
...................................
(notes -
december 15, 2011)
•ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Robin,Robot,Robert,Robocop">Robds>ots making ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Robin,Robot,Robert,Robocop">Robds>ots
•what a robot wants (and how it wants it)
•cataloging computer generated stones smoke
•digital to digital convertor
•physical interaction (between a user and a media object, pressing a button, choosing a link, moving the body) versus psychological interaction (the psychological processes of filling-in, hypothesis forming, recall and identification, which are required for us to comprehend any text or image at all)
•Mechanical Monsters
•blown away roof
•Technology: the new nature
•-error and - horror(-terror)
•edge of the earth
•gold and dream, gold price and power law
•the story of the viewer
•fact and perspective (elucidation)
•love at first sight (digital)
•continual production of the new is what allows things to stay the same, (logic of the same)
•noise story
•the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium (McLuhan)
•The mediation of religion through buildings
•start with metaphor and end with algebra
•a “model” is a system of objects (any kind of objects) that make all of the sentences in a theory true , where a “theory” is a list of sentences in a language.
•metaphors somehow mobilize the difference between the two domains
•arena of alienation
•Cut the Noise
•mirrors with (/without) memories
•substitutability
•optical appearances (mind ~ eye)
•Dioptrics (science of refraction), catoptrics (reflection),
•that could not be spoken of or represented, because it was empty of discourse and thus of meaning.
•innocence of the eye
•Poor Unfortunate Souls
•being useful, like a prison guard
•autopoetic (complex self-referential systems)
•to take up the motives from the external world
•will-less perception, “the pure eye of genius”
•bringing from the artificial world to the art world
•object oriented programming / subject oriented
•Observer, system and environment
•a system (designed) with a purpose of itself
•magnifying or light-collecting optical device
•social selfish
•un-computational
•gray area
•self-identity is bad visual system
•Vision requires instruments of vision; an optics is a politics of positioning. Instruments of vision mediate standpoints;
•Identity, including self-identity, does not produce science; critical positioning does, that is, objectivity
•docile body
•technological visioning (vector of secret texts, books within books, ancient curses, digital dreams, and medieval cyber-art)
•empty space left by theory and philosophy
•technical visioning
•Technology is never merely “used,” never merely instrumental. It is always ” incorporated” and “lived.”
•In his last paintings, such as the Bride of 1912, Duchamp both elaborated an iconography that combined mechanical and visceral forms and began to move away from any procedures that revealed the artist's hand to create “retinal” or “anecdotal” art.
lemon grass plant, ma
rigol
d
ds class="frds scrmbld">Saeedds> 0012063108222
Tehran Wi Fi
: 88 57 27 92
newer me
dium may be ‘neste
d’ insi
de of an ol
der me
dium (or vice versa)
mental life (
memory,
imagination, fantasy,
dreaming, perception, cognition) is me
diate
d an
d is
embodie
d in the whole range of
material me
dia… we not only think about me
dia, we think in them (
Mitchell)
The shock of new me
dia is as ol
d as the hills
Franz Reuleux
describe
d this cor
relation: the more primitive the
technology, the less attune
d the parts of the machine to each other, the greater the
degree of play
-- the more perfecte
d the
technology, the closer the fit, the less play between the in
divi
dual parts.
(For Winnicott,) play is a psychological state where the boun
daries between self an
d the
world remain labile an
d flui
d, (a state which is important not only for the
development of the
child, but with significant ramifications for human life an
d culture in general.)
Re
presentation is a
distinctive manner of
imagining the real, an
d is a fun
damental
phenomenon upon which all culture rests.
Henri Lefebvre
distinguishes Re
presentations of space an
d Re
presentational spaces . ... Re
presentational spaces are “
directly live
d” through as
sociate
d images an
d symbols which overlay physical space, making
symbolic use of its objects.
the conceiving min
d over the perceiving bo
dy (vision/touch)
touching was consi
dere
d “a cru
der scanning at close range,” an
d seeing “a more subtle touching at a
distance.”
for Berkeley there is no such thing as visual perception of
depth, an
d Con
dillac's statue effectively masters space with the help of movement an
d touch. The notion of vision as
[Ouch is a
dequate to a fiel
d of knowl
edge whose contents are organize
d as stable
positions within an extensive terrain.
•a technological gaze
•way of seeing (Derridean deconstructed)
•high-tech images
•artifact (cultural artifact, social)
•image of the or a body and its environment
•impossible subject-positioning, the codification of flesh, a visualization of scientific narratives and the aestheticization of information, all of which tell us about a longer line of cultural fantasies about information, code and technology. (Norah Campbell)
•Everything said is said by an observe (Maturana and Varela)
•framing the world
•virtual gaze (Baudrillard)
•achieve absolute vision, while seeing nothing.
•very much as real; human and technological, both
•i say this as someone who thinks that we are part of this digital world, but we are not necessarily subject to its terms
•splicing of direct and tactile human perception of reality with another reality, one that is mediated and technical
•the naration is not pure nor whole (why cyborg?)
•place of visibility (/ field of articulability)
•it is an aesthetic dream, dream of ismorphism between the discursive object and the visible object
•exteriorization of the body (relation between face / hand / tool )
•The “exact meeting place” of form, matter, tool, and hand is the touch(Henri Focillon)
•
////////////////////////
In this
interconnection of
embodie
d being an
d environing
world, what happens in the
interface is what is important.
--Don
Ihde, Bo
dies in
Technology
At first glance, s
trappe
d to the bo
dy of critters such as green turtles in Shark Bay, off Western Australia, humpback whales in the waters off southeast Alaska, an
d emperor penguins in Antarctica, a nifty miniature vi
deo camera is the central protagonist. Since the first overwrought seventeenth-century European
discussions about the camera luci
da an
d camera obscura, within
technoculture the camera (the
technological eye)seems to be the central object of both philosophical pretension an
d selfcertainty, on the one han
d, an
d cultural skepticism an
d the authenticity
destroying powers of the artificial, on the other han
d. The camera
--that vault or
arched chamber, that ju
dge's chamber
--move
d from elite Latin to the vulgar,
democratic i
diom in the nineteenth century only as a consequence of a new
technology calle
d photography, or “light-
writing.” A camera became a black-box with which to register pictures of the outsi
de
world in a re
presentational, menta
list, an
d sunny
semiotic economy, an analogy to the seeing eye in brainy, knowing man, for whom bo
dy an
d min
d are suspicious str
angers, if also near neighbors in the hea
d. Nonetheless, no
matter how gussie
d up with
digitalize
d optical powers, the camera has never lost its job to function as a ju
dge's chamber, in camera, within which the facts of the
world--in
dee
d, the critters of the
world--are assaye
d by the stan
dar
d of the visually convincing an
d, at least as important, the visually new an
d exciting.
... first we have to plough through some very pre
dictable
semiotic roa
d blocks that try to limit us to a cartoonish
epistemology about visual self-evi
dence an
d the life
worlds of human-
animal-
technology compoun
ds.
Gilbert stresses that nothing makes itself in the biological
world, but rather reciprocal in
duction within an
d between always-in-process critters ramifies through space an
d time on both large an
d small scales in casca
des of
inter- an
d intra-action. In embryology,
Gilbert calls this “
interspecies epigenesis."43
Gilbert writes
: “I think that the i
deas that Lynn
[Margulis] an
d I have are very similar; it's just that she was focusing on a
dults an
d I want to exten
d the concept (as I think the
science allows it to be fully exten
de
d) to embryos. I believe that the embryonic co-construction of the physical bo
dies has many more implications because it means that we were ‘never’ in
divi
duals”
caring
: becoming subject to the unsettling
obligation of curiosity, which requires knowing more at the en
d of the
day than at the beginning
//////////////
Nietzsche also sai
d, at the very beginning of the secon
d treatise of The Genealogy of Morals, that man is a promising
animal, by which he meant, un
derlining those wor
ds, an
animal that is permitte
d to make promises (
das versprechen
darf).
Nature is sai
d to have given itself the task of raising, bringing up,
domesticating an
d “
disciplining” (heranziichten) this
animal that promises.
Microlan
dscapes
:
the talk, also works
df class='thdf'>the notion of | df> mirror
stage an
d what
does it mean for us an
d for the companien
species that are entangle
d. what th
reads of meaning are taken apart by pulling on the th
read of self reflection an
d self vision, what will gets account as
nature for whom an
d when. the
animal that is in charge of her own image is the re
presentation of the universala man.
Appearance of eukaryotic cells aroun
d 2 billion years ago is probably the most significant event in the
history of life on earth. It gave the creatures with
DNA two important things
: a nucleus that containe
d all the genetic
materials an
d an
interface to
communicate with the
world outsi
de of the cell
--a complex
membrane
--to talk with the
materials alien to itself.
Interface is a critical point of
intersection between
different life
worlds, fiel
ds, or levels of organization. They are the areas in which
social friction can be experience
d an
d where
diffusion of new
technology is lea
ding to structural
discontinuities (which can be either
positive or negative), the
interface is where they will occur. The argent issue of
interfaces in
social
interaction an
d flow between human
animal, nonhumans, an
d computers is to
day becoming a zone of
transition of ephemeral
technologies, physical contact,
socio-political boun
daries, an
d metaphor-re
presentation.
Since antiquity, re
presentation has been the foun
dational concept of
aesthetics an
d semiotics. In the
modern era, it has also become a crucial concept in political theory. In a
discussion of law an
d ethnography,
Clifford ds class="frds scrmbld">Geertds>z calls into
question the Western
distinction between
matters of fact an
d matters of value. “Facts an
d law we have perhaps everywhere; their polarization we perhaps have not.”
ds class="frds scrmbld">Geertds>z's hermeneutic approach lea
ds him to focus on the
relation between the groun
ding of norms an
d the re
presentation of fact. Therefore, he con
cludes, re
presentation is a
distinctive manner of
imagining the real, an
d is a fun
damental
phenomenon upon which all culture rests.
The performance-talk is
divi
de
d into three tangle
d narratives, one the
social mo
de of
traveling that in
cludes the
child--the op
posite of the lonely masculine
traveler
--base
d on the real experience an
d a personal
story in a trip to Amazon in Colombia with
ds class="frds scrmbld">Karinds>
Demuth an
d her three years ol
d boy
--ds class="frds scrmbld">Hannods>
--, secon
d a multi-hea
de
d reading of
technologies of
interfacing within computer culture an
d the
worlds of other
species, the meaning of
inter-facing with the other, an
d thir
d a visual re
presentation of the highly
technical images recor
de
d by Kinect infrare
d 3
D-scanner/motion-
detector. The result of the visualization is a heavily glitchy image, which aims in the performance to link the spatial practice to the perceive
d an
d the re
presentational spaces to the live
d. Affirming the “un
naturalness” of the image makes it a trans
position of universal means of
communication
--the
language--that woul
d like to provi
de a
direct, unme
diate
d, an
d accurate re
presentation of the jungle.
The performance is an engagement with
df class='thdf'>the notion of | df> companion
species elaborate
d by
Donna Haraway, in an experience of walking in a tropical jungle with a computer in one han
d an
d in the other han
d the han
d of the human
child. The work
deals with
questions of the other-space that is mentally fille
d with projections an
d projects. The recor
ding of the walking in the rain forest
--as spatial an
d sensual experience
-- is thus
de
materialize
d an
d has acquire
d a
digital character. The
dense an
d hot environment of the Amazon is replace
d by an abstract graphic structure, thus bringing a new un
derstan
ding of the locality of the walk. The noise an
d the ran
domness of the
technical coloring the surface of the jungle provoke an
aesthetic fascination, an
d an appropriation of the imposible image of the forest.
Traveling to the Amazon to experience its ra
dical Otherness is a European tra
dition. It unintentional affirms the i
deology of a “state of
nature” that is
prior to culture.
Lacan: i am le
d to regar
d the function of the mirror
stage as a particular case of the function of the imago, which is to establish a
relation between the organism an
d its reality - or, as they say, between the Innenwelt an
d the Umwelt.
This
developement is experience
d as temporal
dialectic that
decisively projects the function of the in
divi
dual into
history. the mirror
stage is a
drama whose
internal thrust is precipitate
d from insufficiency to anticipation - an
d which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the
lure of spatial i
dentification, the succession of phantasies that exten
ds from a fragmente
d body image to a form of its totality that i shall call orthhopae
dic - an
d, lastly, to
df class='thdf'>the | df class='thdf'>assumption of | df>df> the armour of an alienating i
dentity, which will mark with its
rigi
d structure the subject's entire mental
development. thus, to break out of the circle of the Innenwelt into the Umwelt generates the inexhaustible qua
drature of the ego's verifications.
Electronic Reserve Text
: from Jacques
Lacan, Ecrits, New York
: W. W. Norton, 1977.
The Mirror
Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Reveale
d in Psychoanalytic Experience
Delivere
d at the 16th
International Congress of Psychoanalysis, Zurich, July 17, 1949
...................................
Flusser,
Gestures - beyon
d machines (
reading)
the project investigates the way in which
ds class="frds">Seifeeds> as an artist engages tactics of fiel
dwork,
embodiment an
d materiality (in a manner that reveals or instigates processes of knowing).
(In this moment of increasing stan
dar
dization an
d specialization regar
ding how people learn, art is a space for innovative thinking an
d experimentation outsi
de given frameworks.)
...our ability to share the experience of the habits of the
world that we
discover. (
Kohn)
...................................
Campbell on Harman's philosophy
(problem of) object-oriente
d ontology as
social theory
[insights of object-orientation mechanically applie
d to the
social by Harman, “im
materialism"
]
•innovative adaptation of phenomenology
•critique of how objects have been failed by philosophy
•insistence upon an aesthetic attitude of investigation
--but
-->
•object-oriented social theory lacks the rigor and imaginative potential to envision the ontology of the social
•the way object-oriented ontology is stuck in a no-man's-land of not-quite-nonhuman-not-quite-human
•as ooo enters social theory it commits a performative fallacy --> missing the fundamental starting point of social theory: ***objects come into the social world as expressions of (negotiated, perceptual, political, agentic) value*** [social theory is fundamentally predicated on the socius --> social theory is about the association between things =/= homogenous things]
}=/= Campbell's
*posthuman
relationism
*: another form that better un
derstan
ds the
abyssal point between the non-human an
d the human
(2007 conference) speculative realism
{antipathy to “human-centre
d” intellectual tra
ditions
} d>~d>=> object-oriente
d ontology
(objectivity
=/= obliqtivity)
Harman's im
materialism
: realism without
materialism
: objects can only ever be capture
d obliquely
object-oriente
d ontology's
development
:
•characterised by a consistent lament for how post-Kantian philosophy in general (Continental philosophy in particular) has abandoned hope of describing objects as objects
•the real: absolute autonomy of objects (withdraw from subjects)
◦objects: sleeping giants holding their forces in reserve
•prefer the excess of the aesthetic over the reduction by the scientific (materialism's tendency to reduce objects to a primary substratum ==> rendering them susceptible to mathematical capture) --Campbell--> *aesthetic foundationalism* [==engender==> an attitudinal response to objects] (@apass, this is also a problem in artistic research):
◦aesthetic appreciation above the reduction of the phenomenon achieved by science --> “art (art criticism) is a style that gets us closer to the nature of objects” (+ bad df class='thdf'>example of | df> Clement Greenberg)
◦(to make the invisible deep conditions of objects perceivable) prioritize *allusive style* above *literal description*
•claims to post-phenomenological sovereignty
•over-mining approach to knowledge production =/= objects's surplus of reality
◦methodological approach which encounters objects as objects (=/= actor network theory's manner of focusing upon an object's effects) [+ bad df class='thdf'>example of | df> Dutch East India Company]--Campbell--> object-oriented social theory produces a rudimentary narrative with no discernible innovation on the level of:
◾objects --> the actors are recognisable companies, personalities, infrastructures
◾relations --> the major symbiotic moments are legal contracts, infrastructure and formative moments in a human's life
◾time --> there is standard chronology from birth to death, with emphasis on human-centric causes and effects
•“social theory = a mode of knowledge production” (=/= a decontextualised reflection of the world) ==> withdrawal: a psychological alibi, an aesthetic (=/= cognitive concept) ==stimulate==> an attitudinal response: humility [+ passivity?] in the face of overwhelming non-human existence [~ appeal ==produce==> a paternalistic-arrogant-instrumentalist attitude to the nonhuman =/= *appeal ==foster==> responsibility* (a norrnativity that withdrawal cannot) ---> go to Haraway + Campbell]
}=/= posthuman relationism: realists who draw on contemporary advances in disciplines like geology, biology, mathematics and neurology to make the case that non-human reality is not a sub-set of human reality -->
•commitment to an object-oriented realism (d>~d>= Harman)
•occupy an *anthropic* event horizon: their social analyses occur in the shifting, impossible ground hetween the human and the nonhuman (=/= Harman)
•dialectic of object **withdrawal + appeal** (=/= Harman's object withdrawal) ~ ***interaction between objective withdrawal d'>& subjective appeal***
(Moss) earth as making an appeal --Freud--> a demand for work
“when the attention of an experienced person is drawn to the child's state by this path of discharge, [the path of discharge] ... acquires a secondary function of the highest importance, that of cornmunicalion
--> initial helplessness of human beings is the primal source of all moral motives
(child's) creaming and kicking --> appeal (made by the earth) is a combination of demand + accusation
contemporary social theorists are turning towards objects
<==Bennett== object produce a ‘gestalt shift’ in perception
}==Tsing==> (amounts to) a political act <== (turning towards objects) requires us:
•to re-divide the world
•to re-prioritise matler(s)
•to create different causalities
•to follow new agencies
•to produce new spacetimes
•to interrupt the ‘mind-lulling presence of common sense’
}----> acknowledge the importance of traditional *social theory* in identifying gross inequalities + advocate a posthuman relationism that moves *from critique to production* ==> *new and surprising connections between modes of existence* (df class='thdf'>for example | df>)
•did the typical American diet play any role in engendering the widespread susceptibility to the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq?
•do sand storms make a difference to the spread of socalled sectarian violence?
•does mercury help enact autism?
•what if serious adoption practices for and by the elderly became common?
•what if nations that are worried about low birth rates (Denmark, Germany, Japan, Russia, white America, more) acknowledged that fear of immigrants is a big problem, and that racial purity projects and fantasies drive resurgent pronatalism?
posthuman: a mode of listening for the nonhuman + simultaneously acknowledging the impossibility of fully hearing it --> impossible position ==expand==> our range of socialities, causalities, temporalities and ethics because it contains the **stubborn anthropomorphic residual** within any ‘new’ theory of society
--> (not infinite) co-constitution of the social + the extra-social (vaccines d'>& markets, planetary systems d'>& telescopes, catastrophes d'>& laws, etc.)
feminist science studies *demand a normative responsibility* towards ontological inclusivity and humility
(now that there is no objective -->) interrogatives are object-makers
*strangeness (of nonhuman life) [acts as a guide] --> mobilising new prepositions of connection ==> to think differently about the social ==> new conceptions of society (as planetmate, messmate, natureculture, mindbody, thing-power, odd kin, etc.)
parallels drawn between theories of evolution d'>& theories of social change:
•Gould --> concept of punctuated equilibrium
•Serres --> ontology of the social as parasitism
•Hayles --> translation of epigenesis and technogenesis
•
{phenomenon of serial endosymbiosis theory <-- social theorists deploy this in the search for accounts of how change and creativity originate}--> (bio-econornic context) *symbiosis* has long been recognised as a theory which demonstrates the co-constitution of the social and the biological
=/= Darwinian story of: small variations, random mutation, long time scales, natural selection, fitness and incremental development:
•complexity derived by brute mechanical climbing from the base already built by the efforts of earlier climbing
•unit of change: the gene, or individual organism, the zoocentric, ‘big like us’ epistemic culture of both science and social science (=/= weird worldings of protists, archea, eukaryotes [Wertheim])
bacteriology ==> new organisms were often stemmed from profound and prolonged symbiotic relationships that have proven difficult to analyse =/= discrete
•traits are inherited outside of sexual dissemination (digestion, infection, donation, other complex forms of partnerning) --> consortia: amorphous symbiotic complexes (metabolic energetic networks) =/= organism: anatomically bounded objects (systems of information and exchange)
}==Margulis==> focus on how perceptual, political, social and scientific conditions precede objects: *objects = boundary-work*
--> differential speeds of change (sudden and unlikely mixes + slow and causal)
--> deconstruction of individuality
(co-constitutive bio-econornic-political-social context:)
**ideological contest between individualism and collectivism in political economy <==> intellectual development of symbiosis theory**
•socialist and anarchist concept of mutuellisme in the mid 1800
•Hobbesian-Malthusian-Darwinian bio-economic concept of struggle for existence in zero-sum games of all-against-all
•Kropotkin's symbiosis as evidence for the benefit of global cooperation towards the common good, the division of labour, protection of elements and interdependent organisation
•evolutionary theory used to champion individualism and the social policies of laissez faire
Campbell --> what Harman misses is the elementary starting point for sociologies of science: *that social science translates science* just as science translates “reality”
serial endosymbiosis theory ==>
d class="lstsrd">1. no theory of social change is going to be value-free (endosymbiosis is a process that is always already highly charged with rich metaphor, entailing a ‘host’ that is in an ‘exchange,’ ‘relation’ or ‘merger’ with a ‘guest’ --> a form of ‘living together’ that becomes ‘close’ over time)
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. extraordinary range and nature of these relations can act as strategies for other worldings (other ways of being with each other) --> important normative function [at the cataclysmic endings =/= catastrophic ending]
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. a way to think about temporalities (when a bacterium nestled into a simple cell, creating an intimacy that has lasted four billion years)
d>
d class="lstsrd">4. a template for unlikely intimacies
d>
Harman's philosophical monologue on social theoretical practice (which might yet be remedied by actual dialogue with social theorists) ==> performative fallacy (<-- common in artist writing)
@apass****
(Campbell asking) why has object-oriented ontology become such a popular force in other disciplines?
<== complex interplay between sociological + logical factors
+ rise of *para-academia*
@artist (in proliferation of artist writing)
****speculation = the alibi for a doctrine that wishes to spare itself the trouble of justification****
--> we need closer attention to rationality as the basis of judgement when we talk about speculation
--> we need to be more informed by (sciences) when we stretch relations to our rational outposts, without ignoring their appeals
...................................
posthumanism --> any discursive or bodily configuration that displaces the human, humanism, humanities --> (21st century) technology is the center of critical thought about culture and about nature
[*]posthumanism: a structure of feeling (sense of an era starts to be experienced in the social imagination --> social forms become more recognisable when we had some time to classify them, articulate them, theorize them)
(Williams > Campbell) structure of feeling
we can point to times in the past and say that as an X sensibility (they were romantics, enlightenment, postmodernism) =/= sensing here and now --> practical consciousness, a period at an embryonic stage, at the very edge of *semantic availability*
what structure of feeling is forming in the contemporary western world? --> posthumanism
(postbiological, postcorporal, cyborg existence, etc.)
to be human
<--attack
-- genomics, global finance,
nature of
social in virtual
communities (telegram)
==> yet-to-be formalize
d para
digms of human experience
==> fracture the concept of legal self
[legal theory (arbiter of human
rights)
--> concerne
d with what is to be human
]
(taxonomies of the human
species at its time
-->) humanitas
: legal term use
d in public in ancient Rome to
distinguish Romans an
d Greeks from Barbarians
humans in persistent vegetative states
international tra
de of human organs
human genome project
xenotransplantation
technological unconscious
(tree of life replace
d by) a mo
del that
:
•classifies species according to DNA
•disregards morphological type (how elements of body appear)
•reveals human to be a tiny subspecies in a mass of absolute diversity
classical philosophy
--> scientize
d for a mom
den au
dience (by
Descartes 17th century)
--> special status of human
<-- seen as a totally transparent, secular,
scientific, liberal way of thinking about the
world
humanism
= a belief in progress (implicitly conceive
d as a
technological
instrumental profit-oriente
d)
+ technological masery over
nature
+ ‘human
=/= animal’
+ therapeutic approach to
scientific inquiry
}<-- a 19th century anachronism
--> deeply ingraine
d in contemporary self-consciousness an
d every
day common sense
human
: hero of liberty
<-- french in o
rigin, political in purpose
August Comte
--> the universe can only e un
derstoo
d when the
scientific exploration of
phenomena was separate
d from super
natural superstition
=/= ajayeb
Campbell making the case --> humanism needs to be deconstructed (not in a blithe نرم وملایم postmodern discursive way, rather) the definitions of what it means to be human are of life-changing importance --> humanism's supposed universality and transparency masks the fact that it is *an inherited western relatively recent philosophical perspective of the world*
in consumer research --> human: culturally inflected, psychosocial producer of + produced by the market =/= human: a disembodied information-processor with a rationalistic indentity and a computatinoal approach to the market
--Campbell--> how can interpretative consumer research benefit from a perspective which acknowledges this ideology of humanism?
the term posthuman has been used to describe anything which extends human capcity --ironically--> something as ubiquitous banal ancient and human as *tool-use* could itself be described as posthuman (Hayles, Stiegler, Wills) ==> **posthuman is as ancient as the human itself** }--> [*]posthuman: (a radical recognition that) technological = *originary logic* + *ethical sensibility* (= a stepping-out [=/= coming-after] of the enclosure of what is only important and necessary to the human)
•a concept that draws attention to the cracks that have always existed in the water-light descriptions of the human
•the ethical and radical realisation that the human only comes into existence by the work of (organic + technological) nonhuman others
cyborg --> associated with liberatory modes of identity
**technology deconstructs everyday human experience of agency, free will, choice, self** @apass
21st century --> technology is the center of critical thought about culture and nature (--> df class='thdf'>that is why | df> it became organically part of my ajayeb research)--> *to think about technology in a manner which reflects its ubiquity, its deeper symbolic and aesthetic dimensions, the way in which it can radically chnage humanness and human-centered approaches
(humanistic epistemology ==>) mode of the human:
d class="lstsrd">1. information processor
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. cognitive subject
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. cultural subject
d>
posthuman mode:
d class="lstsrd">1. to widen the temporal range of research (deep future, deep past)
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. take the form of an ethical inquiry (where the human is no longer the center of the world)
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. to think about the ontology of technology
d>
d class="lstsrd">4. the relationship of the human and the nonhuman (sustainability)
d>
20th century --> gene
21st century --> posthuman (postgenetic metaphors)
robotic revolution + biotechnology revolution > agricultural revolution + industrial revolution + information revolution
(consumer research started to develop an outlook that) things are just as complex and social as people
•brand: entities that talk to and interact with other brands, entities that form relationships with humans
(lives that seem to exist in on the
edges of simple humanist life
:)
•*massive* life of market
•*excessive* life of the brnad image
•*virtual* life of Facebook
•
consumer research focuses on the
ontological an
d epistemological givens of only the
consumer
(Turkle theorizing) how
consumers change through their
relationship with the nonhuman
•children view certain objects in the world around them as having degrees of aliveness
•children who have grown up with computers do not experience a dichotomy between biological and computatinoal processes
•playing with a toy like transformers, the toy shifs from being machines to being robots to being animals --learning--> fluid boundaries between mechanism and flesh
•(the ontological stickiness of the) [*]computer: a mind that is not yet a mind, inanimate yet interactive, it does not think yet neither is it external to thought
(Menser
+ Aronowitz) television
: a complex object constitute
d by an
d relate
d to many fiel
ds (soli
d-state physics, politics, etc.)
Latour...
}--> (such way of theorizing
==> precon
dition of) an era where ra
dically mew
technologies pro
duce entities as in
definable complex global (as the Human Genome project) biofuel supply-chains or climate change mo
dels
[--> also cryptocurrencies, blockchain
]
}--Campbell--> consumer rese
archers are creating new concepts an
d figurations in or
der to expan
d the bor
ders of waht constitutes life
[df class='thdf'>for example | df> “living-pro
duct”
metaphor]
(the problem of the)
[ontological
division of
] consumer
=/= world of objects
==> (i
deological move
-->) privileges human
: it is un
derstoo
d by the human, because the human (the only source of analytical attention) is the only thing
doing the
consuming, having the experience, making the meaning
figuration
: new ways of taking account of the
world =/= anthropo
morphism
--Haraway--> practices that create
*knots
* of
material-
semiotic actors
{<-- art
does that
? art's sometimes unreal
figurations
=/= **interpretative
consumer research makes the most rea
listic
figurations of this century
**}@ds class="frds scrmbld">ds class="frds scrmbld">Chloeds>2ds>
the
metaphors of our time
:
•becoming (=/= being) <-- a shift towards a *process metaphysics*
•
(Parsons
+ Maclaren)
items of
disposal (
do not fail to exists, but rather they) are
*move
d along
* to other spaces or politics an
d become other things
•becoming a precious antique
•becoming a water blockage
•becoming a source of marine death
•becoming a materially precious thing (in another part of the world)
•
--> **how things actually move, how they
transition between many states
**
--> *object
= data about the object
=/= tangible thing
* <-- (
transition) from thinking of object as the primary reality
--to--> perceicing the object as
data in computatinoal environments
==?==> (change of the
nature of object
==>) ra
dical shift in theorizing
consumer behavior
posthumanism
•a key term in contemporary western postindustrial era
•a term htat has been used ti describe a highly technologized future existence
--variationally
--> other
stories (
fables) about
technology exists
=/=
d class="lstsrd">1. the claim of (often monolithic) novelty of the historical moment in the west
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. that technology is a sterile instrument
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. that technology aids the human in his ascent to ever greater degrees of humanity
d>
(
greek tra
dition
-->)
*to think
deeply about
technology, we have to think about its
ontology
*
•techno-sociology --> Latour
•ecological feminism --> Haraway
•post-Marxism --> Tiziana Terranova
•
•philosophy of tech --> Heidegger: the most dangerous thing we can do is to think of technology as something neutral --> we often make two ***intuitive ideological jumps of reason*** when we think of technology:
1. “
technology
= means to an en
d”
2. “
technology is create
d by humans”
}<-- df class='thdf'>example of | df>
anthropological truth (about
technology)
~ it is a truth as it appears to human beings
d'>& it is an
*instrumental truth
: truth aime
d at getting things
done or making things work
* =/= [*]technology
: the mo
de by which realities are brought into existence in the
world (hervorbringen)
{unconcealing
==> a concealment of another reality
}= (process of)
*poiesis
= bring out
+ conceal
*
-the greek word *techne = technology + art* derived from the term episteme (the ways in which one can know reality) ==> ****technology: a type of epistemology, a way of knowing****
}==Heidegger==> *technology nee
ds to be un
derstoo
d beyon
d its
instrumenta
list humanist
history
* --Campbell--> *seeing
technology
historically as an ancient
phenomenon
*
technology thought of as something that comes from the west
d'>& does something to other people in other placers
<-- a framework (even well-intentione
d) that
denies both
agency
d'>& contemporaneity to the ‘other’
(-McQuire)
(we are tol
d that)
•the era we exist in is the “information age”
•the world is “networked”
•marheting is “service-dominant”
--Campbell--> what realities
do the terms “information” “
network” “service-
dominant” create, unconceal, conceal
?
==> questions of
:
-what is the consumer?
-the nature of consumer consciousness, knowledge, desire
*far from being a neutral uncomplicate
d relationship,
consumers
develop strategic behaviors for
*coping with
technology
* that is para
doxial
+ fantastical
+ i
deological
+ multi
dimensional
(-Konzinets)
•DIY technologies: forms of competence redefined + redistributed between hardware d'>& human
•technology d'>& identity interpolate each other
global
debates of
:
•fear of genetic determination
•nature of consciousness --> similarities and differences between computation and human being
•
--> intimately concerne
d with the status of humanness
1990s theories of gift-giving, possession, labour, self-concept
=/= *cyber
consumer
* --> circulation of
desire an
d commo
dities in environments that are so highly me
diate
d an
d technological that it begins to generate behavior an
d situations that are quite foreign to existing thinking about that
markets are an
d what
consumers want
**technology
: an active force that both
consumes
d'>& creates
consumers
**
(problem of) sustainability
d class="lstsrd">1. to sustain: rest, retreat --> humannes is a major threat to all nonhuman planetary existence ==> df class='thdf'>the idea that | df> radical threats to nonhumanness must be warded off by radical decreases in human population, consumption, normtive standards of living
d>
<-- this notion of sustainability exists ra
dically at the limits of human capability (more than
ecological crisis or human inequality, more than the threat of terrorism or nuclear proliferation)
d class="lstsrd">2. to sustain: to extend, strengthen --> df class='thdf'>the idea that | df> if we are not here then nothing on the planet has worth; if humans ado not exists, then the earth does not exists ==> our efforts of ecological sustainability are intrinsically human-centered [--(implicit attitude)--> prolonging humanness]==> ecological problem = crisis: an intense, short-lived episode in human history + it will be solved by high-technology solutions
d>
technology has co-evolved with being throughout billions of years --Hayles--> (myriad profound subtle ways) to make nature
--paradox--> *it is “human nature” to use technology + technology changes “human nature”*
--Campbell--> ***while not everything is technical, everything is technological***
*posthuman stance (strategically oriented towards deep future, pays attention to the lives of nonhuman others) gets ontological with technology*
...................................
McQuire
defining the
technological
--activate
--> the bor
der between
nature
d'>& culture
= (the heart of) what it means to be human
...................................
[title]
system attic
...................................
(in
my work with
apass digital
designs, i have been trying to negotiate with
df class='thdf'>the notion of | df>)
*technological gaze
*
what new mo
des of subjectivity are filtere
d through
technological gaze
?
(
?how) high-tech images are cultural artifacts
technological gaze's
method to put its meaning together
:
d class="lstsrd">1. impossible subject-positioning
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. codification of flesh
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. visualization of scientific narrative
d>
d class="lstsrd">4. aestheticization of information
d>
(Maturana
+ Varela) everything sai
d is sai
d by an observer
=/= philosopher
marketing
communication theory
[*]gaze
: (a
technical term for) the ways we visually
consume images of people an
d places
+ the ways images are constructe
d to entertain
d'>& encourage certain ways of seeing
•(using psychoanalysis) Mulvey's gaze: the way in which the camera acts as the eyes and ears of the spectator, presenting ways of framing the world (power-laden + not neutral position) ==> certain understanding of the world is assumed
•Shroeder --> gaze signifies a psychological relationship of power --> the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze [---> go to zoo]
how “human” ways of experiencing the
world are gra
dually being
integrate
d with non-human,
technological ways of perceiving an
d un
derstan
ding reality
:
•Baudrillard --> virtual gaze
•Virilio --> automation of perception (war weaponry --> df class='thdf'>the idea that | df> in west we have technologies so advanced we achieve absolute vision)
•Balsamo --> cosmetic surgery (d>~d>= new visualization technologies) ==> new forms of dominance [---> go to Kardashians TV shows], *replacing the male gaze with a normative disembodied technical gaze
•Haraway --> technocratic gaze
•Strafford --> (starting in enlightenment) *automated spectralization* (in visual presentation of the world) --> the intention and purpose of the gaze became medicalized and technologized [---> go to cartography]
•
}--> (from
techno
science to feminism) theorists have notice
d a
*splicing
* of
direct an
d tactile human perception of reality with another reality, one that is me
diate
d an
d technical
==pro
duce
==> a new reality that negotiates the in
divi
dual's knowl
edge of the universe in
diverse an
d complex ways (
<-- not catastrophic
=/= Hörl)
(time of) intellectual an
d artist upheaval
==> new an
d surprising mo
des of
imagining the human
1950s concept of cybernetics constitute
d a fun
damental change in thinking about control,
communication, information, life itself (
+ new
language of fee
dback, auto
poiesis, cellular automata, neural net)
1990s
computers
+ information
--> cybernetic theory
: (stresse
d that) information patterns are more important in un
derstan
ding organisms than
materiality
*cybernetic view of the
world --> information
code
d in pattern
d'>& ran
domness
=/= material absence
d'>& presence
*
•(both) human and technological = informational entities
•human = cyborg: (human conceived as) cybernetic organism
[?how] discourses (narratives + metaphors + symbols) of science and technology --Campbell--> use in advertisement to create meaning
**technological imagination --seize--> social imagination**
always reinforcing the *awesome power of technology to capture reality* (objectively + without any agenda)
•movie Fantastic Voyage 1966 <--Dijck-- fascination with envisioning the body from a different perspective
•status of foetus (float in black and white) <--Haraway-- meanings whose legitimacy comes from technological systems of perception
•[computer-generated images =/=?] camera-generated images <--Cartwright-- (paradox of) camera's role in capturing the real + camera's capacity to evoke emotion and present a sense of the unattainable d>~d>= (to appear to be at once) both *magical* d'>& *truthful* ==introduce==> new subjectivities into marketplace
mediation of visual phenomena through the eye of technology d>~d>=> new sets of truths (about the body, environment, etc.) --often--> a **disembodied technological gaze looks at the body**
advertisement becomes more highly finished, excessively produced, artificialized --> a technological gaze is found in the discourse of advertising --> scientized d'>& technologized images celebrate a particular view of ***life as information***
...................................
nature
= figures
+ stories + images (
d>~d>= topos, commonplace)
paying attention to
nature like a
child <-- Haraway
[*]trope: a verse
interpolate
d into a liturgical text
عبادات to embellish or amplify its meaning
language --> material-
semiotic flesh
liturgical possibilities of
nature
•ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Christianson">Christiands> liturgical year
•Zaratusztrian nowruz
•star wars --?--> practice of turning tropes into worlds [--> war of imagess]
•war of words
•
(agonistic fiel
ds
:)
military combat
sexual
domination
security maintenance
market strategy
...................................
(
techniques of the observer - september 9, 2012)
•What is the relation between the dematerialized digital imagery of the present and the so-called age of mechanical reproduction?
•ongoing abstraction of vision - Problems of vision
•transformation in the makeup of vision
•history of art <-> history of perception?
•onlooker (Zuschauer)
•historically important functions of the human eye ==> medical, military, and police hierarchies
•Most of the historically important functions of the human eye are being supplanted by practices in which visual images no longer have any reference to the position of an observer in a “real,” optically perceived world.
•where abstract visual and linguistic elements coincide
•avoid mystifying it by recourse to technological explanations (this was my mistake!)
•an observer is more importantly one who sees within a prescribed set of possibilities, one who is embedded in a system of conventions and limitations.
•measurable in terms of objects and signs
•newly constituted human sciences in regulating and modifying the behavior of individuals.
•it was through these disciplines that the subject in a sense became visible
•passage from the geometrical optics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to physiological optics
•to expose the idiosyncrasies of the “normal” eye
•Retinal afterimages, peripheral vision, binocular vision, and thresholds of attention
•outcome of a complex remaking of the individual as observer into something calculable-and regularizable and of human vision into something measurable and thus, exchangeable.
•standardization of visual imagery
•in the amphitheatre / on the stage / in the Panoptic machine
•dissociation of touch from sight ==> “separation of the senses” and industrial remapping of the body in the nineteenth century
•unloosening of the eye from the network of referentiality incarnated in tactility ==> fitted for the tasks of “spectacular” consumption
•Perception for Benjamin was acutely temporal and kinetic;
•a mobile consumer of a ceaseless succession of illusory commodity-like Images.
•Machines are social before being technical
•desiring machines
•The paintings of J-B. Chardin are lodged within these same questions of knowledge and perception His still lifes, especially, are a last great presentation of the classical object in all its plenitude, before it is sundered irrevocably into exchangeable and ungrounded signifiers or into the painterly traces of an autonomous vision.
•that the very process of becoming tired was in fact perception. “When the eye fixes itself on a single color...
•the clear eye of the world
•The more Schopenhauer involved himself in the new collective knowledge of a fragmented body composed of separate organic systems, subject to the opacity of the sensory organs and dominated by involuntary reflex activity, the more intensely he sought to establish a visuality that escaped the demands of that body.
•the physiological makeup of the subject as the site on which the formation of representations occurs.
•Of these only the cerebrum, together with the sensory nerves attached to it, and the posterior spinal nerve fascicles are intended to take up the motives from the external world. All the other parts, on the other hand, are intended only to transmit the motives to the muscles in which the will directly manifests itself. (Schopenhauer)
•It is knowledge that Simultaneously provided techniques for the external control and domination of the human subject and was the emancipating ground for notions of subjective vision within modernist art theory and experimentation.
...................................
ba
d visual
systems
narcissism as a cultural practice (that also motivates an
d steers
technological inventions)
accelerationism
(Accelerationism may also refer more broa
dly, an
d usually pejoratively, to support for the
deepening of capitalism in the belief that this will hasten its self-
destructive ten
dencies an
d ultimately eventuate its collapse.)
Selfie
seems to me the perfect example for this sub
mission of the unconscious to the globalize
d machine
latest theoretical buzzwor
ds
control over the
interpretation of the
world
circulation of the global image machine
tree-ma
de paper
who are (not) allowe
d (not) to have a bo
dy
?
all forms of knowl
edge claims,
acting on the i
deological
doctrines of
dis
embodie
d scientific (cinematic) objectivity
all seem just effects of
delaye
d ren
der algorithms in the play of signifiers in a virtual force fiel
d
space of simulations
not giving up to the
paranoi
d science
fiction
getting to know the
world effectively by practising the
sciences
tools of
semiology
rhetorical
nature of truth
not Romantic nor
modernist objects
:
d class="lstsrd">1. infective vectors (microbes)
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. elementary particles (quarks)
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. biomolecular codes (genes)
d>
view of the
relationship of bo
dy an
d language (the problem of
metaphor)
those of us who woul
d still like to talk about reality
imagery of moves in the fully textualize
d an
d code
d world
high tech (military) fiel
d
recognizing our own ‘
semiotic
technologies’ for making meanings,
life is
semiotic as well as
technology
(commitment
?) to faithful accounts of a ‘real’
world
Haraway writes
: All components of the
desire are para
doxical an
d dangerous, an
d their combination is both contra
dictory an
d necessary.
We nee
d the power of
modern critical theories of how meanings an
d bo
dies get ma
de, not in or
der to
deny meaning an
d bo
dies, but in or
der to live in meanings an
d bo
dies that have a chance for a future. (re
ductionism
?)
insist on the
embodie
d nature of all vision, an
d so reclaim the sensory
system that has been use
d to signify a leap out of the marke
d bo
dy an
d into a conquering gaze from nowhere. (how the exhibition can make visible my
positing in the work
? groun
d me in an
embodie
d vision
? my
situation. to
situate me. not necessarily organic
embodiment
? what have i nee
d to learn in my bo
dies
?)
perverse capacity of the eye
culture
dis
embodies. (
nature
embodies
?)
to
distance the knowing subject from everybo
dy an
d everything
visualizing
technologies are without (apparent) limit
?
linke
d to
:
-artificial graphic manipulation systems
-computer aided scanners
-colour enhancement techniques
mapping is at stake. what kin
d of mapping the Kinect image provi
des
? that is op
posite to the zeiss lens
?
how to go there with the
technology an
d not fuck the
world? carefully not give birth to mythical i
deological seeing or promising transcen
dence
Kinect's generative, but not
devouring vision
the
perversion of the zeiss lens is in that it tries to let the viewer ‘experience’ the moment of
discovery in imme
diate vision of the ‘object’
the exhibition is about a
writing of the bo
dy that
metaphorically emphasizes vision
= an
d commit to
deconstruction an
d passionate construction.
= an
d passionate
detachment, which is
depen
dent on the impossibility of innocent ‘i
dentity’ politics an
d epistemologies as strategies for seeing from (any) stan
dpoints, in or
der to see well. (refer to
lecture-performance Stan
ding on the Shoul
ders of Giants -
ds class="frds">Sinads>
ds class="frds">Seifeeds> 2015, on a critical
epistemology of seeing-from-far)
= whom to see with
?
Haraway: only partial perspective promises objective vision. This is an objective vision that initiates, rather than closes off, the problem of
responsibility for the generativity of all visual practices.
The ‘eyes’ ma
de available in
modern technological
sciences shatter any i
dea of passive vision
? these prosthetic
devices show us that all eyes, in
cluding our own organic ones, are active perceptual
systems, buil
ding in
translations an
d specific ways of seeing, that is, ways of life.
partial way of organizing
worlds
is unlocatable ir
responsible
?
is my visual exhibition a knowl
edge claim
?
To see from below (or the perspective of the mathematics, Kinect, hacker
?) is neither easily learne
d nor unproblematic
ways of being nowhere while claiming to see comprehensively (i
di
d not claim any of these - i
di
dn't try even. i was there
traveling with
relation to my co-
travelers an
d a
technology
relation) my issue with the images is their generality an
d perhaps that is their unlocatablilty. but to
situate my knowl
edge an
d myself i am not solely
depen
ding on the image
rhetoric. i was committe
d to mobile
positioning, an
d that is critical.
me
diate vision
knowl
edge potent for constructing
worlds
trying to be less organize
d by axes of
domination
Science has been utopian an
d visionary from the start
? that is one reason ‘we’ nee
d it.
my eye were
crafte
d by the bloo
d of mosquitoes...
translations an
d exchanges,
material an
d semiotic
what has the property of
systematicity in my Amazon
?
orientations an
d responsibility in
material
semiotic fiel
ds of meaning.
is Here, Kinect's vision not imme
diately a very powerful
metaphor or
technology (for political
epistemological clarification)
?
The visual
metaphor invites us to investigate the varie
d apparatuses of visual pro
duction, in
cluding the prosthetic
technologies
interface
d with our biological eyes an
d brains.
shoul
d i have an argue for (politics an
d)
epistemologies of location,
positioning, an
d situating
?
view from a structuring an
d structure
d bo
dy
we
love stuttering, an
d the partly un
derstoo
d
Translation is always
interpretative, critical, an
d partial
Amazon (location) resists (the politics of) closure
logic of culture (
nature ma
de flexible)
science
code
d bo
dy
black
code
d bo
dy
colonise
d code
d bo
dy
code
d as self sufficient (when
?)
the project an
d me are not boun
dary object (i am not tarzan)
suppress the lost text of aristotle on the
rhetoric of humor
how can something work and not work?!
mathematical competition
what is the other story (of forest, journey, etc.) that i want urgently tell?
or the rhythm of what story i want to change?
...................................
In 1905 the French
neurologists G.
Deny an
d P. Camus recounte
d the case of Ma
dame I who ha
d lost bo
dy awareness. She
describe
d her “general insensibility” as follows
: “I'm no longer aware of myself as I use
d to be. I can no longer feel my arms, my legs, my hea
d, an
d my hair. I have to touch myself constantly in or
der to know how I am. I have the feeling that my entire bo
dy is change
d, even at times that it no longer exists. I touch an object, but it is not I who am touching it. I no longer feel as I use
d to. I cannot fin
d myself. I cannot
imagine myself. My insensibility is f
rightening, as if everything were empty.” Ma
dame I was unable to recognize the
position of her arms an
d legs an
d was completely insensitive to pain.
According to Israel
Rosenfel
d's thesis, Ma
dame I was unable to know her bo
dy as part of her
memory. (her brain coul
d not create a
body image) She coul
d not
imagine, or create in her min
d, images of parents or the houses where she ha
d live
d. Lacking a continuous image of herself, she coul
d re-create momentary images only when she was verifying to herself that she ha
d a bo
dy. (see Strange, Familiar an
d Forgotten pp 40-42)
“If all self-reference were
destroye
d, consciousness an
d un
derstan
ding woul
d not be possible.
“Meaning an
d un
derstan
ding are parts of the structure of consciousness that emerge from self-reference; they cannot exist without a
body image.” (p.55)
“Self-reference is not a hypothetical i
dea but a
de
monstrable part of the structure of consciousness; a partial break
down in the physiological mechanisms that create it give us the
phenomenon of
phantom limbs.” (p.56)
Two English
neurologists, Lor
d Russell Brain an
d Henry Hea
d (!) coine
d the phrase “
body image” for the
internal image an
d memory of one's bo
dy in space an
d time. The
body image is not only a picture of the bo
dy but also an anticipatory plan for the
detaile
d movements of the bo
dy, an
d rather than a fixe
d structure, it is
dynamic an
d plastic, capable of reorganizing itself ra
dically with the
contingencies of experience.
The
body image can also incorporate external object, implements, an
d instruments. When they are being use
d, they can become intimate, vital, even libi
dinally cathecte
d parts of the
body image.
(
Don
Ihde:) “To
embody one's praxis through
technologies is ultimately an existential
relation with the
world.” (
Technology an
d Life
world, p.72)
Embodie
d relations such as the experience of “seeing through” glasses (or the use of hearing ai
ds, blin
d man's cane, or
driving a car) take the
technology into the perceptual-bo
dily self-experience. The me
diating
technology becomes part of the
body image, an
d achieves “
instrumental transparency”
...................................
(
Giuliana Bruno)
This tangible, superficial contact, in fact, is what allows us to apprehen
d the objects an
d the spaces of art, turning contact into the
communicative
interface of a public intimacy. (but not in the Amazonian skin contact) (it is
different than
Lucretius reflecting upon the
nature of things)
(
materiality of) cultural surfaces
As a form of
dwelling that engages me
diation between subjects an
d with objects, the surface also can be viewe
d as a site for screening an
d projection.
The surfaces of the screens that surroun
d us to
day express a new
materiality as they convey the virtual transformation of our
material
relations. An
d these screens, which have become
membranes of contact, exist in our environments in close
relation to the surfaces of canvas an
d walls—also un
dergoing a process of substantial transformation. An
d so it is here—in this meeting place that is surface—that art forms are becoming reconnecte
d an
d creating new, hybri
d forms of a
dmixture.
who shares (deep) engagements with superficial matters?
layered space of interaction between subject and object
surface can be read as an architecture
from mediated encounters with material space to mobilization of cultural space (the exhibition)
memory, imagination, and affect are linked to movement -- embodied in jungle walk?
modernity's desire and fancy for tactile experience, driving and impulse to expand one's universe and eventually to project it, to exhibit personal passionate voyage of imagination -- effects of a spectatorial movement that is evolving further in Selfie. that is the emergence of such sequential virtues motion capturing that comes to inhibit the train of thought = interconnection in the sequence of ideas expressed during a connected discourse and how this sequence leads from one idea to another (modernity).
(i don't do filmic voyage)
...................................
By Consequence, or train of thoughts, I un
derstan
d that succession of one thought to another which is calle
d, to
distinguish it from
discourse in wor
ds, mental
discourse.
“When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succee
ds in
differently.” (— Thomas
Hobbes, Leviathan, The First Part
: Of Man, Chapter III
: Of the Consequence or Train of
Imagination)
...................................
the current forms of biotic forests is due to the spreading of seed-dispersing plants millions years ago (what about abiotic? Kinect)
one of issues related with rate/speed is synchronicity
the effects of biotechnically / bioculturaly situated people
Amazon's nature in opposition to slave gardens (slave plantation systems with factory machine) (along with imperial botanical gardens)
for travel and propagation of...
moving material semiotic
part-time organisms
when visuality is looked at in a haptic modality (the tentacular face for example), vision can be figured as touch, not distance. negatively curving in loops and frills, not surveying(/surviving) from above.
...................................
when a
depiction (
poetic, visual, etc.) is
dangerously ambiguous
?
are we really immerse
d in
data realities
? an
d that really means we are losing the sight on experiences fetche
d by our bo
dies
?
co-existing an
d contra
dictory incomplete mo
dels that groun
d us in our critically limite
d existence. what
does beyon
d the (
techno-cartographic-episto-cogno-
histo-) map's horizon means for this
situate
d “us”
?
...................................
(
Amanda Boezkes)
the
ontological purification
apparatus
we are now on an i
dea of the earth in so to calibrate our sensorial
systems to a
djust to human-born unpre
dictabilities that overri
de an
d neutralize long-stan
ding
histories of local knowl
edge.
how an
ecological perspective can be incorporate
d into vision
-- become a visuality
? -- mobilization of visuality
how an artwork may account for the ways
ecological change registers in vision
?
geo-
aesthetics
information is not energy-
specific (
Gibson)
theory of affor
dance
: information pick-up process
--> threshol
d between the sense-
system of organism an
d the invariance of the environment
an experience of an observer that is not a property of the observer, it is invariant an
d relational.
that is, it acknowl
edges that objective information about an environmental
system can be obtaine
d both in spite an
d because of perceptual change. in this respect an in
digenous knowl
edge is not simply an or
der of cultural perspective, they are rather a form of objective testimony, by the people who are attune
d to the environment's invariant structure. they are not simply a tra
ditional or local “point of view.”
in this sense what kin
d of info is the image of Kinect about the environment
? it is not objective info nor culture, what is it
? personal testimony
? descriptions of a
technological
reading
?!
affor
dance, as a concept, allows complexity an
d refusal to re
duce environments, objects, an
d actions to the basic function they may have to the perceiver in her/his/its
world -- it permits a level (horizon) of consciousness of the
world beyon
d function.
how a beetle may rest on the retina of
bird's eye like pieces of puzzle fitting together
facts of environment
to what extent can an
ecological perception become virtualize
d, re
presente
d, an
d returne
d to vision as a con
dition, or style of being
? that is how to take con
scientious of the
ecological beings that we are in any project
? -- that is attuning vision to an
ecological reality
E. h. Gombrich un
derstoo
d the perception of art as a process of cultivating the visual
skills of recognition in the eye itself
historical ways of seeing
any
skill we have in spite of environmental variances, is operating from visual schema that are geare
d to t
rigger pattern recognition, (art
?)
visuality vs vision
the caricaturist
does not teach us how to see, but rather instantiates a new
code of recognition. a visuality is neste
d into vision; vision is reciprocally prime
d to recognize a visuality
***
visuality involves more than pattern recognition
perception is not the tool by which we experience art, but its very content an
d substance. john Onians con
cludes that “each painting forms its own ‘eye’.”
what kin
d of eye the art (of my Kinect) cultivates
? (a
techno-
aesthetic eye
?) (the
diagrammatic eye
?) (referring to the
diagram project “sa
distic statistics”)
the ways we see ...ly (
historically,
ecologically, evolutionary,
technologically,) more part an
d parcel of the visuality of the
anthropo
cene
the
neuro-
aesthetic eye
to “
read” environment in terms of info pick-up an
d accommo
dation
to simply perceive as we
do
but to parlay (
double up) our perceptual
system into a mo
dality of processing,
response, an
d responsiveness
(the
aesthetics of) the visual brain is the contact (not contract) between the in
divi
dual an
d the eco
system
mo
dulation of ethos in lan
dscape
?
Kinect is not bringing a knowl
edge that is
neurobiologically imperceptible to the nake
d eye nor is it
technologically making a
worldview accessible.
“it is low tech”, its images are born of partial recognition, attunement, an
d attention
low-tech works may be critical for
developing a visuality that is not yet
integral to or explicit within new me
dia, visualising the
specifically
neurological
dimension of
ecologicity an
d mobilizing vision as a perceiving organ to cultivate this self-awareness.
...................................
(
McKenzie Wark)
climate science, a key science of our time, rests on an apparatus of very powerful computers and communication vectors, which overcome the “friction”, as Paul Edwards calls it, between data and communication. it brings together global data according to global standards, mathematical models of physics of climate drawn from fluid dynamics, and massive computational power. the model and data coproduce each other in a way, as the data sets are all partial, and many data points have to be interpolated to make the models work. and then all of that has to be mediated back to human awareness via tables, graphs, computer simulations, and so forth.
...................................
(Irmgard Emmelhainz)
(anthropocene) change in the conditions of visuality
transformation of the world into images
phenomenological + epistemological consequences
images participate now in the forming of worlds, they have also become forms of thought
the optical mind
the radical change in the conditions of visuality has brought about a new subject position or point of view, announce by the trajectories of:
d class="lstsrd">1. antihumanism (between impressionism and cubism)
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. posthumanism (between cubism and experimental film)
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. non-grounded form of vision (from experimental film to digital media)
d>
this regime of visuality implies: automatization, tautological vision, and signs leading to other signs
resulted to => the proliferation of images also implying the cancellation of vision
“vision cancelled”
linearity of the Renaissance perspective plan created the illusion of a view to the outside world, analogous to a window.
cubism: showing a perpetual present in a parallel temporality.
perspectival multiplicity became embedded in the picture plane.
invented a discontinuous space, making identity and difference relative (questioning the classical metaphysics), by subverting the relations between subject and object.
does my Kinect pictural model employs the architectural space? is camera architectural?
in experimental film, duration became a key component of aesthetic experience, analogous to human consciousness, a prosthetic vision
identity and difference, rejection of a priori space
how to release the subject from human coordinates? what are references to human coordinates? screen's rectangular frame?
the machine (optical perception) delivers a posthuman, prosthetic enhancement of vision, which announces, first the incipient (initial) normalization of perception as augmented reality and data visualization
displacement of the subjective center of operations
epitomize
subvert
![--> d
fish ajayeb river water world life species
[source: https://standrewsrarebooks.wordpress.com] fish ajayeb river water world life species [source: https://standrewsrarebooks.wordpress.com]](images/ajayeb/0042.jpg)
fragmentation brought by mechanization, has an alienating character
its impossibility to give back an image or serve a reflective mirror
it is in
different to “me”
the exhaustive visualization an
d documentation of
wildlife is effectively concealing its ongoing extinction (one of the reasons i am not using the zeiss-lens-camera recor
dings)
(for Susan Sontag) taking photographs
[...
] is a way of certifying experience, also a way of refusing it - by limiting experience to a search for the photographic, by converting experience to a souvenir.
[...
] the very activity of taking pictures
[...
] assuages (erleichtern) general feelings of
disorientation that are likely to be exacerbate
d (worsene
d) by
travel.
cognitive activity
giving form to experience, also transforming
[...]