[...]ble worlds --> ajayeb's storied biospheres

...................................

the notion of ‘magic’ in popular TV series, such as ‘Harry Potter’ franchise and ‘The Magicians’ among many others, and instrumentalization. magic as information technology that is completely instrumentalized. the capitalist ideology of ‘tool’ and ‘usefulness’ are insinuated heavily in the hipster figures of ‘The Magicians’ in the way that they interupt history and knowledge-burdened living. “stop the history lessen! tell me how do we kill the beast with it?” (the stupidity of the hipster hero moving through the matrix of merely teleological phenomena, stripping pleasure off thinking...)
(utopian?)

what a magic spell is good for if it is not a leverage?

[title]
The Magicians and The Absolute Freedom and Terror

(‘The Magicians’:) magic: instrumentalizing the logos
knowledge is literal --> magic spells are literal {the result of magic spell is predetermined}. in this case, the magic is both an instrument of power and renunciation of knowledge
(Heideggerian) techne of the Western project is an instrumentality that takes over, arrests, or enframes what it desires to manipulate or contain. (Christian Hubert's notes)
=/= poiesis, a bringing-forth (in Heidegger: blooming of the blossom) (also Greek)

“[(for the techno-monster-magicians) everything is] code to be cracked”

a kind of fantasies that Don Ihde calls techno-fantasy, which have been part of the transhumanism since 19th century

the toxic distinction between techne from episteme (since Homer). ‘The Magician’ suggests magic as a technology or tool apart from its context of involvements and referentialities : a hermeneutic or alterity relation =/= (Heidegger:) the tool is an embodiment relation
(one of the characters even states that humans without magic invented computers as replacement)

‘The Magician’ dismisses the generation of knowledge in the praxis of tool-use. science/magic is pragmatic relation of equipment or tools as ready-to-hand. the ideology of a knowledge relation: magic (as tool) is present-at-hand --> ontological relationship to the world (----the characters want to go and have an icecream when they are finished with all the magical fights.)
this notion of magic as tool (=/= epistemological object) in use achieves (what Don Ihde calls) *instrumental transparency* --> It “withdraws” when in use, but becomes conspicuous again when broken or missing [--> this is precisely the standard account of technology in high-techno-scientific capitalist sunny societies] --> the idea that magicians can “forget” (or “lose”) their magic suggests a guarantor of instrumental transparency of magic (or knowledge).
-the popular vision of magic hinges around the desire for total transparency**
-this instrumental rationality is the he[...]

[...]of entitlement حق به جانب and self-centeredness schema
adult neurotic's sense of omnipotence --> relic of the old megalomania of infancy (~ all paranoic disorders) (~-> hurt with denial)

(Freud's) primal state: {id ~= ego ~= external world}--(not differentiated)
one could not lay hold of oneself as other ==> narcissism expires
(Lacan's) ego = another }==> the specular ego (in the mirror stage) =/= narcissistic
(‘=/=’ : erotic attraction or aggressive tension)

Nietzsche: the utterance “I am ugly” created “the beautiful”
[does this mean: “I am beautiful” created “the ugly” (in the other and world)?]


sublimation is passion transformed
or, object displacement, transformation of instincts,
a desuxualization (from primary to secondary narcissism) (--> what is Aela's “thirst for knowledge”?)~~--> unfolding into (differentiated elements of a oneness of) instinctual-spiritual experience. (Aela's) ‘oneness’ [an original unity + one hidden and defended against] stays alive as connection? --> the question of desire for Aela is about this hidden linkage.
[transitional objects, play, modifications of the pleasure principle, genital function,]
,
(noted by Christian Hubert: for Loewald:) *eroticism is genuine sublimation* : a reconciliation in the area of ego development and of internalization. (@Aela)
-desublimation (of reason?)
objective of sexuality conceptual transformation into Eros --> (asking Aela with Marcuse:) what is the non-repressive sublimation of the resexualized body? (=/= neurotic reactivation of narcissistic libido)
why Eros is so powerful? what kind of sublimation is the culture-building power of Eros?

in Derrida, narcissism is the passage to the Other, and not necessarily merely a collapse into oneself.

auto-erotic solipsism

باطل کردن طلسم ضمیر the ego appears [displaced elsewhere in the world as an effect] as the result of primary narcissism?
(batel kardan-e telesm-e zamir) dispulsion of ego
*ego forms in the world* (Lippit)

auto-erotic economy

the ego in the island, finding footprints of the others
(Freudian protocols of existence:) there is no world, there is only islands. --> multiplicity of isolations ~-> individuation

“In narcissism the ego disappears from the world and reappears in the imaginary realm of invisible interiority.” (Lippit)

{the erotic attachment to outside objects}<--pervert =/= narcissist-->{withdraw, calls it “instinct for self preservation"} (a shortcut: my way of undering my own narcissistic tendencies has been through perversity.)

[for Juan:] (artistic) narcissism =/=? fossilization (~->? mimesis)

*mimesis* is not about form
in order to represent the character of the supposed ‘word’ of another
[...]

[...]ng your senses
*accountability is about your ‘import’ functions (like in a programming language when you import a library of functions)
 --> count: an agent of sorting that separates units or groups of a collection --> list, listed --> to have importance and worth ~-> country ---{? unexpected countries}
 --0--> ‘count’ is also a word technologically tethered, origin of computing


(Kirksey > Leigh Star) to begin with the question, ‘cui bono?’ (for whose benefit?) =/= to begin with a celebration of the fact of human/nonhuman mingling

...................................

my Rigs diagrams are ‘swarms’? -a multitude of different creative agents
ajayeb.net (how can it be:) not a website but a “para-site”
•am i creating an ego (for ajayeb) in my ajayeb.net? if yes, that would be interesting how?

topos/topic of hypertext, spatial character of electronic writing
topic [from Greek ‘topos’: a place, in ancient rhetoric used to refer to commonplaces, conventional units, or methods of thought] exist in a writing space that is not only a visual surface but also a data structure in the computer --> Hypertext: “is not the writing of a place, but rather a writing with places, spatially realized topics.” (Bolter < Hubert)
-in my hypertext, which writing materials, cognitive mappings, itineraries of reading, textual stability, loops and reductions are addressed?

•in ajayeb.net the so-called url address or location bar, is itself a control panel, a graphical user interface widget; how did i come to use “?q=” : rhetorics of technologized inquiry in place before i even could think about how do I allow my objects constituted by “?”, “q” and “=” of the language and grammar of internet
•(when i uploaded my hypertext i faced immediately the big data:) google webmasters tools is my first readership, it communicates its reading with me; (did i have a desire to make the hypertext for a machine?) who/what is doing the reading (in the world of big data)? the interpretive work that is going on, in a writing and reading done by computers ==> ethical and social values
•url pased in facebook post, results into a link to فلزیاب، مطالب علمی و آموزشی / مدار فلزیاب و دستگاه فلزیاب تضمینی, a series of websites for selling treasure finders, finding metal under the ground, ganj, and so on...

the English (since second world war) --> (1) international lingua franca of high technology, (2) the language of computers
-in ajayeb.net the enforcement of standard spelling and even grammar is week or nonexistent
-the amount of linguistic replicators that circulate through my ajayeb hypertext are bound to a colloquial English, they are nevertheless “English”. but this English is being changed and adapted by my foreign use in different ways
-a flourishing of a neo-English and Farsi miniaturization [...]

[...]olymorphism of our bodies (online) [Ihde]

programmers working in other programmers’ works (--not imaginative engagement with the other, rather) --through--> interfaces and folds in interpretation {tutorial voices, screen videos, scripts, help files, layers of codes and tools on each other, nested folders on one's own computer, named categories by oneself, horde of text files and renders, etc}--> these are (en-/de-)crypting extended bodies constructed of language
subjectively constructed phenomenon of the communed fold interpreted : the 3D computer programm
(=/= romantic refusal of all mediation)

-what is the nature of the technology involved in CG?

•what is the source of the somatic sense of place, if not the body (since Greeks) and animality (since Deleuze + Guattari), in the case of CG? --?-->{the way a good farmer will pick up soil and feel the dirt in his hands}
(Greek word) ‘soma’ refers to a corpse (in Homer,) not a living body (--> #lived-body)
Neither the living body as an entity nor the Mind as an entity had a name.
for Aristotle, ‘thinking’ part of the soul, had an existence from any connection to the body.
“to experience the world is the very nature of body inside out.” (Christian Hubert > John Schumacher)


a community whose members are aware of each others’ passive presence is different forms
(active =/= present)

these are issues of social subject in a technically mediated world

to look at CG embodiment relations:
•fold (Ihde)
•skill (Merleau-Ponty)
•theory of affordance (Gibson)
•intra-action (Barad)
•detour (Latour)

(Merleau-Ponty's) ‘body schema’ : space of the body = 'space of situation,’ orientation towards possible (not only existing) tasks ==> aspects of the external/virtual world
body understood in terms of their ability to enter into one's projects =/= spatial location
[what is the body schema of the hacker in CG? (an external world where there is no near or far.) what is experienced as their Gestalt? which grasp is automatically localized? what are their phantom limbs? ==> body immediately known to self]


(body as the) system of possible actions, a virtual body with its phenomenal “place” defined by its task and situation. “My body is wherever there is something to be done.”

kinaestheses, proprioception,

...................................

what ‘play’ does to ‘ego’?

...................................

([is for Lilia (? like Wittgenstein) all ‘certainties'] grounded in the) certainty of the body
{pain <--> certainty}--> trauma + memory

...................................

(Christian Hubert > ) Rudofsky “unfashionable human body” (#veil)

Thomas Friedman “The Golden Straitjacket”
•political-economic garment of globalizatio[...]

[...]rld

to look at CG embodiment relations:
•fold (Ihde)
•skill (Merleau-Ponty)
•theory of affordance (Gibson)
•intra-action (Barad)
•detour (Latour)

(Merleau-Ponty's) ‘body schema’ : space of the body = 'space of situation,’ orientation towards possible (not only existing) tasks ==> aspects of the external/virtual world
body understood in terms of their ability to enter into one's projects =/= spatial location
[what is the body schema of the hacker in CG? (an external world where there is no near or far.) what is experienced as their Gestalt? which grasp is automatically localized? what are their phantom limbs? ==> body immediately known to self]


(body as the) system of possible actions, a virtual body with its phenomenal “place” defined by its task and situation. “My body is wherever there is something to be done.”

kinaestheses, proprioception,





what ‘play’ does to ‘ego’?

...................................

([is for Lilia (? like Wittgenstein) all ‘certainties'] grounded in the) certainty of the body
{pain <--> certainty}--> trauma + memory

...................................

(Christian Hubert > ) Rudofsky “unfashionable human body” (#veil)

Thomas Friedman “The Golden Straitjacket”
•political-economic garment of globalization era --> Straitjacket
(Cold War era:)
•Mao --> suit
•Nehru --> jacket
•Russian --> fur
•
•Islam --> hejab

(Tasavof-->{for which the body does not remain concrete and material, and soul is ambiguous and polymorphic}, Pythagorean:) veli: soul can clothe itself in different bodies =/= (Aristotle:) soul is the form of a particular living body { soul = organization of the body }--> “..there seems to be no case in which the soul can act or be acted on without involving the body” =/= (Descartes:) soul = enlightened machine (~=? proper organization of the brain)


***The body is a special image --> body image

body, the priveleged image, the world of consiousness (through self-reference), the brain's primary frame of reference [-constructed with libidinal intensity? --> a map of narcissistic investment] (=/= body without organs)
•condition of the subject's access to spatiality (of the [numero-computationally?] built environment)
•anatomy is always “imaginary anatomy”
•the (body-)ego is a formation of body image through primary narcissim (in terms of Oedipus complex)
•body image also incorporate external objects (implements and instruments --> intimate, vital, even libidinally cathected parts of the body) ~--> the “detachable” parts of the body: urine, faeces, saliva, sperm, blood, vomit, hair, nails, skin--all retain something of the cathexis and value of a body

-for Bergson: an i[...]

[...]ys “imaginary anatomy”
•the (body-)ego is a formation of body image through primary narcissim (in terms of Oedipus complex)
•body image also incorporate external objects (implements and instruments --> intimate, vital, even libidinally cathected parts of the body) ~--> the “detachable” parts of the body: urine, faeces, saliva, sperm, blood, vomit, hair, nails, skin--all retain something of the cathexis and value of a body

-for Bergson: an image that one know from within by affections, rather than from without by perceptions: body }==> “my body” is the center of actions ==births==> representation
-for Whitehead: “self-knowledge of our bodily event” ==> (organic) conception of nature
-masculinity: body subordinate to the mind ~=>{ body: site for feminist critique
-for contemporary feminism (Grosz): body is neither a biological nor a sociological category, but rather a point of overlap between physical, symbolic, and material conditions
/>
the ideological representations of a “real” precultural body
[--> idealized in terms of abstract geometry, rendered primal in primates,,,]

“The theory of the body is already a theory of perception.” Merleau-Ponty

(in his studies on body, Christian Hubert quotes John Schumacher quoting) James Gibson: “The optical information to specify the self, including the head, body, arms, and hands, accompanies the optical information to specify the environment. The two sources of information coexist. The one could not exist without the other. When a man sees the world, he sees his nose at the same time; or rather, the world and his nose are both specified and his awareness can shift....The supposedly separate realms of the subjective and objective are actually only poles of attention.” (The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception)


sensuality is co-making


rituals and technologies are links between bodies and socid societies
(social) techniques for the inscription of locality into bodies
technology as an exteriorization of the functions of the body?

CG stands for:
•computer graphics
•computer games
•creature generator
•categorial grammar --> “==>”, “=/=”, etc
•conceptual graphs --> graph-based knowledge representation and reasoning model
•computational geometry --> geo-info-sys design
•*computational gesture* --> extracorporeal material culture
•
•(complete governance, chaotic God, commanding general, common ground, center of gravity,)
•

the well-equipped invalid (--> embodiment, Virilio)

(Foucault's radical exploration of:) body = (subject to the effects of) rhetoric of technical reason
techniques of punishment (, a “political technology”) : “an art of unbearable sensations” --to--> “an economy of suspended rights”

Deleuze and Guattari[...]

[...]mmon ground, center of gravity,)
•

the well-equipped invalid (--> embodiment, Virilio)

(Foucault's radical exploration of:) body = (subject to the effects of) rhetoric of technical reason
techniques of punishment (, a “political technology”) : “an art of unbearable sensations” --to--> “an economy of suspended rights”

Deleuze and Guattari: “We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words, what its affects are, how they can or cannot enter into composition with other affects, with the affects of another body...” (what are the affects of the CG bodies?)
-for them the “body” is a discontinuous and non-totalized series of processes, organs, flows, energies, corporeal substances and incorporeal events, intensities and durations, a surface of intensities: *pure simulacra without originals*


erotogenic zones, sexuality, Freud, auto-erotic internalization, clinamen

(the formally female cyborg / techno-monster of the Ghost in the Shell:) the (masculinist) fantasy of leaving the body behind and reconstituting it as a a technical object under human control as both a desire for perfect knowledge and total power and at the same time as a way of escape... [Christian Hubert] #Haraway
•the question of the “soul” is read as the question of (certain technology of) power over bodiess

(traits of) cyborg:
1. boundary transgression
2. the recognition and re-scripting of myth
3. simulations of identity
4. coalitions of affinity


reembodiment of intelligence


Hubert > Serres: “My body (I cannot help it) is not plunged into a single, specified space. It works in Euclidean space, but it only works there. It sees in a projective space; it touches, caresses, and feels in a topological space; it suffers in another; hears and communicates in a third; and so forth, as far as one wishes to go. Euclidean space was chosen in our work-oriented cultures because it is the space of work--of the mason, the surveyor, or the architect. [...] My body lives in as many spaces as the society, the group, or the collectivity have formed: the Euclidean house, the street and its network, the open and closed garden, the church or the enclosed spaces of the sacred, the school and its spatial varieties containing fixed points, and the complex ensemble of flow-charts, those of language, of the factory, of the family, of the political party, and so forth. Consequently my body is not plunged into one space but into the intersection or the junctions of this multiplicity.” (Hermes, pp 44-45) (@Aela)

...................................

(feminist open-source --✕-->?) I am actually coming from a masculinist closed-source culture-thing, that is to say, my background is in masculinist black-boxed concepts of being and beyond, that means i have a different relationship with i[...]

[...]es of attunement, which cannot be intentionally determined (by those who produce the images through the processes of design)

correct mixture of contingency and structure

...................................

prosthesis + castration complex --> “cyberspace: having your everything amputated”

prosthetic skill ~= mastery of the phantom limb
--> rigging

prosthetic --> vivid illustration of the human-technology relations in terms of the body [=/=? hyperobjects]

(set of) architectural metaphors --provide--> foundation of the university
-(in the case of rigging) mechanical metaphors --provide--> foundation of moving bodies

prosthetic technology (like the *magic lantern*)
***technology of theory***



rigging and the question of morphological correspondence (homology: systematic similarity) --> isomorphic systems of relations
•isomorphic: 1-1 mapping, structure-preserving mapping --✕--> breakable objects
homology: principle of rigging, essentially the same (parts might have different shapes and be employed for different purposes) --> geometrical similarity --> ‘abstraction: materials of organization’ [position + structure] (Geoffroy > Hubert)
~~✕--> Deleuze and Guattari's body without organs [anatomical: pure plane of immanence (~ *rig = abstract animal*)]
--> (thinkers of) *organic folding* + *comparative biological intuition* --> *science of form*
•analogue: a part or organ in one animal that has the same function as another part or organ in a different animal (--> rig is the analogue of the animal's body)
•homotypy (homotype: serially repeated parts) --> Goethe

homology: a morphological correspondence determined primarily by relative position and connection ~= rigging
--Darwin--> material ancestors (replaced metaphysical archetypes)

philosophical anatomy <~~?--> rigging
•dialectics is the search for rational laws which are active in nature
•discontent with merely empiricism
•transcendental (philosopher) ==> morphologist

rigging: (step away form ordinary perception and) building internal homologies (=/= external ressemblance)
==> comprehensible order (--> systematic animation)
~=> complexities and accidents (are also part of it)

--> rational morphology
--> mathematization of space [--> analytic geometry (not necessarily Euclidean or rigid bodies, but also curved spaces, n-dimensional spaces, particle spaces, volumetric space, phase space, etc.) (looking at the animal) ==> abstract, proliferation of types --> rig] {--Lefebvre--> social critique of abstract space --> rigged}
-the way i learned 3D animation, the space of the software was a n-dimensional spaces (X, Y, Z, time, texture, audio, constraining, etc.)


automaton
a bit o[...]

[...]hings in advance ==> unexpected sources of influence in markets and consumer cultures @Foad
-to map together material/technological as well as linguistic aspects of consumer culture: narratives, phenomenological techniques, etc.
-consumers ‘become’ during consumption
*[?why become interested in] consumption/markets: hybrid networks of narratives, objects, devices and practices (that [it seems] are necessary to create conditions for any ‘human’ action)*
(still use other more old-fashioned research techniques: depth interviews [Xiri], phenomenological methods [], hermeneutic analysis [Sina], etc.)
-(how to account for) tech-mediated flows of information and knowledge that pass through the massive assemblages of the Internet
-majority of interactions are technology-to-technology and system-to-system interactions

this assemblage-thinking is against[?]:
•Virilio's way of ‘questioning technology'--for him: “to be a subject or to be subjected, that is the question.” he sees crisis in the temporal dimensions of the present moment: the lack of a future-oriented longer time-frame connects “real time”, pollution, and economic inequalities. All of them result from a lack of shared responsibility for the future. (<-- noted by Hubert); or: “The now immaterial environment is connected to the “terminal” body of men and women with interactive prostheses who become the virtual equivalent of the well-equipped invalid.”
•Guattari's machinic (=/= simple construction partes extra partes): omnipresent homogenized capitalist exchange value
•Nancy's ecotechnics: critique of globalization and sovereignty
•Avital's narcotics: on Heidegger: the notion of ‘addicted to technology’ --asking--> under what conditions we could arrive at a *free relation to technology*? being ‘fast’ --> on the run ==> dumps understanding along the way. (for Heidegger) freedom depends upon Dasein's openness to anxiety ==diverts==> addiction [a certain type of being-on-drugs] }--> drugs have something to do with technology? @constantvzw
drugs in warfare: taking pills (or tranced by nohe مداحی جنگ) into superior performance, technologizing himself into the war machine (hero on heroin) --> technically calibrated culture
‘chemical prosthesis’ (a technology of the human) has been part of man-machinic hybridizations
-hallucinated exteriority
-stimulant, opening another hallucinogenre in life, at the edge of being
-our culture is bascially the history of ‘high culture’
(Avital suggests) drugs [master object of considerable libidinal investment] have been about exploring ‘fractal interiorities’ (and not exterior dimensions)
ecstasy of intoxication, forgetfulness, mimetic poisoning (of literature [= singular staging of the imaginary]): as sedative, as cure, as escape [= forced decision upon the subject]
-for Baudelaire opium became the transparency upon which [...]

[...]
[manipulation of symbols]
(from) ethical issue (modern) --to--> stylistic issue (phenomenological, postmodern)

[*]globalization: (create fragmented heterogenized market -->) serve the locals with global universal signs
--> transnational: a highly symbolic communication system that is timeless, contextless, diffused in space, located anonymously, with no known history


marketing is the first institution that adapt to postmodernism

...................................

consumer (--impulse--> “i want”) =/= citizen (“we need”)

Sunstein
consumer sovereignty (matters of personal taste, “are they getting what they want?”, ‘freedom: satisfaction of private preferences’, ) =/= political sovereignty (*government by discussion* + reason-giving in the public domain <-- many/most citizens should have a range of common experiences =/= filtering of information, customizing information to fit)

**unplanned unanticipated encounters <-- central to democracy**

(pseudo-democratic) participation interactivity : invitation to participate in one's own manipulation by providing increasingly detailed information about personal preferences (Andrejevic, noted by Hubert)

...................................

*misattunement:
--Stern--> a parental technique for modifying the behaviour (+ affective experience) of the child
--Ahmed--> being out of synch with a world (“of whiteness” that aims to be in harmony)

*attunement: a technique for occupying space
---> go to #integration {for Ahmed: becoming a citizen (= nationalism) ~= the work of attunement =/= stranger: the body we are not with}

clumsiness: being in the way of yourself (to lack the coordination to coordinate yourself with yourself)
--registers--> as the loss of a possibility

(in art, performed clumsiness as strategically antagonistic?)

(Ahmed's) emotional work: closing the gap between ‘how one does feel’ and ‘how one should feel’ <-- a labour (when) is successful, it disappears as labour

how flight attendants (and teachers?) become responsible for collective moods --Hochschild--> ability to preserve the mood of a situation requires working not only on feelings, but drawing on tactic knowledge about how moods are shaped

(bad mood of a shopkeeper in Brussels...)

*histories that linger as mood*

diversity work --involves-->
•the effort to minimize differences so that those who arrive can appear more ‘in tune’ with those who are already here
•
•
--✕--> bodies do not arrive at the same time [---> go to Sina's trans-lateness lecture performance series for Akademie der Künste der Welt 2014: being late is precisely the condition for which translation is needed + critique of universal[...]