Re: [-empyre-] Introducing Neural Skeins and Digital Skins -- November on -empyre-

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Christina McPhee wrote:

> Literature means the art which is written down in
> letters taken from the code of the alphabet.   It has
> a very loose relationship to its media -- and thereby,
> it can be circulated: it's not bound to a certain
> material.
>
I wonder if the alphabet is, in fact, a code. Certainly it's based on
symbolic substitution (letters for phonemes), but there are codes and then
there are codes - the alphabet is fairly random; axiomatic logic, for
example, isn't.

I also think the binding is stronger than one might think - this is where
the obsolescence of media, screens, technologies, come into play.

Circulation is always of interest to me - I tend to think of
distributivities in general - which goes all the way back to cuneiform
tables and envelopes and even earlier. Circulations are always tied to
protocols, substructures, technologies, embodiments; even the
electromagnetic spectrum, radio/packet/television/etc. is embodied of
course.

> The implication of text is that it is not bound to a
> certain process of writing it down. And this doesn't
> have to be in print. The word "code" literally comes
> from "carving" or "beating" ...carved into stone or
> wood. So, code denotes writing.

Hmmm... I think code and write touch on each other and are interrelated,
but one hardly denotes the other. One can have scribbles without code - Cy
Twombly comes to mind -

>
> In Plato's symposium, all creation or passage of non
> being into being is poetry or making, and the process
> of all art are creative; and the masaters of arts are
> all poets or makers. "Poesis" means making or
> construction. Plato's definition of poetry implies
> passage or process.

This sounds a bit like David Bohm's writing by the way - you might want to
look at it -

>
> Might the metaphoric quality of binary code be found
> in passage or shift?  In Greek,  "metaphor" means,
> literally,  transport.

I'm not sure what the 'metaphoric quality of binary code' is - do you mean
the double encodings at work (Eco speaks of these in his Theory of
Semiotics) -

>
> Aristotle looks at metaphor as a shift of meaning, in
> a nonliteral sense:  the shift is the metaphoric
> transport.
>
> So the question becomes, how is the gap between zero
> and one being filled?

I've lost you here; in binary work, _there is no gap,_ not even checksums
answered or unanswered are gaps. One good source for thinking about this
is Anthony Wilden's System and Structure - written way back in the 70s -
but there's been very little that's been done on the phenomenology of the
digital since than - at least on the fundamental level he considers -

Alan -

>
>
> I hope that our guests, Tamara, Florian, Alessandro
> and Alan will find some paths-- fanciful, serious,
> mystifying, playful-- within this  Forest of Arden
> where i hope we will happily wander for the next
> month.
>
> Apologies to Florian if I've got things mixed up...any
> errors are my own.
>
> christina -- -empyre- administration
> <empyre-owner@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> wrote:
> > Please join -empyre- in welcoming Tamara Lai,
> > Alessandro Ludovico, Alan
> > Sondheim and Florian Cramer discussing the terrain
> > of the 'net, as text, as
> > psychogeography, as spatial construct.
> >
> > In a pastiche of imagery and French and English
> > text, Tamara Lai (Belgium)
> > spins her intimate, visceral cyber-poems from her
> > base in Liege.  Lai's
> > oeuvre includes exploration of performance,
> > ephemerality and virtual
> > relations.  See Tamara's latest work at
> >
> http://www.imal.org/tamara_lai/web_of_lies/index.html
> >
> > Alan Sondheim (US), New York based net artist and
> > poet, conducts a
> > continuous meditation on cyberspace, emphasizing
> > issues of interiority,
> > subjectivity, body, and language.
> > http://www.asondheim.org/
> >
> > Alessandro Ludovico (IT) publishes the critical
> > journal neural.it in Italian
> > and English online.  http://www.neural.it and
> > http://www.neural.it/english
> >
> > Florian Cramer (Germany), is a theorist on
> > comparative net aesthetics and
> > literature, and lectures at the Free University
> > Berlin. Personal site and
> > some writings available here:
> > http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/
> >
> > Please join us in welcoming our esteemed guests in a
> > free flowing debate
> > discussing net: écriture, sexuality, space, and
> > landscape as pertains to
> > their work and theory.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> =====
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>
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http://www.asondheim.org/ http://www.asondheim.org/portal/.nikuko
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
finger sondheim@panix.com