RE: [-empyre-] Re: Subject: inscribing of characters on an interf ace

[Sue Thomas <Sue.Thomas@dmu.ac.uk>]

 Marcus, 

You have an interesting point here. I've spoken with many people about their
experiences of writing and reading online, and a common theme is the way the
necessary interaction with the machine - keyboarding, mouse, physical
position and location - all disrupt their interaction. For some, this
interference increases their pleasure, but for others they are
insurmountable intrusions into the relationship with the text/work/activity.
In other words, for some, the 'undisciplining of the body' is desirable, for
others it isn't.

Indeed, a common complaint is that interaction with the machine frees people
from stillness when they have no wish to be freed. 

I wonder if this is like the way musicians have proclivities for different
instruments? To one person, the vibration of the violin against the
collarbone is soothing, to another it can even be painful. Or the blowing of
a brass instrument is energising for one, exhausting for another.

For myself, I feel most complete when I am at my keyboard and online. My
computer is my musical instrument, and I am transported by it. But I do
appreciate that for many people the opposite is true.

Sue



-----Original Message-----
From: marcus bastos
To: soft_skinned_space
Sent: 10/6/2005 6:35 AM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Re: Subject: inscribing of characters on an
interface

Dear Simon,

when you mention "redundancy as a limit body-experience of text", I
immediately remember of Jacques Rancière´s "The flesh of words:
politics of writing". At this text, Rancière argues that writing
limits body experience, since it obliges the writer to be still for a
reasonable period of time ? and, he states, this stillness molds his
actions. For Rancière, this process of fixing the body in a given
position is more responsible for molding a certain kind of individual
than the words and concepts he learns by acquiring language, given
that his body learns to obey before his mind learns how to think about
disobedience. Do you think the experience of writing with aid of
digital interfaces frees the body and, as a consequence, the mind,
from this stillness? Are digital interfaces capable of, so to say,
"undisciplining" the body?


On 10/5/05, Simon Taylor <swht@clear.net.nz> wrote:
> Marcus Bastos wrote:
> "Juxtaposition seems to be
> crucial here, but I am not sure if those flows of images are as
> controllable as we imagine."
> coming in at the end of this particular beginning, I would like to
highlight
> the foregoing as a juncture in thought about the what is not left as
its
> trace is untraceable in digital ecriture. First, to say, there is a
> summoning herein of the mystique of erasure - as it stands in Western
> meaning-creation. Second, to say that the privilege of transmitting
thought
> as writing 'mind to mind' digitally might be deliberated in principle
as
> contradiction: as we all know the enabling thought behind any thought
in the
> history of this mediation of the code-digital lies in infomation
theory's
> encoded redundancy of meaning-creating and signification. Far be it
for me
> to depart from the idea of meaning-flows but I think there is a
> performative, enunciative limit-base to meaning-creation, which
demands risk
> rather than redundancy as a limit body-experience of text. This is not
to
> get logged down in the visuality syndrome of phallogocentrism, rather
to
> rise up to greet limit-experience as corporeally composed - and
discomposed.
>
> As a juncture controllability seems to belie a pathology of
signifiance of
> surfeit meaning-creation, a decadence, if you will - a breath that is
> shorter than its reach - in line, in play - a distinguishable
control-limit
> to flow dynamic and a sign to regime change - whether willed or not -
in
> game.
>
> The stuff being moved - to invoke a physics model - relies on an
absolute
> framework in which spaces/times are measured according to Newton
against the
> absolute. Relativisation of the sphere of writing demands a shift that
one
> can assume to be there because of digital mediatisation but may not
> necessarily be there because of the laws of meaning-production. The
argument
> surely returns to an archeology of social production of meaning before
it
> repeats in digitised mode.
>
> In short, I'm excited at the prospect of liberated digitised flows but
would
> suggest that sociological barrieres still subsist to mitigate against
such
> flows. Not least the statistical reach of the sociological
> self-constitution - dealing in mass statistical data reflected in
> attribution of meaning - signification - and limits thereto suggested
by
> traditional avant-gardes.
>
> Which is not to say I'm way off the point. If so, I apologise in
advance.
>
> simon taylor
>
>
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