[-empyre-] more "Writing and Pattern Flows"

[marcus bastos <bastos.marcus@gmail.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bill Seaman <bseaman@risd.edu>
To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 20:15:35 -0400
Subject: Re: Subject: inscribing of characters on an interface
>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."


Levels of control/anti-control are both of interest.

>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.

One can choose to make a trace of every keystroke, every interaction
with a computer and code...
This is not my interest or intention.



>First, to say, there is a
>summoning herein of the mystique of erasure - as it stands in Western
>meaning-creation.


Code enables every participant to have a different experience of the
same "work".



>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.


Meaning transmission often relies on some aspect of shared experience
although one can have associations related to unknown configurations
and /or unknown associations --- it is human nature to project a
linguistic frame...

see Duchamp's Meaning Coefficient

-------------------

>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.


both Risk and redundancy are valuable... there is no hierarchy ---
one chooses the vehicles they need to "write"


>This is not to
>get logged down in the visuality syndrome of phallogocentrism,


phallogocentrism has noting to do with the potentials of pattern flows...

See "intertextuality;"
Kristeva, in the book Language, speaks about a potential shift in the
very definition of linguistics, one that recognises the complexity of
the active engagement of the individual in the production of meaning:

This schematic summary of several of the fundamental principles of
the analytic conception of language and their radical novelty with
respect to modern linguistic vision, inevitably raises the question
of whether they can be introduced into linguistic knowledge. We are
not able today to foresee the possibility, much less the result, of
such a penetration. But it is obvious that an analytic attitude
toward language will not spare the neutral systematicity of
scientific language and that it will force formal linguistics to
change its discourse. What seems even more probable is that an
analytical attitude will invade the field of study of signifying
systems in general, the semiology Saussure dreamed of and that, from
that angle, it will modify the Cartesian conception of language and
enable science to grasp the multiplicity of signifying systems
elaborated in and from la langue. (Kristeva, 1989, pp.276-277)
KRISTEVA, J. 1989. Language. New York: Columbia University Press.

See also Roy Harris - Integrational Linguistics



>rather to
>rise up to greet limit-experience as corporeally composed - and discomposed.

Yes - limit experience is corporeally composed but "writing" enables
us to graft onto the the history of corporal experience new imagined
domains --- recombinant qualities of flow fragments forming hybrids
and new imaginative worlds...


>
>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 potential is to push the boundaries, creating new writing
methodologies through code and technological/spatial modalities,
transcend current practice --- thus the control limit is a projected
illusion that can be transcended --- its course altered.

>
>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.


Meaning production, the social, cultural, and digital potentials are
all arising simultaneously informing each other...

>
>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.


there are many barriers, yes,-
These are existing but by no means need to hold back new production
and/or the circumnavigation and/or the ability to ignore/transcend
social norms. One just needs to look at the history of writing to see
people that explored new forms that challenged social norms etc.



>
>Which is not to say I'm way off the point. If so, I apologise in advance.


I think this is the point. We are "writing" a new manner of writing.
This is open and will reflect the deep changes of our current
social/cultural milieu, in particular the potentials of technology
and new reflections on social experience. Are there limits - yes. Can
we push against them as a mode of being. Yes.

b

>
>simon taylor
--
Professor Bill Seaman, Ph.D.
Department  Head
Digital+ Media Department (Graduate Division)
Rhode Island School of Design
Two College St.
Providence, R.I. 02903-4956
401 277 4956
fax 401 277 4966
bseaman@risd.edu

http://billseaman.com
http://www.art.235media.de/index.php?show=2