Re: [-empyre-] Writing and Pattern Flows

[Kenneth Newby <knewby@sfu.ca>]

> Is the notion of an 'ontology' relevant here (as described at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28computer_science%29 )?
>
> I guess an 'ontology' is what a 'world view' is predicated on.

Meta-data... but one always has the nagging feeling that the map may be 
trying to become the territory!

> A difficult question, no doubt, but what is 'meaning', fundamentally?

I find Michael Polyani's notion of subsidiary and focus to be useful 
here.  He achieves a balance between what he terms "personal knowledge" 
and the more universalizing tendencies of an abstract rationalism.  In 
programming things like art machines, encoding media practices, 
encoding culture, and encoding the poetic, I often think of this in 
terms of procedural vs. declarative knowledge: How vs. What.   Deleuze 
further articulated the production of ideas (meaning?) as a process of 
deterritorialization... of associative relationship "and", rather than 
disjunctive/propositional "or" "is".  Making meaning is an active 
performative gesture on the part of the one constructing the meaningful 
relationship, synthesizing the datum of sense/body into a focal point 
of meaning/awareness.  This is also resonant with Michel Chion's 
characterization of what happens in the multi-modal, audio-visual 
medium of cinema: the visible and audible streams are synthesized 
through a process he terms synchresis into an experience that contains 
new elements contained in neither the audible or visible.  Collisions 
of media modality in time....

Good conversation!

Kenneth.

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Kenneth Newby, Assistant Professor
Computational Poetics
School for Interactive Art & Technology
Simon Fraser University
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