[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?

Thu Jul 15 23:10:44 EST 2010

Is "going ontological" similar to going nuclear?

Simon Biggs
s.biggs at eca.ac.uk  simon at littlepig.org.uk
Skype: simonbiggsuk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

Research Professor  edinburgh college of art
http://www.eca.ac.uk/
Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
http://www.elmcip.net/
Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts

> From: Sean Cubitt <scubitt at unimelb.edu.au>
> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:57:10 +1000
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> 
> Absolutely so Simon: and more power to you for having the bottle to go
> ontological. The axiom can be -- should be -- further reduced: what is the
> materiality of the formative agency which constitutes relationships and
> forms things? (You already know which rabbit is in the hat, simon, but allow
> me the ta-dah moment): it is is mediation.
> 
> Not communication: not every mediation communicates. Just that
> everything/process mediates every other contiguous process. This is the
> ontological nature of the human universe (to coin Charles Olson's usage):  a
> person is a medium for other persons. But it is also the axiom of the entire
> sensory and physical universe.
> 
> That places it however in the realm of the second law of thermodynamics: a
> univers eof pure flux runs down entropically. "Communication" for want of
> another term is the ordering of the flow of mediation. Any order is,
> especially among our species but certainly also among dogs, the species I
> know best of the rest, structural or in-formative. The questions are then
> about the modes of order applied to the raw stuff of mediation.
> 
> The unit question is then a question about the mode of order applied in any
> specific media formation. Grosso modo, we are in an era characterised by
> unit enumeration (as opposed, for example, to the geometrical moment of the
> renaissance), so the question poses itself as unitary: as digital, as
> inflected by the exchange principle. On one hand this is why the temptation
> exists to seek out the individual. The effort of thinking otherwise -
> deleuze's 'dividual' for example - is troubling, but is necessary if we are
> to understand a) how the 'dark matter' becomes the medium (!) of privation
> and power  that is the specific existential quality of the ontological at
> the given moment and b) how to operate on it in such a way as to form it
> otherwise - which is where the creative operates
> 
> S
> 
> 
> 
> On 15/07/10 6:33 PM, "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
>> I am using agency in a sense that some might find contentious as I am
>> considering it as an ontological phenomena in a context where individuals,
>> whether human or animal, alive or inert, physical or virtual, are not where
>> agency is located. Rather, I am entertaining the idea that agency is of (or
>> is) the relationships between things (whatever those things might be). In
>> this respect I am proposing a folding of agency and creativity into one
>> thing which might be considered somewhat like a dark matter which binds
>> everything together. The units that are bound within this prima materia (for
>> want of a better term) might then be considered rather like quantum
>> phenomena - the closer you look the more you realise there is nothing there
>> and that it is the phenomena around the unit that give it its apparent
>> properties. The subsequent question, of course, is what is the unit (here I
>> include people)? Clearly there is something there - but what?
>> 
>> Best
>> 
>> Simon
>> 
>> 
>> Simon Biggs
>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk  simon at littlepig.org.uk
>> Skype: simonbiggsuk
>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>> 
>> Research Professor  edinburgh college of art
>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
>> http://www.elmcip.net/
>> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
>> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>> 
>> 
>>> From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:43:44 +0100
>>> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
>>> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
>>> 
>>> I am not so sure that experience
>>> is agency ? but you probably mean something other than what the new
>>> left means when you say this. Also we are not arguing for the "will"
>>> as James points out, but something that is also autopoetic, no? The
>>> difference between the term "thing"(process) as opposed to
>>> "object"(dead forms) leads us to communication (process) community
>>> (dead)? So the relation is affirmative, but the definition (the
>>> limits) amount to its death (Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of
>>> the state).
>>> 
>>> How is Ingold defining agency ? if I remember well he makes a case for
>>> a human centered study, something that Latour has refuted with his
>>> critique of sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) ? Ingold "reads
>>> back to the mind of an agent," i.e, human.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number
>> SC009201
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> Prof Sean Cubitt
> scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
> Director
> Media and Communications Program
> Faculty of Arts
> Room 127 John Medley East
> The University of Melbourne
> Parkville VIC 3010
> Australia
> 
> Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
> Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
> M: 0448 304 004
> Skype: seancubitt
> http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/media-communications/
> http://www.digital-light.net.au/
> http://homepage.mac.com/waikatoscreen/
> http://seancubitt.blogspot.com/
> http://del.icio.us/seancubitt
> 
> Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
> http://leonardo.info
> 
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Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201