[-empyre-] to jacob & homay

Sat Jun 16 07:32:29 EST 2012

Thanks so much for your response Rob! I'm very excited about your work
and I think you're working in a very similar space to the discussion
we've been having. In fact it seems very related to the recent work
I've been doing on Turing's uncomputability as a kind of queer
externality. Your discussion of uncomputability between formal systems
such as language is precisely what interests me. I've recently written
a long history of queer computing for Rhizome that should be published
in September, but Zach, Micha, Pinar and I are also presenting a
series of panels this year on this very topic. My contribution is an
analysis of the interaction that takes place between Ludwig
Wittgenstein and Alan Turing in the Spring of 1939 at Cambridge, when
Turing attends a course Wittgenstein is teaching on the foundations of
mathematics. While the two of them seem incapable of agreeing on the
question of limits of mathematics as a system of logic (that is, the
Entscheidungsproblem), they are both actually making a similar point.
Wittgenstein wants to describe the way in which mathematics is
constructed within language and is therefore burdened by the same
kinds of paradoxes that are of interest to formal logic (the liar's
paradox, zeno's paradoxes, etc.), while Turing wants to argue that the
material nature of mathematical application (the building of bridges,
etc.) would suggest that mathematics is capable of describing true
things about the world, despite the fact that there are limits to such
descriptions, such as uncomputable processes. I would argue that they
are in fact both describing the same thing, and both examining that
which lies beyond the limits of procedural knowledge, something that I
think can be usefully figured as a queer gesture given the subsequent
development of computing technology. While not central to the
argument, it is also interesting that both these men are proto-queer
figures.

Your discussion of "weird machines" also prompted me to think of
Michael Mateas' entry in Matthew Fuller's "Software Studies" lexicon
on "Weird Languages", that is the unique and playful languages
programmers use "to explore and exploit the play that is possible in
programming language design" (267). It seems a very similar practice,
and it seems to walk that same line of a kind of productive breaking
or disruption that serves both as play and parody and as critique.
It's true that this is where these liminal technical objects emerge
from, though of course they might then be redeployed as we've seen
with the recent state sponsored "cyberterrorism" of Stuxnet and Flame.
Nonetheless I'm reminded of Haraway's categorization of cyborgs - and
all computing technology - as the illegitimate offspring of militarism
and patriarchal capitalism that we might make unfaithful to their
troubled origins, only here it is quite the opposite, a reintegration
of these in-between objects into a new kind of productive militarism.
(You'll have to forgive the dated references, I'm teaching an intro to
gender studies course this summer and it tends to bleed through.)

I agree with your contention that we can't separate the early Turing
from the later work. And I would also argue that we can't isolate his
contributions to a kind of queer philosophy to his work in the Turing
Test, interesting though it may be. I look forward to reading the PDF
you send, and I'll respond again when I've had the chance to give it
some thought.

- Jacob

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Rob Jackson
<robertjackson3900 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I'm really sorry if I'm slightly hijacking the thread here, but I too have
> been working
> with Turing in my thesis on the non-human formalisation of computability
> theory. I
> would be extremely interested to hear more from Homay's article on this (I
> consider myself as
> a bit of layman when it comes to queer theory, so please put up with my
> ignorance!) I really, really
> would love to hear these positions.
>
> I work in the digital aesthetics, SR/OOO and computer science, so this
> thread is like a candy shop
> for me. In fact my thesis (should I ever get it finished) is about how
> issues like the uncomputable, undecidability and other
> unsolvable problems factor into aesthetic works, and how it does so
> implicitly or explicitly. My contribution
> (or intervention as one would put it) is to suggest that undecidability - or
> Turing's formulation of the decision problem - is
> more general than is usually advertised in computer science. It occurs not
> just between humans aping for knowledge from some
> homogenous totality that is 'computation', but is everpresent in-between
> formal language systems themselves. It is not just the case that
> human knowledge has little complete mastery of computation; even computable
> systems have no mastery over other computable systems
> such is the complexity of them. Networks do not operate as fluid modes of
> informal flux; they are creaky and impure formal systems, comprised
> of modular compositions, operatively rubbing against others.
>
> Uncomputability in-between formal systems of an equivalent language is the
> reason as to why glitches and especially viruses occur -
> its linked to what the exploit programmer Halvar Flake  recently called the
> "weird machine" - A weird machine is the unexpected state
> of a computing system which was not expected nor intended by the original
> author, but is nonetheless algorithmically recognisable
> in the formal language. If a language is shown to be undecidable, its
> permanently ambiguous, and thus it will always recognise something it can
> never expect/compute.
>
> I have more detailed thoughts regarding this in a recent talk for those
> interested:
> [http://robertjackson.info/index/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/particmaterial.pdf]
>
> It seems to me that human rationality is usually pitted in contrast with
> machines which are viewed either as; dumb surface
> tools reduced to the depths of human communication - or -  artificial
> systems which (may) have the capacity for sentience - or - material based
> historical notation devices.
> Why aren't they just looked as what they are and all the weirdness they
> contain?
> We shouldn't be too quick to align some previous philosophical system or
> political agenda and use it to dissect something or other - I think it's
> much more fruitful (and dare I say more honest) to build a philosophical
> system from the weirdness of things and systems.
>
> I read Turing along these lines; a great philosopher, not just a great
> mathematician and engineer,
> A lot of popular literature (Martin Davis for instance) likes to separate
> the decision problem from Turing's later work on machinic intelligence (the
> Turing test is about the interrogator failing to decide on an input
> query!) and his forays into morphogenesis - but I don't think this can be
> done - I think the surprising irreducible quality of machines emerges
> throughout the Turing corpus.
>
> I don't really have an opinion regarding the links between Turing's
> sexuality and his work, but I do find it interesting
> that Turing's original formulation of the Turing test, was an interrogator
> trying to decide which messages were from a man or a woman (and then you
> substitute the man for
> the machine leaving the undecidable choice between a machine and a woman).
>
> I'll stop - wrote too much again - sorry
> thanks for hosting this important thread - look forward to the contributing
> debate.
>
> best
> Rob
>
>
>
> I think the important element here, especially when one is talking about
> viruses, glitches
>
> On 15 Jun 2012, at 18:14, micha cárdenas wrote:
>
> Here's one of those videos we're submitting to MIX that is part of Shu
> Lea Cheang's viral code spam performance:
>
> https://vimeo.com/37978993
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Zach Blas <zachblas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> hi all--
>
>
> i’ve also been busy with micha putting together a curated set of
>
> videos for mix nyc, a queer experimental video festival.
>
>
> since this week is broadly on the topic of computation and the
>
> nonhuman in queer media art & theory--and since it’s the last day on
>
> this topic, i’d really like to bring in jacob and homay. while
>
> michael, jack, and ian have really heated up the discussions on sr and
>
> ooo, homay and jacob have different approaches to these topics that
>
> i’d like to not let get completely side-lined.
>
>
> jacob, micha and i for awhile have been interested in viruses. i was
>
> thinking about viruses in relation to your work on uncomputability. in
>
> the exploit, galloway and thacker talk about viruses as illegible and
>
> incalculable. the virus also shows up in shu lea cheang’s new work
>
> UKI, which she refers to as a live viral code spam performance.
>
> http://www.u-k-i.co/index-project.html i’m also thinking about ricardo
>
> dominguez and the electronic disturbance theater and how they’ve
>
> conceptualized some of their work as viruses infecting capital and
>
> dominant systems of power. i wonder if you have any thoughts on the
>
> virus. perhaps it can be paired with the glitch. but the nonhuman in
>
> queerness could also be approached through nonhuman things that have
>
> strongly impacted queerness, and the virus would certainly be one of
>
> those things. there’s a new issue of women studies quarterly on the
>
> viral. maybe some people are addressing these questions in there? i’m
>
> asking these questions and bringing up the virus because i’m curious
>
> about building the repertoire of queer tech logics you’ve discussed
>
> through and beyond failure and the glitch.
>
>
> homay, micha shared your work on turing with me. and i remember in
>
> your article you attempt to work through how Turing’s scientific and
>
> computational research could be infused with his erotic desires. could
>
> you say more about this? and maybe how turing helps you investigate
>
> how queer desire can shape or affect computation?
>
>
> --
>
> zach blas
>
> artist & phd candidate
>
> literature, information science + information studies, visual studies
>
> duke university
>
> www.zachblas.info
>
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>
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>
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>
>
>
>
> --
> micha cárdenas
> PhD Student, Media Arts and Practice, University of Southern California
> Provost Fellow, University of Southern California
>
> New Directions Scholar, USC Center for Feminist Research
>
> MFA, Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego
>
> Author, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities,
> http://amzn.to/x8iJcY
>
> blog: http://transreal.org
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