[-empyre-] Mediated matters and design abjections

[etienne turpin]

It has been quite exciting to read the exchanges and I am now quite curious
about this turn in the conversation. I apologize that my previous reply was
lost in transit before I left the US.

Meanwhile, I spent the last two days at the International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna for the International Symposium on Next
Generation Infrastructure, which was fascinating for a number of reasons.
But, with respect to the comments above, it is especially illuminating...

Of course, there is no lack of positivism in the current big data turn, but
there is also, I think, a clear understanding of how far along we are in
the algorithm-driven reality of the contemporary city-planet. It is
absolutely necessary to confront this reality as it is the water we are all
swimming in. To imply it is political or not largely misses the point
because (to appropriate Latour) nothing is *reducible or irreducible* to
politics. That is, every aspect of the reality we encounter can be made a
matter of politics. This is a kind of work common to organizing and
theorizing, and with regard to the data-driven reality of our city-planet,
it is remarkably underdeveloped.

I hope we can bring some of these questions together in the Data Made Me Do
It symposium we are organizing at UC Berkeley College of Environmental
Design *13-15 March 2015*. I'll post the full program to the list once we
have it, but I hope it can be a productive event for developing some of the
questions about the potential for data politics as a strata of interventive
research in the Anthropocene.

in sol. from Vienna.

etienne

-- 

Etienne Turpin, Ph.D.

Director
anexact office
Jl. Sumbing 17  DKI Jakarta  Indonesia  12980
+ 62 819 08830664
etienne at anexact.org

Vice Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow
SMART Infrastructure Facility
Faculty of Engineering & Information Sciences
& Associate Research Fellow
Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Wollongong  NSW  Australia  2522
+ 61 422 464369
eturpin at uow.edu.au



--


On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 6:01 PM, Johannes Birringer <
Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> thanks for your very interesting reply, Davide,
> to some of the comments. And your reply, if we had time here, would raise
> further questions, naturally,
> but I am hesitant to ask them as I feel that somehow the monthly debate
> has not involved very many discussants
> on our list. and it worries me not knowing whether anyone is reading the
> conversations or wanting to participate
> or wanting us to stop?
>
>
> >>
> I don't think (at least for me) that the transmissional model of cause and
> effect of influence (which is also the model of coercion) is sufficient for
> our day and age (maybe it was never enough). Hence my lack of pursuing
> (also) of questions about biopolitics and subjectivity - which aren't
> uninteresting questions to raise and follow through; they're issues that I
> don't feel equipped to deal with well enough - or rather, I should say,
> that the issue of control always already has a moral answer built into it;
> namely, the one who controls is the one (or it) that simultaneously
> exploits....
> But once we've established this moral/ethical trajectory - let's call it
> critical thought's a priori - what can we say about the structures of
> association in our contemporary condition? ..
>
> The disregarding of interest seems like a unique dynamic of datapolitik
> that distinguishes it ..... >>  [Davide]
>
>
> Your (aesthetic?) belief in the healthy disinterest of "datapolitik" (how
> can disinterested algorithms have or form a politics or have strategies if
> we associate the latter with Politik?) is peculiar
> as you did, earlier, speak of a transmission model, and you called it
> contagion. But surely contagious spreads and swarming affects are
> opportunistic, no? they are Machiavellian?  at least as far as i understand
> the biomedical
> metaphor or epidemiological process and your zombie allegory -- "viral
> algorithms spread, contaminate, and affect influence through contagion --
> how then do the immune systems respond and how to political tactics and
> strategies
> become re-thinkable and rethought in such an algorithmic culture of
> associationn? You argue that data have/imply no politics, but call that a
> data-politik? Are you being ironic?
>
> regards
> Johannes Birringer
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
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