[-empyre-] week two - MATTER

Tue Oct 14 05:09:02 EST 2014

Hi Nicholas!

Thanks for the great ride. Very nice writing.

Some feedback. I’m a bit confused how reflecting on an experience is the same as matter or becoming objectified. Could you try and explain from an practical point of view, how you see the digital becoming material when moving AWK? What proces of objectification is happening here. Is it reflection? Memories? Or missing limb syndrome?
From a practicising point of view, I try and define matter as something you can work with. How could you work with this objectifying experience you mention?

yours,

Jan Robert

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hello empyre:
> 
> Thanks so much to Ashley and the other moderators for inviting me to be a discussant this month. I’ve been following the conversation and am definitely excited to contribute!
> 
> As a way of getting started I wanted to pick up on two things that Ashley wrote with regards to the materiality of digital objects:
> 
> From hidden communication between smart devices to the algorithmic computation of actionable futures, many of the processes inherent to “the digital” are taking place outside of the phenomenal field of human perception. To this end, not only is the performative “stuff” of the digital functionally evasive, but the reiterative and regenerative executions that drive its operation also suggest that even when we do “see something,” it is nothing more than an ephemeral apparition…  
> 
> As I mentioned in an earlier post, much of what we refer to when we speak of “the digital” takes place outside of the field of human perception.
> 
> This statement makes me think about driving in nature. I live in NYC now and don’t really get to act on the “Did you know New York has 10,000 miles (or whatever amount) of snowshoe hiking trails?” as much as I’d like to. That being said, The “ephemeral apparition,” - or as I like to call it, experience - of the digital reminds me of taking the offramp on the highway to observe a scenic overlook. I grew up in Northern Virginia and my family didn’t have a lot of money when I was young to go travel or book hotels for long weekends. Instead we would go down US interstate 81 until we got to the historical scenic route Skyline Drive. We would cruise up and down the windy road, listening to tapes on the car stereo or playing guessing games until my brother and I would get tired and fall asleep in the back seat. From time to time, however, we’d pull over and take a look out into the Blue Ridge Mountains and rolling hills of the lower Appalachian Trail. 
> 
> More recently, whenever I make long car trips (in that ever-so-quintessential Americana way), I rarely remember the mile marker, or the commemorative plaque, or where I was on my journey, or even the actual view. What I do remember is that I turned off the road and interrupted my trip - and that this interruption is often a way of reminding myself of my journey through the “stuff” of the road (or information superhighway if you will).
> 
> So, then, what is the objectification of that experience? What is the matter that consolidates or crystallizes that moment of rupture? It could be a photograph, or a video, or a tweet, or a sound recording, or a text to a loved one - some digital artifact of remembrance, a keepsake of data. But I’d wager that the real substance of experiencing the ephemeral occurs in the moment of interruption. With a slight nod to Kev Bewersdorf, I’d say that the materiality of the digital only happens AFK - removed from the torrent of being plugged in, reflecting on it only when one has fully stepped away from its monotony. The moment in which one pulls off the road, interrupting their electronic activities, is the moment when the digital becomes material. It is when the onslaught of digital stuff becomes sublime.
> 
> For me the experience of the sublime is the elusive moment of terrified separation from humanity/civilization. In that moment of (self) recognition away from the digital, I am deeply troubled by what I see in front of me. I see the sublime as a terrible thing, or else a thing of terror (ala Burke). It is terrifying and horrific to reflect on the digital - and it is in that moment of terror that the digitial becomes “real,” or else it becomes “matter.” The “terribleness” - as described by Burke - of that feeling transforms the ephemeral into the actual, and in doing so it shapes the digital into an object.
> 
> ***
> 
> Perhaps the terror that I see during (self)reflection away from the digital speaks to the dangers that occur within a disappearing submedial space. The invisibility of surveillance and the political work that goes on within network culture is often only visible en masse - as is the case with OWS, the Arab Spring, and the current Hong Kong protests. The problematic posed by Groys’ analysis of 21st century submedial space suggests not only that the presence of such a space is becoming hard to perceive but also its affect is becoming harder to feel. This lack of emotional (or psychological) tactility that occurs from observing these mass-produced (or mass-represented) forms of political action from the outside creates a dangerous type of association - one that is inherently built on distance, absence, and othering.
> 
> When affect has been evacuated from social exchange a different type of objectification happens, one that I don’t actually know how to define, but certainly feels different. The matter of a digital object is one that is quickly losing its affect, one that gets subsumed into an infinite scroll. It doesn’t feel like pulling off the road, at least. Instead it feels more like a self-driving car.  
> 
> -- 
> Nicholas O'Brien
> 
> Visiting Faculty | Gallery Director
> Department of Digital Art, Pratt Institute
> doubleunderscore.net
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

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