[-empyre-] week two - MATTER - introduction

Tue Oct 14 05:22:57 EST 2014

Hi Everybody,

I am actually working with Yuk on many of these themes and have been trying to feel out the problem of "the material" in fact we have a monthly meeting here in Berlin, and we are organizing a quarterly conference https://www.facebook.com/events/912789665415547

my background is in flimmaking, I came into material concerns through the challenge of integrating video and computer-based video practices with my training in film. 
Since I am not one of the invited respondents I will keep it short here (for now :))  and I will try to briefly respond to Ashley's opening questions. 

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> > Beyond citing the physically robust supports of computation, how might we account for the materiality of the digital? What makes the digital material?
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In this regard,  I would like to throw up the challenge to reconsider the use of the definite article "the" in front of digital.
What I mean is this... there is no digital without hardware, and each and every moment of every instance of digital media is a unique manifestation on unique hardware, therefore there is no "the (general) digital"  only particular "digitals".  I say this with a wink, but still I contest the general condition of digitality every instance of digitality is material-bound and unique.
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> > What are the conceptual and political ramifications of attributing materiality to digital objects?
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the political ramifications, to my mind, are mostly addressed with called historical materialism.  i.e. with the affirmation of materiality, there is affirmation of scarcity, there is affirmation of location, there is finitude to the digital economy.  Personally, I cannot abstract concepts from politics, since they are mutually embodied in my limited corporeality. 

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> > How might we respond to Kirschenbaum and Drucker's assertion that digital materiality is a matter of modeling, appearance, and interpretation? If we are in agreement with these terms, what implications does this have for the terms of materiality? What implications does this have for conceptualizations of 21st century computing?
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I think these metaphors can be relevant in the construction of software, but politically they do not seem so promising to me. 
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> > What insight might contemporary new media artists, artworks and making practices provide into current debates regarding digital materiality?
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From my long experience in the field, artists are highly sensitive to changes in the environment, as McLuhan said "the D.E:W. line" so basically we can see what is happening by encountering art.  
for anyone who would like to learn more about where I am coming from, please see the panel and paper and artwork I presented on "the persistence of hardware" at ISEA2011

https://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/panel/persistence-hardware
http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/paper/materiality-digital-utopias
http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ISEA2011Uncontainable-Gottlieb.pdf

looking forward to encountering digital materiality with all of you :)

Baruch

Dr. phil. Baruch Gottlieb
IZM Institut für Zeit-basierte Medien
Universität der Künste Berlin

On Oct 13, 2014, at 4:57 AM, Ashley Scarlett wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Dear --empyre-- community,
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> While I hope that our conversation on PRACTICE will continue, (there are still several engaging threads on the go,) I would like to circulate the introduction for our second sub-theme, MATTER. 
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> Please do join in on the conversation, if you feel so inclined!
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> Kindly,
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> A.
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> ON MATTER
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> “Without a basic understanding of the material constraints under which computing systems operate, essential dynamics that animate the built environment of the virtual will remain invisible and unaccounted for” (Blanchette 2011: 1055).
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> According to Matthew Kirschenbaum, digital materiality refers to “the multiple behaviors and states of digital objects and the relational attitudes by which some are naturalized as a result of the procedural friction, or torque, … imposed by different software environments” (2012: 132-133). Distinguishing between forensic (physical) materiality and formal (symbolic-digital) materiality, Kirschenbaum explains that the formal materiality specific to digital objects is one of durable appearance – it involves the “simulation or modeling of materiality via programmed software processes” (9). Reading Kirschenbaum across Johanna Drucker, this formulation of formal materiality suggests that digital materiality emerges through “a process of interpretation rather than a positing of the characteristics of the objects” (Drucker 1994: 43).
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> From October 12th – 19th we will be discussing the terms and implications of digital materiality further, particularly as it relates to digital objects. Digital Materiality, as concept and phenomenon, lends itself to a conversation on digital objects in two significant ways. First, much of the recent work on digital objects is informed by materiality either through phenomenological accounts of their “material” grounds or in response to philosophies associated with Materialism.  Second, materiality is frequently leveraged as a means of animating digital objects, ascribing them with agency and vitality as autonomous material “things”. In this case, materiality becomes an essential means through which to articulate digital objects as such. In response to these terms, and building upon our discussion of practice, during our second week we will explore questions such as:
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> > Beyond citing the physically robust supports of computation, how might we account for the materiality of the digital? What makes the digital material?
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>  
> > What are the conceptual and political ramifications of attributing materiality to digital objects?
> 
>  
> > How might we respond to Kirschenbaum and Drucker's assertion that digital materiality is a matter of modeling, appearance, and interpretation? If we are in agreement with these terms, what implications does this have for the terms of materiality? What implications does this have for conceptualizations of 21st century computing?
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> > What insight might contemporary new media artists, artworks and making practices provide into current debates regarding digital materiality?
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> Invited Discussants
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> Yuk Hui is currently postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Digital Cultures in Leuphana University Lüneburg in Germany, where he has conducted research projects on the work of Gilbert Simondon, J-F. Lyotard's Les Immatériaux as well as a project on personal archives; Before joining the CDC, he was postdoctoral researcher at the Institut de Recherche et d'Innovation of Centre Pompidou in Paris. Yuk Hui has led several joint research projects with Tate, Centre Pompidou as well as T-Labs Berlin. He obtained his PhD in Philosophy from Goldsmiths University of London, with a thesis titled On the Existence of Digital Objects.
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> Jan Robert Leegte is a net-based artist and curator researching the phenomenology and conceptual understanding of digital materiality introduced by the arrival of the computer and the internet. He is lecturer at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam and at the ArtEZ Academy in Arnhem and cofounded the Internet Art and Culture research platform browerBased based online and in Amsterdam.
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> Kelani Nichole is an independent digital strategist and curator working at the intersection of Art + Technology. She is the Director of TRANSFER, an exhibition space in Brooklyn, NY that explores the friction of networked contemporary practice and its physical instantiation. Nichole has produced and hosted 25 (and counting) exhibitions supporting artists working with computer-based practices in NYC and Philadelphia, and has exhibited internationally at art fairs in London, Munich, and Istanbul.
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> Nicholas O’Brien is a net-based artist, curator, and writer. His work has appeared and featured in several publications including ARTINFO, Rhizome at the New Museum, Junk Jet, Sculpture Magazine, Dazed Digital, The Creators Project, DIS, Frieze d/e, San Francisco Art Quarterly, the Brooklyn Rail, and the New York Times. Currently he teaches as a visiting artist professor and gallery director for the Department of Digital Art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
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> Daniel Rourke is a writer and artist currently finalizing a PhD in Art (and writing) at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work is concerned with re-articulating the digital in light of current debates surrounding posthumanism, and is predominantly realized through critical fabulations that treat everything as a science fiction. He is visiting lecturer in the History of Art, Design and Film at Kingston University, London, and visiting lecturer in Arts and Digital Media at London South Bank University. 
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> Brian Cantwell Smith (Respondent – University of Toronto, Faculty of Information) – Professor Brian Cantwell Smith's research focuses on the conceptual foundations of computation, information, and cognitive science, and on the use of computational metaphors in such fields as biology, physics, and art. These investigations have increasingly led him into metaphysics -- specifically, to an attempt to lay out a systematic metaphysics that aims (i) to steer a path between realism and constructivism, (ii) to account for the integrated emergence of subject and object, and (iii) to reconcile our causal and normative understandings of the world ("matter" and "mattering"). A first cut at this project was first described in On the Origin of Objects (MIT, 1996). A multi-volume study of the foundations of computing, The Age of Significance, is being simultaneously published by MIT Press and serially, on the web, over a period of five or six years (at www.ageofsignificance.org).
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> Phil Thompson (born 1998, Manchester) is an artist who lives and works in London. His work engages with the role that digital reproduction has on original artifacts, as well as questioning the materiality of digital files themselves. He has exhibited internationally and is currently represented by Xpo Gallery in Paris.
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> REFERENCES OF POTENTIAL INTEREST
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> Blanchette, J.F. (2011) “A Material History of Bits.” Journal of the American Socity for Information Science and Technology, 62(6):1042-1057
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> Brown, B. (2010) “Matter,” in Critical Terms for Media Studies. Ed. Mitchell. W.J.T & Hansen, B.N. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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> Chun, W. (2008) “The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future Is a Memory.” Critical Inquiry V.35:148-171
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> Drucker, Joanna (2009) SPECLAB: Digital Aesthetics and Projects in Speculative Computing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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> Ekbia, Hamid R. (2009) “Digital Artifacts as Quasi-Objects: Qualification, Mediation, and Materiality,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Vol. 60(12), pp. 2554-2566          
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> Groys, B. (2012) Under Suspicion: A Phenomenology of Media. Trans. Carsten Strathausen. New York: Columbia University Press.
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> Hui, Y. (2012) “What is a Digital Object?” Metaphilosophy. Vol 43, No. 4
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> Kirschenbaum, M. (2010) Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Cambridge: MIT Press
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> Leegte, J. (2010) “Drop Shadow Talk: Observing the Shadow of Shadows.” Public Lecture at the Berlin Technische Kunsthochscule: Hochschule fuer Gestaltung.
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> Leonardi, P. and Barley, S. (2008) “Materiality and Change: Challenges to building better theory about technology and organizing.” Information and Organization, 18:159-176
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> Lillemose, Jacob (2006) “Conceptual Transformations of Art: From Dematerialization of the Object to Immateriality in Networks,” in Curating Immateriality. Ed.
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> Nunes, M. (2011) “Error, Noise, and Potential: The Outside of Purpose,” in Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures. Ed. Mark Nunes. New York: Continuum
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> Parikka, J. (2012) “New Materialism as Media Theory: media Natures and Dirty Matter.” Communication And Critical/Cultural Studies. Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 95-100. Routledge
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> Steyerl, H. (2010) “A Thing Like You and Me.” e-flux. 2010:04 
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> Steyerl, H. (2009) “In Defense of the Poor Image.” e-flux. 2009:11
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> Stevens, Martijn (2012) “Settle for Nothing: Materializing the Digital,” ArtNodes No. 12.
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> Thrift, N. (2006) “Beyond Mediation: Three New Material Registers and their Consequences,” in Materiality. Ed. David Miller. Durham: Duke University Press.
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> _______________________________________________
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> Baruch Gottlieb | digital archive project
> afterglow - transmediale 2014
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