[-empyre-] week two - MATTER

[Nicholas O'Brien]

Thanks for the lovely responses and questions Daniel and Jan! I wanted to
first attend to something that Daniel says:


> I don't experience interruption as the choice I make to drive off the
> road, to knowingly halt the journey.


I think that the journey is not necessarily halted, merely rerouted. I can
see that when I used the word interruption it implied a kind of cessation,
but instead I wish to suggest that the pulling off the road is choosing to
explore other options that the road has to offer. In other words, I don’t
want to break the highway, I just want more off-ramps.

If I were to go off-road, I’d be committing act of violence that I think
Daniel borrows from Nunes. Not only would I inherently undermine the
thoughtfulness of the engineers who designed the road, but I’d also be
risking the safety of my passengers (or myself). But perhaps dropping the
metaphor (as much as I relish playing with it) would allow me to address
Jan Robert’s concern/enquiry about the practical application of turning the
digital into matter through AFK experience. In some ways I think it’s
certainly connected to what Daniel brings up about “things” - that their
existence only becomes manifest when they cease the function. When I’m AFK,
a process of self-reflection and contemplation about the ways in which I
experience the digital come to shape the ways in which that “thing” becomes
matter. It stops becoming interface, data, software, hardware, and
telecommunication infrastructure and starts to take on meaning through
affect. The ways in which I respond to the affect of those “things” is when
I feel as though the digital becomes an object. (This is what I was trying
to say about the digital being “objectified.”)

Occasionally I think literature better explains the process of translating
affect into matter than theorists. I think of the way that Flann O’Brien
described the troubling relationship of a man and his bicycle in *The Third
Policeman*. In his story, one of the constables of the small town of Dalkey
rides his bicycle so much that he is turning into one. Through his riding
he is becoming more and more “part bicycle,” and at the current state he
might be more “part bicycle” than “part policeman.” In other words, his
“thing-ness” is being transformed by the experience and affect of riding
his bike. Though the absurdity of O’Brien’s statement is on the surface
delightful and strange, it does somewhat approach a kind of poetic approach
to (a certain reading of) cybernetics - the more we use our machines the
more we become them.

In this way the matter of a digital object - a kind of manifestation that I
attribute to its affect and experience - can be measured through its use.
However, one cannot evaluate that usage in the midst of applying its
function. Only at the point of reflection - interruption, rupture, breakage
- does the object become material. In that way, the digital becomes matter
(as an object) when we are AFK.

Hopefully that kind of rounds out some of what I was discussing before. I
know I haven’t had a chance to respond to everyone’s thoughtful remarks as
of yet, and I intend to do later in the week!

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 2:09 PM, Jan Robert Leegte <mail at leegte.org> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 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
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> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
>
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>



-- 
Nicholas O'Brien

Visiting Faculty | Gallery Director
Department of Digital Art, Pratt Institute
doubleunderscore.net
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