[-empyre-] week two - MATTER

[Phil Thompson]

Hi all,

I will again echo the thanks to Ashley and also to all the previous
discussants who have made this conversation so interesting.

Nicholas' metaphor as well as the conversation on Heidegger's concept of
the transition from ready-to-hand to present-at-hand through rupture,
brought to mind the networked existence of digital files. In his essay
'From Image to Image File—and Back: Art in the Age of
Digitalization' (http://www.altx.com/remix/Groys.pdf), Groys writes about
how we never experience the original data file, rather we only ever
experience its representation through varying hardware and software, which
in turn has multiple variations of settings. For this reason he states that
all performances of data are original unique events. Therefore if these
glitches or ruptures to data that allow us to perceive its thing-ness can
only be experienced through their representations on the screen, through
the speaker, or through other forms of hardware is it possible to talk
about the materiality of data without having to account for the entire
network?

If not, then Nicholas' wonderful example from Flann O'Brien brings to mind
Michel Serres' concept of quasi-objects as a way of accounting for digital
files. Serres defines the quasi-object with reference to the game 'pass the
furet',

'The quasi-object is not an object, but it is one nevertheless, since it is
not a subject, since it is in the world; it is also a quasi-subject, since
it marks or designates a subject who, without it, would not be a subject.
He who is not discovered with the furet in his hand is anonymous, part of a
monotonous chain where he remains indistinguished. He is not an individual;
he is not recognized, discovered, cut; he is of the chain and in the
chain.'

This definition seems to echo the same revealing that happens when
Heidegger's object becomes a thing. This could then potentially open up the
debate as to whether a quasi-object has some form of agency within the
network (quasi-agency?)
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