[-empyre-] digital process

[Dani Robison]

Thanks for the opportunity to participate in this dialogue.

If our main interest is to address the way digital processes shape our
experience I think it is most important to focus on the actual lived
experience of interaction with the digital.  What is the difference between
a digital watch and a traditional/analog watch?  To the person curious
about whether they are late for dinner there is no difference.  Each watch
counts seconds and relays the same message: 'you are late for dinner.'
 Only the watchmaker really cares about the mechanisms that make
second-counting possible.  Since the complex, underlying digital process is
not experienced I believe it is not meaningful, nor does it offer any new
criteria for aesthetic judgement.
What is specifically significant about a watch is mainly its function as a
status marker and as an heirloom.  In this example, perhaps the simple
existence of a digital version, which is regarded as aesthetically 'tacky,'
increases the value of the analog version, which is then regarded as
'classy.'  This differentiation arises from the digital process, but is
more important to take into account than the softly whirring minutiae
because it has a greater influence over human thought, feeling, and
behavior.
Without worrying too much about crafting a smooth transition I want to jump
right into responding to the bit about unpacking our virtual visual
environment (I'm going to limit my approach to experiences with the
internet.)  I don't think that the digital processes that have been
addressed previously in this discussion offer any sort of relevant critical
model for this work.  I think formalist aesthetics come the closest to
providing an effective model for understanding and critiquing the digital
environments we deal with.  What shape, scale, color, material are we
looking at? If we take a common website like youtube for instance and only
look at its shape we notice it is that of a rectangle which unfolds
vertically.  Hopefully we then realize that this is the abysmal norm for
all websites and that there is no good reason a website couldn't unfold in
other ways or have a shape which defies that of the monitor.  (Although the
digital process of 'scrolling' is at work here i believe it is secondary to
the felt motion of a web page moving up and down beneath one's fingertips.
Unfortunately our range of motion in the digital realm is generally limited
to the 'scroll', the 'click' and the 'zoom'.)  At any rate, I think a
formalist approach allows one to begin to understand how the internet
presents us with severely visually homogenized and unimaginative
environments.  It also allows one to begin to understand ways in which the
norm could be expanded, argued with or at least commented on.
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