[-empyre-] Thinking about Flow and Real-Time in Pandemic-Time: Twitter, GarageBand, and Pianos

[Alan Sondheim]

Hi - I think in a way when you write " I think the issue might be agency 
and volition in submitting to the affective flow state or having it 
imposed upon us." - there is no "or" at this point, just as there's for 
too many people I know, no "or" in addiction or breaking addiction. I've 
always felt that addiction is fundamental to the screen culture and 
economy; I remember the "dream screen" metaphor in psychoanalysis. Azure 
knows someone who died while driving and looking at her phone; when we're 
on the narrow sidewalks here in Providence, we have to walk around people 
walking with the same behavior. This is of course known to all of us... 
And I wonder if our dreams and their awake instantiation aren't so 
intermingled now...


On Thu, 20 May 2021, pl at voyd.com wrote:

> Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 22:03:44 -0400
> From: pl at voyd.com
> To: sondheim at panix.com, rebecca.rouse at his.se
> Cc: empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Thinking about Flow and Real-Time in Pandemic-Time:
>     Twitter, GarageBand, and Pianos
> 
> 
> ??? ????:
> "machine-time reminds me of Sartre's analysis in Critique of Dialectical
> Reason about people working 
> on assembly line"
> 
> For sure, and I remember Sarah Cook citing in the discussion for 24/7: A
> Wake-up Call For Our Non-stop World at Somerset house that Facebook had an
> internal document discussing sleep as the platform's chief challenge to
> growth, In a way, this is the end goal of the attention economy - 24/7
> attention, where our time is no longer our own, and all affect is harvested
> as capital by the infoindustrial complex.
> 
> however, Alan also note the other flow facilitated by technology, like when
> we communicate through whatsapp on demand.
> 
> I think the issue might be agency an d volition in submitting to the
> affective flow state or having it imposed upon us.
> 
> On Wed, 19 May 2021 22:00:57 -0400, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com>
> wrote:
> 
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 
> Hi, just wanted to say I quite like this and machine-time reminds me of
> Sartre's analysis in Critique of Dialectical Reason about people working
> on assembly lines - I forget the exact quote, but it's something like
> "It's the machine in them that did the dreaming." That resonates; machine
> time, AI, and the like are internally timeless in a sense, even with the
> calculations measured, and program breakdowns, ransoms which suspend
> program time, or one program time for another, and so forth. So when you
> write about
> 
> " collaborating with our six year old son to make and edit songs
> in GarageBand. We lose track of time. We make our own fun. That flow is
> between us, "
> 
> I think of the flow among bodies and all the "messiness" of human life,
> and that's a kind of epiphany in a sense -
> 
> Best Alan
> 
> On Wed, 19 May 2021, Rebecca Rouse wrote:
> 
> > Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 20:41:12 +0000
> > From: Rebecca Rouse
> > To: "empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au"
> > Subject: [-empyre-] Thinking about Flow and Real-Time in Pandemic-Time:
> > Twitter, GarageBand, and Pianos
> >
> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
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