From Charles.Baldwin@MAIL.WVU.EDU Fri May 19 15:38:56 2006 Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 15:37:22 -0400 From: Charles Baldwin Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA Subject: terms of "Philosophy" Reading through this again, I began to wonder: why "philosophy"? ("How to begin philosophy, how to begin the process of philosophizing, an activity, a form of labor, the philosopher and the production.") So much is about the collapse and failure and brokenness of philosophy. Why bear with this word? The writing labors under this word, bears up under the question it begins with. There's an attempt here to mathematize everything but also, in the same sentence - which is to say, virtually every sentence - to deny that this is possible. What is a "bridge"? The term is only used once but it sticks with me. I want to say bridges are like ripples or folds. Things that are bridges: interfaces, protocols, but also * I take it * representation. Why are there bridges? It seems that this is one of the things we know and can say: things ripple and double. They bridge (themselves). (I think of Benjamin's term "deepening.") But philosophy is not the same things as a bridge. Philosophy seems to want to put the bridges to work, to capitalize on them. In doing so, however, in its practice, it only allegorizes the flow and the partiality (or scarification?) that bridges. Bridges are intensities, whirlpools, strange attractors. They are always collapsing. I think of a Wheatstone bridge or an acoustic guitar bridge. Final term to think about now: Emblem, Emblematic. I think of this in relation to my own working through metaphor qua codework or in terms of Benjamin on allegory's tendency towards the "thing" (the corpse, the souvenir). Emblem is symbolization, and then playing out of the symbol that makes for the time of the "I." It speaks for us. Emblem, in tradition, equaled "speaking picture." So why emblem rather than symbol, or something similar? Clearly, it's here where we're dealing with something like the Lacanian symbolic. Why emblem and not mirror, for that matter? These alternatives - in contrast to emblem - suggest stoppage, termination, "I read." Emblem suggests paradoxical transfer, poetic utterance, "I cannot read, I speak." Emblem, in tradition, equaled "speaking picture." I think of another strata of this text: decision. With the symbolic, decision is already made, law is laid down. With the emblem, even if we grant a kind of stasis of decision, there is the presence of ot hers, their voices muttering. Emblem is granular, material, poetic. (Even if we grant this to the mirror, the tain is always hidden, it must be assumed, presupposed, metaphorized.) From sondheim@panix.com Fri May 19 21:43:34 2006 Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 21:43:34 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" Subject: Re: terms of "Philosophy" I'm fuzzy at the moment but want to make an attempt at a reply - On Fri, 19 May 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > Reading through this again, I began to wonder: why "philosophy"? ("How > to begin philosophy, how to begin the process of philosophizing, an > activity, a form of labor, the philosopher and the production.") So much > is about the collapse and failure and brokenness of philosophy. Why bear > with this word? The writing labors under this word, bears up under the > question it begins with. There's an attempt here to mathematize > everything but also, in the same sentence - which is to say, virtually > every sentence - to deny that this is possible. I think of philosophy in two ways - first, in terms of the arena where discussion are occurring considering these kinds of quetions; but also in terms of an impulse I have, which is to come to grips with what I think of as reified or inauthentic terms under the Emblematic. If the character- istics of mind and matter are suitably farmed-out, the residue, remainder, is what characterizes philosophy. > > What is a "bridge"? The term is only used once but it sticks with me. I > want to say bridges are like ripples or folds. Things that are bridges: > interfaces, protocols, but also * I take it * representation. Why are > there bridges? It seems that this is one of the things we know and can > say: things ripple and double. They bridge (themselves). (I think of > Benjamin's term "deepening.") But philosophy is not the same things as a > bridge. Philosophy seems to want to put the bridges to work, to > capitalize on them. In doing so, however, in its practice, it only > allegorizes the flow and the partiality (or scarification?) that > bridges. > Re: Above - I'm not sure how this relates to my use in relation to inter- face and protocol. I was using bridge in the sense of mapping; a bridge over water retains similar ontologies/epistemologies on both sides and for that matter on the road surface, but an interface - say a CRT - that loops through an operator through a keyboard back into the CRT etc. etc. - this is more or less a mapping across ontologies/epistemologies; the thingness of electron-flow is different fundamentally from the thingness of the contents of the screen. In any case, this is how I was using it; your description on the other hand reminds me Deleuze's pli which carries a great deal of weight. I think I may be being naive here, playing a "trick" as if "bridge" could be used in a non-controversial manner. > Bridges are intensities, whirlpools, strange attractors. They are always > collapsing. I think of a Wheatstone bridge or an acoustic guitar bridge. These are odd examples, since both are somewhat fixed structures; the intensification (current, vibration) carries throughout them ("throughout" is awkward; I don't know of a more accurate preposition). I also don't know why bridges are necessarily collapsing; certainly ideological ones function that way, but not necessarily straightforward (if such there be) mappings. > > Final term to think about now: Emblem, Emblematic. I think of this in > relation to my own working through metaphor qua codework or in terms of > Benjamin on allegory's tendency towards the "thing" (the corpse, the > souvenir). Emblem is symbolization, and then playing out of the symbol > that makes for the time of the "I." It speaks for us. Emblem, in > tradition, equaled "speaking picture." So why emblem rather than symbol, > or something similar? Clearly, it's here where we're dealing with > something like the Lacanian symbolic. Why emblem and not mirror, for > that matter? These alternatives - in contrast to emblem - suggest > stoppage, termination, "I read." Emblem suggests paradoxical transfer, > poetic utterance, "I cannot read, I speak." Emblem, in tradition, > equaled "speaking picture." I think of another strata of this text: > decision. With the symbolic, decision is already made, law is laid down. > With the emblem, even if we grant a kind of stasis of decision, there is > the presence of ot hers, their voices muttering. Emblem is granular, > material, poetic. (Even if we grant this to the mirror, the tain is > always hidden, it must be assumed, presupposed, metaphorized.) > I think of Emblem in terms of books of Emblems, in part allegorical, in part gestural in relation to the world. It's not mirror; the point for me is that the Emblematic mirrors nothing; the emblematic appears to. It's the distinction which in a way drives the essay. I think the Emblematic also implies the consensual; it's a reification that usually functions ideologically; for me there is the conjuring of an Absolute. And this I find not only problematic but off-base. Perhaps in this sense I'm also thinking of Wittgenstein who always seems to be cleaning house. > - Alan, for some reason really jetlagged today - From Charles.Baldwin@MAIL.WVU.EDU Fri May 19 22:37:27 2006 Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 22:36:02 -0400 From: Charles Baldwin Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA Subject: Re: terms of "Philosophy" re bridge: I understand better now and it's helpful. Thanks. re emblem: Well, I can only agree. Emblem books - exactly the reference. Consensual - yes in the voice of others, as I noted. Not a mirror (or a symbol) - yes, this was the point for me too, so definitely. >>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 05/19/06 9:43 PM >>> I'm fuzzy at the moment but want to make an attempt at a reply - On Fri, 19 May 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > Reading through this again, I began to wonder: why "philosophy"? ("How > to begin philosophy, how to begin the process of philosophizing, an > activity, a form of labor, the philosopher and the production.") So much > is about the collapse and failure and brokenness of philosophy. Why bear > with this word? The writing labors under this word, bears up under the > question it begins with. There's an attempt here to mathematize > everything but also, in the same sentence - which is to say, virtually > every sentence - to deny that this is possible. I think of philosophy in two ways - first, in terms of the arena where discussion are occurring considering these kinds of quetions; but also in terms of an impulse I have, which is to come to grips with what I think of as reified or inauthentic terms under the Emblematic. If the character- istics of mind and matter are suitably farmed-out, the residue, remainder, is what characterizes philosophy. > > What is a "bridge"? The term is only used once but it sticks with me. I > want to say bridges are like ripples or folds. Things that are bridges: > interfaces, protocols, but also * I take it * representation. Why are > there bridges? It seems that this is one of the things we know and can > say: things ripple and double. They bridge (themselves). (I think of > Benjamin's term "deepening.") But philosophy is not the same things as a > bridge. Philosophy seems to want to put the bridges to work, to > capitalize on them. In doing so, however, in its practice, it only > allegorizes the flow and the partiality (or scarification?) that > bridges. > Re: Above - I'm not sure how this relates to my use in relation to inter- face and protocol. I was using bridge in the sense of mapping; a bridge over water retains similar ontologies/epistemologies on both sides and for that matter on the road surface, but an interface - say a CRT - that loops through an operator through a keyboard back into the CRT etc. etc. - this is more or less a mapping across ontologies/epistemologies; the thingness of electron-flow is different fundamentally from the thingness of the contents of the screen. In any case, this is how I was using it; your description on the other hand reminds me Deleuze's pli which carries a great deal of weight. I think I may be being naive here, playing a "trick" as if "bridge" could be used in a non-controversial manner. > Bridges are intensities, whirlpools, strange attractors. They are always > collapsing. I think of a Wheatstone bridge or an acoustic guitar bridge. These are odd examples, since both are somewhat fixed structures; the intensification (current, vibration) carries throughout them ("throughout" is awkward; I don't know of a more accurate preposition). I also don't know why bridges are necessarily collapsing; certainly ideological ones function that way, but not necessarily straightforward (if such there be) mappings. > > Final term to think about now: Emblem, Emblematic. I think of this in > relation to my own working through metaphor qua codework or in terms of > Benjamin on allegory's tendency towards the "thing" (the corpse, the > souvenir). Emblem is symbolization, and then playing out of the symbol > that makes for the time of the "I." It speaks for us. Emblem, in > tradition, equaled "speaking picture." So why emblem rather than symbol, > or something similar? Clearly, it's here where we're dealing with > something like the Lacanian symbolic. Why emblem and not mirror, for > that matter? These alternatives - in contrast to emblem - suggest > stoppage, termination, "I read." Emblem suggests paradoxical transfer, > poetic utterance, "I cannot read, I speak." Emblem, in tradition, > equaled "speaking picture." I think of another strata of this text: > decision. With the symbolic, decision is already made, law is laid down. > With the emblem, even if we grant a kind of stasis of decision, there is > the presence of ot hers, their voices muttering. Emblem is granular, > material, poetic. (Even if we grant this to the mirror, the tain is > always hidden, it must be assumed, presupposed, metaphorized.) > I think of Emblem in terms of books of Emblems, in part allegorical, in part gestural in relation to the world. It's not mirror; the point for me is that the Emblematic mirrors nothing; the emblematic appears to. It's the distinction which in a way drives the essay. I think the Emblematic also implies the consensual; it's a reification that usually functions ideologically; for me there is the conjuring of an Absolute. And this I find not only problematic but off-base. Perhaps in this sense I'm also thinking of Wittgenstein who always seems to be cleaning house. > - Alan, for some reason really jetlagged today - From Charles.Baldwin@MAIL.WVU.EDU Sun Jun 18 12:32:11 2006 Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 12:31:22 -0400 From: Charles Baldwin Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA Subject: Re: turing being discrete Sorry for the delay in responding - got caught up w/ other stuff. Yes, no machine is discrete, and this non-discreteness is not minor or secondary but necessary, and bears on the problematic of computers and computation. I want to also see it as part of the problematic of codework, i.e. similar to what I see in Claude Shannon, I find here a writing that subverts the conceptual discourse that bears its name (Turing). I want to see several things at once here: 1) A discourse on machinery that defines computers as formal symbol processors. 2) A hole in this discourse that is the symbol of an exteriority of continuous and constant motion. This is a smooth and idealized outside, exactly corresponding to the clean and exact addresing and performativity of the machine. 3) The discourse on machinery is within the discussion of the imitation game as a basis for AI. I would say that the mimetics involved come out of the symbolic situation in 1 & 2 above. Moreover, the possibility of universal machines is the background against which we are able to form this discourse on the (im)possibility of discrete machines. Impossible discrete machine means possible universal machines. (The "computational universe," as Hayles calls it.) 4) In all this is a problematic of discrete symbols or codes, one that assumes a clean break, where making discrete is emptying out. The famous gender problematic of the imitation game, i.e. the male/female game it's built on and that so obsesses critical theorists and is central to the "posthuman," plays out in this symbolic addressing, this placement and subjectivation and engendering in the symbolic. 5) #1-4 describes a production of discourse, a symbolic economy. Where is the perverse or desiring machine? This is equally the problem of locating the implications for codework. First I note the metaleptic use of the universal machine, backprojected to establish the discrete machine (and then reinforcing its discreteness and functioning). All this in the service of the production of concepts, in the spinning out of a discourse on machinery, a discourse we inherit as "the computer." (This is also why this must be dealt with.) Second, what interests me here is the insistence on a fully formed subject - both a "site"/"place" of computation or as human operator. For the latter, please remember that the passage I'm refering to comes right after Turing distinguishes parts of a digital computer as store, executive unit, and control - implemented as the so-called von Neumann architecture of memory, processor, and I/O. (Yes, I know that von Neumann describes this in 1945 and the essay by Turing is from 1950; Zuse's patent application of 1936 also mentions the concept.) And remember that the 1936 Computable Numbers predicates the computability of numbers on their availability to the "glance" of the computer, i.e. discrete symbols are a function of focused attention. So, there is a kind of spread space out of which one part speaks. Speech is localized here, made discrete. The symbol speaks but only within a topography. Later in the essay, Turing considers formation of discrete symbols in relation to punishment (types of punishment from order words to physical pain). What Turing does not quite say: physicality and pain must be incorporated into every state of the machine and its processing. Speech comes out of a bodily topography, comes out through mappings that are modulated (i.e. in the terms set out elsewhere in HCI: in this case modulated into voice/text streams). The number strings and sample dialogs in Turing's writings are this: not discrete symbols but re-mappings of absence. This is (barely) there in Turing's essay but I say it must be there. What Turing invents and what we inherit can only be invented on the poetics of this spread. And this is why it is within the problematic of codework. (I think there's more here if I look at Turing's less-studied work on morphogenesis and re-consider his body-gender-sex complications.) Not sure if this goes anywhere. Thanks. Sandy "Like the wolf pack, although let us hope to a lesser extent, the State is stupider than most of its components." Wiener >>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/15/06 8:15 PM >>> Can you explain further? I'm not sure what you mean; I don't see how desiring-machine for example appears from this. I'm not sure - you know more about this than I do - that the Turing test bears relation to Turing machines; I don't think he thought of intelligence in that fashion (which Minsky might have, not sure). I could see a problematic of computers develop out of this; no machine whatsoever, no real machine, is 'absolutely' discrete. What do you mean by 'intrusion' here? - Alan, thanks On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > True, but what interests me is this quote in relation to an > institutional understanding of computers as discrete machines, to the > broader application of Turing's arguments to other classes of machines > (such as us), and to intelligence (this is from the famous imitation > game argument). If this is an intrusion of the universal machine, it is > decidedly not the vision of the universal machine as super-sized > discrete machine, no this is a perverse, desiring machine. I do think, > yes, that his notion of continuous motion is a kind of imaginary > smoothness, and could probably be tracked elsewhere as well (i.e. as > what we extract a "symbol" from in the _Computable Numbers_ article). > > Sandy > >>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/15/06 1:09 PM >>> > Hmmm... but things don't really move continuously, at least on the > sub-atomic level; quantum mechanics takes care of that. Btw it's > interesting to look at automata theory in this regard - I have a book > covering it - as well as another which mentions an 'infinite abacus' > - Alan > > > On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > >> Turing: "The digital computer may be classified amongst the > 'discrete >> state machines.' These are the machines which move by sudden jumps > or >> clicks from one quite definite state to another. These states are >> sufficiently different for the possibility of confusion between them > to >> be ignored. Strictly speaking there are no such machines. Everything >> really moves continuously. But there are many kinds of machine which > can >> profitably be *thought of* as discrete state machines." >> >> > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. > see > http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - > general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org > Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" From sondheim@panix.com Sun Jun 18 16:00:10 2006 Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:00:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" Subject: Re: turing being discrete I'm following, but not entirely; I'm not sure what is meant by 'universal machine' re: the following: " Impossible discrete machine means possible universal machines." Why? If it is a _universal_ machine, what character- izes it as a machine at all? If a discrete machine is impossible, the only universal machine would be non-discrete, i.e. analogic, and I'm not sure where this goes; but then I'm wary of 'universal' in any case. It's difficult for me to unpack what you write here, so I may well be missing the point. This is the problem of 3 for me; I understand discrete in relation to universal as a backdrop, but I'm not sure why an impossible discrete machine (which is impossible except in a formal mathematical sense) would imply a universal machine, unless you have an ontological shift - i.e. concrete discrete machine (i.e. 'as-if' discrete) and theoretical (ideal) universal machine; if there is such a shift, I'm not sure how the impli- cation works. Discrete as emptying out makes total sense; there's nothing but wasteland and not even that between states. Which relates it to quantum mechanics and for me brings up Schrodinger again. I'm curious about 'fully formed subject' - I'm not sure what that is, since sickness, etc. make this notion problematic; from sickness comes 'healths,' not 'health,' and thereby lie readings. I'm curious how punishment fits in here; I haven't read (at least don't recall reading) the Turing essay. - On another related subject, just curious of your (and others') views: I tend to go along with Penrose that memory etc. is quantum at its basis. Recently I've had an MRI and an MRA, both using machines with enormous magnets of course (aligning the atoms in the brain etc.). If memory were quantum mechanical, why wouldn't this alignment interfere with it? Any suggestions; I'm on rough ground here. - Alan On Sun, 18 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > Sorry for the delay in responding - got caught up w/ other stuff. > > Yes, no machine is discrete, and this non-discreteness is not minor or > secondary but necessary, and bears on the problematic of computers and > computation. I want to also see it as part of the problematic of > codework, i.e. similar to what I see in Claude Shannon, I find here a > writing that subverts the conceptual discourse that bears its name > (Turing). > > I want to see several things at once here: > > 1) A discourse on machinery that defines computers as formal symbol > processors. > > 2) A hole in this discourse that is the symbol of an exteriority of > continuous and constant motion. This is a smooth and idealized outside, > exactly corresponding to the clean and exact addresing and > performativity of the machine. > > 3) The discourse on machinery is within the discussion of the imitation > game as a basis for AI. I would say that the mimetics involved come out > of the symbolic situation in 1 & 2 above. Moreover, the possibility of > universal machines is the background against which we are able to form > this discourse on the (im)possibility of discrete machines. Impossible > discrete machine means possible universal machines. (The "computational > universe," as Hayles calls it.) > > 4) In all this is a problematic of discrete symbols or codes, one that > assumes a clean break, where making discrete is emptying out. The famous > gender problematic of the imitation game, i.e. the male/female game it's > built on and that so obsesses critical theorists and is central to the > "posthuman," plays out in this symbolic addressing, this placement and > subjectivation and engendering in the symbolic. > > 5) #1-4 describes a production of discourse, a symbolic economy. Where > is the perverse or desiring machine? This is equally the problem of > locating the implications for codework. First I note the metaleptic use > of the universal machine, backprojected to establish the discrete > machine (and then reinforcing its discreteness and functioning). All > this in the service of the production of concepts, in the spinning out > of a discourse on machinery, a discourse we inherit as "the computer." > (This is also why this must be dealt with.) Second, what interests me > here is the insistence on a fully formed subject - both a "site"/"place" > of computation or as human operator. For the latter, please remember > that the passage I'm refering to comes right after Turing distinguishes > parts of a digital computer as store, executive unit, and control - > implemented as the so-called von Neumann architecture of memory, > processor, and I/O. (Yes, I know that von Neumann describes this in 1945 > and the essay by Turing is from 1950; Zuse's patent application of 1936 > also mentions the concept.) And remember that the 1936 Computable > Numbers predicates the computability of numbers on their availability to > the "glance" of the computer, i.e. discrete symbols are a function of > focused attention. So, there is a kind of spread space out of which one > part speaks. Speech is localized here, made discrete. The symbol speaks > but only within a topography. Later in the essay, Turing considers > formation of discrete symbols in relation to punishment (types of > punishment from order words to physical pain). What Turing does not > quite say: physicality and pain must be incorporated into every state of > the machine and its processing. Speech comes out of a bodily topography, > comes out through mappings that are modulated (i.e. in the terms set out > elsewhere in HCI: in this case modulated into voice/text streams). The > number strings and sample dialogs in Turing's writings are this: not > discrete symbols but re-mappings of absence. > > This is (barely) there in Turing's essay but I say it must be there. > What Turing invents and what we inherit can only be invented on the > poetics of this spread. And this is why it is within the problematic of > codework. (I think there's more here if I look at Turing's less-studied > work on morphogenesis and re-consider his body-gender-sex > complications.) > > Not sure if this goes anywhere. Thanks. > > Sandy > > "Like the wolf pack, although let us hope to a lesser extent, the State > is stupider than most of its components." Wiener > >>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/15/06 8:15 PM >>> > Can you explain further? I'm not sure what you mean; I don't see how > desiring-machine for example appears from this. I'm not sure - you > know > more about this than I do - that the Turing test bears relation to > Turing > machines; I don't think he thought of intelligence in that fashion > (which > Minsky might have, not sure). I could see a problematic of computers > develop out of this; no machine whatsoever, no real machine, is > 'absolutely' discrete. What do you mean by 'intrusion' here? > > - Alan, thanks > > > On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > >> True, but what interests me is this quote in relation to an >> institutional understanding of computers as discrete machines, to > the >> broader application of Turing's arguments to other classes of > machines >> (such as us), and to intelligence (this is from the famous imitation >> game argument). If this is an intrusion of the universal machine, it > is >> decidedly not the vision of the universal machine as super-sized >> discrete machine, no this is a perverse, desiring machine. I do > think, >> yes, that his notion of continuous motion is a kind of imaginary >> smoothness, and could probably be tracked elsewhere as well (i.e. as >> what we extract a "symbol" from in the _Computable Numbers_ > article). >> >> Sandy >> >>>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/15/06 1:09 PM >>> >> Hmmm... but things don't really move continuously, at least on the >> sub-atomic level; quantum mechanics takes care of that. Btw it's >> interesting to look at automata theory in this regard - I have a > book >> covering it - as well as another which mentions an 'infinite abacus' >> - Alan >> >> >> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: >> >>> Turing: "The digital computer may be classified amongst the >> 'discrete >>> state machines.' These are the machines which move by sudden jumps >> or >>> clicks from one quite definite state to another. These states are >>> sufficiently different for the possibility of confusion between > them >> to >>> be ignored. Strictly speaking there are no such machines. > Everything >>> really moves continuously. But there are many kinds of machine > which >> can >>> profitably be *thought of* as discrete state machines." >>> >>> >> >> blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. >> see >> http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - >> general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org >> Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" >> >> > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. > see > http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - > general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org > Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" From sondheim@panix.com Sun Jun 18 20:45:39 2006 Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:45:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" Subject: Re: turing being discrete There are all sorts of questions re: fully-formed, and even what constitutes philosophy or code or language; there are aphasias and mutisms, and I imagine that any organism is always already encoded and encoding, instinct or not - that this is the fundamental char- acteristic of organism, the pliability of codes. This need not imply consciousness or any other state of being of course. To continue, I recognize the meandering, the fully-formed subject may not be capable of conscious computation, or of computation only in part, or even only partially able to operate an abacus, construct one, read the signs. Code inheres within; it's dirty because it's fundamentally analogic within the organism: there are no ledges or discrete states, but only messiness, Kristeva's abject. And I would say this holds for life in general, this messiness, slime all the way back through the stromatolites. Which has political ramifications - re: the review of the two books on global warming I just sent out; perhaps it's our nature to assume the 'clean and proper body' (Kristeva) in relation to code, as if the functionalism of language implies / implicates a cleansed order of the world. This is afield from what you were writing, but it set me adrift - - Alan On Sun, 18 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > Well, the parts your note are my glosses on Turing. Of course, my > glosses are my glosses, and may be wrong or misleading. When you write > "I'm not sure why an impossible discrete machine [...] would imply a > universal machine," I respond: well yes, I agree, that's the point of > #1-4 below. But I may be misunderstanding as well. I think there is an > ontological shift -- if I understand you correctly -- and my question is > how this occurs. I meant "metalepsis" to describe this shift. Again: > "I'm not sure why an impossible discrete machine [...] would imply a > universal machine," and yet it does in Turing. But surely this is not > so. Surely there's no universal machine only as-if / concrete (your > formulation I like very much) discrete machines and imaginary > projections...? I'd say this is what I'm trying to describe - > > "Fully-formed subject": my phrase but what I find in Turing, or at > least a reading of what goes under his name. I don't know what > fully-formed subject is either, but there I'm emphasizing the site/locus > of speech in the machine - as against which, what I called the spread > (which I refered to in terms of punishment/pain but also parcelling out > of parts of the machine but could also be sickness, sure). > > Sandy > >>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/18/06 4:00 PM >>> > I'm following, but not entirely; I'm not sure what is meant by > 'universal > machine' re: the following: " Impossible discrete machine means > possible > universal machines." Why? If it is a _universal_ machine, what > character- > izes it as a machine at all? If a discrete machine is impossible, the > only > universal machine would be non-discrete, i.e. analogic, and I'm not > sure > where this goes; but then I'm wary of 'universal' in any case. It's > difficult for me to unpack what you write here, so I may well be > missing > the point. > > This is the problem of 3 for me; I understand discrete in relation to > universal as a backdrop, but I'm not sure why an impossible discrete > machine (which is impossible except in a formal mathematical sense) > would > imply a universal machine, unless you have an ontological shift - i.e. > concrete discrete machine (i.e. 'as-if' discrete) and theoretical > (ideal) > universal machine; if there is such a shift, I'm not sure how the > impli- > cation works. > > Discrete as emptying out makes total sense; there's nothing but > wasteland > and not even that between states. Which relates it to quantum > mechanics > and for me brings up Schrodinger again. > > I'm curious about 'fully formed subject' - I'm not sure what that is, > since sickness, etc. make this notion problematic; from sickness comes > 'healths,' not 'health,' and thereby lie readings. I'm curious how > punishment fits in here; I haven't read (at least don't recall > reading) > the Turing essay. - > > On another related subject, just curious of your (and others') views: > I > tend to go along with Penrose that memory etc. is quantum at its > basis. > Recently I've had an MRI and an MRA, both using machines with enormous > magnets of course (aligning the atoms in the brain etc.). If memory > were > quantum mechanical, why wouldn't this alignment interfere with it? > > Any suggestions; I'm on rough ground here. > > - Alan > > On Sun, 18 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > >> Sorry for the delay in responding - got caught up w/ other stuff. >> >> Yes, no machine is discrete, and this non-discreteness is not minor > or >> secondary but necessary, and bears on the problematic of computers > and >> computation. I want to also see it as part of the problematic of >> codework, i.e. similar to what I see in Claude Shannon, I find here > a >> writing that subverts the conceptual discourse that bears its name >> (Turing). >> >> I want to see several things at once here: >> >> 1) A discourse on machinery that defines computers as formal symbol >> processors. >> >> 2) A hole in this discourse that is the symbol of an exteriority of >> continuous and constant motion. This is a smooth and idealized > outside, >> exactly corresponding to the clean and exact addresing and >> performativity of the machine. >> >> 3) The discourse on machinery is within the discussion of the > imitation >> game as a basis for AI. I would say that the mimetics involved come > out >> of the symbolic situation in 1 & 2 above. Moreover, the possibility > of >> universal machines is the background against which we are able to > form >> this discourse on the (im)possibility of discrete machines. > Impossible >> discrete machine means possible universal machines. (The > "computational >> universe," as Hayles calls it.) >> >> 4) In all this is a problematic of discrete symbols or codes, one > that >> assumes a clean break, where making discrete is emptying out. The > famous >> gender problematic of the imitation game, i.e. the male/female game > it's >> built on and that so obsesses critical theorists and is central to > the >> "posthuman," plays out in this symbolic addressing, this placement > and >> subjectivation and engendering in the symbolic. >> >> 5) #1-4 describes a production of discourse, a symbolic economy. > Where >> is the perverse or desiring machine? This is equally the problem of >> locating the implications for codework. First I note the metaleptic > use >> of the universal machine, backprojected to establish the discrete >> machine (and then reinforcing its discreteness and functioning). All >> this in the service of the production of concepts, in the spinning > out >> of a discourse on machinery, a discourse we inherit as "the > computer." >> (This is also why this must be dealt with.) Second, what interests > me >> here is the insistence on a fully formed subject - both a > "site"/"place" >> of computation or as human operator. For the latter, please remember >> that the passage I'm refering to comes right after Turing > distinguishes >> parts of a digital computer as store, executive unit, and control - >> implemented as the so-called von Neumann architecture of memory, >> processor, and I/O. (Yes, I know that von Neumann describes this in > 1945 >> and the essay by Turing is from 1950; Zuse's patent application of > 1936 >> also mentions the concept.) And remember that the 1936 Computable >> Numbers predicates the computability of numbers on their availability > to >> the "glance" of the computer, i.e. discrete symbols are a function > of >> focused attention. So, there is a kind of spread space out of which > one >> part speaks. Speech is localized here, made discrete. The symbol > speaks >> but only within a topography. Later in the essay, Turing considers >> formation of discrete symbols in relation to punishment (types of >> punishment from order words to physical pain). What Turing does not >> quite say: physicality and pain must be incorporated into every state > of >> the machine and its processing. Speech comes out of a bodily > topography, >> comes out through mappings that are modulated (i.e. in the terms set > out >> elsewhere in HCI: in this case modulated into voice/text streams). > The >> number strings and sample dialogs in Turing's writings are this: not >> discrete symbols but re-mappings of absence. >> >> This is (barely) there in Turing's essay but I say it must be there. >> What Turing invents and what we inherit can only be invented on the >> poetics of this spread. And this is why it is within the problematic > of >> codework. (I think there's more here if I look at Turing's > less-studied >> work on morphogenesis and re-consider his body-gender-sex >> complications.) >> >> Not sure if this goes anywhere. Thanks. >> >> Sandy >> >> "Like the wolf pack, although let us hope to a lesser extent, the > State >> is stupider than most of its components." Wiener >> >>>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/15/06 8:15 PM >>> >> Can you explain further? I'm not sure what you mean; I don't see how >> desiring-machine for example appears from this. I'm not sure - you >> know >> more about this than I do - that the Turing test bears relation to >> Turing >> machines; I don't think he thought of intelligence in that fashion >> (which >> Minsky might have, not sure). I could see a problematic of computers >> develop out of this; no machine whatsoever, no real machine, is >> 'absolutely' discrete. What do you mean by 'intrusion' here? >> >> - Alan, thanks >> >> >> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: >> >>> True, but what interests me is this quote in relation to an >>> institutional understanding of computers as discrete machines, to >> the >>> broader application of Turing's arguments to other classes of >> machines >>> (such as us), and to intelligence (this is from the famous > imitation >>> game argument). If this is an intrusion of the universal machine, > it >> is >>> decidedly not the vision of the universal machine as super-sized >>> discrete machine, no this is a perverse, desiring machine. I do >> think, >>> yes, that his notion of continuous motion is a kind of imaginary >>> smoothness, and could probably be tracked elsewhere as well (i.e. > as >>> what we extract a "symbol" from in the _Computable Numbers_ >> article). >>> >>> Sandy >>> >>>>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/15/06 1:09 PM >>> >>> Hmmm... but things don't really move continuously, at least on the >>> sub-atomic level; quantum mechanics takes care of that. Btw it's >>> interesting to look at automata theory in this regard - I have a >> book >>> covering it - as well as another which mentions an 'infinite > abacus' >>> - Alan >>> >>> >>> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: >>> >>>> Turing: "The digital computer may be classified amongst the >>> 'discrete >>>> state machines.' These are the machines which move by sudden jumps >>> or >>>> clicks from one quite definite state to another. These states are >>>> sufficiently different for the possibility of confusion between >> them >>> to >>>> be ignored. Strictly speaking there are no such machines. >> Everything >>>> really moves continuously. But there are many kinds of machine >> which >>> can >>>> profitably be *thought of* as discrete state machines." >>>> >>>> >>> >>> blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, > books/etc. >>> see >>> http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - >>> general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org >>> Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" >>> >>> >> >> blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. >> see >> http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - >> general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org >> Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" >> >> > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. > see > http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - > general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org > Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" From Charles.Baldwin@MAIL.WVU.EDU Sun Jun 18 16:34:23 2006 Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:33:17 -0400 From: Charles Baldwin Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA Subject: Re: turing being discrete Well, the parts your note are my glosses on Turing. Of course, my glosses are my glosses, and may be wrong or misleading. When you write "I'm not sure why an impossible discrete machine [...] would imply a universal machine," I respond: well yes, I agree, that's the point of #1-4 below. But I may be misunderstanding as well. I think there is an ontological shift -- if I understand you correctly -- and my question is how this occurs. I meant "metalepsis" to describe this shift. Again: "I'm not sure why an impossible discrete machine [...] would imply a universal machine," and yet it does in Turing. But surely this is not so. Surely there's no universal machine only as-if / concrete (your formulation I like very much) discrete machines and imaginary projections...? I'd say this is what I'm trying to describe - "Fully-formed subject": my phrase but what I find in Turing, or at least a reading of what goes under his name. I don't know what fully-formed subject is either, but there I'm emphasizing the site/locus of speech in the machine - as against which, what I called the spread (which I refered to in terms of punishment/pain but also parcelling out of parts of the machine but could also be sickness, sure). Sandy >>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/18/06 4:00 PM >>> I'm following, but not entirely; I'm not sure what is meant by 'universal machine' re: the following: " Impossible discrete machine means possible universal machines." Why? If it is a _universal_ machine, what character- izes it as a machine at all? If a discrete machine is impossible, the only universal machine would be non-discrete, i.e. analogic, and I'm not sure where this goes; but then I'm wary of 'universal' in any case. It's difficult for me to unpack what you write here, so I may well be missing the point. This is the problem of 3 for me; I understand discrete in relation to universal as a backdrop, but I'm not sure why an impossible discrete machine (which is impossible except in a formal mathematical sense) would imply a universal machine, unless you have an ontological shift - i.e. concrete discrete machine (i.e. 'as-if' discrete) and theoretical (ideal) universal machine; if there is such a shift, I'm not sure how the impli- cation works. Discrete as emptying out makes total sense; there's nothing but wasteland and not even that between states. Which relates it to quantum mechanics and for me brings up Schrodinger again. I'm curious about 'fully formed subject' - I'm not sure what that is, since sickness, etc. make this notion problematic; from sickness comes 'healths,' not 'health,' and thereby lie readings. I'm curious how punishment fits in here; I haven't read (at least don't recall reading) the Turing essay. - On another related subject, just curious of your (and others') views: I tend to go along with Penrose that memory etc. is quantum at its basis. Recently I've had an MRI and an MRA, both using machines with enormous magnets of course (aligning the atoms in the brain etc.). If memory were quantum mechanical, why wouldn't this alignment interfere with it? Any suggestions; I'm on rough ground here. - Alan On Sun, 18 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > Sorry for the delay in responding - got caught up w/ other stuff. > > Yes, no machine is discrete, and this non-discreteness is not minor or > secondary but necessary, and bears on the problematic of computers and > computation. I want to also see it as part of the problematic of > codework, i.e. similar to what I see in Claude Shannon, I find here a > writing that subverts the conceptual discourse that bears its name > (Turing). > > I want to see several things at once here: > > 1) A discourse on machinery that defines computers as formal symbol > processors. > > 2) A hole in this discourse that is the symbol of an exteriority of > continuous and constant motion. This is a smooth and idealized outside, > exactly corresponding to the clean and exact addresing and > performativity of the machine. > > 3) The discourse on machinery is within the discussion of the imitation > game as a basis for AI. I would say that the mimetics involved come out > of the symbolic situation in 1 & 2 above. Moreover, the possibility of > universal machines is the background against which we are able to form > this discourse on the (im)possibility of discrete machines. Impossible > discrete machine means possible universal machines. (The "computational > universe," as Hayles calls it.) > > 4) In all this is a problematic of discrete symbols or codes, one that > assumes a clean break, where making discrete is emptying out. The famous > gender problematic of the imitation game, i.e. the male/female game it's > built on and that so obsesses critical theorists and is central to the > "posthuman," plays out in this symbolic addressing, this placement and > subjectivation and engendering in the symbolic. > > 5) #1-4 describes a production of discourse, a symbolic economy. Where > is the perverse or desiring machine? This is equally the problem of > locating the implications for codework. First I note the metaleptic use > of the universal machine, backprojected to establish the discrete > machine (and then reinforcing its discreteness and functioning). All > this in the service of the production of concepts, in the spinning out > of a discourse on machinery, a discourse we inherit as "the computer." > (This is also why this must be dealt with.) Second, what interests me > here is the insistence on a fully formed subject - both a "site"/"place" > of computation or as human operator. For the latter, please remember > that the passage I'm refering to comes right after Turing distinguishes > parts of a digital computer as store, executive unit, and control - > implemented as the so-called von Neumann architecture of memory, > processor, and I/O. (Yes, I know that von Neumann describes this in 1945 > and the essay by Turing is from 1950; Zuse's patent application of 1936 > also mentions the concept.) And remember that the 1936 Computable > Numbers predicates the computability of numbers on their availability to > the "glance" of the computer, i.e. discrete symbols are a function of > focused attention. So, there is a kind of spread space out of which one > part speaks. Speech is localized here, made discrete. The symbol speaks > but only within a topography. Later in the essay, Turing considers > formation of discrete symbols in relation to punishment (types of > punishment from order words to physical pain). What Turing does not > quite say: physicality and pain must be incorporated into every state of > the machine and its processing. Speech comes out of a bodily topography, > comes out through mappings that are modulated (i.e. in the terms set out > elsewhere in HCI: in this case modulated into voice/text streams). The > number strings and sample dialogs in Turing's writings are this: not > discrete symbols but re-mappings of absence. > > This is (barely) there in Turing's essay but I say it must be there. > What Turing invents and what we inherit can only be invented on the > poetics of this spread. And this is why it is within the problematic of > codework. (I think there's more here if I look at Turing's less-studied > work on morphogenesis and re-consider his body-gender-sex > complications.) > > Not sure if this goes anywhere. Thanks. > > Sandy > > "Like the wolf pack, although let us hope to a lesser extent, the State > is stupider than most of its components." Wiener > >>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/15/06 8:15 PM >>> > Can you explain further? I'm not sure what you mean; I don't see how > desiring-machine for example appears from this. I'm not sure - you > know > more about this than I do - that the Turing test bears relation to > Turing > machines; I don't think he thought of intelligence in that fashion > (which > Minsky might have, not sure). I could see a problematic of computers > develop out of this; no machine whatsoever, no real machine, is > 'absolutely' discrete. What do you mean by 'intrusion' here? > > - Alan, thanks > > > On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > >> True, but what interests me is this quote in relation to an >> institutional understanding of computers as discrete machines, to > the >> broader application of Turing's arguments to other classes of > machines >> (such as us), and to intelligence (this is from the famous imitation >> game argument). If this is an intrusion of the universal machine, it > is >> decidedly not the vision of the universal machine as super-sized >> discrete machine, no this is a perverse, desiring machine. I do > think, >> yes, that his notion of continuous motion is a kind of imaginary >> smoothness, and could probably be tracked elsewhere as well (i.e. as >> what we extract a "symbol" from in the _Computable Numbers_ > article). >> >> Sandy >> >>>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/15/06 1:09 PM >>> >> Hmmm... but things don't really move continuously, at least on the >> sub-atomic level; quantum mechanics takes care of that. Btw it's >> interesting to look at automata theory in this regard - I have a > book >> covering it - as well as another which mentions an 'infinite abacus' >> - Alan >> >> >> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: >> >>> Turing: "The digital computer may be classified amongst the >> 'discrete >>> state machines.' These are the machines which move by sudden jumps >> or >>> clicks from one quite definite state to another. These states are >>> sufficiently different for the possibility of confusion between > them >> to >>> be ignored. Strictly speaking there are no such machines. > Everything >>> really moves continuously. But there are many kinds of machine > which >> can >>> profitably be *thought of* as discrete state machines." >>> >>> >> >> blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. >> see >> http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - >> general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org >> Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" >> >> > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. > see > http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - > general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org > Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" From Charles.Baldwin@MAIL.WVU.EDU Sun Jun 18 21:16:38 2006 Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:15:33 -0400 From: Charles Baldwin Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA Subject: Re: turing being discrete Thanks for this. Reading your reviews on global warming, I thought of Chapman's _Meatphysics_ a book on our destruction of the earth and many other things. Amazing stuff and I recommend it to all. Sandy >>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/18/06 8:45 PM >>> There are all sorts of questions re: fully-formed, and even what constitutes philosophy or code or language; there are aphasias and mutisms, and I imagine that any organism is always already encoded and encoding, instinct or not - that this is the fundamental char- acteristic of organism, the pliability of codes. This need not imply consciousness or any other state of being of course. To continue, I recognize the meandering, the fully-formed subject may not be capable of conscious computation, or of computation only in part, or even only partially able to operate an abacus, construct one, read the signs. Code inheres within; it's dirty because it's fundamentally analogic within the organism: there are no ledges or discrete states, but only messiness, Kristeva's abject. And I would say this holds for life in general, this messiness, slime all the way back through the stromatolites. Which has political ramifications - re: the review of the two books on global warming I just sent out; perhaps it's our nature to assume the 'clean and proper body' (Kristeva) in relation to code, as if the functionalism of language implies / implicates a cleansed order of the world. This is afield from what you were writing, but it set me adrift - - Alan On Sun, 18 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > Well, the parts your note are my glosses on Turing. Of course, my > glosses are my glosses, and may be wrong or misleading. When you write > "I'm not sure why an impossible discrete machine [...] would imply a > universal machine," I respond: well yes, I agree, that's the point of > #1-4 below. But I may be misunderstanding as well. I think there is an > ontological shift -- if I understand you correctly -- and my question is > how this occurs. I meant "metalepsis" to describe this shift. Again: > "I'm not sure why an impossible discrete machine [...] would imply a > universal machine," and yet it does in Turing. But surely this is not > so. Surely there's no universal machine only as-if / concrete (your > formulation I like very much) discrete machines and imaginary > projections...? I'd say this is what I'm trying to describe - > > "Fully-formed subject": my phrase but what I find in Turing, or at > least a reading of what goes under his name. I don't know what > fully-formed subject is either, but there I'm emphasizing the site/locus > of speech in the machine - as against which, what I called the spread > (which I refered to in terms of punishment/pain but also parcelling out > of parts of the machine but could also be sickness, sure). > > Sandy > >>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/18/06 4:00 PM >>> > I'm following, but not entirely; I'm not sure what is meant by > 'universal > machine' re: the following: " Impossible discrete machine means > possible > universal machines." Why? If it is a _universal_ machine, what > character- > izes it as a machine at all? If a discrete machine is impossible, the > only > universal machine would be non-discrete, i.e. analogic, and I'm not > sure > where this goes; but then I'm wary of 'universal' in any case. It's > difficult for me to unpack what you write here, so I may well be > missing > the point. > > This is the problem of 3 for me; I understand discrete in relation to > universal as a backdrop, but I'm not sure why an impossible discrete > machine (which is impossible except in a formal mathematical sense) > would > imply a universal machine, unless you have an ontological shift - i.e. > concrete discrete machine (i.e. 'as-if' discrete) and theoretical > (ideal) > universal machine; if there is such a shift, I'm not sure how the > impli- > cation works. > > Discrete as emptying out makes total sense; there's nothing but > wasteland > and not even that between states. Which relates it to quantum > mechanics > and for me brings up Schrodinger again. > > I'm curious about 'fully formed subject' - I'm not sure what that is, > since sickness, etc. make this notion problematic; from sickness comes > 'healths,' not 'health,' and thereby lie readings. I'm curious how > punishment fits in here; I haven't read (at least don't recall > reading) > the Turing essay. - > > On another related subject, just curious of your (and others') views: > I > tend to go along with Penrose that memory etc. is quantum at its > basis. > Recently I've had an MRI and an MRA, both using machines with enormous > magnets of course (aligning the atoms in the brain etc.). If memory > were > quantum mechanical, why wouldn't this alignment interfere with it? > > Any suggestions; I'm on rough ground here. > > - Alan > > On Sun, 18 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > >> Sorry for the delay in responding - got caught up w/ other stuff. >> >> Yes, no machine is discrete, and this non-discreteness is not minor > or >> secondary but necessary, and bears on the problematic of computers > and >> computation. I want to also see it as part of the problematic of >> codework, i.e. similar to what I see in Claude Shannon, I find here > a >> writing that subverts the conceptual discourse that bears its name >> (Turing). >> >> I want to see several things at once here: >> >> 1) A discourse on machinery that defines computers as formal symbol >> processors. >> >> 2) A hole in this discourse that is the symbol of an exteriority of >> continuous and constant motion. This is a smooth and idealized > outside, >> exactly corresponding to the clean and exact addresing and >> performativity of the machine. >> >> 3) The discourse on machinery is within the discussion of the > imitation >> game as a basis for AI. I would say that the mimetics involved come > out >> of the symbolic situation in 1 & 2 above. Moreover, the possibility > of >> universal machines is the background against which we are able to > form >> this discourse on the (im)possibility of discrete machines. > Impossible >> discrete machine means possible universal machines. (The > "computational >> universe," as Hayles calls it.) >> >> 4) In all this is a problematic of discrete symbols or codes, one > that >> assumes a clean break, where making discrete is emptying out. The > famous >> gender problematic of the imitation game, i.e. the male/female game > it's >> built on and that so obsesses critical theorists and is central to > the >> "posthuman," plays out in this symbolic addressing, this placement > and >> subjectivation and engendering in the symbolic. >> >> 5) #1-4 describes a production of discourse, a symbolic economy. > Where >> is the perverse or desiring machine? This is equally the problem of >> locating the implications for codework. First I note the metaleptic > use >> of the universal machine, backprojected to establish the discrete >> machine (and then reinforcing its discreteness and functioning). All >> this in the service of the production of concepts, in the spinning > out >> of a discourse on machinery, a discourse we inherit as "the > computer." >> (This is also why this must be dealt with.) Second, what interests > me >> here is the insistence on a fully formed subject - both a > "site"/"place" >> of computation or as human operator. For the latter, please remember >> that the passage I'm refering to comes right after Turing > distinguishes >> parts of a digital computer as store, executive unit, and control - >> implemented as the so-called von Neumann architecture of memory, >> processor, and I/O. (Yes, I know that von Neumann describes this in > 1945 >> and the essay by Turing is from 1950; Zuse's patent application of > 1936 >> also mentions the concept.) And remember that the 1936 Computable >> Numbers predicates the computability of numbers on their availability > to >> the "glance" of the computer, i.e. discrete symbols are a function > of >> focused attention. So, there is a kind of spread space out of which > one >> part speaks. Speech is localized here, made discrete. The symbol > speaks >> but only within a topography. Later in the essay, Turing considers >> formation of discrete symbols in relation to punishment (types of >> punishment from order words to physical pain). What Turing does not >> quite say: physicality and pain must be incorporated into every state > of >> the machine and its processing. Speech comes out of a bodily > topography, >> comes out through mappings that are modulated (i.e. in the terms set > out >> elsewhere in HCI: in this case modulated into voice/text streams). > The >> number strings and sample dialogs in Turing's writings are this: not >> discrete symbols but re-mappings of absence. >> >> This is (barely) there in Turing's essay but I say it must be there. >> What Turing invents and what we inherit can only be invented on the >> poetics of this spread. And this is why it is within the problematic > of >> codework. (I think there's more here if I look at Turing's > less-studied >> work on morphogenesis and re-consider his body-gender-sex >> complications.) >> >> Not sure if this goes anywhere. Thanks. >> >> Sandy >> >> "Like the wolf pack, although let us hope to a lesser extent, the > State >> is stupider than most of its components." Wiener >> >>>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/15/06 8:15 PM >>> >> Can you explain further? I'm not sure what you mean; I don't see how >> desiring-machine for example appears from this. I'm not sure - you >> know >> more about this than I do - that the Turing test bears relation to >> Turing >> machines; I don't think he thought of intelligence in that fashion >> (which >> Minsky might have, not sure). I could see a problematic of computers >> develop out of this; no machine whatsoever, no real machine, is >> 'absolutely' discrete. What do you mean by 'intrusion' here? >> >> - Alan, thanks >> >> >> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: >> >>> True, but what interests me is this quote in relation to an >>> institutional understanding of computers as discrete machines, to >> the >>> broader application of Turing's arguments to other classes of >> machines >>> (such as us), and to intelligence (this is from the famous > imitation >>> game argument). If this is an intrusion of the universal machine, > it >> is >>> decidedly not the vision of the universal machine as super-sized >>> discrete machine, no this is a perverse, desiring machine. I do >> think, >>> yes, that his notion of continuous motion is a kind of imaginary >>> smoothness, and could probably be tracked elsewhere as well (i.e. > as >>> what we extract a "symbol" from in the _Computable Numbers_ >> article). >>> >>> Sandy >>> >>>>>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 06/15/06 1:09 PM >>> >>> Hmmm... but things don't really move continuously, at least on the >>> sub-atomic level; quantum mechanics takes care of that. Btw it's >>> interesting to look at automata theory in this regard - I have a >> book >>> covering it - as well as another which mentions an 'infinite > abacus' >>> - Alan >>> >>> >>> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: >>> >>>> Turing: "The digital computer may be classified amongst the >>> 'discrete >>>> state machines.' These are the machines which move by sudden jumps >>> or >>>> clicks from one quite definite state to another. These states are >>>> sufficiently different for the possibility of confusion between >> them >>> to >>>> be ignored. Strictly speaking there are no such machines. >> Everything >>>> really moves continuously. But there are many kinds of machine >> which >>> can >>>> profitably be *thought of* as discrete state machines." >>>> >>>> >>> >>> blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, > books/etc. >>> see >>> http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - >>> general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org >>> Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" >>> >>> >> >> blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. >> see >> http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - >> general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org >> Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" >> >> > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. > see > http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - > general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org > Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" From sondheim@panix.com Mon Jun 19 20:38:42 2006 Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:38:42 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: Charles Baldwin Subject: Re: another intrusive question This is so incredibly difficult to answer. I've taught courses in futurology and have been interested in the 'field' since the 1960s, working through everything from delta prediction methods to forecasting. So there's a practical level in relation to a 'nearby' future, one just around the corner, and then there's a postulated level through, say, 3000, which is about as far as I can take it. But there are also of course futures in a philosophical sense, projects of the present, projections from the present, etc., images, imaginaries, and here is where the real line comes to an end, i.e. global extinctions, extinguishings. Future is also the repository of memory, but a kind of J.G. Ballard 'rusted' memory at this stage, a memory with inconceivable imploding, digital artifacts torn at the edges. In none of this am I (or can anyone be) optimistic; the data and scenarios are all overdetermined, damned. When I wrote about the future of the net, it's the 'nearby' net, imminent net, of the next decade or so. Even there it's dystopic; we can just as easily drown in a virtual sea as a real one. How I see the net? As capital percolating through rock strata in a landslide, just about literally. I'm also interested in issues of the future anterior and teleology, which form the basis of hopeless action (here I sound like Karl Krauss). - Alan On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > OK, answer these or not. What does "the future" mean in your work, or to > you? You've written of futures - possible futures, futures for the > culture, for the internet - some dystopic some not. How do these come > out of your understanding of the net? and how out of your understanding > of our relation to the globe/earth? > > Perhaps this is too much, but I'm still curious. > > Sandy > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" From sondheim@panix.com Sat May 13 15:04:00 2006 Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 15:04:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" Subject: Re: re philosophy On Thu, 11 May 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > I'm feebly thinking my way through Alan's recent philosophy text. > > I'm wondering about the continuous unbinding in the first two > paragraphs, which seems to overcome the unbound-bound distinction in the > first two sections and to underlie the other distinctions > (not-acting/acting, not-returning/returning). This seems right to me, > exactly so, but I'm wondering if you can say why boundaries, binding, > and so on, are more crucial here than other "openings," i.e. why not > start from action? or from matter? What makes bounds/binding > appropriate? While I can imagine why, I wondered if Alan or others had > thoughts? > > (for example, I'm led to the "winding-sheet" in the fourth paragraph, > which offers particular bindings; I think also of swaddling cloth.) > I think of binding/unbinding as a process, a culturally motivated (I almost wrote 'determined,' but that doesn't hold) process, a form of delineation which is contradictory; it's the college-freshman adage that the declaration of unbound is already a binding in the form of the declaration. But here I'm emphasizing the world in its double aspects, as content of philosophy, Western philosophy, and as what I used to reference as a 'continuous rewrite,' continuous generation; we are present and presencing in the world, and the rewrite is thus. It's as if Nietzsche's enternal return collapsed to the moment. So the world is evident, and philosophy is an activity, binding and unbinding. Binding is also that which gives meaning, the signifier bound within language, within the structure of language, and thereby granted binding within the material world; this binding occurs only in language, in thought, within the sememe. > Second, paragraph 3 & 4 give special place to mathematics qua mathesis. > Mathematics is one form of categorization, along with which are > mentioned mediation, symbolization, and so on. I'm not sure if I'm right > to put these at the same level? Mathematics is also a special case - I > know from elsewhere that this is a position Alan takes - I see this as > tied to the kind of work (production?) of mathematics. But I'm unclear > on this special case, and also on mathesis. I always thought the latter > refered to learning and epistemology. It's associate with how we know > things. (I also get it confused with methexis.) Thoughts? I may have the wrong word here; by 'mathesis' I mean the doing of mathe- matics vis-a-vis the world, the process involved within the inextricabil- ity of the world vis-a-vis mathematics. 'Mathematics possesses no return; every mathematical statement is foundation; every mathematical statement exists and presences.' - i.e. mathematics is 'flat.' Later: 'There is completeness in mathematics; there is no completeness in mathesis.' The doing is separable from mathematics itself. It's a somewhat platonist position (which I think Godel held): that the ontology of mathematics is a closed ideality. Mathesis on the other hand is 'dirty,' it's heuristics; on the level of fundamental particles, it problematizes physical reality. I think where I'm with Badiou, as far as I understand him: that mathemat- ics _is_ a special case; where I part company, so to speak: that mathema- tics is fundamental ontology; where I rejoin: that in all likelihood, the ontologies of mathematics and physical reality are 'bridged' at a level far below that of sub-atomic particles, i.e. within string theory, etc. I realize I'm way over my head here; my tendency is to eliminate Being in favor of farming-out and the presencing of the world, which is culturally bound and unbound, bindable and unbindable. - Alan > > Sandy > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" From sondheim@panix.com Sat May 13 15:32:49 2006 Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 15:32:49 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: Charles Baldwin Subject: Re: metaphoricity and technotexts This is incredibly helpful and I agree. I wonder at times why figures like Mez and Talan and for that matter John Cayley are almost - are - canonic; I think the reason is the suturing that occurs, and at least with Mez and Talan, the entire corpus is on the level of metaphor; Mez for example fashions her texts (appears to fashion them) much as an old-time crafts- person; they're texts of a certain style. With Talan, the situation is more complex; the work, for me, stylistically is close to hypertext. I wonder about his relationship to academic art history - why that turn. On the other hand, his performances are brilliant, and the content (for me) of the earlier work is fascinating. It may go back to the dirty/clean distinction. I find Rimbaud, Celine of course, Artaud, 'dirty' - incomplete, spilling like the Arcade Project. It's also possibly the phenomenology of Kabbalah, in which the performa- tive and surface levels are intertwined, inseparable. Certainly with Mez and Talan, they're separable. Sorry to go on about this. I think also that it's very clear what Talan and Cayley, for that matter Loss, etc., are doing; the work's defined. It's far less so with jodi, myself, noemata, etc., Florian, NN/antiorp, etc. It's less so with IRC/hackereze, etc. I'm not sure where one piece ends for example and another begins - not only in terms of ostensible content, but also in terms of 'depth.' Hence the arguments about whether my work 'is' poetry, net art, web art or nothing at all; the same certainly would apply to most of the people on wryting. At this point I'm very interested in poetics, as in Blanchot, or the text I just wrote, but not that interested in poetry, in literature - except as entertainment/enjoyment (rereading Nathaniel West, and reading Barnum for example). - - Alan On Thu, 11 May 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > Keep in mind that I'm continuing to mime what I understand her argument > to be, mime and push to its assumptions. > > 1) First Hayles. Her succinct definition of "material metaphor" is a > "traffic between words and physical artifacts." This traffic is a > "transfer of sense." These metaphors appear in "technotexts," defined as > a literary work that "interrogates the inscription technology that > produces it." > > So, how does this interrogation happen? (Actually, a nice term: > interrogation is literary criticism.) A particular figure or set of > figures in Talan or Mez is isolated and unpacked for its connotations. > At this first level, the figure(s) thematizes body, writing, code - of > course, the "best" or choice figure for the critic are those that > condense all of these. In _Lexia to Perplexia_ Hayles notes the various > interactions required of the user; notes the use of a kind of "creole" > of neologism, code, theory; notes the images and myths; and so on. Since > Hayles purports to offers a "media specific analysis (msa)," she is > clear that her goal is not the field of codes revealed through reading > these figures. For her, such a reading of the cultural text has been the > mistaken and print-based purview of literary criticism. She assures us > that she is not reading the cultural meaning but the materiality. How to > make this move? Well, to say that the figure is a "foregrounding" of the > specific materiality of the digital text. This specificity is not itself > part of the coding, it is rather the sheer fact of the trope. The poetic > merging of cultural codes in the trope is a reflex of the underlying > materiality - the trope is a trace that we can read quite smoothly and > regularly. She consistently uses the term "foregrounding," which implies > and echoes a kind of gestalt effect, and builds on - without saying so - > the presumption of "transfer of sense" in the trope, a kind of > phenomenality perceived in reading. This is where I see an aesthetic > ideoloy. > It is an absent sense, an aesthetics of disappearance, in Virilio's > sense - and as he makes clear, such an aesthetics is always about > conservation of structures of power. > > So Hayles argues that the difficulty and illegibility of Talan's work, > above and beyond the reading of the cultural codes involved, is a kind > of signifier of the technotext's materiality. (Hayles: "Illegibility is > not simply a lack of meaning, then, but a signifier of distributed > cognitive processes that construct reading as an active production of a > cybernetic circuit and not merely an internal activity of the human > mind.") (Another question is this positing of difficulty. Would it be a > kind of dilletantism approach to the experimental and avant-garde?) > There is, of course, value in this second level of allegory, but it's > the assured movement to conclusions that troubles me - it's this that > keeps it within an institutional practice of literary criticism. I would > say it's also this that keeps it from truly engaging with literature, > since the critic is not troubled by the illegibility or its projection > into her own domain... There is illegibility but its always legible. > > (I note that Talan himself, in person, is carefully ambivalent about > what he thinks of this. I think he would honestly say that Hayles' > reading elides the issue of subjectivity and poetics that interest him; > but at the same time, Hayles has made him a household name in this > field, so he can't say too much....) > > Alll this, above, is the heuristic function of metaphor that fascinates > media theory - I would say, media theory is nothing else. Yet metaphor > is really a way of destroying the heuristic, destroying the fiction. > Really what is being made legible is the institutional assumption of a > binding between representation and materiality. The aesthetic ideology > testifies to this institution. There's a kind of legal force to this > assumption: it's taken as a law, and enforced as such. I think that's > why there's so much excitement around Hayles' work: it lets literary > critics feel important because they feel they are revealing something - > but what they reveal is the same thing over and over. I think this also > goes to the poverty of Hayles' notion of embodiment (also > institutional). > > Or rather: what is shown is "the normative texture of writing," as you > say. The institution I describe above might be the institutional > symbolics of discourse and technology, something like how discourse says > the machine. > > In all this, metaphor is assumed as not literary but rather explaining > what literature already is doing. The transfer is always there, unless a > more radicalized account of metaphor and rhetoric is adopted, e.g. > Richards in an odd way, where the tenor-vehicle relation amounts to a > self-deepening and projective model of metaphor, rather than a > referential model. As it stands though, every mention of metaphor in > literary criticism - the very word metaphor, in the institution I'm > describing - is a form of policing, a way of maintaining the institution > of reading and commenting. Literary criticism is built on distance from > literature. (Hayles: "The crucial move [in Media Specific Analysis (SB)] > is to reconceptualize materiality as the interplay between a text's > physical characteristics and its signifying strategies. This definition > opens the possibility of considering texts as embodied entities while > still maintaining a central focus on interpretation.") > > Codework - qua literature - is the chance and gamble that everything is > foreground already (still not a good formulation...). What interests me > in Talan are not the metaphors - a focus which turns the text into > ornament - but the disruptive opening. > > 2) Second, Hayles - and, it seems to me most critics following Hayles, > e.g. Rita Raley (whom I do like a lot) - do not deal with Jodi, you, > Florian, neomata, NN, etc. They may mention these references but then > they will actually quote and promote Talan and Mez (nice for Talan and > Mez, of course). So, if they deal with you, it's in order to bring you > into the space where "Media Specific Analyisis" is possible. > > For me, this means starting from a more subversive and troubled writing > and thinking. > > Sandy > > >>>> Alan Sondheim 05/11/06 2:23 AM >>> > > > Regarding this, how does metaphor vis-a-vis Hayles work in Talan or Mez > > for that matter? I see the coding itself in their work as troped, > poeticized, not disruptive, but disruptive only within the normative > texture of writing. Scratch the surface, in other words, and you get > deeper surface (to borrow from Ben Hecht). This is for me opposed to > say > Jodi, my own work, Florian's, noemata's - work with eruptions that > emerge > from different processes, protocols, epistemological domains. > > - Alan > > > On Thu, 11 May 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > >> On this sentence: >> >> "The point is not the meaning of the metaphors but metaphoricity >> itself, understood as the withdrawal of the context producing the >> technotext." >> >> Here I'm summarizing what I understand Hayles to be doing. I'm > stating >> what I take her argument to be, but I'm also forcing it, exposing > the >> assumptions behind it. I see her first step as identifying the use > of >> figurative language in a text. She then shows that thse usages are >> ultimately all metaphors - this move is part of the way rhetoric has >> been understood in the last several centuries, as reducible to one > or >> two master tropes (i.e. the "shipwreck of rhetoric"), and also part > of >> the general agenda to provide a totalizing reading that situates the >> text in a technocultural milieu (Hayles now calles this the "age of >> computation" or something like that). >> >> So, an example of all this - the most famous of her examples - is > her >> reading of Talan's "Lexia to Perplexia" (this is what made Talan > really >> famous). She locates figurative play merging the language and imagery > of >> human subjectivity and computer programming. At the same time, > Hayles >> underlines that we should not take these tropes as literal, they do > not >> mean what they say, but we should take the fact of these tropes, in >> aggregate, as a response to the materiality of the text, specifically > to >> its technological substrate. (Here I think Talan differs: he takes > his >> language, is neologism, as true in a strict sense.) For Hayles, this >> material substrate produces a generalized figurability which plays > out >> in metaphors (she never quite puts it like this...). It would be a >> mistake to think that any given metaphor in the text means anything - > so >> reference or specific intertextual contexts are voided - but the > sheer >> fact of the metaphor becomes proof of the media substrate. Proof as >> trace, proof as withdrawal (or re-trait via Derrida and Heidegger). >> Reading the texts can give no knowledge of this substrate other than > the >> fact of its existance. >> >> As Derrida points out of such readings of metaphor, this is both a >> radical theory and at the same time the metaphyiscal version of >> metaphor. I'd say its also the structure of metaphor necessary for >> something like "media theory." No context presents itself but in > reading >> the technotext we deal with the force of the context. I find all this > a >> tremendousy powerful and tremendously troubling theory. It's > certainly >> enormously popular in my field and among those working in this are. > What >> it takes for granted is that the appearance in metaphor is true - > not >> true as in a name but true as the remainder of some exteriority. >> >> >> My goal, is in part, to push Hayles claims to the point where I can > ask >> why she's making them, what is produced by these claims >> (certain little "results"). >> >> Sandy >> >> > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. > see > http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - > general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org > Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" From sondheim@panix.com Sat May 13 18:02:41 2006 Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 18:02:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" Subject: Re: re philosophy On Sat, 13 May 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > Section 5: "Language is always at a loss." I think of esoteric language > but also of testimony here. This is poetic language, IMO. > > I wonder, at a different level, how readers take this text of Alan's? > Do we feel caught between- a feeling I find myself struggling with - > reading this as performance and reading this as philosophy? Do we want > it to be one or the other (a simplistic question in a way: yes, no)? > I want to quickly reply, for myself, for isn't philosophy a performance? Not only in terms of the playing-out of disciplines, cultural capital, speaking and writing, but also in a more general sense, a making-sense of the world that is always closed (since it, philosophy, as textuality, is already disjunct), and always paradoxically incomplete, since there has never, to my knowledge, been a "complete" philosophy which is satisfactory to everyone. At the ragtag end of things, philosophy seems to be a matter of happenstance and belief; one is more likely to follow Wittgenstein than Dogen in England. I think it is all performance, all circumscription; the other side of the paradox is that one can make "sense" out of the world at all, however that might be taken. - Alan From Charles.Baldwin@MAIL.WVU.EDU Sat May 13 17:50:56 2006 Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 17:50:15 -0400 From: Charles Baldwin Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA Subject: re philosophy I'm still readings Alan's "Philosophy" piece and sorry for those not hung up on it like I am. I'm taken with the first sentence of section 4: "always already an acceptance." This intimates a limit and juncture of philosophy and a field of intensity, a junction where something like "law" comes into effect. And for this to happen, there are consequences, actions, bodies. (I'm reminded, oddly or not?, of Robert Duncan's "Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow": "that certain bounds hold against chaos,/ that is a place of first permission".) (Actually, I've found Duncan more and more appropriate, not at all oddly, in recent times. I re-read things like "Up-Rising" and they seem directed as much at Bush as at Lyndon Johnson.) Section 5: "Language is always at a loss." I think of esoteric language but also of testimony here. This is poetic language, IMO. I wonder, at a different level, how readers take this text of Alan's? Do we feel caught between- a feeling I find myself struggling with - reading this as performance and reading this as philosophy? Do we want it to be one or the other (a simplistic question in a way: yes, no)? Sandy From Charles.Baldwin@MAIL.WVU.EDU Sat May 13 18:28:59 2006 Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 18:28:08 -0400 From: Charles Baldwin Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA Subject: Re: re philosophy Well, yes what you're saying was implicit in my question - I was rather interested in the effect on readers of philosophical statements that forego (block?) certain generic conventions and thereby force this confrontation... so not that philosophy and practice could be separate but how do we read texts that refuse the fiction of this separation? (I would say all texts refuse this - this is part of their written state - but equally all offer at least a simulacrum of genre.) Again, an old question but not a used up one. Sandy >>> sondheim@PANIX.COM 05/13/06 6:02 PM >>> On Sat, 13 May 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > Section 5: "Language is always at a loss." I think of esoteric language > but also of testimony here. This is poetic language, IMO. > > I wonder, at a different level, how readers take this text of Alan's? > Do we feel caught between- a feeling I find myself struggling with - > reading this as performance and reading this as philosophy? Do we want > it to be one or the other (a simplistic question in a way: yes, no)? > I want to quickly reply, for myself, for isn't philosophy a performance? Not only in terms of the playing-out of disciplines, cultural capital, speaking and writing, but also in a more general sense, a making-sense of the world that is always closed (since it, philosophy, as textuality, is already disjunct), and always paradoxically incomplete, since there has never, to my knowledge, been a "complete" philosophy which is satisfactory to everyone. At the ragtag end of things, philosophy seems to be a matter of happenstance and belief; one is more likely to follow Wittgenstein than Dogen in England. I think it is all performance, all circumscription; the other side of the paradox is that one can make "sense" out of the world at all, however that might be taken. - Alan From sondheim@panix.com Sun May 14 01:16:45 2006 Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 01:16:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: Charles Baldwin Subject: Re: metaphoricity and technotexts On Sat, 13 May 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > > I used to believe that the dirty or ruptured was no more than the > thematization of the intra-systemic workings of metaphor, i.e. > metaphor's displacement gets projected out - remetaphorized - as mess. > So, I thought that something like Artaud was ideological in its own way. > And in turn, I used to think that work like Talan's or Mez's presented a > critique of the pretensions to exteriority that were the dirty, as it > were, a critique insofar as they presented code as nothing more than a > sign - even otherness as sign. (Roughly a Lacanian postion.) I would say > at this level that Talan and Mez (I'm guessing on the latter, assuming) > know what they're about, and are consciously exploiting the cultural or > institutional "suturing" (yes, this is a good word for it). They offer > nothing but the repetition of the fact of this suturing. The are working > on the outside of the inside, as it were, on the tracery of otherness, > or even - I'd wager - the fact that otherness necessarily inhabits every > mark. That being said, there's little at risk in these works: the > tracery or fact that I just mentioned seems to me epistemic and > archived. > On another level, what's at risk is a kind of legibility - it reminds me of Lacan as well, therapeutic in sounding out, working through the rebus. In the back of my mind, Lingis keeps coming to the foreground - perhaps because he's uncomfortable to read. > I'm not sure what convinced me of the need to focus elsewhere - I think > it's really a kind of long chain or my own thought, like a tapeworm, > that finally worked its way to where I could only move towards this. > Probably, in part its my own "creative" work and the things that raises > for me. And, even more likely, because I've long been convinced of > mysticism and spirtuality without the mystic or spiritual - as human, > worldly activities, as it were. I think here of Walter Benjamin's > messianism, an entirely worldly and Impossible messianism. Kabbalah is a > good reference, I think. In some ways the distinction - Talan vs. Alan, > say - is exoteric vs. esoteric. (By my left knee are a pile of books on > shamanism and tantra.) > We must share these books! I also just found out that the saxophone player on one of my albums from the 60s is now a full professor of drama at Brown - his speciality is Balinese theater, and I've been interested in the trance states etc. employed. I'll be in touch with him - John Emigh. > Cayley or Loss (und so weiter) do not "get" this, even if they are fine > poets in their own way - but "not getting" it what makes them poets, a > kind of blockage that lets them stay within and inhabit the institution. > Loss, oddly enough, announces an interest in poetics but it's not > really. I think they (Loss, Cayley) participate and reinforce in a > social order, a habitus, that is happily placed in what I wanted to call > media empire. Whereas, I think you - nn, neomata, antiorp, etc., not to > mention Bataille usw - are not "outside" the empire but at the > non-place where it becomes. I agree with you here of course. > > I'd say this is why I find "literature" fascinating and critical: > unlike the paleonym/old word poetics, literature is most explicitly a > modern, institutional word, and yet clearly a kind of problem > institution, or even a meta-institution. But I'm being perverse about > this: I want to re-use the word even though it's used up. > Which reminds me of why I love painting - because it's also an impossibil- ity, over-determined, etc. What can be done - at this point - fascinates. - Alan > But otherwise I agree with you on poetics. A line of thinking here on > depth, context, message, name - > > - Sandy From sondheim@panix.com Wed May 17 05:38:18 2006 Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 05:38:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: Charles Baldwin Subject: Re: philosophy, still thinking about it I'm not sure whether you want me to reply onlist; hopefully others will say something here. In any case, I do want to comment on 6 - what I was interested in wasn't the richness of the world - which is noted at the beginning - but the proceeding without time, which relates to flattening; that it is, history or temporality is, a conceiving and appearance of transformation, but not transformation - "there is nothing to return to; the state is unpresent" - we're always already "moving on" which isn't a moving, but a presencing present - So for me it's not the reflection of upstream, since the "apparency of disturbance tends towards centering" - i.e. this is already a flattening. Btw "flattening" itself as a term is awkward, "flat," which is why it works for me - I hope this makes sense; I've had close-to-no sleep - Alan > Paragraph 6. There's positing of a relation to the world where > conceptuality and perception are always "downstream," the world always > more complex, more dense, more emergent. So, our concepts and > perceptions are outcomes or residues of this complexity. This is a > familiar position and a way of conserving the complexity (upstream) by > seeing it reflected (somehow) in us. What interest me here is the move > in the final sentence to deny this relation, or deny may be the wrong > word? To accept it, perhaps, and to deny the idea that we should do > anything more than live in the complexity? To deny, at least, the > recuperation of the world in the reflections of thought and mind; to > deny hermeneutics. > > :: > > Why "flattening"? This is a keyword here, an operative word throughout. > "The world is flattening by the subject." Not "flattened," so suspended > between the completed act and the performance. I take as an act by the > subject (flattening the world) and as the subject's location (flat up > against the world). Now, it's hard but useful to think of this vis a vis > language. One idea of language is as externalization but here it is > collapse, or rather flattening. Similarly: "It is a disturbance of > flattening which is flattening." I think this is not an issue of an > appearance (apparent mediacy) that is overturned (dialectically) to > reveal a deeper being, but a being that is all that appears and that can > be described via analogy with substances (disturbance, flattening) but > also through paradox. Analogy or paradox are "necessary constructs." > > Later there is a refusal to allow flattening to become a transcendent > operation. Flattening flattens itself (flattening). > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" From sondheim@panix.com Wed Jun 7 22:19:45 2006 Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 22:19:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: Charles Baldwin Subject: Re: codework book On Tue, 6 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > I'm deep in outlining drafting and I have two immediate questions. > Don't feel obliged to address them immediately. Also, reading tons of > Lingis and Chassguet-Smirgel and others. > I've read one Chassguet-Smirgel (the world's weirdest name) years ago; I'm not sure what you're reading here. > 1) Your work gives priority to the imaginary. Wryting, for example, is > the impossible possibility of writing the absence of the other, an > inscription that is not or no longer only a circulating token but is the > other's body through a breakdown of forms and an irruptions of flow. You > are clear, I think, that this occurs in the imaginary only. At the same > time - and here's my question - this doesn't seem a limitation, as it > might for someone like Kittler (for example) who would then ground the > imaginary in technical sepcifications, who would dismiss it as a > hallucination. Rather, your insight seems to be that the written state > of the internet means imaginary all the way down, even at the level of > current differentials and chip dopants. Is that a reasonable take? > I'm not sure how to answer this; you know more of the background material than I do. Tibetan ghost-trapping came to mind; the traps are almost literally nets, and the imaginary is what is caught - not make-believe, but culturally integral, present. I see the Net as a flux of jectivities - introjections/projections - that constitute 'smeared' or no- systems; I use the imaginary to reference what lies behind the structure of the dream (the structure being a response I think to 'noisy' stimuli while the brain is sleeping), a phenomenology of part-objects, flows, irruptions (and Kristeva comes to mind). The imaginary isn't a hallucination; one might say in fact that the imaginary is what isn't a hallucination - that it is our immersivities (against the hallucinations of the senses, certainly a common topic in Buddhism). > 2) If so, we have the net as a place of overcoding and overflow, of > protocols as intensities, of the screen as body ... So, second question: > how far does the net extend? Physically of course the limits of the technological net are easy to determine. Other than that, it's Indra's Net, I think, and it is what makes us human, all these cultural partial-structures... I may be missing the point here; the questions are complex. - Alan > >>>> Alan Sondheim 06/06/06 8:56 AM >>> > > > This sounds really good - do you have a precis at all? I could rewrite > it; > I think you do these things better than I do. In any case, I'll send > some- > thing out... > > - alan > > > On Tue, 6 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > >> According to Tim, books dealing with media/new media/etc. are split >> between Doug Sery - whose focus is more scientific, more cultural >> studies, more "academic" - and Roger Conover - whose focus is more > on >> art, both visual and in writing. This page: >> http://mitpress.mit.edu/mitpress/staff/default.asp lists him as >> executive editor for Art, Architecture, Visual & Cultural Studies > and >> lists his email as conover@mit.edu >> >> Sandy >> >>>>> Alan Sondheim 06/06/06 8:43 AM >>> >> >> >> I did at one point; he bought some books from me. I'm not sure how >> active >> he is in editorial decisions. Do you have an email? For me, this was >> years >> ago; I don't at this point. If you do, I can write him - >> >> Thanks, Alan >> >> >> On Mon, 5 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: >> >>> I spoke some with Tim Petersen about the codework book. He > suggested >> we >>> try Roger Conover at MIT - I could email him but I thought you > might >>> already know him? Tim seemed to think you did. >>> >>> Sandy >>> >>> >> >> blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. >> see >> http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - >> general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org >> Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" >> >> > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. > see > http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - > general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org > Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" From Charles.Baldwin@mail.wvu.edu Thu Jun 8 10:59:06 2006 Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 10:58:25 -0400 From: Charles Baldwin To: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: codework book Honestly, just bits and pieces of Bellmer's writing I found in a bunch of different books. I notice a collection of his writings available on Amazon and I'm trying to decide if I can afford to buy it. Anyhow, you see where I'm heading. For me this is exciting because I've long disagreed with the institutionalizing, Hegelianizing, normalizing force of media studies and digitial literature and the like. I've seen the critique of it and been able to articulate it's limitations, but I was unable (or unwilling) to push past that to an argument about the real. So, it's been this odd shift for me recently, partly a slow thinking through what codework is (not), but partly a sudden change in my thinking when I read something you wrote a few months back - just the phrase the message is the medium - that led me to re-read all the materials in the internet text and led me down this direction... and so on. Well, thanks - Sandy >>> Alan Sondheim 06/08/06 10:51 AM >>> Where did you find the Bellmer? I had a book on him, but it was a psycho- analytical interpretation and fairly disappointing. It did have a couple of his writings in the back. - Alan On Thu, 8 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > This exactly answered my questions. > > The Lingis + Chassguet-Smirgel (trying saying that with peanut butter > in your mouth): I'm trying to find the right way of expressing the > re-organization of the imaginary from the undifferentiated (Kristeva's > chora but also Lingis' murmuring of the world) to a topography of > introjection/projection (Chassguet-Smirgel but also tcp/ip). Today I was > ready Hans Bellmer's very odd writings on his doll art, which deals with > this as well (anagrammatics of bodies). > > So, thanks. > > Sandy > >>>> Alan Sondheim 06/07/06 10:19 PM >>> > > > On Tue, 6 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: > >> I'm deep in outlining drafting and I have two immediate questions. >> Don't feel obliged to address them immediately. Also, reading tons > of >> Lingis and Chassguet-Smirgel and others. >> > I've read one Chassguet-Smirgel (the world's weirdest name) years ago; > I'm > not sure what you're reading here. > >> 1) Your work gives priority to the imaginary. Wryting, for example, > is >> the impossible possibility of writing the absence of the other, an >> inscription that is not or no longer only a circulating token but is > the >> other's body through a breakdown of forms and an irruptions of flow. > You >> are clear, I think, that this occurs in the imaginary only. At the > same >> time - and here's my question - this doesn't seem a limitation, as > it >> might for someone like Kittler (for example) who would then ground > the >> imaginary in technical sepcifications, who would dismiss it as a >> hallucination. Rather, your insight seems to be that the written > state >> of the internet means imaginary all the way down, even at the level > of >> current differentials and chip dopants. Is that a reasonable take? >> > I'm not sure how to answer this; you know more of the background > material > than I do. Tibetan ghost-trapping came to mind; the traps are almost > literally nets, and the imaginary is what is caught - not make-believe, > > but culturally integral, present. I see the Net as a flux of > jectivities - > introjections/projections - that constitute 'smeared' or no- systems; I > > use the imaginary to reference what lies behind the structure of the > dream > (the structure being a response I think to 'noisy' stimuli while the > brain > is sleeping), a phenomenology of part-objects, flows, irruptions (and > Kristeva comes to mind). The imaginary isn't a hallucination; one might > > say in fact that the imaginary is what isn't a hallucination - that it > is > our immersivities (against the hallucinations of the senses, certainly > a > common topic in Buddhism). > >> 2) If so, we have the net as a place of overcoding and overflow, of >> protocols as intensities, of the screen as body ... So, second > question: >> how far does the net extend? > > Physically of course the limits of the technological net are easy to > determine. Other than that, it's Indra's Net, I think, and it is what > makes us human, all these cultural partial-structures... > > I may be missing the point here; the questions are complex. > > - Alan > >> >>>>> Alan Sondheim 06/06/06 8:56 AM >>> >> >> >> This sounds really good - do you have a precis at all? I could > rewrite >> it; >> I think you do these things better than I do. In any case, I'll send >> some- >> thing out... >> >> - alan >> >> >> On Tue, 6 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: >> >>> According to Tim, books dealing with media/new media/etc. are split >>> between Doug Sery - whose focus is more scientific, more cultural >>> studies, more "academic" - and Roger Conover - whose focus is more >> on >>> art, both visual and in writing. This page: >>> http://mitpress.mit.edu/mitpress/staff/default.asp lists him as >>> executive editor for Art, Architecture, Visual & Cultural Studies >> and >>> lists his email as conover@mit.edu >>> >>> Sandy >>> >>>>>> Alan Sondheim 06/06/06 8:43 AM >>> >>> >>> >>> I did at one point; he bought some books from me. I'm not sure how >>> active >>> he is in editorial decisions. Do you have an email? For me, this > was >>> years >>> ago; I don't at this point. If you do, I can write him - >>> >>> Thanks, Alan >>> >>> >>> On Mon, 5 Jun 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote: >>> >>>> I spoke some with Tim Petersen about the codework book. He >> suggested >>> we >>>> try Roger Conover at MIT - I could email him but I thought you >> might >>>> already know him? Tim seemed to think you did. >>>> >>>> Sandy >>>> >>>> >>> >>> blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, > books/etc. >>> see >>> http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - >>> general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org >>> Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" >>> >>> >> >> blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. >> see >> http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - >> general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org >> Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" >> >> > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. > see > http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - > general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org > Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim" > > blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact sondheim@panix.com, - general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim"