inter/media

Intersection + Intermedia

This posting, as well as the previous one, are the transcripts from a panel discussion I participated in as part of the Hybrid Book Conference in Philadelphia PA on June 6th, also participating were: Marlene MacCallum, David Morrish, William Snyder, Andrew Sallee and Tate Shaw. Michelle Wilson moderated the panel.

This statico-dynamic was projected during this talk.

PART II (inter/media)

The sillis project investigates the effect of digital processes on the production of book works. Three artists set out to produce experimental works exploring process and concept. Each with different levels of experience with computers, from basic to advanced. Works are made independently but some striking similarities are emerging.

The effects of the digital on the production of work are fairly obvious, they aid in the development of pictorial explorations, render feasible operations that would be so intricate as to be counter-productive, they allow the artist to visit a wide range of possibilities in a short span of time. Concentration can be centred on more conceptual factors.

What is less obvious and deserving of attention is the affect of digital processes on the production of work. Are thematic or conceptual choices within the originating thought processes influenced by digital technologies? Does digital technology represent a different sphere of intersection?

In our group (sillis), we all work with lens-based technologies; we understand that photographs fluctuate between the textual and the visual. They are the space of transformation and translation of information. Sequencing acts to shift paradigms. Photography’s hybrid nature is a given, it is a consequence of operational parameters. It is possibility. Our actions reveal the potential. Photography’s élan vital (vital impetus) is enacted through the artist rather than the technology. These distinctions are important when trying to untangle the folding and unfolding surfaces of the hybrid/digital and the integrated/virtual.

Let us think about the articulation of what we call “the digital”. Does it actually exist as such, or is it simply a framework on which to hang parts of a process, or a bit of both? In “Parables for the Virtual”, Brian Massumi explores how the digital, as an independent operational object, separate from the analogue, is improbable:

“…the paths of their (digital + analogue) co-operation- transformative integration, translation, and relay-are themselves analogue operations. There is always an excess of the analogue over the digital, because it perceptually fringes, synasthetically dopplers, umbilically backgrounds, and insensibly recedes to a virtual centre immanent at every point along the path-all in the same contortionist motion. It is most twisted. The analogue and the digital must be thought together, asymmetrically. Because the analogue is always a fold ahead." (MASSUMI p.143)

For all intents and purposes, the digital only exists in the machine; any synasthetic representation of it will be analogue. Given the opposition drawn earlier between the hybrid and the virtual, I would like to propose a parallel opposition between the digital and intersection. Digital coding is a medium of possibility, like the hybrid it is a passive articulation of the possible and cannot express potential.

According to Bergson, the virtual is the space of difference, it qualifies and quantifies it and is a representation of its potential nuances, the key word being “potential” rather than “possible”. And it is an active process. We can then equate intersection with virtuality through their intentional expressions of potential, and hybrid with digital through their more passive expression of possibility. The possible is an engine of potentiality, but not a creative force on its own.

Virtuality is not exclusive to the digital, quoting Massumi again:

“If all emergent form brings its fringe of virtuality with it, then no particular medium of expression has monopoly over the virtual. Every medium, however “low” technologically, really produces its own virtuality (yes, even painting). “Digital Art” is in no way synonymous with “virtual reality”. What matters is the “how” of the expression, not the “what” of the medium, and especially not the simple abstractness of the elements that the medium allows to be combined." (MASSUMI p.175)

In a culture dominated by text and image, the Internet being a representation of this; a properly articulated conception of inter-mediation is needed. Digital and hybrid forms offer the possibilities needed to make objects; but to give forms potential they must be made virtual and inter-mediated. The difference between the hybrid/digital and the intersecting/virtual is the difference between possibility and potential.

Massumi, Brian, Parables for the Virtual, Duke University Press, Durham & London, 2002

inter/section

Intersection + Intermedia

This posting, as well as the next one, are the transcripts from a panel discussion I participated in as part of the Hybrid Book Conference in Philadelphia PA on June 6th, also participating were: Marlene MacCallum, David Morrish, William Snyder, Andrew Sallee and Tate Shaw. Michelle Wilson moderated the panel.

PART I (inter/section)

My first computing experience was in a programming course at university, the language was Fortran and we used cards with holes in them to communicate with computers. The cards needed to be kept in order by “binding” them with a paper tape similar to that used to bundle money. The “bound” stacks of cards were called: “books”. This intersecting experience informs my exploration of ways of knowing and making.

Intersection relies on a specific type of contact between various surfaces of knowledge and practice. In Gilles Deleuze’s conception, these surfaces are like membranes that are in constant flux and offer multiple points of contact with all the surfaces in their proximity. It is much like string theory in physics. The passive product of these intersections could be called, the hybrid.

Add to this, the notion of expansion/extension. These intersections inevitably result in a transfer of knowledge, essence, matter (whatever one may wish to call it) from one plateau to the other; thereby expanding/extending each. It is reasonable to assume that any creative action that brings together elements from varied sources will present an accumulation of data that can be implicit or explicit depending on the practitioner’s intent. My experience in the sillis research group has been to see how intersecting media serve to inform process much more actively than it does product. This brings me to question the very nature of intersection in terms of the hybrid object.

A hybrid form assumes that there can be a monadic form; a form that is purely independent and without reference or contact with other structures. The very nature of a cultural object and in this case, the artists’ book, makes this impossible, as it is conceptually hybrid.

For example:

• FORM 1: The book immediately connotes a viewing experience that happens over time.
• FORM 2: It is explicitly connected to the idea of “binding”, binding requires more than a single perceived unit.
• FORM 3: Whether explicitly or implicitly, the book suggests ‘reading’, an activity that moves beyond phenomenological experience. These three simple concepts already suggest that the book is hybrid by definition.

The hybrid is the passive root of intersection, the intersection of methods, technologies and phenomenological expressions of experience. Hybridity expresses itself as a condition of being; intersection is a field of dynamic action and response. This is where the book as a form finds it’s full potential for the artist and the public. The technologies involved in the making of a book work will be as explicit as the maker wishes to show; the book finds its engagement in the sensory affect created in its viewing. Intersection is dynamic, its locus exists where the artist places it; it is an active call and response mechanism.

The work behind me is a book (this refers to the statico-dynamic image, seen above, projected during the talk. It is a sequence of elements placed within a specific viewing context, exists intimately with the viewer even in a public space such as this one. The photographs used (there is no actual video footage here) are used as if they were text, in a specific and intuitive grammatical organisation. Repetition and difference is their ontological compass. Duration, rather than time, is their medium as time is independent of our existence while we mark duration using chronometers.

There is an interesting connection of the hybrid (as defined) and the virtual found in Henri Bergson’s concept of différence. In the philosophy of difference, change (evolution) is guided by l’élan vital (vital impetus) where forward momentum happens with conscious activity; Deleuze’s reading of Bergson includes the sub-conscious. The virtual comes to represent potential through action while the hybrid represents possibility because of its more passive role in change.

In the second part of my talk, I will look more closely at hybridity defined through the conceptual framework of virtuality; at the intersection of digital and analogue processes.

On Deleuze, Death and Dilligence

I have been thinking of Deleuze a lot lately. His influence on my work has been instrumental, his presence in my life constant. Can I speak of his work in a coherent philosophical discourse kind of way? I don’t think so. But then I don’t think he would have wanted that anyway. I think his work was about moving away from the jargon and weight of history and moving towards the body’s presence in text and in imagination.

I can go on and on about rhizomes and plateaux and folds and repetitions but I really do not think that will help anyone access the universe that he opened for me.

I was a lowly first year grad student at Concordia (back when that meant something), I came from a hole in the wall in New Brunswick and knew I was out of my league. But I was determined… still am. We were given reading after reading of Barthes, Irigaray, Levi-Stauss, Deleuze-Guattari; when, in a moment of rare illumination, I realised I could read in French, after all I am French. So I began to visit all these readings in the language they were written. I quickly realized that the translations lacked the subtlety and playfulness these authors intended in their work.

I became a language nut.

Derrida, who has been dubbed the ruler of meaning (for a while anyway) was the most playful of the bunch. He began a paragraph saying one thing and finished it hinting that he may be full of crap. I absolutely loved this way of writing and it gave my own ideas the legs they needed to stand on.

In 1996, I was invited to meet with Christian Gattinoni of the École Nationale Supérieur de la Photographie while he was on a visit to Halifax NS. So I got in the car around 5 in the morning for the 3 hour drive from Moncton to Halifax, good tunes in the tape player (Psychic TV) and the perfect mind set to go show my work. Halifax was gray, drizzly and mean. I got to Gattinoni’s door, knocked, knocked again, to be greeted with a middle-aged man with glasses on his forehead (nice glasses at that) wiping tears from his eyes. I had entered the Twilight Zone. He simply told me that Deleuze had defenestrated himself. I started crying too, for no good reason. It was just too much. I don’t usually cry at dead stuff, human, animal or machine. So it was a big moment.


That is when I realized my work was going to be dedicated to Deleuze. Hence the Cantos for Gilles Deleuze.

Mars Approacheth

From 2002 - Mars over Cape Onion, the last time Mars was closest to earth in 2000 years. Mars is the brightest streak in the sky.

The end is nigh! :-)

Pestilence, War and sunny skies

In these times of pestilence and war...

Les litanies de Satan
Charles Baudelaire 1855

Ô toi, le plus savant et le plus beau des Anges,
Dieu trahi par le sort et privé de louanges,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Ô Prince de l’exil, à qui l’on a fait tort,
Et qui, vaincu, toujours te redresses plus fort,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Toi qui sais tout, grand roi des choses souterraines,
Guérisseur familier des angoisses humaines,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Toi qui, même aux lépreux, aux parias maudits,
Enseignes par l’amour le goût du Paradis,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Ô toi qui de la Mort, ta vieille et forte amante,
Engendras l’Espérance, — une folle charmante !

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Toi qui fais au proscrit ce regard calme et haut
Qui damne tout un peuple autour d’un échafaud,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Toi qui sais en quels coins des terres envieuses
Le Dieu jaloux cacha les pierres précieuses,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Toi dont l’œil clair connaît les profonds arsenaux
Où dort enseveli le peuple des métaux,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Toi dont la large main cache les précipices
Au somnambule errant au bord des édifices,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Toi qui, magiquement, assouplis les vieux os
De l’ivrogne attardé foulé par les chevaux,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Toi qui, pour consoler l’homme frêle qui souffre,
Nous appris à mêler le salpêtre et le soufre,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Toi qui poses ta marque, ô complice subtil,
Sur le front du Crésus impitoyable et vil,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Toi qui mets dans les yeux et dans le cœur des filles
Le culte de la plaie et l’amour des guenilles,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Bâton des exilés, lampe des inventeurs,
Confesseur des pendus et des conspirateurs,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Père adoptif de ceux qu’en sa noire colère
Du paradis terrestre a chassés Dieu le Père,

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère !

Furthermore...

"The alliance between War and Plague was cemented with the first germ experiments and in this area there have been a number of interesting developments. Despite a lot of talk about discontinuing such experiments and closing down the biologic and chemical warfare centres, Fort Dietrich, in Maryland is now dedicated to cancer research. And cancer research, incidentally, overlaps the more sophisticated areas of biologic weaponry." W.S.Burroughs, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Expanded Media Editions, 1988, p.12

It was sunny today, a bit cold but bright and clear.

XXIII

Twenty Three...

Vingt Trois...

Another picture from the Interzone. This one is from Denver International. I wish I knew about the blue mustang as I would have taken a walk to see it. We were in Denver for two or three hours. I was amazed at the difference between air travel in Canada and in the US.

Once you pass security and while you are in that secure zone. Are you actually nowhere? It seems like all the people there are in the same country and that it is not a country at all but rather an intercountry (I like calling it the Slipstream). Or maybe that is what Burroughs meant by the Interzone.