art and politics

On the occasion of this:

“… as an artist I consider myself obligated to avoid politics.”
Neal Stephenson
(From his website in response to the question Is Neal Stephenson a cypherpunk? – in the context of his novel Cryptonomicon)


It’s not as if “artist” were a vocation, its practitioners attending to a kind of Vatican where a sort of Pope issues edicts and commands concerning proper protocol, nor are they like government employees required to follow similar requirements. In fact, being rarely in anyone’s employ, least certainly as someone making art, an artist has no obligation peculiar to that role. They may not even have the obligation to make art.

Indeed, who would they answer too, if they did shirk their duty, other than themselves?

Well, if they are in the employ of, say a publisher, and they have contractual commitments, then yes they do owe an obligation to their employer. But the terms of that agreement, and its consequential obligations, are not general or universal.

The job or role “artist” then, is fundamentally meaningless because it is essentially unbound by any a priori statute that is generally applied. So to say that it’s an obligation for an artist to avoid (what, exactly: Speaking? Writing about? Depicting? Exploring?) politics is akin to saying that it is the obligation of a poet not to speak of bread.

To issue edicts of this sort is contentious always, because there is no bible, no rule book, no official etiquette that could support such a claim (and even if there were, it still could be contested). It is therefore, an idiosyncratic, perhaps moral, personal decision, and hence, an obligation only to oneself, and not to say, a professional association of artists and/or poets (at least not one that is evidently eminent).

So then, why make this claim? Only speculation can ensue as some kind of a response. This, of course, can be rather entertaining. And so I offer this:

To make such claims, to start with an analysis of “voice,” and given the obvious inability to locate “artist” and their “obligations” in any way that’s meaningful beyond individual contractual requirements, is to occupy the position represented by the phrase “the royal We.” In other words, it is a singularity in the guise of a plurality. I would like to suggest, therefore, from the start that the sentence might have been more genuinely stated simply as: “I consider myself obligated to avoid politics.”

If it had been rendered thusly, then there would be little to contend with. Of course, any person might still consider to ask him why Neal Stephenson felt so obligated, and if he condescended to reply “because I am an artist,” then it would not make a difference as far as this consideration is concerned. But if he did reply, “It is a personal decision,” then pressing the issue further might seem rude and itself a bit “political.”

His reply to a question which does not explicitly refer to politics, but rather to identity, and to, I would assume, some sort of practice, is framed with regard to membership in another group, wherein he draws a line between their group and his own by way of their respective relationships to politics. But I surmise that there is an investment, on the part of Neal Stephenson, in the practice of an artist as representative, then, of some association (i.e. a society or guild), or simply a community, whose practice is discernibly reflective of its ethics.

I shan’t bother to conflate ethics (i.e. principles, rules, regulations, obligations, etc.) and politics, although it would be easy (and facile perhaps) to do so. But the contradiction is apparent. Still, it is perhaps a more complicated matter because of the specifics, yet to be determined, of the verb “avoid,” that modifies the subject “politics” inside of his reply.

Could it be that the obligation that celebrity writer Neal Stephenson has as an artist to avoid politics, is like the obligation that a rock star may have as a musician to avoid groupies? That is, is he is obligated to avoid it because it is so present, and is inviting to him too? Or might politics, and its allure, be stalking Neal Stephenson as an artist, tempting him like a “fatal attraction” towards some regrettable encounter?

Of course I couldn’t say, nor even reasonably infer, but I wonder just the same, does he actually fulfill his obligation? I don’t mean, has he had some secret affair with politics, but rather, is it evident from his art that he has successfully avoided politics?

It would take too long to sort that out by example. Certainly there is politics in his novels, so maybe the point again is membership. Which is to say that perhaps he meant to say that as a member of the artist’s group, he is obligated to avoid the politics of any other group?

Could this be a matter of a certain group fidelity? Or is it simply just the case that Neal Stephenson is diplomatically avoiding the political consequences of a political association with a group whose politics may be construed as radical, and could he be taking an account of how prudent it might be to avoid upsetting such a group with an unqualified rejection?

I don’t know. But such a specific contextualized remark might be better readdressed in a different context elsewhere in the interest of some clarity. And then again, maybe not.

As a personal note, and as a sort of signature to this, I will say that I am in fact a huge fan of Neal Stephenson’s work, and of this novel to which he magnanimously responds in particular (i.e. Cryptonomicon). I think it is a good idea to say so because this sort of an analysis can be construed as being mean spirited, and it can be difficult to discern otherwise in a practice (i.e. criticism) often prejudiced as characteristically cold, abstract and cutting, if not itself pugnaciously self-serving.

I wish therefore to state outright that my motivation, although certainly open to question, is at least in some measure predicated by an interest to sort such matters out as someone who also likes to think of themselves as an artist – despite the fact that I don’t really know what exactly that might mean – and also as someone who does not feel obligated to avoid politics, although I think that it’s a good idea to avoid politicians if I can.

So it is meant then, to be taken in the spirit of the very community I challenge the official existence of, but to which I do feel some affection for the possibility of membership or friendship with in either case. Perhaps this contradiction makes me touchy, but I do not intend to be mean or to make sport.

It is, I think, a fair conundrum, (the questionable relationship of art and politics) and one that has been often addressed before (especially in music), and this is not meant, either, to be a foreclosure on such discussion. Rather, it is meant to be a contribution to it. Forgive me, if I did not do so well.

Every day language is not everyday.

On the occasion of this:

“Someone says “It’s snowing.

I mean what is “it” doing in that sentence? I know that it’s just functioning as the subject of an impersonal verb, but why do we need a subject of an impersonal verb and why should it be “it,” a pronoun? If it’s there because every verb has to have a subject, then it seems that the rules of grammar are eclipsing reference or at least placing a strange demand on the referential function of the sentence. To what can “it’ refer? Does it refer to anything other than its verb? It seems not to have a grammatical antecedent, nor does it have a referent outside the sentence. Is it possible to think of this as some kind of admission on the part of language? Does its code close? Are we operating strictly on a level akin to the analytic? What does the fact that we use the word “it” in this situation say about our language and how we use it? Does it say anything? How can it be that “It’s snowing” can mean much the same as “There is snow falling from the sky”? ”
Speakeasy – Mark Truscott in Filling Station no. 33
Pg. 057-058



Everyday language is not. Because it is not everyday. It is always something. And every day it is always something. But it is not every day the same thing every day. Because every time you say something, even if you say it every day, there is no way that’s “everyday” because there’s no way that you are every day saying it exactly the same way.

Maybe “everyday” means that it is common and informal. It might be common and informal but it is not the same thing every day. Maybe “informal” means you all agree that your language isn’t formal. But of course you know that’s incorrect. But it doesn’t matter because “informal” means you all agree. And that is why “informal” is polite. It is polite to be informal because everyone agrees and everyone’s the same, even though you know that’s not correct.

There are things that you can say and you can say them every day. Things like: Hello, Goodbye, Good Morning, Good Evening, Good afternoon, How’s it going?. What’s up?, Tea?, Coffee?, Drink? But even though they are the same thing that you say, you do not say them the same way, not exactly the same way, and no one hears them the same way, not exactly the same way, because any time there’s conversation, even simple conversation, which is simply gestural, even though they’re saying things, it isn’t just the things that they are saying that anybody pays attention to, it is the things that they are doing also, and the way that they are being, and the way that they are doing it, all of it, together.

Because it is informal, and they do agree, and so it is polite, and anyone is listening and looking beyond that.

Because everyday is not, it only is because you say it is, and so of course, it can be not. And if it can be not, then of course, it can be something else, and that means anyone can wonder what that something else could be.

So there can always be a lot of different things always going on, and a lot of different ways to decide on what it really means. Because it never really means anything you really know. Even though you can be sure in spite of never knowing.

You can be sure because certainly you feel it, even though you do not know it. Of course you are sure because you certainly do feel it even if you do not know it. If later you are proven to be right, you often then can say you knew it all along, but of course that isn’t really true.

That is all because language is a thing that is, and it is the way you speak. And the way you speak is not the same as how you write or think or feel. And there are formal ways and informal ways of saying things. And language can be said to be “everyday,” even though it’s not.

Think about the weather.

You might think it’s funny to say that it is raining if you think there is no “it” that can be doing that. But there always is an “it” for anything that does something, and weather is that way. Weather can be interesting because it’s always being something while it’s doing something too. Sometimes it seems more being than it’s doing or vice versa, but it still is always both.

For example, when it’s raining, it is doing that while it is being “wet and rainy,” or “damp and cold and miserable,” or “thank God it’s cooling off,” or “oh good, we really need it,” or “shit, not more god-damned rain,” or it is a punishment or it washing away something. All the while that it is being how it’s being, whether it’s agreeable or not, it is doing what it’s doing, naturally or not, whether it is wanted or is not.

Some say rain’s an act of nature, which of course means something else, because “nature” doesn’t act, because there’s no such thing as “nature,” although that has never stopped it from being what it is and doing what it does, because we say it’s so. Saying that it’s so makes it be as though it’s so, and that’s enough to make it be what it never really is. Because how things really are only really matters when it actually does not.

“Be” and “Is” are not the same in English, even though they might be inextricably bound together say in French, or in some other kind of language. In English they are not. Anything in English can be something even though isn’t that at all. And just because it is something doesn’t mean that it will be that thing. For instance you can be a boy or girl, even though you are not either one. And if you are a boy or girl, you may not be one or the other of those either.

This can be frustrating for anyone who wants anything in English to be the way they think that it should be. Because English is beyond them. It always is beyond them because it can be one thing and do another thing altogether different and it always works for someone, and not for someone else.

That is why “To be, or not to be?” is a question for someone. Because even though he or she may or may not be, he or she still is. At the very least, they are the one who asks the question.

Because you can be going somewhere even though you are not there. And because you can be somewhere and not going anywhere.

So when you say “it’s raining,” and someone asks you, “What is ‘it’?,” you know the answer is “the weather,” because it is always the condition of the day or night or afternoon, of how things are outside, and what it’s doing out there too. And it is not polite to ask, although it might be amusing, “What is ‘it’?”

And it is not really “everyday” language because language is everything always every day. It’s just a way of saying things, and it always is just that.

The Beauty of Collaboration

Some reflections on given opportunities and followed tendencies.

The following considerations are on the occasion of a summit held at the Banff New Media Institute at the Banff Center in Banff, Alberta over a long weekend in May 2003. The summit, entitled The Beauty of Collaboration, brought together people from such seemingly diverse areas as sociology, social science, computer science, human computer interface design/research, computer game design, various artistic practices including music, movement and graphic arts/design, distance education, biology, physics and various types of engineering, in order to pool comparisons and contrastive findings towards a collective comprehension of the matter. The summit, thus, considered the viability of sharing research and development – as well as conjecture – in the name of progressive collaboration(s) on site. The summit, then, was structured to be an occasion of its own interest.

These considerations are not meant to be taken as a recapitulation or as a condensation of this summit, but rather as an adjunctive contribution to it; taking what is determined to have been prevalent, consistent and pertinent (if only by way of a certain persistence and tendency to reoccur as the start or the heart of discussions) and readdressing them in the spirit of representation on the one hand, but in the interest of further analysis on the other hand. This contribution, then, to these considerations is not so much itself collaborative (although it may be) as acting upon the occasion of such a collaboration, and taking that opportunity to reflect a little more on the issues and interests after the fact.

FIRST SET OF CONSIDERATIONS:

What is the relationship between collaboration and attraction/interest?

Given the opportunity, do people tend to collaborate? How do they manage their respective differences?

What, then, is an opportunity, such that it garners, creates, and/or invites a tendency to collaborate? If the tendency is a response to an opportunity, then what is it seizing upon? What could underscore a resistance to this opportunity? Could we imagine a principled resistance to this opportunity that would still be consistent with, or exemplary of, an orientation to collaboration itself? Is there a way to even say “collaboration itself”, without inaugurating certain epistemological structures and ideas that could be inconsistent with one’s individual orientation to the prospect and potential (the intent) of collaboration?

If we do assume that social formations are inclined towards some prospect and notion of working together, can we also assume that such formations are likewise inclined to be circumspect about the structure(s) and value(s) of that working relationship?

Imagine a working relationship defined as collaborative wherein the partners have quite different conceptions of the parameters of that collaboration – of the aims and goals that the relationship suggests to them, given their specific orientation. Think about the effects such a tacit agreement, with such an undefined nature, could produce. These effects could be ruinous – but they could also be auspicious.

A working relationship may be predicated on a shared and understood conception or principle, and yet for all that, still exhibit a profound difference in the exhibited workings of that relationship. The principle may be shared and the practice contentious. What, then, is this tendency, and what is its interest? What does (or is) it(s) promise, or hope, to introduce?

But it’s not as if that question could be anything but itself an opportunity, and any reply to it, likewise, contingent upon a similar set of circumstances, and subject to a similar semi-contractual offer and arrangement, the particulars of which are (yet) to be determined. Indeed, the failure or success of the relationship could be articulated on the basis of whether such criteria as favors or frowns upon determination (a progressive analysis) as an active part of the relationship.

So to start with, what might be taken to be interesting – given a desire for, or commitment to, collaboration (as either determined or as [yet] to be determined), is the very idea of the given itself – which is to say, the conditions or appearance of any such opportunity. Simply put, what is this opportunity specifically, who offers it, and how is it presented? And further, what is the proprietary relation (if any) to this offer? What is the nature of the governance of this opportunity? What predicates it? And etc.

The givens and tendencies, then, are not transparent, and, as such, they are, themselves, representative of other opportunities and other tendencies.

The dynamics of the working(s of the) relationship (i.e. the collaboration and its management) are quite different depending upon the place(ment) of power relations. Making the assumption that power is present, and its representatives oriented to an interest in describing and situating its structure and relations in concert with the opportunity given, proffers opportunities and invitations to social relations subject (perhaps) to both tacit and contractual (legal/social) expectations and arrangements.

Sometimes an erasure of power relations is performed before they can be decided upon as either imposing or enabling, in an effort to make the partnership appear as a serendipitous occasion. And upon discovery, they can be merely announced as an invitation to entertain presumed shared interests. (Could this then be articulated as an interest in/of marketing? – What is/are the mechanics of marketing in the service of “suggested” or “offered” – what might be called “serviced” – collaborations?)

Power relations in themselves need not be imposing – reporting structures can be considered good, necessary, and enabling as much as they can be considered bad, gratuitous, and controlling.

The opportunity, then, can be given as a gift is given, and be subject to the same joy and misgiving, expectation and suspicion, and the same ambivalent fortune, precisely because a gift is given – because any gift is part of an exchange system (what is given is measured in relationship to what is received). How then, will this opportunity be given? And how will it be received? And what is this tendency that this given opportunity predicates?

Any collaboration is an opportunity to work cooperatively with others in their interest, but also to betray them (by working with an enemy [personal or abstract]). And any tendency towards this opportunity is itself duplicitous: on the one hand it is seduced by it (a state of interest that is not, itself, without its own complex nexus of desires and intentions); and, on the other hand, it seeks to manage or supervise the relationship. In other words, its movement is both towards and within the relationship. The one who invites such an opportunity (or who, given the opportunity, tends towards it) opens the door, thus, to complex power relations, the differences of which can be felt coming and/or rising from either party and as a consequence of their relationship. The seducer (inviter) [then] is as at much at risk as the seduced (invitee).


SECOND SET OF CONSIDERATIONS:

What is the relationship between design and collaboration?

Can we design “architectures of trust”? Can machines and software be designed towards an intelligence of collaboration? What kinds of systems and tools can we design to facilitate collaboration? What is human computer interface design? Can be build participatory cultures?

Consider trust in the context of an architectural interest and investment (i.e. as part of a building project which encompasses both designers and builders – as well as the thing that is built itself). That is, in the context of a research and development enterprise that uses trust as a device meant to spur a continuative translation of ideas (the abstract) into practical orders and solutions (the concrete). This would be a sort of modernist horizon: one which is ever present as a goal impossible to reach but which by virtue of its place(ment) ensures the development and implementation of programmatic research.

Trust, then, as an active lure, an agent-recruiter whose alliance is programmatically double: it serves to secure both the attraction of a relationship/partnership as well as the apparatus/technology that mediates this relationship/partnership. Or, trust as seduction itself, encompassing not just the act, but its constituency (constituents) as well.

But trust can also be a property value (a commodity). Which is to say that it can be owned and prized by potential customers, who are, thereby, set upon by interested buyers and investors. Abstraction of trust as a value allows it to be placed outside of individual ownership and then auctioned off competitively as an open market commodity. Peculiar and idiosyncratic interests and inclinations are treated as inhibiting differences and negotiated into an equivalence or social agreement by way of contractual enticements towards mutual securities or dividends.

So, if trust is seduction itself, and yet at the same time a commodity, then the relationship it serves as a lure towards is likewise commoditized. Which is to say that despite the lure towards, and attraction of, the partnership it proffers, this partnership, itself, is another horizon towards which its participants walk without hope or regard for (or even interest in) ever reaching – and this is not necessarily (taken to be) a disability or handicap. That is to say, the parameters, protocols and other specifics of the relationship are that which are (always? – yet?) to be determined; they must be negotiated, as it were, and not taken for granted (ideally?).

If deception is the pivot around which considerations of a species of cost-benefit-analysis would turn, (i.e. cost equals misappropriation or iniquity, and benefit equals trust), then security (the guarantee, as it were) could be represented as, or by way of, a system of surveillance, or by checking mechanisms. And the management of this security system must, itself, be convincingly non-partisan in order to assuage concerns. Architectures of trust are thus subject(ed) to scrutiny regarding behavior scruples, and the “partnership” (so to speak) gets bigger.

One might wonder whether trust in an institutional context could ever be anything but that which is involved in a form of structural design that is (already) caught up in an ironic (or cynical) orientation to the “object” of their (i.e. the institution’s) interests, and to whatever misgivings such “objects” may have. Could trust in this context be anything other than that which is always imagined inside or outside of designs (or as that which has designs upon it)? And insofar as it is caught up within the nexus of a communication model that is always potentially haunted by a specter of failed reciprocity, trust must be the prize worth risking a sacrifice of fixed principles for.

Seduction must, therefore, be posited or understood, in an institutional architecture of trust, as that which necessarily unravels or undoes the strictures of propriety in order that partners can collaborate towards a good relationship (whatever that might be). And the institution must (also) be able to register its own risk in this relationship – the nature of the sacrifice taken, and the inherent responsibility it incurs upon them by being (playing the role of) the seducer. It does this by shoring up its aura of responsibility. It risks its reputation (not to be underestimated as a collaborative lure) against its promise to do the right thing (once the relationship is inaugurated).

But what it is also selling is mediation. Which is to say that the larger horizon of interests is set in perspective to the network of relations and the relations of network.

And what is, perhaps, interesting, here, is not so much the old chestnut concerning whether or not machines can harbor or allow for human relations (forcing human network relations into restrictive interactive paradigms and reduced pattern variables), because human relations are always and already that which are object and subject, of and to, a mechanics (machinery, technology), the specifics of which are always (yet) to be determined, (those paradigms and pattern variables are always facing relative cementing and deconstruction in relation to those models, strategies, etc., which face-off within human interaction, according to a measure of their own abstraction and practical viability) – but rather, how the mechanics (engineers, workings, design, etc.) of human relations are applicable to, and manageable within, a social production of technology(ical) culture (as the prospect of making the mechanics more human). And, also, how (it is that) this program or goal is itself a ruse to create specific social formations and networks. This would be a displacement, then, of an ontological orientation that produces economic effects, and done so in the interest of an economic (and systemic) orientation that produces ontological affects.

Machines and software could only ever be designed towards an intelligence of collaboration. And it is this movement that is really the point, given any investment or interest in collaborative intelligence as that which is to be sorted out by groups. Designing is a gesture, the meaning and effect of which, is (yet) to be determined by who so ever takes an interest in either its offer or the gesture itself, or both.

There is not yet a consideration here of auto-collaboration, or what that might look like, but it doesn’t hardly matter, either. In a sense, the machine, or software, on its own is in an auto-collaboration circuit (as could also be said of any instance of analysis or deliberation – such as this one). The design or model is, likewise, the occasion, or trace of (a) collaboration. And any collaboration, insofar as it addresses, in some sense, a problem and its solution, or the means towards a solution, (a procedure, or method, or discipline – all of which are themselves a species of solution), is intelligent. And anything that could be said to be intelligent is subject also to (the prospect of) becoming smarter (or dumber, for that matter).


THIRD SET OF CONSIDERATIONS:

What is the relationship between collaboration and beauty?

Can consensus bring about beauty? Is aesthetics and beauty the same thing?

If design is a matter of artifice, then it is also wrapped up in considerations of the differences between art and craft and all the attendant issues with respect to creative disposition; not just politically (i.e. with respect to motive and use value) but also philosophically (i.e. with respect to orientation and understanding). And if there is any difference between art and craft which registers in any respect as relevant to issues of collaboration, then it is likely to be in beauty’s signature that such a difference tries to make itself apparent.

Beauty also is measured, cited, sighted and signed contentiously, both formally and conceptually. The beauty of collaboration, then, will itself be that which is (yet) to be determined (negotiated, instituted).

Think for a moment about beauty, in the context of collaboration, as a consideration, an interest, a gesture, a moment and a pursuit, which has escape as part of its motive or interest. Beauty, then, not just as an object (or subject), but also as a horizon or as an agent, which the movement towards or the deployment of, thereby, opens (a door to) or generates (the condition of) an escape. Or, even, beauty as escape, itself. The beauty of collaboration, then, could be thought of as an orientation to collaboration as that which promises escape (i.e., as a moment of it and/or a movement towards it).

Escape here could be understood as flight (i.e. as an exit and/or an entry) and as freedom (i.e. as a condition and/or an action): a kind of break(ing) out into a (alternate) state or condition which can reside in the movement or gesture itself, or which can be on the other side of that movement or gesture (or both). We could say, then, that the attractive thing about collaboration can be its opportunity to provide (such an) escape. That is, collaboration could be the attractive or seductive invitation, promise, or opportunity to fly, break out, get into, etc. alter(ed)nate states. These states could, of course, be at any time, registered and resonating as individual and/or social and/or environmental (with all the possible fold-backs into these delineations) conditions, which can further formulate themselves as being (ontos) and/or place (eco) (with, again, the possible fold-backs).

Beauty and aesthetics, of course, is no more the same thing than is sex and sexuality. They have, in a manner of speaking, corporate (communal) ties to one another, which makes the one an industry for the other. But, in each case, the object of that industry is always in a state of flight, and is always (yet) to be defined, invested (in), managed and rendered economically. The one makes industry of the other, but as a result of that industrialization, it also puts in place the opportunity for there to be bankrupted investments, evacuated meaning, exhausted management and destabilized economies.

The aesthetics of collaboration, then, would not look the same as the beauty of collaboration. An aesthetics of collaboration could be a moment when the spirit of (the effects and affective disposition resulting from) the beauty of collaboration (that flight which a certain collaboration has become precipitous, or the occasion, of) becomes available as (is rendered or produced as) a model (paradigmatic and programmatic mapping of the effects of social relations in the interest of reproduction) of collaboration. This is itself always (yet) to be determined as exceptional or even successful.

FOURTH SET OF CONSIDERATIONS:

What is the relationship between collaboration and networks?

How does online differ from parallel physical community? Networked computers are far smarter than individual computers. What is a computer-supported community? How does cooperation differ with mobile platforms?

“Life is a network.”
“The internet is a scale-free network.”
Frank T. Vertosick, The Genius Within: Discovering the intelligence of every living thing.

A person’s personal experience of themselves as both an individual within society and as a society within themselves can make them available or accommodating to social stratifications which delineate on the basis of small and large, abstract and concrete, personal and institutional. The network, in this respect, already exists in a prescribed model of social reflexivity. Do the physical properties of a network differ in any significant way from its social properties? Does the physical condition of a network restrict or predominantly determine the character of interaction within it?

Consider collaboration as an emergent property of groups, and groups as an emergent property of a tendency to network. It may be that given the tendency, people are inclined to network, but not necessarily collaborate. It is not necessary to collaborate, at least not in the sense of cooperate, in order for a network to “work”, so to speak. In fact, a network functions more “efficiently” if all of its connections are not at equal strength (not exhibiting the same rate of social/interactive success). This tension in the dynamic weight of the system allows for it to learn and become, hence, smarter.

Collaboration, then, could be considered as an evolutionary product of a network. And there can be an ideal version of both collaboration and the network that obfuscates the importance of failure. Two heads are better than one, but the telephone game reminds us that communication becomes less precise when many heads are participating. However, the end result is also possibly, for all its being a distortion of the original message, more interesting, inspiring, and perhaps even poetic. If nothing else, the resonant feeling of difference inspires awe. Perhaps it is reflective of an experiment in recombinant social genetics, the trans-mutative results of which signify the escape of language itself (from our attempts to contain and master it).

It may be important, thus, to displace any set notion of the aim and parameters of collaboration (as such) as naturally benign, and allow it to mutate and evolve within a social system. In a nexus of collaborative relations, a failed collaboration may be, on the one hand, relative (as in: one person’s, or group’s, failure may be another’s success), and, on the other hand, serendipitous (the proverbial “blessing in disguise”).

Any structural specificity with respect to any network is itself mutable (and recombinant), given social interactivity and the potential to delimit the “permissions” of the system administration. This is equally true of both the “hard” and “soft” or “dry” and “wet” wares that serve as the media of communications.

The condition of a system’s (“hard,” “dry,” etc.) mobility, for instance, is not restricted by the physicality of the media. Whether or not the mechanical device may be moved does not inhibit the potential for the form of communication itself to be moved (and vice versa). The notion of mobility itself, thus, can be at work within any active construction and/or functioning collaboration (network). Which is to say that the notion itself (the idea, the concept, the orientation, etc.) and its mutability and elasticity are exemplary of mobility already. It is not so much the unit of communication’s mobility, then, that constitutes the mobility of the community, network, and collaborative group, so much as it is an interactive consequence of the relationship (an unintentional conspiracy) between the unit and these communities’, networks’, and groups’ – collaborative or not – mobility (you might just call them the mobilites).

Collaboration, then, remains that which is to be determined, but without any guarantee of what the particulars may be or how in the end collaboration could have been said to have happened. It may be that it emerges despite or in spite of whatever machinations are deployed in order to produce or manage it. And it may appear (to be) quite different/ly than intended, and yet, for all of that still be “beautiful.” The beauty of collaboration then, finally, may be, like the telephone game, that moment when we look with either awe or consternation (or both) at the residual effects of an escape from the attempts to specify, produce and manage social interaction. But could it appear so beautiful without those attempts?

map or gloss?

The following is being printed somewhere this month without the footnotes.
I've decided to put it here with the footnotes - since, in a way, the footnotes are the best part.
In fact, perhaps i would be better to only post the footnotes. In any case - the footnotes are included here in square brackets.

Mapping

1. Some sketching on the process of rendering terrain – an economic differential calculus of spatial ownership, and a consideration of space as an emergent conceptual entity (contention: there is no such a thing as space – space is a mobilization of territory, a unit in a geometry of power relations) (Counter-Contention: Space is a gestural location for the articulation of individual vs. institutional difference and determination – the occasion of a necessary border).

2. Mapping as a linguistic signature of a commitment to unfinished business (i.e. staying open for business; keeping the transactions going) – an anarchistic, democratic time-limited and shared-spatial relationship to territory, both geological and conceptual (given that the two can ever truly be separated). (Contention: mapping is ironically set against itself when it confronts the mapped).

Here are some mappings:

Mapping Mapping

If mapping can be said to be a means of cultural expression, then let this be said to be (a) mapping.
It’s not clear to me that any expression could be truly outside of cultural identification.
[1 I am responding here to the writing suggestions in the call for papers – to wit: “this publication is interested in projects that re-appropriate mapping as a means of cultural expression.” – In fact, this whole thing is responding to this call, and taking to heart its interest in “making visible the invisible,” which includes, as it happens, this qualification. ]
So the moment when that culture is identified could be said to be (another) mapping. In fact, it may be the case that mapping is in some way identical to description and analysis.
And what I would like to examine is the relationship between mapping in that sense of description/analysis, and ownership.
In this respect, this mapping is about mapping as (a process of) staking a claim(ing). And as such, it is a measured calculus of the difference (differentiation) between mapping and (the/a) map.
That is to say, it is an exploration of the economy of the production of territory (of location) from exploration and discovery to claiming, defining and defending.

Mapping Borders

Borders are interesting things because they are both visible and invisible.
[2 Here again I am harkening to the terrain laid out by the call. ]

They are, in a manner of speaking, emergent entities.
[3 This is one of my favourite analytic – or I should now say “mapping” – preoccupations. Recent research done under the rubric of Computational and Bio Sciences proffers that Life and Intelligence are emergent properties of networks – which I like to understand as things that are coming into being and are only constituted as being by virtue of contingent and conspiring elements – In other words, they are conceptual and ordained (by way of interest and investment – a consequence of conspiring agendas. This reminds me of the famous Nietzsche quote: “Truth is like an army of tropes”). Anyway, I have recently spun this observation and postulation into the subject domain of networks and suggest that networks themselves can be constitutive of forms of intelligence – That networks are themselves emergent, and being thus are progenitors of emergent forms of life and intelligence. This makes for a kind of biosemitiocs that I like to rethink as post-phenomenology. So if, as Frank T. Vertosick says “Life is a Network”, then it could follow that Network is Life – and then such claims as Mobile Networks are Life could be followed with qualification, i.e. What kind of life? (Contention, if life is emergent, then there is no life “as such” – all life is a “kind of life”). What I am leading to here, it must be obvious by now, are fundamental power relations of representation and of mapping (analysis) as a species of war machine. ]

Which is to say that they are contingent upon, and resulting from, a nexus of network relations and activities. They rarely have any absolute physical manifestation that you could truly call representative (i.e. they are largely suggestive and symbolic).
[4 I wish to register here the double sense of this word “device” as both a tool and a ploy (a ruse, a trick). I hope to tease that out further, but I may not have the time, so to speak. Nevertheless, I wish to register it here as generally representative (which is to say symptomatic) of a mapping procedure. And of course the Great Wall is not the only salient example; there is the Berlin Wall (now struck down, and claimed culturally in many diverse ways – including an appropriation by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd for his Brecht-like musical auto-biography produced on that site) and the high fence going up currently (in protest from the U.N.) between Israel and Palestine – which also reminds me of the fences between protesters and the various Global economic and power leaders and brokers under the rubrics of G8 and WTO). So, a lot of fences, and a lot of expressions of the fence – enough to count as a cultural currency, and to be subject to a cultural history. ]

The Great Wall of China is perhaps the best and closest example of a comprehensive (which is vague of me to say, I realise) physical manifestation of the proverbial “line drawn in the sand.” And its double function and orientation as a barrier and containment device (built as much or more to keep people in as to keep others out) is of interest here as well.
But the border between the United States of America (sic) and Canada, referred to sometimes as the longest undefended (which ought to be qualified)
[5 And it will be when I start to describe communication presence – the heart of wireless politics and ideology. ]

border in the world, is interesting for its (relative) lack of physical manifestation, and for how it infers a border by way of a system of co-managed turnstiles and gateways,
[6 I’m not really being fanciful here – this is more or less what we Canadians and Americans (sic) are faced with when crossing that border on foot, or in a automotive vehicle, or within an airport (only the train presents a different physical experience). They are official entry points, but as Mexico and Cuba and Canada can attest, there are many other ways of crossing (illegally, of course). What I would like to get at here, is the correspondence between these so-called geo-political manifestations of admission management and those being determined in the networks. ]

which are nonetheless equally effective in serving as a similar device for containment and as barrier.
Likewise, the more symbolic cultural borders we are familiar with, such as those between the so-called new (North American) and old (Europe) worlds, or between the so-called West (North America and Europe) and the East (Asia, the Middle-East and parts of North Africa), or with the fluid and mutable boundaries like those between differently defined Races, Religions, Creeds, Sexes and Sexual Preferences, are all subject to this dialectic.
Borders are like published analyses – like published maps – they are, in a certain way, sign-offs on discussed matter – defined (if not definitive) terrain – copyrighted and claimed as owned property, with appended specific stipulations for shared usage. They are defended, or need to be, because they are contestable.
All mapping, then, is a suggestion until it is defended and enforced by ownership – And even then, it is only so because it can, still, be contested. Politics is a management initiative of ownership and contestation – it is a management of borders.
The peculiarities of policy – it’s qualitative differentiation – can be said, therefore, to be locative in its principles of mapping. To use a colloquialism: “It’s all about mapping” (which might make it meaningless in itself).
(Contention: If the end-game of global dominance is “Full Spectrum Dominance” – that realization is tantamount to the end of all borders. No borders are necessary when you own the total domain. Borders, then, are the horizon of difference for those resisting the great corporate merger – the ultimate hostile take-over.)
[7 Once again I draw upon the call: Against the US-led ‘coalition of the willing’ (an extrapolation from the Iraq invasion - mjb) of which Latvia counts itself as apart –informed, as it is, by the US Strategic Command’s objective of “Full Spectrum Dominance” (where does this quote come from? – mjb) (that seeks the unilateral total domination of land, sea, air, cyberspace and outer space) (is that a paraphrase? Or an assessment? – mjb) – this publication is interested in project that re-appropriate mapping as a means of cultural expression (which of course brings me back to footnote 1 –mjb). And “Dominance” is a curious notion, and may be another thing that is, like many of the old modernist horizons, something that can only be reached for and never totally held. Which isn’t to say that a lot damage, pain and suffering doesn’t happen in the process – In fact, reaching for Dominance may be whole point, precisely for this reason – And likewise, “mapping” may be a more desirable mechanism. The idea may be to sustain a process of dominating. So, in this respect there wouldn’t be an end-game as such, and the current occupation for Iraq may be the object example of this. The difficulty in registering difference in using certain terms lies in their free-flowing currency as meaning – For example, it is not necessary to re-appropriate mapping (although this gesture is worthwhile to explore insofar as it conceives of itself as different as such) as cultural expression, because it is always that. The hard and necessary thing to see is that war, ownership, conquest, control and other activities attached to “Full Spectrum Dominance” are themselves mapping, and hence, a means of cultural expression – You might call it the culture of dominance, or dominating – And you would be hard pressed to find any culture without an interest in gaining ground. Maybe it’s a matter of gang wars, and who’s side are you on? Spin attempts to claim ownership of language – vernacular and meaning – and is itself a mapping of sense and sensibility – drawing lines in the comprehensive fields of perception and significance. Battles of interpretation over what someone meant by what they said and how it will play on others who have heard it, is evidence, I think, of the fundamental groundlessness of meaning. It is therefore only held by an enforced insistence – whether by repetition or by more deadly armaments. ]


Mapping the Spin

Information is funny stuff. In some of the science magazines I read, I've found it described as an actual substance that underlies the entirety of existence, as something that is more fundamental than the four fundamental physical forces: gravity, electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces. I think they've referred to it as a super-weird substance. Now, obviously, information shapes and determines our lives and the way we live them, yet it is completely invisible and undetectable. It has no actual form; you can only see its effects. Information is a kind of heat. I would suggest that as our society accumulates information, from its hunter-gatherer origins to the complexities of our present day, it raises the cultural temperature.
Alan Moore, Salon.com, 2004/07/22

This quote from the author of some seminal comic-based stories is intriguing to me because it poses an interesting and unique way of measuring limits and problems. No problem is overtly stated as such, nevertheless, the notion of raising temperatures is evocative of a number of things and its link with information helps to metaphorically render information as organic, and subject to thermodynamics. This is very interesting given a predisposition to situating information more commonly as cold and as abstract. It is a kind of neat operation using some familiar designations reminiscent of Marshall McLuhan
[8 http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/mcluhanprojekt/hei%dfmedien2.htm ]

(I shan’t pursue that here, but I indicate it because even though it suggests an old distinction, it is a slightly different emphasis – it isn’t about the medium here, it is about what the content is.)
I also like it because once again it allows me to register and recognize a fascination with the invisible. The point here is that information can’t be seen, but it can be felt. And I believe it therefore suggests that information is, or can be, a viscerally experienced thing – And that the “hotter” it gets, the more symbiotic it becomes vis a vis culture. Because they are both here, it seems, subject to similar thermodynamic behaviour.
What is meant by cultural temperature? – I have no idea, really, and yet it does register with me in a visceral and suggestive way – like a post-hypnotic suggestion it triggers something that should make sense, even if upon close examination it doesn’t. It’s sublime vagueness seems a perfect illustration of the point it is trying to make – it is, after all, coming to me through the heat of information. Information is heat, therefore it heats you up in contact with it, and you are not just you – you are you in the context of many others you have similarities with and difference from – in other words, you are you only by virtue of there being cultures of you – and so to heat you up – a lot of you up, in any case – is to heat up your culture.
It’s retroactive sense-making – like explaining away the impossible with applied rational thought. It might be completely wrong, mind you – but does it matter if it makes good sense? That is the power of spinning. Feeling is as much or more (these days) believing. That’s faith, right?
[9 This reminds me of an interview with former President Bill Clinton in the July issue of Rolling Stone magazine where he qualifies President Bush’s (sic) intelligence as “an emotional intelligence.” And it is, I think, important to understand the political economy of faith in order to understand the efficacy of the Bush Administrations successful machinations. I’ve also read elsewhere about Bush’s social skills – and it has an eerie resonance – I’m not sure why – is it because it evokes a notion of a sociopath? ]

You know the one about how the prevailing maps of the world a lot of us are shown in western schools are a complete misrepresentation (i.e. a distortion) of the shapes and sizes of the actual land masses?
[10 See http://www.fact-index.com/g/ga/gall_peters_projection.html
and http://www.pacificislandtravel.com/nature_gallery/howtoreadamap.htm
and http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/maps.html
and also see The West Wing episode # 38 “Somebody’s going to emergency – Somebody’s going to jail. See: http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/GuidePageServlet/showid-189/epid-30401
Finally this contentious article offers this juicy tidbit: “All maps distort distance, shape, area, or direction to present a map that meets the users' needs.”
From: http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa030201a.htm ]

The traditional Mercator projection distorts the actual landmass such that, for instance, Greenland looks larger than Africa. In an episode of The West Wing, a group of activist cartographers (could there ever really be any other kind of cartographer?) wish to propose that the state begin advancing a more accurate Gall-Peters projection map – not just as an appeal to verisimilitude, but rather because of the cultural implications and biases imbedded in the Mercator projection.
The Gall-Peters map is a map that was published by James Gall and then “presented” by Arno Peters over a hundred years later. It’s contentious to cartographers also because of its tendency, in an interest in presenting equal area, to distort shapes. The Mercator projection distorts area and better projects shapes. There is an interest to attempt a compromise. The basic problem is ability to project a map to begin with. The cartographers don’t speak about the problem as a political or cultural one, but it strikes me how close to the fundamental dilemma of particle physics it is (to wit: observation of quantum matter trades off of position vs momentum).
Anyway, the example is interesting and indicative, I think, of the persistence of spin on the one hand, and persistence of a methodology for tripping on the other. What is “tripping?” I propose it is what is done to spin to make it crash. Take this other quote from the same interview with Alan Moore, for example:

You've got Ronald Reagan -- the much eulogized, recently deceased former president -- who everyone seems to have forgotten was regarded as one of the most low and treacherous individuals by those in Hollywood that he sold out to the McCarthy hearings. This is someone whose response to the AIDS epidemic was probably responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide. This is someone who created Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, or at least set in motion the policies that would create these creatures. This was the architect of much of the world's present misery. Why did we elect him? Because he had been in a lot of films that some quite liked. We thought him an honorable man because in his films he played a lot of honorable men. I believe there are some who believed he had an outstanding war record. Even Ronald Reagan himself talked with misty eyes about the time he liberated concentration camps, which he may have done in a movie. But Ronald Reagan was out of World War II, fortunately for him, because of ill health. So all of his memories of military service came from movies. I've got to say that there are probably better people to elect than film stars.
Alan Moore, Salon.com, 2004/07/22

Tripping is a counter-spin. Tripping sends spin into a crash. Tripping ends in crashing. Ask any drug taker. Tripping is divergence. Tripping is transcendence. Etc. etc. But tripping always ends in crashing. And crashing is generally not pleasant. Even if you are a character in the famous J. G. Ballard story, crashing may be desired, but that does not make it something pleasant. Because crashing is the ultimate violence to momentum – Crashing is taking a position through violence. Because the crash stops hard the movement of a thing.
So if spinning is mapping – what is tripping to mapping? Tripping is exploration. Tripping abandons maps and takes too detailed notice of visceral and perceptual matters to be recognized as the activity of a cartographer. Tripping is outside of the mainstream – even if it is pervasive. Tripping is usually against the law. Tripping, as in “you be tripping” is an imposition – like power tripping, head tripping or ego tripping. Tripping is an upset. Depending upon what you are tripping on, your crash is tailored appropriately to it. Tripping is not really mapping, but tripping can be an application of re-appropriation.
What you need to re-appropriate, to reclaim, as it were, you once had but have now lost, or have had stolen from you. Tripping is like taking that thing back. Crashing on your trip is the mess you make of it, that thing by stopping it in motion. Afterwards is when you try to put it back together. Sometimes you cannot. Mapping is analysis. Tripping is exploration. Crashing is like war.

Mapping Networks

Networks are not places, they are connections. These connections can result in emergent forms. This is not an apparently deliberate operation. It is an organic consequence of networks. You may not be able to predict the measurement of this emergent form qualitatively or quantitatively. It is an event that may be corralled by interpretation. But insofar as it is subject to interpretation it is caught dynamically in play between spin and crash – or spinning and tripping.
What does it mean to claim and enforce ownership of those connections? It means an interest in claiming ownership, and hence control, of the emerging forms. It’s a form of power based upon political theories of recombinant genetics. Semiobiology-biotechnology as a metaphoric language of power. It’s still the age-old battle over the means of production; it has, however, focused itself upon information, and it is treating information as an organic, recombinant thing. The abstract communication conduits therefore are likewise treated as though organic. The ether itself is territory and all territory is corporeal and corporate.
It’s all about a system of gates and turnstiles and toll booths. It’s not really about what you believe, but rather, controlling the price of admission into whatever you desire – including some public space for expression of those beliefs, interests, etc. So dominance has to be made more specific here. It’s a trafficking scheme. And the organizational structure is modeled after the mafia as presented in such parables as the Godfather and the Sopranos.
It’s a subscription-based power structure, with a classic hierarchy of elites and serfs. Digital Medievalism meets Capitalism. You want it? Pay for it. You want a piece of it? Pay your tribute. You want to take it over? You had better be very well connected. You want power? – Get connected.
Which do you think could be more interesting now: – Mapping? Being Mapped? Being the Map? Spinning? Being Spun? Tripping? Being the Trip? Crashing? Being the Crash? Connecting? Being connected? Networking? Being the Network?



Mapping Resistance

This demands very specific terms suited to very specific instances. What is the immediate issue? I go back to the ominous prospect: “Full Spectrum Dominance.”
[11 The label full spectrum dominance implies that US forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained, and synchronised operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations, and with access to and freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air and information. Additionally, given the global nature of our interests and obligations, the United States must maintain its overseas presence forces and the ability to rapidly project power worldwide in order to achieve full spectrum dominance.
From: http://www.russfound.org/Enet/FSD.htm as a quote from the document Joint Vision 2020 http://www.dtic.mil/jointvision/jvpub2.htm ]

This is a very specific military strategy. It one were to understand its ramifications as evidence of a cultural strategy as well, i.e. as advancing into territory not commonly seen to be fit for or requiring military action (lifestyles, for instance – or common public spaces, or into established areas of privacy) by an militia not apparently armed in the traditional way, but rather with cultural weaponry (propaganda, spin, seduction, hypnosis, etc.), then it might be interesting to see if the vulnerabilities to the plan were equivalent.
The stated vulnerability that calls for the action in the geo-political sense is asymmetrical attack.
[12 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetrical_warfare ]

The defense against such an attack is not technology per se, but rather specialized personnel organizations and training to use specific technology – in other words experts and expertise. It’s quite an interesting engagement.
What would an asymmetrical attack in the figurative sense, say as a response to the invasion of privacy, look like? And what would the defense against such an attack look like?
You can imagine the latter to be evident, for instance, in the proliferation of so-called pundits (formerly known as reporters and commentators) who swarm around each address of policy, however obliquely, on the office channels of political information and communication (i.e. so-called “news” stations). Particularly in the USA (sic) where the conservative army of experts and expertise is relentlessly deployed to master the spin of meaning and to assess each movement of a politician like he or she were a horse gearing up for a race. (It’s like talking someone down from a bad trip, also. – Imagine someone doing that to someone who was having a good trip – might that not turn the good trip into a bad one?). Speed here is of the essence for it to be effective, that and an incessant repetition and over-reaching blanketing of the attack.
As for the former, however, it is not so evident. The term refers to terrorist nations and their propensity for targeting weaknesses in conventional countries. Which would mean striking civilian targets much like happen on Sept. 11 2001 in New York City. But how is that “asymmetrical” exactly? And how could anyone imagine a benign version of such a maneuver. I mean, could there be an asymmetrical move in chess?
[13 See http://members.tripod.com/vismath4/sims/ for an asymmetrical chess board – there could be a clue there.
See http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Chess_opening and search string “asymmetrical” for an asymmetrical chess move which “leads to lots of complicated positions” ]

The war versions are morally reprehensible to me.
[14 That is, of the terrorist variety. However, David and Golliath is a palatable version. And a log of Kung Fu – like Wing Chung for instance – are predicated on techniques for the weak and small to use against the strong and tall. Also Hannibal, or Asterix, or Bugs Bunny. ]

But I’m intrigued by the prospect of an asymmetrical argument, for instance.
Imagine if you will, asymmetrical mapping …
Or asymmetrical networking …
[15 The majority of internet services used by residential customers would be asymmetrical. This is due to the fact that when requesting content from a server the amount of data sent to the server is normally far less that the amount of information returned by the server.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetrical Symmetry in Telecommunications. ]

That will be for me later …
But I will leave you now with this definition, courtesy of Encarta.msn.com specifying a mathematical logic meaning:

Asymmetrical:
5. logic mathematics not interchangeable: used to describe a relation between two things where the first has a relation to the second, but the second cannot have the same relation to the first.

Can you see the value in that?

White Woman Singsong

When I am a seasoned woman.
I shall be a vessel.
I shall be a sister sieve.
I shall bare the burden.
I shall tell the tails.
I shaw weave the blankets.
I shall see the future.
I shall keep the secrets.
I shall tend the flame.
I shall be the Spring.
I shall be the Autumn.
Oh Mother,
Hey ya ya ya.
Ya hey hey hey.
I am a seasoned woman.
I am a vessel.
I am a sieve.
I am a burden.
I am a story.
I am warmth.
I am the future.
I am a secret.
I am the fire.
I am a season.
I am a Seasoned Woman.

heart and mind 01

How much do I determine things by the weight of my feeling compared to the weight of my thought?

Can these two things be truly separated?

It strikes me that feeling encompasses: conviction, belief, ideal, fear, longing and loathing, love and hate, inspiration and depression, satisfaction and desperation, desire and despair …

So isn’t it true that feeling really is being?

To have no feelings is to not-be, in a manner of speaking. (But to feel nothing is a whole other thing – a whole other condition or state of being.)

Yet, I am able to position my thinking – (or perhaps it is more accurate to say “my knowledge,” or – even more pointedly – “my conviction”) – against my feeling. (What is the calculus of no thought “against” no feeling?)

Is this word “feeling” a gloss for “emotion?’

I don’t think so. In fact, I am developing the conviction that “emotions” is a misnomer – what is the limit, after all, of what we emote? And is it really “sensible” to assume a sufficient transparency of meaning between these notions of love, hate, anger, joy, etc. and their experience? Is there any limit to the emotive quality of any moment of being, when it’s recognized as such, and thus always expressible?

What is meant to be distinguished – or what is meant by the differentiation (of such an operation) – between emotion and feelings? And so, also (again) between it and thinking? And then (once more) between thinking and all its parceling?

I have used these distinctions, so I obviously assume that I mean something by them – but what? – especially given that my own scrutiny of them calls their veracity into question?

That’s what I must try and sort out, figure out, and work out. (And what is this business of getting “out?”)