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Dear --empyre-- community,
While I hope that our conversation on PRACTICE will continue, (there are
still several engaging threads on the go,) I would like to circulate the
introduction for our second sub-theme, MATTER.
Please do join in on the conversation, if you feel so inclined!
Kindly,
A.
*ON MATTER*
“Without a basic understanding of the material constraints under which
computing systems operate, essential dynamics that animate the built
environment of the virtual will remain invisible and unaccounted for”
(Blanchette 2011: 1055).
According to Matthew Kirschenbaum, digital materiality refers to “the
multiple behaviors and states of digital objects and the relational
attitudes by which some are naturalized as a result of the procedural
friction, or torque, … imposed by different software environments” (2012:
132-133). Distinguishing between forensic (physical) materiality and formal
(symbolic-digital) materiality, Kirschenbaum explains that the formal
materiality specific to digital objects is one of durable appearance – it
involves the “simulation or modeling of materiality via programmed software
processes” (9). Reading Kirschenbaum across Johanna Drucker, this
formulation of formal materiality suggests that digital materiality emerges
through “a process of interpretation rather than a positing of the
characteristics of the objects” (Drucker 1994: 43).
>From October 12th – 19th we will be discussing the terms and implications
of digital materiality further, particularly as it relates to digital
objects. Digital Materiality, as concept and phenomenon, lends itself to a
conversation on digital objects in two significant ways. First, much of the
recent work on digital objects is informed by materiality either through
phenomenological accounts of their “material” grounds or in response to
philosophies associated with Materialism. Second, materiality is
frequently leveraged as a means of animating digital objects, ascribing
them with agency and vitality as autonomous material “things”. In this
case, materiality becomes an essential means through which to articulate
digital objects as such. In response to these terms, and building upon our
discussion of practice, during our second week we will explore questions
such as:
> Beyond citing the physically robust supports of computation, how might we
account for the materiality of the digital? What makes the digital material?
> What are the conceptual and political ramifications of attributing
materiality to digital objects?
> How might we respond to Kirschenbaum and Drucker's assertion that digital
materiality is a matter of modeling, appearance, and interpretation? If we
are in agreement with these terms, what implications does this have for the
terms of materiality? What implications does this have for
conceptualizations of 21st century computing?
> What insight might contemporary new media artists, artworks and making
practices provide into current debates regarding digital materiality?
*Invited Discussants*
*Yuk Hui* is currently postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Digital
Cultures in Leuphana University Lüneburg in Germany, where he has conducted
research projects on the work of Gilbert Simondon, J-F. Lyotard's Les
Immatériaux as well as a project on personal archives; Before joining the
CDC, he was postdoctoral researcher at the Institut de Recherche et
d'Innovation of Centre Pompidou in Paris. Yuk Hui has led several joint
research projects with Tate, Centre Pompidou as well as T-Labs Berlin. He
obtained his PhD in Philosophy from Goldsmiths University of London, with a
thesis titled On the Existence of Digital Objects.
*Jan Robert Leegte* is a net-based artist and curator researching the
phenomenology and conceptual understanding of digital materiality
introduced by the arrival of the computer and the internet. He is
lecturer at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam and at the ArtEZ
Academy in Arnhem and cofounded the Internet Art and Culture research
platform browerBased based online and in Amsterdam.
*Kelani Nichole* is an independent digital strategist and curator working
at the intersection of Art + Technology. She is the Director of TRANSFER,
an exhibition space in Brooklyn, NY that explores the friction of networked
contemporary practice and its physical instantiation. Nichole has produced
and hosted 25 (and counting) exhibitions supporting artists working with
computer-based practices in NYC and Philadelphia, and has exhibited
internationally at art fairs in London, Munich, and Istanbul.
*Nicholas O’Brien* is a net-based artist, curator, and writer. His work has
appeared and featured in several publications including ARTINFO, Rhizome at
the New Museum, Junk Jet, Sculpture Magazine, Dazed Digital, The Creators
Project, DIS, Frieze d/e, San Francisco Art Quarterly, the Brooklyn Rail,
and the New York Times. Currently he teaches as a visiting artist professor
and gallery director for the Department of Digital Art at the Pratt
Institute in Brooklyn.
*Daniel Rourke* is a writer and artist currently finalizing a PhD in Art
(and writing) at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work is concerned
with re-articulating the digital in light of current debates surrounding
posthumanism, and is predominantly realized through critical fabulations
that treat everything as a science fiction. He is visiting lecturer in the
History of Art, Design and Film at Kingston University, London, and
visiting lecturer in Arts and Digital Media at London South Bank
University.
*Brian Cantwell Smith* (Respondent – University of Toronto, Faculty of
Information) – Professor Brian Cantwell Smith's research focuses on the
conceptual foundations of computation, information, and cognitive science,
and on the use of computational metaphors in such fields as biology,
physics, and art. These investigations have increasingly led him into
metaphysics -- specifically, to an attempt to lay out a systematic
metaphysics that aims (i) to steer a path between realism and
constructivism, (ii) to account for the integrated emergence of subject and
object, and (iii) to reconcile our causal and normative understandings of
the world ("matter" and "mattering"). A first cut at this project was first
described in On the Origin of Objects (MIT, 1996). A multi-volume study of
the foundations of computing, The Age of Significance, is being
simultaneously published by MIT Press and serially, on the web, over a
period of five or six years (at www.ageofsignificance.org).
*Phil Thompson* (born 1998, Manchester) is an artist who lives and works in
London. His work engages with the role that digital reproduction has on
original artifacts, as well as questioning the materiality of digital files
themselves. He has exhibited internationally and is currently represented
by Xpo Gallery in Paris.
*REFERENCES OF POTENTIAL INTEREST*
Blanchette, J.F. (2011) “A Material History of Bits.” Journal of the
American Socity for Information Science and Technology, 62(6):1042-1057
Brown, B. (2010) “Matter,” in Critical Terms for Media Studies. Ed.
Mitchell. W.J.T & Hansen, B.N. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chun, W. (2008) “The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future Is a Memory.”
Critical Inquiry V.35:148-171
Drucker, Joanna (2009) SPECLAB: Digital Aesthetics and Projects in
Speculative Computing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ekbia, Hamid R. (2009) “Digital Artifacts as Quasi-Objects: Qualification,
Mediation, and Materiality,” Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology. Vol. 60(12), pp. 2554-2566
Groys, B. (2012) Under Suspicion: A Phenomenology of Media. Trans. Carsten
Strathausen. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hui, Y. (2012) “What is a Digital Object?” Metaphilosophy. Vol 43, No. 4
Kirschenbaum, M. (2010) Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination.
Cambridge: MIT Press
Leegte, J. (2010) “Drop Shadow Talk: Observing the Shadow of Shadows.”
Public Lecture at the Berlin Technische Kunsthochscule: Hochschule fuer
Gestaltung.
Leonardi, P. and Barley, S. (2008) “Materiality and Change: Challenges to
building better theory about technology and organizing.” Information and
Organization, 18:159-176
Lillemose, Jacob (2006) “Conceptual Transformations of Art: From
Dematerialization of the Object to Immateriality in Networks,” in Curating
Immateriality. Ed.
Nunes, M. (2011) “Error, Noise, and Potential: The Outside of Purpose,” in
Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures. Ed. Mark Nunes. New
York: Continuum
Parikka, J. (2012) “New Materialism as Media Theory: media Natures and
Dirty Matter.” Communication And Critical/Cultural Studies. Vol. 9, No. 1,
pp. 95-100. Routledge
Steyerl, H. (2010) “A Thing Like You and Me.” e-flux. 2010:04
Steyerl, H. (2009) “In Defense of the Poor Image.” e-flux. 2009:11
Stevens, Martijn (2012) “Settle for Nothing: Materializing the Digital,”
ArtNodes No. 12.
Thrift, N. (2006) “Beyond Mediation: Three New Material Registers and their
Consequences,” in Materiality. Ed. David Miller. Durham: Duke University
Press.
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