Curious : In-Forming singular/plural design

As part of The Internet as Playground and Factory, a conference series on the politics of digital media organised by Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Orit Halpern, and Melissa Gregg introduced their individual areas of research and idiosyncratic takes on the notion of ‘affect’ and its evolution in meaning today as a result of technological progress.

Patricia Ticineto Clough is a sociologist currently developing a theory or logic of affect, or to use her own words, “the measurability of affect” which she calls affect-itself (a reference to the idea of life-itself) through various techno-scientific and mathematical approaches. Her proposal stressed the importance of affect as being a potential, which intangible in itself, but ‘real’ nonetheless; and that, as a potential, affect could be measured, not necessarily in terms of the human body, but rather in terms of its relation to value, measure, exchanges and accumulations. Clough referred to the quantum physicist and theorist, David Bohm, who wrote extensively on the topic of Wholeness and the Implicate Order (also the title of his book on perception and the understanding of matter), and who suggested that the world was enfolding and unfolding within itself. This lead Clough’s logic of affect-itself to include open-ended mathematical as well as biological extensions: she described it as “a scale-less matter [that holds] new curves in the temporary extension of digital experience and spatial experience.” In addition, she investigated Michel Foucault’s study of the seriality of governable populations, and noted that the ‘milieu’ should be understood as a spatial-temporal topology; which is to say that, the ‘milieu’ has both depth and breadth, and is mutating through time. This is where, I think, Clough’s idea of measurability of affect-itself takes full shape. Affect can only be measured when seen as a quantifiable value (divorced from the human body), and seen in light of its potentiality and ability to vary from past, present, and future. Clough ended her talk with a note on the aesthetics of value and measure conventions, and raised the necessity of rethinking measure and probability.

The second guest-speaker, Orit Halpern (PhD History of Science), discussed perception and data information as understood in terms of cybernetics, communication science, psychology, and cognitive science. Her presentation revolved around the works of Gyorgy Kepes (1942, 1944) and Charles & Ray Eames, who looked at vision as an organ of choice, able to link and combine abstract forms (or data points) and allow new associations to occur in the perceptive field. For them, this was an anticipatory sight of design, where making links between abstract matter could generate new patterns of perception and help people develop a more comprehensive method for interpreting information and understanding communication. Halpern also touched upon the concept of algorithms, scales of information, and data storage, and by doing so, made connections between perception and cognitive processes by distinguishing data storage from mental processes. She noted that, in cybernetic vision, perception and cognition become the same, and that the brain and the eye become closely related. She gave the example of Warren McCulloch’s mapping of the eyes and brain of a frog, which suggest that the vision is a relationship of understanding and seeing, cognition and perception.

Finally, Melissa Gregg, specialist in affect theory and work, presented her study on affective labour as it appears today in white-collar professional work and the creative industry in Australia. For her, those are today similarly equipped environments. Her documentation demystified aspects of domestic labour (or un-free labour) as discernable in undocumented migrants, conscription, containment, students, the critically ill, and workfare regimes. Some of her findings were that with an increasingly digital lifestyle, workers often express an inability to switch ‘off’, an intensification of stress and anxiety levels, and a heightened sense of responsibility. And more crucially, workers find themselves doing unrecognized work. Greggs’ presentation essentially showed that the digital, whether as domestic appliances, mobile devices or computer stations, has developed new ways of thinking about work in terms of gender, race, and environment.

Source:
The Internet as Playground and Factory. The New School, New York City, NY. Date: November 13, 2009. Patricia Ticineto Clough. “The Digital Affect and Measure Beyond Biopolitics.” Orit Halpern. “The Scanning Eyes: Knowledge and Visuality in Cybernetics.” And, Melissa Gregg. “Affective Labour: Past and Present.”

In early September 2009, I met Rob Wynne (see www.robwynne.net), an American artist living in New York and had the opportunity to visit his studio in Soho, where he showed me a retrospective of his work as it evolved from the early stages of his life to the present. As a dyslexic, his work revolves around ideas of language and found defects in texts and matter. He uses a wide range of materials and works on a variety of scales and surfaces, from installations, glass text, drawings, embroidered paintings, to ceramics as well as glass sculptures. Two of his works, which particularly touched me were: his exploration of embroidered creatures with their see-through quality unveiling the entangled threads as an expression of movement and shadow, as well as his glass texts which clearly reveal the visual experience of dyslexia.

On October 13, 2009, at the Great Hall at Cooper Union, was hosted a conference entitled:‘Reckoning with Torture: Memos and Testimonies from the “War on Terror.” ’ The guest speakers included Matthew Alexander, Jonathan Ames, K. Anthony Appiah, Paul Auster, Ishmael Beah, David Cole, Don DeLillo, Eve Ensler, Nell Freudenberger, Jenny Holzer, A.M. Homes, Jameel Jaffer, Susanna Moore, Jack Rice, George Saunders, Amrit Singh, and Art Spiegelman. The conference aimed at bringing to light hidden information of torturing methods used to obtain information from suspected terrorists in the aftermath of September 11.

The conference was presented as a series of readings from censored documents, such as CIA memos, interrogation accounts, presidential speeches, FBI e-mails, autopsy reports, and tribunal transcripts. Additional evidence were shown as video captures of detainees’ testimonials, clearly reflecting the dehumanizing conditions of the methods and their repercussions. The goal of this conference was, I think, first to create accountability of tortures, abuses, and killings made in the name of America, and second to comment on selective information and create more awareness and evidential proof. In an ongoing backdrop slide-show, Jenny Holzer exposed her latest work showing biometry documents.

The Cuban Art NY (see www.cubaartny.org) offered a collective exhibition of contemporary Cuban artists in New York, in October 2009, at the Dactyl Foundation Gallery. Some of the artists on view included: Lilliam Cuenca, Carmen Herrera, Giovanni Bosch, Carlos Estevez, Heriberto Mora, Mario García Joya, Armando Guiller, and Arturo Rodriguez.

I was taken there by one of my Cuban friends and while this is all very interesting in terms of symbolism and the way those artists mesh their indigenous culture with contemporary ideas of human communication, environmental activities and philosophical themes; I did not think I would find anything potentially related to my research. But I did…

Armando Guiller is a mechanical engineer by training, and a growing artist by passion, and has won numerous honorary awards. His sculptural work has the ability to communicate with scientists, engineers and artists, as it involves craft, mathematical precision, and highly conceptual and philosophical investigations into spatial and perspectival associations. He uses both industrial (metal) and natural (wood) materials, which he treats himself with heavy machinery. Guiller’s modular structures address the relationships between time, space and matter, with a specific focus on helical displacement, which he names “Mechanical Archetypes.” As it has been defined, “a helix is a type of space curve,” and is characterized by its curving property as it continuously performs an angular directional growth.

Le Sens Propre from Cisma on Vimeo.

http://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/player.cfm?vidid=43

“As a quest for expanding the vocabulary of social practices and of the object-subject relationship, emotional technology (smart, intelligent) simulates human behaviour and creative energy. It revisits the environment anew for new types of interactions and explorations. Golan Levin is a software artist who creates screens and robotic objects that study sound, speech, movement, and gaze. In his work he explores the ability for motion to create shapes and enable experimental activities in a social context. In this way, interaction reveals a type of individual personality (rhythm, shapes, emotions) and collaborative relationships between the subject-object and subject-to-subject interface. The screen results in a series of movements and shapes that emit sounds. Making visible the un-designed, real the designed.” (Diab Yunes, 2009)

In a TED talk: “Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you,” Levin explains that his process originates from Oliver Sacks’ observation of synaesthesia (that some people can hear colours and others taste shapes), which he calls ‘funaesthesia’.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/golan_levin_ted2009.html