Resolution Dispute 0010 : Genealogy (vs. /his/tory)

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Resolution Dispute 0000 : Materiality [[resolution studies]]
“‘Material witness’ is a legal term; it refers to someone who has knowledge pertinent to a criminal act or event that could be significant to the outcome of a trial. In my work, I poach the term ‘material witness’ to express the ways in which matter carries trace evidence of external events. But the material witness also performs a twofold operation; it is a double agent. The material witness does not only refer to the evidence of event but also the event of evidence.”
- Schuppli, Susan. Dark Matters: an interview with Susan Schuppli, in: Living Earth, 2016.
 

“Materiality is reconceptualized as the interplay between a text's physical characteristics and its signifying strategies, a move that entwines instantiation and signification at the outset. This definition opens the possibility of considering texts as embodied entities while still maintaining a central focus on interpretation. It makes materiality an emergent property, so that it cannot be specified in advance, as if it were a pre-given entity. Rather, materiality is open to debate and interpretation, ensuring that discussions about the text's "meaning" will also take into account its physical specificity as well.”
- Hayles, N. Katherine. "Print is flat, code is deep: The importance of media-specific analysis." Poetics Today 25.1 (2004): 67-90.

A reflexive approach to materiality makes it possible to re-conceptualize materiality itself as ‘the interplay between a text’s physical characteristics and its signifying strategies’. Rather than thinking in the mediums’ material as fixed in physicality, a re-definition of materiality is useful because it opens the possibility of considering any text as embodied entity “while still maintaining a central focus on interpretation. In this view of materiality, it is not merely an inert collection of physical properties but a dynamic quality that emerges from the interplay between the text as a physical artifact, its conceptual content, and the interpretive activities of readers and writers.”

Reflections on materiality should not just happen on a technological level. To fully understand a work, each level of materiality should be studied: the physical and technological artifact, its conceptual content, and the interpretive activities of reader, artist and audience. [the choice of any] digital material is not innocent or meaningless. With enough knowledge of the material, an investigation into digital materialilty can uncover stories about the origin and history of the material, by others.


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The slides underneath are from the course ‘Materiality’, which took place over three meetings during the New Media class ‘Beyond Resolution’ I thaught as substitute professor at the KHK (Kassel) in 2018. During these weeks we unpacked the term ‘materiality’ via a research into various file formats. The slides are clickable; they either link to the work reference or zoom. 

 

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Resolution Dispute 0001 : Genealogy (vs. /his/tory)  [[resolution studies]]
“Genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to restore an unbroken continuity that operates beyond the dispersion of forgotten things [...]. On the contrary, [...] it is to identify the accidents, the minute deviations [...] the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us; it is to discover that truth or being does not lie at the root of what we know and what we are, but the exteriority of accidents.”
- Foucault, Michel. "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History." in: the Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow (Harmondsworth: Penguin) 1984. p.81
 

Genealogy (vs. /his/tory)
While history often refers to the study of lines of descent and origin, the development of families and the tracing of their lineages, in reality, especially in the digital realm, the development of material does not follow any traditional lines of descent. If at all, the ‘historical continuity’ of digital material is one of breaks, voids, bends, forks, in-betweens, legacy, instabilities, ossification, abandonment and turns. In fact, there is no such thing as a ‘technological continuum’. Rather than ‘the history of a digital material’, there are many, parallel, interconnected non-linear, fragmented and overlapping discourses which impact each other in many directions. Thus, digital material, is best described following a genealogical model.

Genealogy does not pretend to go back in time, to restore what Foucault calls an "unbroken continuity, that operates beyond the dispersion of forgotten things". Genealogy is a specific type of history that deconstructs that which once was unified and makes a continuity of discontinuities. It researches the descents and emergences of how systems of affiliation come into play and maps the understanding and meaning of the object accordingly.

Genealogy considers the many affiliated, interconnected and (geo-)fragmented processes that build their own discourses: it intends to shine a light on why particular technologies develop a social-political momentum in a specific point in time and how this momentum changes over time. To write a genealogy means to write the stories of emergence of a use or practice; it reveals the pre-existing battles present at the moment of arising. It threads different strands constructed from ambiguous, pre-existing discourses, it (inter)connects or juxtaposes generations of different communities and their working methods, conceptual themes and politics.

There is no such thing as a complete history. There are only the many stories from different perspectives, derived from uncertain interpretations, that are neither true nor false. The many stories of media technology are constantly subject to revision:

while their language systems emerge, meanings shift, idioms ossify and vernacular turns to affectual signifiers.
... and then they change again.

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1. Foucault, Michel. "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History." in: the Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow (Harmondsworth: Penguin) 1984. p.81

The slides underneath are from the New Media class ‘Beyond Resolution’ which I thaught as substitute professor at the KHK (Kassel) in the Sommer Semester of 2018. During this week we unpacked the term ‘Genealogy’ via in two weeks; one week was dedicated to standardization via test cards and the next week was dedicated to the development of the meaning of one specific glitch effect: macroblocking, specifically in moving image. The slides are clickable; they either link to the work reference or zoom.

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A Genealogy of the Color Test Card (about objectification and hidden bias)

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KhK Winter Semester 2018: Genealogy block
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Resolution Dispute 0001 : Habit “Habit isn’t the same as instinct; habit is a learned action that becomes automatic. Crucially, habit is always something you learn from others, or in response to the environment. […] I understand habit as the scar of others within the self.”
- Chun, Wendy. Characters in a Drama called Big Data, in: Sonic Acts. Noise of Being Reader, 2017. p 114.

Resolution Dispute 0010 : Habit [[resolution studies]]
“Habit isn’t the same as instinct; habit is a learned action that becomes automatic. Crucially, habit is always something you learn from others, or in response to the environment. […] I understand habit as the scar of others within the self.”
- Chun, Wendy. Characters in a Drama called Big Data, in: Sonic Acts. Noise of Being Reader, 2017. p 114.
 

Following the ideal logic of transparent immediacy, technology is designed in such a way that the user will forget about the presence of the medium. Generally, technology aims to offer an uninterrupted flow of functionality and information. This concept of flow is not just a trait of the machine, but also a feature of society as a whole, writes DeLanda.¹ DeLanda distinguishes between chaotic disconnected flows and stable flows of matter, that move in continuous variations, conveying singularities. DeLanda also references Deleuze and Guattari, who describe flow in terms of the beliefs and desires that both stimulate and maintain society.² Deleuze and Guattari write that a flow is something that comes into existence over long periods of time. Within these periods, conventions, customs and individual habits are established, while deviations tend to become rare occurrences and are often (mis)understood as accidents (or in computation: glitches). Although the meaningfulness of every day life might in fact be disclosed within these rare occurances, their impact or relevance is often ruled out, because of social tendencies to emphasize the norm.

To move beyond resolution also means to move beyond the habitual. One way to do this is by creating noise, for instance in the form of glitch: a short lived fault or break from an expected flow of operation within a (digital) system. The glitch is a puzzling, difficult to define and enchanting noise artifact; it reveals itself as accident, chaos or laceration and gives a glimpse into normally obfuscated machine language. Rather than creating the illusion of a transparent, well-working interface to information, the glitch can impose both technological and perceptual challenges to habitual and ideological conventions. It shows the machine revealing itself. Suddenly, the computer appears unconventionally deep, in contrast to the more banal, predictable, surface-level behaviors of ‘normal’ machines and systems.

To really understand the complexity of the user’s perceptual experience it is important to focus on these rare occurances - to create an awareness of the users habits by use of, for instance, the accident.

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1. Manuel DeLanda, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, New York: Zone Books, 1991. p. 20.
2. Gilles Deleuze and Pierre-Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Trans. B. Massumi, Londen: The Athlone Press, 1988. p. 219.

The slides underneath are from the New Media class ‘Beyond Resolution’ which I thaught as substitute professor at the KHK (Kassel) in the Sommer Semester of 2018. During this week we unpacked the term ‘Habitual Use’ via a research into various layers of standardization. The slides are clickable; they either link to the work reference or zoom.

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From Artefact to Effect

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KhK winter semester 2018: Genealogies block


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