Aesthetic
States of Frenzy: Friedrich NietzscheÕs
aesthetic philosophy and the Odyssey Palimpsest noisy mesh challenge
to the post-modern tragic carnival
For
Cyber-Nietzsche: Tunnels, Tightropes, Net-&-Meshworks at The New School April
13th, 2013
"If
there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one
physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy.Ó - Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight
of the Idols
Odyssey Palimpsest #19
The
realm of aesthetics holds for Friedrich
Nietzsche a position of supremacy. For
Nietzsche, art is the unique offset to prevailing
forms of nihilism. The basic role of art in Nietzsche's philosophy is
that of establishing a countermovement to nihilism because art both destroys
handed down nihilistic values and creates novel aesthetic values that allow for
our inner intensity to flourish. This paper will address what Nietzsche called
the aesthetic state - a state of being that is achieved through the intelligent
sensuality of
art - through a recent body of work that I have executed called the Odyssey Palimpsest.
For
Nietzsche, the aesthetic state is an altered state of consciousness achieved
through an artistic transcendental aesthetic. This aesthetic is the highest
form of human activity, because in certain works of art opposites are
conjoined. And it is through the majesty of such conjoined art that we find an
optimistic path out of nihilism and towards our own aggrandizement. So we
artists and thinkers need Nietzsche now more than ever - because there is so
much to be nihilistic about in our mad and tragic world. Consequently, I am
interested in Nietzscheian tragic aesthetic when Nietzsche emphasizes affective
states Ð states of mind/body that we may enter into as a form of creative
expression of our will to power in art.
Today
the meeting of neuroaesthetics and information
technology is one of the vital and pleasurable arenas in which interesting
currents align for art. My endeavor here shall be to give evidence of this
pleasurable meeting through my recent meshwork series called Odyssey Palimpsest Ð work that returns us
symbolically to Homer's ancient lost hero. I will place this somewhat odd Odyssey in relationship to Nietzsche's
affirmation of life and in line with his development of the tragic hero in The
Birth of Tragedy (1872).
His doctrine of tragedy is based in the fundamental knowledge of the oneness of
everything and of art as the joyous hope that the spell of false individuation
may be broken in the interests of a consciousness of restored oneness. Thus it
is an affirmation of the mystery of everything.
Odyssey Palimpsest is a highly elaborated ornamental
scene sequence that embodies primordial joyful frenzy and primordial pain. The
lyric poet that you will see in Odyssey Palimpsest identifies
himself with the pain of the world and merges into the unification of the
world. But perhaps it is necessary to comment briefly on two of NietzscheÕs
well-known aesthetic formulations: Dionysus (the god of intoxication, orgies,
forces of nature and music) and Apollo (god of individuation, illusion, form
and order). This
use of the concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian is famously linked to
Nietzsche where he wants to bring to our attention the way in which the
development of art is bound up with the duality of the Apollonian and
Dionysian. As you know, Nietzsche's aesthetic usage of these concepts, which
was later developed philosophically, first appeared in The Birth of Tragedy. His premise there was
that the fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian artistic impulses are needed to
form artistic tragedies. It is through a dialectical
interplay of these two opposing - and at the same time complementary -
aesthetic elements that my art owes its continuous allegiance to
Nietzsche.
Nietzsche famously assimilated the Apollonian and the Dionysian
together under the name of an experience of art. Odyssey Palimpsest
attempts an equivalent, as it fuses chaotic disturbance with
classical beautiful forms. It is an attempt at situating us somewhere between
the surface of empirical diverse reality and the chasm of shattering
incoherence where we must each pick through the meshwork and recover figurative
meaning out of entangled ground. This approach relates to my book Immersion Into Noise (2011) where I have mapped out a broad-spectrum of aesthetic
activity I call the art of noise by
tracing its past eruptions where figure/ground merge and flip the common
emphasis to some extent. Immersion Into Noise concludes with a look at the figural aspect of this aesthetic
lodged within the ground of consciousness itself.[1]
But we must
address noise aesthetics and the art context within our broad-spectrum
data-monitoring info-economy environment of background machine-to-machine
gigabyte[2]
communication murmur - and think
through and deploy noise art as an embedded subject within the
larger environment of ubiquitous computing cognitive capitalism.[3] To do so, I will be examining Odyssey
Palimpsest along with some trends and vivid prospects for what I have been
speculatively calling noise art - that is visual art as compared to noise
music.[4]
In brief,
noise art aesthetics[5]
is an unbound zone (where qualitative shifts of coordinates takes place) in
which it is possible to carry out art experiments that would be unachievable in
a different place. What noise art aesthetics has to offer is the possibility to
understand things in a different way, shifting boundaries, departing from
established functions.
Of course
art itself has recently ossified into some established functions that might
provoke a nihilistic response. For example, I have been following the public
proclamations on art of The New School philosopher Simon Critchley. Critchley
described in 2010 contemporary artÕs dominant trend as an in-authenticity of
Òmannerist situationismÓ based in rituals of reenactment.[6]
Critchley goes on in 2012 to describe the
circumstances further, as the Òcold mannerist obsessionality of the
taste for appropriation and reenactment that has become hegemonic in the art
world.Ó[7]
So things have gotten no better. Clearly something deep-seated must be
reevaluated. And art aesthetics is more interesting when it does the work of
shifting meaning. So I am declining here CritchleyÕs urging for contemporary
art to focus in on the monstrous, as, in my opinion, that parody of
gloomy general dystopia only plays into the extreme spectacle aspect of
mannerism. To be fair, Critchley doesnÕt explain what or who he means by the
monstrous[8]
but when I think of the monstrous today I think of the high visibility of Lady
Gaga (and her little monsters), extreme Hollywood lowbrow movies and grotesque
far right political claims and postures. And in art (commodified and co-opted
by the socio-economic system that is its life blood) we have had the work of Eduardo
Kac, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Orlan and Paul McCarthy.
No, here I
am only interested in a new contemporary aesthetic labor based in a certain
exquisite untouchablity, and unseeablity Ð a monster sacrŽ affinity of
disconnectedness, that focuses on an impregnable diva-like commitment to a
nihilistic aesthetic of becoming imperceptible.[9] I am
interested in an exquisite monster sacrŽ aesthetic (where personal
anthropomorphic eccentricities and indiscretions are tolerated) that is bent on
combining the neo-materialist[10]
vibrant world with a wider vision of political awareness including private
spiritual, ecstatic or numinous themes accessible through the generative
subjective realm of each individual; an aesthetics of perception politics based
on resonance - not a politics of
visibility - which reveals in minute particulars the full spectrum of the
extensive social-political dimensions.
This monster
sacrŽ affinity is a materialist nihilism of no that (if it
goes far enough) can transform a metamorphosis (subject to the flickering
formative forces of emergence)[11]
into an all-embracing yes of delicate abhorrence. So I am
advocating here with Odyssey Palimpsest not the passive and thus
incomplete nihilism of form, but a generative and virulent and curative
nihilistic frenzy that unleashes forces of reverberation to emerge and resonate
like a web of inter-connected, molecular and viral relational affects and
intensities of dissonance, deviation, and the incidental. I believe this to be
in accordance with NietzscheÕs
aesthetic state.
Such noise frenzy makes
use of the key notion of eternal return Ð an access to an appreciation of the
eternal through analogy - that is at the heart of great art and enables art to
express hope within the reality of current tragedy. It is, indeed, the access
to the eternal that is the key motif of The Birth of Tragedy as is suggested when
Nietzsche writes that any artwork is worth only as much as it is able to press
upon experience a stamp of the eternal.
My project Odyssey Palimpsest is situated in my
immersive noise theory of turmoil exchanges of figure/ground
relationships: an agile art that emphasizes human and non-human entanglements.
This is an art that depends on playing out nihilistic negativity by
intensifying its forces into an affirmative nihilism. This nimble nihilist bracketing
pushes us towards open de-familiarizations, challenging us to think outside of
the normal system of human consciousness. So Odyssey Palimpsest as nimble frenzy is implicated in the very type of
problematic instability that the ÔselfÕ undergoes in NietzscheÕs thought: the
cohesiveness of the culture/state distinction, like the cohesiveness of the
Ôself/otherÕ distinction disintegrates with the ontological instability
produced by the annihilation of the real as distinguishable from the illusory.
With a nimble art of noise - based in the distinction between active nihilism
and passive nihilism (or monstrous nihilism) - Odyssey Palimpsest can depict the underground vigor of form as an active
verve that can only be speculated at by thinking beyond the discursive. And
that enacts a shift away from the subject-object dualism that is currently much
lauded by Object-Oriented Ontologists.
The
embeddedness of our inner world - the life of our imagination with its intense
drives, suspicions, fears, and loves - guides our intentions and actions in the
political-economic world. Our inner world is the only true source of meaning
and purpose we have and exquisite frenzy-gazing[12]
(that involves self-investigation) is the way to discover for ourselves this
inner life. So we might consider now that, in contrast to our frenzied data
market surveillance culture,[13]
that which trains us to fear the atrocious eyes of outer perception, a protracted
gazing art practice based in absorption could encourage the development of agile
clandestine exchanges based on the embedded individual intuitive eye in
conjunctive contact with an abundant optical-mnemonic commons
(not cloud)[14]
that shares a sensibility for building a defensive force.
Of course
this sphere of anti-purist gazing-commons (essentially a cooperative rejection
of the tyranny of labels, essential identities, privileged abstractions and
fixed ideas) is what allows art to construct unstable distinctions between
subjects and objects that embraces the entire spectrum of imaginary spaces;
from the infinitude of actual forms to formless voids of virtuality.
Subsequently, Odyssey Palimpsest requires a challenging exchange of
the hierarchy of figure and ground (figure and abstraction) through a struggle
between noise[15] and
invisibility.[16] So I want
to argue for an agony of style of logo invisibility - and the importance that
should be given noise art aesthetics.
The
principle of constructing patterns of infinite becomings is perhaps inherent in
avant-garde artistic tradition (avant-garde values). But this avant-garde now,
I think, should be considered in terms of noisy invisibility not ontology, as
deviating from the regularities of visible normality provides the avant-garde
new sources for artistic production. Certainly, the values of the avant-garde
have always been interfering with the channels of artistic production and
reception - and these values are responsible for expanding the forms and
definitions of art itself.[17]
But like in nature, noise in art plays a productive role in the invisible life
of a system when it stresses becoming-imperceptible.
But a
becoming-imperceptible-invisible monster sacrŽ, today can no longer be a form
of enfant terrible with-drawl, akin to Marcel DuchampÕs strategic invisibility,[18]
but rather a phantasmagorical plunge into what FŽlix Guattari expresses as the chaosmosis.[19]
Odyssey Palimpsest marks such a qualitative transformation into a non-place where
being and non-being reverse into each other, unfolding out and enfolding in
their respective outsides. This short-circuit causes a creative conflagration
typical of the art of noise.
LetÕs
consider the difference between noise art (based on an individualÕs inner
vision) verses the monstrous mass machine data market,[20]
with its digital functionalism. For me the difference is in looking into and
projecting onto something - thereby discovering an emerging manifestation based
in invisibility - as opposed to looking at something. In that sense it
requires an active slow participation on the part of the viewer - and the noise
style of Odyssey Palimpsest demands as much. For me this
requires use of hidden mental participation and, as such, is now essential in
our climate of monstrous mass media (mass-think) in that it plays against the
grain of given objective consensus visibility. In that sense Odyssey
Palimpsest is more like a service product (or a server).[21]
However, my
main interest in invisibility with Odyssey Palimpsest lay in a texture of emerging claims of art-as-politics - with its
emphasis on the production of individuality based in a political physiology (a
political function of living systems) with a strong proposition of emergence as
the key aspect. So, I will continue the work done in Immersion Into Noise by looking at the art of noise as an emergent property rooted
in obscurity. This comparison relates to my palimpsest work as an indeterminacy-based
noise artist.
Now I would
like to look more specifically at the possibility of further developments in
noise art aesthetics concerning where becoming-imperceptible and
becoming-perceptible nimbly interact. As sketched out in my book Immersion
Into Noise, the evolution of visual noise art develops from certain
pre-historic cave areas and baroque grottoes, to certain levels of mannerist
and counter-mannerist complexity, to noisy spatial renderings in various
exuberant architectural styles, then into cubism, futurism, dada, fluxus and
other 20th century avant-garde movements, into the screech of
technological noise art, and into the softness of software noise art aesthetics.
As noted
above, what is important in the art of noise aesthetics is its intentional and
elongated invisibility[22]
and enigma. That is why this subject is so hard to write about. The very topic
is a very difficult one to pin down and make intelligible for good reason. The
art of noise is an art of disbelief in habitual codes of practice and
understanding. You must take the art of noise on its own terms or risk doing
violence to the art.
Noise art is
not a set of homogeneous practices, but a complex field converging around
perceived weaknesses in the art system. Such a noisy hyper-cognitive stance[23]
happens when the particular of electronic connectivity is seen as part of an
accrual total system by virtue of its being connected to everything else -
while remaining dissonant. Noise aesthetics is a complex and ambiguous
political gazing, and its theory of an art of resistance and investigation
would be increasingly valuable to an analytical social movement based on
skepticism while undermining monstrous market predictabilities, as it
strengthens unique personal powers of imagination and critical thinking. This
is so as it counters the effects of our age of simplification: effects which
have resulted from the glut of consumer oriented entertainment messages and political
propaganda which the monstrous mass media feeds us daily in the interests of
corporate profit and governmental psychological manipulations.
The noise
art aesthetic of Odyssey Palimpsest is that of dissonant immersion into
a maelstrom of glossolaliaic unintelligibility, chaos and exaltation. Such an
art of noise style is a way of seeing that reverses the order of figure/ground[24]
to ground/figure. It collapses being into non-being (ontological implosion). It
creates ambivalent aleatory[25]
processes that are true to our inner essential world: dynamic pools of
expansion and disintegration.
Odyssey
Palimpsest
refuses easy consumption then and encourages love,
because a love for visual noise art will make perturbing events in your life
more tolerable. It will make you able to see more and make you more adaptable
to disturbance, rather than being torn up about them. It will help you to avoid
psychic ossification by your loving the space of latent expanse. This is what
suggests referring Odyssey Palimpsest
to the aesthetics of the sublime,
which, in the 18th century, was linked to the grandness of natural phenomena.
But Odyssey Palimpsest is an innovative
version of the sublime in which, for the first time, the embeddedness that we
recognize ourselves in concerning nature matches up with our subliminal inner
orb. This embed awareness can be suggested and promoted by noisy artistic
becomings such as Odyssey Palimpsest -
as its generative aspect serves to produce unpredictable results based on
arithmetic instructions contained in its code.
Poetically,
the hyper-noise dense texture of Odyssey Palimpsest, along with
its uniform rhythms, suggests to me a possibility of connecting ourselves
psychically to the great chain of being (that which proceeds us and of which we
are apart). However, this requires an active imagination that is aided by the
visualization properties offered up. Perhaps Odyssey Palimpsest then is a
psychotic outburst that disrupts smooth image operations with an explosion of
buried visual hysteria that promises a highly diverse world. Its
incomprehensibility by design connects the commons to unconscious frenzy
through what I think to be a type of chaos magic.[26]
It creates the visualization bridge between form and intuition, as its
uncertain images have more information in them than a clear certain image (or
sound) where the information quickly becomes redundant. Thus Odyssey
Palimpsest gives rise to new thought. It promotes the emergence of new forms
of an old story: art.
As mentioned
above, what is important in Odyssey Palimpsest is its
intentional enigma. It needs to be obscure to the degree that its codes cannot
be discerned. This phantasmagorical obscurity and mystery is increasingly
desirable in a world that has become increasingly data-mined, mapped,
quantified, specialized and identified in a straight-forward matter of fact
way. This will for enigma is the basis for discovering and entering into an
immersion into the art of noise, even.[27]
Its goal is
to disrupt instrumental logic and contradict, counteract, and cancel out false
reason and hollow feeling. Suffering and joy, like figure and ground, are here
tied together in frenzy, neither one without the other. Thus Odyssey
Palimpsest suggests and produces stress in us; one might even say an urgent
anxiety of disintegration. So dedication to its merits, if there are any, might
well be described as vaguely heroic, because Odyssey Palimpsest suggests
the revelation of a plentiful nihilistic life force. Thus Odyssey Palimpsest implies a
cul-de-sac of ill communication (vacuole)[28]
Ð the communication of enigma itself as experienced by the lyric poet.
Thus Odyssey
Palimpsest has something that words risk diminishing. Nevertheless, I
obviously have felt that I must take that risk because if we are to continue to
live among electronic vibrations that mine us, it may be helpful to talk back
against them. But yes, Odyssey Palimpsest is the transmitter of
unspeakable secrets. That is why art noise matters. It wants more from us.
Moreover, it teaches us to want more from art. It teaches
us to look deeper, to hear more, and to trust the inner noise.
There are
now many artists who see the symbolic and metaphorical dimension of a work as
of little importance. I am not one
of them. For me, the real worth of vigorous contemporary art is in its ability
to deliver to the commons excessive sensually-embodied implications. As noise
art aesthetics are indistinguishable from that which it produces as Odyssey
Palimpsest, in might be considered as a panpsychic[29]
sphere that contains systems of chance operations within it.
So,
as you can see, for Odyssey Palimpsest I
eagerly identified with Nietzsche's Dionysian attention to the frantic painful
beauty of primal unity. For as he wrote, ÒThe brightest clarity of the image
did not suffice us, for this seemed just as much to reveal something as to
conceal something.Ó My urge with Odyssey
Palimpsest has been, in his words, to Òtear the veil and to uncover
the mysterious backgroundÓ of life through the powerful analogy of art.
Such
a Dionysian approach to art includes the notions that The Birth of Tragedy emphasizes in its title
- eternal recurrence - and the realization of Òthe eternal joy of becomingÓ that
is the creative act.
The
Dionysian embraces the frenzied chaotic nature of experience as all-important;
not just on its own, but also as it is intimately connected with the
Apollonian. The Dionysian magnifies us, but only so far as we realize that it
emphasizes the harmony that can be found within oneÕs chaotic experience. Such a
thinking of frenzy through the prism of Dionysian aesthetics was agitating my
inner logic during the summer of 2012 when I did the lion's share of Odyssey Palimpsest in
Corsica[30]
and Provence.[31]
Nietzsche
sees in eternal harmonious unification the genesis of the highest expression of
art: tragedy that allows us to sense an underlying essence of primordial unity,
which revives our Dionysian nature. This is an almost indescribably pleasurable
feeling to try to capture, but it was my goal for Odyssey
Palimpsest: art as means of self-transcendent turbulence.
Art is the great poetic stimulus to radical life, so from an
aesthetic viewpoint we need not to look for purpose, for art is purpose in
itself: the purpose of life. Indeed for Nietzsche, art is the supreme delight
of existence. With the eternal return at the heart of Odyssey
Palimpsest, I hope to articulate a turning to ecstatic frenzy within the current construction of
contemporary tragedy.
[1] This
involves a question of the qualities (and levels) of awareness of our own
consciousness within aesthetic realms which we are capable of attaining through
noise art. Nechvatal, Joseph. Immersion Into Noise. Ann Arbor:
Open Humanities Press (2011) p.
210
[2] Data storage
is measured in bytes. A gigabyte is a billion bytes of information. The New
York Stock Exchange, produces up to 2,000 gigabytes of data per day that must
be stored for years.
[3] Stupendous
amounts of data generated by nearly one billion people are set in motion each
day as, with an innocuous click or tap, people download movies on iTunes, check
credit card balances through VisaÕs Web site, send e-mail with files attached,
buy products, post on Twitter or read newspapers and art theory papers online.
[4] Noise Music
in general traffics in dissonance, atonality, distortion, incidental composing,
etc. This music begins with Russolo, LuigiÕs reti di rumori (networks of
noises) music that he performed on his intonarumori noise instruments and his
text ÓThe Art of Noises: Futurist ManifestoÓ in Cox, Cristoph & Warner,
Daniel (ed.): Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, Continuum
(2004) For more of the history of noise music, see Hegarty, Paul: Noise/Music:
A History. New York: Continuum (2007) and pp. 39-47 in Nechvatal, Joseph.
Immersion Into Noise, Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press (2011)
[5] For a full
investigation into this topic see Nechvatal, Joseph. Immersion Into Noise, Ann Arbor:
Open Humanities Press (2011)
[6] At his talk
ÒThe Faith of the Faithless, Experiments in Political Theology at the Dance
Politics & Co-Immunity WorkshopÓ in Giessen, Germany, November 12th,
2010
[7] Simon Critchley, ÒAbsolutely-Too-MuchÓ, Brooklyn Rail, Summer issue 2012 http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/08/art/absolutely-too-much
[8] Given his
age and Englishness I would guess Throbbing Gristle.
[9] ÒAlthough
all becomings are already molecular, including becoming woman, it must be said
that all becomings begin with and pass through becoming-woman. It is the key to
all the other becomings. [É] If becoming- woman is the first quantum, or
molecular segment, with the becomings-animal that link up with it coming next,
what are they all rushing toward? Without a doubt, toward becoming-imperceptible. The
imperceptible is the immanent end of becoming, its cosmic formula. [É]Ó Gilles
Deleuze, FŽlix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translation
by Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press (1987) p. 279
[10] Manuel
DeLanda coined the term neo-materialist in a short 1996 text ÒThe
Geology of Morals, A Neo-Materialist InterpretationÓ where he treats a portion
of Deleuze and GuattariÕs A Thousand Plateaus in order to
conceptualize geological movements. For more on neo-materialist see Manuel
DeLandaÕs interview in New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies by
Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin, Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press
(2012) p. 38
[11] In philosophy,
systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and
patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.
Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex
systems.
[12] Gaze; to look
long and intently. Gaze is often indicative of wonder, fascination and
revelation.
[13] For example
take the fact that now under construction by contractors with top-secret
clearances, is the blandly named Utah Data Center, being built for the National
Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a
complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept,
decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the worldÕs communications as they
zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of
international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion
center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers
and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of
communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone
calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data
trailsÑparking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other
digital transactions. It is, in some measure, the realization of the Òtotal
information awarenessÓ program created during the first term of the Bush
administrationÑan effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an
outcry over its potential for invading AmericansÕ privacy. For more on this
trend see James BamfordÕs book The Shadow Factory: the Ultra-Secret NSA from
9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. Anchor (2009)
[14] The term
ÒcloudÓ is often generally used to describe a data centerÕs functions. More
specifically, it refers to a service for leasing computing capacity.
[15] As I have
done with my own work while also collecting examples of many other artistÕs
work that can be placed in this continuum.
[16] Perhaps this
should not be surprising given the hidden complexity of a basic internet
transaction is a mystery to most users: Sending a message with photographs to a
neighbor could involve a trip through hundreds or thousands of miles of
Internet conduits and multiple data centers before the e-mail arrives across
the street.
[17] For more on
this read my essay Viractuality in the Webbed Digital Age that was
published in M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online #5 25th Anniversary Edition
(2011) http://writing.upenn.edu/pepc/meaning/05/meaning-online-5.html#nechvatal
[18] Duchamp's
entire artistic activity since the "definitive incompletion" of the Large
Glass in 1923 was an exercise in strategic invisibility, giving rise to
objects and events which--because they were apparently too impermanent or
unimportant or insubstantial, or because they eluded established genre
conventions, or because they confused or diluted authorial identity--evaded
recognition as "works of art."
[19] FŽlix
Guattari said in his noteworthy book, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic
Paradigm, the work of art, for those who use it, is an activity of
unframing, of rupturing sense, of baroque proliferation or extreme
impoverishment that leads to a recreation and a reinvention of the subject
itself.
[20] To support
all that digital activity, there are now more than three million data centers
of widely varying sizes worldwide, according to figures from the International
Data Corporation.
[21] A server is
a sort of bulked-up desktop computer, minus a screen and keyboard, that
contains chips to process data. For security reasons, companies typically do
not even reveal the locations of their data centers, which are housed in
anonymous buildings and vigilantly protected. Each year, chips in servers get
faster, and storage media get denser and cheaper, but the furious rate of data
production goes a notch higher.
[22] This
parallels the fact that in many data facilities, servers are loaded with
applications and left to run indefinitely, even after nearly all users have
vanished or new versions of the same programs are running elsewhere. At a
certain point, no one is responsible anymore, because no one, absolutely no
one, wants to go in that room and unplug a server.
[23] Nechvatal,
Joseph. Immersion Into Noise, Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press
(2011) p. 32
[24] The
characteristic organization of perception into a figure that 'stands out'
against an undifferentiated background, e.g. a printed word against a
background page. What is figural at any one moment depends on patterns of
sensory stimulation and on the momentary interests of the perceiver.
[25] Aleatoricism
is the incorporation of chance into the process of creation, especially the
creation of art or media. The word derives from the Latin word alea, the rolling
of dice.
[26] Some common
sources of inspiration for chaos magic include such diverse areas as science
fiction, scientific theories, ceremonial magic, shamanism, Eastern philosophy,
and individual experimentation.
[27] As an
example, see/hear Marina RosenfeldÕs Cephissus landscape (2002), an
immersive noise work that undermines the central notion of
"surround-sound" technology by locating viewers in an environment
with no fixed center and numerous temporary sonic sweet spots where short
bursts of mingled electronic and acoustic sounds intersect and decay in
expanding concentric circles that suggest oscillate landscapes.
[28] This is a
reference to Gilles DeleuzeÕs (1925-1995) notion of the vacuole. This
concept of noncommunication comes from DeleuzeÕs Postscript on Control Societies. DeleuzeÕs
notion of control is connected to information-communication technologyÑa
concept he pulled out of the work of William S. Burroughs (1914-1997). A
vacuole is like a sac in a cellÕs membrane, completely bound up inside the cell
but also separate from it. Vacuoles play a significant role in autophagy,
maintaining an imbalance between biogenesis (production) and degradation
(or turnover) of many substances and cell structures. They also
aid in the destruction of invading bacteria or of misfolded proteins that have
begun to build up within the cell. The vacuole is a major part of the plant and
animal cell. Nechvatal, Joseph. Immersion Into Noise. Ann Arbor:
Open Humanities Press (2011) p. 14
[29] Panpsychism
is the view that all matter has a mental aspect, or, alternatively, all objects
have a unified center of experience or point of view.
[30] Thank you
Dominique and Isabelle Roussy.
[31] Thank you
Jean-Charles and Jacqueline Blanc.