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Articles

On Withdrawal, Abandonment and the Limits of Algorithmic Apprehension

 

Notes

1 Sterling Crispin, Charon.

2 The quoted analyses provided by Sterling Crisping and Benjamin Gaulon were drawn from a suite of interviews that I conducted with over thirty contemporary media artist from 2013-2015. While the interviews were aimed primarily at exploring how artists are conceptualizing ‘digital materiality’ through their artworks and practices of making, the discussion was not limited to this line of analysis. Sections from these interviews in which the artists describe their creative process or express a critical response to their work will be incorporated into this essay.

3 Tribe and Jana, New Media Art, 1.

4 Reichardt, Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts.

5 Langill, “Interview with David Rokeby.”

6 Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, xxxix.

7 Lovink, “Hermes on the Hudson: Notes on Media Theory After Snowden”.

8 Manovich, Software Takes Command; Ernst, Digital Memory and the Archive.

9 Hansen, Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First Century Media.

10 See for example: Scarlett, “Interpreting an Improper Materialism: On Synesthesia, Catachresis, and the Digital Materiality;” Terranova, “Attention, Economy, and the Brain;” Berardi, “Cognitarian Subjectivation;” Stiegler, For a New Critique of Political Economy; Thrift, Non-Representational Theory.

11 Temkin, “Glitch && Human/Computer Interaction.”

12 See for example: Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty; Hansen, Feed-Forward; Kane, Chromatic Algorithms: Synthetic Colours, Computer Art and Aesthetics After Code; Galloway et al., Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation.

13 Thacker, “Dark Media,” 115.

14 Shaviro, “Consequences of Panpsychism,” 68.

15 Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World, 3.

16 Ibid., 1; Hui, “What is a Digital Object?”

17 One of the prominent early uses of the computer (beginning in the eighteenth century) concerned its use as a tabulation and storage system to help computer the census. The use of computers sped up the calculation process significantly and produced results with fewer errors; Grudin, “A Moving Target: The Evolution of HCI.”

18 Latour, Pandora’s Hope.

19 Scarlett, “Interpreting an Improper Materialism: On Synesthesia, Catachresis, and the Digital Materiality.”

20 Hertz, Critical Making: Introduction.

21 Drawn from interview conducted with Benjamin Gaulon, see endnote number 2.

22 Gaulon Interview.

23 See for example Parikka & Hertz, “Zombie Media.”

24 Gaulon Artists’s Statement: http://www.recyclism.com/refunctmedia_v6.php.

25 Gaulon Interview.

26 This is in part a function of the collaborative nature of the creative process. Gaulon explained that very little of network is the result of a single artist’s labour. Instead, they each take turns working on different components, manipulating and editing without recourse to an authoritative vision. In How We Became Post-Human, Katherine N. Hayles charts the effect that co-authorship has had within programming. She explains that even when the ‘causal’ programming language that undergirds software is made visible, it still frequently remains opaque and illegible due to the unique style, syntax and complexity of individual programmers’ contributions.

27 It is undeniable that the recent popularity of OOO (Object Oriented Ontology) has spurred much of the recent interest in philosophies of withdrawal.

28 Harman, The Quadruple Object, 44.

29 Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.

30 Väliaho, Biopolitical Screens: Image, Power and the Neoliberal Brain; Zimmer, Surveillance Cinema; Colebrook and Maxwell, Agamben.

31 Parisi, “Instrumental Reason, Algorithmic Capitalism, and the Incomputable,” 130.

32 Hansen, Feed-Forward, 121.

33 Hayles, How We Became Post-Human: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.

34 Thrift, Non-Representational Theory.

35 Burnham, Software – Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art.

36 Halpern, “The Trauma-Machine: Demos, Immersive Technologies and the Politics of Simulation,” 63.

37 Hansen, New Philosophy for New Media, 142.

38 Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies.

39 Genosko, “The Promise of post-Media;” Halpern, “The Trauma Machine;” Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty.

40 Discussion definition and etymology of ‘abandon’ and ‘abandonment’ in this section draws heavily from the Oxford English Dictionary online reference.

41 Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, 29.

42 Ibid., 110.

43 Combes, Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Individual, 32.

44 Shaviro quote again.

45 Ibid.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ashley Scarlett

Ashley Scarlett, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Critical and Creative Studies at the Alberta College of Art and Design, Canada. Her current research and writing is focused on the theoretical contours of digitality, particularly as it relates to shifting perceptions of matter, time and aesthetics within the field of contemporary media art. Email: [email protected]

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