Technology, time, transposition

ABSTRACT

Beginning from the broad proposition that art is a site for contesting temporality, this paper considers the relationship between technology and time. Bernard Stiegler’s concepts of tertiary retention and epiphylogenesis are used to consider archaeological heritage and its data analysis in technological apparatus. The claim is made that in the process of producing heritage objects situated in a media environment as tertiary retentions, archaeology also (from a media-archaeological point-of-view) produces an artefactual matter in the technical support that is open to subsequent data analysis. This process of data extraction and subsequent re-immersion of the tertiary retention’s artefactual support into the epiphylogenetic is mapped onto Elie Ayache’s interpretation of implied volatility in the Black–Scholes–Merton model for valuing financial derivatives. The paper negotiates these schemas in order to flatten the relation between the topographic site and its mnemo-technic supports making the paradoxical claim that the circulation of the tertiary retention, the derivative, precedes and underwrites the liquidity of the topographic site. In part this paper tests its own readiness to jump between two registers: the value and interpretation of cultural artefacts and the value and pricing of financial commodities sketching semiotic lines of convergence between symbolic and financial economies.

KEYWORDS:

• Technology
• archaeology
• epiphylogenetics
• tertiary retention
• financial derivatives
• implied volatility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Martin Westwood is an artist, Frank Martin Fellow in Sculpture at Central Saint Martins, PhD researcher in Fine Art Practice at Kingston University, and in collaboration with Joey Bryniarska is a Van Eyck Academie NEARCH Fellow. The NEARCH Fellowships are a European Commission and French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) initiative building collaborations between archaeologists and artists.