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Re: [microsound] MAP Series Guest Lecture: Ian Andrews
Hi Bill,
billashline@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I like this configuration of things because I want to theorize glitch
> aesthetics through the work of Georges Bataille. I see glitch as part
> of the accursed share, of expenditure, of technological production and
> process. That which technology refuses to accept and admit. In
> essence, glitch is the waste product of technology. Microsound
> musicians are playing with its feces, recuperating it from the sewer,
> not so much to privilege it, which would throw us back into the problem
> of representation, a profanation of the sacred, by simply reversing the
> order of the hierarchy, but to simply take it into account, to give it
> its due. Glitch is aural abjection, which has left the realm of the
> abject as object and become the "informe" or formless. By its very
> nature, it resists theorization. But it's always there, always
> inserting itself unacceptably into the normative, always finding a space
> to emerge. Glitch is the surplus of technological production, the
> expenditure that such production constantly refuses.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me! I like your approach very much and can relate to
it.
I approached the problem via the modern subject, and my view of the abject is more
Kristeva's (and Hal Foster's) than Bataille's. I see the modern subject as something
which can only exist by constantly denying, repressing and abjecting everything reminding
'him' of dependency. The abject is everything which reminds of unclear states, fusions,
situations in which there is no stable, solid subject -- hence the disgust of everything
'dirty' or 'sticky'. Dirt is what threatens the subject in its constant endeavors to
separate himself clearly and distinctly from what he posits (and produces by abjection
and pojection) as outside, other. So, of course, Kristeva traces the abject back to the
womb where what would eventually become subject and the nurturing matrix were
indissolubly mixed. This is okay. But in a broader sense the subject also abhors
whatever endangers its apparent autonomy: if he is active, everything else has to be
either a rival or passive, an object. The abject however is neither an object nor really
passive: by reminding the subject that he is not as autonomous as he imagines to be, the
abjects begins to haunt him, like the return of the repressed. I see this relationship
most strongly between masters and slaves, when the master has to constantly repress that
once, as an infant, he completely relied on his black mammy, and that he, on an economic
basis, is dependant on the work of his slaves; but also between creator and tool, because
he is constantly denying that, in a way, he is dependent on the functioning of a tool
(not really dramatic, if the tool is a hammer, easily to be replaced, but if the 'tool'
is a computer and you have become completely dependant on him ------ let's be honest: how
many of us have not experienced strong feelings of depravation once this tool did not
function any more?). Now the glitch as abject -- that makes perfect sense to me:
constantly reminding the subject of his dependency. In a way, the glitch is an outcry of
the slave: look, I am no longer working the way you want me to, I have procedures of my
own. The glitch also reminds of tendencies of entropy: things tend to get out of
control, dehierarchize, slip. When gltiches multiply the modern subject is seriously
frightened; things are not running his way, they appear to have a life of their own...
Thus I see the glitch as potential parasite, and I see the parasite as a return of the
abject into agency. In other words: in a world, which Cartesianism constructs as being
composed of thinking subjects (cogitos), lifeless objects and pure space, the abject has
no place other than being propelled to the borders. It cannot act, as informe, because
the informe by its very definition is not active, not a solid entity with an identity.
The only way to return is as parasite (in both senses of the term: para-site and vermin),
as multiplicity, as swarm. In the area of technology it does so as glitch, or sometimes,
even more actively, as 'techno-parasite' (see:
http://www.v2.nl/FreeZone/users/PARASITES/text.html).
Let me just quote from the URL mentioned above ("techno-parasites" by Broekmann and
Hobijn) because this text has influenced me very strongly a few years ago and because
they can better express what I want to say:
"Our relations with machines are strongly informed by a
desiring economy of dominance and control. We demand
them to be efficient and reliable, they should work smoothly
and quietly - just like any good slave. Even where we use
them for the new, telematic experiences we want them to
enhance our lives and experiences in a controllable and
meaningful way, whenever we deal with machines we want
to mark and map the territory on which they operate, and
we want to still be able to determine how natural artificial
life forms can get.
The Techno-Parasites, however, show that we are not only
out of control because we are, when dealing with complex
technologies, unable to contain the whole potential of this
complexity. Rather, they imply also that there are other
forces in such complex systems, that there is a desiring
Other, which will always disrupt the smooth interfaces and
which will force us into continuous deterritorialisations.
Any
order implies forces of disruption that will create disorder
and a transformation towards a new order on a different
level.
As the scientist and philosopher, Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle
Stengers, have argued, bifurcation, change, amplification
only happens when an 'individual, idea, or behavior,[...] are
"dangerous" - that is, those that can exploit to their
advantage the nonlinear relations guaranteeing the stability
of the preceding regime. Thus we are led to conclude that
the same nonlinearities may produce an order out of chaos
of elementary processes and still, under different
circumstances, be responsible for the destruction of this
same order, eventually producing a new coherence beyond
another bifurcation.' (Prigogine/Stengers 1984:190)
Exaggerating an old tradition from machine art, the
Techno-Parasites are machines that are not only useless or
self-destructive and that perform somehow intelligent or
semi-autonomous behaviour. The Techno-Parasites are
machines that actively seek to waste energy, to destroy
systems, to defy human rationality. They might help us to
reach those far-from-equilibrium experiential states which,
according to thinkers from Nietzsche to Prigogine, are a
precondition for the creation of something new. At a time
when the channelling and controlling of interactive
possibilities in the political as well as in the telematic
field
are widespread, we need forces of displacement, we need
gestures that cause sections and cuts, and the radical
redirection of energetic flows from those dominant trends
of territorialisation. At times like these we have to
encourage the creation of insecurity.
This is a question of enhancing technological development
and artistic creativity, as well as of maintaining a fluid
and
heterogeneous sense of self. Therefore: Defy the insurance
brokers of Cyberspace! Facilitate the moments of
transgression across the boundary of technical rationality.
Not the fantastic but the obnoxious, not the surprising but
the shocking will be the sources of new forms of
subjectivity. The confrontation with that imaginary space of
the machinic unconscious which the Techno-Parasites offer
promises a venture into the zones of pleasure and pain
where the boundary, that source of the emergent self, can
be explored.
2. Attacks on the modern human unconscious
Another aspect of the desire connected to machines is the
fantasy that they will work for us forever, or that better
ones will replace them, which will eventually make it
possible for us to be universal and immortal. The dream of
flying and of teletransportation, of transgressing the
limitations of space and time, is related to this. Any
machine or programme that is destructive or
self-destructive, that has an impossible interface or an
uncontrollable mechanism, potentially undermines this
promise of timelessness, of eternal life, and returns us to
what we are - not in the negativity of virtuality and
promise,
but in the black hole of our subjective positivity.
The psychological crisis that the Techno-Parasites point to
runs deep - the hysteria around computer viruses, power
cuts and logical bombs which are represented as actually
life-threatening are a case in point. The Techno-Parasites
highlight this mechanism in a more differentiated way, they
materialise the invisible in both a metaphorical and
performative way. The Techno-Parasites are precision
weapons for the attack on the modern human unconscious."
In terms of glitch, I think their formula "Not the fantastic but the obnoxious" is just
great, defying as it does Romantic ideas of the fantastic. That's what a glitch is
(before it is used aesthetically, of course): obnoxious, like rats, like cockroaches,
like bugs in general. (While we will long be destroyed by atomic fallout, the obnoxious
cockroach will still thrive alive and kicking -- but I digress).
I especially like your phrase: "to give it [the glitch] its due", because it is an humble
acknowledgment that we are not as grand as we dream to be, a willing nurturing of
dependency and interrelatedness.
>
>
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