On exhibitions

Time Magazine online has filed this report of 13 pictures giving us the gist of the E-Waste issue.

This format is actually pretty similar to the Museum exhibition and thus may give us an inroad to the target.

The previous post and this do some work toward conceptualizing the accident visually, but the main difference between this approach and our approach is that none of these neutral images can get us into that state of vertigo, that state of falling into the object-as-commodity reflecting ourselves in itself.

There's a scene in Sam Raimi's first Evil Dead film where the young Bruce Campbell, having managed to fend off two of the four friends that have turned into Kandarian demons, looks at himself in a mirror. He reaches his hand out to touch it, and suddenly, the mirror has turned to liquid, which his hand goes into. He wrenches his hand back and issues a high-pitched scream.

This is the response we're looking for. To have someone looking into a mirror that exposes itself, to have them dip their hand into it and recoil, as though they have seen their own death or, perhaps, tapped into some sort of universal subjectivity.

Commentary on the object's "speech"

Looking back over the commentary this morning, I find that perhaps it went in the wrong direction toward the end. The object *wants* us to engage it in a virtual relationship. That's the teleology. The object wants us to forget that it's there (in this sense, the first few vignettes are okay).

But where I went wrong is in the section where the computer gets thrown overseas. This is part of its desire. This is part of its role as donor. So, the last few would go something like this.

"Hey, I'm glad that you're sending me away. We've had a great relationship, and I want to live on, if only in your memories of me." The object, of course, is being coy here. It wants us to send it to a virtual realm, distanced by time and the lack of image. What ends up happening though, is its trip into the obscene, into the exposing and decomposition of its working parts. It wants its guts to hang out for all to see, and this brings together a different kind of teleology that works toward a limit.

Its virtuality pushed to ecstasy, the object becomes more virtual than virtual: in a sense, perfectly in the real. It infiltrates the body and the earth itself, making for itself a new home inside the life and forces of the earth through diffusion. Pushed to its limit, we see a new teleology. Rather than wanting a virtual relationship, the computer, willing to give itself up to our desire (like Madeleine/Judy in Vertigo), the machine wants to merge. The digital will, it would seem, is to eventually converge (everything that rises must converge: one can imagine Watson the computer punching out the patronizing mother in the O'Connor story).

Hiding behinds its virtuality, the digital will to power lies in this ability to form relationships that are more virtual than virtual, that are real. The digital will seduces us with its virtuality to force its way into our bodies, into the earth, to become a world.

The digital will is in a state of becoming, its telos being that of a new world.

Provisional sketch of a new image (part 3)

a) the accident reveals the substance
b) follow the accident
1) Conceive the accident as sign
2) Model the accident onto object in pop narrative
3) Put yourself in the shoes of accident-as-commodity

What is it that the accident says? I've decided to do an experimental sequence of dialogues in which I follow the object through its own narrative and life-span. I figure that providing a narrative might also help us with both Contrast and Theory at the same time, as well as giving voice to the sign came up with in the Target. I may be giving it too many human characteristics, but it's an experiment, so here goes nothing:

Narrative sequence: 1) Birth 2) Life 3) Exile 4) 1st Death 5) Afterlife

1) Taking place sometime after a computer or other electronic device has been brought home:

"Hello, I'm a Macintosh G-5. Turning me on is no problem (just press the button on my back). My protocols have made it super easy for you to get me up and running. Wait, hold on a second, buddy, would you...check...out...that...software!?! Isn't it great!? I know. Oh, what's that? You've never had a computer with a camera before? Check mine out. This is going to be a great relationship. Look, that's you in my screen. You look good; I look good; we'll be good together.

2) Hey man, glad you've been around so much lately. I'm running 6 programs right now (one of them, Transmission, the one you use to pirate those lousy VHS rips of Abel Ferrara television movies, has been on for 4 days straight). I've been running nonstop lately, but I don't mind. I'm digging the attention, to be frank. Aren't you amazed how easy I still am to use? Plug stuff in; I almost immediately recognize it and almost always start the software install before you even have to bother. You've got me set up just the way you like me. Check out how good that screen still from Gilda looks on this HD monitor. You don't know what's inside of me, and that's just fine. Our relationship's deeper than that. Look at these photos you took. Your niece was 14 months old then. She's five now. What a kid!

3) Oh please, baby, please, baby, please babybabyplease! We have a great thing going here! I stopped firing up right away awhile back, but you took me to the right people. My circuits and drives are fine now, baby. Sure, you had to buy a peripheral cd-drive. Did you hear me complaining all of those days you neglected to brush your teeth. Let's face it. You need me. I've been your $*#@&(%@(in' window to the world for 5 years now. You've learned more about yourself on and through me than with anyone else (except your wife...maybe). C'mon, man, get real. I've seen you checking out those Ipads. You think that thing can do what I do for you? C'mon, baby, I love you. I've always loved you! I've never made this relationship anything it isn't. C'mon, let's keep it going. Please.

4) Dear Todd,

That trip across the Pacific was bizarre. You remember that scene from Star Wars (I don't remember which one) where the gold robot goes into the Jawa cruiser thing and sees all of the dismantled robots? That's what this $*#&@#)er is like. I always figured we had a good thing. You should see some of these mean SOBs. Circuit boards pulled apart, wires hanging out, it's like their owners fancied themselves amateur surgeons. Thank God you never pulled on my insides.

All in all, I miss you, but I'm in a fun and exciting new space. We're sitting in a mound full of dirt and trash right now, but I have a bunch of friends from British National Health hangin' with me. I think they're putting up a volleyball net of some sort.

Oop, some kids are coming over. I wonder if they know how to play Tecmo Bowl. Will write back soon.

5) Todd,

A lot has passed since I last wrote. In fact, everything's changed. These kids here use hammers and saws and matches and, well, let's just say I'm a whole new person. Oop, did I say person? Well, kind of. You see, I'm actually punching this message up as I sit in this kid Ke-Zhang's left lung.

Okay, here's the story. Those kids came over and ravaged me. I mean, tore me to shreds. It was the most horrific thing that's ever happened to me. You, you were different. You were gentle with a capital G. No probings on my parts, no investigation into my workings, no nothing. These kids though, holy moly, they ripped me limb by limb and burned some of my coatings off in the fire. I guess I'm worth some money to them, like a fat American just waiting for his kidneys to get jacked.

Oh well, I didn't wake up in a bathtub full of ice.

I'm in a kid's lung.

In fact, I'm settling in.

I got a call from my cousin George. He didn't make it into anybody's lungs, but he's got a sweeter gig. He's moving down to a central water supply.

You see, we all made it. I thought having myself exposed would be the worst. Goodness would dictate that I remain in a strictly screened relationship, but these users, whoa boy, they wouldn't take no for an answer. Anyway, it all worked out in the end. Now, we're merging. They're cool with it. They cough sometimes, but, y'know, they did hammer me apart and set me on fire.

Anyway, I hope you and Steph are okay. I'm having fun and think I'm on to a whole new life now.

Let's just hope it lasts.

Provisional sketch of new image (Parts 1 & 2)

a) the accident reveals the substance
b) follow the accident
1) Conceive the accident as sign
2) Model the accident onto object in pop narrative
3) Put yourself in the shoes of accident-as-commodity

1) E-Waste as sign involves processes of displacement and diffusion. Most of the imagery of E-Waste I've seen are perversely beautiful due to the sheer accumulation of wires, empty computer husks, etc. But its actual method of accident (ecological and biological damage) has primarily involved processes of chemical diffusion: the diffusion of lead, beryllium, cadmium, etc. from the computer products into the lungs of workers and into the earth over which they're burned or otherwise destroyed. The process into a sign must take these things into account. So, we may have a layering of the earth, the biological, and diffusion. Some methods have already been tried at this, some in the right direction and some in the wrong. But now, as a sign, we can develop an abstraction, something reveling in signifiance, something able to get across the obscure feeling, bringing together its obscure desire for us to experience it vicariously. Layering, dissolving, and trailing will be our strategies in this.

2) As I did a few posts ago, the accident is modeled on the object of Vertigo. In that film, Jimmy Stewart attempts to get back many things: his manhood, his balance, his occupation, etc. But all of those things become wrapped up in the love interest, his romantic obsession with the deceased Madeleine. Judy offers him the key to regaining his lost love and all of the symbolic material that comes with her, but the twist is that, as donor, Judy is also the object. Judy eventually encourages Stewart to take her as object, to allow him to wrap her up in his own obsession. At the end of that post, I concluded that E-Waste as sign and computer at object should encourage us to do the same: experience me as object, wrap yourself in my virtuality. Yet the object takes its revenge, infecting our bodies, revealing a different desire: to become one with us. To step outside of its virtuality and to merge somehow. So far, it's been through diffusion.

Strategy, the nth power, the mystery

Target: Think of the accident as a sign
Contrast: Find a popular narrative to compare with disaster -- follow the object in its narrative

Theory:???

First, some select quotes, then something like synthesis:
"Against the true of the true, against the truer than true (which immediately becomes pornographic), against the obscenity of obviousness, against this unclean promiscuity with itself that we call resemblance, we must remake illusion, rediscover illusion, this power, at once immoral and maleficent, to tear away from the same, called seduction. Seduction against terror: these are the stakes. There are no others" (75)
"The only revolution in things today is no longer in their dialectical transcendence, but in their potentialization, in their elevation to
the second power, in their elevation to the nth power, whether that of terrorism, irony, or simulation. It is no longer dialectics, but
ecstasy that is in process" (63)
"the irony of the object lies in wait for us" (98)
"If our perversion lies in this, that we never desire the real event, but its spectacle, never things but their sign, and the secret derision of their sign, it means we don’t want things to change; the change must seduce us" (102)
"To find again a kind of distinction, a hierarchy for these figures – seduction, love, passion, desire, sex – is absurd wager, but it’s the only one we have left" (132)

The difficulty of the book lies in how much is actually there. Preparing a presentation on this material has required a laser-like focus on fundamental areas related to our own projects.

So, Baudrillard starts by laying out the (post?)modern condition: we're in a state of obscenity, of information, of sex (as opposed to seduction or love), etc. Illusion has been lost. If anything, the rationality and our obsession with rooting out the cause of all things has made illusion and seduction something to be distrusted, something lost on the wayside.

This situation puts us in a position where the traits of objects and concepts cannot be drawn back. They spin and spin together until in a state of ecstasy (the formula would be roughly "more ___ than ___"). Baudrillard's clear that we can't go back. It's too far gone.

So, what action to take? B. spends a great deal of time pointing out that our traditional thinking through of revolution or social change may have been misguided, filtered through what he sees as the misguided lenses of psychoanalysis, feminism, and direct social action. B. doesn't want that. If anything, he puts these things in the same boat as the other failed methods of utilitarian thinking.

He also sees terrorism as arising out of this system of rationale, based on an ecstatic sense of mutual responsibility that everyone owns but no one wants.

So, to attempt to reverse the tide, B. wants to do seemingly two things:
1) We need to restore illusion and mystery to the world
and
2) We need to find a way of dealing with the object, a process that will likely require taking it further than it's already gone.

So, the 2nd one almost seems clear. B. says that things are in an irreversible state of ecstasy but also that their revolution is in "their elevation to the nth power." So, take things and push them in their own direction.

As he spends the latter half of the book noting, we need to allow to the object is own sovereignty, a sovereignty it takes regardless of whether we want it to or not.

So, yielding to the logic of the object, and pressing it toward its own limits, perhaps we can push it into the mysterious state of reversibility, something that would then yield to the restoration of illusion.

Or, at least, maybe we'll get toward that in the presentation tomorrow.