House & Ilynx?

From my notes on Caillois:

The association of simulation and vertigo is so powerful that it naturally becomes part of the sacred, providing a principle base for terror and fascination given by the sacred.

Civilization estranges us from their effects. (76)

I suppose then that one of my primary challenges may be to present the sacred through civilization. If we're dealing with a house, how does that house become a church? How to whip the viewer of my presentation into the inkling of a religious presentiment. Having just finished Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch, he does it through Bach. Perhaps I can do it through whipping the viewer into and out of their house, their church.

'Pataphysics, Determining the Approach, and Which Science to Use

if poetry cannot oppose science by becoming its antonymic extreme, perhaps poetry can oppose science by becoming its hyperbolic extreme, using reason against itself ‘pataphysically in order to subvert not only pedantic theories of noetic truth but also romantic theories of poetic genius

This strategy of vertigo seems to be becoming more clear. We must look into the science of the topic and exacerbate it in a way that its truth becomes questionable and indiscernible.

The Oulipians derive a logic and strategy from calculus and then derive a way to treat letters and words. Yet the question remains of how one might convert this into a visible syntax, a language made of image.

Do we simply take the words and convert them to image correlates? How do we establish the chain of inference? Something like the figure in the unconscious (something that needs to be traced back to an initial system through processes like displacement and condensation (or, as Lacan says, through metaphor and metonymy?)?

And then the question also comes up of which science to use? If we're to start with a scientific process and then derive an exaggerated poetics out of it, where to look for that science in the accident? For example, with my accident, a primary process is the displacement of lead by way of conflagration of plastics. Do I look into the specific science of that chemical breakdown, convert it to a linguistic trope, and then build that trope into images? Or do I parody the specific science straight off?

Finally, a side note: can we create vertigo just through simply manipulating the user's vision via the Prezi. I've been messing around with the program, and one can easily spin the screen with such convulsions that the viewer might become physically ill. I guess then we can pursue vertigo through both the figurative recognition of ourselves in a mise-en-abyme and also through the visual spinning of an image.

Vertigo and Drugs

Thinking through the ramifications of vertigo (ilynx) as a strategy, I'm struck by my continual return to drugs (esp. hallucinogenic drugs like LSD) as a contemporary means.

Caillois, of course, covers this, referring to drugs when he speaks to the corruption of ilynx outside of the separate zone of play. He reminds, "If the principles of play correspond to powerful instincts in the human, they gratify these only under the idealized situation correspondent to play. Left to themselves, destructive and frantic as are all instincts, these impulses can hardly but lead to disastrous consequences" (55). Searching for unconsciousness and a distortion of perception, many are led down the harried road of pure pleasure, which, of course, interrupts daily life, making existing in the "straight" world nearly impossible.

Maybe it'd be different if one could ride a rollercoaster to work.

Then again, I wonder if there might be more to Caillois' position. He considers the use of intoxicants as a derivation from the positive impulses associated with ilynx at play. He talks about a group of ants who preserve another species' larvae in order to get stoned on its secretions. They evidently give this so much attention that they neglect their young. For Caillois, such a favoring of the paralyzing substance neutralizes "the most powerful instincts, even that of self-preservation." Because of physical addiction, the "alcoholic [is] led down a road where he is destroyed. IN the end, deprived of the freedom to desire anything but his poison, he's left a prey to chronic organic disorder, far more dangerous than the physical vertigo that momentarily compromises his capacity to resist the fascination of oblivion."

Drug culture has changed a lot since Caillois wrote the book, and it seems like they might offer a means to experience the world in a strange new way. It's no secret that many of the avant-gardes used drugs in their speed toward new forms (cabaret scene and absinthe; 60's avant-gardes and LSD, etc. etc.).

So, to what extent should we consider these things in our conceptualization of ilynx? The purest example of vertigo I've seen in contemporary art might be Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void, a film that simulates the experience of someone who's killed while taking a new hallucinogen called DMZ. The blend of live-action and digital imaging in this film is quite incredible, and as a result of the effort put forth in the production, it's the closest one can come to tripping without taking a tab or eating a mushroom.

As you can see from my earlier example, I'm exploring the effects of psychedelia in my image. It seems to me that trips might be considered a kind of living sublime. A sublimity, chemically inspired, coming from the inside out (or the out in). It seems to me that one way of promoting a feeling of vertigo in the reader might be to attempt to synthesize the feeling of the trip in a visual form, but not in a boring, tyedye way, but in another, something resembling reality but tweaked enough in a way as to inspire a feeling of intoxication, of blurriness, of dizziness and ilynx.

Fatal instruction -- final instruction before application

What decision led to the fatal event? What decision, put into contact with an existing desire, launched the fatal accident into the object's becoming?

From Ulmer's last email (see last post): The decision was not to pollute but to trade.

Applied to my context: The decision was not to pollute but to ____.

Calculate? See?

I guess it depends on which element of E-Waste we're talking about.

If we start looking into the history of computing technologies, especially as they applied to Von Neumann in Poundstone, we can see a desire for an object capable of replicating Von Neumann's own, strange, mechanical ability to calculate. So, if we were to go with this thread, we might say that the decision was not to pollute but to calculate. To achieve this then, the materials used in the computer (particularly the non-ferrous metals we talked about before) simply are tools used to enable the connections necessary to manipulate the binary code into something capable of calculating.

But hold on a second. We've so far associated E-Waste with a sense of virtuality, and while the cathode ray technology doesn't define the computer as such, it may act as a successful relay between the computer's functions and our experience of it (an experience defined by the computer's ability to offer us a graphic iconic interface, to display pictures, to act as a window to the world). So, sticking with the cathode ray momentarily, we can see a need emerge.

The historical fatality we can see is the necessity for us to have a relay to the computer's functionality. Punch cards, floppy disks: they're all benign compared to an intrinsic need to see calculation, text, etc. through familiar images.

When you have this need, one can see the necessity of this determination. One had to see. The decision was not to pollute but to see. The involvement of non-ferrous metals (but lead particularly) in the production of the cathode ray tube was simply a technical intervention satisfying a deeper desire. So, therefore, the desire to see fixates on these metals as a means to deliver the object, to intertwine our destiny with its.

Additionally, one can see the problem of E-waste arising from this necessity to see as well. We can see the development of subsequent screens (LCD, LED) as resulting from a desire to see ever more clearly, resulting in the displacement of the CRT and its eventual demise as a figure in a landfill. That isn't to say that these newer technologies solve the problem. A report has indicated that LCD's still contain dangerous amounts of copper and lead. Another indicates about the same for LED screens.

What emblem can stand for this?

Part of my early posts attempted to account for the mixtures of outdated technologies with human desires to see, now expressed in different ways (fetishizing of VHS or cassette tapes in an era of DVD and digital images).

So, from an earlier project that used diffusion as a means to get across the issues of E-waste, perhaps we can add to that a dimension of a kind of seeing that has changed. I.E. IN a new image, we can put in formal elements of former ways of seeing.

My graduate thesis focuses on classical figures by which cinema has been understood (particularly the window and the mirror, the cinema is a ____). My move is to synthesize these forms and posit the cinema as a reflecting window, one that, for example, offers a window onto reality but also that reflects cultural associations, one that offers a window onto the world but also reflects the digital nonsense of pure symbolic, etc. etc.

Perhaps we can utilize this model for the image. The image will offer us a window onto E-Waste but reflect the modes of seeing that have produced the E-waste.

This doesn't change the image much, but it focuses it. From a pure depiction of E-waste, we must now integrate screens (see my "vertigo" image) but also their ability to signify simply as an apparatus.

How can this emblem be manipulated to show the universal subject its own image in the mirror?

We'll see the emblems of E-waste, manipulated to show us texture and diffusion.

But we'll see our mirror image in the scan lines and distortions (simulated, of course) associated with the CRT.

Instruction:

Tap into our fatal need to see that incorporates the poison of the earth. Use the experience of image + the images itself to get across these ideas of seeing oneself in those things that offer images.

As a formal technique, we might see these scan lines as doing something like Holbein's Ambassadors painting:

Lacan writes that this is a prime example because, looking into the image, we eventually see the death's head. This connection will need to be explored more, but I'm starting to intuit its potential.

Let's give it a try.

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.

Vertigo in Vertigo

So, I laid this all out yesterday in class, but let's get it down for the sake of getting it down.

So the choice is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo:

In the film, Jimmy Stewart plays a detective haunted by the death of his detective buddy. They're chasing a bad guy across rooftops, and after Stewart slips, his buddy falls to his death trying to help him.

Left shaken by the incident, Stewart can't be on the force any more. In the meantime, an old friend from college, now a rich industrialist, hires Stewart to follow his wife, played by Kim Novak. Stewart follows her and gradually becomes obsessed. She returns his love but ends up dying when she falls from a belltower. Stewart was unable to save her due to his vertigo.

Shaken even more, Stewart's bumming around the city when he runs into a woman who looks just like his lost love. He sets about courting her and decides to turn her into the deceased woman. He dyes her hair, buys her the woman's gray suit, etc. He walks into her apartment, and in the film's best scene, remeets his lost love, holding and kissing her as the camera spins around them, the cinema itself lost within the pleasure of the vertigo.

As it turns out though, the woman is indeed the lost love, and it turns out that she was a pawn in the rich industrialist's plan to kill his own wife.

I feel kinda bad for spoiling the plot, but seeing the film will still reveal the pleasures. The moment when Stewart remeets Madeleine is one of the finest in the cinema with Bernard Hermann's score and a green glow suffusing your senses as you're seduced the same way Stewart is, willing to leap into the obsession.

My relay to the accident is that Stewart's experience of Madeleine is, of course, a tactile but virtual experience. The figure is a simulacrum wrapped in flesh and blood, a simulacrum that still affects us and shakes us to our core. What else is the computer?

What Stewart can't do is to get over the truth behind the simulacrum, which, of course, revenges itself upon him when Madeleine/Judy dies at the end of the film.

But what sets Vertigo up as especially fascinating is that if we can see the gift as a second meeting with a lost love, then Judy becomes the donor, the one who submits herself to Stewart's desired simulacrum of Madeleine. She's both the donor and the object. She gives herself.

If anything, the ultimate problem is that Stewart can't learn to love the simulation. He can't recognize the gift offered as the donor offers itself as pure simulacrum, as pure Madeleine.

(of course, another way of looking at it is that Stewart's obsessive remaking of Judy negates any possibility for the two's happiness anyway, but the above is looking at it in terms of these narrative actants).

If our goal is to make the commodity speak, then I guess Madeleine/Judy-as-commodity (a phrase I feel a bit uncouth writing down) would say, "Remake me, I'm so dedicated to you that I'll allow it."

Don't our machines say the same? "Use me, I'm your relay to the world. And when we're done, throw me away. Send me away to lands unknown to be smashed and tortured. I want it."

As Baudrillard notes though, the object will have its revenge, and it does so with a fatal potentiality to destroy ecosystems and human life. So, I suppose this accident, that the working parts of virtuality can kill us, is the limit that we can assign the object. To take this accident to its limit then, we can see geopolitical ramifications, health, biological, and ecological consequences.

But it's still a question, I suppose, of refining my understanding of how the object's wishes become fulfilled in how it presents itself.

I'm starting to feel as though my Mac's spying on me even as I write about it and think about its senseless insides.