intrusions from the outside

my thinking and thought in progress - as it happened day to day.... toward a transparent practice of thought going on...and of letting go...

[psysoph]

Listening Together.

An extract of a section I've been struggling with - but at the same time really enjoy..

At the end of Eric Dolphy's Last Date, on completing the most ethereal of solo improvised flute lines Dolphy effuses that 'once you've heard music, its gone, in the air, you can never capture it again'. We feel this intense absence whenever we attempt to share music we are passionate about, which has become instrumental as a vehicle for 'carrying variation', for recalling and enfolding context upon context in development of a dynamic continuity that can never quite commute to the next listener, to another body. The inverse but nonetheless related experience is that of the collective individuation that we sometimes experience when subject to the irreducible excess of a unique performance together - we become 'more than one' together, irreducibly, and without possibility of a return - we are uniquely tied as components in a singular musical event-assemblage (Manning 2012). The twinning of absence and/as supplementarity is intensely manifest between bodies - the absence underwriting an unspeakable and irreducible supplementarity that is ineffably shared between bodies. 

In these two examples we find a parable of the mnemotechnical dynamic and of the media form as architecture of event. In each of these cases a biogrammatic differential is central. While that differential manifests as a ‘disorienting inexactitude’ (a kind of disjunct in the perception and interpretation of an apparently shared experience -particularly in the first case ), Stiegler argues that this inexactitude 'resolves' or rather 'reflects' a mediate-exactitude. That is, variability realised in interpretation and immediacy is the expression of a relational becoming. In the human ecology of thinking-feeling this variability represents a biogrammatic generativity and (ensuing) differential (to refer back to Massumi’s conception of the biogram) - a differential between continuities that are as intensely bodied as they are irreducibly distributed.

In each case (of sharing music together) their are different dopplerings of a biogrammatic differential at work. The music in both cases is more than simply signal - it is the basis for realising/modulating a particular phase of the whole being in question. In the first instance the music is the basis for a return to a being in excess of the body alone - the music speaks both of and to the body and so in the act of listening again we realise a dynamic unity of movement and sensation - where unity is more than simply a continuity - it is a completion.

Like the musician with their musical instrument we are whole again as we regain that which voiced a being in excess of the body alone. That unity is (of course) singular (available only to the sharer) not to with whom the music is shared (at least not in the same way). In the latter example in which we experience a singular event of listening together there is a modulation of the virtual and 'dynamic unity' of movement and sensation (or rather a modulation of the virtual pertaining to these 'dynamic unities of movement and sensation') in the sense that the continuities in question become modulated with the intense experience of the performance.In this context modulation is conceived in the sense of a synthesis of two signals - so that one becomes the carrier of the other via the difference it realises therein. We carry the imprint of the events implications -its absence (‘its having been’) as a resonant ‘dephasing’ of our becoming (Stiegler 2009: 15, Manning 2012). That becoming marked therefore by an irreducible absence is also (potentially) the basis for a mutual supplementarity; the shadow of the whole being in question is carried in the sum of its dephasings. 

In the two instances above the differential realised between minds - the singular dephasings of those biogrammatic continuities are figured as, in the first, the ground for an irresolvable disconnect and second for an irreducible supplementarity. Both the irresolvable disconnect and the irreducible supplementarity are the function of the same biogrammatic generativity and are a natural extension and extrapolation of Massumi’s paradox of a virtual and dynamic unity of movement and sensation into the social (Massumi 2002:21). What differs is the function of the music (the particular music in this case) as a kind of event architecture. In the first instance there is an assumption that the quality of the music alone speaks to and of a particular intensity. In that assumption there is a forgetting of the resonant continuity upon which the implication of that intensity is based. The biogrammatic differential is at once naturalised and marginalised - the singular ‘mindedness’ of the other (listening) party takes on the same status as that 'promised writing' - the assumed shared understanding that Stiegler describes as afforded by the orthographic class (Stiegler 2009: 40). Our own ‘other mindedness’ is assumed universal; we assume the experience of the music is common (Massumi 2002: 190). In the second instance - of a shared experience of musical performance) the absence (or shadow) of the music becomes the vehicle for a supplementarity realised between bodies - there is a resonant dephasing between bodies that transcends the music alone so that the ensuing social continuity no longer need make recourse to the music as a basis for a return. 

There is something critical to the design of a generative mnemotechnical architecture and a vital sustainable becoming in this idea of a resonant dephasing and the supplementarity that it realises between bodies without the intermediary of the object. There is another form of communality and collective individuation opening out in this second dephasing. In the example of a musical-intensity-shared and an irreducible supplementarity the music is no longer the architecture of a return to anticipated potential - as the architecture of event it has removed itself from the continuity that it conditions. It remains only as a modulation of a (or rather , at least two) biogrammatic continuities - as shadow - as subtractive key to a supplementarity realised across a biogrammatic differential. Turrell’s pursuit of a non-vicarious art comes to mind here - there is an aspect of this resonant dephasing is his routing around of the perception’s autonomic 'plumbing of vision' and the ensuing communality his architecture affords - a becoming collective in difference rather than in spite of difference.

[psysoph]

The 'Inessential' and the 'Closed Object'

Simondon argues the 'distance between the act of production and the act of  usage and the lack of  provision for the feeding back of real information between these acts allows for the introduction of the inessential' as a defining quality of the industrial mode and the principal obstacle of the progression toward a technical mentality. The introduction of the 'inessential' under the industrial mode is identified (by Simondon) as the aesthetic or the appurtenant accoutrement of technics (Ibid). He uses the example of the 'luxury' features in the design of cars- in part because they present a clear distinction to more utilitarian vehicles (trucks) the development of which is more focussed on an effective integration and recurrent development with a network (of roads and economic architecture in this instance). In the latter instance the car (of course) remains part and expression of a wider network and its economic architectures. There is however an instance of the slippage in the locus of  agency  in this divergence of the inessential that  is reminiscent  to that discussed in relation to an orthographic mnemo-technics. 

 In the previous chapter we saw the orthographic develop according to what Stiegler describes as a ‘contextual wrenching’ and facility for abstraction  that saw the discourse make the body instrumental in the production and perpetuation of the text for itself. In the case of the ‘closed object’ we see a similar form and logic of implication and a similar shift in the locus of agency as that which occurs in the iteration and perpetuation of the text. The market pursues a universal demand via the anticipation or implication of a mass utility or desire - in the anticipated implication of the body of the consumer en masse. That anticipation 'is judged once and for all...in the full decision or the refusal to buy' (Simondon 2010: 24). For Simondon this means that the 'the object of industrial production' is a closed object, a false organism that is seized by a holistic thought that was psychosocially produced: it allows for neither the exercise nor the development of the technical mentality...' (Simondon 2010: 24).  In this ‘decision or refusal to buy’ I find a form of representative architecture - an impoverished modulation of expression that offers a form of reading/consuming as a promised writing and which thereby affords the implication of the body in iteration and perpetuation of the market as a ‘dynamic’ state of matter - a state of matter that exploits the potential for a determined implication of the body and a marginalisation of its biogrammatic generativity. 

Simondon calls the object at the centre of this assemblage a false organism - its an evocative term that resonates with the market as a ‘dynamic state’ perpetuating itself for itself (Simondon 2010:24, Stiegler 2009: 56 ).  However the object alone is merely the locus of this perpetuating agency. The ‘false organism’ incorporates and is inclusive of the body as component its maieutic becoming harnessed in the service of industrial-orthographic continuity. Given its potential for sustained continuity - its potential as organism - the characterisation as false begs clarification. What would it mean  for an organism to be false? (or true for that matter). Given Simondon’s focus on the object as ‘false’ and peddling the ‘inessential’ I’ll understand this ‘falsehood’ as reflecting the genesis of an essentially  manipulative continuityin abstraction of the bodies maieutic becoming away form a complex and therein generative immediacy. Technologies are defined as manipulative when 'they create the demands that they are designed to satisfy'  and when they 'produce [are productive] according to abstract plans for men in general' (Illich 1973: 37). The manipulative is opposed to the convivial; an architecture that enhances 'the ability of people to pursue their own goals in their unique way'. Importantly this ability depends on an intersubjective differential; conviviality is an ‘individual freedom realized in personal interdependence’( Illich 1973:52).  The closed object of the industrial-orthographic assemblage marginalises this potential for individual freedom realised in personal interdependence by routing around the manifestation of a differential realised in the context of use/expression and in reduction of that expression to consumption as a promised writing; our only potential for expression in relation with the industrial assemblage is reduced to a ‘decision to buy or not to buy’ (Simondon 2010: 24)- that is- ‘you are given a choice [as to your engagement with the assemblage] but on the condition that your choice conform to limits of the constant’ - (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 105 my brackets) 

[psysoph]

Technical Reality as a Whole.

The bodies-as-workers of industrial production;

 'remain(s) separated from the social field of the usage of products...they remain fragmented into specialised groups by their different functions of information contribution to machines -- technicians, workers..cannot elaborate a value code that is capable of becoming universal , because they  do not have the experience of the technical reality as a whole'

 (Simondon 2009: 21). 

In the wider context of the Technical Mentality paper the notions of 'technical reality as a whole' and a 'universal value code' reference the ideal of a fluid, open, and iterative recurrence between production and the 'conditions of use' affording an ongoing dynamic of reticulation in development. According to Simondon's schema the industrial mode of production sees cooperation as overdetermined in the production of a precisely designed/determined object requiring the performance of a highly prescribed input of power or information. This prescription and determination via the industrial machine prevents vision of the assemblage 'as a whole' or any sense of that 'component' or 'input' within a wider assemblage (the 'whole' technical reality). There is none but the bluntest of feedback from the context of the products/technics use: to consume or not to consume. In turn this leads to the decision to produce or not to produce (and as a consequence there is no movement in pursuit of the product's/technic's 'universal value'). Simondon's figure of the closed object of industrial production thus provides a link between the manipulative strategies of an orthographic mnemotechnics and thge industrial assemblage. I will understand this notion of reduction of feedback to a set of binaries; to produce/consume or not to produce/consume as the mode of representation- of 'reading' and 'writing' proffered by an industrial mnemotechnics. In this sense we should understand a link between the forms of political representation that are afforded and are effective in co-extension with an industrial-orthographic assemblage as affording the development of a particular intellect, a general intellect, that emerges according to the dynamic and scale of feedback and iteration afforded by what I will figure as the 'common place' of the industrial-orthographic assemblage. 

[psysoph]

On the product as defining conduit of energy and information.

Simondon figures the industrial mode of production as characterised by a separation of the sources of energy and information involved in the act of production ...'namely when the Human Being is merely the source of information, and Nature is required to furnish the energy' (Simondon 2010: 20). He distinguishes the industrial machine from the tool of the artisan in that the industrial machine is a relay; the machine has distinct inputs for energy and information. Information modulates energy in the process of production (20). The input of information is also distributed across time and space, beginning with the invention of the machine, followed by its construction, then by its regulation, and then by the education of the operator and finally its usage. None of these inputs are 'organically linked to and balanced out by the others'.  We should note that while Simondon explicitly mentions the 'tool' and the 'machine' as a conduit marshalling information and energy in the production of the object - the instrumentality of the object sees it become a tool itself in a recurrent conduct of energy and information. When we approach the productive assemblage from a processual perspective we are reminded of the role of the object or expression of production becomes instrumental in its recursive development and production. In fact we could argue that it is the potential for the object or expression of production as a recurrent conduit of energy and information that defines the mode of production; the artisanal mode defined by the object as a conduit of energy and information from production through to the context of its use, the industrial on the other hand defined according to ‘the abstract plans of men in general’ and to ‘produce the desire that it was designed to satisfy’ in the service of marginalising the recurrent production of difference. Simondon’s schema tends to focus back on the industrial separation of inputs of energy and information in production - but this separation extends into the form of the product itself, infuses the cultures of production as practice that define a becoming collective.