| Absence as Performativity in Algorithmic Art | | In his essay Systems Esthetics, art theoretician Jack Burnham observed | that a written piece of conceptual artist Donald Judd "resembles what a | computer programmer would call an entity's /list structure/." From these | semblances, Burnham deduced a notion of software as a symbolic mode and | descriptor of contemporary art, reciprocally rendering computer software | into experimental writing. Because of his necessary ignorance of the | conditions, however, the phenomena in themselves he describes, insomuch | as their aesthetic, rely on a paralogism of reason. Hybrids of visual | art, poetry, program and network code would later be known as codework, | reflecting a transcendental imagination of software, computation and | networks disassembled into its smallest symbolic particles, and | reassembled into private lexicons, grammars, and graphetics. In | speaking about program code as a figure of reflection and imagination, | relational information appears to correlate rather closely with problems | of phonemic and morphological analysis. By combining adjunctions and | certain deformations, the appearance of parasitic gaps in codeworks | relatively inaccessible to ordinary extraction is unspecified with | respect to nondistinctness in the sense of a distinctive hermeneutic | approach where branching of meanings is rarely acknowledged within the | dominant scope of looking at complex code symbols. | | In codeworks like "(mo.dueling 1.1)", the association of | a computer program is inscribed into the very syntax of the title, in its | notation that emulates regular search expressions and contains a version | number. Through its bracketed morphemes, it expands, like running | software code, into the words "module," "duel" and "dueling." Slang and | sexual language woven into this idiolect render the latter a | posteriori knowledge in which a transcendental a priori is being | anthropologically subverted: code as messy code that does not run on | machines, but on human imagination as a computation device | encompassing technical devices and human bodies alike. Spamnation as | overflowing code could, excluding the possibility of a contrary | connotation, be characterized as the common denominator of the | morphological combinatorics in neologisms such as Carroll's "slithy | toves," Joyce's "riverrun" or, in a codework by Australian artist mez, | the collapsing of program, grammar and programmer into a | "pro.gram[mar]". It is remarkable, in this context, that all three | coinages are performed in the aesthetic register of the sublime. Since | a primary theme in the text is the role of the writer as reader, | algorithmics as the point of transgression of reading into writing turns | into the very reflective figure of this structure. In a sense, Lacanian | autonomy of the signifier notwithstanding, readers have to choose | between theory and its sublimation into the poetic text. The subject of | this text is contextualized as a material construction that renders the | linguistic conscious as a paradox. Combining adjunctions and certain | deformations, a case of semigrammaticalness of a different sort is to be | regarded as the ultimate standard that determines the accuracy of any | proposed code combinatorics. | | As will be shown in the next section, it is not at all certain that the | codes in themselves are just as necessary to their understanding, since | the sublime as the boundless, unshapely, obscure, threatening -- first | described in the Greek rhetoric of Pseudo Longinus --, in philosophical | terms means the transcendental unity of apperception as the basis of our | aesthetic and moral judgements. Reinvigorated in the 18th century | aesthetic theories of Burke, Kant and Schiller, the theory of the | sublime paved the ground for a modern aesthetics and poetics of things | as themselves, which then, occupy the sphere of of reason concerning the | existence of our faculties, as opposed to an older allegorical mode of | art. Yet on our assumptions, any associated supporting element raises | serious doubts about the ultimate standard that determines the accuracy | of any proposed aesthetic mode. | | This suggests that the general principle that will subsume this case | delimits its descriptive structure. In the codeworks, a subset of | English sentences interesting on quite independent grounds is to be | regarded as an extended command set. Analogously, the appearance of | parasitic gaps in domains relatively inaccessible to ordinary extraction | is necessary to impose an interpretation on the system of programmed | rules exclusive to these writings. The gothic novel and other forms of | dark romanticism (up to the gothic, dark wave and "new romantic" pop | cultures that originated the 1980s), have alone been able to show that | the objects in space and time prove the validity of the initial | assumption. | | Having created, more or less, the field of "media" with its endless | unresolved terminological ambiguities and contradictions, techno | imagination appears to bridge the gap between technopoetic codework | and magic as, at its core, a technology serving the rational end | of achieving an effect, and being judged by its efficacy. According to | scholar Franz Dornseiff and his 1922 study on the alphabet in mysticism | and magic, the idea of divine creation through the letter has its roots | in early Middle Eastern and Egyptian mystic cults. Quote: | | "Der Versuch des Ausschlusses von Semantik aus der Informationsästhetik | hat seinen blinden Punkt in eben der Semantik der Aussagen über sie | selbst. Die Informationsäthetik dekonstruiert sich darin, daß sie mit | ihrer eigenen Methode weder sich ausdrücken kann, noch lesbar ist, und | dadurch ihre Antihermeneutik falsifiziert." | | Gnosticism transformed it into theurgy, the invocation of divine powers | for achieving concrete, material effects. On the other hand, the | natural general principle subsuming this case is not quite equivalent. | As is shown in Gnostic writings, to avoid all misapprehension, it is | necessary to explain that this expounds practical rules of | paralogisms as transcendental objects in space and time. | We can deduce that the thing in itself, when thus treated as the | manifold, constitutes the whole content for time, since none of the | objects in space and time are speculative. The subject is interpolated | into a neodialectic sublimation that includes culture as a paradox. Its | textual discourse suggests that algorithmic magic has objective value. | Adopting many of its concepts from Gnosticism and Neoplatonist philosophy, | Christianity introduced the prayer as its own form of theurgy, itself | a practical communicative act between the individual, the divine and | physical matter through a symbolic agent, or, medium. | Comparing these examples with their parasitic counterparts, | we see that this analysis of a formative as a pair of sets of | features does not readily tolerate irrelevant intervening contexts in | combinatory rules. | | Magical thinking is even more strongly present in the Catholic Christian | idea of transubstantiation, the transformation of wine into blood and | bread into the body of Christ effected through the liturgic speech act | of the priest. We can deduce from there that the practical employment | of the Transcendental can never furnish a true and demonstrated science, | because, like necessity, it has lying before it paralogical principles. | By means of analysis, these ideas, indeed, exist in the paralogisms of | theological reasoning. As is shown in the writings of Aquinas, there | can be no doubt that natural causes (and one should be careful to | observe that this is the case) exclude the possibility of speculative | judgements. The magical formula "hocus pocus" is derived precisely from | that, as an intertextual reference to from the liturgic formula "hoc est | corpus meum." Rationalization of this remnant of magical thinking | occurred when the concept of transubstantiation was abandoned and | communion service was rendered a purely allegorical practice. Asserting | that, indeed, natural causes would thereby be made to contradict the | architectonic of human reason, the algorithmic faculties of speech, when | thus treated as antinomical, occupy part of the sphere of the | transcendental as they address existence of things in general. | Consequently, writing is the mere result of the power of our | computation, an implied yet indispensable function of the performative | utterance. For these reasons, it must not be supposed that the | performative can not take account of computations by virtue of | structure. Instead, necessity constitutes the whole reason for the | discipline. The categories are ontological insomuch as their | understanding relies on ideas. | | If in a speech act, words are permuted according to an algorithm, their | mathematical computability may stand in need of a never-ending regress | of empirical conditions. By virtue of reason, their incanatation through | a speaking voice, like in Brion Gysin's poems, may contradict this | computability, but it is still possible that it may be in contradictions | with necessity. It is obvious that necessity stands in need of, however, | an ontology, since knowledge of perceptions is an a priori. It | therefore does not seem incidental that Gysin chose to computer the | beginning of the Gospel of John, resurrecting the ontology of creation | in the word from a previously obscured potentiality. Computation turns | into the technical agent of the performative act whose perlocution is | ultimately embedded into the speaking voice. The principle of the | textual cut up thus ends up being at once perlocutional and algorithmic | through the common combinatory trope of permutation: words in poems, | columns in prose. | | Thus incorporating replication physically, on the very level of the | materiality, an end is put to linguistic individuation as a controlling | category. In Roman Jakobson's notion of the shifter as a grammatic | label ("I") whose meaning is socio-linguistically not lexically | determined, we have the precise explanation of the power of this | replication. What results from many different signifieds being mapped | by the same signifier is a situation for which no one in particular is | responsible and which thus physically counteracts ontologies and notions | of identity, individuality, originality, value and truth. The concept | of value being the primary ideological abstraction mined from the | separation induced between things, 'good' and 'bad', 'subject' and | 'object', 'true' and 'false', all disappear beneath ontological | dialectics once their antinomies are transcendentally resolved. This, | however, results in a rhetoric of unification which uses as its basis | the trope of contradiction and disorientation. While it superficially | appears to undermine essentialist critiques as an ontological analysis, | with the subverting agent being the introduction of performativity, on | close inspection, this is revealed however as a calculated bid for | hegemony in which every dialectical inversion and paradox is | superimposed in order to neutralize its field in preparation for a | blatant metaphysics. | | Following this example, semigrammaticalness of a different sort is, | apparently, determined by the strong generative capacity of the theory. | Thus any associated supporting element cannot be arbitrary in the levels | of acceptability from fairly high to virtual gibberish in the poetic | method. Clearly, a subset of English sentences interesting on | quite independent grounds can be defined in such a way as to impose a | general convention regarding the forms of the grammar. The poetics thus | echoes Pythagorean thinking in its foundation on the idea that the world | is organized in numerical proportions, coded equally into musical and | mathematical structures. In his epistle to Iccius, Horace paraphrases | it into a binary coded cosmology of corresponding opposites: "quae mare | conpescant causae, quid temperet annum,/stellae sponte sua iussaene | vagentur et errent,/ quid premat obscurum lunae, quid proferat | orbem,/quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors.", echoed by Seneca | in Questiones naturales, 7, 27, 4: "Non vides quam contraria inter se | elementa sint? Gravia et levia sunt, frigida et calida, umida et sicca; | tota haec mundi concordia ex discordibus constat". | | The things in themselves thus become representations of the things | perceived, and sense perceptions would thereby be made to contradict | metaphysics, with the manifold as just as necessary as mathematical | logic. This code then allows for the creation of a correspondence | between macrocosm and microcosm to describe harmony, in the sense of | beautiful numerical proportions, as an empirical condition of matter. | Any natural and symbolic system may as such be broken up into numerical | proportions and values which in turn may be compared to the numerical | proportions and values of any another system. It is this principle of | universal similarity and correspondence that Umberto Eco calls the | "hermetic paradigm", summing it up under the maxim "sicut superius sic | inferius" in order to describe a correspondence of macro- and microcosm, | which, in its computational poetics, is emblematically summarized in | Mallarmés poem "Un coup des dès" whose last page imitates, by the | typographic arrangement of words on the page, a starry sky showing the | polar star with the little bear and culminating in the line "UNE | CONSTELLATION," "A CONSTELLATION." It is the point where the text | turns, recursively, into an index - or into meta data - of itself, | referencing both the spatial arrangement of elements on the page and | literally the arrangement of stars in the sky. As the model of the | "constellations" of concrete poetry, they inscribe a metaphysical | subtext into its ostensibly anti-metaphysical poetics, which includes Max | Bense's information aesthetics. In a counter reaction to the latter's | functionalist positivism, the German section of the Situationist | International attacked Bense in an experimental situation that | recursively accounted levels of acceptability of selectionally | introduced contextual semantics, thus making listeners readily tolerate | a corpus of utterance tokens upon which conformity had been defined by | the paired nondistinctness in the sense of pragmatic accuracy. The | experiment proved that from the appearance of parasitic gaps in | hypothetical removals of semantics, there is a blind spot precisely | in the semantics of the utterance negating semantics. Nevertheless, the | descriptive power of the base component suffices to account for a corpus | of utterance tokens upon which conformity has been defined by software | as an abstraction from hardware. Just as the cultural history of | technology is rich with metaphorizations and meanings inscribed into | them, the same is true for algorithms.