Tati, Gursky, machines, gadgets and structures – Part 2

What stimulates something 'to be', to endure? Obviously one cannot answer that by refering to the identity and existence of the thing itself, a paradoxically self-contained sense, or a non-sense. The alternative is a continuous and repetitive abrasion of sense. A stimulation by difference. Of a being in state A and then state B, such that it irreversibly loses some aspect of state A without possibility of reconstruction, but with a memory of that loss. The difference between states A and B being unstatable but ever present, a pure sense. The subjective registers are pure sense machines, prospecting virtual Universes far from equilibrium.

From this chaos, value is a kind of temporary arrangement of sense into a repetitive structure, a cooling down that is necessary for the further production of sense. Structures have the possibility of exchangeability, a trade-off necessary as the multiplicity of desiring machines simultaneously seek the balance between constituting subjective registers and prospecting unknown and unknowable virtual Universes. A structure never deterritorializes alone, but rather constitues it's subjective register with other structures along a plane of consistency. A pattern of irreversibile changes, arrangements of pure sense, a partial objectification.

...occupied by inputs and outputs whose purpose is to make the structure function according to a principle of eternal return…

This flocking behaviour exploits the relative efficieny of large numbers of distinct entities constituting the 'same' arrangement of subjective registers, exploiting the same tricks, extending a phyla of technical apparatus in response to a plane of consistency. As a strata of such uniform entities develops, it provides a generic code that can be repeatedly connected with and manipulated. The phyla is arranged into a strata and becomes a gadget.

The photographs by Gursky, as undercurrent identifies , picture the great machines in their vast expanse, their plane of consistency or environment, but with the action stalled, posing the question: is this a strata of gadgets or a mechanosphere?

Human beings in Gursky' photographs, where they are shown, are shown in anonymous arrangements, distributions in space…. Often (e.g. isKlausen Pass 1984) humans are scattered, scarcely noticeable, like a handful of gravel thrown over the landscape, but nevertheless transforming the surface on which they crawl; making of it a territory, a map, a plan.

The traders in the stock market photo are machines belonging to a specific phylum and existing within a specific plane or environment, defined by values belonging to the adaption of those machines to the environment. An image of cooperation and differentiation together on a massive scale.

Robert O'Toole : 03 Jun 2004 11:37 |  Tags: Philosophy Research Transversality Transversality |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem