by Gabriel Watson & Jason Brown
This is a pre-publication draft of the multimedia project originally published in issue 1.3 (circa Spring 1996) of the online journal _SPEED_. The published version used six rings of six nodes each, reflecting the structure of an organic molecule. See stored copy at archive.org.
The code of this draft version has been modified from the original to allow compatibility with database.
Throughout the idiomatic snapshot of the Late Organic phase are pro/gnostic analyses of entrails as a prerequisite of culture’s ultimate “death” — in fact an undead exit-stance into an Eternal Life. The literal immanence of this shift into “transcendence” dominates the so-called future of neuro-logistics, and speculation on the expected transition has developed into a jihad between the cult of Techno-Fetishism and that of Neo-Luddism, each violently lobbying for the sympathies of the critically noncommital cultural mass. From these proceedings have emerged the psycho-scatological disciplines of the Adepts – those who seek the power to see into the lurid realm where perfect bodies shall burn and burn forever, a world of light and heat and fervered imaginings. The isolated members of this wrath-warded sedentary tribe can be found in their hives, desperately clutching at their culture purchases in the hopes of squeezing a trace of potentiality onto the Ouija board of global info-capital dynamics. (Another subset of the proto-extropes is that of the German amphorists, a cultic mime troupe of quietist techno-nomads, whose faces we frequently find left on our screens. . . . “Incroyable!”, they might have said. (See also: “Yoni/Tron and the Matrix Mooncycles,” Pherrat, 85)
The lingering penetration in question is that of the fabricated senseworld which is mutating exponentially in concert with modern technological innovation and the prosthetic augmentation of the organism fearful of its own obsolescence. The myth factory, itself a byproduct of any fluctuating info-terrain, assembles discrete and autonomous data into self governing machines which may be commanded to servitude by the organism intent upon enhancement. The processes of reading a book, hormone ingestion, or jacking in and driving a cargo lift are all variations of the myth factory’s genesis. This quantistic transposition has been party to the cultural sublimation of the four Godzillas on horseback descending out of flying saucers to etch bar codes on all of the VR helmets, or conversely, the mythic belief in a sudden realization of the utopian Technopolis where the virtual lion lies down with the virtions in an experiment of non-exclusion. The transponder is its own diagnostic when it is lodged within the tendrils of its own manufactured likeness, and in this sense the cyborg cannot be alienated – self and other enter into a duplicitous relationship of extortion and symbiosis.
Wherever abstraction is possible, the metaphor of interaction can be fitted to represent the intuitive tendencies of the individual. Within the mesh of occupied zones of the cyborg utopia, the paths of interconnection are complete. Every topographical element is both a destination and a gateway, hence the regulation of traffic is completely decentralized to the point where any destabilized transponder can be circumvented. To many of those who have attempted to contemplate the dynamics of the new as a state of transcendance, this has seemed to be indicative of a conscioussness delimited only by processing time in an “environment” of instantaneous access to any article of data. Opacity is the cardinal sin.
The tools and fixtures of the cyberworld will be made for specialized beings – entities which, in real terms, “expressively embody” multiplicity. And yet the densiplexity of the digital labyrinth requires agents and associations which perform for the embedded residue of the organism. The primordial age of these beings is the present; the network daemons now prowl the nethernodes, building databases from matching expressions which they will eventually be able to follow through with increasingly greater skills of association and abstraction until a complete sensefeed is compiled. These nonexistant daemonic agents of process are the fetal minions of infopoliticial-capital, and their coding is of utmost importance to the shape of cultural futures, or the lack thereof. As it stands, the neural simulations of desire and will which have manifested in late capitalism will ultimately seed these first hallmark constructs.
The production-consumption paradigm is the only one, and the role of distribution to its inherent dichotomy will be dependent upon the degree to which the interface is able to accomodate both poles. With the interface’s pyramidial perspective upon the dialectctic (so-called) taken into account, what will be the occupational stratifications of cyborgian producer-consumer culture? If the interface is designed to function as machine monopolized for data influx only, is this regressive? It is likely that the epitomization of the cyborg existence will be the designation of interface utilities which correspond to the “inate” faculties of the indivdual, whether they be more programmed to create or digest. A caste system delineated by interface classes seems increasingly unavoidable, with different modules handling routines particular to one side or another of the equasion of dialectical illusion.
The interface is the cyborg’s pourous skin-sheath binding it to the amniotic fluid of its mediated nourishment. The being that knows no self (Atman) is reliant upon its level of interaction with the dataverse (Brahman) in order to qualitatively assess its existence. The cyborg as post-terrestrial occupies only that which it is instantaneously aware of. Points of transmission within an environmental topology are inconsequential to this psycho-trancendent epistemontology; physical place has no role from the cyborg’s praxiological point of view. It does, however have a role….
The prefigurative functionality of the interface is the substrate for class crystalization in mediaspace.
The impetus of attaining the utopian ideal has fueled many settlements throughout history, as the re-establishment of human society without the inefficient and incompetent hegemonies of the Old World is a Historically Transient Attraction (HTA). The colonization of the digital realm is no different, egalitarianism seems to be an intrinsic quality of the envisioned dataspace for the stauncher proponents.
The dynamics of interaction as defined by the physical world are envisioned to be less problematic in the infinite plateaus of the virtually new realm; race ceases to be overtly relevant, monopolization of resources and space is neutered by the seeming inexhaustability of virtual materials, and every pole of ideology is its own media transponder giving the impression of a general presence at the global table of dialogue. However, the introjection of the sex-dirt of physicallity (or more acurately, the resurfacing of the social cyst which had been smoothed over with a shinny latex skin-prosthsesis) will come with the seemingly infallable intraction of the interface. Here is where the utterly political nature of the Transition must be contended with — how it is conceptualized. However such matters are not likely to be adressed by the loudest of the current crop who inhabit the new spaces of media, with discussions of the social impacts of a cashless society being restricted to a historiography of the archetectural effects of automated tellers on bank achitecture (William J. Mitchel, “Touch My Book”)
Immersion as transience
dominant and subdominant processes
Is this gesture of backing into the coffin of a VR suspension tank one which signifies an attempted retreat from “noise”, while describing an act of self-sacrifice to a fanatically pure machinic assemblage ? Be assured that those Agents of Schizophrenic Dissent (ASD) which have achieved zones of functionality within the Mechorganism shall remain without an absolute autocracy… so long as the operating system runs without glitches in the fuctionality of the “Buy Now” button. Despite whatever erruptive potentialities they may (seem to) threaten the System with, they shall continue to exist; the healthiest bodies must contain the seeds of their death, since an overly efficient immunology results in cancerous auto-digestion. But what role will these agents of potential systemic stochasticity play in the lifeworld of would-be bodiless immortals? Is there perhaps an intuitive recognition that information and noise are indistinguishable, that chaos is an in-folding of order, and that the venereal static of the hacker virus is in fact the Stairway to Heaven? Is “cybersex” the voyeuristic entombment of sociopaths or is it the orifice/appendage which synthesizes the Bacchus meme within Christian fidelity, thereby eliminating the counterproductivity of conflicting surrenders to indulgence and monoservitude? From a marketing standpoint, is this a question a cyborg would (need to) ask?
The polling of mitigative inclinations which takes place from time in the execution of *process* demands that the codons are able to satisfy abstracted directives by keying response sequences in accord with a desireable output bitstream. If the machine is to be animated to any degree, it must tap into the creative Force of the biological organism. As it has yet to fall from grace, so it were, it is without the function of will to recognize any but the human as its creator. As machines interface more and more with one another in networks, the data packet bearing the signature of the bio-organism is obscured as the source of the datoid becomes less and less important throughout the various stages of translation between machine protocols. As a result, the plasticity of the interface metaphor ensures the survival of the machine by repudiating individual ownership, which in turn leads only to greater efficiency — as it is the machine’s task to satisfy the organism without being complicated by organismal politics, attractive information is easily reproduced.
Within the despatialized ecology of the infoterrain, there is little reason for guilt in the act of virtual (pro)creation, for not only may dataspace be annexed, it can be manufactured in the form of data storage media. Under such anti-delimitation, the truly efficient interface is that which can tap directly into the percieved Source of the creative impulse. Current evaluations of interface classes are intent upon the sustainability of use and the net satisfaction [sic] yielded, though the manner in which they reward interaction takes two distinct forms. There are those applications which allow satisfaction through their end product, and those which stimulate joy from their processes. This product/process split differentiates between tools and toys, the former being programs used by graphic artists and virtual architects, and the latter being known as games or (edu-)tainment. Yet the new intracacies and complexities of modern datastructure offer oppurtunities for a fusion of these factors, which is where the metaphor employed by the interface is of primary concern. The evolution of the interface is driven by efforts to provide a method of interaction which embodies “pure” expression and intercommunication between the organism and the machine, as close to immersion as physically possible, until the physical itself becomes possible. The essence of the “apt” metaphor is the creation of an abstract gesture executable by the organism which initializes a chain of processes and events within the computer in order to minimalize unnecessary labor. A macro-example of this gesture is embodied on in the social scale in the sweeping layoffs and corporate mega-mergers, which allow managers to control an increasingly fluid, perhaps cyborgian, labor force — more a force and less a body.
Virtual reality has offered ways of analyzing and managing stocks via a visual metaphor wherein the user wanders among a cubist garden of fluctuating shapes, pruning and watering the objects. Such actions initialize “toolbox” routines which adjust the users stock portfolio accordingly. Yet with the expanding universe of virtual spaces, the creative impulse is needed for the genesis and fabrication of *objects,* namely terrain (fragment, decentralized, yet…) and elements to populate it, inanimate and otherwise. Within an agrarian metaphor, the space is seeded, its structures forged. However, those interested primarily with the process of interaction rather than the products of a harvest, a more animalistic approach towards fertilization may come to distinguish their metaphor of choice. Regardless, the existence of the dataspace is dependent upon an impregnation metaphor, even in the rudimentary pre-teledildonic phase of the late 20th century which saw proliferation of the sexual fantasy world in the consecration of datastructure to hold unprecedented volumes of static sexual imagery.
For the Uberborg, the division of virtual and real shatters the balance, and plugging the birth canal of the symbiotic with the prosthesis of impotent homogenesis. The transgenerational cloning of organic physical and mental characteristics simply cannot maintain efficiency in a world increasingly inhabited by machines, arguments for and against mechanical sapience notwithstanding. Therefore, such trans-organics remain inherently transgressional. But this is the magic of the orb and the juju glory which radiates around the slimemold of international infocapital; trans-gression has utterly supplanted progression (“Double investigation of a Double INvestigation,” Fettesh, ii). The point of departure is willingly forgotten and its mention admonished. The organic roots of the superbeing are an embarrassment, as they should be. The will of the rude and spontaneous is to be refined within the algorithmic man, the genetic forbearance of nature is a crude model of the hedging refinement found in the entity production mechanism. As the daemons are brought into existence as they are needed by the arch-user, so too with the rest of the entities ascending up the revised ladder of Genesis. But this time, all in one never-ending day. The analysis of need and the beauty of efficiency in the utilization of resources. The greater minds of the transition stage can be unfrozen from time to time as their peculiar sets of creative variables are assessed as useful to the growth of the polis. But these periodically defrosted brain-pods are merely the precursors to the truly digital process agents, those encoded sequences which alternate in between indefinite stages of dormancy and execution. The merger of Disney and ABC does not (necessarily) indicate that Walt’s heatual lamb. It is an extroactive mut(il)ation; it is the exoskeletal nourishment module which houses and transports increasingly post-analog nerve bundles. Despite whatever (mal-)/(ben-)evolent course may be interpreted in the tracing’s design history, bio-organismic disfigurement is aided and thereby encouraged by the manifestation of the machine. The misotechnic perspective holds that this is humanity’s final exercise in masochism, the flickering blue light in the living room to be replaced by the silhouette of a human suspended above the mainframe, thrashing about in its net of high voltage bondage. The capitalist ethic holds that this is necessary.
The central hub of the armature’s stimtrodes reside at the base of the spine, for athough the eyeball is obsolete, the optic nerve is sacrosanct. Light is to be preserved above all else.
Perhaps the mythos of the cyborg has soteriological gems secreted behind its cool demeanor. It is, at least, geared towards an understanding of mutual metagenetic affecta
Number-timothy leary Virtual reality, for examples 7Tothyl 2.0No more need for mid-level workers with the thorough knowledge necessary to persue such routines “by hand”. Such gardens are the playgrounds of the Padishah, hacking the heads of of virtual workers in order to water the shimmering “earth” with their “blood”, resulting in a corresponding growth-spurt in the portfolio plants.
Witha — infoscapes as they say –these digital ecologies, a period 7, abetweenB 8ly concrete AM [sic], culminating inevitably in the fixation of Cyberchrists everywhere 8 creation will all take place
doDonald and 9ii ia by means of purchaseDisney-mall 10while 10
?!*?!*?!*?!*?!* ?!*?!*?!*?!* ?!*?ZC[(.9OA[)*+!i!'iAe`New Media CenterLYour Face:arAum:prosthesis:CURRENT PROS VER.:CulturalProsthetics [rough]
Throughout the idiomatic snapshot of the Late Organic phase are pro/gnostic analyses of entrails as a prerequisite of culture’s ultimate “death” — in fact an undead exit-stance into an Eternal Life. The literal immanence of this shift into “transcendence” dominates the so-called future of neuro-logistics, and speculation on the expected transition has developed into a jihad between the cult of Techno-Fetishism and that of Neo-Luddism, each violently lobbying for the sympathies of the critically noncommital cultural mass. From these proceedings have emerged the psycho-scatological disciplines of the Adepts – those who seek the power to see into the lurid realm where perfect bodies shall burn and burn forever, a world of light and heat and fervered imaginings. The isolated members of this wrath-warded sedentary tribe can be found in their hives, desperately clutching at their culture purchases in the hopes of squeezing a trace of potentiality onto the Ouija board of global info-capital dynamics.
(Another subset of the proto-extropes is that of the German amphorists, a cultic mime troupe of quietist techno-nomads, whose faces we frequently find left on our screens. . . . “Incroyable!”, they might have said. See also: “Yoni/Tron and the Matrix Mooncycles,” Pherrat, 85)
The lingering penetration in question is that of the fabricated senseworld which is mutating exponentially in concert with modern technological innovation and the prosthetic augmentation of the organism fearful of its own obsolescence. The myth factory, itself a byproduct of any fluctuating info-terrain, assembles discrete and autonomous data into self governing machines which may be commanded to servitude by the organism intent upon enhancement. The processes of reading a book, hormone ingestion, or jacking in and driving a cargo lift are all variations of the myth factory’s genesis. This quantistic transposition has been party to the cultural sublimation of the four Godzillas on horseback descending out of flying saucers to etch bar codes on all of the VR helmets, or conversely, the mythic belief in a sudden realization of the utopian Technopolis where the virtual lion lies down with the virtual lamb. It is an extroactive mut(il)ation;
it is the exoskeletal nourishment module which houses and transports increasingly post-analog nerve bundles. Despite whatever (mal-)/(ben-)evolent course may be interpreted in the tracing’s design history, bio-organismic disfigurement is aided and thereby encouraged by the manifestation of the machine. The misotechnic perspective holds that this is humanity’s final exercise in masochism, the flickering blue light in the living room to be replaced by the silhouette of a human suspended above the mainframe, thrashing about in its net of high voltage bondage. The capitalist ethic holds that this is necessary.
The central hub of the armature’s stimtrodes reside at the base of the spine, for athough the eyeball is obsolete, the optic nerve is sacrosanct. Light is to be preserved above all else.
Perhaps the mythos of the cyborg has soteriological gems secreted behind its cool demeanor. It is, at least, geared towards an understanding of mutual metagenetic
Number-timothy leary Virtual reality, for examples 7Tothyl 2.0No more need for mid-level workers with the thorough knowledge necessary to persue such routines “by hand”. Such gardens are the playgrounds of the Padishah, hacking the heads of of virtual workers in order to water the shimmering “earth” with their “blood”, resulting in a corresponding growth-spurt in the portfolio plants. Witha — infoscapes as they say –these digital ecologies, a period 7, abetweenB 8ly concrete AM [sic], culminating inevitably in the fixation of Cyberchrists everywhere 8 creation will all take place
and 9ii ia by means of purchaseDisney-mall 10while 10
Md will soon become the ruling agent for all of human culture – it only means that his brain will be the algorythmic map which the many agents of global monoculture will follow in the exertion of their quiet hegemony. Not Mickey Mussolini so much as Donald Rhizome and Goofy Arborescent.
Transgression?
Regression, on the other hand, is a useful Hegelian strawman which is kept dancing on the stage in order to rush the hopes of the audience towards the pulsing light which becomes increasingly visible through the roof of the theatre. There are fireworks. Above us, there is potlatch — or at least the look and smell of potlatch, since expendature by the State (or even an animation of State symbology) which results in an awe-struck concentration of the population is by no means an expendature without concrete returns. The presencing of an unembodied specular regime bundles the lines of sight together into the classical facsies [sp], but with the ax no longer in the center, gone but not forgotten. It is a conquership without continuous presence, it’s mark engrained in the irreprerable restructuration of cortex and fiber.
This is the dis/comfort that art provides; management versus, maintenance. The gallery is perhaps the most portable concept, the installation as an experienece of transformation, usually requiring physical disfugurement.
Virilio is completely insane to differentiate the virtual and the real in disco (“Dance with the Devil in the Strobelight,” Virilio, 271). Similar to the gallery structure, consumable threat is presented as a guiding light in an ancient insect level ritual of sex-death seduction. Though it is the Safety Dance, it is also the Masque of the Red Immanence. It is as close to full-screen real-time rendering as the pre-teens can currently get, and make no mistake — they want it bad.
The nomad becomes visible in the emburdenment of the civil servant in the fulfillment of a realized necessity. “Neo-primitive” laceration of surface becomes an ample reward. Unfotunately, the metaphor of distributed processing over networks is too dominant in efforts to establish an interactive flux between the nodes of synthesis, the preceptual model of a cyborg being oriented towards performing command routines from origin-less protocol packets. These biological workstations are not provocateurs — they handle subroutines. (Kafka) In current approaches towards (and the inscripting of) bio/techni-logical coexistence, there is too much accomodation for digital and mechanical influx into the organic being; such an emphasis contradicts the likelihood of a merge between organic and inorganic in the first place. [??]
Feedback response can, of course, exist entirely within the digital realm; the human being need only give the proper cues to the mechanized process in order to meet consumption criteria. Purchasing activity can be represented in a database whose values reflect the outcome of the “economic” equasion. This relates to food as well as media. In such a contigency, the human/computer interface is hardly one of “interaction”; it is merely the prompting of a predefined automated process, whether that prompting is internal or external. The consumer incerases in efficiency and feedback-cycle productivity until the Marxian chain is fully transcended, replaced by the digital encoding of the cycles (as perfomed by extreamly “physically” attractive avatars.)
The human being need only give the proper cues to the mechanized process in order for meat consumption.
Kafka or the priapistic voyeur Kafka ?
The new bloom of insect-eyed epistemological facets? Or the death-aphrodisiac of a moth, still living, pasted to a radiator grill by means of the exploded goo of its own body, accelerating faster and faster down the highway?
“In order to elinminate the sweatshops of a commuter-less future, sweat will be eliminated.”
Gabriel Watson & Jason Brown (U. California, Santa Barbara), “Cultural Proesthetics: The Mutational Aesthetics of the Late Organic” (multimedia, hypertext work) _Speed_ 1.3