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Hi Simon (and all),
I have been following the dialogue thus far. Here are some thougts:
First, it is surprising how quickly the discussion headed toward
sub-atomic physics. There seems to be a kind of
formalist/essentialist consensus that if we can sort out the
differences between digital and analog at that "fundamental" scale,
we will have definitevely sorted out all the differences. But things
happening at that scale don't seem all that pragmatically relevant to
the scale(s) and speed(s) of new media art. Unless these principles
from physics are interpreted in a kind of metaphorical or symbolic
way, in which case we are back to Derrida.
Perhaps the relationship between analog and digital things (and our
model for understanding that relationship) varies and modulates as we
change scales and speeds. At the scale and speed of a human body, the
analog and digital are in one kind of relationship; at the scale and
speed of a city or a global economy, the analog and digital are in
another kind of relationship. Is there some "unifying" meta-principle
governing these shifts in scales/speeds? (And is this governing
meta-principle analog or digital!) Are there certain critical
state-changes along this scale/speed continuum that rupture and
radicalize the differences between analog and digital?
Also, regarding new media art, there is another kind of significant
distinction between those receiving the art, and those making the
art. As a practicing new media artist, I may be greatly concerned
with the nuanced material differences between analog and digital (as
I perceive them at the scale with which my art is engaged). But these
process/production differences may pragmatically mean very little to
a person in the gallery experiencing my art. Here I would be
interested to hear from a third perspective, a curatorial one. How
does curating new media alter one's understanding of the differences
between digital and analog? What new differences arise that are not
encountered from the perspective of either the artist or the
user/patron/viewer/actant.
In my experience, media theorists and practicing artists (and
academic ontologists policing the borders of overlapping artistic
genres) make a whole lot more fuss over analog/digital distinctions
than most new media works actually warrant (at least from the
perspective of a gallery visitor). Some new media works may be
metaphorically or (re)presentationally "about" the digital/analog
divide, but oftentimes the work itself fails to enact these
distinctions as an affectively experiencable event. So perhaps the
distinctions between analog and digital blur and are not so relevant
at both the sub-atomic scale/speed and the dividuated human body
scale/speed (although in different ways and for different reasons).
What happens at macrocosmic scales/speeds? What happens at chip-level
scales/speeds? What may happen at future scales/speeds? Probably
qualitatively different things happen. The differences between analog
and digital themselves differ at different scales/speeds. Ye olde
difference differing.
Regarding language, I have to throw Bakhtin into the mix. By adding
Bakhtin, Peirce's tri-partism doesn't always have to bear the entire
constructivist burden of overcoming Saussure's dualism. (Traveling
east toward Bakhtin thus avoids a a kind of pan-Atlantic, historical
meta-dualism.) Bakhtin's concept of "the utterance" means that the
(digital?) semiotic aspects of language as a system of meaning are
always dependent upon and colored by a series of event-based,
affective (analog?), embodied historical utterances (and vice versa).
Language as a force in the world, tweaked and modulated by the forces
of the world. This understanding of language heads toward
Lakoff/Johnson, and perhaps to/through Deleuze.
And, as if things weren't confounded enough:
http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_licb3pwkSG1qb58eqo1_400.jpg
Best,
Curt
>Just when we thought it was safe to put aside the digital/analogue debate
>this comes along.
>
>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811199
>
>It's digital - but not as we know it. In such systems the state of a bit can
>be zero and one at the same time. A computer designed by Charles Saunders
>Pearce or Lofti Zadeh then...
>
>Best
>
>Simon
>
>Simon Biggs
>[log in to unmask]
>http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>
>[log in to unmask]
>http://www.elmcip.net/
>http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
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