In Kant's critique (though I am far from expert) as I read it the man whose judgement will be subjective is in fact a universal subject, dem rohen Menschen (man in the raw, the Tierra del Fuegan or Australian Aboriginal) is contrasted to the supposed righteous man [einen rechtshaffenden Mann annehmen]. So there is a discussion of objectivity, but that objectivity lies in the "natural" superiority of the European man rather than the work which can be treated subjectively once the question of the subject is sorted.

Also, I'd like a reference where Derrida treats physics principles as a metaphor for something else, because I have never seen it and both JD and physics metaphors are important to me in my current research.

As to the larger pre-Curt discussion, which I've found engaging : the distinctions Johannes and Simon make in there very different ways between formal and informal languages is from my point of view quite productive to the analogue/digital discussion. Yes, there is no formal language without an informal one, and any informal language can also be approximated in a formal way (perhaps event to the point of simulacra, in my first life as an experimental musician I did a lot of trying to get my powerbook 5300 approximate the Tascam 2-track reel to reel I was accustomed to as a recording device). But there are certain kinds of mathematical or "serialistic" processes that are afforded by digital media in ways that analogue technologies don't. In a longer essay one could trace this distinction back to the medieval liberal arts that split the trivium (rhetorical language arts) from the quadrivium (broadly mathematical) or go back to the greek muses. For me, holding the distinction open rather than collapsing it is ultimately productive for explaining the "code" level, even when we know there is no digital without the analogue and vice versa.

Cheers

Danny

--
http://www.dannybutt.net
+64 21 456 379



On 24/03/2011, at 3:15 PM, Curt Cloninger wrote:

> yes!
> "...to ask an artist to adjudicate a debate between a philosopher and a physicist"
> 
> 
> Here is Steven Shaviro on Kant's proposition that beauty is neither merely objective nor merely subjective:
> "...the strange status of aesthetic judgment. I may judge a flower to be beautiful, yet I know that 'beauty is not a property of the flower itself'; the flower is beautiful 'only by virtue of that charactteristic in which it adapts itself to the way we apprehend it.' So beauty is not objectively *there,* in the world. It is not *in* nature; it is rather something that we attribute *to* nature. An aesthetic judgment, therefore, is one 'whose determining basis *cannot be other* than subjective.'
> 
> YET AT THE SAME TIME [emphasis curt's], beauty isn't *merely* subjective. It isn't just something that we project upon whatever it is that we see, hear, feel, touch, or taste. The attribution of beauty is not an arbitrary imposition. There is nothing about it that is special, or particular, to the person who happens to be making the judgment. It is not even 'universally' subjective... Rather, a judgment of taste involves an uncoerced *response,* on the part of the subject, to the obect that is being judged beautiful. Aesthetic judgment is a kind of *recognition*: it's an appreciation of how the object 'adapts itself to the way we apprehend it,' even though, at the same time, it remains indifferent to us."
> 
> He then proceeds to relate this to D&G's parable of the orchid and the wasp.
> 
> 
> ryan griffis wrote:
>> "What you say might be nice and interesting but it has no cosmological relevance because it only deals with the subjective elements, the lived world, not the real world."
>> http://e-flux.com/journal/view/217
>> 
>> 
>> On Mar 23, 2011, at 7:07 PM, NEW-MEDIA-CURATING automatic digest system wrote:
>> 
>>> Date:    Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:26:25 -0400
>>> From:    Curt Cloninger <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Subject: Re: quantum/digital/analogue
>>> 
>>> 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