Znamya Space Mirror (1993)
This 20m wide satellite was a series of experiments by the Russian Federal Space Agency, exploring the possibility of bouncing solar radiation to urban and agricultural areas plunged into darkness for much of the year. Through said illumination perpetuation of “workable” hours could be increased, accelerating Value production.

Light as a unit of comfort, or facilitator of action that can be made profitable through artificial/ human interference. How might this impact other beings across the Scene? What might it be like going from the very dark to the suddenly very light within a second? How would this affect how one orients and navigates; what would the immediate affect be to our cells and. neurons and what might they say? Could artificial light from a screen or lamp be deemed as critical to a value system, if so then what kind of value system and whose? 

Fountain of Youth Lucas Cranach the Elder (1546)
The fountain as a place of rest and
rejuvenation in which an endless cycle of beings bathe and pass through.

distill me
move me
absorb me

Rituals of health and the pool, watery bodies, as means of transition. Cold water is known to reset the nervous system, could one evoke this reaction or photocopies/ memories of this reaction through separated mediums? The sea on screen, a cold viewing space. Or perhaps goose-bumped images in the company of trays of water.

How does the temperature of something affects one's connotations? We know the brain remembers pleasant experiences more readily than uncomfortable/ traumatic ones? Benjamin called existence within the modern as "a shock to the senses" does this affect how we remember? Do our bodies hold this; is remembrance more somatic than cerebral?

Open access to units of capital, relationship between us and objects of value and our access to them. Comfort as a measurable unit within relations of value.

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Let's flux between 3-D and 2-D dimensions.
Between material & somatic, somatic & semiotic, semiotic and material.

Excerpt from Dissertation.
Forces created partly by humans not out with our control that emit forms of temporality that bathes us in a spatiotemporal vortex that is radically different from human-scale time.Morton mentions that philosophical reflection on hyperobjects is a form of rest; acknowledgment of the hard to fathom.

☟

Old work.
Showing an object of capital/ an object created by/for capitalist growth, being manipulated by invisible force. Idea behind cyclical movement was to create feeling of endless loops, endless motion, too reflect endless cycle of goods and capital around the globe.

🐛🍋 📡

🌀

Wark talks of our world going through 3 distinct transformations as capital occupies it as terrain. These transformations happen in the historic as a method of temporal organisation but all classes of beings oppressed by capital interact with one another in what Wark calls a three dimensional game of chess. The role of technology for example creates a new class (which Wark names the hacker) whose spatio-temporal signatories are occupied by capital in distinctly different ways than than those in the Industrial worker class. As with previous the first and second natures (we are in the third one now, heralded into being by technology)

Transition indicates movement both spatially and in ones self. Our ideas of self are still very much materialised through the motion of capitalism; influenced byl, moved through and impacted by . We must always be ready to adapt to the New. Dismissing forces of value, time and space as mere constructions, and framing them as such, causes a gap to occur, where one’s awareness and one’s own placement within these forces is indefinable (these gaps vectoral forms.) Similarly, dismissing these forces as past or purely framing them through a historic lens perpetuates the same effect. Without consciously exploring these states and signals we progressively become pessimistic; active participants within the perpetuation of Realism.

Mechanisms of safeness for multiple beings. Creating experiences that are comforting, engineered to vaporise feelings of safety amongst those localised.
Our conception of music is systematically built on what one hears within the womb, our sense of rhythm for example is based on the heartbeat that echos within the womb (stemming from those who carry us). How might different frequencies of rhythm affect us in conscious and unconscious ways?

“An internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about a given subject at a given time- encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once, rather than detail by detail.”

Gendlin, Eugene, Focusing (New York: Random House Digital, 1982) p.32-33

Mutual play, mutual aid.

Gestell "enframed vision"
Heidegger.

Heidegger and latterly Harway, talk on the idea of technology 'enframing' us in relation to ourselves. Touching on the dangers of transhumanism, they describe our identities, bodies, and selves potentially transform into something akin to "standing reserves" through the modification of body, brain and consciousness by new technologies. Transhumanism views the body as extra, external, and a commodifiable product undermining ideas of embodied identity, and creating feeling of restriction through motifs of scarcity situated in direct correlation to the natural form and forms of being.

"Vision in this technological feast becomes unregulated gluttony; all seems not just mythically about the god trick of seeing everything from nowhere, but to have put the myth into ordinary practice. And like the god trick, this eye fucks the world to make techno-monsters." Haraway, Donna, Situated Knowledge: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspectiv, Feminist Studies , Autumn, 1988, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988) p581

Lets zoom into the infinitely small from the infinitely large. Objective infinite vision is an illusion, an apparition, a daydream. If not in realities it can exist, then perhaps in other more dreamlike and subjective ones it can. Objectivity becomes then about specific embodiment and not infinite transcendence above limits and responsibility, subject and object become one.

" We need to learn in our bodies endowed with stereoscopic vision, how to attach the objective to our theoretical and political scanners in order to name where we are and where we are not, in dimensions of mental and physical space we hardly know how to name." Haraway, Donna, Situated Knowledge: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspectiv, Feminist Studies , Autumn, 1988, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988)

quick notes on yoga

Yoga often pushes at "the edge" between what is comfortable and intolerable in regards to pain. Ideally it exists within one's practice where you are sufficiently challenged but not so much that you are pushing towards strain or injury. This edge not only exists physically but also mentally, often one doesn't associate strain with the mind however, over stimulation and overwhelming thoughts distinctly 'injure' one's mind in that normal level's of function are hindered. A mental edge then could be described as challenging concentration, focus and willpower in conditions that are not comfortable; breathing into intensity, using the comfortable as a place for growth. By challenging and scoping-out, broadening our tolerance for the uncomfortable in body and mind we are able to move beyond what we think we are comfortable and redefine our limits. This pushing of one's spectrum of comfortability is transformative and has a distinctive force and velocity behind it. In comparison to the pace of the modern lifestyle this could even feel like a lack of velocity. As someone who is neurodiverse and with a high sensitivity to light and sound, I have to be more conscious of what I find comfortable so as to not experience frequent burnout, the link between sensation and awareness key.

Within Yoga Nidra, there is also a presence of suggestive linguistics (especially in trauma informed practices) that acts as an invitation into poses, movements and sensations as per what one is comfortable with. These can manifest in certain strectches as a way to embrace and relax into sensation or within bodyscan centred meditation, as a way to draw attention back to the body:

“In these treatment approaches the story of what happened takes a backseat to exploring the physical sensations and discovering the location and shape of these imprints of past trauma on the body […] patients are helped to build up internal resources that foster safe access (sic) sensations and emotions that overwhelmed them at the time of the trauma.” 1

Focusing on a threefold attack, these somatic therapies centre on: observing the sensory information that is obscured by trauma; aiding patients in befriending these energies freed by inner contact; and resolving actions that were paused while said patients were immobilised. Through re-engaging with sensation and body the idea is that one can gradually expand their breadth of tolerance of distressing bodily feelings and the traumatic events that produce them. By existing in a space where one can push at fields of sensation, and embracing the totalities, the spectrum of feeling one can begin to transform deep rooted responses into a more concious practice.

How then might a screen or technology be used as bridge between these sensations? Ideas of technology as tool and digital warmth became centric within moving this research forward.

“We will let our liquidity roar with deep decibels of waves. We will cruise as wild, amorous monstrous malfunctions. [...] Let’s be beatific in our leaky limitless contagion. [...] Be the glitch.”2

References
1 Van Der Kolk, Bessel, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, (London: Penguin Books, 2014) p 217-218
2 Russel, Legacy, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, (London: Verso, 2020), p.152-3

“In these treatment approaches the story of what happened takes a backseat to exploring the physical sensations and discovering the location and shape of these imprints of past trauma on the body […] patients are helped to build up internal resources that foster safe access (sic) sensations and emotions that overwhelmed them at the time of the trauma.”
Van Der Kolk, Bessel, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, (London: Penguin Books, 2014) p 217-218

John Cage~ In a Landscape (1948)
Pictured here is the last measure:“Play without sounding, release pedals (thus obtaining harmonics”). Relation between movement and subtleties, a meditation for both the performer and prompt for deeper listening for audience.

As an ever-presence, noise is often witnessed as mundane As an ever-presence, noise is often witnessed as mundane and disruptive of silence, with sound within art often viewed as “in the process of lastingly polluting our representations.”7 The idea of art to be separate from daily life is interlinked here with the idea of sound polluting quietness and contemplation; our ability to attribute meaning (a clear mind) impacted by sounds available naturally. Sound is something that aides communication and without noise, language and discursive practice would not exist in the first place.8 The need to separate the mind from noise or the naturally occurring, echoes broader Cartesian binaries on the separation of the Human from Nature, particularly the concept of a “pure,” untainted sacred space of all meaning. We can see direct correlation here to the prevalence of the white cube gallery space. Sound radiates out in wave like patterns from an object while Cartesian narratives create imperial mono-hierarchy through which the rationally thought and designed is fetishized. A lot of the research surrounding this project stems from anti-hierarchical formations of thought and organization and so the work set out to be devoid of this hierarchical verticality.

While discussing the vertical, Adorno derides philosophy’s presumption of belonging or meaning denoting earth and origin which perpetuates the idea of violent groundlessness or uncontrolled fall.9 Anti- and post-foundational philosophy discusses the rejection of the concept of a given and stable metaphysical ground, stemming from a constant unsteadiness that is characteristic of our present environments. This unsteadiness or constant need to detach from the present to a purer state of human consciousness is based on the on the ideals of rational Enlightenment thinking. Moving through Heideggerian metaphors of ground and the relationship between abyss and ground, thinkers within this movement see this experience of instability as an experience of freedom.10 Critical within modernity, is the lack of meta foundational space for object, subject, space, and time amongst the dominant. Adorno notes that although falling can be shocking, this shock is inclusive. In this shock the senses and by proxy, our selves can be liberated; allowing for new modes, new spaces for listening to form.

An embracing of all sounds (all listening) can be traced back to Russolo via Cage, Schaeffer, and Varese, with Cage taking this egalitarian view of noise/ sound to its logical conclusion "those intended and those others (so-called silence) not intended."11. His most famous work 4’33” (Fig. 1) silenced the need for expected music and consciously musicalized the surrounding environmental noise;

“You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.”12

Cage proposed that any sound can be used in music; negating the need for intention within music; “only a willingness to attune to aural phenomena”; taking the emphasis from the creator within music and situating it within the listener.13 The line between sound and musical sound is dissolved, every sound imbues the properties of an intentioned sound. With Cage there is a movement towards the use of sound as somewhat documentative of a moment. A turning inwards on surrounding sound that through the establishment of a conceptual space becomes interested in personal internal dynamics, alongside the dynamics of the outside environment;

"the locus of the acoustical experience's meaning is transferred to the listeners, who are therby allowed to 'become their own centres' rather than submit to the will of either composer or performer."14

No one experiences things the same and personal connotations and subjectivity pay a large part in how one navigates and interacts with a work. Instead of setting out with a highly rigid conception of what should be conveyed, I wished to create a space in which one could personally form thoughts and feelings without judgment. One can then work from one's own centre, not in isolation but without being pushed in one particular direction. There becomes a malleable, multi-directional space from which one can slip in and out areas that peak one's interest.15

references
1 Serres, Michel, Genesis, trans. James, Genevieve and Nielson, James (Ann Arbor, MI; University of Michigan Press, 1995) pg. 7
2 Kelly, Caleb, Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, (Cambridge, MA; MIT Press, 2009) pg. 70
3 Serres, Genesis, pg. 22
4 Russolo, Luigi, L'Arte dei rumori (1913), trans. Filliou, Robert, The Art of Noise, (New York; Something Else Press, 1967) 4: pg. 5-6
5 "In the pounding atmosphere of great cities as well as in the formely silent countryside, machines create today such a large number of varied noises that pure sound, with its littleness and its monotony, now fails to arouse any emotion." Ibid, pg. 6
6 "An intoxication overcomes the person who tramps through the city streets for a long time without goal. With every step the going gains in force [...] Then comes the hunger. It will heed nothing of the hundred possibilities of stilling it. Like an ascetic animal he strides through an unknown quarter, until, in the deepest exhaustion, he collapses into his room that, strange to him, lets him in coldly." Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations, trans. Zohn, Harry (New York: Schocken Books, 1969) pg. 525
7 Virilio, Paul, Silence on Trial, (2003)
8 Serres insists that background noise is the “universal condition of all exchange” Serres, Genesis, pg. 192-3
9 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. Ashton, E.B., (New York: Continuum, 1972), pg. 43
10 Steyerl, Hito, “In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective”, in, The Wretched of the Screen, (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012), note 1, pg. 29
11 Cage, John, Silence: Lectures and Writings, (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), pg.13-4
12 Cage, John, quoted in, Ross, Alex, "John Cage’s Art of Noise", in, The New Yorker, September 27 2010, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/searching-for-silence [last accessed: 25/07/22]
13 Kahn, Douglas, "The Latest: Fluxus and Music", in, Armstong, Elizabeth and Rothfuss, Joan, eds., In the Spirit of Fluxus (Minneapolis: Walker Art Centre,1993) pg. 102-8
14 Joseph, Branden W., 'The Tower and the Line: Toward a Genealogy of Minimalism', Grey Room, no. 27 (2007) 59-67; 69, in Sound: Documents of Contemporary Art, Kelly, Caleb, ed., (London; Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2011) 43-53: pg. 45
15 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Massumi, B., (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005)

4’33” (In Proportional Notation), John Cage (1952/3).
“For any instrument or combination of instruments.” Cage’s minimalist, “silent” work uses silence to attune the listener to the world around them. A score for the mundane that moves the audience to consider the sounds that are inbuilt in ‘silence’, bringing them to view all sounds as music, disrupting the hierarchy of sound and redefining the notion of what music is. The piece can never be played the same, reflecting Cage’s interest in chance as a compositional strategy, control redacted from the composer.

space
Our societies are defined by what they choose to deem as valuable. The rhythms of power and wealth production and distribution, are born from this decision of the valued and the valueless. In the feudal system and most tributal systems, this stemmed from regional land productivity. Thus, our spatial awareness of these concepts had a material root within nature and the landscape surrounding us. However in the post-internet era, our environment is less temporally and spatially situated leaving our tools for navigating these landscapes, the senses moot. How then does one navigate a sensory landscape both devoid of input for some senses (taste, touch, smell) and over-stimulating (sight, sound). How can one map (hold this environment) in their mind?

“even spatial distance reduces itself to time; the important thing is not the market's distance in space, but the speed – the amount of time – with which it can be reached”1

Through a material-symbolic redefinition of space through systems of value, capitalism and realism found their success; "time as linear, space as flat, and nature as external."2 The removal of things from their “spatial and temporal order” similar to Freud's definition of a dream state, echoes our own withdrawal into reductive logic.3 The use of rationality as a tool of never ending expansion separated us from nature so as to control it, birthing Anthropocene-centric thinking. Following this perhaps the internet and digital can be thought as the completed form of this movement (an absolute reduction of spatial-temporal relations); a collective dream-world;

"Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map.” 4

Although controlled by others, so expansive and void-like is the internet in it's form (endless black matter) that the nature of being relentlessly expansive means there is always new space. Space to reform, and redirect energies. If this space is already our default, our "natural" then perhaps we already have the tools and means to do so.5 However, if this reduction of things to matter-less forms (“All that is solid melts into air.”) is what is leaving one with feelings of overwhelm and a lack of agency, then reconceptualising elements to have some sort of somatic or material presence is a more sustainable practice. Morss writes on history ‘betraying”us (a sentiment based on Benjamin’s writing) and elaborates further, explaining the somewhat hollow practice of sticking a ‘post-’ era onto these histories to soften and rationalise these failure;

“History has failed us. No new chronology will erase that fact. History’s betrayal is so profound that it cannot be forgiven”.6

In rationalising those that have passed us- post-Marxism, post-modernism, post-capitalism. We run the risk of further abstracting ourselves within intertwined effect. Reducing our shared experience to matter-less ‘dreamland’ only creates opportunity for further abuses of power to take place. Both Morss and Fisher respectively talk of “surprising” the present and threatening this realism through proving it’s inconsistency or, the"glitch" Russel describes.7 8 Cultural uncertainty is seemingly a historically endemic part of a society obsessed by forces of modernisation, the perpetual need for progress, as demonstrated by Benjamin and Morss. Definitions of the spatial and temporal have developed and changed alongside capitalism, and as we move into a new period of domination, acknowledging the historic qualities of these forces helps us occupy the state of 'dreaming'. How could one create feelings of both immaterial and material in the same moment? Can one exist both in a dream and in reality at the same time, and how would this bridge this glitch be in form?

references
1Marx, K., Gundrisse (London: Penguin Books, 1973), p462
2Moore, Jason W., Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (London: Verso, 2015), p61
3Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1965), note p. 84; Buck Morss, Susan, Vanguard/Avant-garde, (2006), p25
4Baudrillard, ed., Poster Mark, Selected Writings, (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), p16
5Jarzombek, Mark, “Digital Post Ontology”, in e-flux Journal, Becoming Digital, (January 2019)
6Buck Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West , p68
7Ibid., p67-68
8Russel, Legacy, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, (London: Verso, 2020)

transitional movement.

GIF of curtain blowing out from broken window in a burned down, abandoned flat. Ephemeral movement transferred into digital in-between. One can feel the force of the wind through a secondary, symbolic lens. A distinctly different but just as valid experience. ~~~Engagement with the mind's senses.

The divine human eye in relation to spheres of stars and earth ~

digital sensoryness
A glitch is normally thought of as an error but through symbolic/ semiotic reintegration Russell show how liberation can be found within the fissures between the body, (gender), and technology. Focusing on an argument based around multiplicity, Russel dissects the intersection of this multiplicity, offering the 'glitch' as an opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities;

"let’s meditate on the idea of a "[self] with multiple selves" and acknowledge that the construction of a self, creative or otherwise, is complex"​1

Mono-technologies have convinced us that signifying who we are is the only way we are deemed worthy of participation, which not surprisingly, makes it easier to target content for us. In hand with this, establishing oneself around singular definitions has become unviable in a world where the speed of information has sped up dramatically due to technological advancement. The glitch can act as an faulty overlay, a cracked lens, through which an image has no choice but to be fractured. We are required to be multitudinous beings in the modern day; professionals, free labour, observed objects, data mines, but importantly this multiplicity is not for ourselves or formed from our own agency. There is dichotomy between the tokenisation of one's self to be 'easily readable' and the multiple forms of labour/ labour identities one undertakes to simply survive. We can be blurry and indefinable of our own accord, it is our right. It is our right to be abstract and fluid both in body and in mind.

Digital landscapes are not just "enframed" by the eye of mono-technologies but also created for their bodies and normativity.2 Around the time when Google was first assembling a maps division, an employee reportedly noted upon first seeing the technology that eventually enabled the construction of Google Earth; “If our mission is to make all the world’s information useful and accessible then this is the real world."” Platforms dictate the manifestations of our objective rationality through the availability of mass information. This channelling of all forms of energy (kinetic, psychic, electric, petrolic, sexual, atomic) into a singular framed vision, realises a singular axis of time in which the historic melts into the synchronised metric of westernised modernity. This diverse appropriation of perspectives is one that Latour title’s “Globalisation-minus”, not an opening, but a closing of perception. 3 We see this in Instagram’s algorithmic timeline, which reorders time through computational intervention, in the hopes of maximising engagement within the compulsive action/reward loops in our brains. We can no longer simply catch up to the present through the times displayed on our phones, instead a mis-match of word, sound and image is displayed to us based on unitary personal statistics. The body of an algorithm is distant, both more expansive and more compact than the human form. .The framing of technology being far apart from the human echoes transhumanist philosophies; a post-human triumph over nature. A repugnance for the sexual body goes hand in hand into this ideology, the preserved techno brain isolated from limbs, and fetishized as such.

As figures on the horizon “we are stripped of the right to feel, to transform, to express a range of self.”4 Technology is an "organ" something that can push our outlines and materiality.5 There is a feeling of bodily echo with our personal smart devices. They respond to our fingers, read our faces and fingerprints, record our heart rate and breath. This seems at odds with the cold remoteness we experience through them at times. A cursor hover could be a loving gaze, a click a caress. We biograph and recapture fragments of ourselves and others through machines, sharing the most tender and blue moments respectfully, representing ourselves through keyboard, lens and microphone.

“Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum. […] People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque. Cyborgs are ether, quintessence.” 6

Escaping transhumanist thoughts that homogenise beings to terms, and creating new repetitions of technology that open warm sensations of social, political, and aesthetic life becomes of empirical interest. Occupation of the body and self, in physical, metaphysical, and transitional spaces seems key to this vision. Transition indicates movement (MAGNITUDE+FORCE=VECTORAL), in space both internally and externally. 7 Modern neuroscience has clearly taught us that our sense of self is anchored in the connections between self and the body. Self-regulation is the manifestation of movement in self and space, allowing us to express the feeling of a not-yet-possible agency with the hope of this becoming possible when one is regulated. These two ideas are the same at the core; the negotiation of self in the present pulling from physical and ethereal entities. We present an idea of the self constantly, whether consciously or not, and this is not necessarily a restrictive process but one that is malleable. Playing with this malleability, inhabiting a plastic identity though technology as a secondary organ is what could be manifested into hopeful futures;

“The oblique romance of Internet-as-utopia, against this backdrop of reality, should not be dismissed as naive… it continues as a survival mechanism…Using the internet to play, perform, explore still has potential. Giving ourselves this space to experiment perhaps brings us closer to a projection of a ‘sustainable future."8

“The work of inhabiting a space involves a dynamic negotiation between what is familiar and unfamiliar, such that it is still possible for the world to create new impressions, depending on which way we turn, which effects what is within reach. Extending into space also extends what is “just about” familiar or is “just about” within reach.”9

The rituals of documentation can be used to orchestrate the data, realities and aesthetics amongst the landscape to bring one back to the now, the present and the body. Embracing an “imperfect realisation” of self is certainly viable whenever transformative bodies force themselves to be felt. Isabelle Stengers notes that the realisation of ideas indicates the act of writing, once written down ideas then coax us to define associations and meanings, in the transition from writing to the post-verbal reading. 10 The act of writing itself, they note, has the possibility to be framed as attesting to a “more than human world”, chthululic, when not viewed as belonging to the self but an “animation” of experience. The right amygdala, a part of the brain that has a role in memory, decision making and emotional response, is shown to light up, momentarily, whilst under neuroimaging when one hears something that mirrors their own experience. 11 This swirl of activity emphasises the accuracy of reflection; a felt-ness of being seen, of being part of something. Hito Steyerl suggests that images, sounds and data now routinely transition beyond screen into altered states of matter. 12 Far from being aggressively opposite, they say, images and world are for most cases parallel to each other, not direct copies of each other, but diverse, uneven, lacking and excessive in relation to each other. Importantly, this state between image and world gives way to anxiety and speculation. What they suggest as alternative is a sort of “circulationism” in which the production of image transitions to a space of recording, redefining and circumventing structures and powers to a place of equal distribution.

Animating one’s experience of self through documentation, whether using image production, written word or audible protest could simulate the somatic and sensorimotor psychotherapeutic practices through the use of technology as extra to the body;

"there is another path that isn’t full of stress, self-doubt, pain, victimization, and suffering. There is a path in which everything is learning, playing, practicing, doing things anew. ”13

The internet acts as Archive, and although vast and ubiquitous in its formlessness, it acts as documentarian; where we can view structures of relations dissolve and reform. THE SELF AS ARCHIVE~

The glitch is a pixelated fall; the cyborg’s ritournelle, a swarm of feeling.

tra-la-la-la-la, the om as drone; a continuous sound.

Acceptance of the effects outwith our control leads us to a state of warm occupation that is undeterred by Capital Realism and logic.

Images magicked onto screen, emanating sounds; put us into a state that makes us feel as if we are encountering the transitional. We move to a subjective-objective world in which we can amplify our inner hum until it envelops, digests and spits out affects beyond our cognition. It creates instances where the temporal can connect within the present, and to relish in that present-ness without agitation and forced transition.

Transition into the future, the next moment, without set functioning, simply enjoying the somatic qualities of the now is the function. A "break" as a source of creative and social inspiration; a voluntary, involuntary experience. Both the physical and digital realms are limitless with ever-large power, places where communication is exchanged with the presumption that words have established meanings and predictable effects.

The internet as an opportunity for the arguing of the importance of locality and the equality of all cultures

Perhaps it is better to revive compromised words, like those which have been restricted to metaphoric use. “MAGICK” is such a word, as we note and speak on the magic (THE EPHEMERALITY) of a landscape, of an event, of a sound. Protected and distanced from the "real" by a metaphor, we have the space to express an experience of an agency that does not belong to us even if it includes us. An agency that has occured due to FEELING. What might an anti-capitalist space look like that is built solely for mutual connection and aid? How would this impact our broader lived experience if this was the norm over spaces that mirror the past over imagined futures? Following the logic of use-based content, it follows that the more we would individually engage with these spheres the more scope they would have on our shared broader consciousness. If these terrains for sharing and uploading were built on the antitheses of compulsivity and the vulturous; if user-based content was designed around grounding and self-regulation; and if the monolithic was transformed into community focused what might our boneless realities manifest as? Both the physical and digital realms are limitless with ever-large power, places where communication is exchanged with the presumption that words have established meanings and predictable effects. Accepting the free-fall amongst scattered metaphors and imagery might open us to find a space where one can explore the intersection of being and becoming; an embracing of plastic identity.

roll the dice of conciousness~~

PH TEST STRIPS
A pH test strip is a strip of litmus paper with which you can measure the pH value of a liquid. The substance in the paper causes the paper to show a different colour at different acidities. The official pH scale is from 0 to 14, where 0 is very acidic and 14 very alkaline

Tools for measuring, signalling, equating. Creation of a tool that measures the substance of consciousness and aids in mapping of an inner world. How might this appear? Could this tool act as a generator, a machine that helps spurn new possibilities and eventualities? A prompt for learning and grounding.

Through technology as a tool a new tool can be compiled together- a mix of sound, text, image, (pixels on a screen) that when brought together becomes a sum of it's parts. The gaps, and broken space between the code (how these things are displayed to the viewer) is what makes this tool functioning- in this breaks, gaps, GLITCHES, a metaphysical space is created, one that transposes self, screen and body. An assertion of inseparability, which still moves as one, but is a function of continual and ubiquitous differentiation. An ever-moving technic movement (algorithm/ spine of code) that differentiates through the unique subjective perspective of the viewer. This spin of narratives is the end function of the tool, made possible through the unconscious measuring the viewer undertakes while in relation to the tool. A measuring, signalling and equating instigated through media.

media as matter.

Mycorrhiza in root cells from a plant of the genus Corallorhiza Orchidaceae.
Mycorrhiza "fungus root" is the term for the underground connections between fungi and plant roots. The connections act as a passage for substances both lifeforms need to grow; plants provide carbon-rich sugars made by photosynthesis, and in return they get nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, that the fungi scavenge from the soil. As the fungal threads spread, they can link up to multiple plants, creating webs known as ‘common mycorrhizal networks’. Through these networks, plants can exchange sugars, nutrients, water and more. By encouraging plants that are connected by common mycorrhizal networks to suck up isotopes (isotopes are atoms of an element with different numbers of neutrons) of a resource like carbon, it’s possible to trace the resource’s progress from one plant to another. From this research, a picture emerges of individuals sharing with those in need, of ‘mother’ trees sending carbon to seedlings, and of dying trees donating nutrients to their neighbours.

"one could say that pines, matsutake, and humans all cultivate each other unintentionally. They make each other’s world-making projects possible. This idiom has allowed me to consider how landscapes more generally are products of unintentional design, that is, the overlapping world-making activities of many agents, human and not human. The design is clear in the landscape’s ecosystem. But none of the agents have planned this effect. Humans join others in making land-scapes of unintentional design. As sites for more-than-human dramas, landscapes are radical tools for decentering human hubris. Landscapes are not backdrops for historical action: they are themselves active. Watching landscapes in formation shows humans joining other living beings in shaping worlds."

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaup, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015) p152

“Forms are active not because they are kinetic but because they interact, evolve and unfold in dialogue with the world around them. Active form offers other toggles and dials for manipulating and rewriting bits of code in the system.”

Esterling, Keller, Subtraction (New York: Sternberg Press, 2015)

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non-hierarchal thinking
The globe is a deepening space for relationships far beyond the simple human-to-human and these connections are significant in their power. As the contemporary epoch rings with the actions of the Global North, those affected vary in species and size. While the world seemingly swells with the ever-large it feels important to re-establish connections on a smaller more localised level. There is agency within our very bodies, neural pathways and white blood cells, as well as on a micro level as molecules reach states of equilibrium.1 These are not new concepts, writers from Harraway to Deleuze have long expanded on this, and in sociology the Actor-Network-Theory social theory proposed by Latour.2 However, the invisible forces of financial capitalism often still leave a wake of disorientation after them that spans interspecies experiences. Decisions can collide into other beings, relations or forces, out with our awareness.

Modern ecology has progressed past flat ontological thinking where nothing consequently has dialogue with anything else, to post-structuralism, where power dynamics are inherently viscous; their impact on the world around them tracked through constellation-like layouts. 3 Connecting things non-hierarchically, connecting heterogenous practices and concerns, where any being is liable to connect with any other, and creating space for all inhabitants of earth to occupy their agency is described by Deleuze and Guattari as “rhizomatic thinking”;

"connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles"4

Similarly Eduardo Viverios de Castro poses multinaturalism in contrast to multiculturalism, the former affirming a multiplicity of natures as opposed to the latter which is built on the concept of homogenous nature touted by neoliberal views. They note the importance of not claiming that each culture has an unique essence, which can be othering, but rather affirming differences through arguing the importance of locality and equality of all cultures. The world is autopoetic without humans; self-forming, boundary maintaining, dynamic, and most importantly, acts as a frame for when our actions have consequences.5 As Crist writes, embracing our insignificance within a broader whole, and declining technocratic, exceptionalist visions;

“invites the priority of our pulling back and scaling down, of welcoming limitations of our numbers, economies, and habitats for the sake of a higher, more inclusive freedom and quality of life.” 6

What might a space look like that is non-hierarchical? The image that follows the one before every bit as equal and valuable. What qualities might it have?I wish to explore the structure of writing and moving image as modes of narrative; a building or collaging of phrases, words, images, sounds and experience that culminate together into one whole. Each one (node) scales up to the whole, but the whole also scales down to individual works, images and sounds. Something collage-like that flexes with each viewer's own personal modes of interpretation.

references
1 Bennett, Jane, “The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout”, in, Public Culture 17(3) (Duke University Press, 2005) p445-65
2 Latour, Bruno, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
3 Weiner, D.R., A Death-Defying Attempt to Articulate a Coherent Definition of Environmental History, Environmental History 10, no. 3 (2005): 404-20
4 Deleuze, G., Guattari, F.,A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Massumi, B., (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004) p7
5 Lovelock and Margulis, “Atmospheric Homeostasis by and for the Biosphere: The Gaia Hypothesis,” Tellus, Series A (Stockholm: International Meteorological Institute) vol. 26, nos. 1–2 (February 1, 1974):p 2–10
6 Crist, On the Poverty of Our Nomenclature, Environmental Humanities 3 (2013): 129–47; p144

Jellyfish Fossils,
Jellyfish fossils are extremely rare due to the bodily structure of a jellyfish being soft; without bones. Instead fossilised jellyfish are only found as 'soft fossils' a process that happens when organisms are quickly buried in sediment, leaving an imprint in rock.

soft, anti-structures of form

imprint of a past, fluid form against an ever-present, ever-lasting hard substance. The trace of an image against the closed membrane of a pressed eyelid OR the mind's eye.

soft bodies, soft form, soft listening.

delicateness held in a fine tuned balance~~~ the result of a balance of ephemeral qualities

aesthetic qualities of a single-cell; nucelli like in appearance.

MINDS EYE~~ CELLS AS A UNIT OF ENERGY

SOLID FORM
↓
Molecules
↓
Atoms
↓
Protons,
Neutrons,
and Electrons
↓
Fermions
and Bosons
↓
Quarks,
Leptons,
Gauge bosons
and Scalar bosons
↓
Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom
Electron, Muon, Tau etc.
Photon, Graviton, W and Z bosons, Gluons
Higgs boson
↓
Energy

Screenshot from Wikipedia page on Elemental particles and particle physics.

TERRA INCOGNITA → TERRA NULLIUS~~
a queering, mapping and occupation of a digital terrain

“The state of mind which analysts describe as a repetition of the infant’s feelings in its mother’s arms, the state which Freud called oceanic, is thus being regarded by certain writers on art as an essential part of the creative process. But it is not the oceanic feeling by itself, for that would be the mystic’s state; it is rather the oceanic state in a cyclic oscillation with the activity of what Ehrenzweig calls the surface mind, with that activity in which ‘things’ and the self, as Maritain puts it, are grasped separately, not together. And the cyclic oscillation is not just passively experienced but actively used, with the intent to make something, produce something." Marion Milner, Psychoanalysis and Art (1956), pg 159-60

molecularisation/ soft bodies
Matter, material, cells and atoms are present through every physical interaction we have with the world. We touch/ are touched; listen to/ speak through; move/are moved; through their structure and form. Their forms are imagined as circular and unitary, building up to a full vision of a whole thing. Bennet in a nod to Spinoza, notes the fields of molecular biology and chemistry as representative of a sort of “self-organizing capacity of inorganic systems.”1 On another more global scale, the biochemical industry has created new components of capital;

“the world economy is dependent on the production and circulation of hundreds of tons of synthetic steroids and technically transformed organs, fluids, cells (techno-blood, techno-sperm, techno-ovum, etc.).” 2

Although the influence of the molecular as central to the global economic system is debateable, there is a distinct feeling of scale at play within our collective thinking of 'the molecular'. Here, marked levels of molecules and related concepts, effects and conceptualisations interact at differing planes, with unique pathways linking them into and to each other. These pathways perhaps act as a mode of conceptualising or understanding the socio-ontology that surrounds the 'molecular'. I am concerned with this idea of a molecular consciousness, or, the theory that surrounds materialising something that is by definition- immaterial;

"the absence of the relationship does of course not prevent the tie (la liason) far from it - it dictates it conditions."3

This gap, 'glitch' or nameless relation that “dictates the conditions of what ties us” -links like a DNA thin pathway -“which is to say that it is not a simple, indifferent absence, but an absence that curves and determines the structure with which it appears”. Lacanian scholar Zupančič goes on;

"The non-relation is not the opposite of the relation, it is the inherent non-logic (a fundametal 'antagonism') of the relations that are possible and existing."4

This ontological and epistemological issue concerns itself with communication or effective depiction and Zupančič also notes the field of psychoanalysis as primarily concerned with this finding of the 'right word', to untangle the logic behind the collection of linked meanings produced by the affect of free association. This depiction is extremely alchemical; a voicing or putting into action; a naming or sounding; a moving of the particles that make up the unknown.

Marx's theory of "concrete abstraction " is characterised by a “synthesis of many definitions, thus representing the unity of diverse aspects.”5 In Jordana Rosenburg's essay "The Molecularization of Sexuality: On Some Primitivisms" they pull from Marx's Concrete Abstraction and align it with the molecular. Describing the ontological qualities of the molecule as:

"it is on the grounds of its sexualization – by which I mean, its figuration as fantastically aleatory and seemingly essentially resistant to discipline – that the molecule becomes an abstraction. [...] the molecular has become linked with a seemingly inexhaustible number of claims about both the contemporaneity of ancestralness and our peering over the brink into a fully new historical moment.[...] Indeed, it is for this reason – because of its simultaneous sexualization and its abstraction –that the molecule signifies futurity and primitiveness at once. "6

The molecule can appear as an ur-object so to speak, both distinctly representative of our past, future and counter-intuitively, the frictionless space between these states. Part of the molecule or cellular charm is it's multiplicity; a characteristic in the later case exemplified by cellular turnover and regeneration. Holistically there's is comfort with imagining yourself as a regenerative form, both grounded by previous iterations of 'self' and propelled forward by the prospect of being a brand new form on a cellular level. It takes between 80-100 days for the body to regenerate the 30 trillion cells that equivalates a new form; a temporally hopeful prospect perhaps. Not in a fetishist sense of endless self regeneration, or a hoarding of cells in the style of primitive accumulation, but in a delicately hung equilibria of being and time;7

"Against a critical reading which would look at the ways in which art or literature queers the pitch of the normal, Deleuze offers a positive reading in which temporality in its pure state can be intuited and given form as queer, as a power to create relations, to make a difference, to a repeat power beyond its actual and already constituted forms."8

There is something 'wet' or soft-of-body surrounding the cell. In 'Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form' , Leslie Esther talks on the LCD digital screen's characteristically liquid form, offering it and the dimensions it transports us to as a uniquely different state of matter.9 Liquid crystal is a curious material phase that organises a substance’s molecules in a crystalline form that simultaneously allows them to move fluidly like water. In both volumes of 'Capitalism and Schizophrenia' Deleuze and Guattari write of the 'Body without Organs' (corps sans organes), based on the writing of Artaud and psychoanalysis, to talk of the body freed from it functions of homeostasis to find it's unregulated potential outside these organisational, molecularly firm, structures.10

In psychoanalysis Freud talks of a limitless, liquid state based of exchanges with Rolland titled 'Oceanic Feeling'. In 'Civilization and Its Discontents' he describes it as a return to the pre-Oedipal state before an infant can determine itself from it's mother; a status of wetly cellular infinity.11 For Freud the Oceanic is something threatening and unmappable; a terra incognita. However if mediated or guided through the oceanic state through the act of signification (naming, processing, putting action into) the oceanic holds a positive potential. As Wang puts it;

"Perhaps, rather than trying to purge, disavow, avoid, or control, the “traumatic excitation” of ocean feeling, it makes more sense to dwell in it, to silence the repulsive dread of maternal suffocation, to inhabit the feeling (getting filled-up and blissed-out) knowing full well that on the other side of the experience lies an opportunity to assimilate the gift (of direct knowledge of the space beyond and outside the ego) by processing and naming it [...] Perhaps it would be possible to alternate between these divergent affective spaces and use them to enrich each other."12

One can submerge or deep dive but with the realisation of coming back up for air. Wang argues that the oceanic state is creatively inspiring due to it's Lancanian inexpressibility.; this lack makes it desirable and evocative to symbolise (paradoxically, for psychoanalysts like Freud, it is this lack that makes the oceanic distinctly 'feminine' and regressive). 13 Perhaps then one could argue for an alluding to the state rather than a direct naming of it as an experience; something that guides rather than tells. 14

Spinoza talks of “existence belongs to the nature of substance”, a singular molecular substance that he refers as God or Nature. 15 In these terms one can think of the Oceanic as a feeling of ego-loss that allows one to commune with "substance" in a way that radically alters one's orientation. A more socially and politically enabling reading of the Oceanic than the psychoanalytic. There are of course distinctly religious undertones here but reframing religion in this instance as a form of pure faith or spiritualism offers readings of holistic practices as affective pathways into this state. A sort of queering or harnessing of the 'othering' that surrounds discourse of this state.

Is our experience of a discrete self bounded by ideas of ego, and is this self-hood cooperatively discrete through 0ur use of language; something that operates through mode of differentiation and naming? Is this also perhaps influenced by enlightenment, liberalism and psychoanalytic ideals of individualism which emphasises individual choice and agency?

"To dismiss oceanic feeling on the grounds that it is infantile tacitly locates “adult” subjectivity in the capacity to differentiate self from other rather than the capacity to conceptualize of the subject as connected: as part of an assemblage or node inscribed within a larger world or network. Framed this way, it becomes possible to see that the denigration of oceanic feeling by some psychoanalytic thinkers also reveals an attachment to a specific idea of the subject. In a sense, oceanic feeling as an affective state has the potential to open up the subject by temporarily dissolving its boundaries."16

As Wang notes this is a question that circles subjectivity and the sociological. Building off of Latour, Deleuze and Guattari etc popular theories of 'rhizomatic', networked webs of socio-relations that effectively dissolve the "I" into a whole. An embedding or ossification of the insular, a materialisation, into an interlinked form. A state at the edge of consciousness.

To conclude, the molecule has as an image, the power to evoke feelings of historic-totality, a state signified by Oceanic Feeling in psychoanalytic terms. This state can act as a state of creative and sociological renewal. Characterised by a feeling of singular particularity in the style of Spinoza, this state is somewhat frictionless or hard to define; this no-relation or lack central to it's Lacan-esc allure. The chemical and biological characteristics of the molecule make it symbolically both relevant to the Oceanic state and ideas surrounding expanded sociologically and definition of self as discussed by Deleuze and Guattari among others.

While looking into psychoanalytic theory surrounding the Oceanic, it seems there is a focus on the experience of this feeling as involuntary and induced through trauma or wound. Coming back to other research I have done on trauma, many scholars such as Judith Herman and Bessel Van der Kolk observe that survivors of traumatic experiences often describe a loss of self or selfhood; 17

“Survivors routinely describe themselves as outside the compact of ordinary human relations, as supernatural creatures or nonhuman life forms. They think of themselves as witches, vampires, whores, dogs, rats, or snakes. Some use the imagery of excrement or filth to describe their inner sense of self” 18

This connection between the oceanic as traumatic might support psychoanalytic readings of this infinite state as a manic, defensive and regressive territory, but this also does not mean that it can't also be seen as an affirming experience.

Although this framing of the molecular and it's associated states can be seen as pseudo-mystic, it should be noted that experiences that are often named as spiritual such as euphoria, chanting, meditation, fasting, psychedelics, sex, adrenaline, etc., could act as cultivator or guide into and through this state. Could the molecular form then be perfectly suggestive to this liminal tie of a bridge?

references
1 Jane Bennett, “A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism,” in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, Politics, eds. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), p. 59
2 Preciado, Beatriz (2013-09-23). "Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era", (Kindle Locations 340-341)
3 Laclan via/ trans. Alenka Zupančič , 'Sexual is Political?'(pg-86-100) in 'Jacques Lacan: Between Psychoanalysis and Politics' ed. Samo Tomšič, Andreja Zevnik, ( New York: Routledge, 2016)pg 89
4 ibid.
5 Karl Marx, "Grundrisse" (London: Penguin, 1993), pg. 206
6 Jordana Rosenberg, 'The Molecularization of Sexuality: On Some Primitivisms of the Present' p.8
7 "As with the stroke of an enchanter’s wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury …" Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 919
8 "Understanding Deleuze," 22
9 Leslie, Esther, "Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form" (London: Reaktion Books, 2016)
10 Deleuze, G., Guattari, F., "Capitalism and Schizophrenia"
11 Freud, 'Civilisation and It's Discontents'
12 Jackie Wang, "Oceanic Feeling and Communist Affect," https://loneberry.tumblr.com/post/153995404787/oceanic-feeling-and-communist-affect
13 “…one instant’s contact with the Infinite is sufficient to make the Illusion of all ‘differentiated’ egos, our own and other men’s, disappear immediately.” Romain Rolland, The Life of Ramakrishna. Rolland disagrees with Freud's reading of the oceanic, perhaps in part, due to his Catholic faith.
14 I am alluding to guided meditation and Yoga Nidra in this instance. As well as an exemplifier for why mixed media, 'collaged' styles of image making might be successful within an Arts context of communicating or inducing this state in the viewer.
14 Spinoza, "Ethics", https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ne/ethics.htm Think Kantian Sublime
16 Wang
17 Van Der Kolk, Bessel, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, (London: Penguin Books, 2014)
18 Herman, Judith Lewis, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books,1997) pg. 105

WATER LILLIES (2007), Céline Sciamma
In French "Naissance des Pieuvres"- Birth of the Octopuses. Baby octopuses hold connotations of smallness, clinging to one another, in a tumble of limbs.The water is her realm, her emotions are revealed to us in its different forms and sounds. she falls down into the depths of it.

this page is multi-directional and organised non-hierarchically:
~ scroll left, right, up and down
~ zoom in and out using the button in the browser or hitting ctrl + or - respectfully
~ hit index to go back to the homepage

Martha Rosler- Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975)

"I was concerned with something like the notion of 'language speaking the subject"

"During waking consciousness, we perceive the world to be made up of solid and separate objects. We believe that our waking thoughts and the objects around us are real. But, could it be that waking-state thoughts and objects are also fabrication and projections of the mind" Miller, Richard, PhD, "Yoga Nidra: A meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation and Healing", (Boulder CO: Sounds True Inc., 2010) pg 18

"In these treatment approaches the story of what happened takes a backseat to exploring the physical sensations and discovering the location and shape of these imprints of past trauma on the body […] patients are helped to build up internal resources that foster safe access (sic) sensations and emotions that overwhelmed them at the time of the trauma.” Van Der Kolk, Bessel, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, p 217-218

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