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alchorisma_reader [2018-11-12 12:50] – nikalchorisma_reader [2018-11-12 13:25] – maja
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 </blockquote> </blockquote>
  
 +<blockquote>
 +When our animal senses are all awake, our skin rippling with sensations as we palpate the surroundings with ears and eyes and flaring nostrils, it sometimes happens that our body becomes part of the larger Body of the land—that our sensate flesh is taken up within the wider Flesh of the breathing Earth—and so we begin to glimpse events unfolding at other locations within the broad Body of the land. 
 +
 +The smartphone replicates something of this old, ancestral experience of earthly acumen that has long been central to our species: the sense of being situated over Here, while knowing what’s going on over There.
 +
 +Perhaps it is easier to understand, now, why we’re so enthralled by our digital technologies, such that once we’re online and synapsed to the screen, it’s remarkably difficult to tear ourselves away. For all these technologies awaken something primordial in us, a biophilic proclivity layered deep in our genome, a penchant for animate interchange with bodies whose shapes are very different from our own. The renewal of that age-old animistic sense of a world all alive, awake, and aware brings an upwelling of wonder, or at least an anticipation of a wondrous possibility waiting just around the corner. 
 +
 +-David Abram
 +
 +</blockquote>
 +
 +<blockquote>
 +Charisma makes us hesitate, wavering in its force field. What if charisma were actual? What would the emission of such an energy field imply? It would imply, for a start, that art isn't just decorative candy. It would imply what "civilized" philosophy from Plato on has been afraid of, the fact that (shock horror) art has an effect on me over which I am not in control. Art is demonic: it emanates from some unseen (or even unseeable) beyond in the sense that I am not in charge of it and can't quite perceive it directly, in front of me, constantly present. A dangerous causative flickering: magic. Magic is taboo cause and effect, or unthinkable cause and effect: either ridiculous or dangerous or impossible, or some weird borrowed-kettle combination of all three. (...) Magic implies causality and illusion, and the intertwining of causality and illusion, otherwise known in Norse-derived languages as weirdness. 
 +
 +Appearance and essence are like two different "sides" of a Möbius strip, which are also the "same" side. A twisted loop is exactly what weird refers to, etymologically speaking. The minimal topology of a thing is the Möbius strip, a surface that veers all over, where a twist is everywhere. This is because the appearance of a thing is different from what it is—yet the appearance is inextricable from it. There is no obvious dotted line between what a thing is, a thing data. Attuning is like studying a Möbius strip.
 +
 +What art gives us, argues Kant, is the feel of data, the data-ness of data, otherwise known as givennes (datum, Latin for what is given). This data-feel is, he argues, an attunement space, the one place in the whole universe where mesmerizing hesitation can happen—a very important mesmerising hesitation, because it underwrites the existence of a priori synthetic judgement, because in this experience, I get a magical taste of something beyond my graspable experience, a transcendental beyond-ness...
 +
 +Attunement is the feeling of an object's power over me—I am being dragged by its tractor beam into its orbit. 
 +
 +-Tim Morton
 +
 +</blockquote>
 +
 +
 +Algorithms
  
  
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 </blockquote> </blockquote>
  
 +<blockquote>
 +So, image for a moment an object, a material, which can literally do anything. It can move across categorical boundaries with no difficulty whatsoever. So what do I mean? I mean that if you possess the philosopher's stone and you were hungry, you could eat it. If you needed to go somewhere you could spread it out and sit on it and it would take you there. If you needed a piece of information, it would become the equivalent of a computer screen and it would tell you things. If you needed a companion, it would talk to you. If you needed to take a shower you could hold it over your head and water would pour out. Now, you see, this is an impossibility. That's right, it's a coincidencia apositorum. It is something that behaves like imagination and matter without ever doing damage to the ontological status of one or the other. This sounds like pure pathology in the context of modern thinking because we expect things to stay still and be what they are and undergo the growth and degradation that is inimical to them, but no, the redemption of spirit and matter means the exteriorization of the human soul and the interiorization of the human body so that it is an image freely commanded in the imagination. 
 +
 +—Terence McKenna, Lectures on Alchemy
 +</blockquote>
 +
 +<blockquote>
 +When you cook bread from a recipe, you’re following an algorithm. When you knit a sweater from a pattern, you’re following an algorithm. When you put a sharp edge on a piece of flint by executing a precise sequence of strikes with the end of an antler—a key step in making fine stone tools—you’re following an algorithm. Algorithms have been a part of human technology ever since the Stone Age.
 +
 +—Christian & Griffiths
 +</blockquote>
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 References References
  
 +  * Abram, David. Magic and the Machine
   * Amato, J. A. Dust: a history of the small and the invisible   * Amato, J. A. Dust: a history of the small and the invisible
   * Blohm, H., Beer, S. Suzuki, D. Pebbles to Computers: The Thread   * Blohm, H., Beer, S. Suzuki, D. Pebbles to Computers: The Thread
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   * Cohen, J. Stories of Stone   * Cohen, J. Stories of Stone
   * Calvino, I. & McLaughlin, M. L. Collection of sand: essays    * Calvino, I. & McLaughlin, M. L. Collection of sand: essays 
 +  * Emergence Magazine Issue No. 3: Technology https://emergencemagazine.org/
   * Harris, P.A. Turner, R., Nocek, A.J. Rock Records, SubStance Volume 47, Number 2, 2018 (Issue 146)   * Harris, P.A. Turner, R., Nocek, A.J. Rock Records, SubStance Volume 47, Number 2, 2018 (Issue 146)
   * Jemisin, N.K. The Broken Earth Trilogy   * Jemisin, N.K. The Broken Earth Trilogy
 +  * Morton, Tim. Attune
   * Ogden, J. G. The Kingdom of Dust   * Ogden, J. G. The Kingdom of Dust
   * Thacker, E. In the dust of this planet   * Thacker, E. In the dust of this planet
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   * Sonic Acts. Living Earth   * Sonic Acts. Living Earth
   * Sonic Acts. The Geologic Imagination   * Sonic Acts. The Geologic Imagination
 +  * Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
  
  • alchorisma_reader.txt
  • Last modified: 2019-08-12 15:20
  • by nik