feedback
May 06, 2009
why 'recursion'
So what do recursions and feedback have to do with anything, anyway?
Well, for one, both recursions and feedback are excellent demonstrators of how memory impinges on perception.
In the case of feedback, I'm probably referring to 'memory' in a vague sense, since the notion of perceptual feedback, I think, is generally pre-memorization. Memory wouldn't mean something episodic, probably more like something procedural, the quick-access holding pattern the brain executes to differentiate and evaluate stimuli. But anyway, both recursion and feedback are real, continual contexts for the ongoing recreation and stabilization of personal identities.
And that's, I think, the relationship between them and subjectification, or specificially to my current thinking, interpellation.
The process of interpellation requires retrieving a named or classified subject from both a process and a body already awash in feedback, recursively generated by both sensory prehension and memory.
Or, to provide a slightly more plain-english version: I don't generally walk around with any kind of firm definition of myself in play. It's not until a scenario arises that provokes me to define or describe myself that I do. If course, I'm not talking about descriptions like 'slightly overwieght,' 'has brown eyes'-- more in the way that I don't really think of my self reflexively *at all* in any way until I feel like I'm supposed to.
I don't localize my sense of self at all when it's not induced. *I* am usually the bundle of sensations that are happening to me. That doesn't become *a person* or even *a body* until the scenario provokes it.
I've read that babies don't have any firm sense of the boundary of their bodies, or rather they don't have any set idea that their *selves* is related at all to their *bodies.*
May 05, 2009
why 'anonymizing declarations'?
Recursion, feedback, interpellation, part 2
The word 'interpellation' describes the act of subjectification by way of hailing. Hailing, as distinct from naming, incorporates feedback. In other words, naming something is applying a label or modifier to it. Hailing, on the other hand, involves a reciprocal transaction. You stand in the street and say, "Hey, you!" The other one first must recognize what and who you meant, then make a quick decision whether or not "You!" is her or him, and then make a response.
It's often more subtle and complicated than this. Feedback comes into play as the listener understands who/what is meant and then evaluated him/herself in those terms. The label impinges on the evaluation.
I'm in a park. From behind me says, "Excuse me, sir." Do I turn around? Who the hell is 'sir'? Oh, that's me. I become 'sir' and self-apply the label at that moment.
In the case of the craigslist ads I'm using to generate these sketches, the poster is speaking her/his "Hey, you!" to a completely anonymized listener. Part of the recognition, self-application, and response that ensues serves to anonymize both the respondent and poster. A doubly articulated anonymization based on interpellation that doesn't name, it erases a name.
May 04, 2009
Brian Massumi's half-second: prolog
Recursion, feedback, interpellation
I've been working on some new sketches. They're evolved from the nautilus paintings I've been working on for the last several years.
The sketches take the same procedural recursion from the nautilus paintings and bring them to the top of the conceptual stack. i.e. I'm trying to draw more attention to recursion as what the paintings are about.
'Recursion' is used most often in math or programming-- things that deal with algorithms. In a recursion, a process is performed and the result is rechurned through the next time the process is carried out. The classic example is the fibonacci series. The series is 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 etc. You iterate through the series by taking the most recent number in the series and adding it to the number before it. 8 + 5 is 13. 13 + 8 is 21. 21 + 13 is 34. And so on. The recursion is that the process iterates over itself. I'm not immediately interested in number sequences in these paintings, but I am interested in procedures that iterate over themselves. I'll get to why in a bit.
In the nautilus paintings, I proceed in a linear way around the canvas. I paint a single region of the canvas at a time, incrementally mixing paint as I go. The paint for a single color is mixed into the next. Once the color is laid down, it is subsumed the next time I need to mix paint. It precludes going back or touching up or correcting color choices later. The recursion is in the iteration of the mixing procedure that is immediately incorporated into the ongoing process.
In the new sketches I'm working on, the admixture of a new hue is meant only to shift the hue of the existing paint body. The point isn't to turn one color into another color, like in the nautilus paintings. It's to take the aggregated mass and move it one step in some direction. c = a + b. d = a + b + c. e = a + b + c + d. And so on.
That's the process of the sketches. The content deals with a specific interpellative framework. Specifically, the creation of the subject by way of anonymizing declarations. More specifically, craisglist.org hookup ads.
Sketches TK.
