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Re: the open university analogy, I can conceive
of some kind of subscription which would permit the subscribing individual
or institution (art institute, museum, think tank, university, gallery,
etc.) to tap into the active exchange of participant signal traffic and
receive summaries and update reports on the state of the game.
[211]
How effective or appropriate
is the analogy drawn from Hesse's glasperlenspiel (the bead game)?
The meta-space of the computer
exchange (the pausing, phasing, the rhythm of the waiting, the receiving,
the sending, the waiting again) is formidable in part because the terminal
itself is so self-unassuming--all one's perceptual habits are somehow
affected by the "typewriter" look, e.g., all this meta-spatial
exchange finally comes out on a single flow of two dimensions (in the strictest
sense, three dimensions since paper has width) which is enough, mind you.
But what it does require then is a set of constraints (contingency rules)
that can be optimized in two dimensions but compatible with more dimensions
and/or other flows of three or two dimensions.
Terms for description: (The work of Kenneth Burke,
Michel Foucault, Ross Ashby are the resources that immediately come to
mind.) A new kind of kinematic graph is what we're groping for here--a
mapping of the exchange of flow--to indicate its experiential novelty.
A modal unit is what is necessary, a unit of measure,
of criteria analogous to the octave for the musician, the arithmetician's
double, the geometer's circle.
In classical aesthetics the quest is for the elementary
forms of intuition. How would such equivalence of the "elementary
forms of intuition" be engaged as a common pool of criteria serving
the tissue of contingencies that is play?
The scale of a thing/process refers to the number
of distinctions within the system described.
Scale: The distinctions between identical
parts is numerical. The distinction between non-identical parts is the
degree, or measure, of difference.
There are parallels here to the laws of combination
in geometry. The attributes of geometric space according to Poincare are:
(1) It is continuous; (2) It is infinite; (3) It has three dimensions;
(4) It is homogeneous, that is to say that all its points are identical
to one another; (5) It is isotropic.
How analogous are these attributes to the meta-space
or the epistemological playing field of this exchange? In a sense, these
first primitive exchanges (about exchanges) are the beginnings of a natural
history--complete with a future archaeology.
How do we arrive at common terms of description?
For a start I would suggest distinguishing art from science. A definition
of objective evidence in science is equal to evolution of a private sensibility
in art. A new mythopoetic strategy would flux between the hard ("in
the metal") evidence of the world's constituted parts and the "soft"
private sensibilities of individual expressions of that world.
"The substance of man is obscure to himself" - Jacques
Maritain
I think the first part of this three way
metalogue could be an introduction of terms. To begin to restate the sentiment
and mythic-key of Genesis at the next pass in the trajecting spiral.
Much of this, I think, has to do with a
primal sense of play and conceptual alchemy. To rearticulate the mystery
and terror of "being" at all, in the belief that anything exists
at all, is the first realization of difference. As existence (in the character
of human consciousness) posits non-existence, existence posits art and
eternal search.
I take it that the kind of
aptitude for what is called "verbal behavior" (which includes
the acquiring of symbol-systems generally, such as music, painting, sculpture,
dance, etc.) can be posited as the differentia that defines us empirically
as our specific kind of animal. Such "arbitrary, conventional"
symbol-systems have come and gone since the days of pre-history when our
kind began developing these aptitudes, the ability to do so being grounded
in the body as a physiological organism. This minimum equivalent of what
in metaphysics or theology would be called "mind" or "spirit"
would involve a social or collective medium. Anthropologists would assign
it to the real of "culture" as distinct from "nature,"
though in its primitive states the two realms might not look much different
from each other, as adjoining things seen from a distance seem to merge.
As our terms for images, concepts, ideas, properties,
attitudes, paradigms, perspectives, situations, processes, relationships,
etc. took form, they became in effect a universe of their own. Also, the
mediums using these purely symbolic devices made possible the kinds
of attention and communication that gradually led to the invention and
distribution of tools (with corresponding methods and attitudes). And thus
we now confront the gradual accumulation of man-made new-things that constitute
what we call the institutions of "technology." - Kenneth Burke,
"Variations on 'Providence'"
Certainly, as a proposition,
the division between true and false is neither arbitrary, nor modifiable,
nor institutional, nor violent. Putting the question in different terms,
however--asking what has been, what still is, throughout our discourse,
this will to truth which has survived throughout so many centuries of our
history; or if we ask what is, in its very general form, the kind of division
governing our will to knowledge--then we may well discern something
like a system of exclusion (historical, modifiable, institutionally constraining)
in the process of development.
It is undoubtedly, a historically constituted division.
For, even with the sixth century Greek poets, true discourse--in the
meaningful sense--inspiring respect and terror, to which all were obliged
to submit, because it held sway over all and was pronounced by men who
spoke as of right, according to ritual, meted out justice and attributed
to each his rightful share; it prophesied the future, not merely announcing
what was going to occur, but contributing to its actual event, carrying
men along with it and thus weaving itself into the fabric of fate. And
yet, a century later, the highest truth no longer resided in what discourse
was, nor in what it did: it lay in what was said.
The day dawned when truth moved over from the ritualized act--potent
and just--of enumeration to settle on what was enunciated itself: its
meaning, its form, its object and its relation to what it referred to.
A division emerged between Hesiod and Plato, separating true discourse
from false; it was a new division for, henceforth, true discourse was no
longer considered precious and desirable, since it had ceased to be discourse
linked to the exercise of power. And so the Sophists were routed. - Michel
Foucault, The Discourse on Language