Talk:Exe0.1 David Gauthier
Hi David,
Great to see some overlapping interest here, such as cold gazing (more i treat it as a method from media archaeology), as well as errors as a way to examine the infrastructure, it makes total sense to me. Also, the way of thinking structure and machine are seemingly useful. However, I am still unsure if structure can be simply reduced to fixed entities. When structure is run, structure may becomes something else? What is structure when it runs? (or how does structure change during execution?)
In the first paragraph as you start introducing the key term ‘cold gaze’, it might be better with 1-2 lines to explain that term? I have to go through a few paragraph in order to understand a bit more about the term.
The notion of eternality refers to the endless repetitive computation? I am wondering the use of the term eternal here, does it means that it is never change? Are you making the distinction between the structure and machine as fixed and non fixed? Are you also thinking undecidability is largely attached with machine than structure? or machine only? May be due to the limited word count, i found there could be a longer discussion around errors, and how it relates to the two notions that you put forward, as a way to examine the infra and super structure of computation. Also, how code gazing relates to errors (though i think it is highly related), this also refers to the microtemporality from Ernst?
I am also looking forward to discussing more about extending media archaeology, or the method of cold gaze towards code-based applications. (or collapsing the dichotomy between hard and soft-ware)
--Winnie S (talk) 13:49, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi David,
your perspective of structure is still in my mine since I read your article...i think there are so much interesting things about the limitation, design and implications of structure. i am thinking structure like protocols/network structure, script/programming structure (e.g DOM), data format (e.g API, XML, JSON), some questions in mind such as how structure exposes to environmental noise? or something like how does undecidability play through within structure? --Winnie S (talk) 17:12, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
I find the link between critique and ideology very astute and certainly important i.e. critique as its own ideological framework. This is very evident when (a white European) teaches in art in Hong Kong for example - the making strange emphasizes. But how could we make computing strange? It relates to the importance of the being aware of the 'enframing'? I feel like many salient points are hinted at in this text. That said, I have many questions which are symptomatic to the fact that I find the text extremely dense, and often felt in need of elaboration, definition and examples to illustrate. To this effect I have highlighted examples (included below) of when I find myself needing clarification.
"which foregrounds tensions inherent to scholarly camps theorising computation as structure versus those theorising computation as machinic." what camps are you referring to?
I feel that the first paragraphs are making huge claims without explanation. Repetition of the equivalent for example, or the eternal return, does this imply an objective homogeneity ideology? Can you give an example of what you mean? Could you explain how structures are "possessed with a desire of fixed eternity"? Do you mean ideas of static storage/immortality? The illusion of forever? Or for example the practical impossibility of erasing most data? Also, How is the machine haunted by failure? On what do you base this? Why is the machine in this case a contingent diagrammatic process rather than a black box? Is it really inclusion or actually obfuscation?
metastable event - please define (outside of electronics the usage needs context)
the Ernst camp... (cold gaze) Overall I am unclear how you bring in Barad with the cold gaze, Parikka puts these in opposition does he not? How do you explain the marriage? If you disagree with Parikka, how are politics and desire not part of the 'messy'. I am not sure this paragraph is clear. Are you calling for a cold gaze (à la Ernst?) or a redefinition of this notion.
Link to Lea - the execution of language (other than code) is a I believe a crucial point. This is something to discuss with [1] who is a specialist in this department.
"The challenge, then, is to think of and account for computational events in and for themselves by exposing the various material and symbolic processes involved in their production. The question of execution can then move from being one of programmatic structure to become one of catalytic event conditioning." -- please consider unpacking in the longer version of this text.
"I would like to point out a possible direction in carrying out a type of operational diagrammatics of execution by namely looking at the object and the advent of computational “errors.”" can you give an example? how would errors be mapped?
"diagrams are to be produced from execution itself as a diagnostic of its non-discursive dynamics. " diagram as diagnostic - very interesting --- could you please explain more the implications of this suggestion. For example you explain (later): " I suggest that we might be able, then, to devise proper methods and related theoretical apparatuses that can indeed directly engage with the nuanced problematic of execution." but how?
the introduction of clinique is major - and not contextualised of referenced. how do you mean it? foucault and?
-- Audrey
Hi David,
Thanks a lot for your contribution!
I appreciate your focus and the straight forward, very clear exposition style.
I think, however, that it would be fruitful if you allowed space for exploring your arguments in depth through concrete examples. In the very end you give hints and suggestions, these seem really interesting and it is almost a bit disappointing that they are excluded. More importantly they might also have introduced a less dichotomic structure to the argument (after all short comings of a 'cold gaze' is that you might forget important aspects of i.e. bugs and errors - which is actually happening/located outside of the machine). So yes, I am not sure that the dichotomy between structure and machine is as black and white as put forward here, or if it is a bit of a construct. Nevertheless, I think that elaborating on this through examples could support or perhaps even give the arguments a life of their own.
Looking much forward to discuss this more when we meet later this week!
/l
Hi David.
Great and dense paper.
I follow your analytic division between computation as structure and computation as machinic. And interesting how it relates to the history of computing and computer science. Reminds me of Matthew Kirschenbaum’s distinction between formal and forensic materiality and how the formal materiality becomes what he calls a medial idealogy that nurtures ideas of computing as immaterial and "shuns the inscriptive act", which might be what we here calls execution though Kirschenbaum is mainly interested in storage.
Also interesting and well written discussion of software studies – especially the (dare I say American) version of software studies by Manovich and Galloway compared to the more material understandings of software-hardware by Chun. I’m with you all the way where you discuss how the structural perspective of computation renders the actual machine and the hardware into a black box in its aim for universality. And I agree, that we need is to confront the desire of upholding a strict and illusory division between super- and infra-structures, soft and hard-ware.
However one question and one thing I’m wondering about:
- Aren’t you after all making things too simple by your distinction, or is the distinction structured in this way ( I know it is a short paper)? Is it true that code, language, software is as immaterial and universal or is it a myth? Perhaps a myth upheld by (some areas of) computer science and fitting into certain societal economies – e.g. that the software operation of computing is virtual, allows for perfect copies, etc. After all we have other understandings of language and writing that include more material dimensions. Perhaps the double focus on machinic and structural does not mean that we need to get rid of software/code and concentrate on the machine? Likewise we could of course argue, that the machine is also designed, inscribed with standards and code, and does not exist without it. So maybe the distinction is more related to two understandings of software and computers?
- I wonder what a clinique instead of a critique would mean? And the diagrammatic practice? I’m somewhat unable to understand some parts of Deleuze/Guattari, I won’t blame you on this, but sometimes their theoretical concepts become too sketchy or sexy for me. In this way, I wonder how these things would be carried out, what they would show, and in what way they would bridge between structure and machine?
/Søren