Talk:Exe0.2 Eric Snodgrass

hi eric,

Thanks for your article, a very interesting link to the concept of ‘interstice” in which you expand sites through taking us from computation (the inner working of it) to habits and automation. This also brings out the possibility and implication of “invisible hands” - “deferral in the decision making powers of all the subjects”. However, I am unsure if the blackboxing of economic responsibility is comparable to Chun’s example of the sorcery. My question would be how does the sorcery relate to the act of deferral? As you mentioned, the invisibility is a key and how does such invisibility of source or executable code bring out the act of deferral? Of course at the earlier point, you mentioned “automation involves an acceptance” and this relates back to the deferral of decisions. But I think the new reference of Chun’s might expand something regarding deferral?

In the beginning, you articulate the notion of a site through Foucault’s concept of interstice, one of the interesting lines is that “an interstice is a scene”, a scene with “competing forms of potential gestures and energies generate certain expressive powers of exchange and action”. Here, I am thinking how might we think about materiality in relation to “gestures” or you later discuss as “states” that constituting the forces? How might we think about gestures in relation to computation and force?

You also mention something about peak stage which is very interesting but also a bit of confusing to me. A peak stage as you said in which to a process dominant and sustainable at daily basis. I miss the connection point between Turing’s memory and the peak stage.

For the last part with YoHa’s work, I think the transparency issue might be somehow related to invisibility that you touch on? Can you might be made explicit on that perhaps is related to the social aspect of invisibility? Do you see this work as an illustration of your earlier concepts or it is a distinctive perspective of a site? If it is the later, are you referring to the relations of database and query that might discard things in nature? But this also relates to any kinds of databases - a close or an open system. I am actually writing about this - executing queries in relation to query (regardless of any kinds of database), I see this temporal relations or query’s operator create another site that act - include, exclude and create a relation in a temporary sense, and this doesn’t reflect in the database schema.

Would be interested to discuss with you further because I am going to work on the notion of automation, a text from Tiziana Terranova - “red stack attack! algorithms, capital and the automation of the common” might interest you.

/winnie

hi eric, me again:

I found this from Chun's crisis crisis crisis "This mode of deferring a future for another future is an engagement with the undead of information. The undead of information haunts the past and the future; it is itself a haunting."

/Winnie

Questions from masterclass: (sorry for the mess...very difficult to document)

- why privilege the site as oppose to process?

- the space of emptiness

- every object has relationship..not necessarily the subject

- Tate modern site video?? Louise..

- The domain of complex thoughts and abstract processes

- production of object > produce abstraction

- high frequency trading - all the computational modes -> automated -> What is the value of representation?

- politics of transformation..strategy

- Appreciation: Adam Smith -> invisible hand -> self corrected market ->the question of responsibility. Useful history -> blackbox -> helpful in understanding the processes about automated decisions.

- Migration execution across domains? What do you think it can do for you conceptually and politically requires to move?

- definition of execution, foucault's work will be part of your dissertation? Latour - we never been modern

- the site of execution is really powerful

- the politics of execution..can be instrumentalized? Where instrumentality dominate the mode of operation..

ml's notes on mostly Susan's comments:

- Foucault “Discipline and Punish”: the scaffold becomes a device in the same way the panopticon becomes a device, producing a whole set of analytics: could be methodological useful. Distributed understanding

- Similar to Latour: when reading the newspaper it allows you to drift through. “We have never been modern”

- Simple sites of interactions (ex counter, Facebook-like)

- A politics of execution, that is where instrumentality isn’t the dominant operation. Not a non-executable script, but political insights – discloses something that allows (produces possibility of political intervention) – transformative politics. Disclosure!