Concept Vlog: Smart Object (Video Exclusive)
Added 2023-10-18 02:55:43 +0000 UTCI got my painting back, and I hope it is an interesting supplement to some concepts I am trying out in the theory game. Featuring a reading by Byung-Chul Han.
Comments
content suggestion: the 4 Discourses of Lacan. Then do Plotinus. 😵💫🤡
Zachary Manenti
2023-12-03 18:01:14 +0000 UTCsorry for taking up so much comment space…. i have one question 🙋🏽 tho: how does this inertial mass play into the revenge of the object? In Baudrillard it seems the object takes its revenge on the ‘substance’ of subjectivity, its fantasy of agency and primordiality, by rendering ‘the body,’ an inertial mass, i.e., total passivity w minimal agency, for example, the figure of ‘the obese’ via the ‘activity’ of commodity consumption. Does the revenge of the object draw its energy from this mass of passiveness (need a process verb for ‘passive-fication’; ironically also in contrast to ‘pacification’ which the system depresses in its reactivity, anyway…) ? Ok, the subject/object binary is, it seems, shown to be inverted in causal priority to the myth we have generated (in philosophy) about the Self/Subject (i think we have that already, tho this is radicalized in a philosophical context, in Lacan’s theory with the object-a cause of the $ubject?) In addition, there is a revenge extracted from this subjective arrogance, it is the upheaval of the master slave dialectic, in other words, upheaval of the very idea of all dialectics, the basis, arguably of the originary subject/object binary. Binary is replaced by the polarity of effects generated in the feed-screen processes and the symbiotic evolution narrative, myth, story, of the human’s fantasy of mastering all (its) things. Humanity has mastered all things by enslaving itself to its thing-slave. But, how is this different than Hegel though? For real. Doesnt Hegel already have the deconstruction of his master/slave dialectic within its(his) system? ( Read later by others, ofcourse). And isn’t it this? Though, importantly, updated conceptually. Anyway, I have to put some monopoly money down ( bc i cant escape some need for belief maybe…) on my bet that there is not so much an exit but some difference to play in the idea of the ‘Discourses’, the 4 quadripodes (4 discourses) of Lacan’s … that turn, and revolve, ‘because the human is ‘toric.’ The ‘analysts discourse’ is not so much the answer or way out, or truth, but one of the four, and some relation to the production of a knowledge, singular and temporal (Heraclitian), not universal and eternal, that operates as a signifier of disruption or interruption in the flow of information, delusion, fantasy, dream?
Zachary Manenti
2023-12-03 17:44:54 +0000 UTCAs to your concepts which ‘I buy’: “Feed brain,” as extending the cybernetic ‘process theory feed’ is def a concept that describes our current world/reality very well. And demonstrates the symbiotic evolution,so to speak, of the ‘human’ perceptual apparatus that always already is a matter of a perceptual apparatus that functions as a screen that selects within a field and actualizes based on decisions, that r hard to determine, from a virtual infinity, but now (perpetual present) symbiotically entwines within a 21c tech media ecology. “ Mirror of disappearance’ not as a concept but a kind of corollary(?) describes the effect of speed and intensity producing polarities and margins of such speed and intensity beyond the absorptive ability of the ‘body’ and causes the median to disappear, as in ‘disappear in perception as ‘ experience’’, in a sense, a disappearance of ‘the body’ (the statistical median as mass and weight) though it inheres within the overall system but inconsequentially. “Screen,” was already a concept on the march since Freud’s time or i should say since Freudian temporality, but now its global and universal ubiquity literally takes the place of the concept of the Subject. That’s what i got thus far if i get it at all. P.S i also especially appreciated your articulation of the subject of writing, and your personal ‘choice’ of subject of video. Moving on a temporality revealed through technology, and the techno dominance of the gaze as voice and vision sutured to the fantasy of totality, wholeness, but given in a practice that interrupts the messaging with a slower conceptual thinking. Lastly, the background/foregrounding of screen and feed is the latent and manifest of the dreamwork, I think…
Zachary Manenti
2023-12-02 20:21:34 +0000 UTCFreud Screen memory. the screen and memory, dream too…already the green screen. Chris Marker… La jetee…the gaps in the image and inbetween the image. i did enjoy your art and agree w your read overall esp the ‘different result’: solipsistic info processor and esp liked the bit about symbiosis , enslaved bc phone is your slave. also reference to Benjamin’s critique: agree he is not nostalgic or romantic and still stands as the upside of loss of aura, as u suggest, for democratization of possibility of commie collective equalization. For Benjamin ‘aura’ (the unspeakable excesss of the originary— becoming —(roots of authenticity etc), exploited by all systems, doesnt return as nostalgia or consumption of magic perhaps, but still returns, as apparently it must, but as ‘shock’ (trauma)? An excess that still has to be worked thru or at least shown to be at work? (The unfilled green screen? ) Thx too for pointing out the fantasy of an obstacle free smoothness (frictionlessness positive free of resistance ‘smoothness’ at the heart of ‘law of attraction’ and the fantasy of technology). Byung-Chul Han’s point too but w your ‘different result’. (Beyond Byung (ok, terrible pun)). Also appreciated your pointing out the social rudeness problem (‘politesse’) having to fake interest in the other when humanistically taking Levinas’ other in the everyday sense. true that. …about it coming down to one’s boredom (w the other) and then the rudeness that wd belie ethics.. haha … easier to hide w smart phone. Thanks for the work.
Zachary Manenti
2023-12-01 20:25:56 +0000 UTCHeraclitus Metaphysics ALL is FIRE with Leferbe whitehead and Deleuze to counter that greek Thales guy in greece who said everthing was water
zolo
2023-11-13 05:36:21 +0000 UTCAdverts shedding text for images is a reversal of the transition children's books make as we grow, like they're trying to burrow a billion levels of habit deeper into your psyche and hit you on a more enchanted plane (maybe why silent movies can give dejavu), and as children bestow excess life into objects so consumerist assemblages develop intensified momentum, annex ever deeper levels of our identities and return a more naive subjectivity.
Alex B
2023-10-29 06:54:59 +0000 UTCIt just hit me: Screens are the only thing getting cheaper in this inflation. You can buy a 80 inch for so little. It's like the system knows what it needs to sacrifice capital for. China could nearly bring the screen industry to a halt if it wanted to. Not as important as nukes but an interesting strategic position.
Khemith
2023-10-24 02:46:52 +0000 UTCThis was a truly awesome video. Thank you
Matt S
2023-10-23 13:25:50 +0000 UTCtrue. Being real here and less theoretical… We’re also always performing and curating our online presence. We seem to prefer it. Seems like we don’t know how otherwise. crazy. I mean, it’s all well and good with friends we can perform a certain way with less fear. I think we can learn to like performing to some degree. Performing and navigating relationships can be more fulfilling. Maybe that’s me… also a loner for many years, I’ve experienced both. haha
Qoheleth
2023-10-22 14:06:34 +0000 UTCLove your commentary. I think what is necessary is to think what is necessary, especially apropos FATE. Fate describes a the inevitable end of current inertia, which is indomitable, and I think projects our convo about gaza at a global scale... It's not too far off that lives are the only communication left.
Plastic Pills
2023-10-22 04:46:22 +0000 UTC<3
Plastic Pills
2023-10-22 04:16:24 +0000 UTCIf you want to go deeper into this, it's the centre of Derrida's critique, which is to say there is an assumed essential element of a personal, one-on-one conversation that is LOST in a phone conversation. Now we can point to some things that are explicitly lost—body language, eye contact—but the question remains after that is: do those elements really constitute something of a more real order? Agree or disagree, Derrida's point about "presence" is that it always does more work than it needs to, and more work than it can do. The "presence" factor doesn't causally account for all the work it is supposed to be doing. Maybe this works as counter-example: I have to perform way MORE at thanksgiving or christmas dinner than I have to perform as plasticpills. Plasticpills as an artificial construction is more "real" than how I interact with my family. This is what Derrida means with the critique of presence more generally: communication (in his mode) is more "real" when it is a text as a mirror of another text, not when it is a text as a mirror of an eye-to-eye conversation.
Plastic Pills
2023-10-22 04:16:07 +0000 UTCNo it's just me saying hi
Ashley H
2023-10-22 02:38:27 +0000 UTC“As a communist, you don’t want the aura around things.” I disagree. The aura disappeared because of capitalist mass production of commodities and the point is to economically shift into a mode of production based on non manufactured (via advertising) needs and desires, rather than on mass, unsustainable consumption for consumption’s sake. Also, the death of the aura is an inevitable outcome of commodity fetishism, which obscures the reality of the conditions of labour that went into making the commodity. So communism would necessitate a return of the aura, but crucially, in an economic context which is not based on scarcity. The print thing you mentioned in terms of the access to art is perhaps an exception to this, but people have a natural tendency to form attachments to objects, and this is denied under an economic system where planned obsolescence is the norm. The objects we would own and interact with under a communistic system would be a lot more highly valued and treated as less disposable if we knew where they came from and that they were made voluntarily without economic coercion and exploitation.
anacidcommie
2023-10-21 08:46:14 +0000 UTCThis was some seriously great content Pills, both in terms of your concepts and the Chul-Han reading. Definitely worth watching twice to grok (mostly) everything. However, I don’t think you can blame the left’s desire for immediate change solely on feedbrain: it’s also a product of being frustrated with a system that stubbornly refuses to collapse despite the mounting contradictions and crises, particularly the climate change situation, where we no longer have the luxury of time to slowly build more effective irritations to the system like the 19th/early 20th century radicals had. This is the main reason I personally advocate for immediate action and quick, tangible results of any kind, as a sober look at the data shows very probable mass starvation events occurring within the next 10-15 years. “These platforms are our own feudal lords”. He’s on point here and it echoes what Yanis Varoufakis has been saying about technofeudalism, as we’re performing labour to increase social media platform value without being paid for it and affecting supply/demand like a wage paid labour would.
anacidcommie
2023-10-21 08:37:09 +0000 UTCAnd that simulation goes back some time now. Wasn’t the home telephone conversation already a simulation of an irl convo? Radio and tv simulations of participating in events? Smartphones and what we have now are at most an acceleration of this phenomenon.
anacidcommie
2023-10-21 08:27:18 +0000 UTCAn intro to Whitehead’s metaphysics would be rad tbh. It would be cool to see how it fits with the Deleuzian stuff you’ve spoken about before.
anacidcommie
2023-10-21 08:02:36 +0000 UTCWould love to hear a critical review of OOO. I personally prefer process philosophies but OOO leaves me baffled.
JN
2023-10-19 02:18:10 +0000 UTCDo yous want to read some OOO or some Whitehead?
Plastic Pills
2023-10-19 00:19:57 +0000 UTCHello? Is this the mysterious other hailing me?
Plastic Pills
2023-10-18 21:50:27 +0000 UTCHi Pills
Ashley H
2023-10-18 20:02:19 +0000 UTCI don’t think it’s necessarily a total dichotomy where before the phone we “authentically experience the other” and now we don’t. I do think a lot of our relationship in technology seems like a simulation of the experience. But you don’t get the same experience that you could. Key is that you “could” not that you necessarily would have. What is on my mind is what someone said from the early days of the “emergent church movement”.. a movement that actually petered out as quickly as it rose up. It was a bunch of evangelicals that started “deconstructing” their religion in the 90’s/ early 2000s. And many actually read Derrida. But a key aspect in the movement was the “coffee table” type conversations that went on face to face. And many believe those “deconstructing” online just don’t get the same experience that some of them had in the “emergent church”. So ya, it’s not a total dichotomy where one is more “pure” but it’s definitely different. I think.
Qoheleth
2023-10-18 17:50:53 +0000 UTCIf the shoe fits...
Plastic Pills
2023-10-18 03:32:33 +0000 UTCI thought you said you were a postmodern neomarxist! haha
Qoheleth
2023-10-18 02:59:33 +0000 UTC
