Andreas Broeckmann on Tue, 21 Jan 97 13:37 MET


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nettime: Machine Aesthetics - a conversation 2/2



Andreas: But for me it is this transformative potential which is of
particular interest. The folds and loops in these dynamic processes are the
planes of immanence at which auto-poetic effects occur, moments of
self-production or subjectification. In musical terms, one can speak of the
refrain or the 'ritornelle', the temporary emergence of a relative order
around which patterns can form that further crystallise, or collapse into
renewed disorder. The aesthetics of the machinic resides in these
movements, processes, foldings.

Machinic art practices are directed at forms of behaviour and exchange, and
at transformative processes. Machinic art is an art of unpredictability and
of instability.


Ken: ... or perhaps more to do with the changes and relations between
states, than favouring one particular state. I'm wary of seeing the
deterritorialised moment as an ethical or aesthetic good. As to whether one
is on the side of de- or reterritorialisation -- that's always a tactical
decision.


Andreas: The point for me is that there is no meaningful differentiation
between human and machine in the machinic assemblage. Rather, the
functionality of the machine itself becomes the core of the aesthetic force
it exerts, creating a phylum that does not distinguish between human and
machine agency. Machinic art practices disregard representation and
concentrate on an intensification of action, communication, play and
disruption, as ways of stirring and accelerating the flow and recomposition
of the singular parts of assemblages.

The aesthetics of the machinic works towards describing an attitude, it
focuses its attention on the preparation towards the facilitation of a
process during which a temporary event can take place. Art, in this
context, is the facilitation of an aggregation of bodies and forces in an
unstable environment. As an aesthetic principle, the machinic confronts its
own ambivalence and works towards making visible its territorial orders,
dispersing and transforming them.

The hybridisation I describe ...


Ken:  God I hate that word! It seems to me always to presume a prior state
of 'pures' that are then cross bred into 'hybrids'. I think
deleuzoguattarian thought is always about multiplicities. In this case:
that there never was a purely human that's been cross bred with the
machine. They always exist together. Body-tool-word-territory.


Andreas: OK, let's say, this multiplicity of states of becoming is part of
what we experience daily, even though we are more often subjected by the
regulatory and industrial machines of a segmented existence. Only
occasionally will art or other practices embrace the machinic. The
Internet, still often described as a machine of multiplicity and
difference, is no more than an aggregation of machinic potentialities which
are currently being explored and experimented upon with mixed successes.
The machinic is not a new aesthetic principle; the commitment to the
machine of the Futurists, the ecstasy of ˇcriture automatique, the
Situationists' practice of derive, Fluxus - these are examples of practices
that emphasise the machinic over the intentional, representational,
expressive. The machinic aesthetics derives from a commitment to chaotic,
or as Guattari would say, chaosmic instability and the initiation of
turbulences that allow for auto-poetic processes in which we can recognise
our selves as other.

Becoming machine is an aesthetic principle that recognises the multiple and
differentiated machinic assemblages as the environments of
subjectification, of de- and reterritorialisation. The forms of
subjectification associated with the machinic are neither enveloped in an
expansive, all-embracing consciousness, nor can they be described as the
infiltration and infection of a unitary organism by an exterior virus.


Ken: The trouble here is that by always refering back to this other
paradigm, the new one comes into being in its shadow. I think its more
interesting to think the machine assemblage without refering back to the
dialectical notion
of human/machine at all. Take, as an example, the way D+G talk about mining
and metalurgy, about holes and tools, etc. The way of thinking just
unfolds, producing itself out of itself.


Andreas: I know what you mean, but for me it is also a question of how do I
communicate and contextualise a thought. I understand that dialectical
thought can be obstructive, but in this case I feel it helps to understand
the conceptual shift from machine art, to a notion of the machinic. For me
this conversation takes place in an art critical context in which I am
trying to develop criteria for describing certain media art practices.

The scenario that should come to mind is one in which a multiplicity of
singular organisms and forces are entangled in mutually parasitical
relationships, tied up in temporary productive, polymorphous
interdependencies. They move from one plane of consistency to the other,
using and swapping hosts constantly, creating larger agglomerations at
times, even unproductive large-scale structures, yet more often they
dissolve and rearrange their singular and momentary ties, feeding on the
most beautiful potentialities of the machinic.



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