<nettime> origin of Measurement, language

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

Origin of Measurement


There's a hill over there (gestures)
No there's a couple of hills
Wait I'll be right back

It's like skin
I'm uncomfortable skinning around here
I skinned that hill

"Btw I'm still working with the .obj files as you can see from the scanner
- one of the things I'm interested in is the phenomenology of measurement
- how the digital is extracted, along with attendant institutionalization,
from the analog - and the images, with their 'peelings' and ruptures
(Blender can deconstruct the Geomagic assemblages) are guides in this of
course. The particular series I'm working with is based on the ruler -
which is only an object with repetition - in any environment.

"Btw again - the rotation of the turntable incrementally connects with the
perceptual stitching of motion in film - which connects again with the
phenomenology of interpenetrating image stage, etc. etc."

What constitutes a mark or token? When does a surface anomaly become
demarcation or inscription? What constitutes discrimination?

The images constitute the skin of the ruler in the real, a ruler whose
surface plays tumor, eruption, swelling. This is difficult theoretically -
the trialectic among the physico-inert of the world; measure; and body /
symbolic - the playing of the surface is, after all, inscription. I hunt;
I return; I'm scratched. Therefore I was hunting. I walk; I return; I'm
stung. Therefore there were bees. The simplest model - that of the gesture
(Tran duc Thao) - in combination with the reading of the world. Already;
bees read. But our reading is plastic, deductive, transformative, morph-
ing.

This is what the body brings to the ruler; this is what the ruler brings
to the body.

Measure is tally is measure; what is brought to writing, accountancy,
tokens in Sumer, elsewhere. Fingers always already are enumerations,
mnemonics; pigeons recognize specific quantities.

Perhaps a false derivation, _etymology_: our very nakedness, the 'naked
ape,' creates an inscribable surface, Peirce's sheet of assertion. Already
there; without fur or scale, nothing is obliterated, forgotten; what is
traumatic, scars. Fur covers, re/covers; continuous growth is continuous
erasure. Ruptures of the skin already are rulers, Rulers by detour of
writing, skin carried into the social, inhabitation - skin as construct of
inhabitation. Our nakedness sexualizes, effaces, inscribes.

The digital inscribes the ruler into the analog/abject _or so it appears._
This is what is presented here, accompanying this text, which is no doubt
more accurate than one might be led to believe (by the voice, all but
obscuring the skin).*

http://www.asondheim.org/ originofmeasure jpgs

*(Therefore the skinwork in my world/work in relation.)




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