2004-03-05
Manuel Delanda, Nature Space Society 1
http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/archive/naturespacesociety/delanda.htm
* intro
collab with dept of geography at open university [which reminds me, I've got
some geography papers on my laptop I've not read yet]
"constructivism has become the orthodoxy. in cultural theory, Nature, or
whatever is on the _other side_ of Culture, tends to get left out of the
picture" [nice terminology]
culture theory is the main "theory" now
This series is also an online event till Apr 2. it's also being weblog. [it'd be
good if they distributed mp3s of these.]
* delanda
Materialist histories (eg Jared Diamond) look for interactions between culture &
nature. William McNeil, Plagues & People (human history from the perspective of
microbes)
institutional history also shaped -- pushed by epidemics
Measles needs 5000 people in constant contact. ie an urban environment
Biological imperialism, Crosby. Showed colonialism wouldn't have worked
(would've been like the Crusades) without: people + domesticated animals +
"undeliberate" transport of weeks & animals. eg New York, non-local weeds have
wiped out local weeds (local weeks not used to footsteps of cattle)
"Altering the social ecology of the native americas. The horse is a war
machine." Horses escaped Mexico & migrated into N America - became "neo wild"
Disequilibrium even before caucasians were seen (this is a Crosby example)
Topsoil & Civilization, civs bad a managing topsoil, tend to last 70
generations.
Nondiscursive, nonlinguistic aspect of a space has always been part of his
[delanda's] work. Battlefields as a social space, but a bullet rips your flesh
or kills you regardless of the representation in your head.
Morale on the battlefield: Semantics is much less important than passion.
Foucault: types of practice
discursive practices: argument, classification, categorisation, representation
nondiscursive (brings the body in): tortue, monitoring, punishing, handcuffs
Now we can look at representational behaviour acts on non-representational
New science & nature:
define nature: nomena, mind independent processes, phenomena, appearance to us
humans.
We should speak of natural process independent of our minds (nomena) - realism -
to avoid being time-provincial (there have only been humans for max 7 million
years]
realism vs essentialism
[I think the oddest thing is Delanda imitating a Spidergoat, baaing while
shooting web from his wrists.]
realist: that world is mind independent. historicise evolution, see that the
zebra is contingent on the processes, where gene flow will go. But still
contingent -- we can still make GMO.
3 ways of seeing the universe [of which I only captured 1]:
1. Kant. world of nomena may or may not exist. experience is conceptual.
sensations have own logic. representations have another (they are social). they
interact. this is empiricism: realist about stuff at a human scale: cats &
columns. but not electrons.
this is the position of science. positivism, ideology of physics. "Only objects
that we can observe exist, everything else is a construct. Can't make a
worldview out of it."
Scientists cannot refer to things that cannot observe. So when they talk about
"laws of nature" they take about the representation, the equations, and not the
"imminent patterns of becoming," the reality, "what the laws capture." so
they're not much better than social constructivists.
atoms are produced in a star, *one by one*, in a "historical factory".
Deleuze concentrates on the minor scientists, in touch with the material
realities, & uses those as his source.
"hylomorphic model" an idea about the genesis of form. commands form matter from
the outside. alternative: matter is capable of self organising.
craft discovers not laws, but imminent patterns of becoming. eg metallurgy
understands quenching, annealing, etc.
quote from ATP: "capacities to affect & be affected"
not sanding against the grain is not a social construction. you can, but it'll
look terrible. you're in a partnership with the microstructure of the wood. you
don't want to be hylomorphic, like God, you don't want to treat material as
insert. [the object/method does. object orientation, conduit metaphor, is *anti
craft*]
something that the designer does plus something that the material does. using
soap film to find hyperbolic surfaces for roofs - high-tech computation, using
soap film to follow its singularity.
Deleuze's singularity: a remarkable, special point. A point for minimising
energy (surface tension, bonding energy)
Singularity inhabits matter & gives matter *tendencies*. no laws, matter is not
inert. Euler invented this, we don't need laws. Laws can be expressed in terms
of singularities, no god/legislator coming from outside.
- Affects. Causality (capacities of materials). Traditional theory is what we
observe. Constant conjunction: ball hits, ball moves. we never see a cause on
its *own*. it's experience. we need a mind-independent, objective version of
causality.
world full of events; events that produce other events.
problem with Hume is that cause/effect isn't generally proportionate or linear.
eg response of rubber, or flesh. non linear.
[so if you stretch a spring and suddenly it extends, what's the cause? the
weight, or the context?]
Replace laws with singularities and affects.
We need to be in partnership with matter & energy instead of imposing our
cognition on them like the hylomorphic model.
* questions
q. The constructivists would say Deleuze is inventing a new reality & not
discovering it, which isn't very realist.
a. Inventing this is okay for non-discovering practices. But if we label &
classify with human beings, there's a feedback loop that changes the system
(discurvive, discourse creates reality). We call "delinquency", people begin to
see themselves as delinquents and feel this effect. That changes reality. [They
react with the interface.]
This feedback loop does not occur with nature.
The Body Without Organs is inorganic life of pure intensities. The weather map
of highs/lows, front, a number of creatures: hurricanes. This is as opposed to
the static map of the each. BwO is plane of consistency is [other terms].
Delanda says we need to reduce Deleuze's work to concrete terms so we can
understand things. [there's an ethical question here, says the chair.]
[I wonder if the artist *expected* the play people have with the mirrors of The
Weather Project, & isn't play example what they mean by craft, a non-inert
material & people collaborating with material? (or really: what the relationship
is between play & crat are as ways of discovering reality?)]
[The artist is discussing with Delanda that people interact with the art
*without* subjectifying it. They define the space by being here, and playing
with it.]
Artist: The Green River (Stockholm): to what extent are you able to affect the
urban space, & to what extent can it affect you? [this is the spectacular city I
read about. We *don't* have capacity to affect the city.] We pretend cities are
static, for stability. In the paper they said the police said the Green River
was "routine". But he was making it dynamic, the city as a mass of intersecting
trajectories, as it *actually* is. So the Green River is hyper-real, to bring
this dynamism really to the fore.
A physical paradigm says that the knowledge of the object is coextensive with
the function of it. A biological one doesn't. [One nugget from a long rambling
question.]
Delanda: Metallurgy has constructed reality to *domesticate* steel, to make it
conform to the hylomorphic model. [ie the conduit metaphor] Replacing flexible
skills with inflexible routines.
This is military & factory. This isn't a linguistic process, but it's still
social construction. We homogenise and standardise still, not change its
meaning.
book: Animal Perception. James Gibson. How animals perceive their material
world. He came up with "affordances" [Tom S recommends]. A cliff affords a deer
an obstacle, a risk of falling. [How does this tie into my ideas of the dog's
smell-space, potential field?]
Chair: We have a Delanda-of-the-19th-century thing going on here. [following a
question asking where Deleuze goes further than Darwin, & one accusing him of
having a Victorian-romantic view of science.]
Evolution as a search algorithm of the fitness landscape. [don't like that, it
subjectifies the landscape too much.]
Parallels between current day Linux kernel prestige hackers and 19th century
science as a collaborative enterprise, where no money changes hands.
Feedback, complexity, *path dependence* -- all ignored if we pretend we work in
a clockwork universe.
q: Architecture dominated by thought: philosophy, history, social scientists,
semiotics (that's now for the first one, and in 10yr chunks back). Geometry at
some point too. Are architecture and urban things social phenomena or natural
phenomena, or what?
Intellectual fashion in architecture... but when it comes to building there's
also gravity & lawsuits so you have to be an engineer too. Delanda tells his
students to be half engineers otherwise they'll be glorified interior designers.
Learn about nature & load bearing & all the rest. But if architecture is
multidisciplinary, we don't know how to do that, because the Academy demands
speciality. People are very protective of their domains.
- "you don't paint from nature so you'll repeat yourself"
- "I *am* nature"
[Art, even spectacular art, is it more or less one-way than the city? Is it true
play, like a dog that changes, or is it simulated play like a game that is reset
at the end of each session? Cities aren't affected by us, but very slowly they
are (in mass). But art can be played with (mirrors) but then it resets itself.]
Geographer: there is no untouched, natural world.
Spinoza
- morality based on essences, good/evil, god/devil
- ethics, environmental ethics, ethics of assemblages. Which become: more alive
vs more degradate [wow. This is cyberethics. Information as bringing the object
more alive.] The assemblage is soil + plant + ec
=> assemblage is your capacity to affect and be affected. This is being more
alive.
To be less alive, to lose your capacity to be affected, is unethical.
q. Deleuzian romanticisation of the artisan artist. "Seeing ourselves sensing"
-- perhaps this means the artist is *moving out* of the Deleuzian moment and
bringing *representation* back into the centre of the art. [Interesting
question]
a. artist: Putting the art in an institution is a way of really pointing out
that this is a representation. To evaluate the sensing as part of the sensing
itself -- it isn't allowed usually. "The retinalisation of Oxford St", you could
evaluate it when you get home, but not within the experience itself.
- Delanda: difference: why do innut have 29 words for snow? linguistic realism:
they have 29 works therefore they see 29 types. *or* are those 29 words synonyms
for ways that bodily interact with the material? [which kind of reverses
Sapir-Whorf.]
q: orality, acoustic, non-rigid attempts to hold the cloud formations. We're
moving away from visual culture, representation, retinal. Voice, smell, touch;
the different ways of feeling. And she feels Delanda spoke to this shift very
well.
Delanda: goffman talks about conversations as dynamic things. embarrassment as
an intensity. or social network theory as transmitting information through
density. This is social sciences, middle level, which fits with his views.
on ethics: Mixtures that are mutually nourishing (as opposed to mutually
degrading assemblages). Phosphorous + soil. People are in couples that bring the
best out of each other: the joy of daily life. This is ethical.
So a factory that closes poisons a town. But a network of small businesses that
produces talent and nourishes the town -- we can apply ethics there.
artist: Interesting critique of Andy Goldworthy. Bringing out the inside of some
oak patronises the viewer, & puts the artist in a position & the oak in a
position -- and that's not a good view of nature.
The senses & the commodification of our senses.
Geographer: D&G are *biased* towards minor science, smooth space, de.t. -- a
romanticisation of the margins.
Assemblages/constellations/interconnections -- maybe ethics (political/social)
arise from these.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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