In the gap is the non-realized. In Lacan's text The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, he talks a lot about the space in between the things that we can see. It is that that is the crux of a lot of his arguments, that limbo space. The space between the lines that's a chasm of understanding, as long as we can see, or attempt to see, what's there. The idea of something that is not realized is hopeful, because it denotes a hopefulness: It is not realized yet. It has a potential, even if it never is realized. In the gap, Lacan states, something is oscillating. The moon causes the tide, but what is it... where is that chain that pulls the water that leads to the moon?
For Lacan, the Unconscious is the place where we can see the gap. It is a door that leads to the gap. But if neurosis fills the room where the gap is, out of it comes a scarring of the unconscious. To continue with my metaphor: the door becomes rusted, sometimes even rusted shut. For Lacan, the psychoanalysts who were coming after Freud wanted to sew the gap away, to stitch it shut instead of trying to understand it. The refusal is what allowed for the scar to happen, a scar that has made it difficult and often detrimental to open back up, and so we have forgotten about the gap that the unconscious leads to.
I think the gap is an interesting place to think about Electracy because so much of what we do in Electracy is comparable to the moon pulling the ocean, there is a line that we don't see that allows what we do to be translated to the screen. That is something that's amazing, I think, and I think it's important to maybe try to see where the gap is here and what it does.
So much of what we see is the cause and the effect, but the steps towards something could, perhaps, open up that door just a little bit so that we can see the place where the gap is in terms of Electracy.
Instruction: Try to find the string that's pulling the ocean, so to speak. Think about the steps that it takes for something to appear from a keyboard to the screen. If you can, document the steps it takes for something to happen. For instance, if you're uploading a video, for instance, how does that happen - can you screencap the steps that it takes to get there. What about your drafts, save every draft of something that you're doing and them compare the drafts. Can you see where the gaps are? Why do you think you saved there and not some other place?
Think, also, about your Mystory: Where are the gaps there, and what does that tell you.... what can you see in the gap, if you can see anything at all.
Showing posts with label Lacan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lacan. Show all posts
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Friday, May 2, 2014
Repetition Re petition Repeate tion (Lacan Instructions 2)
"Repetition demands the new," Lacan declares (61). Seemingly, this sentence is a paradox, since repetition is inherently the Not New. But this sentence also speaks of a desire, a lack for something new. What then, keeps us in a process of repetition? What is holding us back from that shift to something new?
How does this all relate to Electracy?
I think that, with the advent of Electracy, the idea of repetition is something that is both less thought about and also more, for lack of a better word, repeated. Let's think about the keyboard, for instance, where we have a few repeated keystrokes that allow us to "copy/paste" the same text over and over again. There is a complication here because there are two things that are repeating: The action of pressing ctrl+c/ctrl+v and the act of whatever it is that's being copy/pasted being repeated. There is a double repetition here that I find interesting because it complicates the idea of repetition. Even more interesting is the concept of a mistake, something that often happens in the copy/paste function. "Whatever, in repetition, is varied, modulated, is merely alienation of its meaning," Lacan states (61). This need, this demand, for the new is also interesting because Lacan also states that repetition is related to memory, so even as we demand the new, we also need the memory to be there.
But repetition does something else, a consequence, a side effect, that we might not be aware of when we first start to repeat. It imposes newness on its own. Even if there are no alterations to that which we are repeating, the meaning of that repeated practice, word, image, starts to get lost, starts to change.
In an episode of Grey's Anatomy there was a woman who had lost her ability to speak: Her speaking went into her blog where other people who were diagnosed with silence were. But the interesting thing is what her husband said. In order to communicate with him, she made post-its with the most commonly used phrases (thank you, yes, no, I love you, etc...). Her husband, when asked about this process, asked to relate how awesome it was, says that when things like "I love you" are flashed at you they start to lose their meaning. I think here is the crux of repetition: It always washes itself of meaning and starts imposing its own self on us. A meaninglessness, perhaps.
Try it: Say a phrase over and over and over again. You'll start to hear it become different if you say it out loud.
Instruction: Go online and keep doing the same thing over and over again. Whether that's always clicking the same numbered link or watching a video over and over again (I would recommend that one, especially a video that's short and perhaps funny). As soon as it loses its meaning stop watching it. How long did it take? Was it a gradual loss? Did you become annoyed, relaxed, etc...? Using a funny video helps because when you stop being amused, or when you've had enough, is usually a great indicator.
How does this all relate to Electracy?
I think that, with the advent of Electracy, the idea of repetition is something that is both less thought about and also more, for lack of a better word, repeated. Let's think about the keyboard, for instance, where we have a few repeated keystrokes that allow us to "copy/paste" the same text over and over again. There is a complication here because there are two things that are repeating: The action of pressing ctrl+c/ctrl+v and the act of whatever it is that's being copy/pasted being repeated. There is a double repetition here that I find interesting because it complicates the idea of repetition. Even more interesting is the concept of a mistake, something that often happens in the copy/paste function. "Whatever, in repetition, is varied, modulated, is merely alienation of its meaning," Lacan states (61). This need, this demand, for the new is also interesting because Lacan also states that repetition is related to memory, so even as we demand the new, we also need the memory to be there.
But repetition does something else, a consequence, a side effect, that we might not be aware of when we first start to repeat. It imposes newness on its own. Even if there are no alterations to that which we are repeating, the meaning of that repeated practice, word, image, starts to get lost, starts to change.
In an episode of Grey's Anatomy there was a woman who had lost her ability to speak: Her speaking went into her blog where other people who were diagnosed with silence were. But the interesting thing is what her husband said. In order to communicate with him, she made post-its with the most commonly used phrases (thank you, yes, no, I love you, etc...). Her husband, when asked about this process, asked to relate how awesome it was, says that when things like "I love you" are flashed at you they start to lose their meaning. I think here is the crux of repetition: It always washes itself of meaning and starts imposing its own self on us. A meaninglessness, perhaps.
Try it: Say a phrase over and over and over again. You'll start to hear it become different if you say it out loud.
Instruction: Go online and keep doing the same thing over and over again. Whether that's always clicking the same numbered link or watching a video over and over again (I would recommend that one, especially a video that's short and perhaps funny). As soon as it loses its meaning stop watching it. How long did it take? Was it a gradual loss? Did you become annoyed, relaxed, etc...? Using a funny video helps because when you stop being amused, or when you've had enough, is usually a great indicator.
Lack/Unreal (Lacan Instructions 3)
"Sexuality is established," Lacan posits, "in the field of the subject by a way that is that of lack" (204). I know that sexuality is not something that is very obviously relatable to Electracy, but I think that this phrase speaks to that process too. If we can think about Electracy as established through a desire brought on by lack, I think it produces interesting results. For instance, Lacan further iterates his ideas about a lack by talking about Aristophanes and how he "substituted the myth intended to embody the missing part, which I called the myth of the lamella. This is new and its important because it designates the libido not as a field of forces, but as an organ ... This organ is unreal. Unreal is not imaginary. The unreal is defined by articulating itself on the real in a way that eludes us" (205).
I want to think further about what this lack means in correlation with an unreal organ. If we can impose an Electrical filter to Lacan's position on lack, I believe that it will produce interesting results. For instance, understanding what Aristophanes has to do with Lacan's argument about lack can help us to understand. The basic premise of the argument is this: Aristophanes' fable relates the fact that the human was at first created, by the gods, as a doubled being. This means that every person had two heads, to bodies, to appendages, two (different) sexual organs, all stuck together. But the gods grew jealous of their creations' completeness, so they separated the one doubled being into two singled beings. This is where the initial lack comes from, the idea that we are essentially missing half of ourselves. We seek this other half through sexual reproduction, apparently, through coupling. We wax poetic about finding our other half, as if we are constantly searching for that part of us that was split.
This is a creationist myth that I think is interesting with respect to places - like China - where creation myths, according to Jullien, don't exist. But putting that aside for a second, putting aside the idea that perhaps a creation myth also doesn't exist for Electracy, I still want to try and work out what is unreal about it. What is unreal but that we still feel as real and that is why it feels unreal. And many people feel this way, they feel like they have to find their second half, and many fill that "lack" with something else. Lacan states that "one of the most ancient forms in which this unreal organ is incarnated in the body, is tattooing, scarification" (205-6). I posit that it is in the area of tattoos of scarifciation where we can really get somewhere. If we can just find the scar, or denote in some way, that we are missing something by making it physical, making it painful, putting that scar or that artwork on our skin to somehow pay homage to the separation between the two bodies, or even somehow pointing the way to that other body that we're missing, I think that that pain might be, perhaps, easier to deal with.
Let us move towards our other halves in Electracy. To do so, I will use an example that makes it easier to connect the two: Tattoo QR codes. Many people these days are doing them. Tattooing the codes that not only signify a lack, but that lead to where that lack is articulated in ways that can't be attached, prosthesis-like, to our bodies. QR codes are similar to fingerprints. Electracal style fingerprints. But what the QR codes are really leading to is our virtual selves. And herein lies my point: If we can have virtual selves, can these selves function as our other halves? Essentially, that would mean that not only are we filling in the void that the lack has created by getting that other half, it also means having the ability to create that other half. Have we found a way to not have a lack at all?
Instruction: I'm not sure if you have any tattoos or not, but think about a tattoo that you might get that would somehow signify that lack that everyone is supposed to feel, that unreal organ of the libido that one has, and then articulate it in some virtually Electrical way that doesn't have to do with your actual body. How would you go about doing this?
I want to think further about what this lack means in correlation with an unreal organ. If we can impose an Electrical filter to Lacan's position on lack, I believe that it will produce interesting results. For instance, understanding what Aristophanes has to do with Lacan's argument about lack can help us to understand. The basic premise of the argument is this: Aristophanes' fable relates the fact that the human was at first created, by the gods, as a doubled being. This means that every person had two heads, to bodies, to appendages, two (different) sexual organs, all stuck together. But the gods grew jealous of their creations' completeness, so they separated the one doubled being into two singled beings. This is where the initial lack comes from, the idea that we are essentially missing half of ourselves. We seek this other half through sexual reproduction, apparently, through coupling. We wax poetic about finding our other half, as if we are constantly searching for that part of us that was split.
This is a creationist myth that I think is interesting with respect to places - like China - where creation myths, according to Jullien, don't exist. But putting that aside for a second, putting aside the idea that perhaps a creation myth also doesn't exist for Electracy, I still want to try and work out what is unreal about it. What is unreal but that we still feel as real and that is why it feels unreal. And many people feel this way, they feel like they have to find their second half, and many fill that "lack" with something else. Lacan states that "one of the most ancient forms in which this unreal organ is incarnated in the body, is tattooing, scarification" (205-6). I posit that it is in the area of tattoos of scarifciation where we can really get somewhere. If we can just find the scar, or denote in some way, that we are missing something by making it physical, making it painful, putting that scar or that artwork on our skin to somehow pay homage to the separation between the two bodies, or even somehow pointing the way to that other body that we're missing, I think that that pain might be, perhaps, easier to deal with.
Let us move towards our other halves in Electracy. To do so, I will use an example that makes it easier to connect the two: Tattoo QR codes. Many people these days are doing them. Tattooing the codes that not only signify a lack, but that lead to where that lack is articulated in ways that can't be attached, prosthesis-like, to our bodies. QR codes are similar to fingerprints. Electracal style fingerprints. But what the QR codes are really leading to is our virtual selves. And herein lies my point: If we can have virtual selves, can these selves function as our other halves? Essentially, that would mean that not only are we filling in the void that the lack has created by getting that other half, it also means having the ability to create that other half. Have we found a way to not have a lack at all?
Instruction: I'm not sure if you have any tattoos or not, but think about a tattoo that you might get that would somehow signify that lack that everyone is supposed to feel, that unreal organ of the libido that one has, and then articulate it in some virtually Electrical way that doesn't have to do with your actual body. How would you go about doing this?
Termination/Brushstrokes/Keystrokes (Lacan Instructions 4)
Lacan relates the story of Matisse's reaction to a film that was taken of him painting. He says that it was a "strange slow-motion film in which one sees Matisse painting. The important point is that Matisse himself was overwhelmed by the film. Maurice Merleau-Ponty draws attention to the paradox of this gesture which, enlarged by the distension of time, enables us to imagine the most perfect deliberation in each of these brush strokes. This is an illusion ... what occurs as these strokes, which go to make up the miracle of the picture, fall like rain from the painter's brush is not choice, but something else" (114). As a person who paints, I know that brushstrokes are not always the choice of the painter. There is a randomness (which perhaps isn't random at all) to how the painting comes about. Sometimes it has to do with the size of the brush, sometimes with the contours of the subjects on the canvas. But to think about the slowed down brushstrokes of a Matisse painting is interesting because watching people paint seems to have the opposite effect these days. These days, on youtube, people's brushstrokes are sped up so that the viewer can get to the end of the painting as quick as possible. There is no hyper slowing down of the film production of a person painting. I think that would be fascinating. It is especially fascinating when one considers something that Matisse said and my art teacher related that has always stuck with me: "I don't paint things," he said, "I only paint the difference between things." The unsettled way that he feels, I think, points to that. He is watching himself paint the in between, the limbo, and watching himself bring something back out of that limbo.
Lacan says, "Let us not forget that the painter's brushstroke is something in which a movement is terminated. We are faced here with something that gives a new and different meaning to the term regression---we are faced with the element of motive in the sense of response" (114). This termination and regression allows us to see things that we may not have otherwise. Perhaps that is why art historians study the great painter's brushstrokes, why people who can detect reproduced paintings can somehow tell that a masterpiece is real or just a fake copy. I think this is an interesting process to think about, also, when trying to understand Electracy. Instead of brushstrokes, we have people's methods of scrolling, and people's keystrokes. In fact, one can figure out someone's identity by understanding their specific type of keystrokes (at least this is what I've heard), something that's always present: "This terminal moment is that which enables us to distinguish between a gesture and an act. It is by means of a gesture that the brushstroke is applied to the canvas ... the gesture is always present ... All action represented in a picture appears to us as a battle scene, something theatrical, necessarily created for the gesture" (114-5).
Instructions: Take a video of yourself typing and using your mouse. Try painting on a simple program like MS Paint, and record your painting's progression and the way that you move your fingers on your track pad or use your mouse. What happens when you misspell a word? Do you delete the whole word or do you actually use the mouse to go to the problem area? How slow do you type? Fast? How often do you stall as you're typing up a word or sentence? Remember to slow down your video. Do you feel strange watching yourself type?
Lacan says, "Let us not forget that the painter's brushstroke is something in which a movement is terminated. We are faced here with something that gives a new and different meaning to the term regression---we are faced with the element of motive in the sense of response" (114). This termination and regression allows us to see things that we may not have otherwise. Perhaps that is why art historians study the great painter's brushstrokes, why people who can detect reproduced paintings can somehow tell that a masterpiece is real or just a fake copy. I think this is an interesting process to think about, also, when trying to understand Electracy. Instead of brushstrokes, we have people's methods of scrolling, and people's keystrokes. In fact, one can figure out someone's identity by understanding their specific type of keystrokes (at least this is what I've heard), something that's always present: "This terminal moment is that which enables us to distinguish between a gesture and an act. It is by means of a gesture that the brushstroke is applied to the canvas ... the gesture is always present ... All action represented in a picture appears to us as a battle scene, something theatrical, necessarily created for the gesture" (114-5).
Instructions: Take a video of yourself typing and using your mouse. Try painting on a simple program like MS Paint, and record your painting's progression and the way that you move your fingers on your track pad or use your mouse. What happens when you misspell a word? Do you delete the whole word or do you actually use the mouse to go to the problem area? How slow do you type? Fast? How often do you stall as you're typing up a word or sentence? Remember to slow down your video. Do you feel strange watching yourself type?
Gaze - The Libido for the Eyes (Lacan Instructions 5)
The gaze that Lacan talks about is very similar to the concept of libido. This is why I think it works in an analogical statement. Libido is to genital organs like gaze is to ocular organs. It's important, I posit, to understand the idea of desire that stems from the implications of that statement.
I think it's also important to note the power that the gaze has over the one being gazed at. For instance, the gaze has the power of transference. There is always something colonizing about being gazed at because that person is imposing themselves on your without you knowing.
The gaze reduces and annihilates the subject. But if the gaze is the underside of consciousness, how can we try and imagine it since it's always eluding us in some way. How can we think about the gaze when we think about Electracy? What is the underside of the consciousness here, is the layer between them the screen?
And if someone sees the eye that is gazing at them then the gaze disappears. What happens, though, if someone sees themselves seeing them self? There is a past tense in Lacan's statement that allows for a shift in time, for a measurement to be made. There is here too an annihilation. But is it the annihilation of the gaze or the annihilation of the gazed at gazing back? How can we think about the camera or the telephone or just the simple act of Googling something? Lacan talks about the stain of the gaze. He says, "If the function of the stain is recognized in its autonomy and identified with that of the gaze, we can seek its track, its thread, its trace ... We will then realize that the function of the stain and of the gaze is both that which governs the gaze most secretly and that which always escapes from the grasp of that form of vision that is satisfied with itself in imagining itself as consciousness" (74). There is then an invisibility of the gazer gazing or staining in this situation. I want to ask, finally, the same question that Lacan asks: if "the gaze is that underside of consciousness, how shall we try to imagine it" (83).
The instructions for this blog is either easy or difficult, depending on how far the experimenter is trying to capture the gaze, but the implication that Sartre states is important to it: "In so far as I am under the gaze, Sartre writes, I no longer see the eye that looks at me and, if I see the eye, the gaze disappears" (84).
Instruction 1: Take a picture of yourself projected on your screen. This can be your phone screen too if that is where you spend most of your time.
Instruction 2: Think about non-reflective surfaces (like the Kindle Paperwhite edition), and how a gaze might be discerned from that.
Instruction 3: Construct a series of Google poems, these can be Haiku or not. Who is writing these poems, you or the person/thing that is gazing at you through the screen?
I think it's also important to note the power that the gaze has over the one being gazed at. For instance, the gaze has the power of transference. There is always something colonizing about being gazed at because that person is imposing themselves on your without you knowing.
The gaze reduces and annihilates the subject. But if the gaze is the underside of consciousness, how can we try and imagine it since it's always eluding us in some way. How can we think about the gaze when we think about Electracy? What is the underside of the consciousness here, is the layer between them the screen?
And if someone sees the eye that is gazing at them then the gaze disappears. What happens, though, if someone sees themselves seeing them self? There is a past tense in Lacan's statement that allows for a shift in time, for a measurement to be made. There is here too an annihilation. But is it the annihilation of the gaze or the annihilation of the gazed at gazing back? How can we think about the camera or the telephone or just the simple act of Googling something? Lacan talks about the stain of the gaze. He says, "If the function of the stain is recognized in its autonomy and identified with that of the gaze, we can seek its track, its thread, its trace ... We will then realize that the function of the stain and of the gaze is both that which governs the gaze most secretly and that which always escapes from the grasp of that form of vision that is satisfied with itself in imagining itself as consciousness" (74). There is then an invisibility of the gazer gazing or staining in this situation. I want to ask, finally, the same question that Lacan asks: if "the gaze is that underside of consciousness, how shall we try to imagine it" (83).
The instructions for this blog is either easy or difficult, depending on how far the experimenter is trying to capture the gaze, but the implication that Sartre states is important to it: "In so far as I am under the gaze, Sartre writes, I no longer see the eye that looks at me and, if I see the eye, the gaze disappears" (84).
Instruction 1: Take a picture of yourself projected on your screen. This can be your phone screen too if that is where you spend most of your time.
Instruction 2: Think about non-reflective surfaces (like the Kindle Paperwhite edition), and how a gaze might be discerned from that.
Instruction 3: Construct a series of Google poems, these can be Haiku or not. Who is writing these poems, you or the person/thing that is gazing at you through the screen?
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