De tous les idéaux dont nous avons hérité des Lumières, la transparence est peut-être le seul à ne pas avoir été profondément remis en cause à l’époque contemporaine. Tout au contraire, là où d’autres notions utopiques ont prouvé leur incapacité à résister à la récupération totalitaire, l’idéal de la transparence n’en est ressorti que renforcé, [...]
Category Archives: philosophy
La monnaie vivante – Pierre Klossowki
L’objet fabriqué, contrairement au bien d’usage (naturel), quoiqu’il se conforme encore à quelque signification coutumière (p. ex. selon l’emploi de métaux ayant un sens emblématique), perd ce caractère à mesure que l’acte de fabriquer se diversifie. Diversifié selon sa complexité progressive, l’acte de fabriquer substitue à l’usage des biens (naturels ou cultivés) l’utilisation efficace des [...]
Uncanny Valley
Last Saturday, I was reading an article from Le Devoir about a reconstructed carthaginian man who died 2600 about years ago. Journalist Pauline Gravel’s description of dermoplasty was the most interesting thing about it: Une fois la tête posée sur le corps, Élisabeth Daynès a entrepris le moulage de l’ensemble de la sculpture de terre. [...]
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Signs of infinity
Observe that our contact with infinity is always and only through writing Rotman, B. (1993). Ad infinitum–the ghost in Turing’s machine: taking God out of mathematics and putting the body back in: an essay in corporeal semiotics. Stanford: CA: Stanford University Press. p. 6.
Also posted in Language, media studies Tagged communication, language, materiality, visibility, writing Leave a comment
Brian Eno, complexity and universality
Of Eno’s technology projects that have fallen by the wayside, the one he would most like to revive is the idea of self-generating musical systems, which he began studying in the 1980s. The premise is to create a music-making machine, whether it is as simple as a wind chime or as complex as computer software. [...]
Also posted in computing Tagged embodiment, mathematics, performance, programming, technology Leave a comment
“Lost,”
When I found this on Phil Jone’s Blog, Benjamin’s description of a work of art’s aura came back to mind: What, then, is the aura ? A strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be. To follow with the eye – while resting on a summer afternoon [...]
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Galvanic ideology
Electricity also played an important role in redefining a number of seemingly well-established and inviolable bodily boundaries. Natural philosophers could use electricity to chip away at previously clearly defined categories. Whilst the gap between mind and body was widened and solidified, the distinction between bodies and machines became significantly more porous. Machines that could simulate [...]
Mathematics as language
…little need to insist that mathematics is a language: who after all among those familiar with it would deny the proposition ^ Certainly not those users – accountants, engineers, economists, actuaries, statisticians, cliometricians, meteorologists, and the like – who have no choice but to translate in and out of mathematical expressions and terminology on their [...]
The Possible and the Actual
Take, for instance, the possible fat man in the doorway; and again, the possible bald man in the doorway. Are they the same possible man, or two possible men ? How de we decide ? How many possible men there are in that doorway ? Are there more possible thin ones than fat ones ? [...]
Index revisited
I’ve been taking care of an index for a few days. Short contract. A lot of work to do in too little time. But I took the opportunity to write down a few questions on the contemporary art of indexing a book: The first questions relate to the words and their context: Is the instance [...]
