I have been working for over two weeks now on a post following my presentation on how the 5 Senses are simulated online and on the relationship between sensual experience and interface.
While I am somewhat overwhelmed with the numerous examples and the immense details i have to plow through when it comes to simulating senses online (and the reasons why taste and smell are so much more difficult to represent and replicate on any interface/ machine) – I started thinking about a new project – submitting a paper to a special issue of the magazine “The Philosophy of Computer Science” dedicated to Minds and Machines (scheduled for Fall 2010).
The call for paper (CFP as academics like to call it) lists no less than 27 topics – but question no. 7 immediately grabbed me:
“What kinds of things are digital objects? Do we need a new ontological category to house them?”
Thinking about the ontology of digital being and on “digital identity matters” as some researchers already put it, threw my brain into a conundrum and started that tickle that i guess i am addicted to.
After sometime i realized that even though i may not know much about Computer Science i am rather familiar with digital beings and i’d love to think about how they occupy space in the world, the relationships they hold among themselves, and the differences between digital and physical objects.
I’d like to do a George Perec inspired exploration – and to move from smaller objects (or spaces) to larger ones. Georges Perec was a French writer and a structuralist who experimented not only with language and content but also with form. For example, he wrote a book without the letter E (La Disparition), a 500 words long palindrome and composed crosswords for living.
Georges a un chat
The first item that i’d look at will be the autograph, from there i’ll move to letters (or e-mail to be more specific, including spam), folders, books and finally – libraries. Initially i wanted to write about songs and images as well, but they’re less textual based and the topic is already huge.
There’s also a song i like, which is just perfect for this post – it’s conveniently called “Folder” (!) by a band called “Plastic Operator” and the animated music video for the song was directed by Pete Circuitt.
I Interviewed Zachi Dinar from Balora Interactive Design Studio for Walla!Tech. He made a funny comment about how virtual i am. I responded by showing him all the notebooks, books and electronic devices i insist on carrying around (laptop, iPod, cellphone). He said that it looks like physical things are calming me down – as if they help me counter the online world which is so elusive.
Sometimes I feel like a bag-lady, carrying so many things around – the bigger the bag, the more things i am tempted to drag along. There’s always a book, a purse, an iPod, a cellphone, a notepad to write “small” ideas in, and often a notebook to write longer pieces, action items, lists a scrapbook of sorts. It’s a habit i started while writing my dis – to write down ideas before they disappear, to get hold of them, a futile attempt to cling to words, those stubborn, magical entities.
book, notebooks, notepad, calendar
cellphones: old & older, both semi-functioning, i-pod, and toy-chimp keeping them company
My friend Yael, one of the most talented writers i know, sent me a short piece she wrote after we met for dinner several months ago. I arrived from work carrying, as always, a bag filled with tons of things. It was winter so I had several layers on (a habit from Canada where the heating is so intense you have to be able to peel off layers quickly once you’re in the overheated buildings if you don’t want to be boiled).This is one of the most beautiful things anyone ever told me, one of the most beautiful things ever written about me. very very flattering:
“I met Romi tonight. A whirlwind [...] Romi is living a life I would very much like to live, and yet she doesn’t seem quite happy about it. Her facility with writing is astounding to me. She has an idea, and just like that, the notebook is whipped out, the pen is scratching, or the laptop flipped open, the fingers racing. No barriers, she just writes and writes. Ideas, thoughts, criticism, philosophy, it all comes out of her. She lives a life that looks chaotic and scattered, but is actually organized in a library with a Dewey Decimal code that only she can decipher, but she does. She possesses mountains of information, about music and books, and art, and things that make your brain go tick, and carries it around with a notebook and a laptop and scarves and things. She has many things with her, possessions, items, colors. She walks in and takes off two or three layers before sitting down. Her presence is things. And ideas, and emotions. It’s exhilarating to be in her company, and also threatening, or maybe not threatening, but intimidating. Here is someone living in ideas. Living in thought, meeting once a week for think tanks, going abroad, living the life. She’s doing it, whereas I only think about it. It’s truly amazing, a hot air balloon in action, without the negative connotations that image may inspire to those who don’t believe in hot air.”
“Dewey Decimal code that only she can decipher” – loved it! what a great metaphor.
laptops - the old, the new, and the borrowed
all together now
yeah, i wish i wouldn’t have to have all those things with me every time i leave the house (for example – why do i need 3 USB drives? why4 pens and 2 lip-glosses?). Has my possession become my obsession? I wish i knew. Or trust technology more. Or have a better memory so i wouldn’t have to carry all this STUFF around. I know that it’s time to move on, but a smartphone, get rid of the iPod, etc. But in the meanwhile it feels like i need a cart instead of a bag, or at least a porter available on days when all this STUFF doesn’t fit into my bicycle’s basket (no wonder why i feel like basket case).
a look from above (everything fits the bag - except there's only 1 laptop here)
Things? Ideas? Possession? Obsession? All the same to me – be it the state of things or my presence in things it’s time to let go. Or get an iPhone…
There are only 2 places i know how to get to in Jerusalem without getting lost. “Stardust” a bar owned by my friend Avii and Yad VaShem – the Holocaust Museum – where i conducted a visual research in 2006. Every other destination in this city makes me disoriented.
My friend Gardi now lives in Ramallah. Last year she did research there for her dissertation (entitled: ‘”Before our Eyes: Les mots, non les choses. Jean-Luc Godard’s “Ici et ailleurs” and” Notre musique”‘) and now that her dissertation is finished (w00t!) – she’s back in the middle east. Since Israelis aren’t supposed to roam Ramallah and it takes three hours (!) to get to TLV using public transportation we often meet in Jerusalem. Our regular spot is the notorious “Kikar Zion” which she calls “ATM sq.” because of all the banks that are located there. My disorientation and troubles getting to Jerusalem are nothing in comparison to what she has to go through in her voyage from the occupied territories into Israel.
Gardi and i met in Toronto about 6 years ago. We were both misfits in our departments, constantly struggling with (what we considered) the ongoing attempts of both Academia and Canada to put out our fire. Gardi fled to Paris, slept in the Bastille area but technically lived in the Centre Pompidou Library and set up a Latino circle of thinkers and artists. I found refuge in New York, which I visited every time I could escape Toronto and finally moved back to Tel-Aviv, seeking distractions by working in the local Internet and hi-tech industry while completing my dis.
I always look at Gardi with awe and admiration. She’s fearless – a professional world-traveler, unbeatable border-crosser, and a sworn continent-hopper. She travels the world with her pink suitcase, laptop and inquisitive gaze. Her stories from all over the world always make my eyes widen, my head spin, and often confuse me – make me want to cry and laugh simultaneously. As one of her profs said – every word in her dissertation is written in passion. I told her that sometime it seems like she’s one of the characters in Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives – a book she gave me as a gift.
gardi spotted at Havara checkpoint
Identities, Bios, Abouts
Since both of us have been teaching @ the Visual Culture Center in the University of Toronto (VCC) – and we’re quite familiar with the issue of (dis)location and identity we talked about it last time we met.I am fascinated with the way ppl nowadays describe themselves online and in the way online and offline personalities interact (and intersect). I come across many over the top descriptions on Twitter and bloggers’ “About” pages which make “go hmmm…” Take for example this guy’s bio - “Zebra Crossing, Brooklyn Play, Starving Artist (Trader Joe’s), Reluctant Yogi, G Train Distruster, Other Stuff”. Or this one – “Bio Seeker of truth in 140 characters or less. Scientia potentia est. Tweet me a cool fact the world should know. I will RT it. Freelance writer at your service.” And I haven’t even mentioned all those “Guru’s” and the people that are “obsessed” about things (as if there’s no other option, you either don’t care about something or obsessed about it).
It looks like everybody’s trying to be so unique and eye-catching but in face they aren’t saying much. A friend of mine even described Tweeter as the place where everybody try so hard to show how unspecial they are. This could be part of the game of online/ offline and may go with the territory (esp. on Twitter with its 140 characters). But it’s interesting to see how people openly define themselves while seeking a recognition of sorts, or maybe just “followers.”
“Leave it all behind, again”
After our talk Gardi emailed me. Her take is more philosophical:
“Maybe “where we are/been” defines us? I feel sometimes detached from any roots (…), kind of like a nomad. But I don’t like the romantization of nomadism because it is actually very hard to be one (especially with the ‘wrong’ papers)… dunno also like a subject of globalization while refusing to buy into the ‘wired, virtual community’ of globalized sould because that presupposes a homogeneizing mindset… I told you I dig the first line from Bolano’s Manifesto: “Leave it all again.” Which is really hard… although more and more, I’m finding certain stability and continuity in my work (while again, being weary that this stability will be homogeneous with the environment I’m in).
In a way this struggle to NOT fit in helps us “leave it all again.” The quote Gardi refers to is “the true poet is the one who is always abandoning himself. Leave it all behind, again. Take it to the road.” Leaving means resisting belonging. Taking it to the road refuses stability and denies us of the comforting fantasy that identities are stable, that they are not shifting. Being reborn, constantly “abandoning” oneself may be an act of a (true) poet, but it is so so difficult. Going against the stream may mean opposing the “homogenizing mindset” but it seems that for most people the question is less substantial. The flux of identity and the grip of Social Networks turned us all into teenagers, dealing with questions of identity, self-definition, self-expression and trying somehow to pass as someone special, or at least as non-conformists.
