Is digital an efficient motto
To appreciate the importance of the term "digital" as an efficient term in communication about digital art, we shall try here to look at the various aspects of the concept. We shall go, rather informally, from the old to the new, which more or less goes along with the simple and the complex. An hence we shall propose some projections and stragegic elements.
Digital properly speaking was borne with the electronic computers and the Von Neumann era. But it was a new stage in a long history of pre-digital conceptual pairs, such as continuous/discrete. History is a sort of dialectics between these opposite poles, and others like formal/informal, logic/analog, algebraic/geometric...
History
Emergence and waning of digital
Morse/telephone
as other technologies. Iron hinges for home furniture.
Framgementation is perceivent only at definite levels. specially text.
the window. My Rox program.
Degré d'inclination à partir duquel un objet cmmence à couler sur un plan.
Singularité. Black hole.
Big bang, quanta and atoms.
At start, we have the original explosion and first strucurations, obeying notably the quanta theory. Quanta and atoms are discontinuous by nature, then il line with digital operations... but for their high level of impredictibility. It seems that quantic computing could be able to harness that and use it practically.
Then crystals and molecules. Very digital and discontinuous. (valence). C + 02 = CO2
That first assertion contradicts the quite natural feeling that original "nature" is analog, and that digital came only in recent times with machinery and notably the computers. Actually, the world is, partly at least, digital from scratch.
But this discontinuity is not apparent at first sight. Antiquity had a first idea of atomism, intuitively and without serious proofs, and we had to wait for the 19th century for more convincing theories.
Here as is several cases below, the discrete is perceived as contiuous due to large numbers (Avogadro).
Thresholding
Typically, triggering of a behavior, or choice between two behaviors. (Flee/Attack).
The complex analog forms can be replaced by simple ones (Lorenz), some pixels.
Phase changes
solid, liquid, gazeaous.
Reproduction. crystals, epigenetics molecules.
How do molecules reproduce themselves.
Black Hole
Life
An enormous change of phase.
NC or some day we shall find ?
DNA
Here, the digital is deeply hidden. Life emerged 4 billions of years ago, but had to wait for Mendel () then Watson and Crick () to be perceived as digital.
Another NC. Parenchyme.
Of course, in nature, DNA bits are not representations, but programs.
Or they are features which can be reduced to binary values, language, if a perceptive system does the recognition and draws the consequences
Or if there is a threshold
Fragmentation is total (to molecules) for feeding in all living beings. Chemical.
With animals, specific organs to mechanical fragmentation: teeth, preceding the chemical fragmentation in the digestive track.
Eyes and ears
The basically digital nature of retina was perceived only in.
Then it influenced, for instance, the design of our screens (RGB). Note that, of course, there is not a one to one correspondance between the pixels and the retina cells. These two digital interfaces connect as continuous.
Mark/signs. Intentional
Flowers. Sight and aroms. + unperceptible pheronome
Why generate complex shaps just to elicit quite simplistic answers: coming and gathering, sexual arousing. Just to make a color or olfactive signal
The territory marking by animals
Unconscious (proportionally to animal levels of consciousness)
Love parades
Expressive plays (threat:submission)
Tools
The chopper
Then, miniaturization, and polished stone.
Leroi Gourhan.
Externalization. Grinding from teeth to mills.
Feeding is the most important finality of tool development. Chopper. Then mill
Mating will wait much more, because the fragmentation is done before ejaculation, ovulation etc.
Then machine. Anticythere mechanism.
The clock. Machina quae DIVIDIT.
Petrol. cracking.
Cook. Heat cooking.
Alcohol. Distillation. Still.
Technical progress goes with more powerful crackint systems
Grinding. Mill mechanical
Precision insruments
Language
A system of oppositions (Saussure)
Formal logic. e.g. in Bourbaki
The mirror test. Then recursion.
Language, big monkeys, then man.
Language recursion.
Then language iLe langage poursuit ensuite sa digitalisation avec l’alphabet, puis les caractères séparés de Gutenberg, puis la digitalisation stricto sensu à l’époque de Von Neumann et al. Les autres outils suivent le mouvement.
The neolithics as NC
profound change.
Decision
Finite by definition. Cut.
Sometimes, decision not to decide (about life an death)
Money and capitalism
Capitalism as digital:
- dematerialization/volume reductino
- numeric/symbolic
- complex operations
- liquidity, hence concentration
- immediate transfer. telegraph
- discrete
Eugénie Grandet
-pisible up to low. Share, stock exchange
- money has no odor, no meaning
Representation
5.1. in DU
The three cuts.
Sign.
An object.
A convention.
It is not the object as such which is digital or not, but the way we use it.
Images
Vectorial screens. Pixelization.
Cinema and video
The basic fragmentation. Illusion (Bergson, Deleuze)
The second fragmenation. (Eisenstein, Lawson).
HD
Objects
Typically, the clock and the wristwatch.
Jaquet-Droz and Le Boucher
3D Printing
Sculpture.
Not representations.
Miguel Chevalier
Voluntary digitization. Find back the arist
Machines
Machina quae dividit.
The gear, a specirif combination of continuous/discontinuous.
The mill
Psychology
Emotion as a suspension of reason
Politics
The terrigories.
Cadastre
City and its walls.
Power separation
Digital properly speaking
Back to analog with large numbers
Formal languages
Art
unpublished resonance
Writing/speaking
Painting
Alternance, codification/realism
Pompier/Ingres, a summit
Then cubism. analtic.
Then forms generaion. Schillinger.
The first, very "digital"
The path opened by abstraction.
Fantasia
Mohr/Molnar, the series in
De Cambiaire
Then matte painting. HD. (3D)
Algorists
Cinema
The FPS Level, the mounting level. The pixel level.
1992 marvels. Ses history of 3D.
Fantasia.
Abstarc inema
In music, the fragmentation is perceived, rythm.
Emission : instruments
Peception: the ear, the correspondence with the heart beat
Modern/Postmodern
The moderns. Abtract
The post modern. Database.
Deconstrucdion
Reverse engineering.
Then, coordination.
Otaku. Structure of the base.
See pictures, body, the computer.
The parts of the base must afford their combination.
At start, the constraints on the base are not heavy, since th cmbination is done by the brain, with its strong combinatorial power.
All that is required is a physical arrangement of the base so that the otaku can easily make their necessary choices.
There is also the structure of the base in the otaku's mind. But here we have no direct access. Human memory is very comples.
When the assembly is done by machinic means, the constraints are higher on the base structure. But it is a layered structure:
- image of the base in the otaku's mind
- external file structure in the PS
- Google/Facebook
(nota tht image will play a growing part)
Of course here : Israels metacrane, Roxame.
Abstract considerations
A mode of relation
You can process a digital object like a book or a CD like an analog one: throw them to the dustbin, for example.
You can use digitally an object: consider that a black sail annouces death, for example.
(here the 4. subchapter. and the real line R.
The infinites
Recursion
as resonance, a cyclical structure. refer to frequency.
The computer program loop has a frequency linked to the power of the processor and the complexity of the loop.
In a recursive loop, the loop duration is not constant. Varies with the successive iterations. May be constant (xi +1 = xI). Or appear constant, as long as the values stay within ghe limits of an integer/word.
originality is recursive
Discrete/contiunous and the NC
A 19th century idea to preserve religion against science.
The Duprat layers.
Continuity as a "vue de l'esprit"
Connexion by large numbers.
The NC by large numbers, exceeding the capacity of one side (mainly reception?)
Conversions
From continuous to digital
A/D conversion
analysis
vector/raster
descriptibe geometry
Evolution. The sand heap.
Triggering.
From digital to continuous
D/A. a NC, somehow. You are never (?) sure to get back the original.
Re-introduction
HD, Antialiasing. Shading and textures
On seome printers.
HD, antialiasing, seamless
Averaging systems, mulitpilicity
Swarm.
Temparature/pressure . A sensor? etc.
Continuity/discontinuty in knowledge and history
Time division. Machina quae dividit horas. A fragmentation of time.
It is naturally fragmented. The natural fragmentation. plus more complex ones. Going to Anticythere mechamism
Periodization. Revolution. Historic breaks : Renaissance, REvolution. Wars.
NC
Irreductibility of different sciences.
Emotion is a loss of rationality, at least for some duration. Any true emotion is a sort of "small death", a suspension of discursive abilities. Sublime.
Good and bad emotions.
This suspension of rationality is comparable to the flat points in Lauzun algorithms.
The intimate conviction of the judge.
Nor properly random...
Emotion may lead, due to this suspension, to hiegher levels of rationality.
Emotion is not basic random.
Society
Privacy as a NC. Individual freedom.
Power separation
Quantities and measurement
The number of bits (or symbols) we can master.
Beyond, we have to chunk.
Below, its boring, or we have to combine with ohers.
Quantities of bits (6 in DU). One bit, several bits. Hardware and soffware associations.
redundancy, compressin, glitch
Strong fragmentation goes to continuity. Powder. Grinding the colors. HD.
Infinity and reductionism. Unspeakable
Down to the limits of matter possibilities.
Quantum computing. DNA computing.
For large assemblies, we have to accept some kind of loss. Foreing Affaire, Souverainists.
Paul, It's no longer I who lives, Galatian 2, 19-20. Extreme : ultra, COC (BOF : believe, obey, figtht).
Measure the complexity of analog? Quantity of equivalent digital ? Count the llops. Hmeter (here with thresholding).
Baiscally, such a measure is thresholding : the equivalence.
You can measure the complexity not of all the stimulating object but of the behavior.
More exactly, count the complexity of behavior cases.
Reproduction
The meme. Analog reproduction. Digital. Genetic.
Similarity and distance
Information is a differente able to procuce a difference.
Outgrow one's own definition. Ni Dieu ni maitre. Ni Dieu ni gènes.
Similarity, difference, distance, recognition
Similarity
Not a binary concept
Information as a difference able to reproduce a difference.
The Dawkins meme. Memetics. Is a meme necessarily digital.
Reproduction in the life form. Similarity. Broken by the crossover system. Sexual reproduction is a renouncement to mere self continuation.
Recognition goes into a finite series of objects through a feature space, which may be continuous. Typically a D/A function.
Symmetric function: set of models for each form.
Typical recognition: species, animals and men. Gn II.
Voronoi spaces. The nodes, the borders. NC.
Difference is a difficult concept. Deleuze.
Resonance
Digital if the damp factor is 0.
resonance.
more binary if you lower the damping factor
Resonance, demands originality, at least for human minds. We do not resonate indefinetely on the same stimulus.
Actually, each new work changes the resonance.
The damping factor.
Future and strategy
Probably a continuation of the dialectics. discrete/continuous
The singularity
Acceleration.
Digital art, you live with it.
Arguments for showing
Arguments for hiding
Conclusions
DICCAN'S PARTNERS:
Paris ACM Siggraph, the French chapter of ACM Siggraph, worldwide non-profit organization of computer graphics.
Les Algoristes, an association of artists using their own algorithms in their work.
