Miscommunications: Errors, Mistakes, Media 9781501363856, 9781501363825, 9781501363832

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Miscommunications

thinking|media series editors: bernd herzogenrath patricia pisters

Miscommunications Errors, Mistakes, Media Edited by Maria Korolkova and Timothy Barker

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2021 Volume Editor’s Part of the Work © Maria Korolkova and Timothy Barker Each chapter © of Contributors Cover design: Daniel Benneworth-Gray Cover image © Paolo Sanfilippo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-6385-6 ePDF: 978-1-5013-6383-2 eBook: 978-1-5013-6384-9 Series: Thinking Media Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.



For Captain Pa (MK) As ever, for Michelle and Chloe (TB)

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Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments

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Introduction: Bad Operators  Timothy Barker and Maria Korolkova

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Part One  Mis‐theories 1 Affirmative Imperfection Rhetoric and Aesthetics: A Genealogy  Ellen Rutten 23 2 Post-communication Theory: The Non‐dialogical  Timothy Barker 46 3 Miscommunication and Democratic Membership  Reidar Due 61 4 There Is No “Error” in Techno‐logics: A Radically Media‐archaeological Approach  Wolfgang Ernst 79 Part Two  Mis‐sounds 5 Quiet in the Forest  Frances Dyson 97 6 The Guardians of the Possible  Stephen Kennedy  103 7 Communicating the Incommunicable: Formalism and Noise in Michel Serres  Thomas Sutherland 117 Part Three  Mis‐matters 8 Objects Mis‐taken: Toward the Aesthetics of Displaced Materiality  Maria Korolkova 135 9 Fai(lure): Encounter with the Unstable Medium in the  Work of Art  Maryam Muliaee and Mani Mehrvarz 149

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10 A Relational Materialist Approach to Errant Media Systems: The Case of Internet Video Producers  John Hondros 163 11 Negotiating Two Models of Truth: Miscommunication, Aesthetics, and Democracy in Elle and Laruelle  Alex Lichtenfels 179 Part Four  Mis‐happenings 12 Disastrous Communication: Walter Benjamin’s “The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay”  Dominic Smith 197 13 Accidental Recordings: Unintentional Media Aesthetics  Ella Klik 217 14 Desert Media: Glitches, Breakdowns, and Media Arrhythmia in the Sahara  Andrea Mariani 232 Part Five  Mis‐functions 15 The Error at the End of the Internet  Peter Krapp 251 16 From Bugs to Features: An Archaeology of Errors and/in/as Computer Games  Stefan Höltgen 265 17 We Interrupt This Program: On the Cultural Techniques of “Technical Difficulties”  Jörgen Rahm‐Skågeby 284 18 Glitches as Fictional (Mis)Communication  Nele Van De Mosselaer and Nathan Wildman 300 List of Contributors Index

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Illustrations Figures 2.1 Photograph of mailman posing with child in his satchel 12.1 Ghost Bridge/Replacement Bridge 12.2 James McIntosh Patrick, The Tay Bridge from My Studio Window (1948) 14.1 Scanned pictures from the explorers’ photo album 14.2 Illustrated pages from Etiopia journal 16.1 “Tom Thumb” 16.2 Computer game crashes 16.3 “Little Computer People” 17.1 Shannon(‐Weaver) mathematical model of communication 17.2 The War of the Ants module in action

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202 203 238 244 266 273 279 286 293

Table 16.1 Error Types with Examples from PASCAL (Top), C (Middle), and BASIC (Bottom)

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Acknowledgments This volume is a delayed and largely rethought culmination of a seminar series “Making Mistakes: Misleading and Misinterpreted Texts in Literature, Arts and History” held at the University of Oxford in 2011–12. The series was conceptualized by the coeditor Maria Korolkova (then Pasholok) and Margarita Vaysman, and funded through the research grant of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages. Maria is grateful to this funding body, all presenters, as well as to Clarendon Scholarship that sponsored her study at Oxford, and of course to Tim Barker for joining forces in reshaping these ideas into the current volume. Tim’s interest in errors and mistakes was first sparked by Mark Nunes, who many years ago included him in a special issue of M/C Journal and then later in the edited collection Errors: Glitch, Noise and Jam in Media Culture. Tim would like to thank Mark for publishing those early essays and of course to thank Maria for later reigniting his interest. Tim would also like to thank colleagues at the University of Glasgow for reading drafts and in general allowing him to talk to them about dialogue, agonism, and miscommunications. Thanks to Carl Lavery, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, and Michael Bachmann for the generosity with which they shared ideas. Intellectual debts that Maria Korolkova has accumulated over the decade of rethinking the ideas expressed in this volume are multiple. She is in debt to Catriona Kelly for her intellectual, academic, and aesthetical guidance; to Margarita Vaysman for initial collaboration and the freedom to depart from the original directions of the seminars in developing this volume. It is an enormous pleasure to see Ellen Rutten’s ideas on imperfection from the Mistakes seminar series developed and (im)perfected in the chapter to this volume. Maria is also grateful to Reidar Due for his many metaphysical intuitions back at Magdalen College. Beyond Oxford, gratitude goes to the colleagues from the Moscow State University—Pavel Balditsyn—for supporting her interest in Russian formalism in particular and critical thinking in general, late Natalia Chestnykh, for having inspired openness and creativity, and Dmitry Nesvetov, a source of endless philosophical discoveries. University of Greenwich provided the intellectual forum for the coeditors of this volume to meet and launch this project, and they express their sincere gratitude to all involved. Steve Kennedy’s unconditional research support, and conversations at The Mitre—on Michel Serres and the nature of chaos— let this project take its current shape, as well as his kindness to read the drafts

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of several chapters. Maria and Tim are also grateful to Maria Arche, who found time to comment on the linguistic side of miscommunications. Sincere thanks are owed to all contributors to this volume. Above all, Maria is grateful to her family Larisa, Mikhail, Nastasia, and Vasily for their support and love. And, as always, Tim owes it all to Michelle and Chloe.

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Introduction Bad Operators Timothy Barker and Maria Korolkova

The most profound dialectical problem is not the problem of the Other, who is only a variety—or a variation—of the Same, it is the problem of the third man. We might call this third man the demon, the prosopopoeia of noise. —Michel Serres (1982), Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 68 You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage. —John Von Neuman to Claude ­Shannon, cited in Tribus, Myron and McIrving,­ Edward C. (1971), “Energy and ­Information,” Scientific American, 225: 179–88, 180 Fake news, misleading political slogans, interruptions to the flow of communication: these are not new phenomena, but they are ones that have started to become the most noticeable characteristic of media in the twenty-first century. To begin to think about this condition and explore the uncertainty produced by both purposefully and accidentally misleading communication, a good place to start is with two figures that have been instrumental in conceptualizing the role of noise in communication: one in the field of engineering and one in the field of philosophy. Claude Shannon was working on his now famous mathematical theory of information when he was looking for a way to describe the uncertainty of information that equates to noise. Taking his lead from John Von Neuman, Shannon

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described this function as “entropy” (a word that, as Von Neuman points out, is surrounded by its own share of uncertainty). Shannon uses the language of thermodynamic, which explains how energy is lost as heat, to describe the way information can be lost as noise. This shift in thinking signified nothing less than a new way to conceive communication systems in terms of the levels of uncertainty that they are capable of dealing with. It also signified an important concept that can be used in coming to grips with the new political realities of noise. Shifting this technical description into the field of philosophy, Michel Serres uses Shannon but gives us something altogether more radical. Serres tells us that any philosophy of communicative realities need not start from the attempt to uncover dialectic relationship between sender and receiver but should completely refocus attention on Shannon’s uncertainty function and the way that communication functions as the sender and receiver are united in a battle against noise. Any model of communication, for Serres, always involves three parties: the sender, the receiver, and a third that seeks to interrupt communication and to introduce what we could call a miscommunication. Serres asks, how does one enter into communication with another? The answer that he offers is that for information to be transmitted and to take on meaning it necessitates noise; it is only via its differentiation from noise that information is able to exist at all. For communication to take place, it needs to paradoxically exclude that which it necessitates (Harari and Bell in Serres 1982: xxvi). Thinking of communication is only possible because of the miscommunications that it excludes. As John Durham Peters writes, “miscommunication is the scandal that motivates the very concept of communication in the first place” (Peters 1999: 6). In Serres’ work, like in Shannon’s, miscommunication is created by the noise that is introduced into the channel. The novelty with this is that Serres offers a way to completely reconceive the relationships that dialogue is thought to establish. “Communication is a sort of game played by two interlocutors considered as united against the phenomena of interference and confusion, or against individuals with some stake in interrupting communication” (Serres 1982: 67–8). What we and the contributors to this volume try to explore is the terrain of, and possibilities for, communication when we have entered a world in which the “third man,” the individual who has a stake in interrupting communication, is no longer excluded, like an unwelcome guest, but actually becomes the agent in charge of directing communication. The unwelcome guest becomes the host. This does not necessarily have negative connotations— though often it does—but can sometimes be positive and productive. In this collection, the authors grapple with the ontology of media within such

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conditions. They combine to both offer and interrogate a new philosophy of media and a new approach to studying communication with the concept of the mistake, of errant communication, and of noise at its center. To set up the chapters that come, in this introduction we outline a number of pillars that support this mode of enquiry. First, we set out some existing definitions of miscommunication and indicate how this collection both builds on and then moves beyond these approaches. Second, we compare the notion of the error and the accident in the writing of Umberto Eco, Victor Shklovsky, and Paul Virilio, exploring the relationship of language, codes, and mistakes to humanness and creativity. Thirdly, we outline a model of miscommunication based on the breakdowns in the transmission of messages, mostly developed through our use of Serres’ description of the figures of parasites, the Ancient Greek messenger Hermes, and fallen angels. Now, if the potential of miscommunication begins to suggest new systems and alternative ways to operate beyond dominant structures of communication, then its definition and critical framing becomes central to the philosophy of media and communication. Of course, there are already-existing definitions of miscommunication, largely coming from the field of linguistics. In these accounts, miscommunication is seen as those ineffective or problematic moments of communication. In linguistics, a miscommunication amounts to an exchange that has an undesired outcome. In general, it is often understood as a lack of alignment of participants mental states, where they diverge particularly in the occurrence or the outcome of a communication (Traum and Dillenbourg 1996). Miscommunication here amounts to a situation where the receiver interprets the message in a different way than that which was intended by the sender (Ryan and Barnard 2009: 45; Mustajoki 2013: 35). The sender sends a message, intended to be understood one way, and for one reason or another it is misinterpreted by a receiver. This approach is common in linguistics, where communication is often viewed as an action that, while involving two people as distinct individuals, is co‐performed by them as a pair. As Herbert H. Clark (1994) writes, “When Ann and Bob talk to each other, they each perform individual actions such as uttering words, identifying sounds and forming interpretations, but many of these actions are really parts of actions performed by the pair of them Ann‐and‐Bob” (244). When communication breaks down, it is because of a deficiency in this shared system. When a miscommunication takes place, according to Clark, it is not Bob’s and Ann’s problem alone, but something which they share and which they can manage and try to overcome collaboratively. There is a burden to construct the “unsaid” that exists in a communication. This is a burden that is not just carried by the sender or the receiver alone, but one that they share, though

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not always equally (Grice 1975). The process of carrying this burden, of constructing a shared sense of meaning, often breaks down, and these breakdowns in communication are produced cooperatively by the human agents involved in communicative action. But perhaps another approach is possible? Perhaps miscommunications can be better understood by shifting the human from the center of analysis? Perhaps it is more important to ask about the structures of the system for communication that demarcate a situation as a miscommunication? Perhaps it is more pertinent to ask about the politics of a communication system and those things that are then situated beyond its boundaries? Communication systems are after all defined by those things that they exclude. Rather than analyzing the breakdown between a sender and a receiver, this edited collection attempts to take a broader view of miscommunication and understand it not just in terms of a function, but in terms of what it can tell us about the entire communication system. Linguistic definitions of miscommunication tend to look at the reasons and symptoms of breakdowns between a sender and a receiver. What this edited collection instead draws attention to is the way these breakdowns unfold into the whole system, the way that miscommunication can tell us something about the contemporary world, rather than being relegated to the realm of mistakes, errors, and things that should be managed or forgotten because they never worked properly. To this end, authors in this collection focus on media and communication systems such as film, television, the postal system, video games, blogs, photography, and the internet. By focusing on the errant, on the things cast outside the system of communication, they all, in different ways, attempt to uncover the structures that relegate one utterance as communication and another as a miscommunication. In short, this book asks, what are the structures that define a miscommunication? When does a communication become a miscommunication? And what happens when a miscommunication enters into the communicative realm? These questions illustrate an important detail in the linguistic approach to miscommunication. So far, we have been talking about miscommunication as misunderstanding, as a certain negative result of a communicative process, something that can be repaired or corrected. In other words, miscommunication is a communication that did not reach its initial goal, it is a communication that took a detour. There are of course different sources that predicate such detours. Some studies identify the misinterpreted source in the exchange of the utterance (House, Kasper, and Ross 2003; Schegloff 1987); a large body of work is dedicated to cross‐cultural disconnections as the source of miscommunications (Carbaugh 2017). Unlike these approaches, our study suggests that we can see miscommunication not as a result, but as a complex

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process, which has not been preprogrammed for any particular result, and does not need to be corrected, even potentially. Our aim is not to turn back a detoured communication, not to erase the unwelcomed “mis‐,” but to observe what happens if we leave it be, if we let communication not reach its aim. In addition to linguistic definitions of miscommunication, the topic has also been previously addressed in cultural studies and media theory. For example, in Excommunication (2013), Alexander Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark produce a novel philosophy of communication by exploring its opposite, the impossibility of communication. In three individual essays they argue that understanding the possibility of exclusion from the system of communication lets us see the realities of a media culture more clearly, particularly one characterized by illusory images and by systems of networked exchange that it is difficult to escape: there is always a difficulty in creating no messages at all. In the collection of chapters brought together in Miscommunications, a different (but we think equally novel) philosophical approach emerges, where the authors explore the functioning and malfunctioning of machines for communication by looking to their technical operation (breakdowns, malfunctions, etc.) as well as (and often as tied to) their cultural effects. The authors then explore how these operations relate to the difficulties of being. The positions staked out in Excommunication, and indeed in this book too, add to earlier work such as Galloway and Thacker’s The Exploit (2007), Wark’s A Hacker Manifesto (2004), Peter Krapp’s Noise Channels (2011), and the essays collected together in Mark Nunes’ Error: Glitch, Jam and Noise in New Media Culture (2010) along with Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson’s The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture (2009), which were emblematic of a time in media studies research when theorists sought to uncover latent capacities for new media practitioners to develop novelty within and against control structures. The current collection offers an addition to these rich groundings by producing a frame with which to understand miscommunication not simply as the potential for escape from a system of communication to what Parikka and Sampson call “the dark side” of media, but also—particularly given current political realities and the disintegration of the public sphere—as a newly formed political technique with a raft of cultural effects. The current book studies this cultural of miscommunication from a historical/genealogical perspective, as well as using approaches from media theory, philosophy of language, and communication studies. Importantly, whereas earlier research situates these as deviant practices, the contributors to this volume provide a view of the mainstream realities of communicative practice, involving deliberately misleading information, unstable networks of information flows, and the

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power of the false. Rather than trying to uncover a previously dark form of practice, practiced by a few, Miscommunications describes and contextualizes a range of miscommunication practices that have come to define twenty‐firstcentury media and are practiced by many.

Communicating through Errors Throughout the history of ideas, there have been multiple ways of approaching the concept of communication. Communication has been figured in terms of dialogue (Habermas), in terms of a shared partaking in exchange (Dewey), as a technical function (Shannon), as a mode of communion (Hegel), and as an ethical imperative (Levinas). In all these cases, communication is understood to establish a system, a sphere, or a territory. Whether it be Shannon’s technical model, Habermas’ public sphere or Dewey’s pragmatic interactions, these communication systems could be thought of as territories occupied by dominate ways of doing things. And within these territories, there is a long history of resistance and subversion. For instance, Wanda Strauven has previously described the practice of the Belgium resistance exchanging coded information during the Second World War using knitting. Women, looking out of windows that overlooked rail lines, would drop a stitch to indicate the movement of German troops (Zarelli 2017; quoted in Strauven 2018). The mistakes in the knitting—a dropped stitch—was in fact a highly sophisticated mode of communication. Garments could then be exchanged with members of the resistance, forming a new site for communication removed from the occupying forces. What is usually considered as noise, as a mistake, as something to be avoided or excluded, now takes center stage, no longer a miscommunication, as something to be excluded, but now as its own media system. Nele Van de Mosselaer and Nathan Wildman point to similar function of the error in video games. The errors in the game’s software design are not simply seen as “bugs” or annoyances that interrupt play. Instead, certain types of glitches (what they call generative glitches) actually afford the player opportunities to discover new stories, unintended by the game designers. Miscommunication, a dropped stitch, or an oversight in software design, offers a new territory of possibilities for communicative action. In these cases, miscommunication could be claimed to offer ways to resist systems of communication. There remains a chance at these points for what Gilles Deleuze would understand as the production of novelty, or what Yury Tynyanov would call a “constructive principle of the new form” (2002: 179).1 In these examples, the error is not a sign among other signs. It is a material process, a thing, that might cause a reshuffling of the system for

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symbolic exchange and might provide some escape from the world of capital and the distinctions and boundaries that it establishes. The agency of miscommunications and errors is similarly picked up by Umberto Eco in Serendipities: Language and Lunacy (1998). Eco starts by quoting Thomas Aquinas, who in Quaestio quodlibetalis XII wonders “utrum veritas sit fortior inter vinum et regem et mulierem” (whether truth was stronger than wine, kings and women). Admitting that the four notions cannot be compared since they belong to different categories, Doctor Angelicus concludes that truth is stronger, because our animal forces depend on our intellectual ones. Eco then expands this conclusion admitting that if truth is so powerful, the same power can be attached to its opposite—the false, otherwise how can it be possible that so much of our history has been driven by false ideas. To illustrate this, Eco goes on into unraveling numerous falsities, which for a long time shaped the intellectual history of humankind: from Leibniz’s belief that I Ching (Book of Change) was based on the principles of calculus to the Ptolemaic system that was misleading historians and navigators for centuries, and from Marco Polo’s mistaking a rhinoceros for a unicorn (and being quite disappointed with the look of the “truth”) to the forged Roman imperial decree of Donation of Constantine, which provided the power for the popes, and so on. While it might be tempting to continue this list with some cases from the history of the twenty‐first century, a more important take from Eco’s virtuous exposure of layers of mistakes that have shaped humankind is his idea of serendipity. By serendipity, Eco understands the paths of a mistaken action or belief that could lead to a discovery of something true, “or at least something we consider true today” (2000: viii). One of the clearest examples of serendipity for Eco would be the story of Columbus, “who—believing he could reach the Indies by sailing westward—actually discovered America, which he had not intended to discover” (2000: viii). Importantly, Eco stresses that the term, or rather a mechanism known as serendipity, comes from the field of sciences, mostly referring to inventions made by chance rather than by intent (X‐Ray, for example, or microwaves). Yet, it can be broader than just inventing something new out of the blue. Eco admits, “a mistaken project does not always lead to something correct: often [. . .] a project that the author believed right seems to us unrealizable, but for this very reason we understand why something else was right” (2000: viii); or elsewhere, and more radically, “even the most lunatic experiments can produce strange side effects, stimulating research that proves perhaps less amusing but scientifically more serious” (ix). Studying miscommunications, we believe, can engage us in this very type of research. Admitting that we are surrounded by miscommunications in every type of interaction may seem “lunatic,” as Eco defines it, yet it may build up

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new paradigms of understanding through serendipity as its methodological process. For Eco, serendipity is a function of not just the history of ideas but the history of matter, of media; it is a functioning mechanism of how a variety of different things, ideas, and events may come together to produce a result that has a power to change reality—at least that reality that can be described in language. The ideas expressed in Serendipity originated from Eco’s earlier research into the history of perfect languages, from the Tower of Babel to Dante’s reconstruction of Adam’s language in Paradise, to Esperanto. Through this project Eco concluded that none of the perfect languages he researched actually worked, or would work, even on a fictional level. This in turn let him come to the conclusion that the imperfect language which we all use works perfectly well, we can (at least occasionally) understand each other unlike Dante’s Adam, who could not understand the perfect language of the angels. Eco shows us the “force of the falsity” that is evident in human language. As both Serres and Peters describe, a communication always takes place against the background of miscommunication; it is based on moments where it does not work, on moments of communication breakdown. However, what Eco adds to these discussions is the idea that miscommunication lays at the heart of creativity. The Russian formalist critic Victor Shklovsky offers a similar formulation of the energy of errors, with respect to creative literary practice. In 1981, at the end of his career, Shklovsky published a book entitled Energy of Delusion, a title that comes from a famous phrase taken from Lev Tolstoy correspondence with the Russia philosopher and critic Nikolai Strakhov: All seems to be in place to start writing—to fulfil my worldly duty, however there is not enough belief in myself, in the importance of the work, no energy of delusion, that worldly spontaneous energy, which cannot be invented. And I cannot start. (Tolstoy cited in Shklovsky 2007: 36)

Interpretations of this phrase are varied. Author of one the most recent biographies of Tolstoy, Andrei Zorin, writes that this energy was produced by Tolstoy’s belief that his novels would change the world, and would change himself (2020). While Tolstoy recognized the belief as false, he was totally aware of his dependency on this delusion. Taking the same phrase in a less Freudian manner, Shklovsky equated this delusion to the challenges of creative process. Quoting Tolstoy again, “to think through a million of possible connections in order to choose 1/1000 000, is terribly difficult” (Tolstoy in epigraph to Shklovsky 2007), and a writer has to try a million

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falsities, believe in a million falsities in order to find the right one. Close examination of Tolstoy’s early drafts proved this at several occasions. “Literary history is the history of search for its heroes, [. . .] It is the arch of the history of delusion,” Shklovsky concludes (Shklovsky 2007: 39). Whether a part of the belief system or a part of the methodology of creativity, these theorists suggest that delusion, falsity, and mistakes are somehow at the core of the creative process, a drive of invention. Many chapters of this collection that deal with creative responses to miscommunications find new configurations of this interdependency, whether for writers (Rutten), artists (Muliaee and Mehrvarz), filmmakers (Lichtenfels), or even children (Smith). Yet, if all the fruits of creativity are related to mistaken actions or methodologies, can it lead us to a conclusion that mistakes are at the very beginning of creation? Has it all started with a mistake? With his theory of the primal accident, Paul Virilio suggests something that feeds into Shklovsky’s and Eco’s search for the forces that drive intellectual history. Looking at the greatest inventions of modernity, the gems of human thought, and creativity, Virilio makes a conclusion that they are all just a shadow of what he calls the automation of accidents. For Virilio, technology is already automatically preprogrammed with accidents, with possibilities of things going wrong, possibilities of miscommunications: the invention of the locomotive is preprogramed with the invention of derailment; the car is preprogrammed with the possibility that the brakes will fail; the invention of television is preprogrammed with an isolation from reality. In the end, any future discoveries will only anticipate “the imminent emergence of a philosophy of post‐industrial eschatology” (Virilio 2007: 6). Like for Shklovsky and Eco, Virilio puts the drive for misfunction at the very core of human knowledge and human ability to create, not through serendipity or creativity though, but through technology and its automation. The new technology of the twenty‐first century, Virilio claims, specifically the automation of warfare, makes any such misfunction a “globally constituted accident” (Armitage 2000). The contributors to this volume respond differently to the challenges put forward by Virilio, Shklovsky, or Eco, yet altogether they reflect on how the idea of the history driven by mistakes can find its development in contemporary case studies.

Message Bearing Systems One of the main arguments of this book is that when, following figures like Eco, Shklovsky, and Virilio, we reconfigure a theory of communication to focus on the possibility for errors and misunderstandings, rather than on

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the information content of messages, we are able to home in much more closely on the analysis of message bearing systems. Rather than determining the effects or meanings of messages via recourse to hermeneutics, a move like this would mean looking at the way systems function, their sensitivity, their weaknesses, and their ability to be misappropriated. In other words, this type of analysis emphasizes messengers rather than messages, conditions for meaning rather than meaning itself and the way that the usually excluded third, in the form of noise, enters into the communication chain. However, it is also a mode of analysis that offers alternatives to the already established tradition of medium theory, which can be seen across North American and European traditions. First let’s look at the theoretical context for this work by briefly summarizing the medium theory approach. Then, after that, we might be in a position to see just what it is that this approach has missed and just what it is that this collection offers. As is widely known, the Frankfurt School and its associates offered to nascent media scholars accounts of the cultural industry (Horkheimer and Adorno), the effects of technological reproduction (Benjamin), and the conditions for dialogical communication (Habermas). They focused not on the message bearing systems themselves but rather the political, economic, aesthetic, and social effects of these system. A similar belief in the capability for message bearing systems to create social conditions and modes of sociality can be seen in a North American context, principally in the Toronto School of communication theory, including figures such as Harold Innis, Eric A. Havelock, and Marshall McLuhan. This new approach to the analysis of the development of culture gave people ways to describe the effects of media by looking to their existence as material objects, with their own tendencies or conditions of possibility for populations and individuals. Innis showed how the bias of a medium toward spatial distribution (transmission media) or temporal distribution (storage media) impacted upon beliefs, practices, and the growth of civilizations. McLuhan, in a more individualistic way, showed how media work together in a system which has the capacity to impact and extend the receivers of information. For both, it was the medium, rather than the message, that was important. Working with similar ambitions and along similar lines as McLuhan (although with often quite different results), a so-called German school of media theory was established around the work of Friedrich Kittler, which similarly obsessed over the medium rather than the message that it carries. For adherents to the German style of medienwissenschaft McLuhan made a good start but, as Kittler suggested, did not adequately follow his observations through to their conclusion. Contra to McLuhan, Kittler argued that media limit rather than extend the receivers of information, and because of this they

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have vast epistemological effects. For Kittler, media studies needed to practice radical anti‐hermeneutics: it was the technical operation of media machines that should be analyzed, rather than the meaning of content. For all these scholars, a theory of communication rested on its technical architecture, on the devices and systems that supported the transportation of messages. Against this background, we ask the reader to continue thinking along the lines already established before us, to try and suspend an inclination to analyze the text, and to instead look at its support systems. However, we also want the reader to arrive at a different destination when reading this book than they would when reading Kittler or McLuhan. We respect these figures greatly and admire their work in getting the field to think about media as media—or to think of the characteristics of media after media, as is the case with Kittler (see Ikoniadou and Wilson 2015). However, we would like to depart from their emphasis on media as determining styles of relationships, engagement, and thought. If we look a little bit longer at the social phenomena that circulate around media systems—the talking, the chatter, the proliferation of images, the attempts to capture attention, and the playing of games—might we not find another approach, one that can help us grasp more fully contemporary political realities, by looking at message bearing systems in a wider sense, as constituted by more than just technical devices, but as used within and making use of a context. This would mean to look at a medium’s capacities, at its conditions for possibility, as well as its technical operation. We would like to think of message bearing systems as abstract machines that are produced by human, technical, and culturally historical elements. The book is about those things that we invent to send errands. It is about the inventions, strategies, and techniques that accompany message bearing systems. These inventions are not simply produced by the intention of humans, nor are they determined by devices. They come into being based on the intersection of traditions and the way human and technical systems form relations within these traditions. In this book, we ask the reader to follow the authors along routes where the abstract machines that we invent to send errands somehow end up leading people astray. This is the point at which those things that are invented take on a life of their own, beyond simply that of a message bearing system. This would be, following Alexander Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark (2014), to ask “what is mediation” (9), rather than focusing media analysis on the practical questions of its operation. What we are interested in doing here is crafting a theory of communication that does not stand solely on the analysis of its technical infrastructure but instead begins by describing the conditions for miscommunication, for noise and

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for errors. In this we hope the reader will find a theory of communication based on what it is capable of, based on what it can do, based on how it can be used against its design. This would be a theory of communication that can deal with the power of falsity, of mistrust, and of turbulence because this is a theory of communication that begins precisely from this premise: the relationships produced by communication exist not in the messages that it produces but in its capacity to lead astray. The reason that we think that this is a productive approach to address the questions of mediation so central to media and communication studies is that miscommunication, the capacity to be led astray by message bearing systems, bring into relief the distance between sender and receiver. It does this by showing how this space of turbulence, the space in‐between, the space that is filled with what Wolfgang Ernst in his contribution describes as white noise, can introduce the capacity for misunderstandings. This is the same white noise that Serres tells us is the persistent background to any communication. It shows how a space of mediation can introduce the non‐dialogical, how one party (the one who makes the most noise) can sway communicative reality, and how it is insufficient to think of the message bearing systems that fill these in‐between spaces as politically benign. This collection is specifically intended to prompt the field of media studies to focus on bad messengers, on the individuals, devices, and systems that corrupt messages. Instead of looking at the bad messages, like the definition of miscommunication that linguistics suggests, we look at bad messengers. Refocusing analysis on the possibility for miscommunication might offer a way to focus on the operation of these bad messengers, rather than their effects on messages. Eco and Shklovsky, as mentioned previously, focus on the accident and the errant in ways that allow us to see new things about humanness and creativity. Another approach to miscommunications, mistakes, and errors is one that looks to systems, rather than centering on the human. Another approach that is taken in the chapters in this book is to focus not on the human that produces accidents, but to take an approach more oriented toward the actual media systems that produce noise. Toward this end, and in order to begin to conceptualize the cultural history of message bearing systems, Michel Serres has used the figure of the angel. Communication systems have always been bound up with the history of religion, particularly Western religions, so this move is not as surprising as it may seem. After all, the root word of communication is communion, and has for a long time been associated with communication with God. The angel offers to Serres an analogy for the channels of information that encircle the globe. Angels are, after all, carriers of the Word, moving around the globe carrying communication between heaven and earth. The angel transmits a

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message; they take on the function of a communication channel among a network of channels. Prior to Angels, Serres’ method for discussing communication was through the familiar figure of Hermes. Hermes, both the god of orality and the god of thieves, offers to Serres a figure that allows him to talk about all kinds of exchanges as communication, whether this is the exchange of money, gifts, truth, or lies. In Angels: A Modern Myth, Serres finds a new figure to use to discuss communication and doing so is able to provide a picture of the world as conditioned by the network of relationship established by the communicative action of angels. This shift signifies a move in Serres’ work from dealing with communication in the singular (Hermes) to addressing the plurality of networks (angels). “Our universe is organised around message bearing systems, and because, as message‐bearers, they are more numerous, complex and sophisticated than Hermes [. . .]. Each angel is a bearer of one or more relationships; today they exist in myriad forms, and every day we invent billions of new ones” (Serres 1995: 293). But now what happens when message bearing systems no longer carry out an angelic function but become bad messengers? What happens when most messengers act as fallen angels? How can we understand communication systems when the space between sender and receiver is no longer filled by angels that can be trusted but by waves of miscommunication? Can we use the figure of the fallen angel to understand this condition? The fallen angel is an example of a bad mediator. In this case, the messenger acts over and above the message. Hermes would once lie, steal, and mislead in order to deliver his message. But the fallen angel does something different. The fallen angel cares less about the message than about the payment for the message. They care most about appearing ahead of the message. The fallen angel Atë was said by Homer to have done this quite literally, as she walked on the heads of men, rather than the hard earth. The bad mediator becomes visible, they do not withdraw but are instead visible as the third player in the communication chain. The dream of communication by technical means is that the medium, whether print, the telephone, the telegraph, or the internet, should withdraw and not alter the meaning of the message. They should deliver the message and then vanish, like St. Augustine’s angels. As Maria Augusta Babo states, in the case of writing, “the more transparent it is to communication, the less noise and interference there is, the better the language becomes ductile to meaning. In the ideology of communication, the medium tends towards its maximum transparency as a vehicle of meaning” (Babo 2017: 93). In the case of fallen angels, the message bearing systems, rather than the sender or the receiver, interrupt and impose themselves on the message.

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What this rethinking of miscommunication using the figure of fallen angels really asks us to do is to consider the possibility that we ourselves— and our engagement with the networked communicative realities that make up this historical moment—may act as though we are the fallen angels: “We communicate among ourselves at the speed of light; we travel at the speed of sound; and we transform others and the world by our words” (Serres 1995: 294). By doing this, we can become like Atë, leading, misleading the spirit of delusion, mistakes, and errors. The drive behind this book then is to start to explore how networked communication can begin to produce non‐dialogical modes of communication, how errors in communication systems can render communicative acts as noncommunication or miscommunication, how noise can be used to rethink the possibilities for political communication, and how interruptions become productive.

Mistructure Part One of this book, “Mis‐theories,” aims to both develop new theoretical frameworks with which to explore the topic of miscommunication and explore how an emphasis on failed communication can help us reconsider older communication theory paradigms. Ellen Rutten’s chapter begins this part by digging into the genealogy of imperfection as both a methodology for creative exploration and a response to a contemporary digital neoliberal hierarchy that depends on perfection. Following on from this, Timothy Barker’s chapter explores the postal system of communication and its relationship to contemporary media as methods of organization, the outcome of which is often non‐dialogical, and involves acts of partitioning, rather than consensus. Reider Due’s chapter then follows up, similarly exploring the boundaries of communication systems, by probing the notion of non‐communication among the context of a historical moment that is defined by the capacity for symbolic exchange. Finally, Wolfgang Ernst reviews the recent discourse on glitch aesthetics through a media archaeological prism. Focusing on media technology and Shannon’s mathematical theory of information, Ernst argues that the notion of mistakes and errors are themselves mistaken. Noise, errors, and impurities are themselves part of the function of media machines, he writes, and without them there would be no information. For him there is no mistake, rather simply the condition for a machine to function. The chapters in this part work together to begin to set out the new territories for communication, asking us to think about the potential for errors, the potential to be excluded from communication systems, and the potential for antagonism rather than dialogue in order to come to terms with contemporary communicative realities.

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Part Two, “Mis‐sounds,” focuses specifically on noise not just as part of communication system, but as a bigger sonic culture to explore the specific agencies of misleading through sound and silence. Fran Dyson begins this part with a close reading of Jon McCormack and Gary Warner’s sound installation A Quivering Marginalia (AQM) in order to think through the place of marginal sounds in the human engagement with and study of the natural world. Dyson uses the piece to think through the dimensions of the recording apparatus that introduce noise into the environment, while at the same time obscuring or creating the conditions for ignoring nature, as it is situated outside discourse. Against this background, Stephen Kennedy in his chapter starts to think through the consequences of miscommunication, in terms of both language and noise, paying particularly attention to that which is usually excluded in communication systems. For Kennedy, this involves using Serres to think about the concepts of chaos and noise as themselves constitutive of the complexity, and novelty of systems. Thomas Sutherland then also picks up this theme in Serres’ work and sets out a rethinking of the noise information doublet and its inability to be dissolved. What Sutherland shows us is something that all media theories of miscommunication need to grapple with. He interrogates Serres’ position and argues that the signal‐noise doublet continues to underpin philosophical dialogue: The desire to communicate the incommunicable still rests on the ability to filter noise into the very systems that it may have once resisted. Following on from this, Part Three, “Mis‐matters,” explores the specific materials of miscommunications, tracing what happens with materiality, matter, and materialism when the system breaks down. Maria Korolkova’s chapter focuses on objects and the misleading trajectories they are bound to draw in various acts of miscommunications, from experiments of Russian futurists to transformations of a celluloid film, and more recent cases of employing objects as forensic evidence to define between the true and the false. Maryam Muliaee and Mani Mehrvarz take a similar object‐oriented approach to Korolkova and argue in their chapter for the role of errors and glitches in art to refocus attention on the constitution of objects and their affect, rather than interpretive meaning. John Hondros continues this part by expanding material focused approach to all agents of the network, not just objects or things. Hondros employs relational materialism methodology from DeLanda’s reading of Deleuze and Guattari to explore the techniques, strategies, and dynamics with three groups of video makers, who use an arrangement of people and machines to distribute their work on the internet. Hondros teases out these complex networks and shows how errant behavior, in terms of both media systems and human actors, is an integral part of these precarious assemblages. “Mis‐matter” closes with Alex Lichtenfels’ close reading of Paul Verhoeven’s film Elle (2016) to distinguish two system of truth

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that are currently present in Western reality—truth of what is (materialism) and truth of what really happened (history). For Lichtenfels, these truth systems codetermine media objects, and miscommunication between them poses a significant challenge to media theory methods and assumptive logic. Rather than thinking miscommunication as potentially resolvable by appeal to a higher notion of truth, Lichtenfels asks: “What can media theory do when the two sides of a communication have different concepts of what constitutes that communication’s truth?” Part Four, “Mis‐happenings,” then looks at the accidents that result from misdirection. Dominic Smith looks at Walter Benjamin’s live radio broadcast “The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay” and examines the way both the report on the disaster and the disaster of communication may act as a productive site for philosophy, particularly regarding the way philosophy of technology can function with and through the accident of technology. Ella Klik continues this media archaeological investigation by looking at accidental recordings and photographs as instances where it is made obvious that what a viewer sees is always from a device’s point of view and thus impacted on by the potential for noise. Reconfiguring apparatus theory through a focus on accidental recordings, Klik explores nonhuman vision and what these accidents, where a machine carries out exactly what it was designed to do, tell us about ways of seeing in the twenty‐first century. Andrea Mariani follows up with the example of the first motorized crossing of the Sahara Desert from the Italian Royal Geographical Society in 1937. Focusing on the breakdowns, mishaps, and miscommunications involved in this crossing, Mariani uses the figure of interruption to explore the attempt at, and resistance to, making the desert into a colonized, traversed space. From this exploration, Mariani expands the definition of miscommunication from the fields of media and communication studies and offers a way to conceptualize this phenomenon in several types of transmission, whether this involves physical travel or the transmission of information. The fifth and final part of this collection is titled “Mis‐functions,” and it explores the interruptions provided by errors and instances of miscommunication. In some cases, the authors attempt to show how this interruption may in fact be productive, both of modes of analysis and of modes of creative practice, emphasizing a disjuncture or mode of escape from dominant communication systems. In this part, the distinction between signal and interruption is also interrogated, which ends the book by bringing into view the difficulties of communicating anything at all. Peter Krapp looks to the interruptions to internet use manifest by HTML error codes. In developing a history of HTML, Krapp offers in his chapter an account of the moments at which contingency, surprise, and unpredictability resulted

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in computing developments in terms of both systematic improvements and creative recuperation of error. Stefan Höltgen in his chapter focuses on the accident in computer games, raising a number of computer archaeological questions about their constructive and creative usability. He explores the way errors became aesthetic features in certain games and also prompted new practices including the remedial hacking practices of 1980s games. Similarly, Jörgen Rahm‐Skågeby offer an argument on the productive qualities of the error in transmission by producing a variantology of interruptions including the emergency broadcast, the freeze, and television “snow.” Then, to sum up this part’s investigation of error, noise, and the interruption. Nele Van de Mosselaer and Nathan Wildman finish this part by analyzing the role of the glitch in video games vis‐à‐vis possibilities for narrative. They argue, as all the other contributors to this part have gestured toward, that the glitch, the error, the mistake, or the misplaced object not only act as a way of leading users astray but can also serve to create new possibilities to tell stories and understand (or misunderstand) our place within a given context through misdirection. At the end of this introduction, a question is still nagging in our minds. What if this book is a mistake? What if its main argument is a mistake? Would you still read it? Assuming that you are reading this, the prospect of being engaged with an error does not bother you that much. Perhaps you are not alone. In contrast to what we have said earlier, mistakes are still largely considered in negative terms. Usually we tend to try and avoid them. They disturb the perfect image of reality, they make communications noisy, they lead to unwanted results, ruin, distract, deceive, and keep us in delusion. Maybe it is a mistake to think of media as underpinned by these disturbances and interruptions. Yet, you are still reading this, you are intrigued, perhaps even seduced, caught by the prospect of being led to the unknown, of being misled. Why? Following Eco, Serres, Sklovsky, and Tolstoy, we believe that there is a certain power in what we call a mistake or an error, certain creative and productive potential. If this book is a mistake, we hope it is this kind.

Notes 1 For transliteration from Russian here and throughout this volume, the Library of Congress System of transliteration is used, except for citations from secondary sources and conventionalized spelling (e.g. Shklovsky, Tolstoy, Yury Tynyanov).

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References Armitage, J. (2000), “Ctheory Interview with Paul Virillo,” Ctheory, October 18. Available at: http:​//www​.cthe​ory.n​et/ar​ticle​s.asp​x?id=​132 (accessed April 2, 2020). Babo, M. A. (2017), “On the Materiality of Writing and the Text,” in Maria Teresa Cruz (ed.), Media Theory and Cultural Technologies: In Memoriam Friedrich Kittler, 89–98, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Carbaugh, D., ed. (2017), The Handbook of Communication in Cross‐Cultural Perspective, London: Routledge. Clark, Herbert H. (1994), “Managing Problems in Speaking,” Speech Communication 15: 243–50. Eco, U. (2000), Serendipities: Language and Lunacy, London: Phoenix. Galloway, A. and E. Thacker (2007), The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Galloway, A., E. Thacker, and M. Wark (2014), Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Grice, H. P. (1975), “Logic and Conversation,” in P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, 41–58, New York: Academic Press. House, J., G. Kasper, and S. Ross, eds. (2003), Misunderstanding in Social Life. London: Longman/Pearson Education. Ikoniadou, E. and S. Wilson, eds. (2015), Media After Kittler, London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Krapp, P.  (2011), Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mustajoki , A. (2013), “Risks of Miscommunication in Various Speech Genres,” in E. Borisova and O. Souleimanova (eds.), Understanding by Communication, 33–53, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Nunes, M., ed. (2010), Error: Glitch, Jam and Noise in New Media Culture, New York: Continuum. Parikka, J. and T. Sampson, eds. (2009), The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture, New York: Hampton Press. Peters, J. D. (1999), Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Ryan, J. and R. Barnard (2009), “‘Who Do You Mean?’ Investigating Miscommunication in Paired Interactions,” TESOLANZ Journal 17: 44–62. Schegloff, E. A. (1987), “Some Sources of Misunderstanding in Talk‐in‐Interaction,” Linguistics 25: 201–18. Serres, M. (1982), Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press. Serres, M. (1995), Angels and Modern Myth, New York: Random House.

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Shklovsky, V. (2007), Energy of Delusion: A Book on Plot, trans. S. Avagyan, Champaign: Dalkey Archive Press. Strauven, W. (2018), “Text, Texture, Textile: A Media‐Archaeological Mapping of Fashion and Film,” Keynote at Archaeology of Fashion Film Conference, July 31. Available at: http:​//arc​hfash​film.​arts.​ac.uk​/conf​erenc​e/tex​t‐tex​ture‐​ texti​le‐a‐​media​‐arch​aeolo​gical​‐mapp​ing‐o​f‐fas​hion‐​and‐f​i lm‐d​r‐wan​da‐st​ rauve​n/ (accessed April 1, 2020). Traum, D. and P. Dillenbourg (1996), Miscommunication in Multi‐modal Collaboration, in working notes of the AAAI Workshop on Detecting, Repairing, and Preventing Human—Machine Miscommunication, 37–46, August. Tribus, M. and E. C. McIrving (1971), “Energy and Information,” Scientific American 225: 179–88. Tynyanov, Y. N. (2002), “Literaturnyi Fakt,” in Literaturnaia evoliutsiia. Izbrannye Trudy, 167–88, Moscow: Agraf. Virilio, P. (2007), The Original Accident, Cambridge: Polity Press. Wark, M. (2004), A Hacker Manifesto, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zarelli, N. (2017), “The Wartime Spies Who Used Knitting as an Espionage Tool: Grandma Was Just Making a Sweater. Or Was She?,” Altlas Obscura, June 1. Available at: https​://ww​w.atl​asobs​cura.​com/a​rticl​es/kn​ittin​g‐spi​ es‐ww​i‐wwi​i (accessed April 1, 2020). Zorin, A. (2020), Leo Tolstoy, London: Reaktion Books.

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Part One

Mis‐theories

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1

Affirmative Imperfection Rhetoric and Aesthetics A Genealogy Ellen Rutten

Experts frame our age as “mediated,” “digitized,” or even “postdigital” (De Zengotita 2005; Reed 2014; Berry and Dieter 2015).1 To that age, perfection matters in multiple ways. “Edit your photos to perfection,” “fine‐tune imperfections,” “proofread to perfection” (App Store 2019; WhiteSmoke 2019): these and other tech‐company slogans illustrate that spellcheckers, photo filters, and other digital technologies are by definition oriented toward perfecting our lives. A “cult of perfectionism” not only urges tech‐companies to “always have to get better” (Ulanoff 2015) but also thrives among those who buy and use their products. “[S]ocial media use pressures young adults to perfect themselves in comparison to others, which makes them dissatisfied with their bodies and increases social isolation,” says a recent study by the American Psychological Association (APA 2018). The social isolation for which psychologists warn illustrates that technological perfection is a medal with two sides. Not surprisingly, the “politics of perfection” (Hale 2016) of technological advancement evokes a fierce social counter-politics. Across different social domains, recent decades witnessed a lush rhetoric insistence on imperfection.2 In this chapter, I critically ponder contemporary imperfection cults by taking one online text as my starting point: a blog post in which the renowned Russian writer Tatiana Tolstaia promotes mistakes and erratic grammar in her blog writing. In previous publications, I contextualized Tolstaia’s writing within the normative language culture of (post‐)Soviet Russia (Rutten 2009) and as part of a broader interest in imperfection in online writing (Rutten 2014). In this chapter, I explore the historical genealogy of this aesthetic and rhetoric of imperfection. Where does the dread for flawless technologies come from? How does the present‐day preoccupation with flaws relate to historical

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approaches to the imperfect and the non‐polished? And how can older stories help us unpack contemporary pleas for the non‐perfected? In answering these questions, I zoom in on two crucial moments in the historical lineage of affirmative imperfection logic—first, romanticism, and, second, the early twentieth century. In exploring these periods, I use critical discourse analysis to analyze not “imperfection” as such, but rather how others use that term, and how its meaning has developed over time, especially in times of drastic technological transition.3 To do so, I close‐read and juxtapose relevant music and art reviews, literary texts, manifestoes, interviews, and theoretical writings. My take on the historical periods is informed by two existing analyses: first, cultural historian Virgil Nemoianu’s study (2006) of a romantic‐era “triumph of imperfection” and, second, music historian Ted Gioia’s reflections (1988) on jazz as a principally “imperfect art.” In the following analysis, I use their insights to outline three rhetorical strategies—perfection pessimism, love for mistakes‐in‐the‐ machine, and imperfection activism—that resonate with particular force in historical discourse about technology and imperfection.

Transcultural Discourses The pages that follow integrate Russophone case studies in a transnational story. My choice to embed post‐Soviet examples in a transnational cultural analysis without devoting minute attention to the question “how did local developments impact on these examples?” is my way of taking issue with the ongoing anglocentric bias in new media scholarship. Despite repeated pleas to take media studies beyond anglophone paradigms (Curran and Park 2000; Thussu 2009; Mishra and Kern‐Stone 2019), many media scholars still limit themselves to English‐speaking sources without acknowledging that linguo‐cultural demarcation. The following analysis shuns the deterritorialized anglophone gaze but also avoids the nation‐driven prism that still dominates many Russia‐oriented media studies (whose authors not rarely otherize Russophone materials as “uniquely Russian”).4 Instead, I employ what media scholars Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp (2009) label a “transcultural approach” to media cultures. A transcultural horizon, in their words, recognizes that media practices are “not ‘placed’ at a defined locality but rearticulated through disembedded communicative processes, while still being related to a greater or lesser number of localities within or beyond particular national or regional boundaries” (32). The following analysis exchanges both nation‐bound and universalist lenses for this more fine‐grained transcultural approach.

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A last methodological caveat: the scholar who chooses to flag analogies across different social domains, times, and spaces inevitably traverses fields in which they have limited training; and they inevitably insist on transnational analogies where others see local differences. I acknowledge but accept the perils of a broad comparative approach (on interdisciplinarity and breadth as both a “great opportunity” and “necessary burden” for cultural historians; see also Most 2005: xi and Klein 1990). My studies of parallels and patterns I see as food for new, specialized research on thinking about technology and imperfection.

“The Right to Write with Mistakes”: tanyant When Tatiana Tolstaia started her weblog tanyant in the winter of 2007, she already was an internationally renowned prose and nonfiction writer. As early as 1992, a Los Angeles Times interview mentions the Russian author’s kinship to Leo Tolstoy (of whom, as media tirelessly repeat, Tolstaia is a distant relative), her prominence in the American world of letters, and her status as regular contributor to leading intellectual publications (Hamilton 1992). Not surprisingly, Tolstaia acquired a large group of online friends even before managing to write her first post; her audience swiftly burgeoned to a steady 12,000–13,000 regular readers.5 As many other writer‐bloggers, Tolstaia did not blog longer than a few years—after sparse, hyperlink‐only updates in 2017 and 2018, she fell silent in 2019—but between 2007 and 2016, Tolstaia was an avid blog writer with equally avid readers. In her first post, tanyant, aka Tolstaia, advised this impatient audience not to set their expectations too high: I emphatically ask you to remove me from your list of idols, if, Goooooooooooooooooooood forbid, I landed there. I reserve the right: – to write with mistakes; – to disobey any rule of grammar if I feel like it; – to swear. (tanyant 2007)

Typos, errors, swearing: Tolstaia used her first entry to set a clear agenda. For this author, she suggested, the blog is a confined discursive space—one where she would not allow herself to be restricted by strict editorial eyes and other stifling publishing prerequisites. At first sight, tanyant indeed employed a consistently laconic, informal writing mode. She tangibly reveled in asking her blog audience practical questions (“where do I buy straws in Moscow?”), penning down recipes for

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salads and cakes, sharing logistic information about her public performances, and posting comic pictures or films with frivolous comments. Tolstaia, in short, produced the type of blog that cultural historians Irina Kaspe and Varvara Smurova (2002) call “near–literary.” With that term, Kaspe and Smurova flag a tendency among Russian writer‐bloggers to demarcate their blogs as a literary “safety zone,” “where literature is not the centre of attention and authors are allowed to write according to the laws of the amateur literary community.” Tolstaia‐the‐blogger suggested that her brief and non‐polished online writing should be read in this context, as a plus rather than a problem. In her actual posts, however, Tolstaia turned out to only partly fulfill the mistakist pledges with which she kicked off. She did curse, with visible pleasure. She did, at times, pose as an ignorant rather than omniscient writer (remember the straws). But the warranted typos, language mistakes, and grammar errors failed to appear. In an analysis of her blog writings between 2007 and 2009 (Rutten 2009), this reader could not catch the author making a single mistake throughout the entire blog. Quite the contrary: the author frequently used posts to pillory idiomatic mistakes or linguistic errors by others. In an emblematic post—I cite an example from a much longer list6—tanyant (2009) scolded subtitlers of an American TV series: “What right do you have to translate? What right do you have to earn a living . . . garbling both the Russian and the English language? Skunks, cretins, duffers and boneheads, go hang yourselves.”

Affirmative Imperfection Rhetoric and Aesthetics Tolstaia’s blog brims with paradoxes. The same Tolstaia who promises her readers error‐ridden writing publishes impeccably written posts; the same Tolstaia who promotes erratic grammar corrects the language of her readers; and the same Tolstaia who claims “to avoid schoolteacherism as much as possible” in interviews (Laird 1999) reveals herself as a schoolteacher to the backbone. The author’s tone and insistence on fault-free Russian have a professional reason. Tolstaia studied classical philology at Leningrad State University when a highly normative language culture dominated Soviet academia.7 The question, then, is not: Why does Tolstaia correct her readers? But: Why would a professional linguist and precisionist writer promote mistakes in the first place? The answer to this question cannot be isolated from the medium that Tolstaia uses for her posts. In the 2000s, her take on online writing matched a broader trend among post‐Soviet writers to see (micro)blogging—then

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a new communication technology, whose status was keenly debated in meta-discussions about online writing—in “mistakist” terms. In 2014, I studied a selection of fourteen weblogs by influential Russian writers, with special attention for their own meta-comments about their blogs (Rutten 2014). Between the early 2000s and early 2010s, thirteen out of fourteen writer‐bloggers in one way or another framed (micro)blogging services as outlets for irrelevant linguistic play or imperfect language. I share two examples here. Fiction writer Aleksei Slapovskii presented his blog as a medium for “trivialities,” which merely stole time from “real work”: literary writing (Slapovsky 2006 and 2007); and poet Dmitrii Vodennikov (2009) welcomed “erratic words” in his blog posts: “constant typos” merely reinforced their “authenticity.” In these and other meta-comments, what resounded was a persistent urge to dichotomize online and offline writing (the “how‐new‐ media‐writing‐contrasts‐print‐writing” motif that is a continuo basso in early internet criticism (Bell, Ensslin, and Rustad 2013: 6))—and to use a discourse of defects in doing so. Journalist Marina Mitrenina neatly captured this discursive habit in an essay in 2003. In her view, the web, contrary to print media, is an ideal space for a new sincerity: “(a) a text can be published practically simultaneously with the experience that the author expresses in the text; (b) this guarantees the acuteness and sincerity of the follow‐up communication that the freshly published text generates; (c) before publication no mediating instances, such as an editor, corrector, and so on, intervene, so that we see that text in its original form, as presented by the author. … [f]rom the point of view of the transfer of an experience … such an unmediated text is more valuable than an edited text. Not to mention the meaning of each mistake, which tells us much about the author themselves, especially if we rely on psychoanalytic methods of interpretation” (Mitrenina 2003). The interest in the non‐perfected of Mitrenina and of Tolstaia and her fellow authors can be explained in multiple ways. It fits an older trend among literary and other writers to ideologize nonstandard speech. Experts already observe a deliberate “formal incompleteness” in the writings of Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s literary icon par excellence (Romanova 2014). And today fans praise, in less highbrow terminology, erratic language in musical lyrics (“Fuck grammar. Hiphop is antiestablishment,” says student Tadziu Johnson in a Quora forum (Johnson 2017); see also Sebba (2007) on the social functions of norm‐deviating orthography). The blogger‐writers’ choice to cultivate rather than ban mistakes also matches a growing interest, in a globalizing world, to practice “language crossing”—the “use of language varieties associated with social or ethnic groups that the speaker does not normally ‘belong’ to” (Rampton 1995: 14). Tolstaia’s online linguistic motto

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taps from subcultures with which professional authors are not commonly associated—that of the so‐called padonki, for instance. This Russian online chant—whose popularity peaked in the mid‐2000s—protests against the “SOWLLEZ CAMPUTIR CORECTNIZ” of spellcheckers, which “kill all thet is alife,” with deliberate misspellings. “The moor perfict camputir spellchekkurs became,” so padonki believed, “the moor the Rusian languich losiz itz dairectniss and charm” (Manifezd n.d., spelling and capitals original—ER; on padonki slang, see Gusejnov 2008; Zvereva 2009). But there is another, emphatically transnational, and transdisciplinary trend, without which Tolstaia’s and her colleagues’ insistence on mistakes and errors would be unthinkable, and which has my special interest here. I am referring to the affirmative rhetoric and aesthetics of imperfection that resonates today in a bewilderingly broad variety of cultural practices and products. They include purportedly wonky‐looking, handmade design chairs by Dutch designer Maarten Baas, whose “functional imperfection” is promoted as a token of its “organic” uniqueness (Iconic Dutch n.d.); film reviews that theorize an “aesthetic of ‘found’ music and imperfection” in Lars von Trier’s films (Badley 2011: 90); curatorial statements on an “eroticism of imperfection” in Russian contemporary art (Groys 2010); a photo series which frames the disabilities of Australian impaired animals as “perfect imperfection[s],” which “make all creatures precious and unique” (Bratskeir 2015); the collection “Beautiful Imperfection” by Ghanaian fashion designer Stephen French, which explores the interconnection between mental illness and creative expression (Rida 2016); the American self‐help book The Gifts of Imperfections, which tells readers that only by accepting our shortcomings, “we discover the infinite power of our light” (Brown 2010: 137, 6); “The Imperfect” webinars, designed to help Belgian employees “deal with perfectionism” and boost their “energy” or “resilience” (Tryangle n.d.); and, to add quite a down‐to‐earth example, the “perfectly imperfect” cucumbers that British supermarket Tesco promotes to “reduc[e] food waste” (Tesco 2016). These eight examples are representative of a much wider array of affirmative claims about the imperfect. As existing studies illustrate,8 these claims vary in multiple respects: they stem from different world regions, varying creative fields, and various text genres, each with their own language pragmatics. But they have important things in common, too. One, all focus on that which is not “perfect”—the “quality or state” of being “entirely without fault or defect,” “corresponding to an ideal standard”; or “pure, total,” “lacking in no essential detail” (Merriam‐Webster n.d.). The British cucumbers and my other examples defy this flawless state. They—put more precisely, their makers and consumers—advance a logic of deformation, decay, or deviation from social

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norms. Two, all praise imperfection. In each example, the non‐perfected acts as hallmark for something good—aesthetic satisfaction, for instance, authenticity, or mental well‐being. In some, the dichotomy perfect/imperfect flipflops altogether, as when the disabled animals are framed as a “perfect imperfection.” And three, makers and consumers who laud imperfection respond to social transitions—ecological or economic crises, for instance, but also mediatization and technological advancement. They are not born as fans of the non‐polished: their fascination for the imperfect is an attempt to cope with a reality in drastic social and technological flux. Critics understandably raise eyebrows at some aspects of imperfection fandom. Praising the imperfect is, for one, a smart commercial choice in an economic system that insists on aesthetic and affective experiences,9 and practices that laud the imperfect resonate louder among the haves than the have-nots (buyers of Baas’ wonky‐looking chairs, at $2500 a piece, can also afford picture‐perfect furniture). The trend to celebrate wonkiness thrives with special force in Western world regions (even “Beautiful Imperfection,” if designed by a Ghanaian designer, targets mostly Western fashionistas). And in promoting counter-norms and ‐ideals, advocates of imperfection sometimes ruthlessly gloss over real‐life problems (the idealized photos of “perfectly imperfect” Australian animals bypass the chronic pain and discomfort that some disabilities entail). At the same time, in a hypermediatized, hypercapitalist society, pleas for imperfection are no mere folly for the privileged. As my analyses in the following demonstrate, they can facilitate important ecological, economical, and political interventions.

A Historical Genealogy The habit of criticizing the perfect and flawless is, of course, not unique for our time. “The art of imperfection” is anthropologist Oscar Verkaaik’s name for small formal flaws in traditional synagogue buildings—a piece of unplastered wall, for instance. As Verkaaik explains, these irregularities are not unwanted mistakes: they are religiously motivated architectural interventions. Verkaaik demonstrates that their goal is multilayered: among other aims, they remind visitors “of the imperfection of Creation” and they “keep . . . alive the longing for Israel” (Verkaaik 2014). An “aesthetics of imperfection and insufficiency,” as art historian Yuriko Saito calls it, also flourished in traditional Japanese tea ceremonies. From the sixteenth century onward, tea masters started consciously idolizing cracked and worn bowls and pots to criticize material opulence among their shogun patrons (Saito 1997). Tea utensils, we read in a seventeenth‐century record

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of tea‐master teachings, “should, in every way and aspect, fall rather short of perfection” (Sen no Riyū 1989: 45). With time, the ceremonies’ wonkiness achieved such cult status that critics openly scorned it: in the 1730s, scholar and philosopher Dazai Shundai vilified the habit among tea masters to use “filthy and damaged old bowls” as “an unspeakably disgusting custom” (cited in Varley 1989: 175). The cracks in Japanese teapots and defects in Jewish worship houses exemplify a much wider range of historical traditions that positively value the unpolished and non‐perfected. These traditions are not always prompted by economic or religious considerations, as the blemished teapots and synagogues walls were. But they are, as a rule, associated with a response to technological change. This is true, too, for the discipline‐transcending preoccupation with imperfection in the two historical periods that I examine here.

Romanticism: “The Triumph of Imperfection” “Perfection had been tried and found wanting. It was now the time to turn toward imperfection, toward approximation, toward relativity, as the most desirable modes of dealing with informational processing.” With these words, Romanian‐American philosopher of culture Virgil Nemoianu (2006: 248) summarizes a sociocultural transition that he observes in the romantic era. According to Nemoianu, in especially Western‐ and Eastern‐European romanticism between 1815 and 1848, we witness a downright “triumph of imperfection.” He outlines this paradigmatic shift in a detailed study of literary and historiographic texts, travel writing, and religious treatises. The early nineteenth century, Nemoianu argues, not only was an age of increased globalization, urbanization, and social mobility but also confronted higher‐educated citizens with “an overwhelming avalanche of informational data becoming available” (Nemoianu 2006: 231). In response, writers, thinkers, and tourists all undertook discursive attempts to “come to terms” with the psychological and philosophical implications of innovations in information and communication technology (Nemoianu 2006: 233). Among the multiple strategies that contemporaries used to negotiate sociotechnological transition, Nemoianu singles out that of “embrac[ing] imperfection” (Nemoianu 2006: 242)—that is, of insisting on doubts, rejections, and contradictions rather than unwavering truths and perfect certainties. He witnesses this strategy on multiple social levels, including the popularization of science (in gymnastic systems, for instance, which focused on learning‐by‐trying rather than omniscient knowing); a preference among

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artists, writers, and composers on working across disciplinary boundaries (in Nemoianu’s words, romantics embraced a “variety” that unavoidably “engendered imperfection,” by blending, say, physical theorizing and literary writing, as Goethe did, or literary and historiographic writing, as Pushkin liked); a selfhood cult in which a “nostalgic regretful abandonment of the universality of romanticism” blended with an “acceptance of imperfection”; and in celebrating “coziness and peaceful intimacy” as “convenient substitutes for broader desires of perfection” (a favorite move of Biedermeier writers, or, to mention a less canonized author, Czech prose author Božena Němcová, who painted vivid pictures of local country life) (Nemoianu 2006: 238, 244, 245). Not all Nemoianu’s claims are uncontroversial. His definition of imperfection is, at times, unhelpfully broad—and is the artistic urge to combine different professional disciplines truly unique for the romantic age? Together, however, his observations do richly document a contemporary move away from the rigidly perfect and polished. What interests me is a manifestation of this move in a discursive trend that resonated both during the period that interests Nemoianu and in the decades that followed. I am referring to the trend to berate new technologies for their “correctness,” and to point to “imperfection” as antidote (or, as Nemoianu would say, “reconciliation”) for their undesirable perfection. A short look at one of the world’s best‐known stories about technology and threat helps to understand what this trend looked like in practice. “Der Sandmann” (“The Sandman,” 1816) ranks among the world’s best‐known stories about technology and threat. Its author, the German writer and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann, famously placed an automaton at the heart of a love story. Nathanael, a student, meets Olimpia—an attractive girl who, as he discovers only after falling madly in love with her, is really a machine masked as a human. In classic romantic vein, the story ends darkly: the student loses his wits and dies a dramatic death. The tragedy (and its parallel with Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) and other new human/machine love stories) I leave for what it is here—but I want to halt at the words that Hoffmann used to describe the automaton. In the German original, we read about Olimpia: – “In Schritt und Stellung hatte sie etwas Abgemessenes und Steifes, das manchem unangehehm auffiel”; – “Olimpia spielte den Flügel mit grosser Fertigkeit und trug ebenso eine Bravour‐Arie mit eller, beinahe schneidender Glasglockenstimme vor”; – “Eiskalt war Olympias Hand, er füllte sich durchbebt von grausigem Todesfrost”;

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– “[Olimpia”s] ganz eigenen rhythmischen Festigkeit”; and (a programmatic statement): – “Sie ist uns . . . aus seltsame Weise star rund seelenlos erschienen. Ihr Wuchs ist Regelmässig, so wie ihr Gesicht . . . Sie könnte für schön gelten, wenn ihr Block nicht so ganze ohne Lebensstrahl, ich möchte sagen, ohne Sehkraft wäre. Ihr Schritt ist sonderbar abgemessen, jede Bewegung scheint durch den Gang eines aufgezogenen Räderwerks bedingt. Ihr Spiel, ihr Singen hat den unangenehm richtigen geistlosen Takt der singenden Maschine, und ebenso ist ihr Tanz. Uns ist diese Olimpia ganz unheimlich geworden, wir mochten nichts mit ihr zu schaffen haben, es war uns, als tue sie nur so wie ein lebendiges Wesen.” (Hoffmann 1964: 33–4)

In Hoffmann’s descriptions of the machine‐girl, two lexical clusters intertwine. We could label them, first, a “flawlessness” cluster, revolving around nouns, adjectives, and adverbs that highlight the spotlessness, stiffnessness, brightness, rhythmicality, evenness, regularity, and correctness of the looks, moves, and acts of the automaton (“Abgemessenes,” “Steifes,” “Fertigkeit,” “heller . . . Glasglockenstimme,” “rhythmischen Festigkeit,” “Regelmässig,” “sonderbar abgemessen,” “richtigen . . . Takt”); and, second, a “death” cluster, foregrounding their unpleasantness, overt sharpness, coldness, or even “deadly frost,” soullessness, lifelessness, and spiritlessness (“unangehem,” “beinahe schneidender,” “eiskalt,” “Todesfrost,” “star,” “seelenlos,” “ohne Lebensstrahl,” “ohne Sehkraft,” “unangenehm . . . geistlosen,” “unheimlich”). Flawlessness and life‐ (and love‐)lessness intertwine again when the narrator later explains that more than one admirer would later asked their lovers, to be “ganz überzeught . . . daß man keine Holzpuppe liebe,” to sing and dance “etwas taktlos” (Hoffmann 1964: 38). As others argued before me,10 in Hoffmann’s world technology was both correct (“richtig”) and soulless (“seelenlos”). Technology, in “The Sandman,” is the diametrically opposed perfect‐but‐dead antithesis of an imperfect‐but‐soulful humanness. What interests me is not this rigid binary dynamics in itself, but the social dreams and fears about technological advancement that it reveals. To unpack these dreams and fears, it helps to compare Hoffmann’s story with an art‐theoretical text from the 1850s—a time when the “information avalanche” (to borrow Nemoianu’s term) of earlier decades blended with other concerns, about urbanization, advanced industrialization, and the failed revolution of 1848. In Stones of Venice (1851‐’53)—his influential, bulky treatise on Venetian art and architecture—John Ruskin put much energy in glorifying Gothic aesthetics. His love for all things Gothic, as he made unmistakably clear to

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readers, could not be isolated from his loathing of machines, and of perfect machines in particular. “It is, perhaps, the principle admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture,” so Ruskin wrote, “that . . . out of fragments full of imperfection . . . [they] raise up a stately and unaccusable whole” (Ruskin 2018). Ruskin observed a Gothic insistence on imperfection—one that was instructive for the time and place that he happened to know best: the industrializing Britain of the nineteenth century. About this place and time, he was far from positive. “Reader,” so he implored his audiences, look round this English room of yours, about which you have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good and strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are signs of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. (Ruskin 2018)

The problem that Ruskin signaled had ancient roots, so he believed: “the unwholesome demand for perfection” was a “main mistake” of the Renaissance period (Ruskin 2018). But it was the Industrial Revolution of his own age that turned the need to defy perfection into an acute problem for Ruskin. “No good work whatever can be perfect,” he wrote in a much‐cited passage on craftsmanship and machine‐driven perfection, [i]mperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent . . . In all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. (Ruskin 2018)

Here and elsewhere in Stones in Venice, Ruskin adopts a neatly dichotomous rhetoric—one in which perfection equals a lexical cluster revolving around destruction, failure, social oppression, and overall wretchedness (“slavery,” “bitter,” “degrading,” “unwholesome,” “mistake,” “destroy,” “paralyze,”

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“exertion”); and the imperfect stands for all things beautiful, whole, alive, and progressive (“admirableness,” “beauty,” “stately,” “unaccusable whole,” “(sign of) life” (3x), “things that live,” “vitality,” “progress,” “change” (2x), and “expression”). Ruskin was not immune to the pitfalls of romanticizing the non‐perfected (elsewhere, he firmly criticized the type of “heartless picturesque” that today rightly ranks as ruin porn (Ruskin cited in Ballantyne 2015: 159))— but here and elsewhere in Stones in Venice, he did systematically present imperfection as a source of aesthetic pleasure (and of life) in response to drastic technological changes. Whether he had Hoffmann’s story in mind upon doing so is, to this reader at least, unclear (although he may well have; Hoffmann was a leading figure in European romanticism, which had a formative impact on Ruskin’s aesthetic theorizing). But even if he did not, his affirmative rhetoric of imperfection boasts clear parallels with that of Hoffmann. In both, technology adds up to “dead” perfection; both foreground imperfection as a source of life and of true aesthetic pleasure.

The Early Twentieth Century: “The Imperfect Art” of Jazz If Nemoianu is right in framing the romantic era as a time when a rhetoric and aesthetics of imperfection “triumphed,” that conclusion prompts the question: What happened once the “triumph of imperfection” materialized? How, in other words, did creative professionals think and talk about perfect standards and deviations from those standards after the romantic era? To answer this question, it helps to look at The Art of Imperfection (1988), a study of early and mid‐twentieth‐century jazz cultures by music historian Ted Gioia. Gioia warns readers for the “Primivitist Myth” of jazz. With that term, he refers to a tradition to frame jazz as an art form that lacks structure, and that is charming despite, or even precisely because of, its technical imprecision (Gioia 1988: 31). As Gioia demonstrates, readings of jazz as a “second‐rate, imperfect art form” (Gioia 1988: 55) not only misrepresent musicians and their work but also sometimes border on downright racism. Emblematic is music critic Winthrop Sargeant’s claim (1975: 81), in 1938, that “[t]hose who create [jazz] most successfully are the ones who know the least about its abstract structure. The Negro, like all folk musicians, expresses himself intuitively.” Gioia pleas for a different reading of jazz—one that acknowledges the extensive intellectual schooling and formal training that leading jazz musicians

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underwent, and that endorses “both . . . that music’s flaws as well as its virtues” (Gioia 1988: 56). In response to primitivist readings of jazz, he proposes to “develop what I would like to call an ‘aesthetics of imperfection’”—that is, “a framework which will allow us to accept jazz on its own terms—and not as the bastard child of composed music” (Gioia 1988: 56–7). Gioia witnesses this aesthetics in the work of Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and other musicians whose performance “favors spur‐of‐the‐moment decisions over carefully considered choices . . . prefers the haphazard to the premeditated . . . views unpredictability as a virtue and sees cool‐headed calculation as a vice” (Gioia 1988: 58). Students of jazz, in his words, must defy “the virtues we search for in other art forms—premeditated design . . . an overall symmetry,” “aesthetic standards which seek perfection or near‐perfection in the work of art” (Gioia 1988: 57, 68). In this approach, which celebrates “improvisation,” an “ethos of individualism,” and “[t]he human, and hence imperfect element of art,” not the resulting work but the artist takes pride of place (Gioia 1988: 69–70). Gioia is not immune to the flaws that he points out in others (when he insists that, rather than being unschooled, black jazz musicians were thoroughly familiar with the “European musical tradition” (Gioia 1988: 33–4), he extends rather than avoids primitivist stereotyping). But The Imperfect Art offers a helpful cultural history—of jazz music, but also, as Gioia himself explains, of broader critical debates about “high culture as the consumption of polished and perfected ‘masterpieces’” (Gioia 1988: 70). His story matters to our argument about imperfection rhetoric and technological advancement, too, although Gioia himself only discusses their intersection tangentially. From The Imperfect Art, we do learn that the birth age of jazz—the early twentieth century—was a time of drastic technological transition. Gioia explains that this was the era of phonographs and other tools of mass reproduction (and that Walter Benjamin neatly chronicled how these tectonic technological shifts impacted on cultural production and consumption), and he points at the first decades of the century as times of a growing call, motivated in part by technological transitions, “for seamless music, stripped of emotional content as well as the cloying individualism characteristic of the Romantic past” and for new, “dehumanizing” approaches to composition and art (Gioia 1988: 6–11, 65–6). Gioia also draws a parallel between jazz and romanticism—that earlier age of drastic technological acceleration. In his words, we can observe a romantic strain in jazz, whose insistence on improvisation, individualism, and anti‐institutionalism emblematizes “an aesthetic sensibility which is essentially romanticist in character” (in typifying this sensibility, Gioia draws an explicit parallel to Ruskin’s writings about imperfection and Gothic art (Gioia 1988: 70, 86)).

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What Gioia does not discuss—and what I want to analyze in more detail here—is another sensibility that the romantic era and the Jazz Age share. In both historic periods, technological acceleration and an insistence on imperfection did not merely co‐occur but intersect. And just as they did in the early nineteenth century, in the first half of the twentieth century they intersect in more fundamental ways than Gioia’s analysis suggests. Across Eastern and Western Europe and the United States, higher‐educated citizens then faced increasing technological complexity in everyday life on multiple levels. Photography, film, and mechanized print and music technologies became available to broad audiences, shaking up existing views on the powers of realistic representation. In response, the early twentieth‐century insistence on imperfection that Gioia rightfully observes in jazz manifested itself across a much broader range of cultural disciplines—and technological transitions mattered more to this “imperfection cult” than his argument implies. As Gioia rightfully reminds readers, in 1936 Walter Benjamin famously conceptualized the world of mechanical reproduction as a radically new place—one where people were surrounded by cultural objects that lacked the unique “aura” of the original. To Benjamin, “the sphere of authenticity” resides principally “outside technical . . . reproducibility,” and “[e]ven the most perfect reproduction of a work of art” lack the unique, authentic “presence of the original” (Benjamin 1969: 3). Benjamin, in short, theorized technology as the domain of standardized perfection, and the non‐technological as a counter-arena of authenticity and originality. He did so in writings that, by today, few scholars of media and culture do not know or cite. At the time of writing, his views were not unique, however. Historian Anna Fishzon has studied a “discourse of sonic fidelity” triggered by the emergence of a mechanized record industry in late‐imperial Russia. As Fishzon demonstrates, record listeners persistently pondered one question: Did performers manage to transfer genuine pathos to recordings? In response, some record producers strove for maximally polished recordings: the less surface noise, so they believed, the more listeners could enjoy the performer’s genuine, “authentic” sound (Fishzon 2011: 800, 810). In a 1927 essay, philosopher Theodor Adorno plead for a diametrically opposing strategy. To him—as rephrased by Fishzon—it was “the residue of incidental noises and other imperfections” that, “paradoxically, make the recordings sound human” (Fishzon 2011: 817). That, for Adorno, imperfection could rank as artistic aim rather than obstacle, confirm his claims in Aesthetic Theory that “[i]n perfect works art would transcend its own concept”; “the turn to the friable and the fragmentary,” Adorno then argued, was “in truth an effort to save art” (2013: 259).

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In the first decades of the century, an aesthetics of imperfection also attracted Russian Formalists. Viktor Shklovsky’s “Art as Device” (1917) ranks among the best‐known writings of this school of literary and art criticism. To its author, art was a technique of “roughening” language, based on “roughened form and retardation.” Shklovsky believed that poetry optimally demonstrated how this technique operates: if prose, for him, was “proper” language, poetry was “attenuated, tortuous speech” (2018: 250–9). The attenuation of poetic speech became an important artistic strategy for Shklovsky in times of technological shifts. He described the new technology of film montage, for instance, as “the nearest technological answer to a technological complication. Of course we need to perfect the toolkit [. . .] but the work of an artist consists not only in the mastering of new technical devices, but also in the artistic usage of technical complications. Poetry is based on the imperfection of human speech.” (2018: 750). Artists must welcome technological innovation and embrace its potential and the challenges it poses; it is from this play with technological challenges that (a true, imperfection‐based) poetry is born. This is how one can summarize Shklovsky’s take on art. Shklovsky’s essays and my other examples illustrate that in the early twentieth century technological advancement did not simply run parallel to a heightened interest in the imperfect, as Gioia’s analyses might suggest. To multiple contemporary critics, artists, and theoreticians, the two intersected in more intricate ways. For some, wonkiness, inconsistency, or indeterminacy were a hallmark for an “authenticity” or “originality” that shied away from perfect “soundness” and “rationality” in times of drastic technological transition. Others said: artists should welcome the bugs and challenges from which new technological tools inevitably suffer. Technological complications, after all, inspire poetry—a form of speech to which “roughening” and “imperfection” is a sine qua non.

Three “Imperfectionist” Strategies: Conclusion Let us return to the questions with which this chapter opened. Where does the dread for machines that fail to fail come from? How does the present‐day preoccupation with an emphatically non‐technological imperfection relate to historical approaches to the imperfect and the non‐polished? And how can older stories help us understand contemporary pleas for the non‐perfected? That historical discourses of imperfection matter to the here and now was clear for both Nemoianu and Gioia. In 1988, Gioia used his “imperfect” reading of jazz to respond to an art‐critical “craze . . . for semiotics,

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structuralism, and deconstruction” (1988: 104), and Nemoianu believed that the romantic insistence on imperfection “calls to us now, at the beginning of the twenty‐first century,” with its deconstructivist insistence on “fluidities and other ironic undecidabilities” (Nemoianu 2006: xi, 250–1). I agree, although without sharing the authors’ cultural‐critical concerns, that historical pleas for imperfection matter today. By juxtaposing previous and present‐day calls for the imperfect, we can distill which recurring coping strategies dominate debates about technological advancement. This chapter offered such a juxtaposition, first, by thickening Nemoianu’s reading of romanticism as a “triumph of imperfection” with a close‐reading of two canonical romantic texts. Both primarily frame technological acceleration as a threat. Hoffmann equals the “unpleasant” correctness of machines to the “soulless,” the “spiritless,” and to death. Ruskin envisions an “unwholesome” demand for perfection which, in the industrialized age, boils down to downright “slavery.” Hoffmann halts at diagnosing technology as dangerously perfectionist; Ruskin contrasts machine‐driven perfection to an aesthetics of “imperfection,” built on human “expression,” “progress,” “life,” and “vitality.” But both dichotomize technological standardization and humanness as dangerously perfect and fruitfully imperfect counterpoles. In Ruskin’s hands, the opposition even collapses altogether, when perfection becomes a “mistake” and Gothic architects turn fragments into an “unaccusable whole.” For the early twentieth century, I expanded Gioia’s views on jazz as an “imperfect art” with readings of influential contemporary theoretical texts. Their authors adopt a less accusatory tone than their romantic predecessors. Adorno projects “humanness” onto acoustic blemishes. Benjamin locates “authenticity” in unique art works rather than perfect reproductions. And Shklovsky, just as his romantic predecessors, adopts an affirmative rhetoric of imperfection—but unlike them, he welcomes rather than shuns technological innovation. In the early twenty‐first century—the age of technological upheaval of our own times—the discursive strategies that romantic and early twentieth‐century “makers and thinkers” adopted partly recur. The padonki manifesto—signed, tellingly, by “Mary Shelley”—revives romantic tropes when the authors scold the “CORECTNIZ” of “perfict spellcheckkurs” as “SOWLEZZ” tools that “kill” “all thet is alife.” Mitrenina’s and Kaspe and Smurova’s rhetoric of imperfection and amateurism is milder, and closer to that of thinkers like Adorno and Shklovsky. To them, social‐media technologies stimulate rather than stifle genuine communication, as the “amateurist,” “trivial” (a term that Slapovskii also uses), or mistake‐ridden, unedited “original form” of online writing guarantees “sincerity” and “acuteness” more than “ossified” “literary

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canons” can. Tolstaia and Vodennikov appear to agree and practice what Mitrenina and others preach—although Tolstaia does so in theory more than in real life. Both promote a mistakist politics when writing online, and Vodennikov frames online “typos” as hallmarks of “authenticity.” The voices that I united highlight the intricate relationship—I cite media theorist William Boddy—“between technological change and cultural form” (Boddy 2004). Boddy and other media historians demonstrate that technological transitions inevitably actuate collective dreams, fantasies, and phobias (Boddy 2004; Van Dijck and Neef 2006; Baym 2010). They say, when cultural producers and consumers are confronted with new communication technologies, they revisit and rethink ontological values—especially those values which, in their eyes, are put at stake by technological acceleration. Humanness is one such value; authenticity another. “[T]he discourses around technology,” writes media theoretician Nancy Baym (2010: 155), “tell us that, millennia after the invention of the first communication technologies, we remain oriented towards preserving the authenticity of human connection and of ourselves.” The discursive statements that meet in this analysis confirm and expand the findings of Baym and other media historians. They illustrate that technological transitions consistently trigger dreams about perfecting life and art; fears for the downsides of these dreams; and debates about authenticity, creative expression, and the “metaphysics of imperfection” without which human life is unthinkable (Kemper 2019). Between Hoffmann and Tolstaia lies a wealth of different dreams and dreads about technology and imperfection—but there are also parallels. In the sources that I compared, three rhetorical strategies recur with particular force: (1) Perfection pessimism. Perfection pessimists see new technologies as dangerously fault‐free. They call for moving away from that (imagined) technology‐induced, “dead” perfection. (2) Love for mistakes‐in‐the‐machine. Advocates of this strategy welcome technological advancement, but they see the mistakes in the machine— or those mistakes that occur when users work with a new technology— as safeguards of humanness, vitality, or authenticity. (3) Imperfection activism. Adepts of imperfection activism do not halt at passively welcoming machinic bugs as given: they actively make mistakes. They hack or mutilate new technologies, or otherwise perform an affirmative rhetoric or aesthetics of imperfection. Just as all taxonomies, this theoretical model should be handled with care. Hoffmann and the padonki are clean‐cut perfection pessimists; Adorno

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and Mitrenina love mistakes in the machine; Shklovsky’s filmmakers and Vodennikov introduce mistakes in or with the machine; but others subject themselves less easily to categorization. Nevertheless, this cautious taxonomy, and the comparative analysis that underpins it, can help in unraveling the stories that we tell ourselves about technological acceleration. It can contribute, too, to a no less important task: that of boosting resilience against technology anxieties. As my historical genealogy demonstrated, critics persistently frame technologies as perfect; just as persistently, they turn the non‐technological into a fetish (Jurgenson 2012), inventing traditions of undilutedly authentic, human imperfection. In truth, each new technology offers plenty of opportunities to fail, both for machines and for their users.

Notes 1 In parts of this chapter, I revisit and reorganize findings that I shared earlier, most notably, in Rutten 2009; 2014; and in chapters 2 and 4 of Sincerity after Communism: A Cultural History (published by Yale University Press in 2017). I am indebted to Yuriko Saito, Maria Korolkova, and Jakko Kemper for some of the insights shared in this analysis; and to Dianne Teunisse, whom I thank for her assistance with the empirical research. 2 The logic and aesthetics of imperfection is the object of study of the research project “Sublime Imperfections: Creative Interventions in Post1989 Europe,” which PhD students Jakko Kemper, Fabienne Rachmadiev, and I conduct at the University of Amsterdam between 2015 and 2020. See www.sublimeimperfections.org for details. 3 On the translation problems that are inherent to this approach—the word “imperfection” and its antonym “perfection” are, for instance, used in a wider range of situations in English than in many other languages—see Rutten 2019. 4 In Rutten 2014, I discuss both examples of and helpful exceptions to this trend. 5 See on the large online audience that had flocked together by the time Tolstaia started writing http://tanyant.livejournal.com/548.html. Her first post generated eighty-seven reactions (based on the number of comments received by March 12, 2009). The numbers for her readership in the years that followed I base on the March 16, 2009, edition of the then daily updated blog report of Russian search engine Yandex (then available via https://blogs.yandex.ru). 6 See Rutten 2009 for more examples. 7 See on this normative kul’tura rechi (literally “speech culture”) Gorham 2010.

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8 Among others, see on the present-day preoccupation with imperfection also Ramakers 2002: 158–72; Rombes 2009; Pedgley 2014; Clare 2017; and Saito 2017. 9 In making this claim, I build on analyses of our age as an “experience economy” (Gilmore and Pine 1999) or a time of “emotional capitalism” (Illouz 2007) or “artistic capitalism”(Lipovetsky 2015). 10 For a helpful analysis of the story as a form of technology critique (and of the influential reading of the same story by Sigmund Freud), see, for instance, Pascarelli 2002: 115–36.

References Adorno, T. (2013), Aesthetic Theory, London: Bloomsbury. APA (2018), “Perfectionism Among Young People Significantly Increased Since 1980s, Study Finds,” American Psychological Association, January 02, 2018. Available at: https​://ww​w.apa​.org/​news/​press​/rele​ases/​2018/​01/pe​rfect​ionis​ m‐young‐people (accessed July 9, 2019). App Store (2019), “AirBrush – Best Photo Editor,” App Store Preview. Available at: https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/airbrush‐best‐photo‐editor/id998411110 (accessed June 18, 2019). Badley, L. (2011), Lars von Trier, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Ballantyne, A. (2015), John Ruskin, London: Reaktion. Baym, N. (2010), Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Oxford: Polity. Bell, A., A. Ensslin and H. K. Rustad, eds. (2013), Analyzing Digital Fiction, New York: Routledge. Benjamin, W. (1969), “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, New York: Schocken. Berry, David M. and M. Dieter, eds. (2015), Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design, Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Boddy, W. (2004), New Media and Popular Imagination: Launching Radio, Television, and Digital Media in the United States, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bratskeir, K. (2015), “These Photos Show Why ‘Perfectly Imperfect’ Animals Are Worthy of Homes, Too,” Huffpost, November 8. Available at: https​://ww​w.huf​ fpost​.com/​entry​/phot​o‐ser​ies‐ captu​res‐t​he‐be​auty‐​of‐24​‐perf​ectly​‐impe​ rfect​‐anim​als (accessed June 27, 2019). Brown, B. (2010), The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed To Be and Embrace Who You Are, Center City: Hazelden Publishing. Clare, E. (2017), Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, Durham: Duke University Press. Couldry, N. and A. Hepp (2009), “What Should Comparative Media Research be Comparing? Towards a Transcultural Approach to ‘media cultures’,”

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in Daya Kishan Thussu (ed.), Internationalizing Media Studies, 32–48, Abingdon: Routledge. Curran, J. and M.‐J. Park, eds. (2000), De‐Westernizing Media Studies, London: Routledge. De Zengotita, T. (2005), Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It, New York: Bloomsbury. Fishzon, A. (2011), “The Operatics of Everyday Life, or, How Authenticity Was Defined in Late Imperial Russia,” Slavic Review 70 (4): 795–818. Gilmore, James H. and B. Joseph Pine II (2007), Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Gioia, T. (1988), The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gorham, M. (2010), “Language Ideology and the Evolution of Kul’tura iazyka (‘Speech Culture’) in Soviet Russia,” in C. Brandist and K. Chown (eds.), Politics and the Theory of Language in the USSR 1917‐1938, 137–51, London: Anthem Press. Groys, B. (2010), History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Gusejnov, G. (2008), “Berloga vebloga: vvedenie v erraticheskuiu semantiku,” Govorim po‐russki, March. Available at: http:​//www​.spea​krus.​ru/gg​/micr​ opros​a_err​atica​‐1.htm (accessed June 25, 2019). Hale, K. H. (2016), The Politics of Perfection: Technology and Creation in Literature and Film, Lanham: Lexington. Hamilton, D. (1992), “A Literary Heiress,” Los Angeles Times, May 12. Available at: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la‐xpm‐1992‐05‐12‐vw‐1748‐story. html (accessed June 6, 2019). Hoffmann, E. T. A. (1964), Poetische Werke, Vol. 3: Nachtstücke, Munich: Rowohlt. Iconic Dutch (n.d.), “Maarten Baas,” Iconic Dutch. Available at: http:​//ico​nicdu​ tch.c​om/uk​/desi​gners​/maar​ten‐baas (accessed June 25, 2019). Illouz, E. (2007), Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Oxford: Polity. Johnson, T. (2017), “Why Does Hiphop Music Have To Be So Ungrammatical?” Quora, March 29. Available at: https​://ww​w.quo​ra.co​m/Why​‐does​‐hip‐​ hop‐m​usic‐​have‐​to‐be​‐so‐u​ngram​matic​al (accessed June 25, 2019). Jurgenson, N. (2012), “The IRL Fetish,” The New Inquiry, June 28, 2012. Available at: https://thenewinquiry.com/the‐irl‐fetish/ (accessed July 9, 2019). Klein, J. T. (1990), Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, & Practice, Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Kemper, J. (2019) “Theoretical Framework,” PhD dissertation (draft text). Laird, S. (1999), Voices of Russian Literature: Interviews with Ten Contemporary Writers, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lipovetsky, G. (2015), “On Capitalism.” Crash. No. 65. Available at: https​://ww​ w.cra​sh.fr​/on-a​rtist​ic-ca​pital​ism-b​y-gil​les-l​ipove​tsky-​crash​-65/.

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“Livejournal.com, russkaia versiia: Poplach’ o nem, poka on zhivoi . . .” (2002), Neprikosnovennyi zapas 24 (4). Online at magaz​ines.​russ.​ru/nz​/2002​/4/ka​ spe-p​r.htm​l. Manifezd (n.d.), “Manifezd antigramatnosti.” Available at: http:​//www​.guel​man. r​u/sla​va/ma​nifes​t/ist​ochni​ki/sh​elli.​htm (accessed June 28, 2019). Merriam‐Webster (2017), “Imperfection,” Merriam‐Webster Dictionary. Available at: https://www.merriam‐webster.com/dictionary/imperfection (accessed June 25, 2019). Mishra, S. and R. Kern‐Stone (2019), Transnational Media: Concepts and Cases, Hoboken: Wiley‐Blackwell. Mitrenina, M. (2003), “Netneizm i traditsionnaia kul’tura,” Russkii zhurnal, March 24. Available at: http:​//old​.russ​.ru/n​etcul​t/200​30324​_mitr​enina​‐pr. html (accessed June 25, 2019). Most, G. W. (2005), Doubting Thomas, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nemoianu, V. (2006), The Triumph of Imperfection: The Silver Age of Sociocultural Moderation in Europe, 1815–1848, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Pascarelli, G. (2002), “Freud, The Uncanny, and Technology,” in T. Strong and R. Wolin(eds.), Confronting Mass Democracy and Industrial Technology: Political and Social Theory from Nietzsche to Habermas, 111–37, Durham: Duke University Press. Pedgley, O. (2014), “Desirable Imperfection in Product Materials,” Design Research Society. Available at: http://www.drs2014.org/ media/648032/0181‐file1.pdf (accessed June 24, 2019). Ramakers, R. (2002), Less + More: Droog Design in Context, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Rampton, B. (1995), “Language Crossing and the Problematisation of Ethnicity and Socialism,” Pragmatics 5 (4): 485–513. Reed, T. V. (2014), Digitized Lives: Culture, Power and Social Change in the Internet Era, New York: Routledge. Rida, A. (2016), “Steve French | ‘Beautiful Imperfection’ SS 16,” Styled By Rida, July 21. Available at: http:​//www​.styl​edbyr​ida.c​om/bl​og/20​16/7/​21/st​ eve‐french‐beautiful‐imperfection‐ss16 (accessed June 24, 2019). Romanova, A. (2014), “Khudozhestvennoe znachenie nezavershennosti teksta v pozdnei lirike A.S. Pushkina,” Filologiia: Vestnik Nizhegorodskogo universiteta im. N.I. Lobachevskogo 2 (2): 272–5. Rombes, N. (2009), Cinema in the Digital Age, New York: Columbia University Press. Ruskin, J. (2018), The Stones of Venice, Hard Press (Kindle Edition). Rutten, E. (2009), “Wrong Is the New Right. Or Is It? Linguistic Identity in Russian Writers’ Blogs,” in Paulsen Lunde (ed.), From Poets to Padonki: Linguistic Authority and Norm Negotiation in Modern Russian Culture, 97–109, Bergen: Slavica Bergensia.

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Rutten, E. (2014), “(Russian) Writer‐Bloggers: Digital Perfection and the Aesthetics of Imperfection,” Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication 19 (4): 744–62. Rutten, E. (2019), “‘Russian’ Imperfections? A Plea for Transcultural Readings of Aesthetic Trends,” in Andy Byford Connor Doakand Stephen Hutchings (eds.), Transnational Russian Studies, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Saito, Y. (1997), “The Japanese Aesthetics of Imperfection and Insufficiency,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 4 (55): 377–85. Saito, Y. (2017), “The Role of Imperfection in Everyday Aesthetics,” Contemporary Aesthetics, July 17. Available at: https​://co​ntemp​aesth​etics​.org/​ newvo​lume/​pages​/arti​cle.p​hp?ar​ticle​ID=79​7 (accessed November 14, 2018). Sargeant, W. (1975), Jazz, Hot and Hybrid, New York: Da Capo. Sebba, M. (2007), Spelling and Society: The Culture and Politics of Orthography around the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sen no Riyū (1989), Nambōroku o Yotu, ed. Kumakura Isao, Tokyo: Tankōsha. Shklovsky, V. (2018), Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1: Revoliutsiia, ed. Ilya Kalinin, Moscow: NLO. slapovsky (Aleksei Slapovskii) (2006), “Imel’ianov o pustiakakh,” October 15. Available at: http:​//sla​povsk​y.liv​ejour​nal.c​om/20​06/10​/15/ (accessed June 25, 2019). slapovsky (Aleksei Slapovskii) (2007), “Zdes,’” January 17. Available at: http:​//sla​ povsk​y.liv​ejour​nal.c​om/20​07/01​/17/ (accessed June 25, 2019). tanyant (Tatiana Tolstaia) (2007), “Nekotorye otvety na nekotorye voprosy,” December 15. Available at: https​://ta​nyant​.live​journ​al.co​m/200​7/12/​15/ (accessed June 6, 2019). tanyant (Tatiana Tolstaia) (2009), “House, 5, 15,” February 17, online on https​:// ta​nyant​.live​journ​al.co​m/404​47.ht​ml (accessed June 19, 2019). Tesco (2016), “Our Perfectly Imperfect Range,” April 14, 2016. Available at: https​ ://ww​w.our​tesco​.com/​2016/​04/14​/our‐​perfe​ctly‐​imper​fect‐​range​/. Thussu, D. K., ed. (2009), Internationalizing Media Studies, Abingdon: Routledge. Tryangle (n.d.), ‘The Imperfect Webinar: hoe omgaan met perfectionisme?’ Tryangle: Welzijnsinterventies. Available at: https​://tr​yangl​e.be/​tryan​gle_w​ ebina​r/the​‐impe​rfect​‐webi​nar‐h​oe‐om​gaan‐​met‐p​erfec​tioni​sme/ (accessed June 27, 2019). Ulanoff, L. (2015), “Inside Apple’s Perfectionism Machine,” Mashable. Available at: https://mashable.com/2015/10/28/apple‐phil‐schiller‐mac/?europe=true (accessed June 27, 2019). Van Dijck, J. and S. Neef, eds. (2006), Sign Here! Handwriting in the Age of New Media, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Varley, P. (1989), “Chanoyu: From the Genroku Epoch to Modern Times,” in P. Varley and I. Kumarkura (eds.), Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu, 161–95, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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Verkaaik, O. (2014), “The Art of Imperfection: Contemporary Synagogues in Germany and the Netherlands,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20 (3): 486–504, July 28. Vodennikov, D. (2009), Personal conversation with the author. Transcript available upon request. WhiteSmoke (2019), “Spell Checker,” WhiteSmoke: World‐Leading English Writing Software. Available at: http:​//www​.whit​esmok​e.com​/spel​l‐che​ck.ht​ml (accessed June 18, 2019). Zvereva, V. (2009), “‘Iazyk padonkaf ’: diskussii pol’zovatelei Runeta,” in P. Lunde (ed.), From Poets to Padonki: Linguistic Authority and Norm Negotiation in Modern Russian Culture, 49–79, Bergen: Slavica Bergensia.

2

Post-communication Theory The Non‐dialogical Timothy Barker

The frantic abolition of all distance brings no nearness. —Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 163 With a 15‐cent stamp attached to his clothing, the eight‐month-old James Beagle was sent through the post. He was picked up by the mail carrier along his usual route out of Batavia, Ohio, and delivered to his grandmother, who lived about a mile away. The development that made this apparent misuse of the communication system possible was the United States Post Office’s introduction on January 1, 1913, of Parcel Post. As one of the key developments in the remote exchange of goods, Parcel Post meant that people could send packages through the post as long as they were within size and weight limitations. As reported in The New York Times (January 26, 1913) James weighed 10 ¾ pounds (the limit for Parcel Post was 11 pounds) and measured 72 inches (which was also within the limits set by the Post Office). There was a similar case in 1914. After the Post Office increased weight limits from 11 pounds to 50 pounds, much bigger packages could be sent. On February 19, 1914, five‐year‐old May Pierstorff, weighing 48 ½ pounds, was mailed 73 miles from her home in Grangeville, Idaho, to her grandparents’ house in Lewiston. May sat with a postal service employee in the mail carriage and was then delivered personally to her grandmother’s house. In this chapter, I would like to rethink some common tropes in communication theory, spurred on by these historical curiosities and some recent theoretical critiques of the postal model of communication. In particular, I would like to explore further the role of communication as a system for establishing distance between individuals, rather than for uniting people in dialogue (Peters 1999). Distance is rendered in the “post” communication theory developed here both in terms of the literal distance of miles between

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Figure 2.1  Photograph of mailman posing with child in his satchel, c. 1900. Photographer unknown. Collection of National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institute. sender and receiver and also figuratively in terms of the distance established by moments of miscommunication in information transmission systems. On first impression, we might say that a communication system such as the network of the post was set up to mitigate distance, to allow people to communicate with one another across a divide. Distance is meant to disappear, replaced by a metaphorical nearness as the letter is received and read and as communication takes place. Miscommunication then makes this distance visible; it disturbs communication, and it breaks it down in such a way as to expresses the way that the communication system functions. The practice of spacing—the aspect of miscommunication seen in examples such as the

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mailing of children—made visible a number of ontic functions of the postal system, which are usually invisible and hence usually support its operation as an efficient message bearing system. Two key features of the operation of the postal system are expressed in these historical examples, namely the postal system of communication’s maintenance of distance between individuals (a distance that needs to be navigated by message bearers/child carriers) and its function as a technology of care. By refocusing attention on these two aspects—distance and care—we can start to open up the possibility to direct analysis onto the function of the postal communication system itself as the ground for communication, rather than the capacity for, or dynamics of, dialogue between a sender and receiver. Following the general aims of this book, this would be to refocus on the conditions for possibility embedded in the postal system, as a system for transmission, rather than reducing the study of communication to the study of dialogue between the self and another, as a type of ritual that is repeated over time and gives a character to culture (Carey 1992). This chapter asks: How does the operation of communication according to the postal system, control and produces a ground for dialogue? How does the messenger operate to constitute the ground for dialogue? The approach taken in this chapter to answer these questions owes a good deal to Friedrich Kittler’s modulation of Michel Foucault. It also owes a good deal to Michel Serres’ philosophy of communication, along with John Durham Peters’ critique of communication as a mutual communion of souls and Sybille Krämer’s media theoretical account of transmission. In what follows I offer a description of the transmission of messages and of children sent through the post. This description is used to begin an analysis of the conditions for discourse, or an analysis of the control structures of a communication system and to explore the way that it, rather ironically, mitigates dialogue and introduces a new function to communication. The possibility of sending kids through the post makes it clear that the first principle of the postal system was the transportation of material objects over distances. Letters containing sign systems were one of these material objects, but so might be living, breathing children. As Carey points out, the transportation of people, goods, and information were once thought as identical processes and referred to by the common noun “communication” (Carey 1992). Communication, in this view, was a process of transmission designed to control both space and people. The practice of sending kids through the post also makes apparent another aspect of this communication system: the message carrier needs to be trusted to intervene during the process of transmission in order to provide the care that would have been expected. The messenger also needs to act as a carer.

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Of course, communication is not only directed toward caring for the message. Following Krämer (2015), the aim of communication is also often directed toward transmission and the preservation of difference, rather than the dialogue or consensus that would be the outcome from a carefully delivered message. Ironically, the aim of communication can often be directed toward what traditional communication theory would figure as an obstruction to dialogue, an interruption, or obstacle to relationships. By repositioning ourselves thusly, focusing on the material processes of communication rather than its outcome, it is possible to extend Krämer’s work—and indeed Claude Shannon’s work on the mathematical model of communication that provides its basis. Doing so, we might see a new model for communication that offers new terms with which to describe the way people have used communication systems not only to relate to one another and to the world but also to insulate themselves from the world around them. These examples of miscommunication are valuable as tools of critique because they can precisely be used to provide examples where the system for communication is used to invite a process of creative questioning. Communication systems are often thought of in terms of the way they reconfigure the world. However, users of these systems are not always subject to them in a “slave‐master” sense. Instead, as will be seen, where the postal system was concerned, users were brought into a postal world where they could exploit gaps in the system and use this new context for experience in their own unique ways. The system for communication invited a process of creativity in as much as it invited users of the postal system to ask questions such as: What are the limits of what can be sent? How can I test these rules for transmission? How can I test these rules for caring for oneself through communication? In most media theory that deals with the movement of information, networks such as the postal system, which connected vast swathes of people over distances, have been figured as means for the negation of that distance. Paul Virilio, David Harvey, and Bernhard Siegert have all pointed to a temporal and spatial shrinking of the globe. Space, as Virilio ([1998] 2003) writes, “here no longer exists. Everything is now” (italics in original) (116). Or in Siegert’s ([1993] 1999) words, “since the inception of the World Postal Union, the end of the world is everywhere. Not merely in the sense that distances separating one place from another had become anachronistic, but also in that the world’s margins had moved into the immediate vicinity of a neighbourhood everywhere” (143). The postal system in these accounts ushered in a process of coming together, where actions could be coordinated across distances in space. However, what the examples of children moving through the post demonstrates—this intentional act of

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miscommunication—is that real distance continues to remain an obstacle to communion (the root word of communication), particularly in rural settings. The Beagles needed to get their son to his grandmother, one mile away. No amount of letter writing would provide the babysitting for young James. The idea of communication as understanding, made possible after Jürgen Habermas ([1981] 1987), located the function of communication as one aimed at unifying once-conflicting or conceptually distant individuals in dialogue. In this model, the act of communication overcame distance by unifying the sender and receiver in the one dialogical act. By contrast, what is seen in these accounts is that it was not understanding but transmission that was starting to have cultural effects. It was an approach to viewing communication as transmission that could begin to grapple with the ontic function of the postal system of communication, as the unidirectional flow of material signals, and the ontological effects of this mode of operation.

Non‐Dialogical Media If the postal system of communication can be thought from a non‐dialogical frame of reference, it is because of its function as a medium for transmission, rather than understanding. In the logic of the postal system, it is the sending of messages that is given priority, not necessarily their reception. Of course, the reception and reading of letters is deeply important to the users of the postal system—a love letter, a letter from a son or a daughter traveling abroad, even a bill—these objects deliver to their readers things that they have waited for, things that they needed to know. Sometimes these objects are even treasured. But for the system of communication itself, from a nonanthropocentric perspective, it is the sending of letters that is the process that produces and maintains the post. The system is predicated on writing and sending, and this is the cultural technique that it supports in order to propagate itself. The reception of letters, the understanding of their content, and the potential for mutual consent are not important to the system. If they are, then it is only to serve the purpose of new letters being written by the receiver to be then sent back through the post. The sending of letter has famously been used by Jacques Derrida to think through questions of difference and discontinuities. The postal system divides sender and receiver and opens a gap where letters might be lost, purloined, hidden, or misappropriated. For Derrida, “the post is no longer a simple metaphor, it is, as locus of all transfers and all correspondences, the proper possibility of all possible rhetoric” (Derrida 1987: 65). Or as Marian

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Hobson, citing Derrida, argues, “the history of the postal tekhné is to assume transit between pre‐existing sender and pre‐existing receiver; identity and destination are treated as the same. But the nature of any kind of mark, and so anything that can be sent, is to divide both itself and its destination, because it is coded, and takes on several values in one” (Hobson 1998: 177). The technique of writing and sending a letter, and also of mailing children, is not then based on the presupposition that the letter will always arrive at its destination but on the very possibility for it to become lost in the post. Not a nice thought for the parents of James and May, but one that, as Derrida tells us, accompanies any transference via the post. One way that distance is preserved is in the potential for loss that accompanies any transmission. The letter moves across the space of transmission, and in this movement there is always the potential for it to be lost entirely or for its identity to become otherwise as it moves through the system (this is what Shannon (1948) called information entropy). As Derrida argues, the letter—which stands in for desire—can always never reach its destination. The letter, like desire, is always posted to an unknown and perhaps unreachable destination. The only protection against the corruption of messages, lost letters, or lost children is the trusted message bearer. James’ and May’s parents trusted the envoy enough to send their little ones through the post. For James’ parents, this was the postman of a small rural town, someone who they would have known well and who would have been a key part of the community. In May’s case, she sat in the mail cart next to her uncle, who hand delivered her to her destination. The envoys that move the message through the network, the usually invisible messenger, is responsible for the arrival of messages and maintaining trust in the cultural technique of postal communication. This messenger acts as a switch, as a third element, as an addition to the sender‐receiver model. They act as what Serres ([1993] 1995) describes using the analogy of the angel, as the carrier of “the Word” (or the carrier of the child).

Characteristics of Transmission In her analysis of the media theoretical concept of transmission, Krämer argues that, when approached via this properly technical concept, the processes of communication can be seen to be premised on the preservation of distance, rather than its annihilation. Communication, following Krämer, becomes creative rather than destructive. It creates distance, rather than destroying it. It gives distance a form, and allows it to be represented within the communication system as a by‐product of the sending of messages.

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This messenger‐model, however, has been given short shrift in accounts of communication. In terms of the postal system, we usually instead privilege the way a letter might signify some command to the receiver, rather than the way it moves through space. Habermas understood communication as a sign system that was used to coordinate action and form communities. In his model, the letter sent through the post would be understood as composed of various signs that are written down by a sender and decoded by a receiver. This is certainly true of the early history of the postal system, where the post was used primarily to carry military orders. If communication was used in this context to form communities, it was based on the colonization of the space through which the letter travels, as Andrea Mariani has shown in his chapter in this volume. It was the ability to move military orders and coordinate action between two points that formed the potential to not only form communities but to colonize others as well. Krämer (2015) writes that there are four generalizable characteristics of transmission: First that “transmission presuppose a difference that is not reducible to spatial or temporal distance” (165). The original meaning of transmission, as Krämer points out, is to “carry across,” to provide some kind of method for overcoming distance. Thus, in any form of transmission there is presupposed to be “ruptures” or “oppositions” (165). The sender and receiver are defined by their difference. For communication to take place at all, for a transmission to be possible, difference needs to be preserved. If there is no difference, whether spatial, temporal, cultural, political, biological, or otherwise, no transmission can take place. The transmission of sameness to sameness only designates preservation of the same. Krämer gives the example of the transmission of disease. With the invention of the practice of immunization, a small amount of the pathogen was used to give a healthy body a controlled infection. This depends on a cancelling of difference between the self (the healthy body) and the other (the sick body) so that transmission can be interrupted. Without the difference between sick and healthy bodies, when a “forced levelling” has taken place, no transmission is possible. Secondly, Krämer (2015) argues that “Media—as seen in the functional logic of the messenger—thus make it possible to deal with difference” (165). Media that supports the postal system of communication were not designed to annihilate difference, but rather to preserve it. Transmission through the postal system acts as the articulation of distance precisely by providing a means to overcome or deal with this distance, seen acutely in the examples of small children being mailed and the communication system being used to stand in for a transportation system. However, the postal system did not

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annihilate spatial distance, nor did it provide a means for it to be completely overcome, as Carey (1992) first argued. What it did was to illustrate this distance, to bring it into daily life, to make it a part of the discourse system as it became part of the communication network (Siegert [1993] 1999). With the post, communities and relationships supported by constant communication could become dispersed. According to Habermas’ notion of communication, this would constitute the overcoming of distance and difference such that community forming activities can take place far and wide via dialogical communication. However, as Krämer (2015) argues, this is precisely not the point because the goal of the transmission is not dialogue but instead “dissemination” (22). This is the difference between communication as understanding, which Habermas described, and communication as transmission, which is what the postal system actually delivered. In the context of the postal service that was set up in the fifteenth century in Europe to connect the cornerstones of the Habsburg empire in Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, the word “message” did not designate a dialogue or an invitation to communicate. Instead, it meant to issue an order to “act in accordance” (Siegert 1999: 7). Since its beginnings, the transmission of communication through a postal system has been about tracing boundaries through the operation of the system, rather than the messages that it carries. The goal of the postal system is not to create a unified view of the world between sender and receiver, thus overcoming distance, but rather to allow the sender and receiver to take turns in the dissemination of information and to thus maintain a separation between the self and other. Another way to put this is that the role of the postal service is not necessarily about conveying the content of letters, but instead predicated on communicating its own power and its mode of organization. As Siegert writes, “[p]eople did not communicate through the postal system; on the contrary, the postal system communicated through people” (Siegert 1999: 6). Krämer suggests that a generalizable media theoretical claim is that the function of the messenger is to make something perceptible (165). As seen in the examples of postal misuse, the role of the postal system was to make spatial distance perceptible by bringing the role of distance and the movement of messages across distance into discourse networks. But this of course was not what the medium was intended for. Media should fill the space between sender and receiver while, as Aristotle first suggested, also remaining diaphanous and suggesting immediacy (Krämer 2015: 32). Media should overcome the space between sender and receiver while also becoming transparent and withdrawing from the message. However, the space they

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traversed and the time it took for letters to arrive became a factor, just as much as writing styles and discursive content, in how the letter was read and received. This is seen most acutely in love letters, where a heartbroken sender waits in agony from word from his distant lover, which has been delayed by the post. Its overcoming can be seen in the development of the telegraph, which coded all discourse and made the transmission process near enough to instantaneous. In order to keep up with the telegraph and to try and render space diaphanous to communication, the use of cannonballs and archery to send messages via relays was considered, which would have drastically sped up the transmission process.1 Krämer suggests that the making perceptible of transmission “is possible through a transformation that manifests a difference by neutralizing what is ‘singular’ in each case” (165). Media are able to transmit messages and to make things other than themselves—as the messengers—visible precisely for the fact that they withdraw and become invisible as soon as they deliver the message. When communication functions properly, the messenger should withdraw completely behind the written word of the letter. Miscommunication however sheds light on the messenger. Posting a child through the mail puts a new emphasis on the messenger and a new responsibility on the timeliness with which the message (the child) is delivered. What’s more, miscommunication, in this case, made visible the relation of capital to distance within the postal system and the transport system. The Beagles and the Pierstoffs mailed their children because the cost of postage was much cheaper than a train ticket. With the universalization of postage, seen in the advent of the “penny post” in the United Kingdom and similar fixed rate systems in the United States, the cost of sending a letter was no longer directly correlated to the distance that the letter had to travel. Previously, however space was demarcated by cost. The cost of sending a letter was commensurate with the distance that it had to travel. What the mailing of children made clear was the way this new organization of distance opened up new opportunities to test the communication system’s limits. It also made clear the positioning of individuals within the discourse network, with legislation introduced that forbid the practice of child postage, leaving no doubt that people, locked into the postal system of communication, were meant to stay put, rather than travel through the system. If successful communication results in the medium withdrawing in order to make perceptible the content of the message, a miscommunication does the opposite. The miscommunication pulls the covers from off the medium, exposes it, and puts it on display. In this case, miscommunication displayed the medium’s capacity for redefining the relationship between traversable space and capital and also its invitation for people to be brought into a postal existence.

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The Postal System as a Technology of Care If the sending of children through the post made obvious the function of transmission as the first principle of postal communication, as opposed to dialogue, the second function that this miscommunication makes visible is the function of the postal system as a technology of care. For parents to send their children through the post—assuming that they were doing so rationally—they would need to be able to trust the mail carrier to be able to provide a certain amount of necessary care to the children. The senders of children were (one can assume) sure that these messages would arrive—a détournement would be, it would seem, out of the question. There was to be no rerouting, no delay, no undelivered children. The sender was certain that the carrier would give due care to the child and take responsibility for their safe delivery (Lewis 2016). In fact, and as already mentioned, in the case of James Beagle, the mail man, Vernon Lytle of the Rural Free Mail, would have been a trusted member of the community. He was well known and often seen in the small town of Batavia (Pope 2013). In the case of May, her mother’s cousin was a clerk for the Post Office, and he was able to chaperone her for her entire trip through the postal system (Pope 2013). Eventually, after the introduction of laws that restricted what live animals could be posted, the mail service limited its duty of care. After 1920, the only animals that could be legally sent by post were those that did not require food or water during transit. However, the postal system continues to take on the role as a technology of care by setting up the potential for communication and by rendering people as subjects within a system of exchange. These conditions are not those set only by the two people engaged in dialogue through the post but by the system for writing down and the system for transmission itself. The post and its regulation linked the condition of subjects with their participation in the message exchange network, which was able to be controlled and policed. Not only that, but the very idea of “self ” was also linked to the ability to communicate. The potential of expressing the self, as Gilles Deleuze would say, became related to bandwidth as the inbetween or the surface for interaction (Delezue and Parnet [1977]2007: 6–7). It became related to what could be written down and sent. This was obvious, and made quite literal, in the case of the mailing of children. What could be expressed through the post, what could be sent, was quite literally the living, breathing child subject of the postal service. But in extension, the transmission of messages as well as children through the post constituted the conditions for the possibility of the communication of what it is to be a subject in the world. Understanding communication in this way asks one to focus on processes rather than the objects that a letter signifies.

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Although the postal system is a relatively ancient form of communication, the idea of the post as a technology of caring for one’s own subjectivity is a relatively recent phenomenon. For most people the idea of using the post for personal correspondence was still foreign, at least up until the middle of the nineteenth century. “The post had been many things in the memory of mid‐century Americans—a news source, a medium for business communication, a resource for making special (typically tragic) announcements—but it had not been a broadly interactive network, and its rites and rhythms had no fixed place in everyday experience” (Henkin 2007: 94). But the involvement of ordinary people within the network of the postal system happened so quickly that by 1914 people trusted not only their written correspondence to the mail but also their children! This was due to the development of a number of cultural techniques around the codes and ideals of intimacy that would go on to shape communication through the post, and later through distributed digital communication networks. This was the becoming of the post as a technology of the self, as a cultural technique of epistolary communication emerged, as well as a technology for transmission, communication, and coordination. “What emerged most generally during this period was a set of practices, discourses, and beliefs—a postal culture” (Henkin 2007: 94). Foucault (1988) identified four major types of technologies, which almost always operate in an interrelated fashion: technologies of production, technologies of sign systems, technologies of power, and technologies of the self. System of communication are usually considered as dominated by technologies of sign systems, which permit the use of and exchange of signs, meanings, and signification. These technologies are developed to make it possible to coordinate action, which can then be linked to technologies of power. However, by focusing on the idea of care and the postal system, we might be able to see how the postal system took on the role of a technology of the self and specifically offered opportunities for the care and maintenance of the self. Technologies such as this, in Foucault’s words, “permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and ways of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality” (Foucault 1988: 18). The technology of the postal system, by introducing systems for writing down and sending, introduced a type of method for the upkeep of those things thought to be central to the self, including happiness, rationality, love, and wisdom. The post was used as a means of taking care of yourself—sending letters to friends, relative, acquaintance, and loved ones, in order that they may reciprocate.

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Foucault tells us that the development of administrative structures and bureaucracy during the imperial period upset the dominance of oral rhetoric in the public sphere. From the time of Plato to the Hellenistic period a shift occurred where the dialectic was no longer about speech acts but about written correspondence. Foucault writes, “[t]aking care of one‐self became linked to a constant writing activity. The self is something to write about, a theme or object (subject) of writing activity” (Foucault 1988: 27). Or as Siegert argues, a new type of rationality called the raison d’état transformed everyone into subjects of the modern state. The governmental technology of such centralized political and administrative power was a comprehensive police system—the knowledge and practice of establishing order and regulating all relationships: between people and the state, the people and things, the people and the people and the people and discourse (32).

The role of the police was to direct the traffic of communication. The postal system was one of the ways in which these channels could be organized and controlled. As far as postal communication would go, Foucault would call this practice an expression of the system’s “governmentality,” which structures the “possible field of action” (Foucault 1983: 221). The guidebooks and the protocols of communication via letter filtered the several possible ways of behaving, ways of writing, ways of responding, into one method of communication via post. But there are always possibilities to resist. The mailing of children enacted a kind of freedom to send whatever you liked, as long as you either trusted the carrier or were prepared if the package was damaged. But this instigates a type of agonism, a struggle against the governmentality of the post, which, as with the example of children being mailed, responds with legislation and raises the stakes. You can still mail children, if you like, but you risk being punished. In the end, freedom always operates in a way that is conditioned by this agonistic field. And for Foucault, care for the self takes place precisely in this agonistic field, which signals a struggle of the self between learned rules and regulations. Foucault asks, what kinds of knowledge about the self were disavowed by rules and systems? And how is the subject to discover himself or herself based on the types of interactions and self‐reflection that these rules, regulations, and practices facilitate? These questions draw attention to a type of struggle and a type of game that involves a player and a set of protocols for action. It signals the struggle that is manifest be “the relations of power in which the subject is formed” (Foucault 2011: 68). Within the struggle associated with the playing out of these relationships, miscommunication— the use of systems against themselves—has started to take on a key role.

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Conclusion: Systems for Writing Down and Sending (Aufschreibesysteme) Before language set about representing ideas, noise, in the form of vocalized sounds, was sent from one person to another and this acted as a way of connecting individuals (Siegert 1999, 1). This was the beginning of a postal system that was based not on the content of messages, nor whether or not this content promoted dialogue and unification but on the dynamics established by transmission. As Marc Botha (2007) writes, “[t]he voice brings us together in this always slightly dysfunctional conversation. But the voice divides us again because, in our conversation, it is the most obvious reminder of our separation from each other—our individual voices, as they drift through endless talking.” The voice, the noise, is transmitted and establishes a condition for a connection. This is now continued in written correspondence. But the content of messages, those things that are created to establish our identity, are what ensures separation. This content, the narcissistic writing down and sending messages, as a technology of caring for oneself, is a becoming of the individual that is always striated by media systems as it passes through them. The postal system in this sense constituted what Kittler ([1985] 1990) in his defining work of the same name would term a “discourse network,” the German for which (aufschreibesysteme) is literally translated as writing‐down systems.2 Within this system, other forms of writing, such as literature, became epochs of the postal system, as argued by Siegert. They become understandable as an information system only by viewing them through the paradigm of the postal system of communication, which is predicated on relays, transmission over a preserved distance and delays and détournements between the self and the other. Foucault (1988) writes that the development of the administrative structures and the bureaucracy of the imperial period increased the amount and role of writing in the political sphere. In Plato’s writings, dialogue gave way to the literary pseudodialogue. But by the Hellenistic age, writing prevailed, and real dialectic passed to correspondence. Taking care of oneself became linked to constant writing activity. The self is something to write about, a theme or object (subject) of writing activity. (27)

The self, taking care of oneself, speaking politically, becomes first of all defined by the written word. But as people were brought into postal existence, letters needed to be sent; they needed to be transmitted for one to engage in discourse with others.

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The conclusion of this chapter, which started with the example of children, rather than written correspondence being sent through the mail, is that the postal system acts as a non‐dialogical system. This claim is not meant to signify that the post is non‐dialogical simply because our definition of it has expanded to include more than the sender and receiver. It is indeed true that any approach claiming to offer a post‐communication theory needs to expand the definition of communication to include more people than two in a dialogue—and this is one of the things that has been done here. The picture of communication systems offered here includes the sender, the receiver, and the mail men and women as well as the rules and protocols for transmission—but it is also more than this. The postal system primarily can be considered as non‐dialogical because of the way it excludes noise and seeks to insulate messages from the outside. For the postal system to deliver messages the mail men and woman, the mail sorting system and the writing system used to write down, sort, and deliver messages need to function as a technology of care—in order to ensure that letters arrive and that they conform to an acceptable style that is proper to the communication system— while simultaneously acting as a technology of governmentality. Because of this, it mitigates dialogue by insisting on one‐way communication. Media systems such as the postal service and its extension into social media not only are invasive but also make possible non‐dialogic communication. This is because their function is not to support communion, as we’ve been led to believe, but rather the opposite.

Notes 1 Bernhard Siegert describes the author Heinrich von Kleist’s Project of a Cannonball Postal Service in Relays: Literature as An Epoch of the Postal Service: “Kleist proposed a projectile or cannonball express: an institution that, with suitably situated artillery stations spaced within firing range of each other, would discharge, from mortars or howitzers, hollow shells, which have been stuffed full not of powder but letters and packages.” 2 Thank you to my friend and colleague Michael Bachmann for pointing this out to me.

References Botha, M. (2007), “How to Lose Your Voice Well,” Postmodern Culture 17 (2). Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/217406

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Carey, James W. (1992), Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, London and New York: Routledge. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari ([1980] 2004), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, New York: Continuum. Deleuze, G. and C. Parnet ([1977] 2007), Dialogues II, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam, New York: Columbia University Press. Derrida, J. (1987), The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1983), “The Subject and Power,” in H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 208–26, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1988), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, eds. Luther H. Martin, H. Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, London: Tavistock Publications. Foucault, M. (2011), The Courage of Truth, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Habermas, J. ([1981] 1987), Theory of Communicative Action, Volume Two: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas A. McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press. Heidegger, M. (1971), Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter, New York: Harper & Row. Henkin, D. (2007), The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth‐Century America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hobson, M. (1998), Jacques Derrida: Opening Lines, London: Routledge. Kittler, F. ([1985] 1990), Discourse Networks 1800/1900, trans. M. Metteer and C. Cullens, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Krämer, S. (2015), Medium, Messenger, Transmission: An Approach to Media Philosophy, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Lewis, D. (2016), “A Brief History of Children Sent Through the Mail,” Smithsonian.com. Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ smart‐news​/brie​f‐his​tory‐​child​ren‐s​ent‐t​hroug​h‐mai​l‐180​95937​2/ Peters, J. D. (1999), Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Pope, N. A. (2013), “Very Special Deliveries,” Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Available at: https​://po​stalm​useum​blog.​si.ed​u/201​3/02/​ very‐special‐deliveries.html Serres, M. ([1993] 1995), Angels and Modern Myth, New York: Random House. Shannon, C. E. (1948), “A Mathematical Theory of Information,” The Bell System Technical Journal 27: 379–423, 623–56, July, October. Siegert, B. ([1993] 1999), Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Virilio, P. ([1998] 2003), The Information Bomb, trans. C. Turner, London and New York: Verso.

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Miscommunication and Democratic Membership Reidar Due

Dialectic This chapter discusses the origins and implications of a current ideological self‐image within Western elites. This self‐image is one of tolerant rationalism, its ideological expression is, I will argue, institutional liberalism. One of the origins of this conception is therefore the growth of institutions, national and international, in the postwar era. One of its implications, on the other hand, is a branding of groups, which do not wish to participate in an institutional society, or who do not wish to share in the kinds of rationality that is characteristic of an institutional society. The chapter goes on to argue that terms such as “populism” and “miscommunication” are results of the need, on the part of the elites, to demarcate themselves from its institutional other. This chapter is written against the background of Hegel’s political philosophy and employs some elements of his dialectical method. In particular, it uses the Hegelian method of taking elaborate statements of thought as historical documents and then subjects these statements to an analysis, which is both sympathetic and critical. In Hegelian terminology, such a method of analysis is called “immanent critique.” The chapter sees two texts to be symptomatic of postwar institutional ideology and subjects these texts to an immanent critique. It has its first focus on a contemporary political pamphlet by the political scientist Jan‐Werner Müller, What is Populism? (Müller 2016). It then moves on to argue that the ideological premises, concerning rationality, which guide Müller’s argument, are to be found in a more elaborate form in an earlier text written by the sociologist Jürgen Habermas: Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1981). Reading these two texts as historical documents, the chapter aims to situate current discussions of miscommunication within the history of postwar political thought.

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Hegel’s political philosophy has proved to be prophetic, one may say. We can see that the development of the modern state, and its relation to society, during the last two centuries have been anticipated by Hegel’s conception of the state as an umbrella for all activities in society. This is particularly evident in the institutions of the welfare state, which evolved in Europe after 1945—and as a response to 1945: modern welfare (and international) institutions should now form a wall against authoritarian rule and promote substantial justice beyond the norms of the hierarchical and divided societies, which had produced the two world wars. The Hegelian conception further entails the notion that institutions embody ethical values and collective aspirations. I believe that this principle could also help us to understand the institutional ideology of contemporary elites—and by implication their relation to what is defined as “populism.” The current elite ideology is one that I will argue can be defined as “liberal institutionalism.” This is the ideology that collective ethical aspirations toward justice are absorbed within a wide range of social and legal institutions. The work of institutions is then to translate aspirations, of tolerance, for instance, or equity, into action, on behalf of the community. Opposition to liberal institutionalism would be a challenge to the power of institutions to be able to function in this way as a vehicle of ethical (and broadly speaking political) aspirations. The concept of liberal institutionalism is meant as a model or a constructive device, not as a theoretical‐empirical term. No doubt elite ideologies are complex and vary between countries, and I am here mainly concerned to describe a European prototype. Hence, the liberal institutionalist outlook forms an ideal type, which allows us to analyze the implications of elite ideology on a simplified case. (Incidentally, this model approach is also one that is practiced by Habermas in his Theory of Communicative Action.) The understanding of institutions as ethically purposeful is not only an ideology but is also embedded in an actual historical process of modernization. It is through a specific interpretation of this modernization process that the elite ideology is shaped. I will look at the sociology of Habermas as a prototype of this interpretation (Habermas 1981). The “populist” challenge to the inherent rationality of modern institutions may appear unintelligible from the ideological viewpoint of institutionalism. This is due to the far-ranging background assumptions that this ideology entails, concerning what modern democracy consists of. It is a challenge, which would appear, to this ideology, to defy the very rules of political communication. My purpose in this chapter is to contribute to making this challenge to the current elite consensus seem less obscure. It will do so not by validating anti‐institutional arguments but by looking at the terms on which

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the liberal institutional ideology understands democracy—and democratic communication. On the level of method, I believe that Hegel’s dialectic mode of interpretation offers a fruitful method for thinking about political ideologies of this kind. Any ideology tends to present itself as a one‐sided perspective: dialectic allows us to think about political ideology from a perspective that makes it intelligible from the outside and hence in a less unilateral form. That means, in Hegelian terms, to look at an ideology according to its historical objectivity and not according to its “position” within a landscape of debate.1 According to the dialectical method, “objectivity” signifies a set of background assumptions. These assumptions are dependencies which are both conceptual and historical. These dependencies are not always manifest at the surface of argumentation. Such a dialectical method entails not conceiving of political processes as taking place in a playing field demarcated by “views,” as I said. It also means that one should not limit oneself to tracking individual histories of parties or institutions in separation from a larger historical process. Instead, one follows a particular problem in its conceptual and historical genesis. The genetic understanding aims to bring to light the intelligibility of a problem through an immanent critique of a thought formation, in this case an ideology. Within the ideology of liberal institutionalism, the chapter analyzes the genesis of a specific form of intolerance. To call a form of critique “immanent” means that it does not aim to be a direct refutation of the conclusions of the thought formation that one criticizes: immanent critique is not an attempt to prove that this thought formation is inconsistent. It is an attempt, on the basis of a sympathetic reading of its own self‐conception, to point to a certain blind spot, which turns out to be in contradiction with its stated aims. Here, I seek to show that a certain defence of democracy (as institutionalism) leads to a denial of democracy (as emotive communication). This understanding of critique may sound very familiar, as it evokes Derrida’s method of deconstruction. This association is not unwarranted as Derrida was himself a scholar of Hegel, but here I am not seeking to show how a liberal and elitist understanding of democracy deconstructs itself. The chapter seeks rather to point to a social and political reality of emotion, which this conception of democracy appears to repress. This reference to a reality of emotion is developed in successive steps through an immanent reading of the two political thinkers Jan‐Werner Müller and Jürgen Habermas, in light of a concept of “symbolic exchange” (Baudrillard 1976).2 Immanent critique was a method within intellectual Marxism of the twentieth century. It was practiced, for instance, by Georg Lukács in his

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interpretation of the philosophy of the young Hegel (Lukács 1967). My own method is close to that of Lukács (in that work), but it does not seek to argue for Marxist conclusions. It is arguing rather for a critical self‐examination on the part of liberal elites. The problem that I seek to trace is the emergence of a breakdown of communication between the two discursive groups in Western society commonly referred to as “elites” and “populists.” Sociologists are currently discussing this divide in terms of oppositions in value attachments, for instance, between family values and cosmopolitan values. I will discuss this phenomenon, and this debate, on a meta‐level. I will analyze the interpretations available to the liberal “cosmopolitan” elites of their own historical position, and mission, in society. There is in Western society, and particularly among liberal elites, a widespread fear of political ghosts. Derrida’s optimistic idea of the return of a communist ghost has been overtaken in public discourse by a series of new ghost scenarios. What is referred to as “populism” could be seen as the sign that a certain kind of democracy, which, during the 1930s, ended in the abolition of democracy, is about to return. If 2008 resembles 1918, then the 2020s could be like the 1930s: the distrust in state authorities following the First World War would be paralleled in the distrust of state and financial institutions following the banking crisis ten years ago. Just as the post–First World War climate was a perfect humus for the growth of a new kind of politics, which led to totalitarianism, so the ideological disarray of the past decade seems ominously to forebode a rise of antidemocratic movements. What is characteristic of Leninism and Nazism as ideologies would be echoed in the new ideologies of the extreme left and the nationalist right. This kind of ideology consists in the belief that political movements and state decisions, display, or should display, a drama resembling the drama of individual human life. This hope is captured perfectly in Martin Heidegger’s aphorism that the “ground is also an abyss”: the ground of the state can also be the abyss of revolution. Hence, according to these antidemocratic ideologies, the individual subject can mirror itself within the process of politics. The subject can find in this mirror the meaning of its existence.

Outside of Parliament This idea of a direct mirror between the individual and a political process can sound very plausible and take the form of a belief in direct democracy based on the notion of an ongoing political event, as theorized, for instance, by the Maoist philosopher Alain Badiou. The idea of democracy as an engaging

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collective event involves thinking of the political in a way that, which differs quite sharply from basic assumptions within liberalism. By “liberal” I do not here mean the philosophical doctrines of utilitarian political thinkers, but a picture of the state and its relationship with citizens, which is implied in the historical experience of liberalism in the nineteenth century. The following is a Hegelian ideal type of the nineteenth-century liberal considered as a figure who defines himself through a specific relationship with the state (Camfora 2008).3 Whereas in existential, or radical politics, the individual citizen seeks to mirrors himself in a political drama, seeing the state as an instable entity that could at any point be overturned, in liberalism the life and the liveliness of society are grounded in the stability of the state. This means that the liberal citizen is an individual who mirrors himself, not in a drama or a process, but in a state that it sees as the representative and protector of its interests and aspirations. This state guarantees—or should in the future guarantee—for the individual, its right to exercise a specific range of activities: ownership of property, trade, political participation, public speech – and religious worship. Historically, the kind of activity that mattered most has varied. In the nineteenth century, religion was the most contested political arena in many countries. In Britain, this was due to the multireligious situation of the Empire. In Southern Europe, it had to do with the political power of the church. In the liberal conception, the life of society, the liveliness of initiative, springs from the force of individuals, whose activity is both protected and stimulated by the state. Michel Foucault has thus analyzed how the term “laissez faire,” which was introduced to bring an end to strict state control over the economy, has the meaning of actively stimulating activity within certain bounds (Foucault 2004). Hence, for the classical liberal, the sphere of the political is dramatic only when the stability created by the state, or which the state ought to establish, falters. Public debate is for the liberal positive insofar as it testifies to a lively exchange of opinion and shows the tolerance within society of a diversity of opinion. It is not on the other hand desirable if it puts into question the stability of the state, for it is this stability, and the rule of law on which it is based, which create the basis for all the lively activities of society, whether they be political, economic, or religious. Hannah Arendt analyzes the reverse of such a situation within the Nazi movement in Germany (Arendt 1958). Now, there is a widespread worry in our society that we are about to witness a rise of unconventional political parties and of leaders defending illiberal policies. These movements often advocate a “direct” connection between the leader and the “people.” By direct one should understand “non‐institutional.” This development appears to signify a return of an unstable political climate

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similar to that of Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Now far from denying that these tendencies are manifest, I will go on to discuss how they can be interpreted within the institutional ideology of the elites. First, however, I will say something more about these illiberal tendencies and what they are supported by, on the level of ideas. They are stimulated by historical trends of different magnitude and with different historical timelines. To name just two: the influence of post‐structuralist philosophy and the return of Catholicism as a political force. The systematic disinterest in parliamentary democracy within French and German political philosophy since the 1920s is very striking. With the exception of a few figures such as Raymond Aron, Jürgen Habermas, and Claude Lefort, each writing from a different political perspective, the dominant philosophical and intellectual trends of the Frankfurt school, of existentialism and post‐structuralism proclaimed a definition of the political, which was not grounded in liberal democracy. The political would be located on a different stage than parliamentary debate; it would be more dramatic or more abstract than these debates and the legal nexus between citizen and state. There appears, then, a discursive gap between the topics deemed political within philosophy and the social questions, which were political within the sphere of parliamentary democracy. The legacy of the Frankfurt School and of post‐structuralism in politics is thus that a stratum within the group of European intellectuals will be prepared to think of the political in terms, which are separate from the questions debated in parliament or in local politics. The other trend is a return of the religious question. What Spinoza called the “theologico‐political” referred to the historical problem of peace between Protestants and Catholics, and toleration of the Jews (Yovel 1992). In the nineteenth century, we can think of a theologico‐political complex, which framed the nation-state in religious, but at the same time quasi‐secular, terms. What we refer to as “nationalism” thus implies, in Europe, a Christian nation. Even when the state overtly defines itself against the church, as the French republic does with its secular principle of education, the nation that the state refers to as its ground of legitimacy is known to be a Christian nation. Hence, illiberal attacks on the state could in France take the form of mobilizing the church against the state during the Vichy regime. Now, the tactic, which consists in mobilizing the unity of nation and church, is in our European situation an attractive option—but only in countries with a Catholic tradition; (Protestant nationalists tend to espouse the state as the expression of nationhood.) The emerging Catholic league stretching from Warsaw to Budapest and from Budapest to Munich problematizes liberal conceptions of the political with much the same effect as the philosophical

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discourse created by post‐structuralist Marxists. In one case, the political is located outside the state within a union of church and nation. In the other case, the political is located outside of parliamentary politics in the spontaneous manifestation of the event.

Elites In this chapter, I will not question the reality of these trends, but the interpretation of their political significance in relation to democracy. I believe that terms like “miscommunication,” “fake news,” and “populism” are signifiers, which liberal elites employ as instruments to defend themselves against challenges to institutionalism. The liberal institutionalists move a step beyond seeing the state as a mirror of their aspirations as they now see the state as a presence within society, a presence throughout society in the form of various institutions. By endorsing this institution-producing state, the liberal is no longer defending just classical liberal aspirations but a wider range of ethical aspirations, which grew out of the postwar experience of fighting injustice both materially and in symbolic terms, with the ultimate purpose of creating an inclusive and equal society. Here it is important to introduce a small caveat. The current elites with its ethical aspirations of social and symbolic justice should not be referred to as “technocrats.” This is because no one likes to refer to himself as a technocrat: the term “technocracy” is a derogatory word used by certain intellectuals who believe that questions concerning, for example, income distribution are bureaucratic questions belonging within administration and that they therefore do not form part of what constitutes the essence of the political. It is more accurate to refer to the ideology of these current elites as “liberal institutionalism.” This term is based on the sociology of modern society put forward by Daniel Bell in his book The Coming of Post‐Industrial Society from 1973. He there argues that the late capitalist society is one that is governed largely by institutions rather than by state, market, and individual (Bell 1973). The liberal institutionalists that I see as an ideal type believe that national and international institutions, which have grown steadily since 1945, are the result of innumerable political battles led by progressive individuals and parties, whether liberal or on the left. These institutions by now embody a dense web of values and aspirations, which we can identify as modern. It would be insane, the liberal institutionalist thinks, to throw these institutions overboard or to speak as if they didn’t exist, as if one could formulate the problems of religion, or the problems arising

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from relations between states or from relations between races in a new way. A rejection of institutions and the benefits they produce would inevitably mean to return to a prior position of reflection, an inferior, more dogmatic position. We can be proud, these liberals think, of having moved past the unthinking racisms and dogmatisms of our parents and grandparents. We don’t need to look back too far to find the ugly head of political aggression. Much is thus at stake for us as individuals who can exercise our tolerance— but much is at stake also for modern society generally. Modern society evolved politically in the West as a process and as a set of aspirations, which can be summed up in the term “democracy.” This term designates in the context of modern society not just a “parliamentary system.” Nor is democracy a utopian term, which is awaiting definition within some conception of “direct” democracy. Democracy is, in the vocabulary of these liberal modernists, a political system, which is both the product of modern society and a protection against those forces, within modern society, which are not modern. Democracy consists therefore both of institutions, which allow citizens to coexist respectfully, and of aspirations toward tolerant coexistence—aspirations that would be threatened by illiberal ideologies. This conception of democracy as the political regime of a modern liberal society is thus more sophisticated, in theoretical terms, and also more historically embedded in the post‐1945 experience than the classical liberal conception of the nineteenth century. That was a conception of atomized individuals standing up against, and supporting, a state that it sought to model in its own liberal image. The modern liberal is not primarily concerned to model the state but to model society. He is concerned to use socialist techniques of social transformation to liberal ends: progress comes not with revolution but, incrementally, through education. According to this conception, those who are enemies of democracy—within modern society—are people who do not really wish to participate in the society that “we” are creating for them. In German, there is a word for ethnic minorities and social subgroups which resist social integration: parallel societies (Parallelgeselschaften). Modern society is thus in this modernist conception integrative, and the process of integration is mildly coercive, as society demands participation. Institutions are then to be seen not as abstract entities of state bureaucracy created for administrative or policing purposes. On the contrary, the institutions of the state facilitate coordination between social agents and support their participation in society. I will argue that the terms “miscommunication” and “populism” have been invented to articulate within this liberal modernism what it rightly sees as a threat to its values. In the remainder of this chapter, I will look at some

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possible problems confronting this ideology from within. This will lead to a number of theses concerning “populism.” To anticipate them here, they are as follows: (1) “Populism” refers to a desire, on the part of the state and its ruling elites, to control membership within democracy. (2) Criteria for membership in democracy are linguistic and discursive. (3) Outside of these criteria is a domain of interests, which can be referred to as emotional. I will examine the liberal ideology typical of modern Western societies through two examples, which I think are historically symptomatic and prototypical. One is contemporary. It is an essay by the political scientist Jan‐Werner Müller called What is Populism? It dates from 2016. The other is a classical text in political theory, defining salient aspects of the liberal ideology of the postwar elites that I just outlined. It is a text from 1981, and thus written during the 1970s, entitled Theory of Communicative Action. It is written by the political activist, sociologist, and political philosopher Jürgen Habermas. He more than anyone else brought the question of democracy into the center of intellectual and philosophical discussion during the last four decades.

What is populism? In What is Populism? Müller examines different sources of the problem of antidemocratic politics during the last decades. He also critically examines the meaning and uses of the term “populism.” He seeks to limit its definition so that it does not contain any element of what he sees as a patronizing, elitist attitude. To take “the populist” seriously means for Müller to see him, or her, as an adversary and not as someone who is weak, or too weak to be taken seriously. This laudable intention to address the populist as an equal, and on equal terms, outside of any patronizing elitist prejudice, turns out, in the concrete analysis, to encounter some quite thorny questions regarding motivation— and the attribution of motivation to political agents and supporters of political movements. These problems stem from a conceptual ambivalence that is inherent to the argument. The text in fact slides between using the term “populism” in a wide sense, which covers current usage, and a narrow sense, which makes populism seem like a first step on a path leading out of democracy. This logic of moving from a wide to a narrow definition is

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effective in conjuring up the specter of a threat, or a slide: what may seem like harmless provocations are in fact the first steps onto a slide leading toward authoritarian rule. Müller’s narrow definition of populism is that it is an enemy of parliamentary and liberal democracy. This is so because liberal parliamentary democracy is based on a principle of pluralism. Different parties, opinions, and groups negotiate through representatives and reasoned debate—and no particular group or opinion has the privilege of representing “the people” as a whole or its “general will” to use Rousseau’s phrase. Populism is then an anti‐pluralist search for, or fantasy of, “the real people”: the secret unity of the nation, embodied and represented in one charismatic leader. This leader tends also to present himself as an outsider to the political system and its current elites. Populism, in this sense of an illiberal movement dominated by a charismatic leader, is, Müller now goes on to say, like a shadow of democracy and its “constant peril” (Müller 2016: 11). Populism is then, according to Müller, not simply an ideology which appeals to popular views and disregards economic facts. He argues against this conception because it makes populism seem harmless. Spelling out this argument, he says: In any case, making a political debate a matter of “responsible” versus “irresponsible,” poses the question, Responsible according to which values or larger commitments? Free trade agreements—to take an obvious example—can be responsible in light of maximising overall GDP and yet have distributional consequences that one might find unacceptable in light of other values. The debate then has to be about the value commitments of society as a whole, or perhaps about the different income distributions that follow from different economic theories. (Müller 2016: 13–14)

Müller here makes a number of moves, which are characteristic of his enterprise as a whole and of his conception of the populist voter. These moves reflect a liberal conception of the contemporary situation, which is itself, as I will argue, elitist. First, he acknowledges the ethical core of politics, denying that political questions can be reduced to material or utilitarian problems. Politics is not reducible to a rational choice between different goods that can simply be maximized. Politics concerns socially manifest value commitments: “Responsible according to which values?” Now, values are, even when they refer to material goods, immaterial. They are immaterial criteria for choosing between options. Insofar as having values provides the citizen with such criteria, values are immaterial goods, which

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can be expressed, for instance, as ideals, aspirations, role models, or aesthetic codes. Since politics is a negotiation of value commitments, according to this passage, we must then ask how these values are to be negotiated? This is, as we shall see later, a central concern also for Habermas in his Theory of Communicative Action. Here, the example, which Müller uses to develop the notion of a value commitment, is a classical ideological opposition between neoliberals (or free market conservatives), on the one hand, and socialists, on the other. One camp seeks to create growth, the other to increase equity. So far, we are on the level of everyday political debate in postwar Europe. Müller now goes on to gloss this standoff between socialists and neoliberals in terms of value, by saying: “The debate then has to be about the value commitments of society as a whole, or perhaps about the different income distributions that follow from different economic theories.” The two parts of this alternative are theoretically, and philosophically, quite different. The first part concerns the ethical debate within society as a whole, and the second concerns the technical—industrial and bureaucratic—expertise, which determines policies for welfare and social justice. This equivocation is symptomatic of Müller’s entire enterprise. He begins this paragraph by invoking values, hence immaterial goods, but then exemplifies this phrase by referring to income distribution. By including socialist politics through phrases such as “different income distributions that follow from different economic theories,” he further translates a political ideology, which has its origin in a humus of political passion and action, into a sort of metalanguage, which concerns technical expertise. This metalanguage is situated, we may observe, at one remove from political passions and contexts of action. Ideology can now be framed as a series of “value commitments.” There is no talk, for instance, of appropriation by the state of the means of production, of trade union claims, or any other concrete items of a political and historical process. Phrases, which would have a literal connection, on the level of the signifier, to historical reality—to meetings or to theoretical texts—are thus replaced within this metalanguage by terms, which refer to an epistemic agency: the application of economic theory to income distribution. The expression “income distributions” itself is historically clean and free of any specific historical reference. Now, it is part of Müller’s project, as it was part of the philosophy of communicative action in Habermas, to show that politics involves acknowledging, on the part of each participant, the right of the political opponent to have opposing views. This equality means for Müller that one should not patronize the opponent, by treating him as a kind of patient. This is spelled out as meaning that one has to take the other as an opponent in

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the specific sense of “opponent in argument,” that is, take him seriously as someone who argues. This would be an alternative, for instance, to seeing the opponent as someone who expresses emotions such as anger or frustration. For if one does so, one puts oneself in the superior position of a therapist or a social worker. Müller here picks up on the hermeneutics of dialogue formulated by Gadamer, who says that there can be no real dialogue between a doctor and a patient, since a dialogue requires that one party does not treat what the other says as a symptom (Gadamer 1965). The requirement to take the opponent seriously induces Müller to introduce quite a strong distinction between reasons and emotions as motivations for ideological action. He articulates this distinction as follows: The simple fact is that “anger” and “frustration” might not always be very articulate—but they are also not “just emotions” in the sense of being completely divorced from thought. There are reasons for anger and frustration, which most people can spell out in some form or other. (Müller 2016: 16)

This spelling out “in some form or other” is what Habermas calls “discourse.” It requires a certain detachment in relation to the values and emotions that one has. Again, we see Müller making moves in two different directions. First, he acknowledges that many emotions, or thoughts expressed in the language of emotion, are much more than mere feelings or passing sensations. They are thoughts—or at least embody thoughts. These thoughts could also be spelled out differently, in a language different from that of anger and frustration. In a parallel move, however, he establishes a hierarchy, whereby it seems that the frustration holder, if we can call him that, is only truly entitled to his frustration as a political commitment that commands respect and deserves to be taken seriously, once he is able to spell out what the underlying thought of this frustration is. He has to be able to do this “in some form or other”—a form other than that of stating his frustration during a demonstration or at a political rally for instance. This quite Habermasian criterion for what constitutes a valid political commitment, and hence a legitimate form of political participation, excludes emotion at the very point of apparently including it—by saying that emotion is not, as one might have thought, completely divorced from thought. The gesture of generosity presupposes an interlocutor who is a very strict rationalist and who would think that emotions are entirely insignificant as a form of political expression. Against this rationalistic rigor, Müller will concede that emotional expression may, in spite of their being emotional, in fact express thoughts, which we can recognize, once they have been expressed in some other form.

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Habermas Müller applies in practice a criterion for what it means to be a legitimate participant in democratic debate, which Habermas sought to articulate in the late 1970s, culminating in his Theory of Communicative Action. This is a criterion that eliminates as illegitimate all emotional expressions. In Habermas, this is not because they have an emotional form, but because such expressions testify to a lack of reflective awareness concerning the subject‐citizen’s own acquisition of political ideology and beliefs. This quality of reflective awareness is for Habermas characteristic of social and political interaction in a modern society. By implication, it is therefore also characteristic of individual subjects within modern society, although it is for Habermas quite important that the argument should not run the other way, from the individual to society. It is not so that a modern society is flexible, tolerant, and regulated by laws, which citizens conform to, because those citizens, as individuals, have certain properties, such as self‐consciousness. This would be a form of thought that Habermas calls the “subjectivity paradigm” (Shabani 2003).4 The argument should instead run the other way, from an analysis of types of social and moral interaction, that is, it should have its roots in intersubjectivity. This methodological principle Habermas calls the “intersubjectivity paradigm.” He emphasizes this difference, as it is not only methodological, referring to the social sciences, but also ethical and political: it is, according to Habermas, only from the point of view of intersubjectivity that one can really grasp why modern society is not simply identical with a neoliberal capitalist society, constituted by individuals who seek to maximize their own private utility.5 According to the theory that he unfolds in Theory of Communicative Action, the ethical core of social interaction in a democratic society is a willingness on the part of citizens to participate in dialogue. This willingness is itself characterized as rational. It depends on a kind of rationality, which is opposed to authority and the unquestioning acceptance of one’s own beliefs about norms. Hence, the capability of being rational is already defined in a way that has political implications. Habermas, who grew up in part during the Nazi regime, writes against the prospect of a collapse of democracy. He develops a particular notion of rationality, which, were it to spread effectively through society, would make society very robust in its resistance to authoritarian structures of government and motivation. This move – this interconnection of rationality and democracy – is accomplished by Habermas through a sociology of modernity. To be modern according to the classical sociological theory of Durkheim means for social agents to be reflective: this in turn means that the norms, which regulate

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actions and define what is at stake, what is admirable, what is taboo, and so on, are not norms which one unquestioningly obeys, for instance, because they are supported by a group of powerful men, such as the elders in the village. One is able, if one is a modern individual, to compare norms and to resolve contradictions between them. With his reliance on Durkheim’s sociology, which he then goes on to elaborate with reference to theories of the modern society considered as a system, or even a system made up of systems, Habermas comes to define the terms reflexivity, modernity, and rationality through one another. This is a very Hegelian strand in his thinking: rationality is an integrative force, just as society, if it is not to disintegrate, has to be able to integrate all its subsystems and reconcile them with everyday experience. The difference between Hegel and Habermas, which concerns us here, is that the integration of society based on reflexivity is articulated by Habermas in terms, which are not based on ethical aspiration or what Hegel would call ethical “substance.” They are, rather, aligned with the bureaucratic rationality of institutions. This is because Habermas sees one of the roots of the Nazi regime in a romantic rejection of industrial modernity. In order to avoid this danger of romanticism, and to keep on board the technical aspects of modern social knowledge, Habermas has to articulate rationality in such a way that a modern individual who is rational is one who participates fully in modern institutions. He is someone who is not unaware of economic reasoning, legal transactions, voting mechanisms or technological opportunities. For if he were, this individual would be a romantic, retreating into his own private self‐consciousness and lifeworld, taking that lifeworld to be threatened by the productive forces unleashed by industrialization.6 There is a coercive aspect of this emphasis on intersubjectivity. I referred earlier to the notion of nonintegrated groups as parallel societies. In the terms of Theory of Communicative Action, one can think of such groups as collective subjects refusing full participation in modernity. They erect a wall between a particular shared value system, or lifeworld, and a larger field of interaction. This wall not only protects its members from various aspects of technical rationality. It also allows them to tone down the modern social requirement of reflexivity in relation to their own norms. Now, if reflexivity and modernity are mutually defining terms, they explain the social meaning of democracy and its capacity to set limits to authoritarian structures. Hence, a group, which sets limits to reflexivity, also sets limits to its own participation in modernity—and in democracy. Such a group therefore withdraws from the social and political space, which would be genuinely democratic.

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Out of Democracy Habermas thus presents powerful arguments, which would allow subsequent generations of liberal institutionalists to think that a kind of democracy that is expressed in the simple direct mechanisms of parliamentary vote and referenda, is an abstract and incomplete form of democracy. The vote of the citizen who is not fully modern, who is not fully educated and reflective, is still a vote, of course, but it is a fragile vote, easily manipulated. It is a vote that all too easily falls under the sway of charlatan leaders of the kind described by Müller as crypto‐authoritarian. Let us put this into perspective. Baudrillard uses an anthropological category of communication derived from the description of non‐modern societies in order to diagnose structural transformations within consumer society in the 1970s. I will develop this concept in a communicative direction in order to bring it more directly into communication with Habermas and his theory of formal dialogue. Baudrillard uses the term “symbolic exchange” as a term of contrast, referring to a type of transaction that formalized communication of the kind described by Habermas, for example, would exclude. Baudrillard argues that modernity is characterized by the gradual erosion of symbolic exchange. I would argue that symbolic exchange as a transaction of desires, which are not contained, or indeed containable, within speech, always takes place, in any society and group. The difference between Baudrillard and Habermas, which interests me here, does not only concern the meaning of “rationality” considered as a value within communication (for instance, in the sense discussed by Lichtenfels in another chapter of this book.) This difference concerns rather the ethical substance of aspirations that can only be expressed indirectly— through symbolic exchange. Symbolic exchange can be seen, in terms of communication, and formulated with Hegel’s concepts, as a process of mediation via a value substance. This mediation makes it possible to communicate in words about salient questions, regarding, for instance, hierarchy, sexuality, shame or death, but without explicitly naming what may be socially too meaningful for direct communication. Symbolic exchange is then the mediation between two agents in relation to a “third,” which, we might say, is too substantial to become a topic of formal communication. This mediation is central to very many social rules and norms such as work ethic or family values – since in any organized social setting one will have certain substantial interests in common. These substantial interests are rarely questioned—and when they are questioned, (because of changes in society, for instance), then the discussion will also automatically take the appearance of a political discussion, as opposed to everyday social exchange.

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Returning to Habermas, reflexivity implies a development within modernity, which also entails a transformation of symbolic exchange. The ideal of communication that Habermas defends, as a route toward social modernity, is one, which relies on a principle of explicitness: it is only possible, he argues, to enter a moral discourse about one’s own beliefs and take up a rational stance in relation to one’s own norms, if these norms are formulated explicitly. This would also mean that one would oneself be able to be explicit about one’s deepest motivations. Now this principle of explicitness is certainly compatible with institutional practices, where the norms guiding action are well defined and very limited in scope. The principle of explicitness is, on the other hand, absolutely not compatible with symbolic exchange. For mediation in relation to a third, which may be partly taboo, relies precisely on a lack of explicitness. If one claims that to be modern is to be rational and to be rational is to be able to be always explicit about one’s norms and motivations, one therefore, by the same token, introduces quite a coercive criterion of participation and membership in society. Those groups, which seek to define their values in opposition to the dominant value system may to some extent hold very explicit values, but the form or communication within a group of shared values is one that seeks to keep intact the idea that certain values are absolute and hence not open to discussion. By extension, now from the group to the individual, and from communication to democracy, the coercive element contained in the explicitness criterion would be that from the inside of the dominant norm group one would not think that individuals who communicate in the form of symbolic exchange, and who refuse the kind of explicitness, which allows others to discuss their norms, are fully capable of entering a democratic dialogue, a modern democratic form of communication. If one further thinks that democracy based merely on individual votes is a somewhat reduced democracy, as the liberal institutionalist tends to think, one can now find ways of saying that the individual who expresses himself in the medium of symbolic exchange—rather than in the medium of rationality—can only participate within democracy in a reduced sense, in the limited form of votes. The voice of such a person does not fully count, indeed cannot fully count—for who would hear it?—that is, who would hear it within the dominant norm group, if the person expresses himself with reference to values that he refuses to make explicit. We have here the coercive normative tools for defining rules of membership within democracy. It is in the interest of the state, as an abstract person, to maintain stability. The ruling elites within the state take over this interest and express it as a need to protect society against extremism, that is,

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against symbolic exchange. In contemporary social reality, what corresponds to symbolic exchange is a relationship with one’s own lifeworld, which has not always already been translated into a language of expertise—the language of “income distribution” following from different “economic theories,” for instance. This direct relation to one’s lifeworld is typically expressed and experienced as emotion. The most salient is the emotion of being in a certain place. Arguably, two of the most characteristic of these emotions, referring to the subject’s belonging to a place, are sentiments of dignity and the loss of dignity. It would therefore not be anger or frustration, which Müller enlists as typically populist emotions, that is primary. One may feel anger because of a loss of dignity, but anger in itself is abstract and can be decontextualized. Dignity, on the other hand, is not. It is an emotion which only acquires content in virtue of a very dense and highly specific social context that the subject belongs to.7 Dignity is also a very interesting quality in relation to the modernity theory of the liberal institutionalists. It has the metalinguistic property of not being translatable into institutional discourse. When did you last receive a letter from the tax authorities praising you for your dignity? When did you last praise the workings of the tax authority for its dignified behavior? By stigmatizing dignity, the discourse on dignity and its cognates, as antimodern, incompatible with democracy, proto‐fascist, and so on, which the modernist liberals are wont to do, one moves in the direction of not simply casting the opponent as an inferior—which it was Müller’s aim to avoid—but of gradually excluding the opponent from the very possibility of communication. This is the prospect, the regulation of membership within democratic discourse, which is meant by the term “miscommunication.”

Notes 1 In English language Hegel literature, one often uses the term “effectivity” to translate the term “‘Wirklichkeit.” I replace “effectivity” with “objectivity,” which is then not taken in the sense of scientific rationality, but in the sense of what has a particular genesis, through which it manifests itself objectively. 2 See also Müller (2003). In this work, Müller establishes his methodological perspective, which is to analyze politics from the point of view of the ideology of ruling elites within the state. 3 This liberal conception is symmetrically opposed to the “Caesarian” conception of democracy put forward by Luciano Camfora in La Democrazia, Storia di una Ideologia. 4 This conception of subjectivity has roots in the German idealist tradition that the earlier Frankfurt school referred to, see Shabani (2003).

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5 The intersubjectivity principle grows out of internal discussion in critical theory, which itself is a critique of any liberal theory based purely on the market. However, Habermas also develops his own form of liberalism within the intersubjectivity paradigm, see Brunkhorst, Kreide, and Lafont (2017). 6 With his notion of a “colonisation of the lifeworld by systemic rationality,” Habermas does in fact take on board this romantic fear—but the modern intersubjectivist does not stay within it, and finds a reflective equilibrium between lifeworld and system. 7 One of the best statements to this effect that I know of is the Marseille film by Robert Guédignan: La ville est tranquille from 2000. A similar statement is made by Ken Loach in a film from 1993 called Raining Stones.

References Arendt, H. (1958), The Origins of Totalitarianism, London: G. Allen and Unwin. Baudrillard, J. (1976), L'échange symbolique et la mort, Paris: Gallimard. Bell, D. (1973), The Coming of Post‐Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting, New York: Basic Books. Brunkhorst, H., R. Kreide, and C. Lafont (2017), The Habermas Handbook, New York: Columbia University Press. Camfora, L. (2008), La Democrazia, Storia di una Ideologia, Bari: Laterza. Foucault, M. (2004), Naissance de la Biopolitique, Cours au Collège de France 1978‐1979, Paris: Gallimard. Gadamer, H.‐G. (1965), Wahrheit und Methode, Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, Tübingen: Mohr. Habermas, J. (1981), Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, 2 vols, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Lukács, G. (1967), Der junge Hegel: Uber die Beziehungen von Dialektik und Oekonomie, Berlin: Luchterhand. Müller, J.‐W. (2003), A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post‐war European Thought, New Haven: Yale University Press. Müller, J.‐W. (2016), What Is Populism? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Shabani, O. P. (2003), Democracy, Power and Legitimacy: The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Yovel, Y. (1992), Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 1: The Marrano of Reason, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

4

There Is No “Error” in Techno‐logics A Radically Media‐archaeological Approach Wolfgang Ernst

While hermeneutics within humanities takes the use of language primarily as intended for understanding in communication, this is a misunderstanding of its originary character in terms of information theory, which takes uncertainty as point of departure. “The concept of information applies not to the individual messages (as the concept of meaning would), but rather to the situation as a whole” (Weaver 1963: 9). The possibility of error is inherent to the concept of communication engineering itself, in order to separate intentional miscommunications (cryptography, frauds, forgeries, fakes) from non‐intentional (material channel) noise in signal transmission. “Uncertainty which arises by virtue of freedom of choice on the part of the sender is desirable uncertainty. Uncertainty which arises because of errors or because of the influence of noise is undesirable uncertainty” (Weaver 1963: 19). Information theory arose under the pressure of engineering needs: the efficient design of electronic communication devices (telephone, radio, radar, and television) to achieve favorable signal‐to‐noise ratios.1 Applied to communication signals, information has been formulated by Wiener as negative entropy, “and a precise measure of certain classes of information can be found by referring to degrees of improbability of a state” (Von Foerster, Mead and Teuber 1953: xiii). When analog signals move through a channel, they lose power and become vulnerable to all kinds of noisy factors. As a cybernetic device to compensate for such loss, the amplifier was developed, adding power, but each time a signal goes through an amplifier, it accumulates or amplifies noise itself. Increased communicational entropy occurs in analog networks, resulting in high error rates. Digital networks use regenerative repeaters instead, which “examine the signal to determine what was supposed to be a one and what

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was supposed to be a zero. The repeater regenerates a new signal to pass on to the next point in the network, in essence eliminating noise” (Golenniewski 2002).2 In increasingly intelligent digital signal transmission, error rates infinitesimally tend to the zero limit.

“Errors,” “Mistakes”? A Media‐analytic Misconception The current interest in “uncertainties” and “errors” in media theory is itself a symptom of a dead end in “digital” culture: the deterministic machine. “Programming culture is infected by incomputable thoughts that are yet to be accounted for” (Parisi 2013: xviii). Even if “contingency is the nightmare of logistics” (Neilson and Rossiter 2017: 109), such unpredictability of randomness is a reminder of its material grounding. “Contingency registers the force of material practices and events that disrupt logistical operations” (Neilson and Rossiter 2017: 109). An aesthetics of imperfection has arrived where it seems to be most unprobable: in digital computation. An essential metamathematical deficiency (the halting problem and Gödel’s concern with the incomputable) gave rise to the Turing machine itself (see Fazi 2018).

Technology Does Not Know “Mistakes” If the archive is understood in Foucault’s sense of l’archive, that is, not as institutional agency of administrative memory, but as the Kantian a priori for media events to occur at all, then the “anarchive” is its technological errors. From the media‐archaeological point of view (coinciding with the apparatus perspective itself), there are no miscommunications in technology‐based signal exchange. On the technical level, any apparent hardware failure acts according to the laws of physics; even what appears contingent for electrons behavior in (quantum) physics, in itself can be mastered by the mathematical equations of probabilities and uncertainties. And for coupled systems, cybernetics has developed a heavy media‐epistemic mechanism called “feed‐back,” which allows for error correction on the fly (such as in Wiener’s Anti‐Aircraft Predictor for artillery in the Second World War (see 1948: 11 et seq.). This extends to “deep learning” in computation, for discovering intricate structures in large data sets “by using the backpropagation algorithm to indicate how a machine should change its internal parameters that are used to compute the representation in each layer from the representation in the previous layer” (LeCun, Bengio and Hinton 2015: 436); initially erroneous validation is thereby successively improved.

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In similarity‐based image retrieval, computational “mistakes” turn out as a chance to be relieved from reducing image cognition to cultural semantics. It has long been impossible to semantically describe an image to the computer and have it retrieve it; the algorithm would rather produce erroneous results. But such mistakes only result from the human point of view which is impregnated by cultural iconologies. One would like the computer to understand the human’s similarity criteria. Ideally, we could define a measure of perceptual or semantic similarity and use it instead of the ubiquitous mean‐squared error measure of similarity. [. . .] However, based on currently available understanding of the human visual system, it is highly unlikely anyone can prove that a given algorithm imitates the human notion of “visual similarity” on more than a trivial set of data. (Picard and Kabir 1993: 161 et seq.)

But what if such a deficiency is turned upside down by changing the perspective from cultural hermeneutics to media (active) archaeology: all of a sudden, it turns out as an “informational” virtue. In automated sound or image retrieval, what appears as erroneous results for humans makes perfect sense from the computing and algorithmic point of view.

Aestheticizing and Preserving Un/ intended Electronic Noise Artists have been invited, even seduced, by technologies to create (or let happen) intentional mistakes and miscommunication (see Krapp 2011). From the engineering point of view, Lev Thermin misapplied electronic oscillations from radio technology to create his Theremin‐vox and Terpsitone, where the interference of the body acts as variable capacitor within the antenna circuit to modulate the acoustic vibrations. Nonlinear sonic distortions in electronic vacuum tube‐based amplifiers or positive feedback excess in electric guitars have become a defining characteristic of rock music (Jimmy Hendrix). In a couple of early video art pieces, intentional “noise” has been meant as critique of contemporary television culture, such as Jean Otth’s TV‐perturbations from 1972, and several installations by Wolf Vostell and Nam June Paik. For museological preservation of media art, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate this intentional noise from unintended noise resulting from the preservation of early video artworks, asking for a cryptography of the technical medium itself. For preservation,

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reconstruction, and reenactment of closed‐circuit video art installations, based on CRT cameras and magnetic tape recorder, solid knowledge of its electronic assemblages is a conditio sine qua non. In the time‐critical realm, there is jitter or time base errors, mechanically resulting from delay in tape speed either already in recording (then irreversible) or by later hardware deterioration (see Gfeller, Jarzyk, and Phillips 2012: 66). Dropout appears on the picture as small white spots or streaks. It can be internally caused by physical deterioration of the tape itself or by external contamination of the tape with dirt or dust. It results in signal loss because the heads that read and display the picture information become contaminated. In analog electronic imagery, beam and focus of the cathode ray and its bias (voltage) define the character of the images. All the more in digital media culture, this deserves preservation as a reminder of the materiality of apparent immaterial signal flows (see Gfeller, Jarzyk, and Phillips, 2012, p. 117). With digital culture, there is a growing distance to the aesthetics of the analog, which becomes a knowledge matter in itself for preservation.

Accidental Technological Discoveries Technical creativity frequently derives from miscommunicative tinkering with technical devices—such as Oersted’s rather accidental detection of electromagnetic induction when a magnetic needle and an electric coil met on one table as media theatrical scene (1819/20). When pre‐Socratic philosopher Thales of Miletos described sparks emanating from rubbed amber, he had unintentionally created high‐frequent electromagnetic waves which were only later discovered as “radio.” More than two millennia later, Lee deForest constructed his vacuum tube triode as a radio wave detector rather by mistake. A media philosophical description of such errant interpretations would highlight the communicative action involved between the inventor and their objects: media knowledge emanating from the artifacts themselves. Technological devices are loaded with inherent knowledge, a latency which waits or insists to be consciously discovered by humans.

Error‐inducing Media Materialism: Circuit Bending, Datamoshing The so‐called “post‐digital” rediscovery of the material factor within information culture goes along with a renewed sensitivity for technical

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failures. Circuit bending provokes errors on purpose, by short‐circuiting (low‐current) electronic devices in “catachretic” ways. According to Fritz Heider, a medium is a large mass of loosely coupled elements, which is susceptible to form, with the difference between loose coupling and tight coupling (see Heider 1959). Even elements from different technical epoques are heterochronically coupled. By means of a “jumper” cable, two points in circuitry can be connected in a way not intended by the engineers. Unlocking previously undiscovered sounds in electronic devices is a media archaeology of its implicit sonicity. Such experimentations with misconnections occasionally result in interesting sounds which are then preserved by hardwiring.3 Research artist Morten Riis applied this to the cassette tape recorder, where the apparatus itself becomes the musical instrument (Riis 2015). The contingencies of the real are thereby integrated into the symbolical regime—a transubstantiation of their essence, from error to composition. Miswiring in the circuit bending of analog electronics is replaced by dyscoding in digital software, where material wiring is replaced by symbolical programming. Datamoshing is the process of manipulating the data of compressed media files, especially video streams, in order to achieve visual or auditory effects in real time, that is, while the file is decoded (see “How to Datamosh Videos”). In professional video editing, the effects of datamoshing are generally viewed as undesirable; thus, applications like Avidemux “try their best to correct these errors and eliminate glitching distortion” (Riis 2015). Most media art, though, has been focused on exploring the aesthetics of noise that is not perceived as a disadvantage from the traditional electric engineering point of view. Noise in these works is experienced as aesthetic enrichment, such as in Bill Viola’s video Information (1973), which does not show an electronic “image” but recorded noise as a result of aberrant signals passing through the video switcher; the accident is actually desired (see Herzogenrath 1997: 113).

“Errors” in Computer (Games) A central misunderstanding between communication studies and media studies has been identified by Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media (1964): the confusion of medium content with the analysis of its technologically induced message. The articulation of the artifact itself is its subliminal massage of the human senses and actions. As already identified by Heidegger in Being and Time (1927), only when tools like the “hammer,” machines, and electronic technologies do not operate in the way they were intended, the medium reveals its essential being. Only in case of failure

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or error, media become apparent as technological beings, flipping from “ready‐at‐hand” to “present‐at‐hand” (Heidegger 1927). But the “error” announcement on the screen, from within a computer program, has been programmed and precalculated itself already—literally taking into account and “counting” with miscommunication already. The conditions for the error in twenty-first-century media have roots in both hardware and software. Looking at mistakes in programs leads to rethinking digital media theory in media‐archaeological terms. Especially when it comes to computing in terms of the Turing machine, breakdowns, loops, and mistakes induce computational theory to reconsider questions relating to media determinism, in favor of unconventional computation. Contrary to its contemporary association with software errors, the notorious “bug” (moth), which Grace Hopper detected between relay contacts in the Mark II computer on September 9, 1945 (see Höltgen, 2014: 298), has been a hardware error, externally induced. In programming, human or automated “debugging” is the equivalent to the hermeneutic tradition of “emendation” in philological text criticism and editing. Internally caused syntax or semantic errors in software programming can be detected a priori, while runtime errors only appear (aletheia) “on the fly,” that is, with computer medium in being, when the calculus is confronted with unexpected signals transformed into data (see Höltgen 2014: 299). When the microprocessual “subface” (Frieder Nake) of the machine disrupts the “surface” of the graphical user interface (GUI) and the narrative imaginary, revealing its technological function, this is a momentary revelation of the technical tempo‐real of the symbolic Read-Only Memory (ROM) code (see Höltgen 2014: 306).4 It is only at such a moment, that the computer interface does not dissimulate but actually reveals its computational function: a true manifestation of the universal Turing machine. A specific media‐archaeological (or media‐archival) target is the program code that is stored in a masked ROM chip. If the chip itself is using a known architecture and a known assembly language, reverse engineering can recover the actual instructions stored in the ROM, by “forensic” philology. Defective microchips and codes both require analytic hacking for media‐philological criticism. While software hacking is risky on the symbolical level, tinkering with circuits that are directly connected to mains electricity is dangerous in a physical sense. After detecting and reading out unknown bits of a program which is magnetically latent in a ROM chip, they can then put through a disassembler and figure out how to make good code (see “Fun with masked ROM/Atmel MARC4”). In case the documentation of the algorithm is lost, material investigation is required, such as resetting a fuse “to allow reading/writing of protected areas or probe a data track to observe data

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being processed by the chip, or even trying to figure out the actual logic of a proprietary chip by viewing and reverse engineering it’s construction” (Höltgen 2014: 306).

Signal‐to‐Noise Ratio in Cultural Tradition While the forensic reconstruction of obsolete code is highly probable because of its inherent time‐invariant logic, the physicality of analog media has resulted in a memory of non‐intentional records which elapse the symbolical notation by the alphabet or the alphanumeric code. The epoque of photography, phonography, and cinematography lead to what Marcel Proust has identified as mémoire involontaire (not to be confused with the administrative archive). Against the historiographical practice of textual memory controlled by the alphabetic code, with the emergence of physical thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and mathematical stochastics in the nineteenth century, a paradigm shift for notions of cultural transmission took place. The humanistic trust in secure preservation of knowledge has since been replaced by the notion of improbabilities of transmission. In parallel, the mathematical theory of communication is not concerned with the “semantics” of the transmitted signals; that is why “noise” here is not just a distortion but also a possible source of information (just like in secret coding). The ratio of such communication engineering, while usually applied to telecommunication systems across spatial distances, can be a theoretical model for analyzing communication across temporal distances as well, with its channel being time (alias “history”) itself. Here, errors, misunderstanding, and noise occur in notorious cases. The channel in communication engineering is “the medium used to transmit the signal from transmitter to receiver” (Shannon 1963: 34), involving all kind of side effects, unintended patterns, and changes. Its cultural equivalent is “tradition.” Noise has been excluded as cultural value for a long time; media‐archaeology uncovers a mémoire involontaire of recordings from the past which was not intended for tradition—a noisy memory, inaccessible for alphabetic or other symbolic writing. While the narrative closures of “media history” as symbolic time order conceptually do not allow for the irruption of the tempo‐real (incidental events), noise emerges from the technical “anarchive” itself. This becomes most apparent in acoustic records themselves. Listening to ancient phonograms, there is always as well the scratch, the hiss of the recording apparatus. The phonograph as media artifact does not only preserve the memory of cultural semantics but past technical knowledge as well, a kind of frozen media knowledge embodied

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in engineering and waiting to be unrevealed by media‐archaeological consciousness.

Oscillating between Message and Noise: Ancient Inscriptions and Machine Philology In accordance with techno‐mathematical communication engineering, techniques of coded tradition have been created to fight the risk of entropic degradation of the message. For example, in the Renaissance, Alberti proposed a numerical sampling of the map of Rome in order to prevent manual copying errors in transmitting it to future reading; from the numerical grid, the urban map can be graphically recreated (see Carpo 2008). But even in coded transmission across long time distance, distortions and noise occur in the channel. A scene where symbolical writing encounters material noise is Lapis Satricanus, an ancient inscription from late sixth or early fifth century BCE, discovered in 1977 by the archaeologists of the Dutch Institute of Rome during their re‐excavation of the temple of Mater Matuta in Le Ferriere (Latio), the ancient Satricum.5 In this case, it can be shown how, just like in technical communication media, semantic noise may result both from the material distortions of the storage hardware and from formal encoding of the data. The textual inscription, like flat files of data strings in computing today, does not itself separate words. A statistical ars combinatoria can offer different readings by sequencing these letter‐data: A) [4‐6]ie iste terai B) [4‐6]iei stet erai C) [4‐6]iei steterai D) [4‐6]ieis tet erai E) [4‐6]ieis teterai F) [4‐6]ieist et erai6 The epigraphical transcription presents the text like this: [.......]EISTETERAIPOPLIOSIOVALESIOSIO      SUODALESMAMARTEI

The reproduction of this early Latin votive inscription tends to reduce it to the already coded transmission. But the challenge of any coded symbol when embedded in matter (like in technological heritage) is that real physicality

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takes revenge. Due to fragmentation, the inscription itself is already deficient at the beginning: the first letters are missing, no arché‐logos. This initial lack which remains to be supplemented keeps the discussion of hypotheses going on, just like in the print representation of corrupt letters in the ancient Roman inscription Monumentum Ancyranum in Andreas Schott’s edition (Antwerpen 1579), lacunae are expressed by subsequent dots.7 A revision of the earliest photographic documentation of the Lapis Satricanus in situ by D. J. Waarsenburg in 1994—a kind of secondary dig in the archives of archaeology itself—revealed that the literally initial lacuna can, at least partly, be completed by the letter “I,” while another apparent fragment of a letter on the photography, blown-up media‐archaeologically by computer analysis, turned out to be a blade of grass. What is the message, or what is missing: a truncated first letter, or a scratch in the stone? The completion of the first letter(s) would require either a reverse lexicographic statistical processing of letter sequences or an analysis of Markov chains. As proposed in the mathematical theory of communication, philological certainty recedes against statistical probability, prediction, and entropy: “The errors, as would be expected, occur most frequently at the beginning of words and syllables where the line of thought has more possibility of branching out”(Shannon 1951: 54 et seq.). Image processing routines can be applied to enhance shallow inscriptions and thereby support their deciphering, in calculated enlargement of this closeup by digital filtering (in PhotoShop). Digital media themselves act as active “archaeologists” of this past, by techno‐mathematical signal correlation of (missing‐to‐existing) letters. Mutilated cuneiform inscriptions from ancient Mesopotamia have been restored by holographic signal processing, identifying visual “spikes” in correlation analysis (see Wernicke 1995 fig. 5). The new kind of “inscription” for media‐cultural heritage will be source codes for computing itself.

Technological Misreadings When sampling a continuous wave form with an analog‐to‐digital converter, the sampling rate controls how many samples are taken per second; in quantizing, precision controls how many different gradations (quantization levels) are possible when taking the sample. In fractions of a second, the ADC “looks at the wave and picks the closest number between 0 and 9. These numbers are a digital representation of the original wave”; in reverse, the DAC recreates the wave from these numbers. There is an originary

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techno‐cybernetic sacrifice involved in this operation where “quite a bit of the detail originally found” is lost. In audiovisual sampling, the fidelity of the reproduced wave is high only to easily deceivable human senses. “This is the sampling error. You reduce sampling error by increasing both the sampling rate and the precision” (Brain, “How Analog and Digital Recordings Work”). Another challenge to digital signal processing is what has first been described by J. Willard Gibbs in 1899 for the approximation of a discontinuous jump function like a square wave (necessary for binary computing and digital communication), by overlaying continuous periodic sine waves (according to Fourier analysis). “At the turnpoints of the discontinuity (the edges of the square wave) disruptive waves are appearing when increasingly approximating the square wave with a series of sine wave harmonics” (Miyazaki 2008). Such disturbances reveal a zone of uncertainty exactly at the crucial coincidence between the analog and the digital, between real physics and the symbolic operation. Analytic or artistic sonification allows for listening to such artifacts, which are called “ringing artifacts.” They appear in audio signal compression (notably the MP3‐format) as short sound impulses and sound like preechos (Miyazaki 2008), analogous to the nonlinear Klirrfaktor effect of additional overtones added by vacuum tube during periodic wave amplification. “When asked to describe the aesthetics of these sounds, one should use the term “‘post‐digital’ [. . .] introduced by Kim Cascone into the discourse of experimental music. They sound like the re‐entry of the analog in the digital world—this means very erroneous” (Miyazaki 2008). On the logical level, apparent software “glitches” are fully logical like any event in the deterministic machine called digital computer. What appears erroneous is already a function of the human hermeneutic view.8 For computer games studies, it is the human player who finally identifies a signal event as noise (see Bojahr, 2012: 158) But increasingly, media (especially Net) culture is about communication between machines themselves. Can there be misunderstanding between computers?

“Live” Transmission, Leap Seconds, “Ping”: Errors Deriving from Time‐critical Media Functions In media culture, occasionally, moments of crisis or disaster are directly induced by technological misinterpretation,” when communication systems break down and start to deliver misleading information. A whole branch in media studies deals with political revolutions caused by breakdowns in

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technological communication, starting with the collapse of the Roman empire by the breakdown of its communication system with interrupted road infrastructures, up to the collapse of the dictatorship in Romania in December 1989 when gunshots replayed from cassette tape interrupted and irritated Ceausescu’s final public speech, resulting in real moments of speechlessness.9 In Orson Welles’ radio dramatization of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, aired in October 1938, the (simulated) collapse of the broadcasting network itself caused widespread panic among audiences, who thought Martians were actually about to invade New Jersey (see Pinchevski and Liebes 2010: note 2). When spokesman Günther Schabowski of the GDR government on November 9, 1989, in East Berlin, replied “immediately” (German sofort) to a request by a journalist in a press conference, concerning the enactment of a pronounced new regulation for freedom of external traveling for GDR citizens by the regime, this was an erroneous, and premature, announcement in terms of political decisions: a miscommunication. But the “live” communication of broadcast media like radio and television immediately transmitted the audiovisual signal, thereby making the erroneous “immediacy” real. This has been no rhetorical but technological metonymy, with the word (logos) becoming electromagnetic signal techné. “[W]e cannot distinguish through our senses alone between what we take to be simply “alive” and what as reproduction, separated from its origin, is structurally posthumous” (Weber 1996: 121). Instant archivization of the present reveals itself in news radio channels with its frequent errors in (re‐) play. What appears like actual news broadcast is by mistake (when the new editor pushes the wrong button on his digital control panel) an event just reported being repeated. It is a shock for the “presence” authenticity contract between listener and radio station when it becomes apparent that there is not live transmission any more, but digitally stored data files—a presence that is a function of intermediary storage already. While errors, mistakes, and miscommunications in such man–media couplings can mostly be corrected within phenomenological intervals (the neurological time window of what is experienced as the “present”), technological communication has already escalated into micro‐dimensions where errors escape human attention. In media cultural practice, occasionally a leap second is added to the coordinated universal time (UTC) system used to set watches.10 Occasionally, such temporal interference result in logistic disasters, while the timekeeping systems, such as that used by Global Positioning System (GPS), avoid such leap seconds at all. The creators of the POSIX standard, used by Linux and Unix operating systems as time base, “made a tragic mistake” (see “Linux’s Creator Wants Us All to Chill Out About the Leap Second”) when defining a day as exactly 86,400 seconds while simultaneously forcing computers to use

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the leap second-friendly UTC. Such chrono‐frictions point out that there is no “wrong time” as assumed in common sense, but rather a heterochrony of media time regimes. In online communication, the so‐called “ping of death” is not a lethal error but an intentional, calculated mistake in internet traffic to measure and test time‐critical datagram transmission. Machines can be crashed by sending IP packets that exceed the maximum legal length (65535 octets). An IP datagram of 65536 bytes is illegal but can easily be created owing to the way the packet is fragmented (broken into chunks for transmission). When the fragments are reassembled at the other end into a complete packet, “it overflows the buffer on some systems, causing (variously) a reboot, panic, hang” (see “Ping of Death”). The schedule has been developed as a cultural technique for the symbolical administration of time, and the temporality of material transport logistics has evolved into just‐in‐time production and distribution. Just‐in‐time logics in computing is highly time‐critical, as known from high-frequency trading at the virtual stock market. The challenge arises from the core of computational theory, a variance of the Halteproblems, such as for sorting algorithms: Is a task solvable in polynomial time (“finite”)? Minimal temporal decisions, within electronic circuitry, differs from the rather generous human interval for identifying signal events and pulse trains taking place in the perceptive window of the present: three seconds within which they can be integrated and synchronized into a coherent impression. Within operative computing, algorithmic functions like the “interrupt” are most crucial in that respect—microtemporal processes for dealing with the accidental, which is not treated as error but as contingent.

Technological Destinerrance? Shannon’s Labyrinth and Internet Traffic At the eighth Cybernetics Conference, Claude Shannon presented the audience with his “mouse” (Theseus), a motor‐driven sensor learning to find its ways through a labyrinth by a hidden binary relay‐based memory matrix. It was not long before there appeared the risk of a “neurotic” behavior of the system (as described by Gerard in the discussion), with the mechanism being lost in a “singing condition” (Shannon): a techno‐traumatic behavior of the mobile sensor in Shannon’s labyrinth (see Pias 2003: 474 et seq.). In terms of Jacques Derrida’s neologism destinerrance, it is always possible that a letter does not arrive at its destination.11 On the contrary, Lacan states that the letter always arrives, since the symbolic finds its place (on The Purloined Letter by Edgar Alan Poe). At the software level in computing, within

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an operating system, “a port is a logical construct that identifies a specific process or a type of network service. The software port is always associated with an IP address of a host and the protocol type of the communication. It completes the destination or origination network address of a message” (“Port (computer networking)”). Errors only occur because of belatedness. In time‐critical online gaming, competitors struggle with microtemporal lags in their internet connections and LANs, and within hardware symbol processing devices. But temporal errors are no errors at all; rather, they reveal the truth about signal processing in high‐technological media.

Radically Media‐archaeological Conclusions Seen from a nonhuman, machine‐focused perspective, hermeneutic notions like “misunderstanding” lose most of their impact. What appears like “error” in human usage of media makes perfect sense in terms of hardware behavior (technics) and software implementation (logics). What frequently looks erroneous results in similarity‐based text, image, and sound retrieval is coherent from the point of view of the algorithms involved. By apparent “errors” in experimenting with technologies, engineers, scholars, and artists are almost accidentally invited to make inventions, discoveries, and artworks. But when video and sound art, glitch‐provoking circuit bending, and computer game design intentionally evoke errors, they enframe the real already in the symbolical order. Far from being just a paratextual, collateral effect of media‐in‐action, errors, misunderstanding, and mistakes concern the core of contemporary techno‐mathematical communication theory, ranging from the technological destinerrance in Shannon’s epistemological toy “labyrinth,” and extending to the challenge of the signal‐to‐noise ratio in technologies of cultural tradition. There are techno‐archival disruptions which derive from time‐critical media functions, ranging from the media‐phenomenal level (like press spokesman Schabowski’s “error,” which, in combination with live transmission, induced the opening of the Berlin wall in November 1989), down to the inner‐technical level (the challenge of “leap seconds” in computational synchronization) as well. Such media‐triggered events lead to irritations for the human “inner sense of time” (Husserl), but do not irritate the communication media at all. As a methodology in media studies, “errors,” “mistakes,” and “miscommunication” turn out as a media‐analytic misconception themselves, misunderstanding the techno‐logics of communication and information theory. When automated systems malfunction, in most cases it is not by fault of the logical circuit design, but a reminder of the drama of

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technologies in being. The media diagram needs material implementation to become operative; at that very moment, though, the physically real (such as errors arising from entropic degradation) gets the chance to articulate itself against the symbolic order.

Notes 1 See Malaspina (2018). 2 Chapter “Analog Transmission,” quoted here from the online excerpt: http:​ //www​.info​rmit.​com/s​tore/​telec​ommun​icati​ons‐e​ssent​ials‐​the‐c​omple​te‐gl​ obal‐​sourc​e‐978​02017​60323​?w_pt​greva​rtcl=​Telec​ommun​icati​ons+T​echno​ logy+​Funda​menta​ls_24​687 (accessed February 18, 2019). 3 As documented on the circuit bent music compilation CD Noise and Toys vol. 1 (2005); see http://www.wearerecords.com/noistoys.htm (accessed February 18, 2019). 4 Referring to terms created by Nake 2010. 5 See http:​//www​.tele​maco.​unibo​.it/r​ombo/​iscri​z/sat​ricum​.htm 6 De Simone 1980: 71. 7 As discussed by Siegert (2011: 110 et seq.). 8 On code as “autonomous” in itself, thus discarding all real engagement with its specific “glitch” aesthetics see Parisi and Portanova (2011). 9 On such instances, see Dayan and Katz (1992). 10 On chrono‐technical “temporal smearing,” see Genosko and Hegarty. 11 Derrida (1987).

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Neilson, B. and N. Rossiter, eds. (2017), Logistical Worlds: Infrastructure, Software, Labour (No. 2 / Kolkata), London: Open Humanities Press. Parisi, P. and S. Portanova (2011), “Soft Thought (in Architecture and Choreography),” Computational Culture: A Journal of Software Studies. Available at: http:​//com​putat​ional​cultu​re.ne​t/art​icle/​soft‐thought (accessed February 18, 2019). Parisi, L. (2013), Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, and Space, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pias, C., ed. (2003), Cybernetcs / Kybernetik vol 1: The Macy‐Conferences 1946‐1953. Transactions /Protocols, Zurich: Diaphanes. Picard, R. W. and T. Kabir (1993), “Finding Similar Patterns in Large Image Databases: M.I.T. Media Laboratory Perceptual Computing Section Technical Report No. 205,” in IEEE ICASSP, Minneapolis, MN, vol. V, 161–4. Pinchevski, A. and T. Liebes (2010), “Severed Voices: Radio and the Mediation of Trauma in the Eichmann Trial,” Public Culture 22 (2): 265–91. Ping of Death. http://insecure.org/sploits/ping‐o‐death.html (accessed September 14, 2016). Port (computer networking). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_(computer_ networking) (accessed August 30, 2018). Riis, M. (2015), “Where are the Ears of the Machine? Towards a Sounding Micro‐temporal Object‐Oriented Ontology,” Journal of Sonic Studies 10. Available at: https​://ww​w.res​earch​catal​ogue.​net/v​iew/2​19290​/2192​91 Shannon, C. E. (1951), “Prediction and Entropy of Printed English,” The Bell System Technical Journal 30 (1) (January): 50–64. Shannon, C. E. (1963), “The Mathematical Theory of Communication,” in C. E. Shannon and W. Weaver (eds.), The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949), 29–125, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Siegert, B. (2011), “Kulturtechnik,” in H. Maye and L. Scholz (eds.), Einführung in die Kulturwissenschaft, 95–118, Paderborn: Fink. Weaver, W. (1963), “Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication,” in C. E. Shannon and W. Weaver (eds.), The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949), 1–28, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Weber, S. (1996), Mass Mediauras. Form, Technics, Media, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wernicke, W. (1995), “Holographische Zeichenerkennung an Keilschrifttafeln,” Humboldt‐Spektrum 4: 22–7. Wiener, N. (1948), Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Paris: Hermann; Cambridge, MA: The Technology Press; New York: John Wiley. Von Foerster, H., M. Mead, and H. L. Teuber (1953), “A Note by the Editors,” in Cybernetics: Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems. Transactions of the Ninth Conference, March 20–21, 1952, New York: Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.

Part Two

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5

Quiet in the Forest Frances Dyson

The sound world is awash with nature recordings. From the dense insect orchestrations of the Amazon, to the crisp, buzzing heat of the desert, to the fragile overtures of species driven to extinction by relentless human pursuit, listeners have access to a multitude of calls, cries, and animal communications, dispersed across spaces and times impossible to traverse in a single lifetime, and representing places and creatures the listener may never engage with—except as images on screens or broadcasts on radio or files on SoundCloud. In an era of dwindling habitats and rising temperatures, it is impossible to hear these sounds without a sense of loss. They are sounds in recession, and their audition carries with it the guilty haunting of audio, always heard as something that has been, a moment lost, a soundscape captured. Jon McCormack and Gary Warner’s a quivering marginalia (AQM, 2016) could easily be heard in these subdued tones.1 But yet there is little trace of mourning in the primarily vocal excerpts flooding AQM’s immersive sonic environment. Described by the artists as “a generative multi‐speaker sound art installation exploring unintentional poetic potentials within spoken word utterances of biological sciences field recordings” (McCormack and Warner, 2016), the installation, equipped with an array of small digital audio players that play audio fragments (presorted into recombinative playback clusters that are randomly triggered), is housed in a geodesic dome reminiscent of the “hide” structures used by scientists to observe animal behavior. The aim is to create an environment that encourages reflection: on what we understand by Nature; on the practice of scientific and bioacoustic field recording; and on the “semantic ambiguity” that decontextualized data, heard through the recorded voice in situ, reveals. In one of the many ironies of the work, these philosophical and techno‐cultural dimensions are literally

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played out through audio fragments that are not meant to be heard: the moments prior to the “actual” recording of animal sounds—the date, time, and place, sometimes a short description of the weather, elevation, and vegetation, and possibly quite lengthy and elaborate details of the equipment being used: This will be reel number 20 . . . I’m going to put on a calibration tone to begin with here. A 1000 cycle calibration tone . . . Zero DB on the 775 meter, zero on the other meter, which indicates we have zero DB at 775 volt RMS when we have the BU meter at zero.

Such details are often included at the very beginning of the audio files held in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library—the world’s largest repository of animal sound.2 Usually excised from the broadcast of the recording, they join the ensemble of “technical” sounds that—like the test pattern on early television, or the calibration tone that fronts old analogue audio—are intended for the ear of the technician, (fellow scientist) or broadcaster only. That they form the entirety of AQM’s soundscape may at first strike the listener as odd. However, the dominance of what would normally be regarded as technical specifications draws attention to the vocal signature of the recordist, through which the tone of human sentiment (also generally excised from the “scientific” method associated with field recording) can be appreciated. Analogous perhaps to sound art and glitch music that plays with the sound of the recording apparatus or the digital aberrations of signal noise, the excised portions of the recording stating the date, place, time, and research target become “marginalia”—a note or text on the margins of a manuscript, associated both with scholarly and poetic writing, and with nonsensical or irrelevant annotations. In the world of audio, such “marginal” details are thought to interfere with the smooth and unencumbered transmission of sound in the wild to the domesticated human ear. This is the sound that the listener is waiting to hear, the sound that is, after all, the rationale for the recording. But in AQM, instead of the magnificent wail of an exotic species, we hear a human voice, a voice that, despite its often scientific inflection, nonetheless leaks emotion, excitement, surprise, loneliness, wonder, fear, and all the emotions associated with this human species, alone in a kingdom to which, momentarily at least, it must surrender. The shift from the scientist as detached observer, standing aside their equipment, microphone in hand, almost part of the recording mechanism in both intent and stature, to the everyday individual, stuck in a thundering

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forest, and struck by the sheer alien nature of the scene and the sounds that surround them, is registered sonically, by the breathy timbre of hesitation, the jarring rhythm of an uneven flow of words, muted at times as they catch in the throat, struggling to quell the eruption that is also building in the depths of the diaphragm. We hear the speaker’s body contracting and their breath abbreviated—we hear the marginalia of speech, murmuring, like an insect on the forest floor: At about 1 o’clock in the afternoon we heard a flapping—it sounded like a flapping of elephant ears, and then a cracking noise, and we thought that we either found elephant or buffalo. We were in fact watching birds and we were about to retreat from the area when we were charged. I would also like to say at this point that my feeling on seeing them was one really great surprise at [. . .] how black they were and that their faces, to me, were absolutely fascinating because they shone!! They were really shiny and it looked as if they’d been polished with black boot polish. And this to me was one of the most surprising things of the lot because I mean I’ve seen gorillas in the zoo but I’ve never—[stumbles] it never occurred to me that they were so black nor that their faces were quite so shiny; we don’t know for sure”; “ok we have a 57 alpha channel 3”; “for two hours we could not get under the bridge”; “rather quiet in the forest”; “and then, Pauline started to scream some more”; “I’m going to continue with abbreviated announcements because I’m running out of tape”; “waiting for the best recording”; “1904 hours”; “and they went into all sorts of gyrations and swam around the pool rapidly”; “and fear context with human observers . . .

In this respect, AQM is far from glitch music—a genre that also references the institution of audio—which would be its natural analogue. Within the rhetorical, institutional, framework of audio, the sounds of the animals are heard as cries, whistles, and bare sound that has no equivalent in any notation or script, and are transmitted in pure form, without an intermediary. As long as they are recorded, stored, and broadcast—in other words, as long as they are audio—these sounds are both “true” in themselves and attest to the “truth” of recording as both a technology and a practice. It is this “truth” that glitch music often critiques by sonically exploiting the technology. But this is as far as the analogy extends, because AQM makes this reference only obliquely, offering neither an exposition of the hidden technological apparatus, nor for that matter a comment on the attempt to

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literally tune in to nature through the channels of the microphone in situ. The quotidian ambience of AQM provides an opportunity first and foremost to witness and to reflect on the multifarious entanglements between the human and animal world. Far from being technical information, the beginning of the recording becomes the beginning of a story, involving the people who venture into areas considered “uninhabitable” in order to record species considered “mute,” creating a text that refers to a sound yet to come, in tones that are themselves redolent with a quietude and stillness that beckons invisibility. Listening to the Macaulay archive, not all voice is language, and not all the sounds are animal. On occasion, the recordist attempts to mimic the birdcalls or animal communication that he or she is hearing, bursting into onomatopoeic renditions as a kind of supplement to, or replacement for, audio. At such moments, the so‐called marginalia reveal something of the long-forgotten narrative of human/animal separation, a narrative founded upon the attempt to situate humans as being part of, yet separate from, the animal kingdom. Despite the many anatomical and behavioral similarities between, for instance, apes and humans, studiously detailed throughout Darwinian evolutionism, the capacity for speech has operated as the primary criterion for differentiation between human and animal. Distanced from the debate, on the ground, surrounded by birds, insects, thick mists, and garrulous animals, the distinction between speech and animal cry—especially when accompanied by obvious communicative intentions—is profoundly ambiguous. Similarly, the distinction between human creativity expressed, for instance, through music (often seen as direct evidence of the divine working through the soul), and the melodic sequences found in birdsong, is almost impossible to establish. How often does a particular birdcall resemble the motif of a familiar symphony [or song]? How do we differentiate between the thrill of a gathering chorus of birds and the collective enthrallment as a [musical] performance builds to crescendo? When the two meet—music and birdsong, animal cry and its human onomatopoeic imitation—what were once inalienable positions, situations, and places in the world become unstable. The ground begins to fall away, the human is left naked, without support, with only the sonic memory of the difference between their speech, their music, their civilization, and the uncannily “human” sounds they have just heard, emanating from a world that, despite its acoustic density, is nonetheless deemed “mute.” The audio recording of the animal cry heard in nature recordings retains and verifies that memory as a statement of fact, acting as an intermediary between the limits of discourse and the opacity of nature. The audio

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equipment becomes a physical support, extending a human arm into the wild—like a beacon or torchlight illuminating the “there” of what was once “nowhere” and, as such, opening it to appropriation? However, in AQM the arm doesn’t extend, the microphone shuts off as soon as it announces itself, and the telos of audio is truncated, leaving the listener waiting. In withholding the nonvocal, or nonlinguistic call of the bird or animal, the sound that would verify the recording as such, as a testament to human presence and technological veracity, AQM cuts off the possibility for comment, dialogue, analysis—the repetition and continuation of human speech that reaffirms the separation of human from nature. By leaving the listener in a state of ignorance, the piece also creates an opening to the practice of “ignoring”— the “passing over without notice” that “ignorance” embodies. In this way, the piece lets animal sound be, leaves it outside of discourse, outside of the anthropocentric machine and its primary vehicle of exploitation. It welcomes instead a potentiated emptiness: we know that sound is there, somewhere, and our ears pique, focus, and relax in order to hear it, vicariously, through the flutter of voices announcing the date and time, and letting us know that “all is quiet in the forest.” As Warner says: the spoken words by orangutan researcher John MacKinnon are “rather quiet in the forest”—I like this phrase for its initial sense of pastoral idyll but subsequent intimation of loss of sounds through loss of species—pockets of preserved habitat being not enough to support animals like orang‐utans or even, closer to home, powerful owls that need large ranges—the north island of Aotearoa/New Zealand is a good example of this, tiny pockets of “scenic reserve” left amongst the wasteland of once‐forest now‐pasture, for humans to “enjoy” but not enough to support the lifeways that once thrived there . . . early colonial reporting on Aotearoa/New Zealand wrote in amazement of the prevalence of overwhelming birdsong everywhere in this land without mammals.

Notes 1 First exhibited at the Sydney College of the Arts as part of FIELDWORK: Artist Encounters, curated by Gary Warner and showed at Sydney College of the Arts Galleries, University of Sydney, 7–30 July 2016. Fieldwork was an exhibition project that creates spatial, conceptual, sonic, and material­conversations between recent works of a collection of artists with

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decades‐long practice trajectories involving, in various ways, work in the field or of the field. 2 Collected in order to preserve the sounds of each species, to maintain a record of their behavior, and one would add, their habitat.

Reference McCormack, J., and G. Warner (2016), A Quivering Marginalia, Fieldwork Show. Available at: http:​//www​.fiel​dwork​.show​/mcco​rmack​warne​r/ (accessed May 15, 2020).

6

The Guardians of the Possible  Stephen Kennedy 

In his book Rome: The First Book of Foundations, Michel Serres describes the fervent activity of termites as they construct their improbable towers. While this activity demonstrates a degree of order, Serres also postulates an element of deviance and anomie. He says: “I’m sure that here and there, around, a few individuals will always continue to deposit balls on the ground while the Tower of Babel is being raised. These termites are the guardians of the possible. They sow the time of hope while laws and the repetitive are being solidified by the crystal next to them” (2). Such a description acknowledges “activity at the edges”—the kind of activity that, in the name of reason and dialectical efficiency, is too often marginalized, compressed, or designed out of contemporary mediated environments and channels of communication. Such “deviant” activity, though, is not simply oppositional, or contrary, but is rather integral and essential to the wider landscape insofar as its relative qualities are continually in concert with other more orderly universal elements. Such activity occurs in what Serres calls the third space, occupied by those named as “third instructed.”1 We should seek our instruction neither from science alone, nor the sacred, nor any singular form of understanding, but should rather seek to occupy the spaces of transformation which lie between—neither one nor the other but the “third space.” Hence Serres ([1991] 1997b) gives the name “third‐instructed” (tiers‐instruit) to him or her who is able to give up the comforts of disciplinary specialism and risk putting themselves into perpetual translation. (Brown 2002: 12)

This perpetual translation is precipitated by the relational flow between states of being, characteristics, and their incessant instability. In order to inhabit such an unstable universe, Serres draws on multiple sources that cut across time and space. As an example, he cites the work of Lucretius and the poetic extrapolation, through the figures of Mars and Venus, of the physical world as the source of contemporary thinking around the notions of complexity

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and simplicity. Lucretius positioned Mars as the master of order—presiding over atoms that are consistent and amenable to geometric calculation and the reliable laws of cause and effect. It is a world where predictions can be made, and outcomes are predetermined. However, the reign of Mars is placed under erasure by the presence of Venus, who presides over a very different world. It is a world of chaos and uncertainty where prediction is far less reliable, if not impossible. It is, though, a world of infinite potential. It is the realm of the possible (and Venus is its guardian). The intention of this chapter is to challenge the received wisdom of Mars that reason and logic serve to bring a coherent and natural order to chaos. The argument will proceed to suggest that what reason and logic actually do is to impose certain very specific patterns on the world through a variety of processes of selection and rejection, mediation, translation, and design that are too often definitive and fixed. Working through Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zygmunt Bauman, and Michel Serres, what follows explores self‐organization, and pattern formation as instances of the repetition of difference through resistance, as part of an enduring process of movement and attrition in a universe of chaos and noise, where waste and error are constant features. Repetition in this context operates as an unfolding and unstable visceral affect that is both distinct from and central to the critical distance of the formal intellect.2 The idea of communication in this context then always contains within it the idea of miscommunication: where there is signal there is noise. The important question is, what do we do with the shifting ratio of signal and noise, communication, and miscommunication? Do we demarcate them into separate realms or recognize their necessary coexistence? Wittgenstein understood this problem, and it is expressed in his well‐known statement, “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (2009: 89). For Wittgenstein, information that could not be said to form part of a logical structure of language was superfluous and therefore not well disposed to knowing. It poses a potential danger—of misunderstanding or miscommunication—insofar as it stands ready to be variously interpreted. Hence, it is silenced and effectively confined to a different dimension, where until such time as a common structure can be identified, there is no possibility of communication between this “colloquial” form of expression and the more formal and evidently meaningful mode. But what is this silent dimension? Can it be thought of differently? Or are we bound by Wittgenstein’s configuration of it? Paradoxically, it might be better understood by invoking the figure of noise. As chaotic, deviant, and unruly, noise feeds back into the ordered system causing miscommunication and disrupting the clarity of logically structured language to the degree where perpetual translation is required, as Serres has pointed out. This however is not necessarily a negative incursion,

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as noise also constitutes an important part of the overall signal from which sensible meaning is derived. Noise, from this perspective, offers a means of describing the dense plenum in which language subsists and out of which it forms, and reforms, responding to the infinite options made manifest by the guardians of the possible. As Cary Wolfe states in his introduction to The Parasite (2007), noise should be understood “not as the other or opposite of content, but as content’s very fiber” (xiii).3 Turning silence into sound and noise in this way reclaims what is lost to Wittgenstein, without losing Wittgenstein himself. He was, after all, correct. The world is formed of repeating patterns that can largely be identified and modeled. Yet it also retains the potential to surprise. While Wittgenstein demonstrates the common structure to great effect, in doing so he silences the colloquial nuances, individual utterances, performances, “unnecessary” flourishes, and waste products that language is also capable of producing. For him, such communicative “excesses” simply get in the way. They are exiled until such time as they can be formally accommodated. For Wittgenstein, such an accommodation presupposes the possibility of translation between realms that combine to produce an end product, the common structure, from the raw material of language. Translating from one language to another—or between systems/modes of language—created a dichotomy for him, of formal commonality and superfluous material (waste) which in turn established two distinct spaces, the real and the mystical. “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical” (2009: 89). They exist but do not form what comes to be understood as the common structure. For Serres on the other hand there is no end product and the process of translation is always ongoing. Waste is not partitioned, but is always present in the process, present and active as noise. In his book Angels: A Modern Myth (1995), Serres makes this point with specific reference to noise and music: “The messages carried by our voices are made up of various components: a basis consisting of background noise; then a musicality of sounds accompanied by phonemes, varying according to the language that is being spoken; and finally meaning” (Serres 1995: 79). He goes on to say: “Music is so called because it is the sum of all the muses: it adds to every art—no art excels without it. As an acoustic support and a precondition of meaning, music is a constant vibrating presence beneath our dialogs” (84). Noise, music, and meaning should be understood, then, as changeable states that bind together to form a single sonic economy that is characterized by virtual potentialities as much as actual trajectories. The ideas of sound, silence, noise, and music are foremost in terms of the argument being developed here, and Wittgenstein himself drew on them to fortify his argument and to present a clear account of how

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language, mediated in a range of different technological forms, marginalizes unnecessary data or information, compressing it in the service of reliable and effective communication. His working through of the relationship between gramophone recording and musical notation serves to underpin his explanation and identification of a common structure present in language and can also be read as preceding contemporary practices in relation to algorithmic compression of data. Susan G. Sterrett unpicks Wittgenstein’s references to sound recording, mediation, and representation in her article Pictures of Sounds: Wittgenstein on Gramophone Records and the Logic of Depiction (2005). Sterrett sets out the significant technological advances that Wittgenstein would have been aware of during his lifetime, notably in the year before his birth (1889), a wax cylinder recording of Brahms playing the piano. This recording was later transferred to a gramophone disc and then more recently to an MP3 file. The significance of this will be returned to shortly. Wittgenstein was born into a world of recording, exactly at a time when liveness and the experience of listening were in the throes of separation. But recordings, as they were in the 1890s, were of a very uncertain quality, and even as Eddison’s cylinders gave way to Berliner’s superior gramophone discs, there remained the situation where, in a recording, what was being said was recognizable, but who was speaking was less certain. Though the quality would rapidly improve in the ensuing years, to the point of near exact replication, this seemed to be of little significance to Wittgenstein. The invention of recording was interesting for him at a conceptual level rather than a technical one: he was intrigued by the fact that music could be embedded within grooves on a disc from which sound could be reproduced by the motion of a needle, but even more so in the extent to which this was comparable to a written score consisting of marks on paper. Ultimately, these two modes or models, like all forms of language, would have to possess common features that would allow for the translation of each into the other in order for their common structure to be identified. The common logical structure present in such models was a kind of compressed signal, where identifiable meaningful communication, whether written language, musical notes, or the gramophone recording, was present always, unaffected by limitation or interference. It demonstrated an economy of expenditure—excluding miscommunication, or noise, or the always present potential for interpretation by the reader/musician, or the mechanical playback related to equipment and the condition of the disc. What was not immediately present and translatable in these forms of representation, then, was effectively silenced, designated as colloquial, or set to the margins of the virtual or the possible not-yet manifest, or

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manifest only in the mystical sense.4 The wrong note, mis‐timing, and the scratch were inconsequential. The point for Wittgenstein was not one of accuracy or perfect replication, but the presence of a common structure that could guarantee recognition regardless of the nuances of reproductive quality. A recording of a certain quality could undoubtedly capture more detail than a score generally does, but that was not the point. The point was that the common structure applied only to the minimum amount of information required to ensure meaningful communication. This minimum amount is what is present underneath the interference and the unnecessary adornment, unaffected by interpretive role of the performer that carries an infinite potential for miscommunication. In order for a symphony to be extracted from the score, only a minimal amount of information, in the form of marks on paper, needs to be provided. These are the parts that when heard can in reverse be written down/notated. All notions of representation and similarity are based solely on those features of the symphony that can be translated into formal language. This relationship between elements of depiction and translatability into performance is in effect what constitutes logical structure shared by the depiction and the depicted in equal ratio. Any examples of nuanced interpretation that may exist within the performance does so outside of the logical structure. Once notated, the manuscript must be able to be played. Notes must be able to be played, and played notes must be able to be notated. They are thus relative to each other—the depicted and the language of depiction coalesce to produce meaning, independent of specific circumstance or condition. Everything outside of the logical structure is “sent to Coventry.” It is noise that paradoxically must be passed over in silence—not spoken of or to in formal terms. Yet questions remain. What is outside of the logical structure of the symphony, or, more accurately, what out of all that is inside is superfluous? Is the “outside” essentially an affective and a distinct mystical realm? Are accidents, mistakes, errors, and miscommunications necessarily designated as mystical? Finally, must the mystical be brought under the control of logic or can it be liberated as energy that is present without demanding representational recognition, and therefore not mystical at all? The position adopted here is that in a chaotic universe, that which is logical is bound to the mystical and that which is mystical is only the unrealized potential of all that ultimately becomes manifest in language. The fate of each, if they are separated, becomes political and dependent on a human vocabulary of expediency, choice, and hierarchy. So, the task is to breach the divide and to recognize the extent of self‐organization in a universe where the logical and the mystical are unstable and fluid pattern formations inhere in each other and emerge from a single material plenum.

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In contemporary terms, this idea of the logical and its relation to the mystical raises the related issue of the divide between the digital and the analogue, and the question, what is outside of the digital (itself a form of linguistic logic)? The answer in simple terms is, nothing, because everything can be coded and made to conform to mathematical logic. In the same way as the mystical and the linguistic cohabit, the analogue inheres in the digital and the digital in the analogue. Yet to return to the significance of the MP3 mentioned earlier, even when everything can be reduced to logic, and the self‐fulfilling modern project is seemingly complete, a strange kind of waste continues to be produced. Strange because, having already been modeled and codified, it is demarcated as unnecessary rather than disposed of, or consigned to the abstract mystical realm. The abandonment of the proportion of the signal that cannot be perceived by a statistical average of the population serves to flatten the experience of listening and, in doing so, constitutes a neat analogy for exclusion at the level of political economy. The enduring presence of this digital waste, and with it the specter of error and miscommunication, means that the drive toward efficiency, to the final victory for Mars, and to a logical understanding of everything through an economy of expenditure is always destined to fail. With this failure Venus returns to “sow the time of hope” and to draw our attention to areas historically neglected. Such an analytical, or logical approach to language and communication, as was undertaken by Wittgenstein, concentrates meaning within a given band or frequency. Anything beyond this is silenced, darkened, and designated as mystical. This notion—of a darkened realm that wraps around an illuminated zone—is developed further by Zygmunt Bauman in his Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts. To illustrate the point, Bauman uses the concept of design to suggest a specific kind of ordering or patterning, describing a design language that compresses in the service of narrative. Bauman exonerates stories and the process of storytelling and defends their propensity to “include through exclusion and to illuminate through casting shadows.” It is for him, as it was for Wittgenstein, an appropriate form of data compression that filters out all that is unnecessary for the creation of meaning. In order to further illustrate this, he refers to the Ireneo Funes story by Jorge Luis Borges. Funes, having been thrown from a horse, is injured to the extent that he is no longer capable of enacting the compression of data required for sense making. He is “virtually incapable of general Platonic ideas.” Instead, the common logic, present in the structure of language, as set out by Wittgenstein, is flooded by the superfluous to the point of incomprehensibility. Funes was “able to (had to!) perceive ‘every grape that had been pressed into the wine and all the stalks and tendrils

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of its vineyard’” where you and I, “with one quick look,” “perceive three wine glasses on a table” (Bauman 2004: 17). In such a case, simple meaning becomes essentially impossible to communicate, and the potential for miscommunication is once again infinite. No waste is created in the mind of Funes, nothing forgotten, nothing ignored. It is the virtual field, the not-yet manifest, the endlessly possible—a quantum landscape where the rules of neither geometry nor representation prevail. In essence, it is a chaotic mind that cannot process information into knowledge. “To know is to choose. In the factory of knowledge, the product is separated from waste, and it is in the vision of the prospective clients, of their needs or their desires, that decides which is which” (Bauman 2004: 18). In order for something to be known, to enter the realm of knowledge, something else must be unknown, choices must be made. It is not possible to have knowledge of the totality. Not possible for most humans at least. “For all practical intents and purposes, things excluded—thrown out of focus, cast in the shadow, forced into the vague or invisible background—no longer belong to ‘what is’” (Bauman 2004: 18). They are effectively destroyed. The mind of Funes is the chaosmos, the universe of endless possibility, a purgatory from which release is only guaranteed via recourse to the reason and logic that he lacks. That those who have access to such faculties should be grateful is a difficult proposition to argue with. Yet it somehow feels a little too clinical—too cut and dry, too universal, too modern. Does each individual go willingly into a universe of signs, accepting the Platonic contract that there is much that cannot, and maybe should not, be known? What if we do not go willingly though? What if the contract is political and economic rather than simply rational and logical? Would there not always be a curiosity, a compulsion to know whether that which has been discarded might be preferable to what was retained (as knowledge)? These questions are undoubtedly beyond the remit proposed here, but suffice it to say, and this is Bauman’s point: it is now imperative that we attend to the discarded, the superfluous, the unwanted, and the different. Indeed, these are recurring themes at present—ecological catastrophe, national retrenchment, economic crises, gender identity, and anxiety. All of these have become consistent tropes in recent times and are related to the notion of miscommunication, overcommunication, and overtly false, or “fake” communication. It is also related to the notion of constant uncertainty and unreliability in relation to our engagement with the world, where meaning once arrived at may need to be renegotiated almost immediately—over and over. Rather than moving inexorably in a linear progression, that which we thought we had left behind returns, and is folded back into the present, and we can witness this everywhere. How do we deal with this? How do we turn silence onto noise,

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or cast a light across the whole stage without being cast into a catastrophic existential crisis of global/universal proportions? The superfluous and the inexpressable, or that which has not yet been contained in language, in Wittgenstein’s universe, must now be given due attention. They inhabit the same realm from which meaning and logic emerge as that which can be expressed or spoken about, or recognized and made sense of. Such sensible manifestations, however, insofar as they are compressed, too often stand aside from that which is designated waste, or beyond sense, surplus to requirement, and in effect silent. These maligned modes of being, if theorized differently however, can be understood as “the guardians of the possible,” whose silent presence is always a danger, or an opportunity, standing ready to permeate the sensible. The borders, such that they exist or are erected, are malleable, and likely to be breached at any moment. Science breached by myth, and myth by science, back and forth across time and space, as Lucretius, and many others return to the fold as our contemporaries. Myth communicates with mathematical patterns, analogue with the digital, sensible speech with noise and waste, to form a protean tide that compression seeks to tame creating passing moments of order. To fully comprehend this process and our place within it, we need to change our relationship to time and space and the “unthinking, mindlessness of nature”—self‐organization and pattern formation. This of course carries the risk of distinct voices becoming indecipherable as the mix becomes too dense, too busy, too noisy. It also risks coherent logic being sacrificed to a kind of premodern chaos, and a submission to mysticism. Yet it is a risk that Serres is prepared to take. He is not deterred by the scale of the task. He begins by plotting the complex passages that link these diverse voices, realms, disciplines, and domains. They are passages through which communication is mediated and translated, and of course this means there is always the chance of distortion, or miscommunication and misunderstanding. In the Hermes series, and later through his work on the theme of angels, Serres tackles head on this notion of translation as a process of making connections and setting out lines of communication that create passages between multiple distinct realms. He uses the example of J. M. W Turner, whose paintings he says demonstrate the communion between art and science with Turner’s work residing at the intersection between classical mechanics and thermodynamics. This is not though a simple matter of cause and effect. Turner is not ushering in a new paradigm, nor simply responding to one, but is rather an integral element in what is now a complex process of translation and communication, without direct representational form

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(Brown 2002: 5). There are countless other cases that cut across aesthetics, popular and intellectual, spatial and temporal, scientific and philosophical divides in the spirit of Serres. They are a common feature of the narrative texts that pervade our culture, and it is worth pausing for a moment to consider a particular example. Echoing Serres’ call to the angels—It’s a Wonderful Life, A Matter of Life and Death, Field of Dreams, Wings of Desire—can all be cited as examples of narrative discourse in relation to translation, communication, and indeed miscommunication between realms, mediated by a heavenly messenger. For the purposes of this chapter, it is A Matter of Life and Death that perhaps best illustrates the point being made. As a narrative text, it shines a light on a particular moment in time and space, yet it equally embraces the intertranslatability between realms—the dark and the light, or, in this case, the technicolor and the black and white—as time and space, and the specific instances that inhabit them, become entangled. A film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger from 1946, A Matter of Life and Death, constitutes a nonlinear unfolding as it looks forward from the darkness of war, through the a‐temporal lens of the film’s heavenly inhabitants, to a reinvigorated future where life returns to a corporeal host from which it could so easily could have been taken, miscommunication and mistakes notwithstanding. With its mission to consolidate US/UK relations in the midst of a Europe having torn itself apart, it has a timely resonance that can and should be refolded back into a contemporary context. Seventy-three years later, this cinematic masterpiece is still playing to audiences and its contribution to new modes of understanding remains undimmed. In the film, a mistake by an angel/conductor allows a man, who should have died, to live. It is a mistake that threatens the very fabric of the universe—though one that when corrected via logical argument can be accommodated by a universe that is resilient and able to adapt to new and unusual situations. Like Lucretius, Powell and Pressburger become our contemporaries, connecting between realms, crossing the divide. Wittgenstein’s mystical and real are connected by an angel—heaven and earth inhere in each other and become parallel dimensions (that can now be spoken of logically through the language of cinema) that can always potentially connect as the narrative folds back into the present to inform and support our thinking. Within such narratives the unknown is not abstract and impotent, but a potential force that can impact at any moment to create something new. This is what Powell and Pressburger as well as Serres have been able to deduce for us, and what we need to comprehend for ourselves as we endeavor to account for contemporary complexities.

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The new emerges out of unique combinations of communication and translation between realms, whether object oriented or theoretical in the form of ideas. Sometimes this process can be smooth and flawless and result in the common structure that Wittgenstein described. But equally it can be unpredictable and problematic. In his outlining of Serres’ position, Steven Brown cites the work of John Law, and it is worth repeating within the current context. Law suggests that translation (“traduction”) is a form of transformation as well a kind of betrayal, a treason (“trahison”). But this is not necessarily a bad thing (Brown 2002: 6). It is too simple, he says, to assume that communication is good, while miscommunication is bad. Communication, whether transformation or betrayal, is always a complex mix, and in the context of the argument that is being developed here, it is a mix of noise, music (as an emerging pattern), and meaning. The basic sender–receiver model or simple laws of cause and effect do not suffice in such noisy environments. Because Serres understands this, he is extremely important in terms of supporting models of thought capable of accounting for the current complex nature of our existence where the fuzziness of uncertainty and anxiety are recurring features. For him, things constantly get mixed up: history, myths, names, and language move from Greek to Roman, Heracles becomes Hercules, and this is Serres’ terrain of choice, a space where information moves in and out of range, commingling to produce sense and nonsense—intended and unintended effects. In Rome (Serres 2015), Heracles kills Cacus: having stolen a herd of cattle from Geryon, Heracles himself becomes the victim of a misdemeanor when Cacus contrives to separate Heracles from his herd. In a complex maneuver Cacus reverses the cattle’s line of flight, but not their direction of travel as indicated by their footprints, by dragging them by their tails to his lair. On awakening, Heracles resolves to follow the footprints and, in doing so, sets off in the “wrong direction.” His quest though is interrupted when he hears the lowing of the cattle behind him. He reverses his course and discovers his stolen cattle hidden in Cacus’ cave. “The tracks deceived Hercules, and the lowing undeceived him” (Serres 2015: 11). The deception at play here is not the result of an untruth however. Both the direction of the footprints and the lowing are read correctly. But only in combination do they unconceal the full picture of Cacus having duplicitously dragged the cattle to the cave. The footprints miscommunicate in terms of spatial location on this occasion, but in doing so, form an essential part of the communication of the overall picture. They serve as a text to be read by Heracles, yet while his reading is correct, his direction of travel is not. If the footprints are a kind of text, the lowing is a kind of hypertext that alerts Hercules and induces an immediate change of direction. As such, the

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cattle have adopted a superposition where their physical presence is contrary to the represented position without the latter being false. For a moment all possibilities exist at once. This is an intriguing portent of the digital, a folding of history from the ancient into the contemporary where multiple possibilities coexist and where in digital time and space any direction of travel can immediately be disrupted and recalibrated as part of a continuous discontinuity where a text no longer needs to be followed beginning to end in a single direction. There is an apparent explosion of options. To “stay on track” is one option, one that Hercules (as a God) did not take, because as a god he could comprehend, like Funes, all of the sense data simultaneously. To “stay on track” is an option or a predisposition that draws on what Lyotard has referred to as the “acte manqué” (Lyotard 2013: 17), a “putting away somewhere,” temporarily forgotten and just out of reach (a kind of filtering out of noise) of information, in favor of the continuing concentration on “reliable” compressed data, and the continuing functioning of the chosen at the expense of the discarded. This implies a trust in and a reliance on communication at the expense of miscommunication. If the suppressed data is permitted to return, there is a risk of chaos. This is the contemporary digital paradox: a multiplication of messages to unprecedented levels is afforded by a process that is at the same time compelled to compress, lest that multiplication exceed the reach of man and attain reception only by the Gods (or at least the speculative realm of the nonhuman). In conclusion, for Wittgenstein, the mystical, until such times as it could be expressed in language, must remain silent and unknown apart from in terms of speculation. His resolute position does the world of knowledge and logic a great service. Dispensing with faith, romanticism, and superstition, his is a philosophy capable of bringing much into the realm of the known through a process of detailed analysis. However, by designating a realm of undecidability, his model also contributes to the underpinning of social and political regimes of exclusion. Even where that realm can itself be modeled through a form of language, if it is not recognized by the dominant model, it remains distinct. So, the challenge is to expand Wittgenstein’s logic to the point where as much as is possible is included, and as little as possible excluded. The challenge, though, becomes ever more acute in a time of digital modeling with its attendant compression algorithms. Wittgenstein was interested in the efficiency of exchange, a picture, and eventually a model of reality that could be reduced to a common structure. At the root of that structure is the notion of translation, between the picture/model and reality, and the intertranslatability between the different models. When all of this can be demonstrated, the common structure is revealed. It is this structure, or

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network of structures, that gives meaning to our world. That which cannot be contained within such a structuring is consigned to the realm of the mystical and to myth—and this should not be the concern of philosophy for Wittgenstein. However, that which is rejected or designated as unnecessary, surplus to requirement, or whatever unwanted category it is placed in, can no longer be conveniently placed out of view, or effectively silenced. Instead, order and chaos are increasingly engaged in dialogue. Order and chaos, Mars and Venus, are back on speaking terms. The world is no longer conducive to a neat dialectical ordering. The “act manques” no longer suffices. There are fewer and fewer hiding/storage places in which to place those ideas, concepts, or objects that somehow “do not fit.” Faith and confidence in a consistent ordering of this kind belongs in the modern world, but in some sense, as Bruno Latour famously pointed out (1993), “we’ve never been modern”; never free from potential contaminants, we have never been on an orderly linear path that moves logically and continuously through time to a steady beat/tempo. But, equally, perhaps we’ve never been postmodern or premodern either. Rather, we vacillate constantly between states of order and chaos, where each is an essential component of the other. There are of course periods when the prevailing order appears to work and the towering human achievements born out of “modernism” are testament to this—but at what cost does the imposition of this kind of order come? Any such order that does exist, or has existed, whatever its historical categorization and designation, generates a degree of exclusion and occurs through a process of translation. It is manifest in an evolving set of technological standards, operating simultaneously as the consolidation, imposition, mediation, and communication of a kind of stable and perceptible set of norms. Such norms form the common structure of language and underpin meaning and comprehensibility. They determine what can be read as well as how. Evander, as a mortal, reads signs inscribed by man as prophetic, as forming a linear trajectory through writing which presumes an orderly memorandum of understanding between coding and decoding, to produce by design a very particular, human, kind of knowledge. Hercules’ mode of reading though precedes Evander’s. Hercules is a God and can therefore read both the visual tracks and the audible lowing, the copresence of meaning(s), communication and miscommunication alike—the two mixed into a noisy cacophony of data that is beyond mortal perception. Today though, human and nonhuman media, messages, and signs mix together to form a singular totality as dense in complexity as the world was for Funes. Hence, we need to be able to read in multiple directions at once, and to take the meanings we deduce as unstable and temporary. Serres helps us with this. He mixes things up constantly. His method echoes the work of the rogue termites, the

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“guardians of the possible,” straining to hear what Wittgenstein condemns to silence. Serres inhabits an expanded field of influences and intermediate expressions where languages, disciplines, and temporalities enter into conversation, where miscommunication and misunderstanding are likely to occur. Like Wittgenstein, the notion of translation is central to Serres’ work, though with clear differences: he is not content to “pass over” in silence but is determined to proceed accompanied by a cacophony of noise.

Notes 1 Timothy Barker outlines an excellent example of this kind of behavior in this volume. His analysis of the “misuse” of the US postal system shows exactly how formal practices and patterns of prescribed use can transmute into rogue practices that undermine the intended meaning and utility of the system. 2 The idea of repetition of difference through resistance draws heavily on Deleuze’s (2008) rearticulation of the concepts of difference and repetition, where the former becomes a positive expression of singular and unique attributes that maintain themselves through the repetition and endurance of that which has no equivalent and cannot be replaced. The trajectory of this energy is relative to variable instances of flow and resistance—smooth seamless continuities and sudden fissures and encounters with other objects and energy sources. In such a universe, even the most stable and predictable of elements are susceptible to unpredictable and unforeseen events. 3 Thomas Sutherland gives a much fuller account in this volume. 4 Dyson, in her description of a quivering marginalia (AQM), explores and exposes the infringement of the recordist, and highlights the significance of returning to the recording that which had originally not been intended for audible perception.

References Bauman, Z. (2004), Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts, Cambridge: Polity. Brown, S. D. (2002), “Michel Serres: Science, Translation and the Logic of the Parasite Theory,” Culture & Society 19 (3): 1–27. Deleuze, G. (2008), Difference and Repetition, London: Continuum. Latour, B. (1993), We Have Never Been Modern, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lyotard, J. F. (2013), Why Philosophize? Cambridge: Polity Press. Serres, M. (1982), Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, eds. J. V. Harari and D. F. Bell, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Serres, M. (1995), Angels: A Modern Myth, London: Flammarrion.

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Serres, M. (2007), The Parasite, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Serres, M. (2015), Rome: The First Book of Foundations, London. Bloomsbury. Sterret, S. (2005), “Pictures of Sounds: Wittgenstein on Gramophone Records and the Logic of Depiction,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 36A (2): 351–62. Wittgenstein, L. (2009), Tractus Logico‐Philosophicus, London: Routledge.

7

Communicating the Incommunicable Formalism and Noise in Michel Serres Thomas Sutherland

“To come down to earth, or to dive into the current of meaning, to communicate,” declares Michel Serres, in the introduction to the first volume of his Hermes pentalogy (1968, 1972, 1974, 1977, 1980), “is to travel, translate, and exchange,” in the course of which we encounter Hermes, “god of paths and crossroads, messages and merchants” (1968: 10).1 Articulated in this series of five books, which together constitute the core of Serres’ early, structuralist epistemology, is a philosophy of transport, which seeks to comprehend our knowledge of the world in terms of a communicative network, involving constant translation between different domains and disciplinary formations. Serres embraces the network form as an abstract philosophical structure—one which, once supplied with determinate content, can furnish numerous conceptual models—as a means for overcoming the linear causality of traditional concepts, observing that “complexity is no longer an obstacle to knowledge or, worse, a descriptive judgement; rather, it is the best facilitator of knowledge and experience” (1968: 20). It is not surprising, then, that his work has been increasingly taken up within fields like media studies, wherein the attention that he pays to the question of noise has found particular purchase, emphasizing the extent to which human communication is grounded upon its inherent fallibility.2 Serres’ consideration of noise derives principally from the privilege that he affords the twin disciplines of information theory and cybernetics, in turn forming part of a more general interest that he shows in the mathematical sciences, which he views as catalyzing a methodological revolution in the twentieth century: namely, that of structuralism. Unlike many of his French contemporaries, the inspiration for Serres’ structuralism does not stem from

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linguistics; instead, he seeks to apply methods derived from mathematics (especially set theory and topology) to other fields of knowledge.3 This is what he terms “importation,” whereby “a methodological concept, defined with precision and clarity in a given domain, and having succeeded (a method can and must be judged only by its results), is tested at every possible opportunity in other areas of knowledge, critique, etc.” (1968: 28). Serres views mathematics as almost uniquely suited to such importation insofar as it aspires to an empty, purely formal universality, a language without meaning. And yet, such universality can only be achieved through a constant process of abstraction and purification, leaving in its wake a trail of empirical residua that serve to remind us of its material, technical, and practical conditions. It is this deliberate tension between the universal and the particular, the ideal and the empirical, the pure and the applied upon which I wish to focus in this chapter. More specifically, I wish to examine the way in which Serres grapples with one of the most persistent philosophical problems: namely, how philosophy, as a discursive form, might gesture toward that which remains external to all discourse—in simple terms, how philosophers might render the incommunicable communicable. In Serres’ case, he seeks to use the conceptual affordances of the mathematical sciences in order to foreground that which philosophy has typically neglected, asking how we might “speak purely of an impurity” (1968: 40 [66]). Inspired in particular by G. W. Leibniz, who attempted to develop a metaphysics “in which calculation has the value of creation, in which the immense plenitude of the real is expressed by a maximally pure discourse, in which substances, of infinite complexity, and in their hopeless solitude, communicate perfectly,” Serres views the said metaphysics as isomorphic to his own project, which is guided by “the paradox of a message without noise somehow transporting all the clamour of the real, incomprehensibly comprehensible” (1974: 116). For Serres, it is only in the aforementioned methodological revolution of structuralism that we have found the means to truly conceptualize noise— not just the audible (or otherwise sensible) noise that might interfere with certain signals, but the inexorable background noise that lies behind all communication. Paradoxically, such methods communicate noise (along with other forms of physical and metaphysical disorder) by formalizing it, stripping it of its noisiness. In this fashion, noise remains both internal and external to Serres’ structuralist method: it is always present within philosophical communication (and indeed, forms the latter’s objective condition), and this presence can in some way be mathematized, but it can never be truly represented in itself, only grasped as a residuum—something left behind, abandoned, filtered out.

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The Struggle Against Noise The advent of information theory and cybernetics marked a paradigmatic shift in the mid‐twentieth century, inasmuch as they attempted to mathematize the adequacy of communication. In order to do this, the questions of signification and understanding that motivated most prior conceptualizations of communication had to be abandoned in favor of a consideration of accuracy in terms of the statistical characteristics of both a message and the channel by which it is delivered from sender to receiver. The consequence of such a model, argues Norbert Wiener, since all mechanisms of communication, as efficient as they may be, are still “subject to the overwhelming tendency for entropy to increase, for information to leak in transit, unless certain external agents are introduced to control it,” is (touching on the research of Benoit Mandelbrot) that speech might be understood as “a joint game by the talker and the listener against the forces of confusion” (1954: 92). Communication, according to this account, always carries with itself the risk of miscommunication, precisely as a result of the inherent properties of language itself and its medium of transmission. Wiener alludes, however cursorily, to an essential agonistics of communication, whereby a successful transmission is actuated through a joint struggle by sender and receiver against both the usual frustrations of language, as well as the potential for active interference, which together constitute the noise that becomes an obstacle to said transmission. In particular, this cooperation between sender and receiver—whether speaker and listener, scribe and reader, and so on—hinges upon the possession of a shared symbolic code, allowing for a reasonably accurate reception of the message, even in the presence of such noise. This notion of communication as “a sort of game played by two interlocutors, considered as united, against the phenomena of interference and confusion, or against individuals with some stake in interrupting communication,” argues Serres (1968: 41 [66–7]), has the potential to fundamentally transform our understanding of dialogue. Most notably, in contrast to the usual interpretation of the Platonic dialogue, and its model of dialectics (the maieutic method), this notion of a joint struggle against noise means that the interlocutors are not at all opposed (however irreconcilable their dispute may appear), but instead “are on the same side, tied together by a mutual interest: they battle together against noise” (1968: 41 [67]). There is not a single, linear transmission between speaker and listener; rather, they continually exchange the roles of sender and receiver, with sufficient frequency that it is possible “for us to view them as struggling together against a common enemy” (1968: 41 [67]).

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“To hold a dialogue,” Serres propounds, “is to posit a third man and seek to exclude him; a successful communication is this excluded third” (1968: 41 [67], italics in original). An equivalence is drawn here between the noise that information theory and cybernetics view as obstructing communication, the excluded middle of classical logic,4 and the so‐called “third man argument” put forward by Plato in the Parmenides.5 In the latter dialogue, Plato submits that the notion of a linear, determinative relationship between an idea and its manifold sensible manifestations (the key metaphysical gambit of his middle‐period dialogues) necessarily results in an infinite regress, for there must be a third idea in which both the originary idea and its sensible manifestations participate. Appealing to the Platonic dialogue as a particular genre of communication, Serres personifies the third man in an almost‐literal sense as “the demon, the prosopopoeia of noise” (1968: 41 [67]): an outsider who comes between the two interlocutors. The maieutic method, in fact, unites the questioner and the respondent in the task of giving birth. Dialectic makes the two interlocutors play on the same side; they do battle together to produce a truth on which they can agree, that is, to produce a successful communication. In a certain sense, they struggle together against interference, against the demon, against the third man. (1968: 42 [67])

Of course, such a struggle against noise is not always successful, as attested to by the various aporetic dialogues. But this is exactly the point of the mathematical model of communication that Serres views the Platonic dialogue as representing: by conceiving of communication in probabilistic terms, the success of the transmission is of less import than the very fact of the struggle by which it is constituted. Information theory is about the strategy or ruse—the game—whereby a sender and receiver work together to at least partly defeat the noise that might otherwise obstruct them.6 The consequence of this, then, is that the ideas sought within these dialogues cannot be regarded as preexisting their transmission; rather, it is in the very agreement between interlocutors itself that an idea is recognized as such: “the attempt to eliminate noise, is at the same time the condition of the apprehension of the abstract form and the condition of the success of communication” (1968: 43 [68]). Noise is thus not merely an inconvenient obstacle, getting in the way of a preconceived idea, but a necessary element in the communicational process. To put this another way, what the Platonic dialogue reveals, in its figuration of philosophizing as an art of disputation and concordance between

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speakers, is that the ideal of noiseless communication—represented by Plato as the eventual agreement upon an idea shorn of all empirical specificity and superfluity: a universal form, singular rather than particular, stable rather than protean—is paradoxically dependent upon a necessary presence of noise. The idea, in spite of any claims to ontological originarity, is in fact the product of an act of purification or formalization, for “to formalize is to carry out a process by which one passes from concrete modes of thinking to one or more abstract forms; equally, it is to eliminate noise, in an optimal manner” (1968: 43 [68]). The precise virtue of the idea, namely its independence from all empirical instances (and thus its outright universality), can only be understood when considered in counterposition to the noise that it supposedly precedes, and this distinction or decision between message and noise is, in turn, an arbitrary result of a preestablished concordance between the two interlocutors. In Serres’ conception, noise is not something that simply intrudes upon a preformed message (as is implied by the original formulation of the mathematical model of communication), it is present from the very beginning, such that the message (i.e., the idea) is better understood as the product of a filtering mechanism that occurs through the process of communication itself, a kind of rudimentary spectral analysis that, by dint of a code shared between both interlocutors, entails a selection and isolation of particular attributes communicable via said code. If the mathematical model focuses its attention upon preventing the specific errors and distortions that are perceived to have afflicted a given message during its transmission from sender to receiver (i.e., the impure noise distinct from a signal regarded as pure at its origin), Serres instead shifts his attention toward the physical or thermodynamic noise that is the condition of circulation for any message in general, and which remains in the absence of any message, the aleatory matter of any added form, an objective gasp prior to any signal, any sound, any sign, or any singular language. (1972: 192–3)

The unavoidable presence of noise complicates the very question of origin, for it forecloses the possibility of a pre‐communicative element within the communicative process: the message does not precede communication, it is an abstractive product of communication and its struggle against the powers of noise. Something must be purged or expelled. It is for this reason that Serres views the genesis of mathematics, a discipline which “furnishes the example of an almost‐perfect communication, univocal information at both sender and receiver” (1968:

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95), as tied up with the intersubjectivity of the Platonic dialogue. Taking the term “mathematics” in the sense of manthanein, to learn, Serres suggests that it is plausible to think “that its very origin lies in a dialogue where both interlocutors compete together against the powers of noise, that mathematics is acquired from the moment when victory rests in their hands,” such that “Platonism presents both a philosophy of the pure mathematon and a dialectics” (1968: 95–6). In particular, the model here is the Meno, which is, strictly speaking, an aporetic dialogue (inasmuch as the participants reach no firm conclusion regarding the definition of virtue), but which also contains perhaps the best‐known example of anamnēsis, in which Socrates coaxes a solution (for doubling the area of a square) from an unwitting slave boy, demonstrating the latter’s recollection of a seemingly innate geometrical knowledge. Serres defines mathematics as “the world of communication maximally purged of noise” (1968: 96), such that any interference or break in a transmission can only signal its fall into non‐mathematicity. “Mathematics is transmitted in its entirety or not at all” (1968: 96). The Meno, in its depiction of a direct recollection of a knowledge and a tradition that was always already there—the ignorant slave boy demonstrating himself capable of reestablishing connection with a forgotten world of unchanging ideality—represents precisely such a case of the perfect, uninterrupted transmission of information that mathematics offers: “[t]he reminiscence of the Meno is a reconnection or a full taking‐responsibility by the heir, the one who is taught, for a tradition which is not susceptible to misinterpretations, equivocations, or lacunae” (1968: 96). It is in this reconnection that we find the exemplar of noiseless communication, a kind of limit case of historicity, in which mathematical truths, as a result of the expurgation of all empirical and material residua, can be preserved and transmitted without interference. And yet, it is also in this indispensable noiselessness that the limitations or boundaries of such a mode of communication become apparent.

Formalism and Structuralism in the Hermes Pentalogy This formal equivalence that Serres draws between the maieutic method and mathematics, of which the Meno marks the juncture, forms part of a broader project, contained within the five Hermes volumes, which seeks to use the conceptual resources of information theory and cybernetics (as well as thermodynamics, topology, set theory, genetics etc.) in order to develop a simultaneously unified and pluralistic epistemology, premised upon a

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continual process of communication, transportation, and translation, that itself mirrors the physical laws to which its objects of study are beholden: exchange, as the law of the theoretical universe, the transport of concepts and their complication, the intersection and overlapping of domains, the indefinite debate of meaning in non‐referential speculation, henceforth mimics, represents, expresses, reproduces, and so on, the very fabric in which objects are ensconced. (1972: 15)7

This informational model, which conceives of disciplines (taking in not only the sciences but also philosophy, literature, the arts, etc.) as distinct, albeit often mutually intelligible languages, does not, according to Serres, position itself as the proverbial queen of the sciences, but is rather a means by which such hierarchies might be dismantled: there is an urgent need to found a pluralistic epistemology, encompassing a complete spectrum, from the logic of science, to linguistics and the sociology of science. And it is precisely to the benefit of this epistemology that science is unitary or systematic, and not under the haughty eye of an established discipline, of divine right, at the top of a hierarchy; a unity of a multiplicity of points of view, each of which enjoys roughly the same power of generality as all the others. The unity of circulation, the pluralistic epistemology, and the philosophy of transport all destroy dogmatism without remainder. What is left is to plan out a comparative epistemology, without reduction or reference, for all these languages designating, at every possible opportunity, a single horizon of pertinence. (1972: 12)

A “generalized informational language,” Serres argues, “constitutes the fundamental and continuous relation between objects,” such that “the certainty that it exists results in the certainty that the external world exists, in the mode of a communicative network, of which all the networks that I know and can constitute are singular, exceptional cases, approximating or imitating the real world” (1972: 110). All epistemological domains and regional sciences are merely translations of this generalized language‐world (the encyclopedia), none of which possess the right to be situated at the top of a hierarchy, and all of which are constituted not on the basis of their specific cultural content, but on purely formal (i.e., structural) terms— namely their referentiality and relationality: their internal coherence and external correspondences. He seeks “not the unity of a law, but the coherence of a language” (1972: 101).

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It is in this way that Serres develops his peculiar take on structuralism. Structural analysis, he declares, is a purely formal method, in distinct contrast to symbolic analysis, the latter seeking to determine the correspondence between signs and semantic content: a structure is an operational set with undefined signification (whereas an archetype is a concrete set with overdefined signification), grouping together any number of elements, the content of which is unspecified, and a finite number of relations, the nature of which is unspecified, but for which the function and certain results regarding elements are defined. Assuming, then, that we specify, in a determinate manner, the content of elements and the nature of relations, we obtain a model (a paradigm) of this structure: the latter is then the formal analagon of all the concrete models that it organizes. Instead of symbolizing content, a model ‘realizes’ a structure. (1968: 32, italics in original)

Hence, as he goes on to explain: For any given cultural content, be it God, a table, or a bowl, an analysis is structural (and is only structural) when it presents this content as a model in the sense defined above—that is, when it can isolate a formal set of elements and relations, about which it is possible to reason without appealing to the signification of the given content. (1968: 32, italics in original)

This cultural content, whatever it might be, is thus treated as merely the specific, localized manifestation of a more general structure that is grasped in purely formal (rather than significative) terms. We can thus better understand Serres’ appeal to the Platonic dialogue, and the equivalence that he draws between the dialectical method and the birth of mathematics. In his conception, this unusual genre furnishes a specific model through which we can isolate a more general structure of communication, precisely because this model is isomorphic to another model of communication, namely mathematics, insofar as the former’s attempt to communicate an idea in the absence of any noise (i.e., a universal idea, unshackled to any specific empirical or material realization) is structurally homologous to the mathematical evocation of a purely ideal form, lying outside the realm of immediate experience. This isomorphism between two distinct models facilitates Serres’ identification of a particular structure of communication, one that is premised upon an elimination of the empirical

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and a dematerialization of reasoning, equating the success of communication with the recognition of an abstract form or idea. And yet, Serres’ identification of this structure also allows him to highlight the limitations of these models, in that the noiseless communication that they uphold is only made possible through the active exclusion of noise. After all, Serres’ decidedly anachronistic recourse to the metaphor of the encyclopedia, combined with his aspiration toward an informational and communicational conception of knowledge, is not intended to imply an ideal transparency of cultural transmission; on the contrary, it emphasizes the inherent imperfection or inadequacy of all communication, and the concomitant necessity of translation and exchange. “To formally analyse,” argues Serres, “consists in forming a language which develops its own rules: it is only afterward that there is the possibility of translating it into content, into models” (1968: 32), and in particular, it is the mathematical sciences that for him furnish an entirely self‐referential language. Modern mathematics appears to us as “a science which contains within its autochthonous field its own methodology, its own ‘self‐description,’ and its own ‘logic’” (1968: 48), giving it a formal purity—as well as a clarity and precision—that allows it to be translated into all manner of models. The mathematical sciences are chosen as paradigmatic by Serres not because this purity affords them an infinite translatability, but, on the contrary, because their continual movement toward purity demands a ceaseless expurgation of that which remains untranslatable. Mathematics’ ever‐tightening circle of abstraction, by which it filters out all empirical residua, allows for an evermore apparent delineation between abstract universality and empirical specificity. For this reason, then, Serres is able to proclaim that “abstract mathematics and axiomatics owe their emergence to the Sophists’ discussions and paradoxes, as well as to Plato’s dialogue techniques” (1977: 97 [23]): mathematics, as much as the maieutic method, derives its idealities from an agonistic field, wherein it struggles against the empirical and material domains, even as the latter furnish the means for its communication (and accordingly, the conditions for its abstraction from said domains). And as noted earlier, it is specifically in the Meno that Serres finds the key figuration of such agonistics, this dialogue not only marking the intersection of dialectics and mathematics but also depicting their dual provenance, in both the immaterial communication of anamnēsis and the inductive movement from empirical particularities (lines in the sand) to ideal universalities. Plato’s dialogical technique, frequently deployed in his middle‐period dialogues, whereby he presents Socrates as using empirical instances in order to evoke an idea that is constitutive of and yet irreducible to any such

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instance, is isomorphic to Socrates’ interaction with the slave boy in the Meno, whereby a shaky, inexact diagram, drawn in the sand, is used to evoke an ideal form of the square and the diagonal: [i]t is never the same square, the same diagonal. It must therefore be acknowledged that the mathematical essence is only the invariant of a multiplicity of concrete, or most concrete realizations, that which remains identical, the abstract or most abstract. The emergence of a stable ideality is obtained through a continuous purification of inessential determinations. If this is true, Platonic reasoning is the secret of this truth. (1972: 118)

There is a process of translation here, transforming the particular into the universal and, in doing so, eliminating all noise, all cacography, all that is accidental (and would thus differentiate one instance from another). And yet, at the same time that this translation into the language of mathematical formalism would seem to abandon all recognition of the material channels and media upon which it depends, as we shall see, in a strange way it also brings them to the fore, as the residua of this process of purification.

Communication beyond Semantics Scientific rationality, argues Serres, depends upon control (in the specifically cybernetic sense of the term), demanding a tight feedback loop between sender and receiver, so that one can be assured that a particular theorem, when transmitted, will be received in the same manner that it was sent. “And this,” he contends, “is why it was Plato, rather than someone else, who really founded such rationality, with a philosophy in which roles and counter‐roles enter into dialogue. Any break in dialogue, any lapse in control, ruins rationality” (1974: 87). The tacit agreement that Serres identifies between the interlocutors of the Platonic dialogue—namely that a successful communication is a noiseless communication—acts as a mechanism of control, resisting the tendency toward entropy that would lead to information becoming corrupted in transit. But as we have already seen, what this mechanism reveals is that this form of communication, deemed to be successful, is not so much the prevention of noise from intruding as the exclusion of a noise that was always already present. Formalization—whether mathematical or dialectical—requires, in Serres’ conception, an exclusion of all differentiation and, accordingly, the exclusion of all that is empirical. The empiricist is the first “third man” to be excluded.

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What this means is that for this formalization to be successful, it must effectively cut itself off from the particularities of the world: in order for dialogue to be possible, one must close one’s eyes and cover one’s ears to the song and the beauty of the sirens. In a single movement, we eliminate hearing and noise, vision and always‐botched drawing; in a single movement, we conceive of the form and we understand each other. And therefore, once again, the Greek miracle, that of mathematics, must be born at the same time—an historical time, logical time, and reflexive time—as a philosophy of dialogue and by dialogue. (1968: 45 [70])

Indeed, Serres frequently posits such empiricism as the diametrical opposite to Plato’s dialectical formalism, remarking that “at the extreme limits of empiricism, meaning is totally immersed in noise, the space of communication is granular, and dialogue is condemned to cacophony: the transmission of communication is a perennial transformation” (1968: 44 [70]). The empirical is, in short, noisy. If philosophy, in its usual mode, “must work upon central singularities, never on the periphery” (1977: 230), excluding all disorder and irregularity in the name of a straightforward communicability—which is to say, a stable, predictable meaning—then Serres’ structuralism, by contrast, is intended to effectively regionalize reason, depriving it of its presumed universality, and thus in some way to make the incommunicable—the diffuse, chaotic, fluid, stochastic, marginal, and so on—communicable, not by incautiously attempting to translate its content into another language (so to speak), but precisely by revealing its structural properties as resistant to all such translation.8 The key exemplar of this is mathematics itself, the seeming paragon of formal purity. Mathematical science, observes Serres, “is not pure, in itself, and by divine right; it moves toward purity”—and then, looking backward, “the mathematician perceives previous theories as being applied theories” (1972: 50–1). With each step toward a greater universality and purity, its origins come to seem “less and less mathematical, more and more naive” (1972: 52): more material, technical, or pragmatic, more determined by singular, empirical instances. Hence, with hindsight, Euclidean space seems beholden to the practices of masons and architects, while the space of linear perspective seems likewise to those of painters. This is the peculiar temporality of mathematics: its march toward an ever‐greater formal rigor is accompanied by a reciprocal movement back toward its source, revealing its “impure,” applied antecedents. Every instance of mathematization, which is to say every effectuation of mathematical truth, leaves behind something

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untranslatable, an ineradicable remainder or impurity that is only brought to light in retrospect.9 “From stage to stage, the ‘pure’ is preserved, the ‘empirical’ abandoned, and so on” (1972: 52), such that the origin of mathematics can only be understood in terms of this continual movement of simultaneous abstraction and excavation, the filtering out of an empirical residuum. Serres is not alone among the French structuralists in his fascination with mathematical formalism. For instance, in his twentieth seminar of 1972–3, Jacques Lacan draws, like Serres, upon the model of Bourbaki’s set theory, and in particular to what he describes as the “play of mathematical writing” (1998: 48). Lacan seeks to harness the effects of written language in a manner that exceeds all semantics: The real can only be inscribed on the basis of an impasse of formalization. That is why I thought I could provide a model of it using mathematical formalization, inasmuch as it is the most advanced elaboration we have by which to produce signifierness [signifiance]. The mathematical formalization of signifierness runs counter to meaning. (1998: 93)

Such a form of writing makes no claim to represent the real; on the contrary, it is intended to symbolize the limits of all such representation, invoking a pure signifierness which precisely means nothing. “Mathematical formalization is our goal, our ideal,” Lacan declares, for “it alone is capable of being integrally transmitted” (1998: 119).10 Gilles Deleuze makes a similar maneuver in his appeal to differential calculus, positing the symbol dx as “the principle of a general differential philosophy” (1994: 217), specifically representing the problematic character of the virtual Idea, which cannot be straightforwardly traced back from a proposition that would serve as its solution or response. In both cases, mathematical formalization becomes the means by which an aspect of thought or experience might be symbolized without attaching to it any significative or semantic content. In a strange way, formalism is used to evoke that which resists all formalization. It is this paradox that is raised, and indeed foregrounded, by Serres’ structuralism: noise becomes communicable when it is purged of its noisiness, when it is shorn of its particularity, divorced from any particular empirical instance. After all, “the more pure a concept, the more applicable it is”—in order to transport a concept from one domain to another, “this concept must be of such formal purity that it is multivalent” (1972: 54–5), hence the virtue of mathematical code, the universal applicability of which derives from exactly such purity. Yet this multivalence does not prevent the noise that always crops up when this code is applied to empirical instances—indeed, the greater the formalization, the greater is the

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recognition of that which remains external to it. In a way, the mathematical model of communication allows “noise” to be heard: not just the distortions that might appreciably afflict a particular message, but the universal “murmur at the bottom of all speech” (1972: 194), a murmur that Serres posits as prior to and the condition for all intersubjective communication. And at the same time, by parenthesizing all meaning, it reveals just how little of this noise can actually be translated into the form of a mathematical model: “it is when mathematics is at its highest degree of purity that we best see the empirical origins of its ‘naiveties’” (1972: 52). Emphasizing “the unitarist power of this thought in a world of infinitary pluralism and regional complexity,” Serres views mathematical formalism as the key to articulating “a new filiation between the indeterminate abstract and the proliferation of the significative content of human culture” (1968: 34), a logoanalysis that would finally unite the sciences and the humanities under a common, universal paradigm. In other words, Serres’ philosophy, at least at this early stage of his career, does not forsake the dialogic mode—there is still a code, a means of bringing some kind of order to chaos, systematizing noise such that its incessant presence might finally be recognized.

Conclusion Ultimately, the Hermes pentalogy raises numerous questions—some of which would be elaborated upon in Serres’ later works, while others would quickly be abandoned. The priority that Serres places upon mathematical formalism as the starting point for a new universalism (albeit a pluralistic universalism) would rapidly diminish in his later output, which would instead accentuate the importance of chaos, disorder, and multiplicity. In my estimation, though, there is a crucial question raised by Serres in these early works that still deserves much greater attention: namely, the question of how philosophy is communicated—and more specifically, the question of the media, techniques, and protocols by which philosophers connect with (and perhaps, also, distinguish themselves from their audience). Within media studies and communication studies, we make persistent recourse to philosophical concepts and frameworks, and yet, there has been comparatively little examination of how exactly such philosophies function as modes, objects, and practices of communication. As Sybille Krämer remarks, “core areas in philosophy, like philosophy of mind and language, epistemology, and philosophy of science, not to mention ontology and metaphysics, still remain largely unaffected by issues in media theory” (2015: 28, translation altered). The history of philosophy is a history of both

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inclusions and exclusions. It is a discourse built upon shared codes, filtering out unwanted noise. Perhaps more attention needs to be placed upon the communicative means by which such inclusions and exclusions have been effectuated.

Notes 1 Only a small selection of the essays from these books have been published in English, mostly in the Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy (1982a) collection. I have taken translations from this book when possible, albeit often significantly altered. All other translations are my own, unless noted otherwise. Citations refer, in the first case, to the original French books; page numbers for the English translation, when applicable, are in square brackets. 2 See, for instance, Siegert (2015: 19–32) or Krämer (2015: 55–62). Such works tend to appeal to the much more extensive discussion of noise in The Parasite (1982b [1980])—see also Thompson (2017: 56–62). 3 If Serres is “perhaps the only philosopher in France whose work is consonant with the spirit of structuralist analysis,” opines Vincent Descombes, “this is because he takes his definition less from Saussure than from Bourbaki” (1980: 87). 4 As Maria Assad remarks, “built into the very concept of ‘noise’ as a set of interference phenomena, and in ‘noise’ as the parasite who triples as an abusive guest, a parasitic organism, and/or static noise, is the overriding notion of the excluded middle or third (le tiers exclu) without which the entire logical structure of Western thought is unthinkable” (1999: 18). 5 N. Katherine Hayles (1988: 6) expresses skepticism regarding the “metaphoric slippage in the half numerical, half anthropomorphic phrase ‘third man,’” which she views as conflating multiple incompatible concepts. 6 For a more detailed examination of this notion, see Terranova (2004: 10–20). 7 On the influence of information theory and cybernetics upon “French theory,” see in particular Lafontaine (2007) and Liu (2010). 8 This emphasis upon noise becomes more marked in the fourth and fifth volumes of the Hermes series, wherein Serres increasingly posits various forms of disorder as not only necessary, but logically, ontologically, and epistemologically primary in relation to the systems of order with which prior sciences allied themselves. 9 As Lucie Kim‐Chi Mercier puts it: “mathematical truth can only manifest itself historically through idioms that function as its successive materiali-

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zations and the inherent imperfection of these languages constitutes the dynamic core of mathematical historicity” (2019: 62). 10 “The matheme is,” writes Justin Clemens, “among other things, an attempt to answer the problem of transference in the institution of psychoanalysis, a materialist way to transmit knowledge beyond meaning or interpretation” (2013: 56).

References Assad, M. L. (1999), Reading with Michel Serres: An Encounter with Time, New York: State University of New York Press. Clemens, J. (2013), Psychoanalysis Is an Antiphilosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Deleuze, G. (1994), Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton, London and New York: Continuum. Descombes, V. (1980), Modern French Philosophy, trans. L. Scott‐Fox and J. M. Harding, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hayles, N. K. (1988), “Two Voices, One Channel: Equivocation in Michel Serres,” SubStance 3 (57): 3–12. Krämer, S. (2015), Medium, Messenger, Transmission: An Approach to Media Philosophy, trans. A. Enns, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Lacan, J. (1998), The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book XX: On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, Encore 1972‐1973, trans. B. Fink, New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company. Lafontaine, C. (2007), “The Cybernetic Matrix of ‘French Theory’,” Theory, Culture & Society 24 (5): 27–46. Liu, L. H. (2010), “‘The Cybernetic Unconscious’: Rethinking Lacan, Poe, and French Theory,” Critical Inquiry 36 (2): 288–320. Mercier, L. K.‐C. (2019), “Mathematical Anamneses,” in R. Dolphijn (ed.), Michel Serres and the Crises of the Contemporary, 51–70, London and New York: Bloomsbury. Serres, M. (1968), Hermès I, La communication, Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Serres, M. (1972), Hermès II, L’interférence, Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Serres, M. (1974), Hermès III, La traduction, Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Serres, M. (1977), Hermès IV, La distribution, Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Serres, M. (1980), Hermès V, Le passage du Nord‐Ouest, Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Serres, M. (1982a), Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, eds. J. V. Harari and D. F. Bell, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Serres, M. (1982b), The Parasite, trans. L. R. Schehr, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Siegert, B. (2015), Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real, trans. G. Winthrop‐Young, New York: Fordham University Press. Terranova, T. (2004), Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age, London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press. Thompson, M. (2017), Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism, London and New York: Bloomsbury. Wiener, N. (1954), The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, Cambridge: Da Capo Press.

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8

Objects Mis‐taken Toward the Aesthetics of Displaced Materiality Maria Korolkova

This book, written by a resident alien, appropriately begins with an “error.” —Giuliana Bruno (2018: 15) In Atlas of Emotions: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film, Giuliana Bruno (2018) justifies the deliberate mistake she makes in the title of the opening chapter of the book, “Site‐Seeing: The Cine City”: Sightseeing has become site‐seeing. An error implies a departure from a definite path; the semiotics of the term incorporates the notion of erring, or wandering. Error—the deviation from a route, a departure from principles—is bound to such wandering. As an act of navigation on a devious course, it implies rambling, roaming, and even going astray. Atlas—a map of theoretical and emotional itineraries—has developed as an errare. (15)

Throughout the book, the seminal text on haptic cinematic geographies, errare becomes not just a metaphor, but a fundamental, sense‐making motive of the work. It acts as a structuring principle—erring as a “textual layering of a palimpsest”; as a methodology, the glue connecting different “shifting grounds of socio‐cultural motilities”; and, finally, as the principal theoretical model (15). In this chapter, following Bruno’s journey of errare, I take a close look on the structure of miscommunication as material mis‐taking and examine visual communication as a territory of displacement. Bruno’s errare originates from a spelling mistake with “sight” misspelled as “site,” which in turn accounts for a mirroring theoretical shift: “as an error, site‐seeing partakes in a shift away from the long‐standing focus of film

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theory on sight and toward the construction of a moving theory of site,” from “Lacanian gaze” of the “voyeur” toward a spectator as a “voyageur, a passenger who traverses a haptic, emotive terrain” (15). Constructing a new theory of viewing art, architecture, and film, Bruno employs errors on two levels. First, she claims that the preceding theories of film were faulty because they concentrated solely on “transcendental, disembodied” filmic gaze, presenting an optic model that does not fit the multisensory experience of cinematic viewing. Secondly, the model suggested by Bruno in Atlas is kind of a meta‐error; it reclaims emotions and emotional exploration—which is often done by mistake, by erring, wandering around—as its main methodology, arguing “for the haptic as a feminist strategy of reading space” (2018: 16).1 Taking these two errors into account, my reading suggests that Bruno leaves an important gap in her understanding of viewing experience in art, cinema, and architecture. While concentrating, often virtuously, on the filmic gaze, the viewing spaces of cinema and the embodiment of the spectator, Bruno leaves little space for the actual materiality of viewing, consisting, from one side, of screens and surfaces, and, from the other, of objects that inhabit this new haptic architectonics of viewing—of actual objects that are being seen. What comes to the surface here is not only the embodiment of the spectator but also the objectification of the surroundings around them. These screens, surfaces, and objects, I argue, have their own trajectory of errare, which I explore by looking at three objects, mistaken and displaced—a wallpaper taken off the walls of an apartment in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire, in 1910; film reels found in 1978 on a construction site at Dawson City, Canada; and a hole in the ceiling of Auschwitz Crematorium, Poland.2 Following Bruno, I also make a movement from the optic to the haptic in looking at the way error and displacement is represented, felt and experienced in different types of visual communications, predominantly film and architecture, through its relationships not just to viewing space and a spectator‐subject, but to objects as well. The focus on objects and their materiality leads me to employ the term “mis‐taking” rather than other derivatives mentioned throughout this collection (miscommunications, error, glitches, lies, etc.), as it assumes the modality of taking (mis‐take— from Old Norse mistaka “take in error”) initially in its nonabstract sense. While erring—errare—implies a wondering, traveling, detouring subject, mistaking—mistake—can signify the travel of an object “taken in error” and then put elsewhere, displaced. Likewise, within contemporary visual communications and the shift from the optic to the haptic, most visual objects (objects of vision) can not only be touched or sensed but also (mis)taken— the multiple screens of smartphones we constantly touch and take wherever we go, or even mistake them for what they are not. In this way, the message of

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miscommunication becomes the object, or, in a McLuhanesque fashion, the object becomes the message, and this message becomes a mistake. The idea that the object is the message, or indeed a message of miscommunication, is not of course new in the history of visual culture. René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, more widely known as This Is Not a Pipe (1929), and his later work This Is Not an Apple (1964) both famously play with the distinction between object, sign, signifier, and their representations. Yet, with Magritte, the agency still remains with the author, who famously got annoyed with being constantly approached to explain his pipe riddle, so that he had to specifically point out that he did not write “This is a pipe” on the painting, but “This is not a pipe,” so he was not lying (Torczyner 1977: 71). Magritte’s miscommunication lies solely in the area of representation, and the artist as the source of this trick. What I am interested in is the very materiality of objects, which through this materiality could take on their own agency of misleading. As Bernd Herzogenrath puts it, “materiality that has significance beyond human action and intervention,” “objects that have a life of their own, a temporality of their own” (2015a: 113). A more fitting art‐historical practice to explore these processes would be a collage. In 1978, Groupe μ, a collective of Belgian semioticians interested in the idea of signs, objects, and symbols, guest‐edited an issue of the French journal Revue d’exthétique, giving it the title Collages. Their goal was, as the art‐historian Yuval Etgar points out, “to reveal how similar the activity of cutting, assembling and pasting papers, pictures and other materials is to the way in which we construct sentences: choosing pre‐existing elements— words—and arranging them in various ways that generate different meanings” (2019: 35). For the group, the precise activity of colle, of “gluing,” or “pasting,” equated to the activity of communication, of meaning-making, and the result was an “object that tends to maximal openness, overflowing with any attempt at classification, reduction, or closure,” after all “one might consider ‘everything as collage’” (Collage 1978; cited in Etgar 2019: 35). Such generalization suggests collage as a universal principal for any production of new knowledge regardless of the material conditions of the medium, yet there remains a very specific action of cutting a material object, and (mis)taking it to a new surface, displacing, which creates new meanings often charged with miscommunication. Collage, regardless of the artistic movement that deploys it, can represent the type of miscommunication described in the introduction to this volume, which is understood not just as the dialogical relationship between the sender and the receiver, but a polyphony, which welcomes the third party. Here, I will define this third not just as noise or interruption, but as some kind of displaced material object present within a (mis)communication act. Such definition highlights two shifts. First,

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it suggests, to look at visual communication predominantly through its materiality, in which I follow an already established cohort of theorist of media in its materialist turn (see Bollmer 2019; Herzogenrath 2015b; Parikka 2012; Tilley et al. 2006). Secondly, the stress on misrepresentation echoes Deleuze’s description of the falsity of photographs provided in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (2003). For Deleuze, photographs are not only ways of seeing (the optical model offered by Bruno previously), but “they are what is seen, until finally one sees nothing else” (Bacon cited in Deleuze 2003: 91). According to Deleuze, a photograph as a medium that copies reality becomes a cliché of visual perception, misleading the viewer and displacing what is represented within it with something that is only considered to be real. Yet, any photograph can be seen as a collage of different layers of reality, and if “everything is collage” can translate into “everything is a miscommunication,” exploration of such techniques can help us “identify new sites of distraction, voids, gaps or moments where narrative no longer runs fluently but instead offers an opportunity for something unexpected, unscripted, or that was not meant to be included to appear” (Etgar 2019: 48).

The Wallpaper In May 1910, a group of young poets and artists broke into the publishing house of St.‐Petersburger Zeitung of Kügelgen, Glich & Co in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire. They did not intend to steal anything; in fact, they were trying to print a book. The problem was that none of the typography houses of St. Petersburg of the time would agree to deliver their order due to the unusual nature of the printing paper. The book was designed to be pressed on a cheap wallpaper, which had been taken off one of the city’s apartments, so that, in the words of one of its authors, Vasilii Kamenskii, “the cheap wallpaper pattern was left blank on left pages as decoration” (1931: 113).3 The wallpaper indeed eventually damaged the typography machine; however, the desired effect was reached. The book called The Trap for Judges (1910) was printed in 300 copies and became a public scandal of the time. The Russian futurist movement was launched. The book’s distribution system was also quite unconventional. The self‐proclaimed futurists would sneak into St. Petersburg’s most famous poetry salons, and secretly put the book into jacket and overcoat pockets of the renowned attendees—a deliberate act of miscommunication. What interests me here is not the history of the futurism movement in Russia,4 but the materiality of this collective action, the act of multiple

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miscommunications and mis‐takes. Wallpaper was misused as a book, the book was misused as wallpaper, the typography was misused printing on wallpaper instead of newspaper, and, finally, the poetry salon was misused as a distribution channel—and the way this act was possible is through its objectification of wallpaper. Following a Foucauldian archaeology of knowledge, let’s trace the paths of this object and its shift in meaning—from an apartment in 1910 St. Petersburg, through the publishing house of a German newspaper to the pockets of Russian bohemian public and, finally (with this particular volume), to the shelves of the British Library, where I consulted this book (this wallpaper?) for my research on this chapter. The displacement of the wallpaper as an object of everyday life into the method of artistic epatage is illustrative of the futurist methodology of mistakes. As a movement that was supposed to break with all past traditions, futurists needed new unexpected materials; they were after the most radical shift of values. And what could be the best disobedience of all of the rules, and not just some specific ones? A mistake! Futurists gladly embarked on this notion in their poetic works and used all sorts of literary mistakes and linguistic failures as the semantic principle of their poetics. This strategy was later conceptualized by one of the most prominent critics of the emerging Russian formalism movement, Yuri Tynyanov (1894–1943). In his major work, “Literary Fact” ([1924] 2002), tracing the genealogy and evolution of genres, Tynyanov comes up with a theory that is based on the types of mistakes and misplacements futurists were so fond of. For Tynyanov, any established form or genre from time to time goes beyond its own rules and makes mistakes. For example, small literary forms such as poems or sonnets get published in a larger collection, and this new whole gains more meaning than the sum of its parts, creating a new genre, as it happened, for example, with Petrarch’s sonnets, which Schlegel would call “a lyrical novel.” Exploring multiple examples of this type, Tynyanov concludes: “In fact, every ugliness, every ‘mistake,’ every ‘wrongdoing’ of normative poetics is—potentially—the new constructive principle” (2002: 179).5 Initially applied to literary genres, this constructing principle of mistakes can be extended beyond textual approaches, to the evolution of cultural and social landscapes. The case of wallpaper’s mis‐placement highlights not just the literary or linguistic background of mistakes (although some brilliant poetry was published on the reverse of this wallpaper), and equally neither mistake as only an action or event, but also the materiality of the mis‐placed object. A Trap for Judges, printed on the reverse side of the wallpaper, together with Worldbackwards (1912), another experimental publication of Russian futurists with letters of various sizes and shapes, use of handwriting,

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collage, potato cuts and rubber stamps, as well as A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (1912) printed on sackcloth—all grounded mistakes and misplacements in their use of materiality. As Helen Palmer suggests, the “method of using unusual, rough‐textured or industrial materials intended for other purposes is vitally linked with their [futurists’] operations on the word because it represents the materiality of language pushed to its furthest extreme” (2014: 6). But are we in fact considering here only the materiality of language, or should we take into account a much broader idea of materiality, which includes the visual and verbal, the auditory and tactile, the temporal and the special? Following Bruno’s shift from the optic to the haptic, her “mistaken” transition from sightseeing to site‐seeing, these experiments invite readers to consider a broader idea of materiality of poetics, the one that produces new sites and spaces in an act of mis‐taking and misshaping materials, not just words. After all, poetics comes from poiesis, meaning to “to make.” For futurists, being a poet means making mistakes and shifting meanings, as Kruchenyhk suggests in his manifesto‐work Shiftology of Russian Verse: An Offensive and Educational Treatise (1922: 14). Importantly, these shifts are not limited to form, as any form inevitable shifts matter, an equation that would become the guiding principle of formalist aesthetics. For futurists, the world is made of material words and images, which are being then shifted by poets to create a new materiality with new meaning. The replacing of the wallpaper had a world‐making function. First of all, it helped mis‐take and mis‐place the class system, that was about to collapse in the course of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The fact that the wallpaper piece was taken from the apartment of the St. Petersburg working class was particularly important to early futurists, as it highlighted the ideas of transforming the everyday or the byt, primarily associated with class dwelling. Byt is one those cultural terms which do not translate directly into any other language, which is one of the reasons it became the point of departure for Russian culture of the time from Western modernism aesthetics.6 Roughly byt means the everyday, and transcending the byt was seen as one of futurism’s main tasks. In his critique of the futurist generation, Roman Jakobson defined the byt as a “stabilising force of an immutable present, overlaid, as this present is, by a stagnating slime, which stifles the life in its tight, hard mould” (1987: 277). Transcending byt gave birth to major futurist themes of a higher caliber—resurrection from the dead, immortality, cosmic imagination, life on Mars (see Kruchenyhk 1922: 3; Perloff 2016: 22). It may be an exaggeration to say that the cheap wallpaper was at the core of these transformations, yet the connection is there.

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More than eighty years later, in the end of the Soviet social experiment, a Russian‐American conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov (1933– ) created an installation with a certain homage to futurist aesthetic of mistakes, wallpaper, and cosmic imagination. “A Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment” (1985) featured a small room of an ordinary Soviet citizen, with no doors or windows, walls stuffed with handmade wallpaper, political posters, and hand‐drawings, and the ceiling featuring a giant hole, through which a blinding light enters the room. For this man, or rather for his absence, the drawings on the walls are not examples of misuse or misplacement, rather his whole (non)existence is a mistake and misplacement. As the artist’s comments state: For a long time, since earliest childhood, I have been sick of, bored, with its [life’s] exhausting “everydayness,” its circular movement day after day, even the very fact that it “is,” and it’s not important whether it is pleasant, joyful, interesting, or boring, excruciating. I am simply sick of being, and I remember life as a miserable necessity. (2019)

The installation represents misplacement in its final state. A misplaced object transformed into a misplaced subject. By the hole in the ceiling, the viewers can assume that the subject, the man from the title, was there in the room, we can even see his worn shoes, yet there are no doors or windows through which he could have entered to get in initially. Have we all been misplaced to these little rooms, to this life? Can we flee from it?

The Celluloid Nitrate In 1978, in Dawson City, a Yukon River town in north‐western Canada, Frank Barrett, a construction worker excavating the site of a new recreation center, suddenly found himself digging up film reels. After careful excavation and expert examination, 533 silent films of 1910s and 1920s, including ones by D. W. Griffith, Lois Weber, Allan Dwan, Tod Browning, and other early cinema luminaries, were rediscovered for the history of cinema. Lost and forgotten, buried underground for decades, some of them barely functional, parts of these reels made it into the work by American avant‐garde filmmaker and artist Bill Morrison (1965–), titled Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016). The film tells the story of this discovery, but also, and more importantly, demonstrates the found material itself—the nitrate films, beautiful in their decaying materiality, corrupted by soil, water, and pressure during its

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underground existence—and subject to several mistakes, accidents, and miscommunications. As silent film gained its worldwide popularity, Dawson City became the final destination for film distribution routes. Usually, after the show at a local theater, the distributors would balk at paying for return shipment, and eventually the town turned into a significant film library, which then was sent floating down the Yukon River. With one particular mis‐take—a part that was buried in 1929 on the site of a pool that had been filled in with film and replaced with a hockey rink. This infill was then discovered in 1978 and reintroduced in its materiality in Morrison’s film in 2016. The material properties of the film reels, the cellulose nitrate, plays a significant role here. Movie reels made from this material (often referred to as nitrate films), that is, most films made before the early 1950s, are prone to decomposition, including melting, molding, and rotting. The nitrate film footage from the 1978 discovery was underground for nearly forty years, and naturally, was severely damaged, but not so much as to be unwatchable, or unrestorable. Yet, rather than restoring the footage, or trying to correct the damage to use the footage in a contemporary film, which would be the case for preservationists such as Martin Scorsese for example, Morrison celebrated it, reveled in it, never intending to correct—a type of logic suggested in the introduction to this volume. For Morrison, the very idea that this footage would present a miscommunicated message, a message disturbed by the damage of time and decay, with half‐visible scenes, barely recognized actions, half actor‐faces, was exactly what he was after. This very miscommunication was the message. Instead of trying to correct and restore, he kept the partly decomposed footage onscreen and let it define the visual composition and the mood of the film, following the techniques he developed throughout his artistic practice, most notably in his best‐known film, Decasia (2002), an experimental visual essay exploring the results of nitrate film decay. Like in Decasia, to which decay is the central theme, decomposition of film material also plays significant role in Dowson City, but unlike the intuitive aesthetic of Decasia, this time Morrison provides an accurate documentary narrative, expanding the field of properties of decaying matter from purely aesthetical to historical and materialistic, the matter becomes what really happened—to the film, to the city, to the footage.7 Like with the wallpaper case, materiality of an object, here the physical film, reveals its own agency that changes throughout its accidental rite of passage though mis‐takes and dislocations: first as part of original silent films of 1910s and 1920s, then as a lost, buried, and forgotten archive, which had no significance for a long time, then as a discovered artefact representing “a damaged history of film” (Evans

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2018), which finally finds its way into Morrison’s Dawson City as a part of artistic technique equaling matter to image, the medium to the message. This transition follows Bruno’s erring trajectory of the visual communication described earlier in this chapter, yet again changing gear from sight to site and from the optic to the haptic—from what is seen to where, when and how it is seen. Bernd Herzogenrath’s work on Morrison (2015a, 2018) presents exhausting exploration of when in the director’s oeuvre, showcasing how “[t]ime leaves much more direct traces on film, than any representation of time in film could ever achieve” (2015a: 113). Morrison’s artistic technique implies that temporality not only reveals itself directly through the material qualities of film, through the properties of celluloid nitrate; it also becomes a coauthor, sharing artistic agency with the director. As Herzogenrath puts it, for Morrison, the destructed, decomposed, spoiled film material reveals “the ‘collaboration’ of time and matter as in itself ‘creative’ and ultimately produces a category one might call the matter‐image and that neither Deleuze’s movement‐image, nor his time‐image completely grasp: here, time and matter produce their own filmic image” (2018: 83; original emphasis). This creative agency of matter that Herzogenrath highlights in Morrison’s films follows the creativity of mistakes, of shifting meanings that Russian futurists were so preoccupied with. It emerges on the boundary of the accidental, of the mis‐taken, where the new meanings are created. Looking at the damaged, leaking frames of Dawson City, one cannot help but imagine how the undamaged visual content of the frame, a person or an object, is communicating with the rotten, twisted part of the same frame, presented in an abstract unidentifiable fluid form. This is not just the communication between the two forms, figurative and abstract, clear and damaged, it is also the communication between the two temporalities, one of the early twentieth century, when the original film was made, and the other of the period between 1929 and 1978, when the footage was buried. Or perhaps this is a miscommunication between the early twentieth century and the ever-occurring moment of watching the film, thus inviting the viewers to coauthor this temporality. As the compositional principle of Dawson City’s narrative, the damage of the nitrate film reels also serves as an entry point to other corrupted and mistaken narratives: the rise and decay of the town of Dawson itself, or damaging impact of the gold rush on the region, and, finally, the history of early film in general, which was prone to the accidental fires in storage and cinemas due to the fragile and explosive properties of the early film matter. The Dawson archive story is a perfect example of what Paul Virilio calls “the original accident,” the idea that any technological invention is

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preprogrammed with failure (2007). The fact that so many early films were destroyed through accidental fires, or used as a construction compost, only adds to Virilio’s list. Yet, what Dawson City also proves is that such mis‐taken history does not necessarily turn into the history of eschatology, the visible end, but can be creatively appropriated to what will become a new countdown for a future aesthetic, creating new temporalities of miscommunication with every viewing.

The Hole8 The 26 and 27 of January 2000 were the tenth and eleventh days of the David Irving trial at the English High Court of Justice. Initiated by the English writer David Irving against the American writer Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, for calling Irving “the most dangerous of all holocaust deniers and a falsifier of history” (Lipstadt 1993). As documented in detail by Weizman (2015), during these two days, the trial debates evolved around the representation and nonrepresentation of four holes in the ceiling of one of the gas chambers of Crematorium II of Auschwitz‐Birkenau. According to the few surviving witnesses, both victims and perpetrators, it was through these holes that the cyanide poison would enter a gas chamber full of people. On January 26, 2000, the expert witness, architectural historian and Auschwitz expert Robert Jan van Pelt, submitted his report to the court. It stated that these holes could not be observed in the ruins of the crematorium due to the state of the roof, which was twisted and damaged in an explosion that was meant to eliminate it as evidence. For Irving, who was representing himself in the case, the question of material existence of these holes was the primary point of the defense. For him, these four holes represented the Holocaust. If they did not exist, or rather if their material existence could not be proved, the poison could not have entered the room; hence, the room could not have been called a gas chamber. Without a gas chamber, Auschwitz could not be a death camp, and hence the Holocaust could not have happened, and if it did not happen, Irving could not be accused of denying it—“no holes, no holocaust,” as was proposed elsewhere during the trial (quoted in Weizman 2015). In 2000, Irving lost the case, and traces of the holes were discovered a few years later (see Weizman 2015; Mazal 2004), but the logic of Irving’s defense strategy illustrated an important shift in the function of materiality and mistakes of visual communication that I am tracing here. As Weizman puts it, “it was not simple positivism that led deniers to insist on materiality, but rather a desire to preclude the very ability of witnesses to speak to history

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at all,” “[b]y posing matter against memory, they demanded a history without subject and beyond language” (2015). In other words, we witness here the emergence of the history of materiality, where matter plays the leading role and can legally define truth from lies, what happened from what did not. What makes this example even more illustrative is that the hole, strictly speaking, is not matter, but the absence of matter within matter. Irving’s defense was based on the absence of an absence, which was in turn substituted by the materiality of photographic representation of the hole. During the trial, Irving claimed that the four marks visible on the photographs9 could not be the holes, since the representation was blurred and the negative might have been compromised, an argument his opponent Van Pelt had anticipated, presenting a detailed analysis of how the aerial photographic images of the holes could in fact be considered the holes themselves. Weizman’s detailed analysis of this part of the trail introduces what he calls the threshold of detectability: The size of the hole in the roof of Crematorium II was approximately the size of a person as seen from above. The hole was thus approximately the size of a silver salt grain. When an object photographed approximates the recording ability of a negative, it is in a condition that we can refer to as the threshold of detectability. In this condition, the materiality of the object represented (the concrete roof/hole) and the materiality of the surface representing it (the surface of the negative/silver salt grains) should be considered both as presence and as representation. Each surface must be equally analyzed as an image and as a material reality. (2015)

This particular part of the case, where materiality equals its representation and in turn becomes the only acceptable witness to justify for or against the truth of a historical event, together with Van Pelt’s expert work submitted as a part of this legal case, became one of the main inspirations for the creation of the Forensic Architecture (FA) by Eyal Weizman at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2010. In the definition of its founders, FA “refers to the production and presentation of architectural evidence—relating to buildings, urban environments—within legal and political processes” (2020). In other words, FA uses material objects and their representations from the zones of conflict and other human rights violations sites to undertake advanced spatial and media investigations into cases of such violations, where often the material witnesses remain the only ones to be able to “testify” for the public truths. Much of the FA’s work is connected to the ways of seeing, and in most cases the drone and satellite footage of the conflict zone is the only way to enter the destroyed territory, to comprehend its reality; hence, forensic

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architects are often dealing with matters presented similar to Irving’s case— with pixels, photographs, and other types of visual representations. And while the agency helped testify in numerous court cases with the evidence gained from such material analysis, and with the risk and courage of those who agreed to make such testimonials public, the underlying question for these kind of cases remains: Is the evidence gained with the help of such “material witnesses” indeed the final version of what happened, and not yet another miscommunication? Taking into account the fluidity, unstable nature and, more importantly, the force of the methodology of mis‐taking and miscommunication described here, and throughout this volume, Virilio’s framing of mistakes, accidents, and technology seems once again fitting to unite these cases. Much like the futurists who embraced the imperfection of language through creativity, and like Bill Morrison who celebrated the decay of matter with his artistic techniques, and like forensic architects who use material displacements to testify to public truth, Virilio “steadfastly looks for the novel ways of examining the aesthetic realms of technoscientific devices and their cultures in order to determine alternative trajectories for media theory and practice, which will transform these and our own worlds into something more human and caring” (Armitage 2012: 3). As the foregoing case studies have demonstrated, with their fluid, multidimensional, largely unpredictable, shifting logic, mis‐taking and dis‐placing can as well be one such alternative trajectory.

Notes 1 Feminine point of view as a deviation from the “norm” of masculine can be read as a third level of error here. 2 The selection of case studies and their geographies and chronologies are not representative. Rather, they follow Bruno’s methodology “to ‘err’ through the shifting grounds of socio‐cultural mobilities in order to develop a new theory” (2018: 15). In doing so, it also echoes the research logic of Michel Serres, mentioned on several occasions in this collection (Kennedy, Barker), connecting the nonconnectable. In another way, it mirrors the selection of case studies in the chapter by Dominic Smith in this collection, who examines Walter Benjamin’s Die Eisenbahnkatastrophe vom Firth of Tay through a set of unconventional connections. 3 For an excellent account on how Kamenskii would continue to reflect on the use of textures and surfaces in his work, see Rann, 2017. 4 For discussion of Russian Futurism books, see Compton, 1978; and see Perloff 2016.

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5 Compare to the idea of imperfection as a new genre of online language for Tatiana Tolstaia, in Ellen Rutten’s contribution to this collection. 6 For a discussion of byt in Russian culture, see Buchli 1999 and Kelly 2004. 7 While through this technique Morrison equals history to matter, in one of the following chapters in this “Mis‐ matter” part, through the close‐reading of Paul Verhoeven’s film Elle (2016), Alex Lichtenfels explores how these two notions could coexist as two conflicting views of reality, a reality corresponding to what is (materialism) and to what happened (history). 8 I am grateful to the members of Advanced Urban reading group at the University of Greenwich, Emma Colthurst, Susana Gomez Larranaga, Alexis Liu, Tatiana Isaeva and Ed Wall, for the fruitful discussion of ideas that emerge in this section. 9 The aerial photographs of the area close to Auschwitz was shot in 1944 on 35 mm film by the US reconnaissance mission and was rediscovered only in 1978. When blown up, these photographs identified four blurry marks on the roof of the Crematorium II.

References Armitage, J. (2012), Virilio and the Media, Cambridge: Polity. Bollmer, G. (2019), Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction, New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic. Bruno, G. (2018), Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film, New York: Verso. Buchli, V. (1999), An Archaeology of Socialism, Oxford: Berg. Collages (1978), special issue of the Revue d’esthétique, nos. 3–4. Compton, S. P. (1978), The World Backwards: Russian Futurist Books, 1912-16, London: British Museum Publications. Deleuze, G. (2003), Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. D. W. Smyth, London: Continuum. Etgar, Y. (2019), “On Edge: Exploring Collage Tactics and Terminology,” in Elliott, P. (ed.), Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, 35–49, Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland. Evans, J. B. (2018), “A Damaged History of Film: Bill Morrison Discusses ‘Dawson City: Frozen Time’,” Mubi, October 2. Available at: https://mubi. com/notebook/posts/a‐dama​ged‐h​istor​y‐of‐​film‐​bill‐​morri​son‐d​iscus​ses‐ d​awson​‐city​‐froz​en‐ti​me (accessed April 7, 2020). Forensic Architecture (2020), About: Agency. Available at: https:// forensic‐architecture.org/about/agency (accessed April 9, 2020). Herzogenrath, B. (2015a), “Matter that Images: Bill Morrison’s Decacia,” in B. Herzogenrath (ed.), Media Matter: The Materiality of Media, Matter as Medium, 111–37, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Herzogenrath, B., ed. (2015b), Media Matter: The Materiality of Media, Matter as Medium, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

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Herzogenrath, B., ed. (2018), The Films of Bill Morrison: Aesthetics of the Archive, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Jakobson, R. (1987), “On a Generation that Squandered Its Poets”, in Language in Literature, 273–300, Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Kabakov, I. (2019), “A Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment,” kabakov.net. Available at: http:​//www​.kaba​kov.n​et/in​stall​ation​s/201​9/9/1​ 5/the​‐man‐who‐flew‐into‐space‐from‐his‐ apartment (accessed March 27, 2020). Kamenskii, V. (1931), Put’ entuziasta: avtobiograficheskaia kniga, Perm: Knizhnoe Izdanie. Kelly, C. (2004), “Byt: Identity and Everyday Life,” in S. Franklin and E. Widdis (eds.), National Identity in Russian Culture: An Introduction, 149–68, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kruchenykh, A. (1922), Sdvigologiia russkogo stikha: Trakhtat obizhal’nyi i pouchal’nyi, Moscow: Tip. TSIT. Lipstadt, D. E. (1993), Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, New York: Free Press. Palmer, H. (2014), Deleuze & Futurism: A Manifesto for Nonsense, London and New York: Bloomsbury. Parikka, J. (2012), What Is Media Archaeology? London: Polity Press. Perloff, N. (2016), Explodity: Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art, Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute. Rann, J. (2017), “Living as a Legend: Modernist Theatricality and Stalinist Self‐Fashioning in the Lifewriting of Vasilii Kamenskii,” Modern Language Review 112 (4): 953–80. Tilley, C., K. Webb, S. Küchler, M. Rowlands, and P. Spyer, eds. (2006), Handbook of Material Culture, London: SAGE. Torczyner, H. (1977), Magritte: Ideas and Images, Ann Arbor: H. N. Abrams. Tynyanov, Y. N. (2002), “Literaturnyi Fakt,” in Literaturnaia evoliutsiia. Izbrannye Trudy, 167–88, Moscow: Agraf. Virilio, P. (2007), The Original Accident, Cambridge: Polity Press.

9

Fai(lure) Encounter with the Unstable Medium in the Work of Art Maryam Muliaee and Mani Mehrvarz

“Failure” is a polysemic term, and in the context of a digital society, it broadly encompasses the typical moments of media malfunction, including the common glitches, accidents, and the breakdowns of everyday technologies that do not surprise users. Adapting to living with our laptop’s or mobile phone’s regular errors, we become accustomed to such failures and barely even notice them. In fact, through these frequent errors, our devices remain in their communication effect cycle: one learns to identify, understand, and interpret these usual digital crash occurrences as legible messages—signs and symptoms of a problem. In these situations, failure does not lead to aesthetic experience. As a multilayered term, however, “failure” has another side—a tortuous aspect that can aesthetically decoy and recast. Failure is pregnant with a lure—fail(lure). To explore this quality, we will borrow the account of “lure” from Whiteheadian terminology (Shaviro 2014). As we will suggest, failure can conditionally present a possibility, a premise, or a surprise of something unnamed or undiscovered happening in the future. This chapter considers this kind of failure investigated within examples of media art in particular. The myriad potential of failure and its revealing latency have been explored in a recent wave of scholarship specifically in the context of digital network culture (Parikka 2007; Parikka and Sampson 2009; Nunes 2011; Krapp 2011). Jussi Parikka and Tony Sampson conceptualized digital failure as potential “anomalies” that go “against the prescribed and often idealized goals of the visionaries of digital capitalism,” with an emphasis on recognizing the merits of these phenomena rather than considering them as limitations or disadvantages (2009: 3). Moreover, in the introduction to his edited collection Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures, Mark Nunes delineates digital failure as either “potential” or “uncaptured” errors

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while drawing on Claude Shannon’s information theory and reworking Jean‐François Lyotard’s “logic of maximum performance” (2011: 13–14). Digital errors, as Nunes articulates, are phenomena to be appreciated because they indicate “a path of escape from the predictable confines of informatic control” (3). In this stance, everyday digital failures are recognized as part and parcel of the digital, networked society. In addition, some of the values of productive errors in art have been widely explored in past research, including the examination of noise music and glitch arts (Moradi 2004; Kelly 2009; Kahn 2009; Barker 2007, 2011; Ballard 2011; Menkman 2011; Manon and Temkin 2011; Vavarella 2015; Rossaak 2016; Thompson 2017). Failure, however, still remains an unexplored concept in the context of media art practice with a focus on thingness, and the technical conditions in media for aesthetic experience. What are the conditions for failure to bring something new and unexpected to our experience? Taking this curiosity as a point of departure, this chapter looks into artworks that employ a specific kind of failure in media through which the audience experiences surprise, shock, distraction, or disturbance as if they face something unfamiliar and indescribable. To explore how failure facilitates an aesthetic experience, this chapter will focus explicitly on the technical condition of failure: when the object of media no longer transmits a message but reveals something of its own inert thing or invisible singularities through failure. What is the thing we encounter in the work of art that uses failure? We will examine the thingness in media when failure occurs and disrupts the communication effects, that is, when media become things for us to encounter, aesthetically. In this context, the term “media‐as‐things” will be used. Developed through a media archaeological lens, media‐as‐things refers to the objects of media that are set to fail their communication purpose or the transmission of message while still in operation (Mehrvarz and Muliaee 2019). The concept of media‐as‐things underscores the significance of process and underlying materiality in technical media that failure, as a catalyst, reveals. This revelation is conducted in a way that we could not otherwise experience in an encounter with the work of art except through failure.

Failure and Noncommunication Aesthetics In his essay “Habit: The True Aesthetic Criterion,” Flusser linked the term “new” to the aesthetic qualities in the work of art in specific situations; these are indeed “improbable situations” that artists plan to create to surprise their

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audience with, to bring forth something ineffable, unforeseen, and startling in their works (2002: 52). With the creation of “improbable situations,” artists allow their audiences to feel something different and new that can’t be experienced or encountered otherwise as Flusser radically asserts: in encountering the work of art, it is the new that makes us “tremble.” The new, this yet‐to‐be‐explored phenomenon is “terrifying” because it is unfamiliar, irregular, and uncanny and comes into existence through “hateful, ugly situations, situations that cause terror.” Flusser’s model is illuminating for framing failure beyond the realm of everyday and familiar digital errors. In this perspective, failure can be considered as a requisite condition in a work of art: through blocking the communication effects in media, failure provides us with “ugly situations”—the situations that are needed for the aesthetic experience. To put it differently, the new is the quality of not yet already being known or experienced that failure can engender in media objects. Flusser correlated the degree of newness to the level of our terror, shock, and distraction in order to measure and evaluate the aesthetic phenomenon in the work of art. The more unexpected and out of ordinary the work is, the more we feel perplexed and surprised, as if we were experiencing something “terrible,” “hateful,” or “ugly” (52). In other words, the “ugly” is the art of the new, unanticipated, and not‐yet‐disclosed that takes us by and beyond surprise—even toward disturbance and irritation. This ugliness in the art that causes a feeling of “terror,” however, eventually becomes “habitual,” meaning that it becomes common and standard in time. The new inevitably becomes old again. Building on his thesis of the new, Flusser explained what he meant by the aesthetic phenomenon. For him, “aesthetic” means “capable of being experienced”—relative to the level of newness and, consequently, to the “terror” it causes (53). In this sense, something that has become habitual is “anaesthetics.” The flip side of the aesthetic experience, for Flusser, is communication. In contrast to the “terror” that “ugly” imposes on us, the art that communicates flawlessly looks “beautiful” and does not necessitate any aesthetic effort. What follows is the argument that not all failures can be evaluated aesthetically. The commonplace errors that have become habitual still communicate and are not subject to aesthetic evaluation. To the question as to why the flow of communication must be disrupted in a work of art in order to offer the aesthetic—that capability of being experienced—Flusser’s model presents an intriguing answer. Flusser equated communication to habit: the degree to which a specific work communicates signifies the “redundancies it contains” and, in turn, the kind of experience it can lead to (54). The familiar bears the most redundancies;

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it has nothing new to offer because it communicates well. In turn, failure through miscommunication becomes a vital condition for the work of art to be aesthetically experienced. Drawing from Flusser, we propose that failure is (and must remain) an essential condition for “ugly situations” in the work of art. In other words, failure can provide an aesthetic encounter only if it miscommunicates. To understand this argument, A  C  I  D  G  E  S  T (2017), a media installation by Haroon Mirza is a relevant example worth citing. Mirza, a distinguished media artist based in London, is internationally known for his immersive‐environment designs that are created with the intensive use of noise, light waves, and electric signals that combine to make sensory and auditory experiences. In A  C  I  D  G  E  S  T, Mirza designed a system that transmitted electrical signals to eight speakers situated in a circular arrangement in the gallery. Each speaker was modified, rewired, and attached to the strips of colored LED lights. The sound from each speaker powered the LED strips to glow in eight different colors, corresponding to different noise frequencies received. The source of these varied frequencies was a phrase that Mirza selected from a poem (based on the word “acidgest”) and converted it into a score (consisted of a sixteen‐million‐line concrete poem) using algorithms (Mirza 2017). Various orders and combinations of the letters (eight‐character line) in the word “acidgest” created infinite possibilities for dictating the patterns of the light and sound in the piece. In other words, the shifting position of each letter in the combination (given through algorithms) determined the color of light and the noise playing from each speaker. In order to play the entire score, the installation required a full eighteen days of operation. Indeed, Mirza designed a peculiar system that rematerialized the visual text (language) into electric frequencies (signals) in a way that something unusual could be experienced, asking: “What if one could see sound?” (Mirza 2017) In this piece, the artist cracked the communication system to make something new. The work meets Flusser’s model for aesthetic evaluation. The communication flow (the linguistic structure of the legible phrase) was broken and transformed into nonmusical, buzzing noise, and nonsignifying light. The phenomenological experience of the acoustic space in A  C  I  D  G  E  S  T was like “standing in a quiet hallway outside a crowded room,” and this situation inevitably focused attention on the sonic quality of space, a nonconventional confrontation with architecture that altered the visitor’s understanding of spatiality (Mirza quoted in Nawi 2017: 3). Different elements used in Mirza’s work were “transfigured into something that ultimately resists any notion of usefulness,” providing us a

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chance to encounter “an illogical, interventionist impulse” that challenged the habitual way of understanding the space (Nawi 2017: 3). The level of miscommunication in this work paralleled the degree to which the audience’s habitual expectations were disturbed, suggesting that failure produced the necessary “ugly situations” for the work to be experienced aesthetically. This work is an example that exhibits failure as a key situation in which the habitual becomes inexplicable. The “ugly situations” in this work were in effect when noise and light as affective materials did miscommunicate. With failure built in the system, A C I D G E S T disfigured language and reconfigured a new system. Through cycles of disfiguration–reconfiguration, imperceptible signals were rematerialized and experienced without being transformed into legible signs. Laura Marks’ theory of “enfolding–unfolding aesthetics” (2015) can be a conceptual support for examining the value of failure in A C I D G E S T. Drawing from Flusser, Marks defines noise as a ratio between signals and signs. This ratio can indicate the portion of signals being transformed into signs or communicated messages. Depending on the amount of noise, there must be either a low or a high signal‐to‐sign transmission ratio in effect. Considering that in technical media there is always a layer of code underlying the perceptible materials (image, for instance), Marks proposes there is a third plane (information) in between the plane of image (the perceptible) and the infinite (total noise) to explain how we perceive certain things from the universe. For her, noise is highly valued because it is our direct connection to the infinite, or the universe. So, the value of noise is justified in a world where “the most important perceptual decisions are made being taken by market‐driven powers, for the rest of us,” and it is noise that can reveal the materiality of commodity culture (Marks 2015: 109). In this sense, noise draws our attention to the invisible and unfolds some of the unknown aspects of the world. Similar to Flusser, Marks also argues that art’s job is “to make ugliness” and “to unfold infinite in [a] noisier, less ‘meaningful’ way.” Marks’ model suggests that “ugly art” uses noise as an aesthetic phenomenon. This argument is valid in A C I D G E S T, which demonstrates how “ugly situations” are created in the work of art through failure. Although A C I D G E S T originated from alphabetical letters, it diverged from linguistic signification and revealed an unfamiliar situation to be experienced. The audience was invited to encounter signals in an affective atmosphere beyond meaning. With the highest signal‐to‐noise transformation ratio, this work presents the vitality of miscommunication and failure only with which can the work reach the level of actuality for audience experience.

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Media‐as‐Things and the Vitality of Process in Electronic Media What is the object of media in the work of art in which failure can aesthetically be in effect? What conditions or characteristics must it have to engender the “ugly situations” through failure? What task does failure technically undertake in it? To frame the object of media in a state of failure, it helps to begin our exploration with an example. In one of their videos, titled Discs (1970), the pioneer video artists Steina and Woody Vasulka aimed to explore the potential of their medium through deploying failure. Discs was built based on the idea that the electronic image in video can travel horizontally (unlike film that can only be set into vertical motion). To examine the essence of electronic image, the artists engaged signals in the video. In one of the experiments, they tried to technically interfere with the process of signals by altering the timing of the horizontal frequency in the video and through multiple scanning processes. The interference caused a failure in the process of signals and led to the distortion of image. However, the failure unfolded something new for the audience: the invisible signals. The Vasulkas’ work was realized based on a “transformation” conditioned by failure rather than a “transition” (Spielmann 2004: 20). The artists were interested in the quality of “frame‐unbound” in electronic image as well as in its potential to be “multidirectional, multidimensional, and ‘open‐ended’ in a number of ways” (25). They discovered that “with the new generation of tools in digital video, it is possible to remove the image from the frame and treat it as object” (Vasulka quoted in Sturken 1996: 38). In Discs, signals were manipulated to move beyond the bounds of a fixed frame and in various unexpected temporal and spatial directions. The signification was disrupted in the video as signals were materialized in the form of video noise. Discs exhibited something out of sight, unfamiliar, and impalpable about technical media. The aforementioned example also concretizes one way in which technical media can be examined in a media archaeological‐tuned perspective: through failure. Wolfgang Ernst (2016) argues that technical media (such as electronic imaging) bear specific properties and complications that are invisible from the human eyes and perception. The electronic signals qualify media (when in process) to be influenced by failure toward formation of things, or what we call media‐as‐things. Failure uncovers some of the singularities in media in the sense of Fulsser’s definition of the new and transforms media into aesthetic things. In Discs, the Vasulkas disclosed the transformative aspect of the video’s frame: without failure, this singularity could not be possible

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to be revealed and experienced. Discs is an example of media‐as‐things that evinces the vitality of failure in the artwork. Media‐as‐things is determined by the intensified thingness in media (defected signals revealed as materials) as well as the processes that dictate media temporalities. Flusser states that media are complex systems with processes of transcoding: “The message of technical images must be deciphered, and such decoding is even more arduous than that of traditional images: the message is even more ‘masked’” (Flusser 2015: 96). Media can no longer be grasped within a linguistic system (through the linear logic of alphabetical grammar), or if it can, media would be an “idiotic object” (123). Their “time‐critical process” defines media (Ernst 2016). Time in media, or “tempor(e)alities,” is different than the human notion and understanding of (linear) time; it disrupts and informs human conceptions of historical time (Ernst 2013: 29). In the same vein, Timothy Barker also emphasizes the significance of “the multi‐temporal construction of acoustic space” in technical media, which has replaced the “linear construction of chronological time” inherent in cinema and print (2018: 31). In order to examine what media are, Ernst argues, the focus of media analysis needs to shift from “sign relations” to signals as “genuine time events” (4‐5). Given the importance of signals and temporalities in media in the analyses above, signal processing becomes critical regarding the revealing role of failure as well. Temporality in media is beyond just a “physical parameter” and indicates an “intelligent operator” (Ernst 2016: 10). Without failure, this invisible agent in media remains unpunctuated. When failure occurs, the inner time of media is materialized and can be sensed in the moment of signal transition as an event. In a Whiteheadian sense, Barker (2012) suggests that an “event” cannot be positioned only in the present or in the past; rather, it is traceable in its path from the past to the future. Viewed through this lens, the electronic image in Discs is the processes in which signals can be set to have multiple various settings such as delay and can be considered as “event.” The Vasulkas recognized the importance of process, the unfixed spatiotemporal dimensions in electronic image, and creatively revealed this quality in their work through failure. In Discs, as the image was motioned in horizontal frequencies, the timing adjustment created a noticeable delay in the video and distortion (noise). The Vasulkas used various tools, such as a synthesizer, to create numerous possibilities for signal transmission in video. With the use of synthesizing devices, signals were set in a new and different configuration. The synthesizer helped them discover the transformative and unfixed essence of the electronic image and amplify it. They verified video as an autonomous medium that could potentially raise unique and unrepeatable qualities in the work of art.

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There is something [in video] that you know has other meaning in its ability to self‐generate and self‐organize. Of course, you can control it like you can control fire, but you cannot predict all its phases, you have no linguistic defense against this relentless process except by saying, ‘It is like being in a dream.’ (Vasulka and Weibel quoted in Dolanova 2014: 279)

In this practice, failure was, in effect, in the time of operation—when signals were in the flow of event (video). The disruption of signals played through chance, as “each image [arose] from a continuous spectrum, existing as one of the possibilities of its actualization” (Dolanova 2014: 278). Failure amplified the resolution of transmission, and altered the signal‐to‐noise ratio: more signals were damaged in the course of transmission, and more noise was emitted to irritate the audience. The noise video in the Vasulkas’ work broke the regular habit of communicating with a decipherable image. This work exemplifies the vitality of failure and manifests how inner process and imperceptible temporalities are revealed in media‐as‐things through failure.

Broken Tools: The Instability of Media‐as‐Things What is the thing we encounter in a work of art governed by failure? The qualities of media‐as‐things that incite the “ugly situations” for aesthetic experience can be explained by thing theories. This exploration sheds light on a core quality in media‐as‐things: their instability. Drawing from Heidegger’s distinction between objects and things, Bill Brown first coined the term “thing theory” in 2001 to articulate the human–object interactions in the context of art and literature. Thing theory posits that when objects break down, they become things. We draw a new and different relation with things because they disrupt our old habit of contextualizing objects: the already established social and cultural values that pertain to objects are suspended in things. In Brown’s analogy, like filthy windows that become opaque, things require one to look at them to see what they disclose. However, “we only catch a glimpse of things,” and it is because things “can hardly function as a window” (2001: 4). With the touch of failure, things reveal something new to our experience yet remain affectively inexplicable and bewildering. In his book Tool‐Beings: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (2002), Graham Harman furthers Heidegger’s theory of “broken tools” (1927) in order to elaborate on the qualities of things. Heidegger’s thesis of “broken tools” explains that when tools are broken, they draw our attention and, thus, become present to us. This theory points to a “double life of equipment,”

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meaning that tools always have a binary existence, a twofold nature in which they exist either in a state of “action” or of “disrepair” (45). There is either “the unified totality of equipment” or “the manifold distinct entities that erupt from it,” which means that these two planes never intersect: Equipment in action operates in an inconspicuous usefulness, doing its work without our noticing it. When the tool fails, its unobtrusive quality is ruined. There occurs a jarring of reference, so that the tool becomes visible as what it is. (Harman 2002: 45)

Harman argues that the concept of tools is a much broader concept than previously theorized by Heidegger and needs to be taken beyond the regular functions of tools. Harman insists that tools and their being must not be reduced only to their practical usefulness, workable solely for human beings, because tools are more than just simply human devices. In other words, the visibility of the tools is not conditioned upon their “cessation” to only serve us as regular equipment. A tool can work other than designed to exhaust (even partially) its being—to fulfill and exhibit its intrinsic potential. For Harman, the invisible qualities of the tools are not (and never) fully translatable by the tool’s common functions of serviceability (26). Harman makes a point: tools always have some virtual qualities to be actualized in other undetermined conditions. In other words, tools can always potentially give us a surprise, a new experience through failure. There must always be at least a possibility for the new to emerge in some stipulated orders (or disorders) in media. So, tools do not need to be practically smashed and destroyed or to stop working to become visible, and reveal their being. Artists have been inspired by this idea. With technical failure (when media is still in process), some invisible qualities of media can be revealed. For instance, the failure in Discs did not mean to hinder the operation of media (camera, screen, etc.) but to reconfigure the functionality (modulating the horizontal frequencies) so that the piece still operated. In this unusual operation, remarkably, the hidden processes and particularities of media were revealed: the fluidity of video’s frame that we could not see otherwise. Media‐as‐things is the expression of media’s inaccessible being gated through failure. The intensities that failure bears in media can be explained with what Harman calls “allure” (2011). The notion of allure sheds light on the core quality in media‐as‐things. Allure is interpreted as “the dazzlement of things bursting forth” when failure occurs, “showing‐forth of that which is, strictly speaking, inaccessible” (Shaviro 2014: 53). In the state of allure, an object is no longer legible, usable, or comprehensible as it once normally was.

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Likewise, with failure, media fall outside the circuit of representation and signification; they become unreadable and mystifying—they allure. This is the attraction of something that has retreated into its own depths. An object is alluring when it does not just display particular qualities, but also insinuates the existence of something deeper, something hidden and inaccessible, something that cannot actually be displayed. Allure is properly a sublime experience, because it stretches the observer to the point where it reaches the limits of its power, or where its apprehensions break down. (Shaviro 2011: 289)

Shaviro reworks the concept of allure in a Whiteheadian perspective, which is informed by what Whitehead called “lures for feelings,” to point to a “proposition” in things, the “tales that perhaps might be told about particular actualities” (Whitehead cited in Shaviro 2014: 54). Lure means a potential, something enticing that can aesthetically unsettle. In this sense, lure can be interlaced with failure—fai(lure). Both lure and failure want to unveil. They both speak of an unknown possibility that is unrealized but pending to flaunt. In Shaviro’s reading, the Whiteheadian instance of “potentiality” equates to a “metamorphosis”: a quality that transforms objects to animated and vibrant things in a sense that they become new for our experience (Shaviro 2014: 54). Within metamorphosis, “the web of meaning is multiplied and extended, echoed and distorted, and propagated to infinity as the thing loses itself in the network of its own ramifying traces.” Metamorphosis makes things “alive” (50). In this model, Heidegger’s theory of “broken tools” is upgraded to tools’ exhibition of unsteadiness and unpredictability. Metamorphosis is a kind of wayward attraction, a movement of withdrawal and substitution, a continual play of becoming. In metamorphosis, it is not the thing itself that attracts me, over and above its qualities; it is rather the very unsteadiness of the thing that draws me onward, as it ripples and shifts in a kind of protean wavering. (Shaviro 2014: 54)

The concepts of lure, allure, and metamorphosis all undoubtedly overlap in underpinning the aesthetic qualities of things. The affective state in things is caused by their instability. In other words, the instability of media‐as‐things perpetually gives rise to the “improbable situations” for aesthetic experience. Some artists genuinely have used this quality in their works. In his installation Visuelles feld (2000), German media artist Carsten Nicolai designed a system in which the flow of communication must be suspended by the presence of an

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audience as a means for the piece to be actualized. The installation consisted of three elements connected through a circuit, and all were installed in the gallery: a CCD camera to capture a monochrome drawing on the wall, a television to screen the image received from the camera as a live video, and a speaker to play the recorded signals by the camera in auditory form. When visitors entered the gallery and walked into the camera’s field of vision, the signal transmission (from the camera to the TV and speaker) was interfered with, leading to the distortion of the image on the screen. The interference also intensified the noise in the audio track. As the artist explains, “all movements that occur in the room add tension to the setting—as soon as we observe a system, we cannot prevent [becoming] part of it” (Nicolai 2000). The visitors had to violate the steadiness of the communication system by being present in the space of the gallery. However, signal disturbances varied at every moment, depending on the crowd and their movement. As a result, the audiovisual experience was undetermined and unrepeating throughout the whole exhibition. This work exhibits how media‐as‐things can become unstable agents in the work of art through failure. Unlike the pioneering artists who worked with TV, such as Nam June Paik, Nicolai did not mean to emphasize bodies as sociopolitical or cultural agents. Instead, the human body in Visuelles feld became a force of failure causing instability in the system. The unsteadiness that constituted the work and was dictated by the disruption of signals aimed to increase the level of noise in the space. In Nicolai’s work, the invisible signals were materialized into the audiovisual experience in the space of gallery and gave the audience an intense feeling of synesthesia. As failure fluctuated the ratio of signals‐to‐noise dissemination, the visitors became aware of invisible signals. This experience points to “a nameless awareness of [the] impossible singularity of [things]” (Bennett 2009: 4) and underlines the significance of failure in Nicolai’s work: In such a strictly regulated environment, conditions like mistakes and disruptions, or accident assume an extraordinary importance. These irregularities lead up to a moment of exposure revealing the strength, the efficiency, and ultimately the structure of the system. (Hollein 2005: 21)

The artworks, such as Visuelles feld, underline that failure does not make media obsolete but expands media to more‐than and beyond familiar, everyday objects—media‐as‐things. By re‐modulating the signals, Nicolai designed a nonhabitual structure in which signals were re‐modulated into noise. The aesthetic experience of the sonic space (an intensive noisy system)

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in Visuelles feld suggests an encounter with media‐as‐things in their state of instability and flux.

Conclusion Everyday errors of our devices imply “habit,” “redundancy,” and “anaesthetics” in Flusser’s evaluation. They don’t give us a surprise and their reception is effortless. This chapter has sought the opposite side of such routine moments, the flip faces of communication—the new, ugly, and terrifying. What are the conditions for failure that make media “art” and thus “capable of being experienced”? One answer lies in the conception of media‐as‐things. Media‐as‐things is the reverse of the ordinary, the standard, and the kitsch: it kindles disturbance and shock in the audience by providing “ugly situations” required for an aesthetic experience. Through the effect of failure, we encounter media‐as‐things “as a terrifying enormous noise” (Flusser 2015: 51). Drawing from Flusser and Marks, we explored the aesthetics in media‐as‐things and imagined a relationship between the new and ugly. Media‐as‐things exhibits miscommunication and is determined by thingness in media. This thingness is new to our experience. Media‐as‐things manifests how failure can unsettle the flow of meaning and, in turn, reveal something unexpected that could not be experienced in another way. Failure has a unique proposition, a lure in a Whiteheadian sense, that indicates the potential in media‐as‐things. The invisibility of electronic signals, their other temporalities, and the underlying process remain unknown to our experience unless failure occurs. Theories of things allow us to imagine media in the dual position of invisibility and visibility, and due to this twofold quality, media become an unstable and fluctuating agent in the work of art for our aesthetic encounter. Relying on such momentous principles in media‐as‐things—the instability and flux—artists incorporate failure in technical media as a provider of “improbable” and “ugly situations” in media. Art’s uses of failure qualifies the audience to experience some of the invisible singularities in media‐as‐things. As discussed in the examples in this chapter, media art’s experimentation with failure is directed toward an aesthetic quality beyond the discourse of daily tech errors.

References Ballard, S. (2011), “Information, Noise and et al.,” in M. Nunes (ed.), Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures, 59–79, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.

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Barker, T. (2007), “Error, the Unforeseen, and the Emergent: The Error and Interactive Media Art,” M/C Journal 10 (5). Available online: http://journal. media‐culture.org.au/0710/03‐barker.php (accessed July 10, 2019). Barker, T. (2011), “Aesthetics of the Error: Media Art, the Machine, the Unforeseen and the Errant,” in M. Nunes (ed.), Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures, 42–58, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Barker, T. (2012), Time and the Digital: Connecting Technology, Aesthetics, and a Process Philosophy of Time, Hanover: Dartmouth College Press. Barker, T. (2018), Against Transmission: Media Philosophy and the Engineering of Time, London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Bennett, J. (2009), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Brown, B. (2001), “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28 (1): 1–22. Dolanova, L. (2014), “Woody Vasulka: Dialogue with the (Demons in the) Tool,” in K. High, S. Hocking, and M. Jimenez (eds.), The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued, 273–308, Bristol: Intellect. Ernst, W. (2013), Digital Memory and the Archive, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Ernst, W. (2016), Chronopoetics: The Temporal Being and Operativity of Technological Media, London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Flusser, V. (2002), “Habit: The True Aesthetic Criterion,” in A. Ströhl (ed.), E. Eisel (trans.), Vilem Flusser: Writings, 51–7, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Flusser, V. ([1983] 2015), Post‐history, trans. R. Novaes, Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. Harman, G. (2002), Tool‐being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects, Chicago: Open Court. Harman, G. (2011), Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things, Chicago: Open Court. Hollein, M. (2005), Carsten Nicolai, Anti Reflex, Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König. Kahn, D. (2009), “Alvin Lucier: I Am Sitting in a Room, Immersed and Propagated,” Oase 78: 24–7. Kelly, C. (2009), Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Krapp, P. (2011), Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Manon, H. S. and D. Temkin (2011), “Notes on Glitch,” World Picture 6: 1–15. Marks, L. U. (2015), “A Noisy Brush With the Infinite: Noise in Infolding‐Unfolding Aesthetics,” in C. Vernallis, A. Herzog, and J. Richardson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media, 101–14, New York: Oxford University Press. Mehrvarz, M. and M. Muliaee (2019), “Media‐As‐Things: A Nonhistorical Nostalgia Through Failure,” in R. Lizardi (ed.), Subjective Experiences of Interactive Nostalgia, 167–88, New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

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Menkman, R. (2011), “Glitch studies Manifesto,” in G. Lovink and R. Somers Miles (eds.), Video Vortex Reader II: Moving Images Beyond YouTube, 336–47, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Mirza, H. (2017), “Artist Haroon Mirza Explains His Latest Commission, A C I D G E S T,” YouTube Uploaded by Pérez Art Museum Miami. Available online: https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=jZ5​wIXXS​B‐I&feature=youtu.be (accessed July 30, 2019). Moradi, I. (2004), Glitch Aesthetics. BA diss., University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK. Nawi, D. (2017), “Haroon Mirza: A C I D G E S T,” Website of Pérez Art Museum Miami. Available online: https://www.pamm.org/exhibitions/ haroon‐mirza‐c‐i‐d‐g‐e‐s‐t (accessed July 14, 2019). Nicolai, C. (2000), “Visuelles Feld,” Artsit’s Website. Available at: http:​//www​.cars​ tenni​colai​.de/?​c=wor​ks&w=​visue​lles_​feld (accessed July 30, 2019). Nunes, M. (2011), “Error, Noise, and Potential: The Outside of Purpose,” in M. Nunes (ed.), Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures, 3–23, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Parikka, J. (2007), Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses, New York: Peter Lang. Parikka, J. and T. D. Sampson (2009), The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture, New York: Hampton Press. Rossaak, E. (2016), “Who Generates the Image Error? From Hitchcock to Glitch,” in B. Cohen and A. Streitberger (eds.), The Photofilmic: Entangled Images in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, 217–32, Belgium: Leuven University Press. Shaviro, S. (2011), “The Actual Volcano: Whitehead, Harman, and the Problem of Relations,” in L. Bryant, N. Srnicek, and G. Harman (eds.), The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, 279–90, Melbourne: re.press. Shaviro, S. (2014), The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism, Minneapolis: Minnesota Press. Spielmann, Y. (2004), Video and Computer: The Aesthetics of Steina and Woody Vasulka, 1–38, Montreal: The Daniel Langlois Foundation. Sturken, M. (1996), “Steina and Woody Vasulka: In Dialogue with the Machine,” in Steina and Woody Vasulka: Machine Media [exhibition catalogue], 35–48, San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Thompson, M. (2017), Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Vavarella, E. (2015), “Art, Error, and the Interstices of Power,” Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts 7 (2): 7–17.

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A Relational Materialist Approach to Errant Media Systems The Case of Internet Video Producers John Hondros

This chapter examines how a relational materialist approach to media systems can be used to theorize glitches, malfunctions, and breakdowns and give due prominence to such errant behavior alongside nominal behavior. The approach used here draws upon the notions of “assemblage,” as formulated by Manuel DeLanda from his reading of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and “actor‐network” from Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) and applies them to case studies of three groups of video makers. These concepts provide a rich theoretical language with which to frame and analyze important aspects of the different arrangements of people and machines these groups created to distribute their work on the internet, such as their complexity, precariousness, and heterogeneity. The case study groups are visionOntv, the internet video project of the UK activist group Undercurrents; an international group of film and television fans; and the California Community Media Exchange, an association of US community media centers located in Northern California. The criteria for selecting these particular groups were part of the requirements of a larger study, from which the data set for this chapter derives: the groups needed to belong to categories of nonprofessional producers that existed before the advent of the internet but that later adopted it to distribute videos and the groups also needed to be active during the time of the study. These groups were studied ethnographically over two distinct periods: May 2011 to June 2012 and November 2016 to November 2017. Initial entry into the field was framed by the literature on participatory culture but while investigating this many informants would complain in passing about the errant behavior of the different technologies they used to distribute their videos, such as disruptions caused by denial of service attacks on LiveJournal, unwarranted YouTube takedown notices generated by bots, and problems with how Facebook’s algorithms filtered posts. While initially dismissed as

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irrelevant to the research, it eventually became clear that these complaints were instead important clues to understanding the nature of the processes the groups were engaging in as they formed and tried to maintain their distribution systems. The first section of this chapter provides a brief overview of the notions of assemblages and actor‐networks. This section will also discuss the compatibility of these two concepts and how they, when taken together, provide complementary insights. The second section will then apply this theoretical framework to case studies of the three groups examining how their media systems and the errant behavior they experienced can be framed and analyzed in the language of assemblages/actor‐networks. The chapter concludes with some observations concerning how this approach can provide a comprehensive analysis of errant behavior by placing it within its wider socio‐technical context. The ethnographic fieldwork that underpins this chapter involved observing and participating with the groups online and offline, usually on a daily basis. The data collected was triangulated against eighty-five formal interviews.1 My identity and the nature of the research were disclosed fully to all informants directly in these online and offline spaces.

Relational Materialism: Assemblages and Actor‐Networks Drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblage, DeLanda develops a social ontology based on the concept of relations of exteriority, where wholes are comprised of parts that are autonomous from them, and where the properties of a whole are synthetic, emerging from the interactions of the capacities of those parts with each other, and not merely an aggregation of the component parts’ properties (DeLanda 2006b: 9–11). Deleuze characterizes these interactions between component parts as “alliances” and “liaisons” that result in them having a symbiotic relationship with each other (Deleuze and Parnet 2006: 52). DeLanda (2016: 10–11) illustrates how an assemblage’s properties can emerge from the interaction of its component parts through a discussion of interpersonal relationships within tight‐knit communities. For such communities, the degree their members are connected together govern the pervasiveness of information throughout the community relating to, for example, transgressions of norms by a member, which will become part of

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the transgressors’ reputation if it is remembered by enough members. This property of “density” (of connections) is a quality of the assemblage that emerges with a sufficient quantity of connections. Communities with too few connections will not be able to transmit knowledge of, punish (through ostracism or ridicule), or remember such violations (DeLanda 2016: 76). The emergent property of density is a property of the assemblage as a whole, relying on the interaction of its components and not simply an aggregate of those components’ properties, while at the same time not requiring that we think of an assemblage “as a seamless totality in which the very personal identity of the members is created by their relations: neighbours can pack their things and move to a different community while keeping their identity intact” (DeLanda 2016: 12). In addition to emergent properties and relations of exteriority, there are two other defining aspects of an assemblage for DeLanda that are relevant here. The first defines variable processes in which these components become involved and that either stabilize the identity of an assemblage, by increasing its degree of internal homogeneity or the degree of sharpness of its [spatial] boundaries, or destabilize it. The former are referred to as processes of territorialization and the latter as processes of deterritorialization . . . which either destabilizes spatial boundaries or increases internal heterogeneity. (DeLanda 2006b: 12–13)

DeLanda provides an illustration of territorialization processes through an examination of the US computer manufacturing industry where the “integrating and regulating activities of organizations such as trade and industry associations are a key component of these processes.” For example, “industry associations are instrumental in leading their members towards consensus on many normative questions which affect them collectively, particularly the setting of industry‐wide technological standards,” thereby acting to homogenize the industry (DeLanda 2006b: 82). The industry however is also subject to deterritorialization processes since it operates in a “turbulent environment . . . created by a high rate of innovation in products or processes,” which increase the industry’s heterogeneity due to the differing rates the various manufacturing organizations adapt to these changes (DeLanda 2006b: 82). The final defining aspect of an assemblage discussed here is the role played by language in stabilizing its identity through the process of “coding” and its destabilization through “decoding.” For example, “in institutional organizations . . . the legitimacy of an authority structure is

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in most cases related to linguistically coded rituals and regulations . . . written rules, standard procedures, and most importantly, a constitutional charter defining its rights and obligations” (DeLanda 2010: 13). For DeLanda, then, “the identity of any assemblage at any level of scale is always the product of a process (territorialization and, in some cases, coding) and it is always precarious, since other processes (deterritorialization and decoding) can destabilize it” (2006b: 28). DeLanda’s reference to scale here points to how his understanding of the notions of components and assemblages are relative. Illustrating this using the aforementioned computer industry example, while the industry can be considered an assemblage and the individual organizations that make it up as components, those organizations are also themselves assemblages (of, for example, people, buildings, and machines). When referring to these assemblages of assemblages, DeLanda uses the term “macro” assemblage with their component assemblages referred to as “micro” assemblages, but these designations are to be understood strictly as relative. That is, for DeLanda, a micro assemblage can be a macro assemblage when considered at a lower level of scale and vice versa when considered at a higher level (2006a: 251–2, 2010: 68). Having completed a brief sketch of assemblages, we can now turn to actor‐networks. To understand this concept, we first need to address its key terms as their definition within the theory deviates somewhat from common parlance. With respect to the first term, “an entity counts as an actor if it makes a perceptible difference. Active entities are relationally linked with one another in webs. They make a difference to each other . . . they enact each other” (Law and Mol 2008: 58). Also, as Latour states, “the word actor has been open to . . . misunderstanding . . . ‘Actor’ in the Anglo‐Saxon tradition is always a human intentional individual actor” but in ANT, contrary to this, an actor is “something that acts or to which activity is granted by others. It implies no special motivation of human individual actors, nor of humans in general. An actant can literally be anything provided it is granted to be the source of an action” (Latour 1998: Section 3; as with this quote of Latour’s, the term “actant” is sometimes used as a synonym for “actor” by ANT scholars). Law and Mol’s use of the term “web” earlier anticipates the meaning of the term “network” within ANT, which sees “everything in the social and natural worlds as a continuously generated effect of the webs of relations within which they are located” (Law 2009: 141). As this quote hints at, and as Latour (1999a: 15, in Gane 2004: 83) emphasizes, “network” within ANT is not to be understood as a system that transports things without deformation, like a telephone network, but rather as a series of translations. These translation processes, which are sometimes also referred to as transformations or

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transductions, are described in various ways within the ANT literature. Callon (1980: 211), for example, states that “translation involves creating convergences . . . by relating things that were previously different . . . [it is] the expression of a shared desire to arrive at the same result.” Sometimes achieving this can require negotiations or “trials of strength” to achieve an alignment of interests when competing actors “problematize” the situation in conflicting ways (Callon 1986: 203–11). The “new interpretations of . . . interests” achieved by a successful translation process can result in “channelling people in different directions” (Latour 1987: 117). Elsewhere, Latour defines “translation” as “a relation that . . . induces two mediators into coexisting” (2005: 108), where mediators are defined as actors that “transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry” (2005: 39). An actor‐network can therefore be understood as the web (network) of associations created by mediators (actors) and are the “flows of translations” (Latour 2005: 132) created by the work of these mediators as they enact, enable, and adapt to each other (Mol 2010: 260). The inclusion of a new actor within an actor‐network as a result of a successful translation is referred to as “enrollment” (e.g., Callon and Law 1982). On rare occasions, according to Latour, mediators can become intermediaries, where the latter transport “meaning or force without transformation: defining its inputs is enough to define its outputs” (2005: 39, 40, 105). This applies both to single actors and to actor‐networks: “If a network acts as a single block, then it disappears, to be replaced by the action itself and the seemingly simple author of that action . . . A working television, a well‐managed bank or a healthy body . . . mask the networks that produce [them]” (Law 1992: 385). That is, the complexity and specificity of the actor‐network need not be engaged with, and it can be simply treated as an actor within other actor‐networks, which is referred to as “blackboxing” within ANT (Callon 1991: 153; Latour 1999b: 304; Law 1992: 385). From the various formulations of the concept of translation above, we can see that the process requires work: “What is important in the word network is the word work. You need work in order to make the connection” (Latour in Gane 2004: 83). Also, once the connections are made they are not permanent, but rather require ongoing work to maintain the enrollment of the different actors: “A network is not made of nylon thread, words or any durable substance but is the trace left behind by some moving agent . . . it has to be traced anew by the passage of another vehicle, another circulating entity” (Latour 2005: 132). As Law puts it, “building and maintaining networks is an uphill battle . . . enrolment is precarious . . . links and nodes in the network do not last all by themselves but instead need constant maintenance work, the support of other links and nodes” (2003: 3). Sometimes, however, in spite

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of this maintenance work, actors can cease to perform their roles within an actor‐network resulting in it coming apart. We can see from this section that assemblages and actor‐networks are very similar concepts as they are both precarious arrangements of interacting humans and non‐human objects, which are separable from these arrangements, that are more than the sum of their parts. This close relationship is attested to by a number of scholars (e.g., Acuto and Curtis 2014: 5; Harman 2007: 3; 2014: 124; Law 2009: 146). In a similar vein to works that either treat these two approaches as complementary or use their terminology interchangeably (e.g., Bennett 2005; Müller and Schurr 2016; Rizzo 2015; Salovaara 2015), the following case studies will be analyzed by drawing upon the theoretical vocabulary of both assemblages and actor‐networks. This will allow for a richer and more faithful rendering of the situations encountered in the field than relying upon one approach alone. For example, with respect to processes of stabilization, the ANT vocabulary of problematization, interests, translation, and enrollment provides a way to break down these processes into different stages and elements, while the concepts of territorialization and coding from DeLanda’s theory of assemblages draws our attention to the role space, diversity of components, and language play in them. For the sake of convenience and clarity, the term “assemblage” will be used to refer to both DeLanda’s assemblages and to actor‐networks throughout the case studies.

Precarious Media Assemblages This section analyzes the errant behavior of the media systems used by each of the three case study groups by framing it within a socio‐technical analysis of those systems using the approach outlined earlier, beginning with visionOntv. VisionOntv was run by a core team of two people supported by a pool of volunteers, and its primary goal was to promote the development of communities of social change through attracting audiences for the activist and alternative videos that it produced and distributed via the internet and by facilitating conversations within these audiences. To achieve this goal, visionOntv constructed a complex media system. At its core was the Liferay content management system. Liferay was used to both organize the thousands of videos that visionOntv distributed and to provide tools for their audiences to discuss them through comment boxes and other text‐based functionality such as a bulletin board, a wiki, and chat. While Liferay enabled visionOntv to organize their content thematically into “channels,” it did not have the functionality to aggregate videos. This was done instead through the opensource software platform Miro Community, which was embedded within

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each of the Liferay channel webpages. Miro Community only provided aggregation functionality however, and did not host the videos themselves, and so visionOntv used video hosting platforms such as YouTube and Blip and then linked them to Miro Community via RSS feeds. VisionOntv’s media system also used social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to feed audiences into the Liferay channels. Typically for assemblages, as we saw in the previous section, the processes for enrolling this heterogeneous collection of human and machine components into visionOntv’s media system required work and the results were precarious. For example, adapting RSS technologies to visionOntv’s needs took several attempts by volunteer programmers. The work involved in this “enrollment” process (Callon and Law 1982) not only concerned manipulating these technologies so Miro Community and the hosting platforms could “coexist” (Latour 2005: 108) but also involved negotiations that translated the interests (Callon 1986: 203–11) of the volunteers who had their own motivations and objectives concerning the work they were doing that diverged from visionOntv’s core team to some degree. Even after a component’s enrollment has been completed however, it remains precarious and requires work to maintain (Law 2003: 3), and so it was with the RSS feed: a glitch developed in the feed from Blip to Miro Community which meant that general entertainment videos unrelated to visionOntv’s goals were being fed to one of visionOntv’s channels. The cause of this, visionOntv believed, were changes Blip’s engineers had made to their hosting platform, which was a process that made Blip’s enrollment within visionOntv’s assemblage fail as it required visionOntv to take the feed offline while searching for a way to enroll it again. We can see therefore that while the complexity of the Blip‐RSS “micro” assemblage (sitting within the visionOntv “macro” assemblage; DeLanda 2006a: 251–2) could be ignored and treated simply as a “black box” (Latour 1999b: 185; Law 1992: 385) or “intermediary” (Latour 2005: 39) when it was acting nominally, its specific nature and complexities had to be engaged with when it stopped acting as required so the situation could be rectified. This overall situation can also be understood in terms of DeLanda’s (2006b: 28) observation that an assemblage’s identity is the product of a process but is precarious since it can be destabilized by other processes. In this case, the identity of visionOntv’s assemblage as an activist project was primarily formed by the processes that circulated activist videos through it but the appearance of unrelated videos threatened to destabilize its identity via a “deterritorialization” process, as the malfunctioning feed introduced heterogeneity into the assemblage, and it required a “territorialization” counter-process of removing that feed to increase the homogeneity of the videos within the assemblage to stabilize its identity (DeLanda 2006b: 12).

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Another example of components in visionOntv’s assemblage not functioning as required involved the audience interaction functionality within Liferay. There was very little audience discussion on the channels despite the traffic they received, which visionOntv believed was caused largely by the lack of user‐friendliness of the text‐based tools on that platform. To remedy this situation, visionOntv attempted to upgrade Liferay to a version that included the “OpenSocial” framework, which contained social media tools that they believed were more suited to facilitating conversations among their audience members. However, despite several attempts, visionOntv were unable to complete the upgrade successfully. While this situation could simply be regarded as an isolated instance of user error or a technical glitch, the upgrade process can also be understood more broadly as one of the many translation processes that visionOntv attempted while constructing and maintaining their media assemblage. During the upgrade attempts, visionOntv had contacted Liferay’s technical support team for assistance; however, they were using a free version of Liferay which did not come with support. VisionOntv were therefore not able to obtain the assistance they required, despite some negotiations, but they were not prepared to pay a licence fee that would enable them to get this support due to their limited budget and their commitment to developing a free-to-use media system as a template for other video activists to adopt. This was therefore a failed translation process as visionOntv were unable to change the Liferay organization’s problematization (Callon 1986: 203–11) of its platform and were in turn unable to accept this problematization themselves, preventing an alignment of their interests. A final example of the errant behavior of visionOntv’s media assemblage concerns Facebook, which they used to enroll audiences into Liferay. When a new video was available, a post was made on visionOntv’s Facebook page that contained a link to the relevant channel on Liferay, rather than an embedded video or a link to the video’s hosting service, so as to direct the audience to Liferay and away from Facebook and the hosting service. They did this because they believed that their platform was a more suitable place for the kinds of conversations they were trying to facilitate to occur, in spite of the perceived inadequacy of its current set of communication tools. Their Facebook posts were actants that enrolled audiences into the Liferay platform through a translation process that involved “channelling people in different directions” (Latour 1987: 117), namely away from Facebook and into Liferay for those interested enough in the post to click on the link. This process was however prone to failure, and one reason for this was that many of the people who “liked” visionOntv’s Facebook page were not receiving their posts. VisionOntv believed that this had always been an issue for them,

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although they also believed that the situation had deteriorated significantly between the two periods of fieldwork and that this was due to changes in how Facebook’s traffic algorithms worked. In fact, the Facebook organization had admitted that the way their algorithms handled the general increase in traffic on their social media platform over the period in question had indeed led to individual posts reaching fewer people than they had previously (Boland 2014). The algorithms’ response to this increase in traffic resulted in the users’ enrollments within visionOntv’s assemblage destabilizing, as they required the regular passage of “circulating entities” to be maintained (Latour 2005: 132). Facebook did provide a new actor, in the form of paid functionality that made posts appear in news feeds of more users, to help maintain these enrollments but visionOntv were unwilling to pay for this due to their limited funds and their anti‐capitalist philosophy, which contributed to a decline in the number of views their videos were receiving. Turning now to the second case study, the group of film and television fan video makers discussed here traced its roots to the mid‐1970s and had a predominately female membership who hailed primarily from North America and Western Europe. For a majority of the fieldwork, the group was centered around the LiveJournal online journaling platform and two annual fan video conventions. While the group did not go by a particular name, it will be referred to here as the LiveJournal vidding community. Before the adoption of LiveJournal, which began in the early 2000s, the group had relied upon email lists and bulletin boards as its main modes of online communication concerning videos. LiveJournal eventually replaced these older technologies to become the central component of the group’s assemblage and some of the perceived advantages that had prompted its adoption over these technologies also helped to stabilize the group. One example of this concerned the email lists where group members felt that long posts or frequent posting was discourteous as it risked inundating other members. Live Journal on the other hand provided each group member with their own online space where they could post as much and as often as they desired without disturbing others since only those interested in reading what they had to say would visit their pages. LiveJournal allowed these visitors to leave comments on posts, and also to leave comments on comments, which sometimes led to conversations developing between different group members. These posts and comments were actants that enrolled one community member’s account into another’s and were therefore one of the community assemblage’s stabilization processes. When a post or comment interested group members enough to leave a comment, this process would link the accounts together since not only did LiveJournal’s system automatically include a link in the comment to the commenter’s account but

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it also sent a message to the original poster’s LiveJournal inbox containing a link to the commenter’s account. The greater freedom the members felt LiveJournal gave them to express themselves led to an increase in the number and length of conversations occurring within the community which in turn increased the “density of connections” (DeLanda 2016: 10) between the different members to such a degree that it became an emergent property of the community assemblage that helped to stabilize it. While communications between members on LiveJournal typically worked to stabilize the community assemblage, it was precarious and miscommunications between them could also destabilize it. One way this manifested was when comments made concerning a video that were intended as constructive criticism were interpreted negatively by other members leading to conflicts that could break the connections made between them, thereby threatening to destabilize the group assemblage. To maintain the community assemblage’s stability, its online conversations had become increasingly “coded” (DeLanda 2010: 13) over time through discouraging constructive criticism and the posting of controversial material. In addition to miscommunications, other errant processes related to LiveJournal threatened the community’s stability. For example, LiveJournal’s administrators at one point had purged a large number of accounts from their platform that included keywords relating to sexual offenses; however, this purge had also erroneously included some innocent accounts such as fan pages relating to films and television programs that addressed these themes. Another source of instability related to LiveJournal concerned denial‐of‐service attacks it suffered periodically, which some in the community believed were a consequence of its use by Russian political dissidents. Therefore, while LiveJournal was an actant within the community’s macro assemblage that could mostly be engaged with as a dutiful intermediary, it was also a micro assemblage that underwent its own processes that sometimes brought its specificity as an assemblage of people and machines to the fore in such a way that destabilized its enrollment within the macro assemblage. In these two cases, a territorialization process performed by its staff, possibly assisted by bots or algorithms, to homogenize its accounts by excluding those it considered unacceptable and also a deterritorialization process conducted by third parties that temporarily excluded the community from LiveJournal’s online space. The vidding community did not host their videos on LiveJournal but would rather host them on third-party platforms and typically embedded the videos from these platforms within the LiveJournal post announcing them. Embedding was a translation processes that made LiveJournal and the hosting platform intelligible to each other through the use of (software) code. This

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translation was precarious however, as it was subject to a deterritorialization process. It depended on the specifics of the platforms involved but, as with DeLanda’s (2006b: 82) computer industry example, rapid technological change could alter the specifications related to embedding functionality potentially introducing heterogeneity as different organizations adapted to these changes at different rates. The vidding community in fact witnessed the precariousness of this translation since on one occasion they discovered that the videos from Blip embedded within their LiveJournal posts no longer functioned, even though they were still viewable directly on Blip, and this problem persisted for some time. The community believed the reason for this prolonged malfunction was that Blip did not have the resources to promptly respond to changes made in other platforms. Another errant behavior related to video hosting platforms involved YouTube and how some content rights holders went about generating copyright claims against users. There had been considerable disagreement among rights holders, YouTube, and fans spanning both periods of fieldwork concerning how much copyright material (in the form of film and television clips and music tracks) fans were legally permitted to use in their video montages. YouTube had provided tools to allow rights holders to pursue claims against uploaders of videos they believed infringed their rights such as a content matching functionality, which compared uploaded videos against a database of copyright material to detect infringements, and a dispute system that allowed rights holders to trigger YouTube to issue an infringement notice against an uploader and to manage the dispute process between them. While the LiveJournal vidding community had generally been hostile to YouTube and rights holders over what they considered a draconian interpretation of the law, resulting in many infringement notices being issued that they felt were unjustified, they believed some infringement notices were in fact being generate automatically without the video content even being examined. One such example involved a community member who had received an infringement notice for a video that only used sixteen frames from content owned by the rights holder making the claim, which at the time would have been too short for the content matching system to have detected. The community member believed that the company was using a bot to search keywords related to their content on YouTube and then automatically generating claims on YouTube’s dispute system for any matches without first reviewing the videos. The dispute system was provided to content rights holders to allow them to prompt YouTube to perform a (homogenizing) territorialization process to ensure that the content hosted on it was compliant with copyright law but the bots employed were generating errant claims that required the community members to use the system to perform ongoing

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translations as counter-processes to prevent the destabilization of YouTube’s enrollment in their assemblage. Recalling the formulation of translations that characterized them as an alignment of interests (Callon 1986: 203–11), in requiring the community members to fill out a statement to YouTube claiming that their use of the content in question was in fact within the law, the dispute system was also an actant in a translation process which required them to reaffirm to YouTube that their interests were indeed aligned with respect to only dealing in legally complaint videos (the original affirmation occurring upon acceptance of the terms of service when they signed up for their account, which was part of the initial enrollment process of YouTube into their assemblage). The final case study concerns the California Community Media Exchange, which was an association of seven community media centers that were involved in various activities related to the production and broadcast of community television and radio. The focus here is on the online distribution activities related to the public access television programs produced by members of the local community at two of those centers: Davis Media Access (DMA) and the Community Media Center of Marin (CMCM). DMA had developed their own platform for online distribution of public access programs produced at their center, which involved a website they built embedded with videos from their own video‐on‐demand server. Maintaining this platform was time consuming, and DMA, like many of the centers, operated on a very limited budget. As a result, they looked for ways to either automate the various tasks related to maintaining their platform or delegate them to the community producers themselves so as to reduce the burden on their overstretched staff. To this end, at one stage DMA was involved in the development of a new content management system that was part of the Open Media Project (OMP), which was an initiative managed by a group of community media centers in various parts of the United States and based on the Drupal content management system. When complete, this new system would allow producers to handle much of the distribution process themselves (e.g., uploading videos, creating program records, entering metadata) and automate other aspects (e.g., encoding, routing videos and metadata to the broadcast system). DMA’s attempt to enroll the OMP content management system into its video distribution assemblage proved unsuccessful however, and while the details of why this enrollment ultimately failed are beyond the scope of this chapter, one contributing factor was that when the OMP system was part of the distribution assemblage, it sometimes caused it to malfunction. This was due to the assemblage not being sufficiently coded: Recalling DeLanda’s (2010: 13) formulation of coding as a stabilization process involving language,

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in this instance DMA’s lack of resources meant that not only were staff and producers using the new system not receiving sufficient training in its operation but also that adequate operating documentation was not produced. The decoding of the distribution assemblage was increased by software bugs within the OMP system as fixes and workarounds related to these sometimes required changes to procedures that made aspects of the limited training and documentation obsolete. This lack of relevant training and documentation sometimes resulted in the new system being used incorrectly, which led to the malfunctions. CMCM used Miro Community, embedded within the center’s website, to distribute their community producers’ videos. CMCM did not host the videos themselves, but rather allowed the producers to set up accounts on Miro Community and link them via RSS to the third‐party video hosting sites used by the producers. On one occasion, CMCM found its online video distribution assemblage subject to a similar deterritorializing process as the one experienced by some members of the LiveJournal vidding community. An update to Blip had resulted in videos from that platform no longer appearing in Miro Community, and CMCM’s suspicion was that the Participatory Culture Foundation, which developed and distributed this free and open-source platform, did not have the resources to rapidly respond to changes in the industry. The problem was not in fact rectified until Blip provided a further update. This deterritorialization process occurred again, but in a slightly different form, when Blip began supporting high definition videos, which was a feature adopted by the producers but one that was incompatible with Miro Community. Rather than wait for the Participatory Culture Foundation to provide a solution, CMCM attempted their own translation process to enable these two platforms to coexist again. While their ad hoc modification to Miro Community worked, they considered it precarious and believed that a more stable solution would require more fundamental changes to the platform than they had the resources or expertise to conduct.

Conclusion Rather than treating the errant behavior of media systems as simply anomalous instances of technical breakdowns or human error, the theoretical approach of this chapter frames them as the consequence of the inherently precarious nature of assemblages resulting from the various destabilization processes they are subject to, which contest the stabilization processes that facilitate the assemblages’ nominal behavior. That is, this approach does not

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address these errant behaviors in isolation, but rather treats them as diffused through wider socio‐technical assemblages and part of the continual flow of processes and counter-processes that form, stabilize, and destabilize those assemblages. It does this by tracing the various relations between the different components of these assemblages, addressing how they associate and disassociate from each other. The errant behaviors relating to LiveJournal experienced by the vidding community, for example, were the result of the different processes that emerged from the competing problematizations of it by the community, LiveJournal’s administrators, and hackers; from how it interacted with Blip; and from how the members interacted with each other. Because of the heterogeneous nature of assemblages, this approach allows humans, machines, language (such as DMA’s manuals and constructive criticism within the LiveJournal community), among other things, to be addressed together providing a comprehensive socio‐technical account of the glitches, breakdowns, and miscommunications experiences by the three case study groups.

Note 1 The findings in this chapter are based on only a small part of this rich and extensive data set. For additional discussions of it, see Hondros (2014, 2016, 2018).

References Acuto, M. and S. Curtis (2014), “Assemblage Thinking and International Relations,” in M. Acuto (ed.), Reassembling International Theory: Assemblage Thinking and International Relations, 1–15, London: Palgrave Pivot. Bennett, J. (2005), “The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout,” Public Culture 17 (3): 445–66. Boland, B. (2014), Organic Reach on Facebook: Your Questions Answered. Facebook. Available from: www.facebook.com/business/news/ Organic‐Reach‐on‐ Facebook (cited March 11, 2019). Callon, M. (1980), “Struggles and Negotiations to Define What is Problematic and What is Not: The Socio‐Logic of Translation,” in K. Knorr, R. Krohn, and R. Whitley (eds.), The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, 197–219, Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Callon, M. (1986), “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: The Domestication of the Scallops and St Brieuac Fishermen,” in J. Law (ed.), Power, Action and Belief, 196–232, London: Routledge and Kegan.

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Callon, M. (1991), “Techno‐Economic Networks and Irreversibility,” in J. Law (ed.), A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, 132–61, London: Routledge. Callon, M. and J. Law (1982), “On Interests and Their Transformation: Enrolment and Counter‐Enrolment,” Social Studies of Science 12 (4): 615–25. DeLanda, M. (2006a), “Deleuzian Social Ontology and Assemblage Theory,” in M. Fuglsang and B. M. Sørensen (eds.), Deleuze and the Social, 250–66, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DeLanda, M. (2006b), A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, London: Continuum (Kindle Edition). DeLanda, M. (2010), Deleuze: History and Science, New York: Atropos. DeLanda, M. (2016), Assemblage Theory, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Deleuze, G. and C. Parnet (2006), Dialogues II, London: Continuum. Gane, N. (2004), The Future of Social Theory, London: Continuum. Harman, G. (2007), Networks and Assemblages: The Rebirth of Things in Latour and DeLanda, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Harman, G. (2014), “Conclusions: Assemblage Theory and Its Future,” in M. Acuto (ed.), Reassembling International Theory: Assemblage Thinking and International Relations, 118–30, London: Palgrave Pivot. Hondros, J. (2014), “Visual Ethnography of Amateur Video Makers,” Journal of Media Practice: Screenworks [Online] 5 (2). http://screenworks.org.uk/ archive/volume‐5/visual‐ ethnography. Hondros, J. (2016), “Problematizing the Internet as a video distribution technology: an assemblage theory analysis,” Information, Communication & Society 19 (2): 221–33. Hondros, J. (2018), Ecologies of Internet Video: Beyond YouTube, New York: Routledge. Latour, B. (1987), Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1998), On Actor‐Network Theory: A Few Clarifications. net‐ time mailing lists: mailing lists for networked cultures, politics, and tactics. Available from: www.n​ettim​e.org​/List​s‐Arc​hives​/nett​ime‐l​‐9801​/msg0​0019.​ html (cited February 19, 2019). Latour, B. (1999a), “On Recalling ANT,” in J. Law and J. Hassard (eds.), Actor Network Theory and After, 93–5, Oxford: Blackwell. Latour, B. (1999b), Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2005), Reassembling the Social, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Law, J. (1992), “Notes on the Theory of the Actor‐Network: Ordering, Strategy, and Heterogeneity,” Systemic Practice and Action Research 5 (4): 379–93. Law, J. (2003), “Traduction/Trahison: Notes on ANT.” www.lancaster.ac.uk/ socio​logy/​resea​rch/p​ublic​ation​s/pap​ers/l​aw‐tr​aduct​ion‐t​rahis​on.pd​f. Law, J. (2009), “Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics,” in B. Turner (ed.), The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, 141–58, Oxford: Wiley‐Blackwell.

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Law, J. and A. Mol (2008), “The Actor‐Enacted: Cumbrian Sheep in 2001,” in C. Knappett and L. Malafouris (eds.), Material Agency: Towards a Non‐anthropocentric Approach, 57–77, New York: Springer. Mol, A. (2010), “Actor‐Network Theory: Sensitive Terms and Enduring Tensions,” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Sonderheft 50: 253–69. Müller, M. and C. Schurr (2016), “Assemblage Thinking and Actor‐ Network Theory: Conjunctions, Disjunctions, Cross‐Fertilisations,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41 (3): 217–29. doi:10.1111/tran.12117. Rizzo, T. (2015), “FCJ‐177 Television Assemblages,” The Fibreculture Journal (24): 106–26. Salovaara, I. (2015), “Media Spaces of Fluid Politics Participatory Assemblages and Networked Narratives,” Media Transformations 11: 10–29.

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Negotiating Two Models of Truth Miscommunication, Aesthetics, and Democracy in Elle and Laruelle Alex Lichtenfels

New York Times reporter Ron Suskind recalls a miscommunication with a Bush aide (reputedly Karl Rove (Englehardt 2014)) during the Second Iraq War: The aide said that guys like me were “In what we call the reality‐based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” [. . .] “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” (2004)

According to this analysis, for the reporter, the fact that reality corresponds to facts is important in deciding how to act. Alternatively, for the aide the action itself, rendered by military power, creates the reality upon which the justification for the action can retroactively be applied. This analysis can be extended to current media representations in a “post‐truth” landscape. For example, after Donald Trump’s inauguration, his press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that “This was the largest audience ever to ever witness an inauguration, period” (qtd. by Swaine 2017), later defended by White House aide Kellyanne Conway, saying that he had given “alternative facts” (qtd. by Swaine 2017) despite evidence to the contrary such as photos of the event and transit data. The usual formula has been for different parties privy to this type of communication to declare other parties to be lying, as seen in Trump’s repeated accusations of the liberal media’s fake news (e.g., Pak and Seler 2018; Massie 2017) and of the New York Times’ documentation of Trump’s lies (e.g., Leonhardt and Thompson 2017). Each party believes that there is no miscommunication, but that both know the “real” truth and that the other

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party is lying. Conversely, this chapter takes seriously the proposition that each side of a communication may operate according to different concepts of truth and that therefore no appeal can be made to a common ground that would solve the miscommunication by allowing both sides to understand its “true” meaning. The debate is couched in terms of the classically liberal media that uses a correspondence theory of truth in which truth is true because it corresponds to facts, and of emerging media, particularly those associated with populism, which often use a coherence theory of truth in which truth is true because it is internally coherent. Through an analysis of Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2016), the chapter discusses how media objects not only operate within different truth systems but also shape those very systems, suggesting that for coherentists, media representations can determine truth. Elle is used as an example of a media object that appears to critique coherentist truth systems, but actually uses many of these systems’ aesthetic strategies in order to engage its audience. As a middlebrow European film, it is also chosen as an example of how coherence truth systems and the media aesthetics through which they function are by no means limited to the lowbrow American culture with which they are often associated. Drawing on the nonphilosophy of François Laruelle ([1996] 2017), the chapter concludes by discussing methods by which the impasse between correspondentists and coherentists might be negotiated, an important challenge given the deep societal divisions this impasse is causing. Truth is the basis of communication’s possibility. As James Young writes “It is clear that we cannot do without the distinction between sentences which are rightly assertable and those which are wrongly assertable. Without this distinction, the very concept of meaning and the possibility of communication are undermined” (1994: 7) and that in order to name rightly assertable sentences “‘Truth’ seems as good a word as any” (1994: 7). However, miscommunication isn’t usually thought of as arising from a situation in which sender and receiver operate within two different truth systems. This is because most people’s understanding of truth is that it is universal—that what is true is true for everyone—and further that this universality is one of the qualities that renders truth true, that renders true statements “rightly assertable.” The correspondence theory of truth locates this universality in facts. It has many variants (see David 2016), but in general asserts that “propositions have objective truth conditions. To say that the truth conditions of a proposition are objective is to say two things. First, objective conditions may obtain independently of whether users of the proposition are able to tell that they obtain. Second, objective conditions are, in general, external to a system of beliefs, or extrasystemic” (Young 2001: 91). The correspondence theory

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of truth advocates an appeal to objective conditions, or facts, in order to determine the truth of a statement. This is what the Bush aide was getting at when he talked about the “reality‐based community” in the quote that opened this chapter. In correspondence theories of truth, convincing someone of the dissonance between a proposition and the facts to which it supposedly corresponds is sufficient to convince that the statement is false. However, this strategy simply hasn’t worked. Approximately 30 percent of American voters continue to believe Trump’s statements, according to a recent study by the Washington Post (Clement and Kessler 2018). Maybe liberal media outlets have not managed to reach enough people, or other media outlets have been more powerful in convincing people that the facts they use to support their arguments are objective. But there is an alternative possibility, which is that the two sides of communication are operating under entirely different truth conditions. In opposition to the correspondence theory of truth, the coherence theory maintains that a proposition “is true and only true if the speakers’ system of beliefs includes the beliefs that warrant assertion of the proposition. When a system contains the beliefs that provide the truth conditions for some proposition, the proposition may be said to cohere with the system” (Young 2001: 91). What matters is not that truth accords with facts, but that it accords with belief. Ignas Kalpokas has shown how “the primacy of belief ” is central to what he calls “the post‐truth condition” (2018: 6). A coherence model of truth can thus be readily associated with notions of post‐truth. If truth is a matter of belief, then a level of complexity is added to the operations of media objects in communication. This is because they are not only potentially truth bearers—things that can express objective truths, but also truth creators—things that can create beliefs. The Bush aide’s claim that “when we act, we create our own reality” means that power—military power, but also political, cultural, and media power—can create truth because it can create belief. Therefore, when analyzing media objects, the theorist will have to be careful that the methodology used can prove effective in describing how both their expressive and determinative properties function. The determinative properties of media objects under a coherence theory of truth are important because they challenge the efficacy of some classical critical methods, for example apparatus theory’s critique of Hollywood cinema. In their seminal article “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” Jean‐Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni argue that “Once we realize that it is the nature of the system to turn the cinema into an instrument of ideology, we can see that the film‐maker’s first task is to show up the cinema’s so‐called ‘depiction of reality’” ([1969] 1976: 25). By showing up the mechanisms by which the cinema depicts reality, the filmmaker or theorist can identify the inevitable

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disjunction between objective reality and that depiction, thus revealing those mechanisms and the representations they produce as ideologically charged rather than objective. Therefore, apparatus theory supposedly empowers the viewer to understand that a miscommunication has occurred, that what they took to be a realistic representation was in fact an ideologically inflected one. The efficacy of this type of critique, still common today, relies on a correspondence theory of truth shared by both the maker and receiver of the representation. In “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), Laura Mulvey argues that continuity editing techniques such as eyeline matches between men looking and women being looked at are at once invisible and ideologically charged, and that their ideological efficacy depends on their invisibility. Yet there only needs to be a making invisible of the mechanisms of representation because the maker of the representation tacitly acknowledges that there really is a disjunction between representation and reality under the aegis of a correspondence theory of truth. When the representation’s framework of truth moves to a coherence theory, this type of critique no longer functions effectively because there is no longer a cover-up. The rhetorical mechanism creates the belief/truth system that underpins reality, which in turn justifies the mechanism, as in the case of the Bush aide. Describing the mechanism is not an impediment to the mechanism’s successful functioning. In fact, it is crucial that the representation highlights its own aesthetic mechanisms so that the receiver of the communication understands the premise under which they are accepting truth, the rules of the game. In this framework, apparatus theory is operating under different truth conditions to the mechanisms that it critiques, rendering its critique ineffective. Inevitably, this latter situation also relies on a receiver, or audience for media objects that operates within a coherence theory of truth. While the description of the historical emergence of this audience is beyond the scope of this chapter, suffice it to say that the numbers of those who take as truth the representations populist media outlets make (as evidenced by the statistic quoted earlier) shows that these people exist in large numbers. It is clear then that a further understanding of how coherence systems of truth function in media objects is warranted if there is to be a productive critique of the issue of miscommunication between different truth systems.

Elle and the Creation of Coherent Truth To explore the potential force of coherence truth systems and their relationship with media objects, the second part of this chapter explores the

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film Elle, starring Isabelle Huppert as Michèle, the titular “she.” Elle both thematizes and satirizes the cultural shift from a correspondence theory of truth to a coherence theory, but simultaneously implies a viewer who is implicated in this shift. I will argue that the film is aimed at the very liberals who would most likely disavow coherentism in favor of correspondence and that it therefore demonstrates how the rhetorical structures underlying populist truth not only are something that is happening “over there” but are infiltrating films in European culture, which is traditionally opposed to the vulgar proclamations of American populist news media by virtue of its sophistication. Educated Europeans would never fall for falsity in the way that hillbilly Americans might. The film is a self‐styled rape comedy. Michèle is raped in her own home by a masked intruder at the beginning of the film; however, for the majority of the running time Elle plays out as a Parisian bourgeois farce, in which characters play a game of one‐upmanship while maintaining the appearance of social grace. What is uniquely shocking is the way the brutal rape also functions as a source for comedy in the film. For example, soon after the rape, Michèle goes out for dinner with her ex‐husband Richard, her best friend Anna, and Anna’s husband Robert. With eloquent dispassion, Michèle informs them that she was raped. Soon after, a waiter brings over the champagne they ordered. The dimwitted Robert comments “very good,” before momentarily assessing the situation with a glance around the table and adding, “Wait a few minutes before popping it,” as if these few minutes might be the requisite amount of time in Parisian society to consider the gravity of rape before returning to champagne drinking. The challenge for the viewer is how to reconcile the seriousness of rape with its comic treatment. I suggest that the audience’s perception of the rape’s seriousness stems from its material brutality. By adopting a coherence truth system that rejects objective material facts, Michèle (and the other characters in the film) is able to disavow this seriousness. In order to investigate how Elle convinces that Michèle adopts a coherence truth system, it is worth comparing Elle to the work of Michael Haneke, in particular La Pianiste (2001), a comparison clearly invited by Elle as both Molly Haskell (2016) and Mick LaSalle (2017) have pointed out. Both films star Isabelle Huppert as a bourgeois ice queen who is raped, whose complicity in her own rape is questioned, and who has a difficult relationship with her mother. Importantly, the films also share the key concern of investigating the way that extreme violence intrudes into bourgeois life. In La Pianiste, Erika is a sadistic piano teacher, criticizing her students’ every imperfection until they live for her approval, but this sadistic tendency in public is countered by her extreme masochistic fantasies. She starts an affair with a charismatic

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student, Walter, and writes him a letter essentially asking him to violate her and to ignore her protestations when he does. Toward the end of the film he proceeds to do, to a large extent, what she details in her letter, reminding her as he does it that this is what she wanted. The scene is filmed in one long take, and it is clear both from Erika’s reaction and Walter’s persistence that Erika is not consenting, and that Walter knows this. The point here is one that is familiar from Haneke’s films, which is that extreme violence is abstractly desired within bourgeois fantasy as a counterpoint to the strict explicit and implicit rules governing bourgeois society (Slavoj Žižek would call it a function of the Lacanian superego (2005)), but that the terrifying reality that extreme violence actually perpetrates in no way corresponds to this fantasy. Material violence is initiated by fantasy generated within a social structure, but reveals the ethical depravity of that structure by confronting it with the disjunction between the images its fantasy generates and the material reality that most certainly does not correspond to this fantasy. This intrusion of extreme violence as a locus that can shock audiences out of their bourgeois complacency is repeated throughout Haneke’s oeuvre in films such as Funny Games (1997) and Caché (2005), and recalls his provocative statement that “I want to rape the viewer into independence” (qtd. by Conrad 2012). This aesthetic tactic clearly relates to the apparatus theory model (and the correspondence theory of truth that underpins it) of revealing the disjunction between the cinematic and social mechanisms that produce ideological fantasy and the material reality to which they do not correspond. In Elle, the setup is similar. Michèle runs a video games company in which monsters rape princesses for the player’s entertainment—as in La Pianiste, sexual violence in Elle takes on a key role in structuring desire in contemporary Western culture. However, using the violence as a pretext for comedy obviously differs from Haneke’s treatment of it as traumatic for character and audience member alike. Elle’s logic is at its most obscenely provocative in the scene during which Michèle decides to reenact her rape with her rapist. After discovering her rapist is the seemingly friendly next‐door neighbor, Patrick, Michèle and her son, Vincent, bump into him in the supermarket, where he invites them round for dinner. After an unremarkable evening, a tipsy Vincent falls asleep and Patrick offers to show Michèle the boiler in the cellar, clearly offering a pretext for potential sex. Michèle accedes, and after going downstairs, Patrick tries to hit her and Michèle tries to escape. When Patrick has Michèle on the floor and is about to strike her, Michèle says, “do it.” We then cut to a stupefied Patrick, hand in the air, ready to strike. Clearly displeased, he tells her, “it doesn’t work like that.” Patrick then goes on to force himself on her, but the implication is clear—she wants it, and this is consensual. The moment stuns because it seems to endorse the notion that

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rape victims can want it, in contrast to La Pianiste, where Erika’s brutal rape is unrecoverable into desire. One possible reading of this scene is that the reenactment functions for Michèle as a way of reestablishing material rape into bourgeois fantasy, denying its trauma by performing it as a consensual erotic act. Having violent sex with her attacker functions as a particularly perverse form of therapy, as sexual fantasy enacted to disavow trauma. But if this is the case, the performance’s efficacy relies on a tacit acknowledgment of the actual rape, in which the rape is so horrible that it needs to be disavowed (“Lacan asserts that disavowal is always accompanied by a simultaneous acknowledgement of what is disavowed” (Evans 1996: 44)). However, the role that fantasy plays in the social order Elle presents is not as simple as a method of disavowing trauma. Erika Balsom argues that “When understood as part of a patriarchal order buttressed by such unlikely bedfellows as the Catholic Church and the grotesque spectacles of videogames as Elle encourages us to do, rape is banal. Its violence is no aberration, transgression, or exception, but absolutely immanent to a system founded on male privilege” (2017: 33). Unlike in Haneke, Elle doesn’t distinguish between traumatic brutal material rape and rape as fantasy. Michèle’s fantasy, even when materially enacted, rather than tacitly supporting the horror of rape by disavowing this horror, is a method of allowing her rape to retroactively become just another one of the bourgeois games she plays. The shift in truth systems provides a logic for Michèle to ignore the material brutality of her own rape. According to a correspondence truth system, Michèle’s rape really happened, she can disavow it, but it will always return as trauma. However, according to a coherence truth system in which beliefs can replace facts as a measure of truth, Michèle’s enactment of her fantasy becomes its own yardstick of truth, its performance renders her earlier rape false, not because it didn’t happen or because it wasn’t brutal, but because its actuality or brutality is irrelevant to the truth the performance generates. If the horror of sexual violence previously presented a locus of truth that contradicted its fantastical representation in Western culture, as in Haneke, the proper ideological solution is not to deny the truth, but to change what truth is. However, changing truth systems are not only thematized in Elle, the film also uses the aesthetics of a coherence theory of truth in the way it positions its viewer in relation to it as a media object.

Elle and Coherence Aesthetics Several academic and popular critics agree that Elle is intended to be a satire (Valladares 2016; Walters 2017; Hynes 2016), and, certainly, the viewer is

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supposed to laugh at the characters’ bourgeois machinations, as well as misogyny and rape culture. Even the reenacted rape is intended to be funny because it is such a perverse thing to do. However, satire is of particular concern in Elle because as an aesthetic and critical strategy it is structurally implicated in the changing notions of truth that are being satirized. Claudia Claridge argues that “satire is meant to criticize, i.e. a negative evaluative attitude towards its target is a defining characteristic” (2011: 257). One key method by which it can achieve this is through hyperbole, which “keeps a balance between similarity to the target [. . .] and critical distance” (2011: 257). The structures of the satirized thing are rendered excessive but still recognizable in order to show them up as ridiculous. By rendering ideological mechanisms excessive, they are rendered explicit, paving the way for an apparatus theory–style critique, in which a disjunction between material reality and ideological mechanism shocks the viewer into consciousness à la Haneke. Elle has been read in this way by Carlos Valladares, who argues that it “zaps, prods, slaps you across the face and jolts American audiences out of their everyday complacency” (2016: 4). However, if Elle is a traditional political satire, then the coherence truth‐based object of critique poses a problem for the correspondence truth‐based satirical mode of critique. The object of satire in Elle is precisely the preponderance of the ability to ignore correspondence to materiality as a basis for truth. Further, the interpretation that through satire the film is reasserting correspondence over and against coherence doesn’t really fit. First, Michèle’s strategy works, she actually does seem to be able to recover the rape as something she truly wanted. Second, the inefficacy of this type of critique is thematized in the film. A subplot revolves around Vincent and his pregnant wife Josie. Josie gives birth and it is clear the baby is not Vincent’s biologically, since the baby has black skin and Vincent is white. Michèle confronts Vincent, directly telling him, “he’s a cute kid, but he’s not your son, you know that?” However, Anna takes Vincent’s side, comforting him, and the incident is not mentioned again. Despite the material evidence to the contrary, the baby is accepted as truly his father’s son. In this sense, the film thematizes the inefficacy of the correspondence theory of truth as a counter to the beliefs engendered by the coherence theory. Elle’s satire is therefore either profoundly nihilistic in acknowledging its own inefficacy or doing something different to traditional satire. The analysis that follows explores how Elle self‐consciously adopts the point of view that it satirizes, and that the excess of satire supports rather than exposes the represented ideological structures. In the film’s first scene, where Michèle is raped, the viewer is clearly aligned with the point of view of Michèle’s impassive cat, structured through

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a shot of the cat in closeup looking, followed by a shot from the cat’s point of view, from which position we view the rape. The cat is the archetypal neutral observer, its cold felinity and stillness juxtaposes the viscerality of the scene it witnesses. Balsom thus equates the cat with the viewer, “like the cat‐witness of its opening shot, it [Elle] stares down the ugly scene with fierce eyes open” (2017: 33). However, if the viewer is implicated as observer, they are also implicated as observed. During the rape, a highly structured piece of Mozart plays diegetically—presumably Michèle was listening to it before the attack. The precision of the music contrasts with the chaos of the rape. This music is not politically neutral however; it is very haute Parisian to listen to Mozart, and by playing this music while the cat’s gaze is on the rape, the scene implicates the viewer as an educated, bourgeois observer. Of course, this is also Michèle’s music in the sense that she has put it on, which further positions the viewer within her social class. If the viewer observes, this dispassionate position is nevertheless implicated in a particular social structure. Indeed, the cat’s attitude here is not neutral, but reminiscent of Michèle’s froideur throughout the film. As Valladeres comments, “Like her, the cat is always aloof, uneasily amused, caught between contempt and nihilist bemusement of her surroundings” (2016: 2). Like the viewer, Michèle displays an awareness of the hypocrisy of the games she plays, like her, the viewer is implicated as part of the satirized culture. The satirized class is also the one watching, indulging in the satire. Again, this structure is similar to Haneke’s films in that the viewer is both observing and ethically implicated in what they are observing (e.g., Saxton, 2007; Wheatley 2009). However, whereas in Haneke the viewer is shocked out of their social complacency, in Elle excess functions both as the aesthetic method of satirical critique, and as the expression of the aesthetic foundation of contemporary desire in Western culture as generated by the media. The excess of sexual violence is linked to viewer desire in the video games created by Michèle and Elle uses a further media image of excess in a TV documentary within the film about Michèle’s serial killer father. Here, an image of Michèle as a child, covered in ash and blood invokes the idea of a demon child accomplice. We see members of the public confront Michèle about her role in her father’s killings, confrontations emanating from a pathological desire to believe in the truth of this excessive image. Excess allows the viewer to laugh at the object of satire and for this object to remain simultaneously desirable. In Haneke, when confronted with excess as material reality, excess loses this desirable quality because material reality retains a locus that fantasy cannot penetrate due to its operation under a correspondence theory of truth. Here, where the reality depicted operates

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under a coherence theory of truth, the gratuitous violence of Michèle’s reenacted rape is at once supposed to be satirically funny and really sexy, Michèle still moans orgasmically in closeup during the scene. The scene is still violent—both characters beat one another, but it is clear that this violence is part of the fantasy, as the logic of fantasy can now encompass the most brutal material violence. This fantasy is not only Michèle’s but also one that through an aesthetics of excess linked to desire Elle encourages the audience to share. Under the conditions of a coherence theory of truth, an aesthetics of excess not only ceases to be an effective form of ideological critique but also is actually an effective aesthetic method of creating the effect that it appears to be critiquing. Elle is a tremendously nihilistic film, not because it is saying the correspondence theory of truth has been lost and there’s nothing to be done but because it lets you have your cake and eat it. You can both be aware of the way ideology creates a vision of reality and indulge in the morality of that vision, because the fact that you believe in that vision is sufficient to render it true. Elle not only depicts this morality, but also causes it as another media object using an aesthetics of excess, just like the video games it represents. That its use of excess renders the film self‐conscious about this creation simply helps the audience to ground themselves in its logic rather than empowering them to critique it. This analysis has some salient implications when thinking about how media objects operate according to different models of truth. For example, one frequent journalistic complaint made about satire in relation to Donald Trump is its inefficacy: however much he is lampooned on Saturday Night Live (1975– ), it seems to have very little effect (e.g., Karpf 2016; Cook 2018). This could be because Trump’s popularity is due to his excess—in his political stance, in his tweets, in his attitude toward women, in his riches. An aesthetics of excess—even a satirical one—may reinforce Trump’s desirability, made possible under the conditions of a coherence theory of truth. The analysis also highlights that excessive aesthetics are pervasive beyond lowbrow American culture.

Laruelle and Radically Immanent Thought My analysis of Elle specifies how media objects contribute to miscommunication between correspondence and coherence theories of truth. It shows how an aesthetics of excess can create opposite effects— critique or endorsement through desire—depending on which version of truth the viewer subscribes to. Through an application of François Laruelle’s

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nonphilosophy, this chapter hopes to outline some pathways that could be followed to negotiate this impasse. The liberal solution has been to insist on a need to return to facts as the basis of truth (e.g., d’Ancona 2017; Davis 2017). Such strategies have two problems. First, they don’t work—you can’t convince someone their nonevidencebased/factual version of truth is wrong by saying yours is evidence-based/ factual. Second, there is a political danger in these calls. Apparatus theory’s target was a liberalism that covered up facts in the name of ideology under the aegis of a correspondence theory of truth. The ideological functioning of systems enacted under the name of a correspondence theory of truth was hardly ethically neutral. No version of truth has an inalienable right to itself, yet most versions of truth tend to assert this right as a prerequisite of what is true because most versions of truth claim universality. This enables miscommunication between truth systems. Laruelle has written extensively about an analogous problem in philosophy. He argues that philosophers “ignore the problem of Philosophy [la philosophie], of its identity as much as its multiplicity and circularly practice its auto‐legitimation” ([1996] 2017: 1). Therefore, “any philosophy must be replaced if it does not, as non‐philosophy does, relate to its own identity—all philosophies play for some other the role of meta‐philosophy” ([1996] 2017: 9). For Laruelle, philosophy articulates the basis of its own legitimation. Through auto‐legitimation and its implicit claim to universality, Laruelle’s description of philosophy is analogous to truth. Laruelle’s project is to break with this philosophical tradition through his invention of “nonphilosophy.” By operating from a position of radical immanence not already prescribed within a philosophical system, nonphilosophy aims to take philosophy as its material and become “the universal dictionary of philosophies; the transcendental idiom in terms of thought which relates to them” ([1996] 2017: 14), rendering philosophies democratically equivalent. The individual described by “radical immanence” is not already the radical one given freedom by a philosophical system, but rather a One that precedes any philosophical systemization. This is important because it means that the position from which nonphilosophy is conducted is separate from both the system being analyzed and the subject the analysis determines, allowing for a multiplicity of legitimate philosophies. A parallel project could be undertaken in regard to auto‐legitimating truth systems, such as the correspondence theory or the populist application of the coherence theory. However, translating this project into a solution to the miscommunication between coherentists and correspondentists is problematic. First, because nonphilosophy accords with the auto‐legitimating truth systems of neither correspondentists nor coherentists, they would likely just ignore

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a nonphilosophical project as itself untrue. Second, in advocating for a One that is able to democratize philosophical systems, Laruelle gestures toward a philosophically neutral stance for nonphilosophy, but the truth of its neutrality remains universal within nonphilosophy—perhaps not as a philosophically auto‐legitimated function of thought, but nevertheless as a legitimate basis of nonphilosophical thought’s possibility. A potential problem with this stance is that as a basis for thought, it is as unbendable through its own thought as the materials (philosophical systems) it critiques are through theirs, “it is the suspension of every idealism at the heart even of thought” ([1996] 2017: 27). Whereas idealism auto‐legitimates, anti‐idealism asserts legitimation, but neither stance includes the possibility of the transformation of its truth system in communication with another system. Yet Laruelle does open a door to a different kind of critique. In this chapter, I have tried to consider truth systems as democratically equivalent. While nonphilosophy does not give an obvious solution to the problem of miscommunication between systems, it enables an articulation of a position and mode for thought that includes the possibility of that position’s and that mode’s own transformation—even if this position is one of nonphilosophy’s materials rather than its own legitimate position of an immanence a priori to thought. By adopting such a transformative position, thought might seek to communicate with other truth systems in a way that generates communications without the hypocrisy of insisting that its own truth system is universal or auto‐legitimating. In this conclusion, I want to sketch some directions models of transformative thought might take. Rather than conceiving the One as a priori to philosophy, or a philosophy/ truth system as an a priori structuring being, it is possible to imagine an interactive relationship between thought and self; for example, a self that is situated both by the way it thinks and by external forces which act upon thought (e.g., ideology, media, economy). The self generates thought, but this thought can change what the self is; this new self can then think differently ad infinitum. This type of model is slippery because it seems like an infinite regression in which neither truth nor self will ever be arrived at. But such slipperiness is precisely its advantage, which is to allow thought and self to remain in process. Media objects can take on a different importance in this processual context, enabled by nonphilosophy. This is partly because nonphilosophy allows not only for a democracy of philosophies but also for a democracy of ways of understanding and relating to the world. Laruelle notes, “If non‐philosophy is grounded on the renouncing of the meta‐philosophical ideal, then it is all the more exercised as a unified theory—unified rather than

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unitary—of philosophy and science, philosophy and art, ethics, etc” ([1996] 2017: 9). Therefore, a film such as Elle can function as a piece of media that potentially changes truth for its audience, inculcating a coherentist model of truth where truth accords with desire as generated by capitalist Western culture rather than material reality. Its coherence is not given by philosophy but by the beliefs its aesthetics generate. An adapted nonphilosophical approach acknowledges the possibility of media objects as truth generators while denying the universality of the truth generated. It allows for the critique that this is a denial Elle avowedly does not make. By understanding media objects as ways of thinking that potentially allow ourselves and our truth(s) to remain in process, their generation and reception can become part of a way of addressing miscommunication between truth systems. It seems to me that enabling people’s truth to remain in process this could be a fine goal for Media Studies to engage with through practice as research in media (generation), or as analysis of media (reception). However, such a model only accounts for one side of a communication. There is still no guarantee that the receiver of such a communication will engage with it in a way that may allow it to affect their truth. Nevertheless, the conditions for success can be outlined. First, it must be assumed that the person receiving the communication maintains an openness to a communication that does not operate within the truth system that they operate within, since without such a locus, communication between truth systems isn’t possible. Second, the communication must try to engage the assumed locus of openness through its form, as philosophy, as media object, as art, and so on, and, by doing so, alter the truth of the receiver. Crucially, the receiver’s truth is not replaced by the sender’s, but rather is altered by it in a way that will be unique to the receiver’s own situated position. If this model avoids miscommunication in that the receiver does not reject the communication, what replaces miscommunication is not communication in the sense of the receiver understanding a message’s meaning on a shared basis of truth. Communication here becomes something far messier because its meaning ceases to be fixed. Communication is possible not on the basis of truth, but to the extent that it can be embraced as a phenomenon that disrupts truth and changes the individual as sender or receiver. Ultimately, I mean to suggest that communication in the sense I have attempted to outline it, from an adapted nonphilosophical position, can function as a means of putting truth and people into process rather than enabling a transfer of meaning. This is desirable as a potential way of breaking the current impasse of communication between universalizing truth systems that is dominating Western neoliberal cultural politics.

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Kalpokas, I. (2018), A Political Theory of Post‐Truth, London, New York and Shanghai: Palgrave. Karpf, A. (2016), “Satire Won’t Rid Us of Trump, But it Will Make Us Feel Better”, The Guardian, December 26. Available online: https​://ww​w.the​guard​ ian.c​om/co​mment​isfre​e/201​6/dec​/26/s​atire​-dona​ld-tr​ump-b​igotr​y-pre​judic​ e-hum​our-e​scapi​sm (accessed August 14, 2020). La Pianiste (2001), [Film] Dir. Michael Haneke, Austria, France and Germany: MK2. Laruelle, F. ([1996] 2017), Principles of Non‐Philosophy, trans. N. Rubczak and A. Smith, London and New York: Bloomsbury. LaSalle, M. (2017), “DVD Review: The Piano Teacher,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 20, 2017. Available online: https​://ww​w.sfc​hroni​cle.c​om/mo​vies/​ artic​le/DV​D‐review‐The‐Piano‐Teacher‐12445530.php (accessed May 30, 2019). Leonhardt, D. and S. Thompson (2017), “Trump’s Lies,” New York Times, December 14. Available online: https​://ww​w.nyt​imes.​com/i​ntera​ctive​/2017​ /06/2​3/opi​nion/​trump​s‐lies.html (accessed April 30, 2019). Massie, C. (2017), “WH Official: We’ll Say ‘Fake News’ Until Media Realizes Attitude of Attacking the President Is Wrong,” CNN Politics, February 7. Available online: https​://ed​ition​.cnn.​com/2​017/0​2/07/​polit​ics/k​ file‐gorka‐on‐fake‐news/index.html (accessed April 30, 2019). Mulvey, L. (1975), “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16 (3): 6–18. Pak, N. and M. Seler (2018), “Trump Calls ‘Fake News’ Media ‘the Real Enemy of the People’ over Putin Summit,” ABC News, July 19. Available online: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump‐calls‐fake‐news‐media‐real‐enemy‐ people/story?id=56687436 (accessed April 30, 2019). Saturday Night Live (1975‐), [TV programme] NBC. Saxton, L. (2007), “Secrets and Revelations: Off‐Screen Space in Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005),” Studies in French Cinema 7 (1): 5–17. Suskind, R. (2004), “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” New York Times, October 17. Available online: https​://ww​w.nyt​imes.​com/2​ 004/1​0/17/​magaz​ine/f​aith‐certainty‐and‐the‐ presidency‐of‐george‐w‐bush. html (accessed April 30, 2019). Swaine, J. (2017), “Donald Trump’s Team Defends ‘alternative facts’ after Widespread Protests”, The Guardian, January 23. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/us‐news​/2017​/jan/​22/do​nald‐​trump​‐kell​ yanne​‐ conway‐inauguration‐alternative‐facts (accessed April 30, 2019). Valladares, C. (2016), “The Woke Political Commitment of Paul Verhoeven’s Elle,” University Wire: Carslbad, November 17. Available online: from https​://se​arch.​proqu​est.c​om/do​cview​/1840​94852​9/ful​ltext​/D874​BE99A​ 8084D​68PQ/​1?acc​ounti​d=805​8 (accessed April 30, 2019). Walters, B. (2017), “Paul Verhoeven: Cinema’s Mischievous Satirist Is More Vital Than Ever,” The Guardian, February 3. Available online: https​://ww​w.the​guard​ian.c​om/fi​lm/fi​lmblo​g/201​7/feb​/03/p​aul‐verhoeven‐ mischievous‐satire‐elle (accessed April 30, 2019).

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Wheatley, C. (2009), Michael Haneke’s Cinema: The Ethic of the Image, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Young, J. (1994), Global Anti‐Realism, Aldershot: Avebury. Young, J. (2001), “A Defence of the Coherence Theory of Truth,” Journal of Philosophical Research 26 (1): 89–101. Žižek, S. (2005), The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality, 2nd ed. London and New York: Verso.

Part Four

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Disastrous Communication Walter Benjamin’s “The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay” Dominic Smith

February 1932, Berlin, Germany: Walter Benjamin live broadcasts a twenty‐minute radio piece called “The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay” (Die Eisenbahnkatastrophe vom Firth of Tay). The intended audience is schoolchildren, and no audio recording is made. It is assembled from materials Benjamin wrote at least as far back as 1929. March 1932, Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Benjamin repeats the broadcast. The intended audience is schoolchildren. No audio recording is made.1 May 2018, Dundee, Scotland: A group of eight- to thirteen-year-olds meet for a two‐hour comics and visual communication workshop. They know all about a famous railway disaster that befell a bridge across the Firth of Tay in 1879. They are unaware, however, of an obscure 1932 radio piece called Die Eisenbahnkatastrophe vom Firth of Tay, the translated text of which will form the stimulus for their workshop. The site of the disaster described in Benjamin’s broadcast is two miles southwest of them.

Picture Benjamin sitting alone in his radio booth in 1932. It is tempting to view “The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay” as disastrous communication: as something symptomatic of a career Benjamin felt was going astray, or as part of a broader set of radio pieces he wrote around this time that take disasters as their theme and that have come, in retrospect, to be viewed as allegories of the rise of European fascism (BBC 2014). Viewing things the first way only requires taking Benjamin at his word. Benjamin consistently

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stated that he did radio work in the 1920s and 1930s to make ends meet, and that he saw “no interest” in it for serious scholars (Rosenthal 2014: xvii–xxii; Eiland and Jennings 2014: 332). Viewing things the second way only requires being aware of one of the most canonical images of Benjamin to have emerged since his suicide in 1940: that of the “saturnine” thinker of the “Angelus Novus,” prophetically but powerlessly attuned to history’s catastrophes—”[w]here we perceive a chain of events,” as Benjamin wrote of the angel, “he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet” (Benjamin 1999: 249; Sontag 1978). It is justifiable to view “Railway Disaster” in either of these ways, and both hit on aspects of Benjamin’s life and work that we should communicate about. As this chapter will seek to show, however, there are other ways in which “Railway Disaster” can count as “disastrous communication.” Instead of taking Benjamin at his word, developing a sense of these will involve breaking with his own views on the worth of his radio work. Likewise, instead of situating “Railway Disaster” in terms of Benjamin’s broader canon, it will involve submitting it to a very different context. Stop picturing Benjamin alone in his radio booth. Picture the Dundee afterschool group. Picture this group engaging animatedly with cut‐up extracts from the text of Benjamin’s broadcast, then quickly retranslating them into all kinds of drawn, written, and spoken formats: from comic strips and computer animations to two‐minute lectures on the merits of viewing train engines anthropomorphically. Picture a group uninhibited by foreknowledge of Benjamin, but energized by his words. Picture some loosely interpreting the text. Picture others scrutinizing it meticulously. Picture some not interacting with it at all. Picture some working intensely as individuals. Picture others starting off in teams with no plan, then improvising shared solutions to give coherence at the last moment. Picture Benjamin’s words emerging, not as gloomy or fated, but in other ways, including playful and hopeful ones. The aim of this chapter is to chart a series of miscommunications and transformations occurring to and through Walter Benjamin’s “The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay,” between and beyond the three events listed at the beginning. The first section gives a sense of context by highlighting some contingencies that led to “Railway Disaster” becoming a focus for the workshop. The second section describes the workshop itself. I show how its structure adapted to contingencies on the day, and give a sense of some of the rich materials produced. The third section concludes by situating both “Railway Disaster” and the workshop as continuous with an approach to philosophizing with and through technologies pursued in my 2018 book Exceptional Technologies.

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“What Technology Is” When, at the beginning of the last century, iron foundries began their first trials with the steam engine, it was something altogether different than when modern technicians and scientists work on a new airplane, a space rocket . . . or some other such machine. Today we know what technology is. (Benjamin 2014: 170, my emphasis) These are the opening words of “Railway Disaster.” In 1933, the year after they were broadcast, Benjamin gave up radio work and moved to Paris. In 1940, he was forced to flee Paris in the face of Nazi persecution, and the typescript for “Railway Disaster” was included in papers left behind. These mistakenly made their way into the archives of the Pariser Tageszeitung (“Paris Daily News”) newspaper, and, after the Second World War, were transferred between various Soviet and East German (GDR) archives (Rosenthal 2014: xvi). “Railway Disaster” was first published in German in 1985, in a collection called Aufklärung für Kinder (Enlightenment for Children), with other pieces Benjamin had written and performed for radio.2 In 1989, the piece appeared in vol. 7 of Benjamin’s Gesammelte Schriften (Complete Works). It first appeared in English in 1999, in vol. 2 of Benjamin’s Selected Writings. A new translation appeared in Verso’s Radio Benjamin collection in 2014, with twenty-eight other such “Youth Hour” pieces. Let me begin by noting three reasons why this piece, carried by these contingencies, struck me. Consider Benjamin’s assertion: “today we know what technology is.” The point, it seems, is that whereas previous ages merely played and experimented with technology, modernity has, since the Industrial Revolution, aimed at controlling and rationalizing it. This point is so general as to appear symptomatic of what many philosophers of technology today call “classical” philosophy of technology. Thinkers commonly labeled “classical” include Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Hans Jonas, Karl Jaspers, and, above all, Martin Heidegger (Achterhuis 2001: 3; Verbeek 2005: 7; Brey 2016: 129). The implication is usually negative. It holds that these figures were doing something dated and insufficiently empirical: instead of focusing on the complexities of actual technologies in concrete situations of design and use, “classical” philosophers of technology were, it seems, tending toward an abstract conception of “Technology” (with a capital “T”), viewed as some kind of mysterious transcendental force (see Smith 2018). It would be easy to describe Benjamin as a “classical” philosopher of technology. This is compounded by strong connections with the schools of both phenomenology and critical theory to which a great many other

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putatively “classical” thinkers belonged.3 But his assertion suggests something very different on closer inspection. Benjamin’s assertion is comfortably among the more hyperbolic statements he ever made on technology.4 But this does not mean that it is imprecisely weighed. Rather, when situated in terms of its immediate rhetorical context, it makes perfect sense as a way into a case study that, far from being “unempirical,” is hyper‐empirical. By this, I mean that Benjamin’s work on the Tay Bridge Disaster is packed with the kind of allusive historical, technical, poetic, and philosophical details that work to productively challenge our received sense of what constitutes a “technology” (see Smith 2018). Instead of identifying Benjamin as “classical,” his opening assertion is merely the first of these details: less a last word on how his work should be judged more an overture to an open‐ended conversation. A key aim for this chapter will therefore be to impart a sense of just some of the other details covered in “Railway Disaster,” to take this conversation further. Second, I live and work in Dundee, the main city on the Firth of Tay. This may seem like a very parochial thing to note. The site of the disaster described in Benjamin’s broadcast is nevertheless inescapable for me: living and working in Dundee, I see it virtually every day. Of itself, this is too trivial a point to have much philosophical significance. When we consider that Benjamin is one of the most influential thinkers of “place” to have emerged from the European philosophical tradition, however, different potentials emerge. Benjamin wrote justly celebrated pieces on places including Naples, Moscow, Marseilles, Berlin, and Paris. In contrast to these places, where Benjamin either lived or visited, he did not visit the British Isles, never mind Dundee or the Firth of Tay. Whenever I look at the still visible stumps of the first Tay Rail Bridge, then, adjacent to the supports of its still-functioning replacement, I am, on reflection, in a very curious position indeed: that of actually witnessing a site that remained merely imagined for Benjamin. A key aim of this chapter will be to make good on this, not as a quirk of personal history, but as philosophical opportunity: to show how the approach to place, evident across Benjamin’s work, celebrated though it is, might in fact be more dynamic and nuanced than a focus on some of the more famous and well‐trodden sites of his work might lead us to suppose.5 Third, why was “Railway Disaster” addressed to children, through radio? The simple answer is that there was no choice. Benjamin undertook his radio work for money and professed to see no scholarly merit in it. But this underestimates the virtues he made of his constraints. Principal among these were the novelty of his medium and the difficulty of trying to make philosophical ideas accessible. As I hope to show, Benjamin

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made virtues of these by engaging radio’s democratizing potentials and by introducing inventive range and nuance into both the form and content of his broadcasts. What “Railway Disaster” ultimately points toward in this respect, I think, is an open and hospitable philosophy of education that is implicit throughout Benjamin’s work from beginning to end. This approach draws on the philosophies of technology and place I have mentioned in this section, and stands in dynamic contrast to a proprietorial model of education prevalent today. It does this through exceptional examples, and by using gentle forms of what Sam Weber has called “methodological extremism” to unsettle received notions of age, expertise, and appropriate educative media (Weber 2008: 179).6 As I will seek to demonstrate in the next section, it has immense potential to speak to us today.

“Localising Philosophy” My aim for this section is to situate the workshop mentioned at the beginning of this chapter as an instance of “localising philosophy.” By this, I don’t mean an attempt to render philosophy “provincial” or “narrow‐minded.” I mean an attempt to make philosophy hit home. That is, an attempt to challenge the categories of “home” and “place,” and to render them philosophically perplexing. What was therefore at stake in the Dundee workshop, if you prefer, was a gentle attempt to render “heim” (home) “unheimlich” (uncanny) (see Freud 2003 and Fisher 2016). There are obvious ways you might try to do this. If you’re in the philosophy department at the University of Edinburgh, you might think about the legacy of David Hume. If you’re at the University of Glasgow, you might think about Adam Smith. Dundee does not have such direct connections to the philosophical canon.7 It does have something that might just be more philosophically interesting, however: a notorious railway bridge.8 More precisely, Dundee has two railway bridges: one that opened in May 1878 and that then collapsed with the loss of all aboard an Edinburgh to Dundee train in the Tay Bridge Disaster of December 1879 (an estimated 59–75 people); another that opened in 1887, and that still functions as part of the national rail network (McKean 2006). The second bridge recycled parts of its predecessor. What Dundee therefore shares with the town of Wormit on the south side of the Tay is the ghost of a bridge running alongside a replacement fashioned, in part, from the skeleton of its predecessor. To put it this way is melodramatic. It is nevertheless arguably more precise than the straightforward proposition “Dundee has a railway bridge.”

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There was something sufficiently interesting in this to inspire Walter Benjamin to turn the Tay Bridge Disaster into a focus for a radio piece for German schoolchildren. In May 2018, I, along with my University of Dundee colleagues Dr. Anna Robb (Education) and Dr. Damon Herd (Humanities), attempted to reciprocate. We did so in conjunction with one of the usual afterschool clubs at Dundee Comics Creative Space, a hub that uses comics and visual communication techniques to help children develop skills relevant to their education (Comics Creative Space 2019). The aim was to stage a two‐hour workshop that would take up the translated text of Benjamin’s broadcast and make it accessible to local schoolchildren. The children were aged eight to thirteen. We began with a discussion. We showed an image of the current Rail Bridge (Figure 12.1) and asked “what is this, and what can you tell us about it?” This elicited a show of hands from almost all present, and the first association to be pursued concerned not the still-functioning bridge (left of picture) but the stumps of the failed one (right of picture). All the children had heard of the Tay Bridge Disaster, and most could relay interesting details. We then showed another image (Figure 12.2) and asked, “are you familiar with this?” It was a photograph of a painting from 1948, by James McIntosh Patrick. The original hangs in McManus Galleries, Dundee’s main art gallery. Most of the children had seen the image, either in the gallery, in books, or online. In thinking about which images to include for the event, we had selected this to act as a kind of metaphorical “bridge”: the aim was to switch

Figure 12.1  Ghost Bridge/Replacement Bridge. Photograph by Owen Fraser McLaughlin.

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Figure 12.2  James McIntosh Patrick, The Tay Bridge from My Studio Window (1948). from something local and well known (McIntosh Patrick’s painting) to an international perspective that would be relatively unknown (Benjamin’s broadcast). Interestingly, the children used the McIntosh Patrick image as a way of spontaneously going beyond this. What the group was most interested in were visible signs of an earlier historical time: the horse and cart in the foreground, for instance, and the steam from two engines in the background (one on the Dundee/Glasgow line and the other on the bridge itself, on the Dundee/Edinburgh line). Indeed, the group seemed to want to leave these open as signs of an indeterminate past: rather than wanting to date them as part of a realist painting produced some sixty-nine years after the disaster, it was as if they wanted the signs to bring them into closer proximity with the past as such. We then introduced Benjamin, showing a standard photographic portrait widely available online, followed by a famous cartoon from the New York Review of Books. The aim of the latter was to appeal to their sensibilities as a group of artists. We concluded with a brief overview of the text of “Railway Disaster.” Before the event, we had decided to divide the text into seven key episodes, and we imparted a sense of these by showing a slide with seven headings, which remained up for the rest of the workshop: 1. “Technology’s scary history. . . .” 2. “A goblin in space!”

204 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Miscommunications “Why are railways important?” “Building the Tay Bridge.” “Disaster!” “The aftermath.” “The Eiffel Tower.”9

We had made photocopies of Benjamin’s text beforehand, and had cut it up to reflect these episodes. The discussion concluded with us asking the children to choose an episode (or episodes), and to draw images responding to the extract. The children were reassured that they had broad scope: they could work alone or in teams; they could focus on anything ranging from a particular image or character to all the episodes; they could update the story; they could stop if they felt uncomfortable or bored; and they had one hour before we would reconvene. One artist built a story around a character she had developed in other sessions, and which she had used in other comics. The character turned out to be a historically unacknowledged survivor of the disaster, and constituted (along with her dog) a response to Benjamin’s observation that there were “no eyewitnesses” (Benjamin 2014: 174).10 Another artist read all the episodes and retold the story starting from the second (the perspective of the Goblin in space). Another artist decided to update Benjamin’s approach in the first episode, focusing on what she found most puzzling about technology today. She produced a scene in which the key character was Amazon’s Alexa. Another artist chose to take the kind of license and characterization involved here further, telling the story from the perspective of an unacknowledged villain who had caused the disaster. Another group of artists told the story from the perspective of the train engine itself. In this, they were following a notorious local precedent: the engine involved in the disaster was fished from the Tay shortly after, refitted, and went on to serve on British railways until the 1920s. It was nicknamed “The Diver” (McKean 2006: 195).11 The group reconvened after one hour, and the children who felt comfortable to do so were invited to “show and tell” their work. What was immediately striking was that children who had seemed uninterested had in fact quietly gone about producing responses and were capable of eloquently speaking to them. What was striking across the board was the quality of responses produced, both visually and in terms of the capacity of the children to articulate what was at stake in them. We had allotted merely one hour for reading the extracts and drawing responses and had worried that this wouldn’t be enough time; the children’s images and observations quickly allayed this.

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Coming from a background in academic philosophy, what struck me was the number of core philosophical issues touched upon. Through quickly created comic strips, this group had explored questions relating to ontology (how many bridges cross the River Tay at Dundee?), epistemology (how can an event without survivors be made known, and what counts as “eyewitnessing”?), ethics (how should cultural memory be represented, and to whom does it belong?), and aesthetics (how are character, agency, and the perspective of a narrator to be factored into a story—should they be assigned to an extraterrestrial observer, unacknowledged survivors or culprits, or technologies themselves?) One obvious flaw with our initial approach is that we didn’t take enough account of differences in the children’s reading abilities. The core problem here was that we had perhaps mistakenly privileged fidelity to the text of Benjamin’s broadcast. Instead of trying to use all the text, perhaps we should have used shorter snippets, then provided context when asked, driven more by the stories the children wanted to tell. This is something we have tried to address in subsequent workshops involving the materials.12 But isn’t there a more serious flaw? At the beginning of this section, I situated Benjamin’s broadcast in terms of a broader attempt to “localise philosophy” and sought to head off suspicions that this commits us to forms of provincialism or narrow‐mindedness. I now want to suggest that what this afterschool group did in response to Benjamin’s text constitutes refutation of these suspicions. But isn’t the more serious flaw that this text is simply too terse and evanescent? It comes in at a mere six pages, and is capable of being spoken in twenty minutes. Isn’t it the kind of stimulus that quickly exhausts itself? And isn’t this the real reason a group of eight‐ to thirteen-year-olds could productively interact with it in an hour? My aim for the next section is to refute these suspicions. To do so, I will situate both the text and the workshop in terms of broader issues explored in Benjamin’s work, and in terms of issues that might be explored in the field of philosophy of technology today.

Exceptional Technologies Although Benjamin gave up radio work in 1933, he did write a short piece on his radio career in 1934, called “On the Minute” (Auf die Minute). Let me cite the opening passage at length: After trying for months, I had received a commission from the head of broadcasting in D. to entertain listeners for twenty minutes . . . I was

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told that if my banter fell on sympathetic ears, I could look forward to doing such reports on a more regular basis. The program director was nice enough to point out to me that what was decisive, besides the structure of my observations, was the manner and style of the lecture. “Beginners,” he said, “make the mistake of thinking they’re giving a lecture in front of a larger or smaller audience which just happens to be invisible. Nothing could be further from the truth. The radio listener is almost always a solitary individual; and even if you were to reach a few thousand of them, you are always only reaching thousands of solitary individuals. So you need to behave as if you were speaking to a solitary individual—or to many solitary individuals, if you like, but in no case to a large gathering of people. That’s one thing. Then there is another: you must hold yourself strictly to the time limit. If you don’t, we will have to do it for you, and we’ll do so by just brutally cutting you off. Experience has taught us that going over the allotted time, even slightly, tends to multiply the delays over the course of the program. If we don’t intervene at that very moment, our entire program unravels—So don’t forget: adopt a relaxed style of speaking and conclude on the minute!” (Benjamin 2008: 407, my emphasis)

At the beginning of this chapter, we pictured Benjamin alone in his radio booth. We are now encountering Benjamin’s own reflections from within just such a situation. They close an important loop: from the vantage point of what turned out to be the last piece dedicated to radio published during his lifetime (Ryder 2016: 217), we find Benjamin reflecting back on constraints laid down to him at the beginning of his work in the medium. But another set of issues opens up: the fact that “On the Minute” turned out to be Benjamin’s last piece on radio is a matter of contingency that could be added to those I listed at the beginning of the first section (something that could have happened otherwise but that did not; another disaster of communication affecting a voice cut short). Consider, in contrast, the tone in which the constraints of the medium were initially laid down to him: it is one of quasi‐Kantian moral necessity (see Kant 2002), dictated by a producer who remains anonymous in Benjamin’s account and who thereby stands in for a universalizing voice prescribing how all must act in similar circumstances (the voice of the “one,” in a Kierkegaardian or Heideggerian sense (Kierkegaard 1978: 62; Heidegger 2005: 163–8)): “you need to behave as if you were speaking to a solitary individual”; “you must hold yourself strictly to the time limit” (my emphasis). At the beginning of this chapter, I listed three events: (1) a broadcast from Berlin; (2) a broadcast from Frankfurt; (3) an educational workshop

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in Dundee. How does the tension between contingency and necessity just highlighted relate to these? What is immediately striking is that the producer’s words apply strictly to the first two. Like the broadcast described in “On the Minute,” both these events involved performances of “Die Eisenbahnkatastrophe” that were live, unrecorded, and scheduled to last twenty minutes. Adding the Dundee workshop to the mix drastically changes things, however. In the first section, I attempted to give a sense of some contingencies that allowed “Railway Disaster” to become a focus for the workshop. In the second section, I attempted to give a sense of how successful the workshop was. Absent all concerns about how it got there and how successful it was, however, Benjamin’s reflections in “On the Minute” allow something else to hit home: simply taking the text of “Die Eisenbahnkatastrophe” as a stimulus for the workshop at all exposes the contingency of both the imperatives prescribed by the radio producer. First, by making this piece the focus of something collective and participatory, it shows that, when engaging with such material, “you don’t need to behave as if you were speaking to a solitary individual.” Second, by putting a text from 1932 in touch with a group from 2018, it calls into question the sense in which one has to “hold [oneself] strictly to the time limit.” Added together, the three events listed at the beginning of this chapter amount to scarcely two hours and forty minutes in duration, not accounting for redundancies, silences, and repetitions (assume, for instance, that the Berlin and Frankfurt broadcasts were verbatim copies). The Dundee workshop was separated from the radio broadcasts by over eighty‐six years, as well as considerable differences of language, media ecology, and technological and cultural conditions, plus a world war that positioned their respective host countries as adversaries. It would, moreover, be a considerable stretch (and conceit) to say that any of these three events were experienced as “key events” in the lives of those involved: Benjamin’s broadcast was recycled from material written as far back as 1929, and he professed that he was only doing his radio work for subsistence; the Dundee workshop was a one‐off session that slotted into the established program of a comics group, and, if anything, had the capacity to show up as an annoying distraction for the children because of this—as a way of taking away from the continuity of their regular sessions. I nevertheless want to conclude this chapter with a reflection on how these three events might be connected with bigger pictures. The problem facing us at the end of section two was to try to connect the local up to broader philosophical issues. Let me go the other way here: following a description of three relatively specialized claims made in my

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2018 book Exceptional Technologies, I will attempt to show how these relate to the three events listed at the beginning of this chapter. Exceptional Technologies makes three main claims. First, it argues for a renewed sense of the transcendental. “Transcendental” is a loaded term in the history of philosophy, where it is most famously associated with Kant’s “transcendental idealism,” as developed in the Critique of Pure Reason. In contemporary contexts, including philosophy of technology, the term is sometimes used, confusingly, as a synonym for “transcendent” or “out of this world.” Exceptional Technologies argues for a sense of the transcendental that is not reducible to either of these senses. Instead, it argues for a metaphilosophical sense of how this theme has developed since Kant. Transcendental philosophy, in this sense, is not reducible to “transcendental idealism.” Instead, it is philosophy that addresses the following question in different ways: “given X, what are the conditions for the possibility of X?” On this account, approaches ranging from those of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, through to the more contemporary approaches of thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, and Malabou can be characterized as “transcendental,” and are to be distinguished by how they problematize key terms at work in this question differently (“given,” “X”—that is, “objecthood”–, “conditions,” “possibility”).13 Instead of reifying the “Transcendental” into something sublime that takes us out of this world, then, Exceptional Technologies argues that the transcendental should be trivialized as a relatively common theme in the history of philosophy. Second, Exceptional Technologies argues that philosophy of technology, especially since a putative “empirical turn” in the 1990s/early 2000s, has tended to rely on a relatively unclarified common sense of what constitutes a “technology.” This follows, I argue, from the fact that “transcendental” has, since the empirical turn, generally been used as a pejorative term for the kinds of “classical” philosophers of technology mentioned in the first section of this chapter. The typical claim made against such thinkers is that they focused on a reified sense of “Technology” (with a capital “T”), and that they avoided empirical engagements with “technologies themselves” (Achterhuis 2001; Verbeek 2005). While there is merit to this claim in particular cases, Exceptional Technologies argues that it is problematic in two main respects: first, it tends to repeat the gesture it condemns by reifying the “Transcendental” itself into something sublime and otherworldly; second, it esteems a sense of “technologies themselves” that tends toward positivism and presentism, as if our sense of what constitutes “a technology” should just be obvious. A way to address these issues, I claim, is to de‐reify the transcendental, and to view it adjectivally, as a method, process, or operation of sense. Understood in this way, I

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argue, a sense of the transcendental opens up the possibility of critical reflection on the conditions that constitute our sense of “technology” in fine‐grained ways across different situations. In the book, this leads to the claim that, rather than focusing simply on case studies that align with our common sense of what technologies are (a smartphone, the internet, AI, or nanotechnology, for instance), we can learn just as much (and sometimes much more) from case studies of “exceptional technologies” that show up as paradoxical (for instance, merely imagined, failed, or impossible technologies (see Smith 2018)). Third, Exceptional Technologies argues that philosophy of technology might usefully experiment with different pictures of method, to open it up as an exciting field capable of sustaining many different perspectives. The point, trivial though it may seem, is that the language of “turning” employed in this field has nontrivial consequences for how we picture developments in it. Where “turning” is our key register, I argue, we are committed to a picture of method that is implicitly first person and oppositional, where every “turn toward” involves increasingly specialized “turns away from.” I suggest an alternative picture of method as “mapping” in the book, but mostly as a way of emphasizing a broader point: that other pictures of method are possible and desirable, and that they might help us open philosophy of technology up as a multidimensional “problem space.”14 In the second section of this chapter, I described Benjamin’s “Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay” as an instance of “localising philosophy.” Viewed in this way, “Railway Disaster” connects to a number of dimensions of philosophy of technology’s contemporary problem space that are, I think, underexplored as we try to face up to educational and existential issues posed by technologies for future generations in ways that are inclusive and democratic (for instance, the local/global dichotomy; the place of philosophical and technological education in contemporary school curricula; asymmetries of access, information, and knowledge; and issues concerning what constitutes responsible and sustainable design, and who gets to be part of the design process). The first thing I would like to note here is that Benjamin’s broadcast, short though it was, immediately connects up with the three main claims of Exceptional Technologies. First, Benjamin is one of the key thinkers in the post‐Kantian tradition in European philosophy: from beginning to end, his work bears witness to a profound sense of the transcendental that is focused on a wide‐ranging interrogation of conditions of possibility.15 Second, “Railway Disaster” takes what can be characterized as a clear and powerful “exceptional technology” (a failed and ghostly bridge) and uses it to provoke reflection on “what technology is.” Third, Benjamin’s broadcast packs in clear

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examples of methodological experimentation: in the second episode listed in section two, for instance, he cites the description of a space‐traveling Goblin from Henri de Grandville’s illustrated 1843 book Un Autre monde, and in episode seven he describes the Eiffel Tower. On the face of it, Benjamin’s Goblin is an example of him economically drawing on a text with which he was highly familiar. Viewed more closely, however, it emerges as a strategically placed citation designed to provoke the imaginations of children, as well as a strong implicit assertion of Benjamin’s own (high) estimation of illustrations and visual communication. Benjamin’s description of the Eiffel Tower might similarly appear as something “tagged on” on a superficial reading. Viewed in context, however, it emerges as a clear example of the Dada- and surrealist‐inspired method of “dialectical images” that he was experimenting with at the time. A “dialectical image,” as he famously put it in a note for the “Arcades Project,” involves a “constellation saturated with tensions,” giving rise to “the arrest of thoughts” (Benjamin 2002a: 475). On closer inspection, it is just such an image that is at stake in his description of the Eiffel Tower. The key point is that this description is in profound tension with the image of the Tay Bridge developed over the course of his broadcast, “arresting” it. Whereas economic purposes seemed to trump safety concerns in the case of the Tay Bridge, the Eiffel Tower initially seemed to have a purely aesthetic function, only finding an economic one following construction, as a radio tower (Benjamin 2014: 175). We could go much further. At the beginning of this chapter, for instance, I mentioned that “Railway Disaster” was cribbed together from materials that Benjamin had written as far back as 1929. What I didn’t mention is that these materials (including the Goblin episode) were among the first to be written toward the “Arcades Project,” and among the first that Benjamin aired to the famous “Königstein” group that included Theodor Adorno, Gretel Karplus, and Max Horkheimer (see Benjamin 2002b). This group was, notoriously, where Adorno first encountered Benjamin’s work in depth and where he became excited by the plans for the “Arcades Project” (Buck‐Morss 1977: 22–3; 136–63). Without overstatement, then, we can say this: Benjamin’s reflections on the Tay Bridge Disaster, unworthy of serious scholarship though he may have deemed them, nevertheless emerge as contributing factors to three famous events in twentieth-century European philosophical culture. First, they draw on materials and methods involved in Benjamin’s work toward the “Arcades Project” (the Goblin episode and “dialectical images”). Second, they were implicated in the beginning of the correspondence and friendship between Benjamin and Adorno that would last for the rest of Benjamin’s life, and that would profoundly influence Adorno’s work for the rest of his (see

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Adorno 1990: 3–57; Jameson 1990: 49–58). Third, they were implicated in the beginning of “critical theory” as a school of thought. But doesn’t situating “Railway Disaster” like this stray too far toward the “canon”? What if you are trying to make philosophy “hit home” for somewhere that doesn’t have pieces written about it by famous thinkers like Walter Benjamin? More seriously still, are the canon and famous thinker discussed here not decidedly Eurocentric and exclusive, not to mention dated? In response to these issues, let me simply note, first, that everywhere that is somewhere has a history, and, second, that if it doesn’t have such pieces and thinkers, then perhaps it harbors a greater opportunity: to either find or invent different comparable focal points and to produce thinkers of its own.16 These points are no doubt far too tritely and tersely expressed here. Worse still, they might come across as drastically underestimating ethical and political difficulties involved in telling stories and histories about particular places due to forms of oppression (past or present, systematic or unconscious), as well as gaps in the historical record. The point, quite simply, is that each of these points is desperately important, and deserves much greater attention than I can give it here. Notwithstanding these limitations, there is one key point that I would like to make in conclusion, and that I take this chapter to have demonstrated: insofar as any educational event has the degree of liberty required to take up a piece like “Railway Disaster” as a stimulus, it also has the degree of liberty required to invent and reinvent such stimuli. This matters, I take it, independent of how long or short, successful or unsuccessful the event might be. The overall contention of this chapter, then, is this: the constellation formed by the three events listed at the beginning harbors immense philosophical potential. This is the case however fleeting and contingent these events were and however far apart they appear in time and space. In the Dundee case, this constellation harbors a profound and transformative sense of “disastrous communication” that can feature as part of a broader attempt to “localise philosophy.” This approach may appear to risk parochialism, narrow‐mindedness, and quickly exhaust itself. On a more profound level, however, it harbors potentials in favor of an open and democratic approach to philosophical education that resists these dangers and that connects and problematizes the categories of the “local” and the “global” in meaningful ways (that bridges them, if you will allow). In the case of the Dundee workshop, this bridging exercise turned out to be less a question of following the letter of a text by “Walter Benjamin the canonical European philosopher” and more a question of enacting the spirit

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of an approach to education that Benjamin’s work pursues on a fundamental level, and that can be obscured by more “canonical” images of him. In the process, we moved from a sense of “Railway Disaster” as but a minor footnote in the career of an isolated philosopher tending inexorably toward a gloomy outcome toward an approach that tried to receive this piece and turn it into an educational site capable of cutting across all kinds of perceived divisions of history, media, age, expertise, and cultural background. This happened independent of Benjamin’s intentions for “Railway Disaster,” through the historical contingencies and translations involved in various linguistic, cultural, and media platforms, as a happy instance of “miscommunication.” To put it melodramatically again (but once again with more than a grain of accuracy), it is as if we were shifting from the picture of a train falling into a foggy abyss where a bridge should be, as occurred one night in 1879 between Fife and Dundee. Instead, it is as if we were trying to turn the site of a disaster into one of disastrous communication. Further, it is as if we were trying to get inside of a particular type of carriage, where people of all kinds of different ages and backgrounds, while being transported, could be free to philosophically communicate (and miscommunicate) the things that matter to them, wherever they are from, and wherever they are going to.17

Notes 1 No known audio recordings of Benjamin’s voice exist. A fragment of one of the eighty to ninety radio broadcasts he wrote between 1927 and 1933 is preserved (“Much Ado About Kasper”), but his voice does not appear (Rosenthal 2014: xiii). 2 This was turned into an audio book in 2003 (Benjamin 2003). 3 For Benjamin’s connections with phenomenology, see Fenves 2011. For his connections with critical theory, see Jay 1973 and Buck‐Morss 1977 and 1991. 4 In comparison, for instance, with famous remarks made in “Konvolut N” of The Arcades Project (Benjamin 2002a: 456–88). 5 The toy shops of Berlin or the Arcades of Paris, for instance (Benjamin 2006, 2002a). A possible avenue of interpretation here would note that I appear to have stumbled into a position analogous to that of Kafka’s character, Karl Roßmann. Kafka, one of Benjamin’s heroes, never visited the United States, but wrote about Roßmann’s experiences there in the novel America (or The Missing Person). Have I analogously become a figment of a place that remained merely imagined for a different heavyweight of modernist literature? Conducted badly, this would lead in the directions of “the canon” and narcissism. If I mention this speculation here, then it is less

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to indulge it than to highlight that this chapter aims to pursue a different interpretative possibility, for something much more participatory and collective (the workshop). I mean “exceptional” here in the sense explored in Smith 2018. Dundee has connections to important figures in the history of philosophy, such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Norman Kemp Smith. These are more tenuous and indirect than the connections that Edinburgh and Glasgow have to Hume and Smith, however. This point is counterintuitive and intentionally tendentious. I say “more interesting” because the bridge has the capacity to act as a focal point for philosophical reflection in ways that are novel, and that the oeuvres of thinkers like Hume and Smith don’t have on first sight, because different forms of familiarity, expertise, and imagination are at stake. The more reflective version of this point is this: a focus on famous philosophers need not exclude one on more marginal phenomena such as this bridge; indeed, the bridge can become a focal point for a wide range of philosophies, including those of Hume and Smith. See Benjamin 2014. Benjamin may have meant that there were no direct eyewitnesses (survivors). A number of eyewitness reports were cited by the official inquiry (McKean 2006). Ethical approval was obtained from children and parents in all instances described. For instance, the “Materialist Pedagogies” workshop at the University of Dundee, May 17–18, 2019. The conditions involved in the sense of the transcendental I am arguing for are not reducible to causal conditions, or “ideal” ones. The most obvious direction of travel issuing from Exceptional Technologies’ three claims would be a “transcendental turn” in philosophy of technology. I object to this, however, on the same grounds that I object to the notion of an empirical turn: both are crudely first‐person and oppositional pictures of method. I also think that this forsakes something more interesting: opening up philosophy of technology as a field capable of being explored in all sorts of directions at once, whether, for instance, “empirical” or “transcendental,” “complex” or “simple,” “continental” or “analytic,” “local” or “global.” A more restricted version of such a turn might involve renewed focus on the classical “transcendentalists” that the empirical turn turned away from, such as Marcuse, Ellul, Anders, Mumford, Jaspers, Arendt, Fromm, and Heidegger. I think this has some potential but, to put it crudely, that it might remain too comfortably within the confines of exegetical convention. A more inventive version of the restricted move might involve identifying new “transcendentalists” who focus critically on conditions implicated in technologies in interesting ways. Some candidates might include Wittgenstein, McLuhan, Kittler, Derrida, Haraway, Deleuze, Simondon, and

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Hui. I have witnessed versions of this move performed extremely well (for instance, by Mark Coeckelbergh in relation to Wittgenstein (2017)), but think it too might suffer from a tendency toward exegetical convention in the long run. A further move might involve viewing “exceptional technologies” as a special set of resources to be leveraged and applied in industry. What I have in mind here is something like the use of “design fictions” in product design (see, for instance, Sterling 2005). In raising this point, I am not presuming that exceptional technologies have any groundbreaking potential in this respect. Instead, I’m expressing discomfort at how they might be framed by a “research and development” ideology dominant in contemporary universities. 15 On Kant’s importance for Benjamin, see Benjamin 1996, Fenves 2011, and Eiland and Jennings 2014. 16 For an illuminating instance of such “field philosophy,” see Kabat 2017. 17 Postscript: the Comics Creative Space workshop described in section two was so successful that we ran a series of follow‐up workshops throughout 2019, culminating in a session at a “Materialist Pedagogies” workshop in May 2019. I am currently writing a book manuscript that develops the three main points made in section one of this chapter in depth (on Benjamin’s philosophies of technology, place, and education), and that tries to address the concerns outlined on p. 17 in appropriate depth. For further information on the “Localising Philosophy” project, see the podcast at Findlay and Smith 2019.

References Achterhuis, H. (2001), American Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn, trans. R. P. Crease, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Adorno, T. W. (1990), Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton, London: Routledge. BBC (2014), “The Benjamin Broadcasts.” Available online: https​://ww​w.bbc​.co.u​ k/pro​gramm​es/b0​44b3l​j (accessed July 30, 2019). Benjamin, W. (1996), “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy,” in M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings (eds.), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings (vol. 1): 1913–1926, 100–10, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Benjamin, W. (1999), “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in H. Arendt (ed.), Illuminations, trans. H. Zorn, 245–55, London: Pimilico. Benjamin, W. (2002a), “Convolute N,” in H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin (eds.), The Arcades Project, 456–88, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

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Benjamin, W. (2002b), “The Ring of Saturn, or, Some Remarks on Iron Construction,” in H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin (eds.), The Arcades Project, 885–7, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Benjamin, W. (2003), Aufklärung für Kinder, Hoffmann und Campe: Hamburg. Benjamin, W. (2006), Berlin Childhood around 1900, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Benjamin, W. (2008), “On the Minute,” in M. W. Jennings, B. Doherty, and T. Y. Levin (eds.), The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, 407–9, Cambridge, MA: Belknap University of Harvard Press. Benjamin, W. (2014), “The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay,” in L. Rosenthal (ed.), Radio Benjamin, trans. J. Lutes, 170–5, London: Verso. Brey, P. (2016), “Constructive Philosophy of Technology and Responsible Innovation,” in M. Franssen, P. Vermaas, P. Kroes, and A. Meijers (eds.), Philosophy of Technology after the Empirical Turn, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, 23, 127–43, Cham: Springer International. Buck‐Morrs, S. (1977), The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute, New York: The Free Press. Buck‐Morss, S. (1991), The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Coeckelbergh, M. (2017), Using Words and Things: Language and Philosophy of Technology, New York and London: Routledge. Comics Creative Space (2019), Dundee Comics Creative Space Website. Available online at: https://dundeecomicscreativespace.com/ (accessed July 30, 2019). Eiland, H. and M. W. Jennings, eds. (2014), Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life, Cambridge, MA: Belknap University of Harvard Press. Fenves, P. (2011), The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Findlay, L. and D. Smith (2019), Resident Resonance Podcast: Episode 1. Available online at: https://soundcloud.com/rrpod/ resident‐resonance‐podcast‐episode‐1 (accessed July 30, 2019). Fisher, M. (2016), The Weird and the Eerie, London: Repeater Books. Freud, S. (2003), The Uncanny, trans. D. McLintock, London: Penguin. Heidegger, M. (2005), Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell. Jameson, F. (1990), Late Marxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic, London: Verso. Jay, M. (1973), The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923—1950, Boston: Little, Brown. Kabat, J. (2017), “Rain Like Cotton,” Bomb Magazine, October 1, 2017. Available online at: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/rain‐like‐cotton/ (accessed July 30, 2019). Kant, I. (2002), Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. T. E. Hill and A. Zweig, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Kierkegaard, S. (1978), Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press. McKean, C. (2006), Battle for the North: The Tay and Forth Bridges and the 19th‐Century Railway Wars, London: Granta Books. Rosenthal, L., ed. (2014), Radio Benjamin, London: Verso. Ryder, R. (2016), “On the Minute, Out of Time: Reading the Misreading of Time in Walter Benjamin’s ‘Auf die Minute’ (1934),” Germanic Review 91 (3): 217–35. Smith, D. (2018), Exceptional Technologies: A Continental Philosophy of Technology, London: Bloomsbury. Sontag, S. (1978), “The Last Intellectual,” New York Review of Books, October 12, 1978. Available online at: https​://ww​w.nyb​ooks.​com/a​rticl​es/19​78/10​/12/t​ he‐last‐intellectual/ (accessed July 30, 2019). Sterling, B. (2005), Shaping Things, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Verbeek, P. (2005), What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency and Design, Philadelphia: Penn State Press. Weber, S. (2008), Benjamin’s –Abilities, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Accidental Recordings Unintentional Media Aesthetics1 Ella Klik

For a long time, the bold innovation must have been taken as an accidental intrusion of the maker into the world of the making. —Rudolf Arnheim (1957: 28). Coordinating these Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.

—Vladimir Nabokov (1989: 63).

Photography’s involvement with chance or its operation at the risk of chance is well documented and theorized, beginning with early inventors and practitioners’ experiments through the ontological photographic theories of the twentieth century and culminating in the internet’s penchant for reporting on growing death rates due to frivolous and life threatening imagemaking practices. Visual media and the capturing of contingency as well as unintentional recording and its accidental property are all parts of a discourse on the machine that performs “disclosure” (Rexer 2009). This performance is one that is undertaken by challenging systems of proper activation, be it technologically designed or culturally determined. This chapter will consider the aesthetics of accidental recordings within such frameworks, but will argue that the type of unintentional capturing that digital mobile devices afford is different than their predecessors in the erratic lineage of technological accidents. These recordings, which simultaneously represent objects under control and out of control, offer the possibility of an errant methodology for examining the relation between technology, systems, and bodies through practice, in an unintentional way.

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A Brief Exposition One day a familiar message popped up on my personal device, exclaiming, “your storage is almost full.” I then proceeded to delete various items I had stored on my phone, the last of which were, naturally, my photographs. Sorting through the thousands of pictures I had taken throughout the years (a legacy of migrating files from one phone to another), I was drawn to several distinct images, which were rather dark, blurry, and, at the same time, luminescent. I did not take them, nor could I make out what objects these were meant to represent. And yet, the images were beautiful in an abstract and experimental sort of fashion. I kept them. Cyberspace kept these too. As far as internet culture goes, the multiplicity and accretion of everything and anything including the marginal renders it an aesthetic sphere of its own. Unsurprisingly, then, accidental recordings participate in digital culture with photographs, videos, and audio, all circulating on various platforms. In the following, I venture to make sense of these objects, occupying a space in between the accidental and the operable. Drawing on media theory and art history, with a particular emphasis on photography, I will consider the visual aspects of technical chance encounters between the camera and distracted human activation.

A Note on Photographic History There is an ingrained paradox in photographic theory. One the one hand, the photograph fixes and embalms, rendering an object fixed; on the other hand, it represents contingency and chance. At the heart of photography, beyond the expected and premeditated, is what accentuates and punctuates it. Roland Barthes’ (2000) concept of the punctum refers to something akin to a “sting, speck, cut, little hole—and also a cast of the dice” (27), something “offered by chance and for nothing” (42). Punctum is the exceptional moment of the accident, not the mundane operation of all of photography, though, as such, it potentially looms over any record, even more so since the punctum is subjective. Surely, Walter Benjamin (1972) preceded Barthes in describing the lure of the unexpected in “A Short History of Photography,” stating that “the spectator feels an irresistible urge to search such a picture for the tiny spark of accident” (7). In the finalized object, we seek its unintended opposite; in its opposition, we derive the mechanisms for actualizing. Bearing in mind the entirety of the body of work that refers to some accidental property of the photograph, one cannot help but wonder whether there is anything nonaccidental in photographic capture.

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Of course, there is another important aspect to photography; it indexes time, detaching a specific moment from its own context, a property that is acutely felt (and, at times, pricks). In Barthes’ photographic oeuvre, such effect ties recording with the passing of time and, hence, one’s relation to mortality: a moment captured is a moment passed. Before Barthes, Siegfried Kracauer (1960) made a similar conjecture tying chance and the temporal, maintaining that “even the most typical portraits must retain an accidental character—as if they were plucked en route and still quivered with crude existence” (19). As one scours through the videos of accidental recordings uploaded online on YouTube and in groups devoted to the genre of accidental photography, the mind naturally wanders to thinking of the chance that such mundane and everyday encounters reveal. These objects are posted for the interest of only few, gaining a handful of views and little acknowledgment. Though these recordings attest to the lack of general interest in someone else’s routine mishaps, what is evident by their cyber existence—in a perverse way—is the importance (or the punctum) felt by those who make public their private accidents. It perhaps comes as no surprise then that accidental baby photographs #babyselfie and shot‐just‐before gruesome accidental death photographs and videos have an honorary place in the digital sphere, invoking the beginning and end of the subject, equally mirroring the pleasure and terror of the unconscious and uncontrolled acts in the face of nonexistence. Such examples, unlike the mundanity of simply accidental videos of the everyday, are situated on the other side of the popularity spectrum; they fascinate us, insinuating that there is a larger lesson to be learned through irony or obliviousness. In either case, there is something reassuring in the highlighting of such chance as an unplanned capture, a sign of authenticity. This is especially true in a time when image editing tools and software, as well as the spread of deepfake aesthetics, are constantly eroding the veracity of images. The unforeseen result highlights technology and reveals to the viewer the “behind‐the‐scene” of production as a set of operations and actions, precisely when it involves an unaware producer. In a historical—and long-overdue—account of photography from its nascent days, Peter Geimer (2018) theorizes the essential accidentality of such a craft. He highlights the framework of materiality as a prism from which one may think more deeply about the ways in which visual forms of representation are created and sustained. Put another way, accidentality is not solely a property of contents that the camera managed to take (and not only a result of capturing something that the photographer had not had in mind). It is also a manifestation of the physical conditions of photography. Thus, the “inadvertent” in the title of Geimer’s Inadvertent Images refers as much to

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historical production practices that are inherently exploratory of chemical processes and their interactions with substrates as it does to the subsequent accidental aesthetic features that appear as a result (perhaps photography was itself such inadvertent discovery?). Here, we find a constitutive accident expressed in attempts to capture and, by doing so, generating an effect following the unexpected interaction; and this extends beyond production to handling and storage as well. Given this kernel within photography, Geimer argues that “a history of intended, durable, and mimetic images exacted a price: unintended, ephemeral, and ‘nonrepresentational’ visual recordings had to be stowed away in a paradoxical antechamber, outside photography proper” (29). Having offered a way to think of chance in the world, chance as captured on camera had to be erased from its own history and forgotten. What echoes remain of that constitutive feature is precisely the accident that Benjamin, Kracauer, Barthes, and many others have all noted. From the experience of looking at chance to the accidental materiality of the photograph, images are all about the accident, through and through. The current investigation adds another layer, that of activation. Producer, viewer, and apparatus are all imbricated in the production of digital images in‐and‐out of control. Today, such accidents may be the result of the unawareness to pressing the record or camera button, erroneously pressing these buttons several times more than intended, or forgetting to lock the screen. All possibilities indicate an erroneous activation, an initiation of a technical process. To be clear, these photographic chance events do not include moments that can be classified under the scandalous genre of accidentally caught on record, where the locus of the surprise is one’s unawareness to the working of a recording apparatus and, instead, focus exclusively on the context of erroneous initiation. The former tends to highlight contents, what or whom did something egregious, transgressive, or undesired on tape, on record, on mic, or on screen for the world to know, while the latter brings to the fore the limitations and potentials of designing interactions between bodies and technologies. Against this background, intentionality and the field of nonhuman photography become all the more important to better understanding the current topic. Intentionality is most often considered as a question about the limits of authorship; consequently, by extension, so is accidentality. Put differently, the accidental points to what the maker could not or would not intentionally insert into a piece of work, whether arising from her subconsciousness or an inability to properly monitor and order a situation (for instance, a surprise intrusion at the moment of taking the shot). Accidentality, then, is opposed to the intentionality of production by internal and external circumstances. The next question to consider is as

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follows: Is photography a mere vehicle in the service of the human drive to capture the world? If not, what space can be granted to the apparatus as a nonhuman agent that operates as more than simply an extension of human vision? Pursuing such an inquiry, Joanna Zylinska (2017) highlights the impossibility of understanding photographic production, which serves to explore and to certain extent shape the world and social life through visualizing tools (themselves utilized as a means of control and are a result of such means), without attending to both the nonhuman and the human elements in such processes. In this way, Zylinska opens up an avenue for thinking of intentionality even in cases of image-making where the human is nowhere to be found in the image itself, nor in the production phase, nor as the intended audience. This introduction of a posthuman vocabulary facilitates approaching the shared, though dissimilar, responsibility of the body and the digital device in producing an accidental photograph that ultimately generates a nonhuman vision of the world. In this context, it is interesting to note that “[t]he automaticity of photography is executed not only on the level of algorithm—with the majority of cameras manufactured today being able to choose the “correct” exposure, light temperature (aka white balance), and focus—but also on the level of framing” (2017: 31). What Zylinska means by automaticity is the directive for the camera to shoot, to operate when it is activated and to do so in a certain way. Notably, however, the automaticity that accidental photography demonstrates does not conform to the controlled and predefined notions of perfecting any of the above features. The images appear fascinating and compelling precisely since the automatic aid for producing better photographs had failed to react in time due to the lack of intentionality of creating the image in the first place. What this means is that the spontaneously unintended gestures of the body create situations in which the controlled means of algorithmic support participate in the production of images we would never take ourselves. If the design of contemporary devices is meant to improve human image-taking and, therefore, introduces further nonhuman elements, the relation between the two is crystalized when the former does not live up to its expectations of proper action. And therefore, the latter is forced to perform its work of control outside of its own control.

A Consideration of Technical Control The nonintentional aspects of these mundane out of control objects are tied to both nonhuman elements and bodily conditions. Visual and auditory technologies, such as photography, phonography, and motion pictures were

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only a few of the apparatuses that participated and represented the mediated and mediating facets of the “control revolution” taking place at the end of the nineteenth century (Beniger 1986). Part by part, increased control and standardization became essential to the engineering and design of media. Geimer’s history demonstrates how control or the lack thereof was already expressed in the early days of photography: Cordier’s metaphor of the technician as a “pilot without a control stick” sketches a scenario in which the photographer was not entirely in charge of the process. Besides his “unsuccessful attempts” and “failures,” the intervention of “accident” was accordingly mentioned time and again as a source of disruptions . . . accident appears where human authorship is not, or not unambiguously, discernible. (2019: 49)

This means that a negative value is ascribed to an object when the power shifts from the literal hands of the human to that of the artificial for purposes of production. Further, in this volume, Wolfgang Ernst offers a provocation, reflecting on whether what is considered erroneous within a hermeneutic reading would still be deemed as such within a technical approach to computation and digital media. Pertinent to the current inquiry, Rachel Plotnick (2018) explores the design of the touch button and its subsequent accidental activation. Plotnick demonstrates how the button or “digital command” was and is an integral, if not essential, part of such control revolution in the factory setting, in the domestic sphere, in public contexts, and in the amateurization of visualizing practices. “Creating technological safeguards against unruliness” (Plotnick 2018: XV) was a concern from the very introduction of these haptic means of control in various domains. As far as the command of devices goes, a renewed wave of fears, mishaps, and malfunctions have taken over since mobile devices became flat and the touch screen was introduced by Apple (Plotnick 2017). While physical hands are becoming all the more distanced from processes of production with the introduction of buttons, these instances of inadvertent effort nevertheless render present these limbs of ours in all of their potential for production and erring glory (even when the only action required is pressing). Against Kodak’s famous compression of the photographic into an act of pressing the button, while the company does “the rest,” the virtual buttons responsible for the discussed accidental photographs by mobile devices bring together communication and capture that eliminate all of the rest of development and labor (Plotnick 2018). Despite the abundance of patents and designs geared toward securing the device from unintentional operations,

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these recordings reveal precisely the moments when control stops short. In failure, the initiation creates out of control aesthetics within a system that functions perfectly well. That is, the accident (and other negative concepts) render visible the encounter that stands outside of control of proper initiation while, at the same time, performing its photographic command—pressed, now capture! This configuration of operability and greater control can be read through Paul Virilio’s (2007) thoughts with an eye on our recording devices. “If, for Aristotle, some little time ago and for us today, the accident reveals the substance, this is in fact because WHAT CROPS UP (accidens) is a sort of analysis, a techno‐analysis of WHAT IS BENEATH (substare) any knowledge” (10). Virilio introduces the essential nature of interference with technological expectations (that the machine will operate smoothly, that communication will be transmitted perfectly) as a spatial methodological recourse, where breakdown clues us to the innerworkings of technicity. But, if “to invent the train is to invent the rail accident of derailment” (2007), the examples before us are distinctive. The main difference is that although the failure of activation without intention may be seen in a perfunctory look as an accidental potentiality of the machine, the technology did not itself fail. That is, the rail accident diverted its course away from our expectations of operability and proper action, but with erroneous capture the camera, in fact, runs on course. This type of accident is reminiscent or evocative of a possible crisis and, indeed, challenges the viewer to become aware of the beneath. Moreover, it pushes us to think of the beneath or the inside in the context of the encounter with the generativity of the human–nonhuman relation, not necessarily within the assumption of its failure. Of course, this sort of parasitic accidental necessity is nothing like or as consequential or lethal as the accidents that Virilio discusses. The disparity between the original accident and such minor objects of study means that such images do not generate outrage or disgust, nor do they threaten an order or prestige. Instead, they are shared and circulated as minute, ordinary, and peculiar testaments of unintentionality. Together, however, they also complicate the argument that an accident reveals a system under the presumption that media technologies conceal themselves and become anesthetic, unnoticeable, and so on (see for instance Krämer 2015). This is mainly because the images cannot be neatly understood by such methodological approaches, as the breakdown here is not entirely a breakdown. Consequently, the non‐aesthetic aspects of photographic production do disclose themselves to the surprised and, at times, pleased user, but not in a necessarily disruptive state. As long as that encounter appears within and outside the purview of control in a distracted unconscious

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manner, it has that potential for a different sort of revelation that may provoke “the interruption of conscious behavior” (1970: 181), which surrealists, such as Wolfgang Paalen, longed for.

A Recourse to Avant‐garde and Experimental Art Rudolf Arnheim (1957) asserts that what the accident shows is instability, given that systems, objects, and technologies may, at any moment, fail to maintain their relations and, thus, become exposed. The artistic accident reminds us of this imminent reality. Accidental objects are not always aesthetics or perceived to be aesthetic, yet the world of art, certainly that of the twentieth century and beyond, is full of such examples. Dada members and surrealists famously experimented with “objective chance,” to use Andre Breton’s term for excavating something hidden. Surrealism’s move from exploring the depth of human subconsciousness in the technical scene of automatic writing (automatism), and later, in “dream photographs,” are notable examples. Chance, or the designing of the accidental into a controlled event, was a way of getting at objects that did not disclose themselves spontaneously. Currently, the accidental has become aestheticized in the digital realm with glitch art emerging as a form of representation that dramatizes planned and unplanned software failure. Nam June Paik’s distortions of televisual images is regarded as a destructive forerunner to glitch aesthetics, a generative spectacle of misused equipment. Rosa Menkman (2011) positions glitch art as a commentary on and a counter act to philosophies that regard the elimination of noise (and thus, chance, randomness, and miscommunication) as a technological apex. The glitch aestheticizes the error, precisely because the system always eventually fails. These artistic interventions and movements (and others such as Oulipo) are exemplary in that they speak to the magnitude of dealing with chance in contemporary artistic production, driven by the desire to capture the unexpected, shattering assumptions regarding (im)proper modes of representation. Still, can there be a nonartistic equivalent to such types of investigations, providing that accidental images were not produced with creative intention in mind, more specifically, the rejection of the canon of Western representation? Accidental photographs do in fact undermine norms that have concretized in almost 200 years of purposeful creation (and the banishing of the unintended, as Geimer would have it); even more so, the revelation is one of potentiality of recording not through the camera directed by the human body and the logic of its eye. Admittedly, however, there are two different

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logics at play: avant‐garde art explores chance through its predetermined and fabricated systems of control (i.e., that chance appears when the basic rules of automatic engagement are set in place), while in erroneous photography, it is control that is explored when chance finds the system (i.e., when the technical system works yet has surprisingly produced the unexpected). The essence of the accidental nature of these recordings stems from activation, not the artistic process or function. Randomness lies in the capturing, not its configuration. Photography out of control creates a spectacle of the machine as it does its machinic thing, so to speak, not as it breaks down or is programmed to fail. Notably, the argument is not that these images are art—far from it—but that they bear a striking visual resemblance to experimental photography and video and as such, they become aesthetic objects that circulate not in galleries but in the spheres of social media. Echoing this state of affairs, a user posted a photo writing “no idea, but artsy,” while another titled his video “arthouse.” Similar sentiments are often expressed: I accidentally did X, or I have no clue how, yet the result resembles Y art piece or Z artist. The relation of resemblance is a part of the discourse of some of those who upload such records, while the descriptions provided often emulate artistic titles in form and in tone. The adjectives “abstract” and “surreal” are frequently referenced. To consider such attitudes as a straightforwardly postmodern blurring of boundaries between professionalism and amateurism would only be part of the story. A case in point is Chris Nuijen’s artist statement, which describes the photograph series accidental happiness, comprised out of several photographs, some almost entirely black and others exhibiting an abstract play between white and grays shades: when I take a picture I can take multiple similar images and choose the picture afterwards. It’s all preset and organised and even we it could go “wrong” i’m not taking any chances. Untill [sic] i saw the beauty in these images. i’ve never chosen to take these pictures, but I’ve definitely pressed the button and there they were on my hard disk! these images started to fascinate me, even still today. what you see below are 12 arranged pictures, of “accidentally” taken photo’s. wich make me very happy [sic]. life isn’t arranged. (Nuijen, n.d.,)

Uncovered in the accident of this specific creation is the meticulous system and preplanned conditions of taking images by a professional. The grammar and typing errors in this short blurb correspond to a distinct property of these photographs (whether they were in fact unintentionally created or not).

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When one looks at these happy accidents, one thinks first and foremost of the image itself as a whole, providing that no distinct detail or object is to be found. The observer may also ponder about hindrance: What was it in front of the camera that was captured too closely to not be seen? Or what was it that blocked the camera’s view that it produced these nonrepresentational artifacts as a result? Nuijen is clearly concerned with controlling the setting; yet, this accident did not occur within the boundaries of his control (he was trying to control another), and, as such, his rhetoric and that of users online converge. Unintentional presses, disciplined buttons, and equally undisciplined bodies create an aesthetic of falling in‐and‐out of control. (Perhaps this is a playful expression that can only exist after photography and post‐photography had exhausted themselves.)

Notes on Accidental Images What this comes down to is an aesthetic similarity, not a logical one, between an intentional act of exposing systems of representation, technologies, and ideologies through the introduction of accidental acts in a closed regulated system (art) and, on the other hand, an accidentality that disrupts in an unprompted way from within a set of controlled actions and devices. What artists do with purpose, the apparatus performs without care—because it can and it was designed to. Thus, that which is an aesthetic exploration for some is also a mundane sharable object for others. Keeping in mind the similarity and difference, I sketch out two aspects of accidental representations without intention and with no artistic aspirations. Blur and movement: One of the most recognizable features of an accidental photograph is blurring either to the point of nonrepresentation or a localized blur caused by visible movement. The former is the total expression of too much light and too much movement that leaves no time for the apparatus to defend itself by focusing or fixating, undercutting the adjustments of the automatic function. At times, images speak through overexposure and the unruly regulation of light, colors refracting and bleeding into each other. At others, they represent the state of being too close to an object, an amplification of a potential to capture to the point where it becomes excessive, bearing no details; the object that was in front of the camera remains completely unknown and unreconstructable. The blur, or the ghostly image, conjures all kinds of accidents in the life of photography (this is how spirits and the world beyond were accidentally revealed to the Victorians). More broadly, the blur is a reminder of the inability to mechanically visualize and approximate human vision in early photography, though, not long after the blur would

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become an artistic mode of expression, from Julia Margaret Cameron to Gerhard Richter and Hiroshi Sugimoto. In fact, the majority of these images do not present perspectival, depth, or vanishing points, as they remains in the flatness of glowing orbs, overexposed flickers, shadows, and indistinct outlines. Details are scarce. Arnheim (1957) argues that the drive toward greater and greater realism in artistic representation had created a fertile ground for accidentality, that the excess of detail (what may be referred to in the digital context as striving for hyperrealism) becomes unwieldy, far too great to keep under control. Following this line of thought, it is not impossible that the sentiment for the accidental record is one that rejects verisimilitude and its forms of expression, and appreciates the accidental created by technical encounters. The accidental is expressive through abstraction, and low on detail, which is the hallmark of a “good” rendering. Accidentality offers a break, a pause, and defect aesthetics created by perfecting and automatic means. The latter, that blur caused by movement, is another staple of photographic scientific efforts to unpack motion by paradoxically arresting time. Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne‐Jules Marey were pioneers of the technique of segmentation of the flow of movement. Marey’s chronophotographs exhibit the deconstruction of motion in a way that also visualizes the inevitable blur that such actions create for the photographic apparatus, though not for the human eye. By contrast, the source of the blur in accidental photography is not a drive to understand movement, but an unintentional movement of the hand‐held device as it captures. The movement blur appears as though it speculates: What if our hands could see and not our eyes? Could the mobile device be a perfected extension of the hand instead? The world appears through the mediation of artificial vision, which does not exclude its human inadvertent accomplice, for example, the shaky aesthetics often invoked in the style of documentary (and faux‐documentary) explorations of things that cannot or should not be seen. Thinking through experimental photography as “undisclosed images” or visual means that defy the expectation of giving forth a coherent image of objects, Rexer comes to the conclusion that “photography [and other forms of recording for that matter] is not looking at or looking through but a looking with” (2009: 11). The action of looking through the camera with the body generates deformed objects in accordance with the direction in which the device was swiftly turned; thus, there is a direct relation between the form of action and produced images. This creates a strange contradiction: whereas the image does not disclose its source, it still remains true to photography’s indexical reputation as a visual media that bears witness to the moment of production, even when it occurs due to a series of misguided pressings. The camera looks with the body, the unaware

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body, and, together, these eccentric images provide a new kind of perspective, not quite the machine’s, not that of a human eye in a Cartesian world. Framing and composition: Henry Fox Talbot (1969) famously conceptualized photography as “a pencil of nature.” What then are we to think of such early proclamations of objectivity and rationality in photography, when the camera is activated through an unwilling body? The digital device rattled and pointed at different directions with no intention does not represent the objectivity of the camera removed from its photographer. A foot, a hand, a voice, a part of a head, a finger, the culprit makes frequent appearances in the photographs and videos, corroborating the existence of a body not behind the camera but with and alongside it. The finger, no surprise, is the star of many shots, though its proximity to the lens often blurs it to the point that it becomes a sphere that obstructs the view of the supposed world that was ought to be represented fully and carefully in the image that never was. The schism between photography and accidental photographs lies in the distance between such meddling fingers and the careful staging of one’s body when preparing to take a shot. According to Vilém Flusser (2014), this type of gesture of preparation is one of philosophizing through photography. For him, the gesture is one of searching and doubt, and in this context there is only the certainty that there was no negotiation, only activation. Flusser then continues to enumerate several additional steps of completing such a gesture: bodily positioning, followed by active manipulation of scene, and then, finally, self‐criticism (quality control). Thus, the question arises: Can accidental visuals be considered philosophizing in the event that self‐positioning is not satisfied, the manipulation is unintended, and the self‐critical aspect is irrelevant? I would argue that there is something valuable in this unplanned variation on a gesture, though it may take place on a different register. Remaining with the body through an opposite practice, consider the reminiscent aesthetics of Zylinska’s (2017) experiment with wearing the Autographer camera. The camera is an automated device described on its Amazon page as “custom built to enable spontaneous, hands‐free image capture.” Zylinska contemplates this interaction in the following terms: “The machinic behavior was nevertheless influenced by the way I moved my body, enacting a form of immersive, corporeal perception that broke with the representationalist linearity of perspectival vision while also maintaining human involvement in the multiple acts of image capture” (44). What such images depict is a result of a conscious body that is the anchor for photographing the world, and a digital device controlled by an algorithm that is meant to maximize or balance out the ability to capture as much as possible with the need or intention to do so. The aesthetics of blurred movement as well as the occasional documentation of the photographer’s body parts are

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well present both in this deliberate experiment and in that of accidental photography. However, the difference lies in the absence of unusual framing produced by the unaware gesturing body. In other words, the camera is always in the same position in front of the world, whereas accidental photographs generate a vision in moments when it breaks from the clear human intention to see what is in front of it. Instead, often visualizing the closeup (and perhaps too close) and upside down. Nevertheless, both of these contradictory logics engage in the same kind of inquiry: What happens when the device is granted more freedom and more control of the photographic situation?

A Final Remark Accidental photographs, sound recordings, and videos are embedded in various converging and diverging histories of control in technology and art. Following these paths suggests that accidental images and videos are not quite accidental but also certainly not models of perfected control. Returning to Plotnick’s (2018) historical work, she demonstrates how the potential of losing control or exploiting the systems by the bodies of workers led to greater standardization of interactions with push-button technology. These days, Apple, one of the largest companies producing hand‐held devices, seeks to bypass and completely eliminate control as a necessary step in the context of photography. On January 9, 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone to the world, his presentation pronounced that the device “works like magic.” One aspect of this “magical”-like operation was that it “ignores unintended touches, it’s super smart.” Hence, the technology could distinguish intentional from accidental pressure on its glass surface. More than a decade later, there are a multitude of images proving the opposite, that the digital device is also prone to inadvertent pressure, as its predecessors. It is therefore fascinating that Apple had recently filed a patent to automatically turn on the camera, even when the lock screen is activated. The lock screen is, of course, the most basic and robust form of controlling or guarding against unwanted initiation of photographing, calling, or using any other app or granting access to one’s information to unwarranted parties. The patent application indicates that this step of locking is a hindrance to capturing something urgently; for this reason, the “apparatus and method for automatically activating a camera application based on detecting an intent to capture a photograph or a video” (Shultz 2019) would turn on the camera based on the sensors’ identifications of intentionality before the body actually performs the action of initiating the app. We can only imagine, should this feature become integrated into devices, the number of accidental

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photographs that would be generated given the elimination of methods of control in favor of speed. Notably, the accidental photograph lives in a realm of other inadvertent activations, the most memorable in recent past being virtual assistants ordering and performing tasks beyond the user’s direct intentions. The fear of the nonintentional and automated activation evoked by such auditory examples is the mirror image of our fascination with accidentally captured images. In any event, these represent the perils and accidents of technology attempting to perform its work all too well.

Note 1 I would like to thank Paul Frosh for his suggestions and insights into photographic theory.

References Arnheim, R. (1957), “Accident and the Necessity of Art,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 16 (1): 18–31. Barthes, R. (2000), Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. R. Howard, London: Vintage. Beniger, J. R. (1986), The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Benjamin, W. (1972), “A Short History of Photography,” Screen 13 (1): 5–26. Flusser, V. (2014), Gestures, trans. N. A. Roth, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Geimer, P. (2018), Inadvertent Images: A History of Photographic Apparitions, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Jobs, S. (2007), iPhone Keynote. Available at: https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​ v=vN4​U5Fqr​OdQ Kracauer, S. (1960), Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, New York: Oxford University Press. Krämer, S. (2015), Medium, Messenger, Transmission: An Approach to Media Philosophy, trans. A. Enns, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Menkman, R. (2011), The Glitch Moment(um), Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Nabokov, V. (1989), Pale Fire, New York: Vintage Books. Nuijen, C. (n.d), “Accidental Happiness.” Available online: http:​//chr​isnui​jen.c​ om/pr​oject​s/29_​accid​ental​_happ​iness​.html​(accessed March 1, 2019). Paalen, W. (1970), “Excerpts from Surprise and Inspiration,” in L. R. Lippard (ed.), Surrealists on Art, 180–3, Englewood: Prentice‐Hall, Inc.

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Plotnick, R. (2017), “Force, Flatness and Touch without Feeling: Thinking Historically about Haptics and Buttons,” New Media & Society 19 (10): 1632–52. Plotnick, R. (2018), Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing, Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press. Rexer, L. (2009), The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, New York: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers distributor. Shultz, C. A. (2019), “Apparatus and Method for Automatically Activating a Camera Application Based on Detecting an Intent to Capture Photograph or a Video,” Patent no. US20190020801A1, filed July 20, 2018. Talbot, W. H. F. (1969), The Pencil of Nature, vol. 1, Library of Alexandria. Virilio, P. (2007), The Original Accident, trans. J. Rose, Malden: Polity Press. Zylinska, J. (2017), Nonhuman Photography, Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.

14

Desert Media Glitches, Breakdowns, and Media Arrhythmia in the Sahara Andrea Mariani

On November 1937, the Italian colonial magazine Etiopia published an extract from the exploration diary of Count Giuseppe Salvadego from Brescia (Salvadego 1937: 137).1 The article was the visual and literary reportage of a car crossing through the Sahara Desert promoted by the Italian Royal Geographical Society: a journey from Tripoli to Lake Chad (and back through Congo, Kenya, and upward until Addis Ababa). The explorers were three university students and friends: Counts Luigi Martinoni and Giuseppe Salvadego from Brescia and Count Giovanni Campello from Rome, assisted by a young mechanic from Vercelli, Luigi De Fabianis. The Sahara was a trans‐colonial region at that time. The exploration route connected Italian Libya and Italian East Africa, descending through French, Belgian, and English territories. In particular, a temporal/chronometric pressure concerned the Tripoli‐Lake Chad segment of the journey: in fact, the primary target of this mission was to drive from Europe to central Africa, inaugurating “la via più rapida,”2 the fastest possible route, driving two regular automobiles (not autochenilles, like the French ones of the Citroën expedition) (Levine 2000; Bloom 2008; Andouin‐Dubreuil 2008) in an experimental crossing of the desert. By adopting the metaphor of an “experiment,” I want to emphasize the strategic relevance of the “newness” of the vehicles’ model, the “unknown” dimension of the track and the “un‐predictiveness” of the outcomes that the explorers highlighted when presenting their journey and the Saharan territory in their accounts.3 A multitude of interruptions hindered this mission. This chapter will discuss how paying attention to the physical effects of these travel interruptions may help to shade a renovated light on the colonial discourse on crossings and explorations and frame a critical interpretation of a modernist trope.

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There are several reasons why this case is pertinent in this chapter. On the practical and geopolitical side, the time of crossing was mostly “unproductive,” and was made of never‐ending latencies and unexpected bureaucratic incidents that insanely procrastinated its accomplishment and prolonged the journey by months. On the technological side, the Ford vehicles that the explorers chose4 repeatedly broke down and revealed the tremendous morphologic resistance of the desert environment to any modern technological domestication, increasing the paroxysmal arrhythmia of their ride. On the visual and aesthetic side, the stops‐and‐goes of these enthusiast explorers were conditioned by the scopic “attractions” of the movement through the landscape that inspired the travelers’ photographs and a material sense of “cinematographing.” They even tried to make effective this creative tension into a travelogue film, whose realization was frustrated and abandoned in the early stage of the organization. By presenting this case, I don’t intend to claim that delays were infrequent in exploration travels at that time, instead that the materials and documents these explorers left incisively show the dysfunctional, scattering character of travels and explorations in the colony, eliciting an unusual perspective on the discursive practices related to space appropriation and representation, and colonial mobility too. According to these preliminary notes, I am going to excavate the deep net of “dead ends” that make this case so original. In particular, I am going to excavate the desert as a multi‐temporal and multi‐spatial media in modern colonialism, questioning the material consistency of desert media and communication failures in the mastering of the colonial space. Within the scope of this collection, by crosscutting historical and contemporary cultural techniques, this chapter provides a retrospective reading of an experience of miscommunications in Italian colonial history, at the interface of media archaeology, cultural history, and film studies.

A Desert Media Theory On May 9, 1936, Benito Mussolini announced the foundation of the Italian African Empire.5 The Italian dominion was a territory divided into two blocks: the so‐called Italian Libya, or Italian North Africa, and Italian East Africa. The first one was established in 1934. It reunited the colonies of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania,6 and, moreover, the Phazania desert territory named the Fezzan. Tripoli was its capital city and Marshal Italo Balbo its governor. Italian East Africa included instead Italian Somaliland, Italian Eritrea (overseas acquisitions of the previous century), and the newly conquered

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Ethiopian Empire, named then Italian Ethiopia. Addis Ababa was its capital city and Marshal Rodolfo Graziani its governor, at least until December 1937. The foundation of the empire marked a watershed for the biopolitical design of the fascist regime in the colonies, and—interestingly—for the communication strategies concerning their image. If, before the foundation of the Italian Empire, journals and visual propaganda represented the colony as a territory where the fascist masculine military forces were worked out and proven, in the second half of the 1930s, once the aggression was exhausted, the expanding and controlling strategies were subsumed by a different tactic, stressing the function of demographic mobilization, and tourism. The image of the desert—the epitomical space of the colonial propaganda imaginary— was significantly and consequently muted. In the 1920s and early 1930s, fascist journals and the colonial literature highlighted the indomitable and overpowering nature of the desert: they stressed its a‐temporal dimension, irreducible to modernization (Berhe 2017: 3), and they emphasized exoticism and eroticism. After the foundation of the empire, in force of a formidable impulse given to Italian tourism in the colonies, the exoticism of the desert progressively faded out, as well as its a‐temporal dimension. The focus moved toward a more nuanced relationship between “urban” space (echoing the modernizing efforts carried out by the fascist regime in the motherland Italy) (Ertola 2017: 74–5) and the “colonial” space,7 through various strategies: harmonizing the modern with the traditional; stressing the urban character of the colony; objectifying the colonial space through organization, functionalism, and communication; making the colony attractive and familiar to Italians. After the foundation of the Italian Empire, we can say that the desert and the exotic colonial spatiality lost—or was expected to lose—its unsettling and perturbing power, in order to progressively become a space to be scientifically, rationally, objectively acquired and learned: A modern(ized) space, perceivable as an organized unity.8 Not surprisingly, the second half of the 1930s saw the Italian scientific and geographic publications about colonial territories and expeditions significantly increasing (Rocca 2016: 104). Nevertheless, the “rationalization” and scientific objectivation of the desert and the wild territories in the colony are mostly motivated by the necessity to solicit Italian people to immigrate there. Marshal Italo Balbo recurred to this kind of propaganda and presented the colony as a reconciled land, conceptualizing its transformation into a modern, “town‐like” environment, ready to welcome a multitude of farmers and workers. He invested highly in a huge demographic campaign from 1935 to 1940 (Del Boca 1985: 259– 71). An article on Le vie d’Italia, the official journal of the Italian Touring Club, in a special issue celebrating the works for the Libyan coastal road,

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the via Balbia, on December 1936 triumphal asserted: “The desert was won,” describing edited pictures of men at work on the new infrastructures. The mastering of the desert through these forms of temporal domestication and appropriation of space demanded—at least in its contemporary colonial representations—spatial discreteness and temporal specificity. In media terms, we could also say that this strategy legitimizes to read the desert as a modern(ist) multimedia environment. So, I will—provocatively—take these colonialist theoretical premises to their extremes. I will excavate the desert’s temporal stratifications and spatial planes, as a media environment, questioning the colonial discourse from a material perspective. On board their automobiles the explorers are intertwined with media dynamics forming media configurations that go from the physical/mechanical reactions to the desert, to the intellectual “decoding” of its environment. I include in this description dynamics and media that are not strictly and not merely technological, stressing forms of mediation that are about the process and the material substance as well. I’m deliberately stretching the sense and meaning of the media concept, looking at the desert as a dense formation of material, morphological (mineral), cultural, technical, human, and nonhuman infrastructures: I’m considering here the desert a network of “nested or entangled infrastructures” as Shannon Mattern incisively described the urban environment of “the media city” (Mattern 2015). Within this perspective, the desert can be interpreted as a highly mediatized space. Dick van Lack correctly reminds us that in the colonies, “infrastructures were distinguished tools of technocratic efforts to integrate territories and societies alike,” a primacy of rational and efficient organization, where “the idea that Europe and Africa should naturally be linked via expanding infrastructures was an important part of many imperial and infrastructural visions” (Van Lack 2010: 27). Mattern also recalls sociologist Susan Leigh Star, stressing how infrastructures also “includes intellectual and institutional things, such as measurement standards, naming conventions, classification systems, technical protocols, and bureaucratic forms” (Mattern 2015: 10) that are mainly relational. In the archive of these Italian explorers, the desert appears as a cultural, technological, infrastructural entanglement of different material (and immaterial) stratifications. It entails multiple temporalities and multiple spatialities. Modern technologies and practices become sedimented together with primitive media built by nomads or Bedouins and—above all— geological formations. Driving their automobiles, the Italian explorers pay close attention to the engine’s noises, recording the mechanical responsiveness of the automobile and the morphological varieties in their final report to the Royal Geographic Society:

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Time: 9.35 AM Location: Lagaba Distance: KM 527 Notes: We keep a gara on the left. Then we pass a serir. Hard impacts. Damages at one leaf spring. We stop to fix the leaf spring of our second truck. Time: 1.30 PM Distance: KM 530 Notes: We move. Heading East, we cross a rocky gara. We then found ourselves in a rocky upland area. Horrible track of stones. We are pointing at 220 degrees East. Time: 2.15 PM Distance: KM 535 Notes: On the Serir. We overlook mounts Emi Oueldi. The engines are overheating. We have to stop and cool down the trucks’ engines.9 As this extract may make clear, they oriented themselves using a modern car compass, but they were making use of morphological marker points as well.10 There is evidence of a varied and differentiated dynamic of progression into the desert that encompasses old and new media. For instance, they were making use of some desert anthropic communication media such as the “guemira”—a primitive “optical” media made of a pile of mounted stones, used as an orientation signal11—or they were taking advantage of Bedouins’ camels’ caravans to transport gasoline cans in the desert (so they had to wait for them and adapt their progression at Bedouins’ pace). But, at the same time, they were also emotionally struck by the moving scenery starred through the automobile’s windowpane, and so they were inspired to stop and take pictures, using their Leica. Thus, the desert the Italian explorers crossed presented multiple temporal stratifications (primitive/modern temporalities, which also mean multiple speeds, multiple rhythms) as well as multiple spatialities: from the micromorphological impact of the soil on the vehicle’s body and mechanics, to the variability of the terrain they classified for orientation, to the widespread and extreme length of its perimeter. In this chapter, I am interested in looking at the colonial desert space as a place where modern technology is not merely nor exclusively occluded or weakened, instead modulated and integrated in a nuanced manner. In particular, I will focus on three basic desert media configurations, which the explorers operate within: first, the “mechanical reaction” of the vehicle to the desert morphology; second, the bureaucratic forms of accessing and entering different colonial territories; third, the “visual attractions” of the natural

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panoramas as seen from the traveling trucks and the photographic gesture which is the embodied reaction to this solicitation.

Desert Mechanisms and Temporal Discreteness The vehicle’s mechanical responsiveness through sands, dunes, and dirt tracks reflect the temporal disciplining and imprinting of the desert landscape. Peter J. Bloom, discussing the trans‐Saharan crossing films of the 1920s, reminds us that “the Saharan landscape represented the ultimate challenge to the chronometric rhythms of industrial production” (Bloom 2008: 70). He stressed that the “kinematics of the automobile is based on modulation of interlocking mechanisms embodied by the clock” (Bloom 2008: 68), and underlays the chronological indexing of civilization through a regime of regulation that expressed an imposition of time (Bloom 2008: 69). Therefore, rather than merely spatial, the automobile crossing crucially expresses a temporal “subjection.” The (political) function of this mission is a chronometric strategy to temporalize (and subjugate) the desert space. As mentioned previously, the temporal domestication of the mythic a‐temporal dimension of the desert is part of the strategical target of the colonial institution in the late 1930s. What I underestimated in this interpretation is the meaningfulness of the breakdowns. They are carefully photographed and reported in the explorers’ diary and photo albums. Breakdowns occurred every day, causing interruptions lasting from a few hours to days. However, on the side of the “temporal domestication” of the desert, the breakdowns conditioned forms of arrhythmias in the regime of regulation that standardized the car movement. They compromised the kinetic synthesis at the core of this temporal imposition, and they cracked the technocratic spirit that was leading the mission. Breakdowns are dispersed throughout the diary of the explorers. The explorers, worn out, sarcastically lamented the inadequacy of their means in their diary: “And then they said that Ford motors are the only valuable for crossing Africa!” (Mariani 2017: 199). The automobile hardly assimilates the unpredictable asperity of the terrain, the bumps, and the swallowing sands. It is an arduous and imperfect “conquest,” carried out through continuous adjustments, quick fixes, and runaway replacements. The mechanic, the proletarian Luigi De Fabianis, is a deus‐ex‐machina, the real “genius” of this mission, whose inventions and creativity allowed the explorers to find improvised solutions to complete their journey. He had technically modified and potentiated the vehicles’ engines and mechanics before departing (Martinoni 1937: 4) although this was not enough.

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Figure 14.1  Scanned pictures from the explorers’ photo album. Courtesy of Martinoni Family Archive. Breakdowns and malfunctions provoked delays, deviations, or even made the explorers travel back through the same route again to find alternative tracks, deferring passages for a few hours to weeks. The natural environment makes modern technology dent, patched up, sometimes beaten as pictures amply prove (Figure 14.1). It is an arduous and tentative modernization, where the myth of conquest and efficacy with modern technology—and the automobile—is overcome with a complex and problematic metabolization. If we pay attention to the large and extensive photographic documentation of the breakdowns and the detailed and recursive descriptions of glitches and delays, we can make the interpretation of this modernist enterprise nuanced and skeptical. In the desert, centennial morphological formations (Butzer and Hansen 1968) and desert “infrastructures” materially crash with the time regulation imposed by the vehicle mechanical advancement: they provoke a‐synchronic and changing dynamics in the clock‐based modulation of interlocking mechanisms of progression the vehicle strives to follow. The desert’s natural and primitive infrastructures exposed the explorers to a truly experimental and unpredictable exploration, making the understanding, the possession, and the control over the desert space a not‐given assumption. Furthermore, the “exploration” is here revealing the double‐edged nature that challenges and puzzles the new forms of the Italian colonial discourse even more. It guarantees expansion and adjunct

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knowledge, but it also implicitly discloses something not mapped before and not controlled, not yet “won.”12 By doing so, the morphological resistance of the desert also confirms the romantic character of its landscape. As David Atkinson correctly stated, “the apparent hostility of its environments combined with the vast scale of its area rendered the desert the antithesis of continental Europe” (Atkinson 2000: 95). According to this premise, contemporary thinkers have seen the desert as “a metaphorical trope for non‐fixity, anti‐essentialism and mobility as resistance to the bounded spaces and orders of modern society” (Atkinson 2000: 95) therefore an “unstable place,” (Ben Ghiat 2015: 15) and an archetypical nomadic environment, where “the nomad conjured all that Fascism feared: uncontrolled movement, ephemerality, and the absence of national or territorial loyalties” (Ben Ghiat 2015: xvii). The polyrhythmic nature of the desert environment and the a‐synchronic temporality of its crossing could easily elicit a cultural interpretation of the desert in a postmodern nomadic perspective: a space of endemic resistance to modernity, control, and fascism. Nevertheless, a step forward into this adventure could reveal an additional grade of complexity.

Colonial Bureaucrats and Migrant’s Mobility Once they entered French West Africa, the travelers became unaware actors of a paranoid espionage plot. In fact, the French administration set up a network of spies that regularly referred to the talk, intentions, and daily programs of the explorers, throughout the French area. The French forced them to stop and prevented their passage for ten days in Bilma, from April 11 to 21. While justifying their requests with customs fees and document requirements, they secretly organized an investigation and communicated with the French Ministry of the Colonies in Paris. The commander of the circle of Bilma, Captain Henri Amiel, denied the explorers the permission to pass, apparently for security reasons, as stated in a telegram addressing the French Ministry of the Colonies on April 13, 1937: “N°1010/C/AP réponse 145 ai soumis cas Dakar avec mon avis défavorable pour voyage direct Bilma N’Guigmi piste inexistante (stop) dispense cautionnements” (N°1010/C/AP answer 145 submitted Dakar case with my unfavorable opinion for direct travel Bilma N’Guigmi nonexistent track (stop) waiver bonds) (Amiel 1937). More precisely, the telegram stated that the track was “non‐existent.” Thus, the French simply denied the possibility and so the experimental nature of this enterprise: the chance to explore the nonexistent.

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There could be several possible motivations. On the one hand, the “conquest” of the Sahara with automobiles was already a source of national pride for the French colony (Arnauld 1927), due to the Courtot mission in 192513; on the other hand, French administrators feared the expansionism of Marshal Italo Balbo. The archive of the Ministry of French Colonies in Paris includes an extensive dossier about the Italian expedition. Their moves in French East Africa have been recorded from April to July and enclosed into three confidential reports, dated May 6, June 12, and August 31, 1937. The report dated June 12 is the most informed and eloquent. It was written by Monsieur Blaud, the administrator of the colonies and chief of the Department of Moyen‐Chari in the Chad region. Blaud stressed that according to what collaborators14 in Fort Archambault declared, Marshal Italo Balbo would have followed the explorers by airplane and ultimately met them in Tripoli. Blaud interpreted the Italian journey as a plan designed by Italo Balbo to Encourage his compatriots to come to Chad and to settle down gradually, to serve the politics of their country. Marshal Italo Balbo must be certainly promoting our cynegetic tourism in a very compelling way. These kinds of attractive travels quickly cover the Italian infiltration, and if Marshal Balbo did not accomplish his plan yet, is just a matter of time (Blaud 1937).

The counts never suspected any covert French surveillance upon their heads. This event is just an extreme example of how (paranoid) bureaucracy could paralyze travel mobility. The explorers suffered colonial administration throughout their journey, from the very beginning until the very end. Back in Italian East Africa, Italian finance police stopped them at the Addis Ababa border checkpoint, summarily accusing them of illicit affairs and persuaded them to pay a bribe to let them go. Bureaucracy is a necessary infrastructure in the new strategies of the Italian colony. Given the demographic policies of Marshal Balbo—an essential function in the late imperial dominion—it became urgent to regulate and administrate entries and exits (Ertola 2017: 10). After the empire proclamation, a new rhetoric of the colonial man took form, according to a real ideological turn. A new man for a modern society built upon “selected” mass emigration from Italy. Discreetness (and selectiveness) of a migrant’s mobility coupled with discreteness of space. Medical, professional, and political controls were periodically carried out for aspiring migrants and during the permanence in the colony too. Workingclass people hardly obtained permissions, and they were also quickly expelled.

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Tourists were indeed less under pressure, but, as the documents prove, the explorers were continuously monitored and checked at any central passage of their expedition. It is an “embedded resistance” of the colonial institution itself—in any of the crossed African colonies—to sabotage the experimental travel and increment forms of arrhythmias at various stages of its progression. Interestingly, these long breaks are made evident by dramatic interruptions through photo albums and diaries; for example, the entire period from April 11 to 21 is missing. Unproductive time in marking out undramatic episodes, eloquently emerging from the empty spaces of the explorers’ archives. Visual and literary vacuums scattered throughout their narratives. However, the visual experience of the exploration of the desert shows us an even different form of interruption, triggered at a very inner and deep grade.

Photographic Interruptions and the Missing Film The explorers often stopped to take pictures. Their scopic regime of navigation tells of tension for a “secondary” and mediated experience that inspired them to stop and procrastinate their travel. As media scholar Nanna Verhoeff stressed: “transport and mobility nourish a desire to simulate the virtual gaze (and vice versa); they nourish a desire to the secondary experience of looking by means of media technologies” (Verhoeff 2012: 44). The vision from the window is inscribed in what she calls a “panoramic desire,” a desire for an immersive perception, not physical, rather virtual. This desire becomes part of the visual experience of the navigation on board of the automobiles, where the landscape, the spectator (in the theater seat, or in the car), and the dispositive (the automobile in motion) are in contact and relation. These interruptions are intimately related to the experience of the passenger staring out of the windowpane (or frame): “The added value of sitting still while watching comes from the desire to have an overview and to optimally experience the sequence—in other words, the sequential (and re‐edited) shots, as a series of glances. Hence, the image seen is that of the single shot, a recording of a single fluid (camera) movement” (Verhoeff 2012: 45). We could say that the photographic interruption is nourished and pre‐experienced in the combination of the mobile gaze of the passenger and his still/immobile position in the car. By shifting from external to inner grades of mediation and transmission in the desert experience, we can witness forms of interruptions that stay in the blind spot of the strategies of space appropriation and representation. The mobile navigation instilled a material impulse of “cinematographing” the technological “conquest” of the desert, a desire to remediate the traveling

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experience, through the record of a visual trace and the re‐creation of movement and fluidity of the sequence. The explorers crafted three photo albums that extensively document their journey, but they also prepared a travelogue film that was never realized. On January 11, 1937, two months before departure, Italian cinematographer Luigi Rerverso‐Meiniet sent a detailed budget for an expedition film to Luigi Martinoni, whom he met some days before in Milan. Rerverso‐Meiniet was, in fact, a joint filmmaker at Explorator Film Company in Milan, and he filmed the most famous Italian colonial documentary of that time: Siliva Zulu (1927), directed by explorer Attilio Gatti. The whole budget for the explorers’ film amounted at 244.000 Lire, a quite remarkable figure. No trace of that project survived, no proof of its accomplishment, neither in the diary nor in the photo albums. Regarding these kind of films, Wolfgang Fuhrmann reminds us that “the most satisfactory form of traveling the colonies was the colonial travelogue” (Fuhrmann 2017: 192). In particular, its most crucial (and ambivalent) feature concerned the way the surrogate of looking provided by the camera returned the visual experience of unity: a peculiar sense of appropriation of space. The absence of the travelogue, the ghostly shadow of it, is weighty and evokes many possible meanings: The negative print of a mis‐appropriation of space? The implicit evidence of a loss of control? Absence and silence— an interruption of the signal—often elicit multiple interpretations in communication and information theory. As Wolfgang Ernst stresses in the chapter in this collection, if we turn this deficiency upside down “by changing the perspective from cultural hermeneutics to media (active) archaeology: all of the sudden, it turns out as an ‘informational’ virtue.” Thus, a closer look at this dead end may shine a light on the information this non‐existent travelogue could tell us. The storyline Luigi Reverso‐Meiniet sketched out and sent to the explorers stresses a unity of space, where he asserted the necessity to avoid mere documentation, and create a narrative structure: A film based on a story, with a strong continuity with the different stages of the expedition journey. Concerning this point, I would like to discuss with you a “leitmotiv” I invented, to connect the various episodes of the film and give it shape; this can also help us to finally get rid of that arid and cold tone that often makes a documentary boring. It will be all about adventures, genuine and realistic, as long as [it is] funny and amusing. I am eventually pretty convinced by the utility to insert scenes shot on locations too, reproducing everyday life and rituals of the primitive people, through immediacy and realness. (Reverso‐Meiniet 1937: 1)

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Here it emerges how colonial travelogues pivoted on this inner strategy. In fact, Fuhrmann reminds us: “The place presented must merit the curious filmgoers’ gaze; therefore the place must be (constructed as) exotic, yet in this presentation there is at the same time a certain disavowal of that exoticism, a desire to mark what is Other and then contain it, to keep it at arm’s length” (Fuhrmann 2017: 193).15 In the period this journey was planned—the late 1930s, after the proclamation of the Italian Empire—this balance through visual and filmic rhetoric would have entirely met the muted sensibility concerning the representation of the colonial space, as I discussed at the beginning of this chapter. In travelogue films, this delicate balance between the Other and the “normal,” the exotic and the urban, the fluidity and unity of perception of the represented space is elicited by montage and the moving image. The experience of travel and mobility through automobiles is intimately rooted in an ecstatic and corporeal tension that is potentially cinematographic, as Nanna Verhoeff stressed. Nevertheless, the unaccomplished film project, this dead end, is the final all‐encompassing metaphor of the peculiar frustration these media interruptions and failures are revealing. The explorers covered their adventure with a multitude of photographs. Then they sophistically organized their pictures in three photo albums, where they even tried to arrange forms of narration with intermedia or intertextual links too, through the collage of photographs and newspapers articles. They roughly connected microhistory and macro‐history, multiple temporalities and multiple spatialities, but the fluidity of time and movement were inevitably sacrificed. The storytelling they try to organize is often sophisticated and complex, but time and space remained untied, undone, because of the material consistency of the album. The mechanics of leaf through the hiatus from one fragment to the other, the missing formal and material connections, and the structural elliptic logic of the narrative create a sense of frustration for the “missing movement” of this tentative “remediation” of the travel experience. They missed the travelogue. They accused interruptions in the remediation system, lack of transmission and unity. This is even more evident if we look closely at the reportage published on Etiopia journal: pictures supposedly taken from “the film of the journey” illustrated the pages of the diary of Count Giuseppe Salvadego. Thus, it is as if the explorers (or the editors) pretend that the photographs they pasted in their albums are taken from a film’s sequence. An even closer look at the layout of the pages makes it appear that the grids the photographs are placed upon are graphically emphasizing nodes, bonds, and links, that is, forms of montage (Figure 14.2). Of course, the “film of the journey” the Etiopia journal alludes to is a fake, and it shows, by contrast, the awkward lack of

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Figure 14.2  Etiopia journal. Illustrated pages announcing “The film of the journey.” movement, of the fluidity of time, and unity of space in the representation and remediation of traveling across the colony.

Conclusions: A Scattered Space, a Scattered Time This ride proliferated in a polyrhythmic ensemble of “forms of unregulated touring mobilities” (Highmore 2005: 322) that compromises the regime of regulation embedding the colonialist imposition of time and organization of space. In the attempt to excavate the desert as a multimedia environment, through infrastructural layers and temporal and spatial planes, I wanted to stress the multiple rhythmical and temporal effects desert environment, modern technologies and the psychology of the travelers produced on the expedition journey and its representation. Traveling the desert colonial space revealed itself as a complex, ambiguous and contradictory experience, as also demonstrated by Fuhrmann. On the one hand, Though the organisation of colonial space into structures and a “functional network of discrete spaces” supported the functioning of the colony, there remains a contradiction of spatiality in colonial discourse, as “an ever‐increasing segmentation and fragmentation of space on

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almost every level” runs counter to the concept of the colony as unity. (Fuhrmann 2017: 194)

On the other hand, the temporal discreteness the new course of the Italian colonialism tried to carry out, resisted a linear and unifying government. It was a precondition for scientific, political, and cultural appropriation, but it was also a boost for fragmentation and schizoid temporalities, impossible to regulate and unpredictable. These paradoxical temporal conditions— crucially interwoven with spatial fragmentation—make evident, instead, a sort of “negative” time: the times of mechanical glitches and breakdowns, the unproductive times of administrative blocks, and the times of induced ecstatic interruptions. They are forms of “time scrap” subjected to a controversial power, not merely the colonial power, nor exclusively the power of technology, not even, not necessarily—not yet—a nomadic tension. These temporal interruptions bring forward the weight of media materiality in the power negotiations operating in a colonial space, and highlight, in the words of Sean Cubbit (2017), a tactical “revenge” of media materiality— wherever, whenever we find it—in respect to the normative presumption of its organization.

Notes 1 The diary of this expedition and a collection of pictures with a scientific introduction have been recently published in Italian. See Mariani 2017. This chapter provides an original text about those materials and a new interpretation of this story. 2 The explorers used these words in the final report addressing the Italian Royal Geographical Society (Martinoni 1937). 3 I will return later on this issue while discussing how the official fascist and colonialist reactions to this mission questioned this “experimental” feature. 4 Ford Pick-ups Model 1937 with V8 Engine. 5 For an extensive account on the foundation of the Italian Colonial Empire, see Del Boca 1985. 6 Formerly taken by the Kingdom of Italy from the Ottoman Empire in 1912, after the Italian-Turkish War of 1911 to 1912. 7 An important role was played by the Fascist Empire Cinema, see Ben Ghiat 2015. Colonial cinema, and travelogue specifically, was crucial in German imperial discourse as well (Fuhrmann 2017: 200). 8 On the importance to present the colonial space as a unity, see Noyes 1992. 9 See Martinoni 1937.

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10 For instance, the “fech-fech” is the local name for a muddy area; the “gara” is a local name for a specific geological formation; the “serir” is a specific kind of desert pavement in eastern Sahara. 11 Stéphane Desombre, a young French explorer and novelist who met the Italian explorers in the Chad area, entitled his memoir with the name of this primitive “optical medium” (Desombre 1944). 12 Lieutenant Francesco Moccia, commander in chief of the military area of Southern Libya, published a letter addressing the explorers, downsizing their enterprise. He stated: “The desert is not more an unknown [place] nowadays, and the mystery that once veiled and endangered the most audacious adventures definitively disappeared from the entire African continent.” He follows: “I am saying this, encouraging people undertaking journeys like this one, taking advantages from the safe and widespread organization of our territory, as well as from the vast areas south Alger and Tunisia and all along the French West and Equatorial Africa.” See Moccia 1937, page number missing. Emphasis mine. Interestingly, Lieutenant Moccia ecumenically defends the colonial institution, embracing with his argument the entire International colonial system. 13 The Citroën expedition demonstrated that that track was accessible with cars equipped with caterpillars, the autochenilles: there was nothing more to prove, especially from Italians with regular vehicles. 14 A Tripolitanian merchant named Fitturi Krechi, another Tripolitanian man named Ben Taleb, a Jewish Iraqi called Hadamanu and his assistant Abd-El Ouad (whom the explorers asked for fuel), and, finally, one black Venus that was “offered” them as an homage by the French officers. 15 Fuhrmann also recalls Peterson 1997.

References Amiel, H. (Capt.) (1937), Telegram on 13 April, Count Luigi Martinoni’s Correspondences, Various, Tripoli‐Addis Abeba Expedition: Martinoni Family Archive. Andouin‐Dubreuil, A. (2008), La première traversée du Sahara en autochenille: Sur les pistes de Tombouctou, Paris: Glénat. Arnauld, G. (1927), “La conquête automobile du Sahara,” Annales de Géographie 36 (200): 173–6. Atkinson, D. (2000), “Nomadic Strategies and Colonial Governance: Domination and Resistance in Cyrenaica, 1923–1932,” in J. P. Sharp, P. Routledge, C. Philo, and R. Paddisonp (eds.), Entanglements of Power. Geographies of Domination/Resistance, London and New York: Routledge. Ben Ghiat, R. (2015), Italian Fascism’s Empire Cinema, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

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Berhe, S. (2017), “Un impero di carte: l’immagine della Libia nelle riviste turistiche Le Vie d’Italia e Libia,” Clio@Thémis, 12. Available Online: https​://ww​w.cli​othem​is.co​m/Un‐​imper​o‐di‐​carte​‐ l‐immagine (accessed March 15, 2019). Blaud, no name (1937), Monsieur Blaud’s Report on 12 June 1937 to the French Colonial Ministry, Serie “k‐Afrique 1918‐1940,” Sous‐série “questions générales,” 52 (Voyages et missions d’Italiens: Dossiers individuels, Compte Martinoni, k 4.1 s/d.19), Paris: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive, Directorate of the Archives [translated from the original French]. Bloom, P. J. (2008), French Colonial Documentary. Mythologies of Humanitarism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Butzer, K. W. and C. L. Hansen (1968), Desert and River in Nubia: Geomorphology and Prehistoric Environments at the Aswan Reservoir, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Cubitt, S. (2017), “Glitch,” Cultural Politics 13 (1): 19–33. Del Boca, A. (1985), Italiani in Africa Orientale: La conquista dell’Impero, Roma and Bari: Laterza. Desombre, S. (1944), La Guémira. Mission Alger‐Lac Tchad 1937, Paris: Édition Olivier Lesourd Ertola, E. (2017), In terra d’Africa. Gli Italiani che colonizzarono l’impero, Bari: Laterza. Fuhrmann, W. (2017), Imperial Projections. Screening the German Colonies, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Highmore, B. (2005), Cityscapes: Cultural Readings in the Material and Symbolic City, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Levine, A. J. M. (2000), “Le Tourisme Citroën au Sahara (1924‐1925),” Vingtième Siècle, Revue Histoire 68 (October–December): 95–108. Mariani, A. (2017), L’Audacissimo viaggio. I media, il deserto e il cinema nella microstoria della spedizione Tripoli‐Addis Abeba 1937, Udine‐Milano: Mimesis. Martinoni, L. (1937), Relazione della spedizione automobilistica italiana Tripoli‐Bilma‐Lago Chad‐Congo Belga‐Addis Abeba, Brescia: Self‐Published. Mattern, S. (2015), Deep Mapping of the Media City, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Moccia, F. (1937), “Da Tripoli al lago Ciad,” L’Avvenire di Tripoli, April 2, 1937, p. missing [translated from the original Italian]. Noyes, J. (1992), Colonial Space: Spatiality in the Discourse of German South West Africa 1884–1915, Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers. Peterson, J. L. (1997), ““Truth is Stranger than Fiction:” Travelogues from the 1910s in the Nederlands Filmmuseum,” in D. Hertogs and N. De Klerk (eds.), Uncharted Territory: Essays in Nonfiction Film, 75–90, Amsterdam: Stichting Nederlands Filmmuseum. Reverso‐Meiniet, L. (January 11, 1937), “Programma cinematografico,” Count Luigi Martinoni’s Correspondences, Various, Tripoli‐Addis Ababa

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Expedition: Martinoni Family Archive, 1–4 [translated from the original Italian]. Rocca, G. (2016), “Il deserto libico negli anni Trenta del Novecento. Il rapport uomo‐ambiente el’immagine turistica,” in A. M. Salvadè (ed.), Deserti. Rappresentazioni geografiche e letterarie, 101–23, Milano‐Udine: Mimesis. Salvadego, G. (1937), “L’audacissimo viaggio in automobile di quattro italiani attraverso il Continente Nero. Il diario del Conte Salvadego,” Etiopia, Rassegna illustrata dell’Impero, 28 October—30 November: 137–40. Van Lack, D. (2010), “Detours around Africa: The Connection between Developing Colonies and Integrating Europe,” in A. Badenoch and A. Fickers (eds.), Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe, 27–43, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Verhoeff, N. (2012), Mobile Screens: The Visual Regime of Navigation, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

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15

The Error at the End of the Internet Peter Krapp

It was software, in cyberspace. There was no system core. It could not be shut down. —Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Digital culture is predicated on communication efficiencies to an extent that veils faults and errors. This chapter focuses on how internet errors are addressed in the requests for comment (RFC) corpus. Collated by the Internet Engineering Taskforce, the RFC are organized working notes that, since 1969, document the development of the internet (as initiated by Steve Crocker, and later shepherded by Jon Postel for twenty-eight years). RFC1958 reflects: “A good analogy for the development of the internet is that of constantly renewing the individual streets and buildings of a city, rather than razing the city and rebuilding it” (Carpenter 1996).1 Looking at computer‐mediated communication from the vantage point of errors is not to diminish the contribution of those who design ergonomic interfaces or engineer trustworthy data transmission; and the point is not to restate Murphy’s law, but to heighten awareness for the potential of contingency under tightly controlled conditions. Technologies pull a veil over what is temporarily exposed by errors; but between a hermetically rule‐bound realm of programmed necessity and efficient management of the possible is a realm of contingency: distortions in the signal‐to‐noise ratio, glitches, moments where what does not compute is condescendingly ascribed to user error. Administrator lore summarizes all‐too‐human irritations in the acronym EBKAC—error between keyboard and chair. Despite the undeniable prevalence of such attitudes, here we accentuate the recognizable potential of errors for systemic improvements or creative recuperation. The first ARPAnet connection was already characterized by an error. According to colleagues in the University of California system who observed

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it, the connection from UCLA’s SDS Sigma 7 to the SRI SDS 940 at Stanford Research Institute on October 29, 1969, was established long enough to transmit the letter L, followed by O—but not to transmit the intended word, “login” (Kleinrock 2011).2 It became clear to the community managing the patchwork of interconnected computers that codifying error types might help. RFC0071 from September 1970 addresses reallocation in case of input error. Informed by the seminal experience, less than a year earlier, that a connected machine may err in determining the length of the incoming message, which can impact the quality of the connection, its gist states that “in case of reading a message from the IMP, it may be impossible for the receiving NCP to determine the length of the message if an input error occurs.” The IMP or interface message processor was a refrigerator‐sized device provided for ARPA by Bolt, Beranek, and Newman in Massachusetts to facilitate connections between otherwise incompatible computers. To enable resource sharing and data exchange, computers needed procedures for successful transmission. RFC0076 from November 1970 clarifies which commands avoid a logger protocol error. “Every transaction should prompt a response from its recipient,” RFC0133 from April 1971 demands to guide file transfer and error recovery—moreover, “if errors cannot be recovered as above, then some means must be available to clear the link completely and resynchronize.” (The initial connection in 1969 needed a phone conversation for this feedback.) By 1974, RFC0630 proposes error codes for more reliable mail services: 450 File not found 451 File access denied to you 452 Data connection closed 453 Insufficient storage 454 Cannot connect to your data socket This may seem unremarkable, but consider that even as I write this, mobile phones do not yield unambiguous distinctions between busy signals or unanswered connections: Did you see my call but decide not to answer, or is my number blocked by your device; were you talking in a different app or was your phone turned silent; were you roaming out of network or had you failed to pay your last bill? What emerges from these initial, cursory samples is a design anticipating, not suppressing or avoiding error. We face the mystery why there are no RFC0014, RFC0026, RFC0092, RFC0220, RFC0244, RFC0257–0262, RFC0257, RFC0279—they are listed as “not issued,” as if the IETF operated like a hotel room numbering scheme that avoids “unlucky” or unpopular

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designations. Were these numbers omitted by error, reserved for uses that did not make the record, or erased? Honorably, the IETF site states that “published RFCs never change”—so, despite careful proofreading, the organization maintains two lists of errata: one for technical errors and one for editorial ones (spelling, grammar, punctuation, syntax, etc. not affecting technical meaning3). This distinction is consequential: there are factual errors (of commission or omission) but there are also errors of description which permit reversal or correction more readily. Transmission errors, as communications engineers know at least since Shannon, are unavoidable given the presence of noise in any communications channel (where noise is the sum total of random signals that interfere with the communication signal). In digital media, an error (understood as the difference between an estimate or forecast and the actual value) can occur any time: Analogue devices showed tendencies for errors to appear in the least significant place, but were limited by precision of manufacture and could not be combined to secure additional places. Digital devices might show errors in any place (a limitation inherent in all positional nomenclatures), never required extreme accuracy, and could always be combined to secure another place, at the same price per place as previously. (McCullough 2003: 723)

The history of error codes illustrates distinct phases in the development of the internet; a more complex example is RFC1536 regarding common domain name system (DNS) errors. Referring to prior RFCs, it urges in 1993 that a good implementation of client‐server handshakes needs to estimate round‐trip times or set a reasonably high initial time‐out. It also warns that bad recursion could occur if “a broken or malicious name server might list itself as one of the name servers to query again. The unsuspecting client resends the same query to the same server.” Infinite loops are obviously far more likely between machines than between a human and a machine— they can tie up resources to such an extent as to shut out anything else. It is one thing if a machine does not have the answer to another machine’s query; it is another if the machine becomes unresponsive. Hence, RFC1537 establishes that every internet‐reachable computer needs a “name” in the DNS, avoiding inconsistent, missing, or corrupted entries: for instance, labels can consist of ASCII letters, digits, and the – (dash), but must begin and end only with a letter or digit. The DNS used to offer a rather limited selection of top‐level domains (whether country suffix, org, com, or edu) but the space had to expand rapidly to accommodate the rapid commercialization of the

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World Wide Web, and of course the vaunted internet‐of‐things will stress the protocol even more. Referring to various prior RFCs regarding the simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), RFC2023 from 1996 recommends an SMTP Service Extension for Returning Enhanced Error Codes. At that point, email is almost as old as the internet, and SMTP, the simple mail transfer protocol as first defined in RFC0821, is twenty-four years old. Yet the sending and receiving of mail on TCP port 25—after a quarter century of use and improvement—shows that “in the modern, international, and multilingual Internet a need exists to assign codes to specific error conditions that can be translated into different languages.” Or as RFC3155 from August 2001 diagnoses wryly: “The rapidly‐growing Internet is being accessed by an increasingly wide range of devices over an increasingly wide variety of links. At least some of these links do not provide the degree of reliability that hosts expect, and this expansion into unreliable links causes some Internet protocols to perform poorly.” Expansion across diverse languages and heterogenous devices is nonetheless the point of the internet—the net that connects other nets and constantly expands resource sharing—in other words, the feature is the bug. As RFC3155 states, “All known subnetwork technologies provide an ‘imperfect’ subnetwork service—the bit error rate is non‐zero. But there’s no obvious way for end stations to tell the difference between packets discarded due to congestion and losses due to transmission errors.” By 2006, RFC4636 needed to offer an extension to the mobile internet protocol in IPv4 to allow for error codes such as reason unspecified, administratively prohibited, insufficient resources, failed authentication, poorly formed reply, invalid care‐of address, registration timeout, and so on. Elsewhere, RFC1536 points out that “servers in the internet are not very reliable (they go down every once in a while) and resolvers are expected to adapt to the changed scenario by not querying the server for a while.” This leads me to error messages on the web. Using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), as described in RFC2068, RFC2616 and elsewhere, web servers signal the success or failure of certain connections.4 Status codes signal predefined meta‐information—those in the 1xx class are informational, the 2xx class indicates that a request was received and accepted (though status code 203 signals that the returned meta‐information is nonauthoritative), codes in the 3xx class indicate a need for redirection (e.g., 301: moved permanently, or 307: temporary redirect). The 4xx class of status codes is for cases where clients making a request from a server seem to have erred. Examples for status codes in this class are 401 (unauthorized), 403 (forbidden), or—perhaps the best known on the web—404 (not found). If a web server responds to your request for a page with 401, your request lacked the required credentials; if the

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response is 403, the server understood your request but refuses to fill it (and authorization would not help)—the difference is that this request should not be repeated, while in the prior case you could return with credentials. Error 404 indicates that the server has not found anything matching the request, without indicating whether this status is temporary or permanent. We have probably all seen error 404—the net as we enact it lacks version control, and despite useful initiatives to archive important pages, there are broken links, or sites that have moved. (Never mind the urban myth that error 404 stood for a room number at CERN, the Swiss research lab where Tim Berners‐Lee used to work, housing a database in pre‐web days.) HTTP allows customized responses—some servers offer a search window, some a humorous illustration, some a political message. In an example of using the 404 status code for a “Virtual Sit‐In on the University of California Office of the President,” the San Diego artist‐activist Ricardo Dominguez turned to the website of the headquarters of his employer.5 His applet requested files named “Justice,” “Freedom,” and “Human Rights” so as to visibly return the error messages “Justice not found,” “Freedom not found,” and so on in the university’s homepage; with this performance on March 4, 2010, Dominguez incurred the ire of administrators but enjoyed some ambivalent limelight.6 Other error codes in the 4xx range include 408 as indication of a request time‐out, 413 for a request that is too large, or 415 for an unsupported media type. In the 5xx class, codes indicate that it is not the client that erred, admitting errors on the server’s side. Status code 500 for instance indicates an internal server error—any unexplained condition preventing the server from fulfilling requests, while status code 503 notifies the client that this service is currently unavailable. The possibility of distinguishing between client error and server error is something we need to return to. The word “error” describes a range of situations, from moral and legal to technical and managerial contexts. Connotations of deviating from a correct path are a legacy in Western thought, arising from a need for guidance to avoid blindly going astray. In modern parlance, however, the word is used more often to denote technical errors, while human fallibility is taken as read. Types of technical errors, in turn, are seen as either endemic and unavoidable, as Shannon argued about all physical channels for communication, or something to debug; many systematic approaches are devoted to correction. If we understand our work as eliminating sources of error, we aim at establishing the limits of rationality. But if we acknowledge that the rational ideal of avoiding errors may be inherently unattainable, we need to cope with the fact that mental states and ideas can be interesting, motivating, moving, albeit false. Moreover, the word “error” is used both for an act and for its result; this conflation has consequences. The recognition of an act of

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commission is context‐dependent—errors are not simply false claims, but claims that turn out to be false even though one considered them true at the time. The objective falsity of the statement has to coincide with the subjective conviction that it is not false. If recognition of an error depends on context or consequence, this means that the retrospective realization that an utterance or act were erroneous is necessarily delayed; we tend to recognize someone else’s errors more readily than our own. Hegel argued that the error as such is to take a singular observation or situation for the whole, since only a fully dialectical context can amount to the truth. Marx turned this into a social factor, arguing that error is a matter of ideology, while Nietzsche’s willfully irrational approach can be read as a turn to psychology. However, systemic thinking often conflates the notion of erring with that of a logical fallacy; formal thought is less interested in errors as results, but in the erroneous processes that can lead someone to consider correct what is actually a fallacy. This is where we may identify a fault line in the history of systematic thought since antiquity. The pre‐Socratic philosopher Parmenides of Elea proposed that error was connected to a dynamic sense of being, rather than nonbeing. Plato held that error was characterized by “nonexistent non‐facts” versus a more generous account, which might have viewed error as merely an “incorrect characterization of actual facts” (Rescher 2007: 89–90). In a media‐saturated society, this has come to seem rather like cold comfort. But let us not jump to the complacent conclusion that “man does not merely stray into errancy,” as Heidegger writes following these ancient traces, “he is always astray in errancy” (Heidegger 1993: 133). Foucault joins the choir, claiming “Life is what is capable of error,” but what is gained by such generalizations? (Foucault 1991: 22) With all due respect to these thinkers, this legacy conceals a categorical confusion—the assumption that all noise is just noise, that all failure stems from the same root causes. This would be, one surmises, a generic error. So, philosophers and media theorists labored to think about technological error with more nuance. Derrida sets up and reworks a binary between the singularity of the event, associated with living beings, and machines’ calculable programming and automatic repetitions (Derrida 2002: 72–4). But this may perpetuate a juxtaposition of the error‐prone human versus the fail‐safe mechanism. Kittler also theorizes technical media as emerging from the nonhuman; where humans provide spontaneous responses to unforeseen events, the machine is only capable of what was set out for it in advance (Hoffmann & Schickore 2001). For Kittler, noise is a nonsocial, technical phenomenon, though it has social consequences (Kittler 1990: 183–4; compare Wolfgang Ernst in this volume). But even as humans have trouble telling one instance of white noise from another, we know that

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these are differentiated; similarly, media studies know that not all errors boil down to the same thing. A derivative of the categorical commingling of errors (whether dismissively as “error between keyboard and chair” or as logically homogeneous) is the romanticizing notion that to err is human, that erring is authentic and correction is disciplinarian and machinic; this fuzzy notion (leading to exhortations in graduation speeches and hallmark postcards but not to anything one might judge on merits) is grounds for the popular suggestion that we only need to fail forward, that the dignity of effort is marked by the persistence with which we blunder from one slipup to the next. Inversely, this rhetoric has led some to propose that we adopt a “broken world thinking” in a situation characterized by “risk and uncertainty, growth and decay, fragmentation, dissolution, and breakdown” (Jackson 2014: 452). But this resigned totalization was already anticipated—and parodied—as early as 1968, by computing pioneers Licklider and Taylor, who in a seminal essay prophesied that in the near future “unemployment would disappear from the face of the earth forever, for consider the magnitude of the task of adapting the network’s software to all the new generations of computer, coming closer and closer upon the heels of their predecessors until the entire population of the world is caught up in an infinite crescendo of on‐line interactive debugging” (Licklider and Taylor 1968: 41). The irony is of course that computer culture used to prize and pivot on people who could operate machines by trial and error; the locking down and black‐boxing of software and hardware is a recent, paranoid formation that no longer allows for playful exploration. Many attempts to explore and learn about software and hardware by trial and error are outlawed (or made far more difficult than they used to be), impacting not only computer literacy but also general attitudes toward digital culture, which now often feels like a company town, despite the many warnings that all‐out privatization “would effectively destroy the Internet as we know it” (Elmer‐Dewitt 1993). The purportedly innovative rhetoric of praising failure as the path to success is beholden to the most traditional idea of progress. With each new hype‐cycle, goods and services seek to replace themselves, leading to planned obsolescence and a proliferation of failure (Davison 2014). Accordingly, we get the ludicrous Silicon Valley spectacle of an annual FailCon featuring a “Fuck‐up Night” encouraging entrepreneurs to share their startup mistakes (Donohue 2015; Kaenel 2014). Media historians excavate why certain products and services in digital culture did not succeed, but still reductive takes boil down to timing: an invention too early, too complex for users who erred in not recognizing the new thing. Ideological debates over destructive innovation aside, it is surely erroneous

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to suggest that errors and system failures are not episodes of a technology working against what it has been programmed to do. If and when an error is perceived to occur, it is because the machine has reached a limit. Before we subsume this—as if machines could only do what humans program them to; therefore, their errors are really always already human errors—consider that this not only sneaks a deflated romantic humanism in through the backdoor of discourse analysis but also ignores the multiple potential ways of erring, precisely because this hopelessly romantic rhetoric is based on the conflation of all errors in human fallibility. A variation on this conflation is the religious rhetoric still extant in public discourse. Premodern thought had opposed sovereignty and powerlessness: a divine power creates, the created do not have a choice about being constituted otherwise, or not at all. Wishing to be otherwise would have been blasphemous. This rejection of contingency in premodern thought is illustrated in legends of saints, in two modes: an undeterred allegiance to God even under the greatest duress and a turn away from God corrected by a redeeming turn back to God—the martyr or the converted sinner. That hagiographic stricture was a reaction to polytheistic personifications of Fortune. It should be obvious, however, that the structure of the internet is that of a multi‐cursal labyrinth; the challenge of such a maze is finding a method to access every spot in a network of meandering detours without knowing the overall plan (see Mariani on desert media in this volume). Science solved this problem by mapping the topology of links and nodes as a graph; a path through the labyrinth traverses each edge (at least) once, in a series of decisions. The history of mathematics gives pride of place to Leonhard Euler’s thoughts on the seven bridges of Königsberg in 1735 as a founding moment of graph theory and topology—in my office, I hung up several topological maps of the internet, some more serious than others, though not even the most advanced search engines would lay claim to a visualization of all traffic across computer networks. Our ancient fascination with mazes represents an extreme aesthetic state, a regular structure that includes within itself a highly irregular structure. The multi‐cursal labyrinth affords many possible paths, contingent on each selection. All jokes notwithstanding, if you reached “the end of the internet,” moving along would not necessitate backtracking— there is no such end or turning point. Yet as we encounter things that feel out of human control, including illness and accident, a quasi‐religious rhetoric is still invoked, ascribing contretemps to providence—it just feels less random than ascribing such turns to “bad luck.” It was this limited notion of contingency that Kierkegaard derided as despairing of necessity in the absence of possibilities; it is one of the sources of metaphysical belief systems offering a means of coping with fate and a reduction of contingency (Beabout

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1996). On the other hand, if contingency means something could always have been otherwise, this presents the dilemma Kierkegaard saw in an aesthetics despairing of possibilities in the absence of necessity; wholesale rejection of universal principles threatened to suspend art in a nauseating state of “anything goes.” Modernity ascribed both sovereignty and impotence, both creativity and overdetermination, to humans. And now we find these ancient categories returning in media technologies, where it is not at all unusual to see placeless power ascribed to media, with the subject located in a powerless place. A humorous take on the customizable error 404 pages is the “last page of the internet” meme.7 While earlier iterations of the joke exhorted people to shut down their computer and go outside, later versions typically sell a souvenir t‐shirt.8 Either way, even as many of these pages have since disappeared, such webpages from the 1990s onward have been archived and can still be referenced—an illustration of the resilience of the web. If the idea of reaching an end of the internet is a joke, it is less ludicrous to imagine that the net as such could end. As a distributed reticular structure, it is built for redundancy, and error‐tolerance, as we saw, is built on the assumption that there will be failed connections, dropped packages, lag and latency, and jitter. The infrastructure is designed to work around what it inevitably produces, and the history of error messages is the history of the internet, from before Baran’s napkin sketches of topology to after the emergence of the dark net, censorship, hacktivism, and the great firewall of China. Lovink discussed this as “the principle of notworking”—circumscribing the realization that “networks are ideal Foucault machines: they undermine power as they produce it” (Lovink 2005: 18). This inflection point is not an epistemology of noise or distortion, but the dysfunctionality and social subversion—what makes today’s networking is the notworking. It is precisely when a technical assemblage does not work that we gain valuable insight into its functioning. While it works smoothly and without interruption, its inner workings are black‐boxed. If we point to the familiar tale of RAND consultants like Baran goading the US government into funding and for a long time governing a computer network that would be more resilient than radio or telephone networks, we still need to resist the temptation to see in computing and computer networks nothing more than a military‐industrial complex (Hafner and Lyon 1998; US National Research Council 1994). While recently there are too many neoliberal accounts that seek to erase the significant role of the US government in the development of the internet, there are also still too many trumped‐up stories that falsely assert that the network was conceived as a command‐and‐control structure that would survive nuclear conflict. The real threat to the internet is much more banal.

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Internet error messages are so quotidian, so unglamorous that a net interruption is hard to represent culturally, something audiovisual narratives about computer culture struggle with, whether on TV or in cinema. Beyond obvious media competition, this is another reason why we so often see bombastic exaggerations and apocalyptic scenarios instead. Only worst‐case scenarios bring resilient communication networks to a halt. The popularity of these scenarios, whether ascribed to rogue artificial intelligence, alien invasions, or acts of nature, distracts us from a far more realistic scenario. A very real “end of the internet (as we know it)” may come from censorship and privatization, threatening the open core that we read about in the RFC corpus. The “competitive idea behind the layers of the internet hourglass translated to a reality that anyone could write an application to convey data, and network providers would serve no gatekeeping role” (Zittrain 2019: 372, compare Deering 2001). In a famous quote from John Gilmore (one of the founders of Electronic Frontier Foundation), by design “the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”—yet the basis for this robust redundancy is now in peril (Elmer‐Dewitt 1993). Before the Federal Communications Commission decision in the United States in December 2017 to dismantle net neutrality, the relevant legal framework was Title II of the 1934 Communications Act, categorizing internet service providers as similar to telephone networks, and considering common carriers a utility.9 When a partisan FCC overturned a tradition that had culminated in 2015 in formalizing principles of net neutrality (as honored long before in practice), this last step toward commercialization abandoned the legacy of how the RFCs structured the net as flexible, open, fair. Three aspects of the debate are worth considering as we digest the impact of this decision. A basic expectation is that if you or I pay a service provider such as Verizon, AT&T, Cox, and Comcast for internet access, it should be independent of content—no price breaks for fans of proprietary content and no premium extracted (nor slower service) if you seek out other sources. Secondly, government must protect free speech and not discriminate against legal content. And third, even if there are nefarious actors on the internet, that should not result in policy that amounts to tiered access to the public sphere. The healthiest defense of an open society against its enemies is robust public debate, not systemic bias that chills free speech. Yet in the absence of net neutrality, money will become even more powerful in shaping political opinion. This, in short, is error 402: payment required. In the HTTP documentation, this status code was carried as “reserved for future use”; sadly, by ending net neutrality we reached that error message, though hopefully not permanently. As early as 2006, commentators issued dire warnings about the closing of the net: “those with the deepest pockets—corporations, special‐interest groups and major advertisers—would get preferred treatment. Content from

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these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer‐to‐peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out” (Chester 2006). The old rules were easy for service providers to follow; their repeal creates incentives to slow services to extract premium prices. As the FCC decision forces tiered access in the United States, this turns the public sphere into a pay‐to‐play arena: powerful corporations can pay to see their content served at fast speeds, while their competition (not to mention nonprofits) may be squeezed into slower tiers with less visibility. This not only creates barriers but also raises the specter of censorship. Should policy makers and citizens wish for a net of walled gardens? What is the upside of backroom deals with content providers, or of data caps biased for or against different types of use? Should your broadband company influence what search engine you use, what shows you watch, what news you read? The FCC decision not only ignores arguments made by numerous experts in politics, technology research, and public advocacy like the ACLU and EFF but also overrules the advice of the FCC’s own Open Internet Advisory Committee and of the Congressional Research Service (FCC 2011; Open Internet Advisory Committee 2013; CRS 2014, 2019). An argument could be made that the internet needs to be made more secure and that deregulation may help service providers fend off hackers, social media manipulators, and fake news peddlers. But this never required abandoning net neutrality. Service providers previously intervened in traffic, for instance when they censored political speech at a Pearl Jam concert in 2007, when they throttled file-sharing sites like BitTorrent, eDonkey, and Gnutella, and when they blocked text messaging by activists who sought to coordinate protests. Generally, we do not associate such acts with an open and free public sphere; they do not empower robust debate. As exceptions, we may condone them, but that does not make them a basis for general policy. Another argument could be made that dismantling net neutrality still allows wide access to the net. But access to what, really? If this policy shift undermines the character of the net as a public sphere and turns large parts of it into a company town, who gains? Remember, the internet was funded and developed by agencies of the government in the first place. Abandoning net neutrality may lift profit margins of broadband providers, but at what cost to democracy, an open media landscape, and a robust public sphere? Competition will not fix this, since most Americans face local broadband monopolies. The claim that deregulation will spur infrastructure investment rings hollow—it is hardly a proven correlation. On the contrary, in the absence of open internet rules, the FCC cannot incentivize corporations to invest in innovation; the only incentive is for corporations to raise tolls. Abandoning net neutrality is more than a political blunder.

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Lest we oversimplify the story, in cybernetic systems of any complexity the probability of error is always anticipated. The RFC illustrate that from the outset errors are recognized as a necessary condition of the network. If there were no errors, the whole point of robust routing around them in designing the internet would have been moot; if there were no errors in the entire effort to communicate appropriate feedback along noisy channels, their absence might even be interpreted as a total breakdown. Indeed, computing since the 1940s counted on errors; as Norbert Wiener put it in a discussion at the Macy conferences: The machine I am talking about would literally do this. It would check whether the error was the predicted error. I am not talking about the continuous machine. It could be made discrete quite as easily. Then when the error got out of hand—when the difference between the actual error and the predicted error got beyond a certain percentage—it would repeat itself, re‐examine itself statistically. (Norbert Wiener as cited in von Foerster 1950: 32)

Noise and error are endemic in computing, infrastructure becomes robust by planning on disruptions, net institutions are strengthened by embracing criticism, and technical constellations are dynamic only if they allow themselves to be destabilized. As network errors are the product of network technology, they cannot and should not be treated as coming from some transcendent outside—they are part and parcel of packet‐switching. Errors do not in fact interrupt the continuity of the net—the more homogeneously predictable the digital landscape becomes, the more obviously the absence of interruptions is not an optimal realization of the sociotechnical assemblage, politically or otherwise. From the RFC corpus in general, and from parsing HTTP error codes as we navigate around the web in particular, it should be clear that the net was never designed to avoid or suppress mistakes, detours, or lapses—the worry was instead whether there might be a point when no such disruptive events could occur, indicating fatal stagnation: a lack of traffic and a lack of ideas. There was never a true path across the network, only the attempt to generate additional paths. This is the story of the internet. To that extent, “if the telling of stories plays a decisive role in the establishment of networks,” Samuel Weber points out, “then the means or medium by which such telling is disseminated will constitute an essential factor in the shaping and maintaining of networks” (Weber 2005: 103, with reference to Arquilla and Ronfeldt 2001: 328). The unstinting end of media studies must be to tell the stories found in the RFC corpus and the HTTP error codes to ward off tendentious interpretations and policies that could be the end of internet culture.

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Notes 1 RFCs cited throughout my text can be found in this format: https://www.ietf. org/rfc/rfcN.txt for each N. 2 Strictly speaking, this is not yet the internet, since it is only one connection and the essential TCP/IP protocols are not yet involved, though the ARPAnet featured email, telnet, and FTP. 3 https://www.ietf.org/standards/rfcs/ 4 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616 5 At http://www.ucop.edu 6 http:​//www​.hast​ac.or​g/blo​gs/ma​rgare​t‐rhe​e/sup​port‐​ricar​do‐do​mingu​ez‐an​ d‐cal​it2‐b​angla​b 7 https​://kn​owyou​rmeme​.com/​memes​/the‐​last‐​page‐​of‐th​e‐int​ernet​ 8 http://endoftheinternet.com 9 https​://tr​ansit​ion.f​cc.go​v/Rep​orts/​1934n​ew.pd​f

References Arquilla, J. and D. Ronfeldt (2001), Networks and Netwars, Santa Monica: RAND Corp. Beabout, G. R. (1996), Freedom and Its Misuses: Kierkegaard on Anxiety and Despair, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. Carpenter, B. (1996), “Request for Comments: 1958, Architectural Principles of the Internet,” Network Working Group, https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1958.txt Chester, J. (2006), “The End of the Internet?” The Nation, February 13, https:// www.thenation.com/article/end‐internet/ Congressional Research Service (2014), Net Neutrality: The FCC’s Authority to Regulate Broadband Internet Traffic Management, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/ misc/R40234.pdf Congressional Research Service (2019), The Net Neutrality Debate: Access to Broadband Networks, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40616.pdf Davison, A. (2014), “Welcome to the Failure Age,” The New York Times Magazine, November 12. Deering, S. (2001), “Watching the Waist of the Protocol Hourglass” (presentation, IETF 51 London, August), https​://ww​w.iet​f.org​/proc​eedin​ gs/51​/slid​es/pl​enary​‐1/sld003.htm Derrida, J. (2002), “Typewriter Ribbon: Limited Ink (2),” in Without Alibi, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Donohue, J. (2015), “Fail Fast, Fail Often, Fail Everywhere,” The New Yorker, May 31, http:​//www​.newy​orker​.com/​busin​ess/c​urren​cy/fa​ il‐fast‐fail‐often‐fail‐everywhere Elmer‐Dewitt, P. (1993), “First Nation in Cyberspace,” Time (Dec. 6, No. 49). Archived at: http://kirste.userpage.fu‐berl​in.de​/oute​rspac​e/int​ernet​‐arti​cle. h​tml

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Federal Communications Commission (2011), Preserving the Open Internet (Federal Register, vol. 76 #185, September 23), http:​//ass​ets.s​bnati​on.co​m/ass​ ets/7​70333​/FCC_​Prese​rving​OpenI​ntern​et.pd​f Foucault, M. (1991), “Introduction to The Normal and the Pathological by Georges Canguilhem,” trans. Carolyn R. Fawcett, New York: Zone Books. Hafner, K. and M. Lyon (1998), Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet, New York: Touchstone. Heidegger, M. (1993), “On the Essence of Truth,” in D. F. Krell (trans. and ed.), Basic Writings, Routledge: London. Hoffmann, C. and J. Schickore (2001), “Secondary Matters: On Disturbances, Contamination, and Waste as Objects of Research,” Perspectives on Science 9, no. 2 (Summer): 123–5. Jackson, Steven J. (2014), “Rethinking Repair,” in T. Gillespie, P. Boczkowski, and K. Foot (eds.), Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kittler, F. A. (1990), Discourse Networks 1800/1900, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kleinrock, L. (2011), “The Day the Infant Internet Uttered its First Words,” https​ ://ww​w.lk.​cs.uc​la.ed​u/int​ernet​_firs​t_wor​ds.ht​ml Licklider, J. C. R. and R. Taylor (1968), “The Computer as a Communication Device,” Science and Technology (April): 21–41. Lovink, G. (2005), The Principle of Notworking: Concepts in Critical Internet Culture, Amsterdam: HVA. McCullough, W. (2003), “Summary of the Points of Agreement Reached in the Previous Nine Conferences on Cybernetics,” in Claus Pias (ed.), Cybernetics: The Macy‐Conferences 1946‐1953, vol. I, 723, Zurich: diaphanes. Open Internet Advisory Committee (2013), Annual Report. https://transition. fcc.gov/cgb/oiac/oiac‐2013‐annual‐report.pdf Rescher, N. (2007), Error: On Our Predicament When Things Go Wrong, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. US National Research Council (1994), Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond, Washington: National Academies Press, https://www. nap.edu/read/4755/chapter/4 von Foerster, H. (1950), Cybernetics: Circular Casual and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems, Transactions of the Sixth Conference (March 24–25, 1949), Josiah H Macy Foundation, New York. von Kaenel, C. D. (2014), “Failure Has Never Been More Successful,” Fast Company (November 14). Weber, S. M. (2005), Targets of Opportunity: On the Militarization of Thinking, New York: Fordham University Press. Zittrain, J. (2019), “The Internet,” in D. Hunter and C. Op Den Camp (eds.), A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects, 369–75, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

16

From Bugs to Features An Archaeology of Errors and/in/as Computer Games Stefan Höltgen1

The following text attempts to give a computer archaeological perspective on the topic of errors, bugs, and glitches with a special focus on video games and how these affect gameplay and ultimately the gaming experience itself. Because computer archaeology is more concerned with the computer as a technological artifact and does not concentrate on the content (its aesthetics, cultural impact, or socio‐psychological effects on its user), the forthcoming remarks will touch on such “media contentism” (Ernst 2012: 212f.—own trans.) only marginally. Even so, computer archaeology is interested in certain aesthetical phenomena—when it comes to a “short circuit” between the technological and aesthetical layers. In those moments, the computer technology disturbs the user’s immersion and redirects his/her attention by showing the “subface”2 of technology on the surface of its output devices. This leads to a kind of “violent distraction” of the user, who—in case of the emergence of an error—will try to understand what could have happened with the machine, a thought process that can invoke a wide variety of actions—from shutting down the defective computer in exasperation to a reflection about its hardware and software processes and their debugging. The latter may then lead to a (more) productive and emancipated use of media technology.3 What should also be mentioned in this context is the intentional and staged form of computer errors, the so-called glitch art. Especially in the last decade, media artists have directed their attention to vintage gaming hardware and software to produce glitch art, thereby establishing a media‐epistemological craft interesting for both gaming and art scenes. The intentional engagement with programming errors as an art form produces a specific postmodern aesthetic marked by citation, irony, and a blurring of boundaries between

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traditional gaming concepts and gaming on a meta-level where the gamers are forced to reflect on their doing/gaming. “Are you able to lead Tom through a 178 screens big pyramid to get Manilo’s treasure?” This question repeatedly scrolls across the top of the screen during the game of “Tom Thumb” (1986). Rather than a real question, it is a promise of an adventure, since it raises the gamer’s expectations for the game: a pyramid, 178 graphic screens wide, appears huge against the size of the character, which takes up a mere fraction of one screen size. However, the sublimity of this game setting turns into disillusionment when, after playing halfway through the game, the player finds a definite answer to that question: “No, I am not”—because at this point an error occurs, finishing the gameplay long before the end of the game (Figure 16.1). “Tom Thumb” resembles innumerous jump ‘n’ run games of its time—with the difference that most of them (like the famous “Montezuma’s Revenge,” 1984, or “Prince of Persia,” 1989) were not available for the Commodore C16 home computer. In “Tom Thumb,” the gamer has to steer the Tom character through the named labyrinth, jump over dangerous abysses, fight monsters, climb ladders, and open doors for which keys have to be collected in advance. After nearly half of the 178 screens, the character approaches a ladder which leads to the next key, which in turn is essential to open a specific door to

Figure 16.1  A wrongly placed bitmap graphic element stops the gameplay of the Commodore C16 version of “Tom Thumb” (Kingsoft, 1986; screenshot from the Vice Emulator).

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continue the game. But on top of this ladder, a bad surprise is waiting: a set of the spikes that are spread through the game course, rising from the ground to kill the character, are placed right at the end of the ladder. As a result, the character cannot climb it and the player cannot continue the game. As there is no other way to get to the required key, the game ends here and the player will never see “the end” of it. The cause for this abrupt ending is a programming error—one of the kind that does not lead to a program crash but rather to an endless loop. The character is trapped within the scene/screen. When the level was constructed, the programmer, perhaps in a momentary lapse of attention, put two of the bitmap graphic objects on top of each other instead of putting them side by side: the one for the ladder’s final step, the character’s collision with which should lead to the placing of the character above the ladder graphic,4 and the one for the spikes, which would lead to the loss of a life when the character touches them from the sides or jumps onto them. Colliding with its underside does not affect the character, though. Presumably, here the sprite/shape routine just detects an unbreachable obstacle. But how does such a programming error occur? To what class of errors does it belong, and which other classes exist (especially ones found in video games)? What consequences do errors have for the game and the gaming experience? And how can errors in video games become or be made productive?

To Compute Is to Err From a historical perspective, programming errors are as old as computers themselves. When a computer program transforms a universal Turing machine into a specialized Turing machine, errors reveal a dysfunctionality that can only occur in the hardware‐software compound of the (real) computer. Therefore, the “(hardware) design flaws” (cf. Trogemann, Viehoff, and Roch 2000: 5–7) (as problems with the hardware) should be distinguished from the glitches (as problems with the compound) and from programming errors or bugs (as faults within the software). By this differentiation, one of the founding myths of computer errors would be disavowed: the anecdote of the moth that Grace Hopper found on September 9, 1945, trapped between the contacts of a Mark II computer relay. Later that day, Hopper pinned that moth to her lab journal and labeled it the “first actual case of bug being found.” But this was neither a “bug” in biological terms nor a “bug” in the present‐day sense of a programming error. It was a disturbance of the signal flow, a resistor with infinitely high

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resistance, a problem of the hardware functionality, not of the hardware itself, and therefore a typical glitch. Programming errors are different from these, because from the computer’s perspective they are not errors at all. The computer executes erroneous code without any problem; it is our interpretation of the output that defines the operation as inaccurate to our expectations.5 Programming errors have existed since the separation of machines and their program was made. Up to today, programming errors have not become uncommon: “errors belong to the nature of computation” (Trogemann, Viehoff, and Roch 2000: 4). It is assumed that professional programs—programs that have been tested in different stages (with alpha and beta versions) and possibly even been through updates and versioning—only contain two errors in every 1000 lines of code. Normal programs, in contrast, contain twenty-five errors in the same amount of code (cf. Sneed, Baumgartner, and Seidl 2012: 6, 65). The most obvious programming errors are those that discontinue the running program (which appear in the form of a crash and/or the output of an error message): syntax errors. They are the result of a wrong use of the orthography or the syntax of a programming language. In the first case, a “word” (command, function, etc.) is mistyped (see Table 16.1, top); the latter is the case if the syntactic construction rules of the specific language are infringed (e.g., not closing loop constructions, wrongly defining jump locations, and not properly terminated command lines). The next level of programming errors are of a semantic nature. They do not cause the program to stop but they lead to an unexpected behavior or output, for example when a wrong function is called correctly. Most programming languages use the “,” to separate different values within a data set and the “.” as the decimal point. A mix‐up of both will lead to semantically unexpected program behavior (see Table 16.1, middle). The cited case shows the (in)famous programming error that leads to the unwanted “flyby” of the Mariner Venus probe because the programmer confused European (“,”) with American (“.”) decimal point symbols. Similar to these are logical errors, which produce a contradiction between the algorithm and its expected behavior. For example, this can Table 16.1  Error Types with Examples from PASCAL (Top), C (Middle), and BASIC (Bottom) Syntax Error Semantic Error Logical Error

Cf. Hagen 1997: 65.

a

writlen(“*”); instead of writeln(“*”) “DO 3 I=1,3; instead of DO 3 I=1.3”a 10 INPUT 1,2, or 3,A 20 IF A3 THEN GOTO 10

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happen when the program demands the input of a value between 1 and 3 but jumps back to the input routine if the value is less than 4 (see Table 16.1, bottom); in this case, the program will repeat the input routine eternally. Programming errors also can be differentiated by the time at which they show up. Syntax errors occur after the first test run of the program (or during its compiling process). Semantic and logical errors can be found later—in the testing phase or even when the program has already been sold. Runtime errors will show up even later and lead to bigger problems with the code execution. Like logical and semantic errors, they mostly do not lead to a program crash but to unwanted/unexpected program behavior. They only appear when the running program is fed with data that the programmer did not consider: a sensor value beyond the defined range, an input that leads to a miscalculation, a software conflict (e.g., with a peripheral driver), an outdated operating system, or similar problems. This kind of error shows most clearly the failure of every programmer’s goal: the reduction of a real‐world problem into an algorithm, which of course assumes that he/she knows or can find all the main facets of that real‐world problem. Unfortunately, most of these facets only reveal themselves when the program has already hit the “real world”—after its publication. Big efforts have been made to research and teach ways to avoid programming errors. Since programming languages are counted among the formal languages, their behavior can be predicted perfectly. There are programming languages, like Ada, whose effects can be calculated and proven mathematically, programs that help to detect errors with built in proving tools,6 and external tools for monitoring the running program down to a single step line‐by‐line execution of the code (with the so-called debuggers). Even fault tolerance is programmable with operations and routines that trap errors and call specific routines to compensate their effects. The main goal remains in avoiding and removing errors, which requires compliance with programming rules (cf. Grams 1990: 5f.), like commenting the code, using clear structures (to make the code maintainable for others), and regularly checking for new demands of the operating system and its environment. Most programs are not programmed in one day and are not the work of only one programmer. This leads to several problems: If the thoughts and decisions that led to specific routines are not documented properly, the code will become more and more difficult to comprehend as time goes by—even for its programmer. Especially when working with another programmer’s code, this can be an unbreachable obstacle for debugging and maintenance, as every single programmer has his/her own style in designing algorithms and implementing them. Still, these obstacles only constitute one level in the production of programming errors and may be the easiest to avoid.

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Through looking at programming errors, one can see the differences between natural and formal languages very clearly: There are no semantic or other ambiguities. Fuzziness (like in natural language orthography) cannot be interpreted correctly and will either lead to a crash of the running program or an interrupt of the compiling process. Because of this difference between natural and formal languages, logical or semantic errors can show us the machine’s “understanding” of language clearly in the form of results that the programmer did not intend: the unambiguous interpretation of a (from the perspective of the outer world) meaningless instruction/routine once led to the preconception of the computer as a “dumb” machine.7 However, the same could be said of the user at the front end, too, and when it comes to debugging, such evocations (cf. Grams 1990: 9) should be avoided. Rather, it should be understood that programming errors can teach us as much about the thinking of the programmer as about the processing of the computer.

Computer Games with Programming Errors Normally computer games are fault‐tolerant—if the error comes from the gamer. Faulty inputs or breaching of the rules are captured by the code and will lead to a punishment of the player (by losing score or a “life”). Most times, if the player makes a nondefined move, nothing happens: “Games provide room for error” (Krapp 2011: 76). But those are not the errors of the subface which have to be avoided or repaired. Present‐day computer games are patched regularly, meaning debugged, updated for new requirements of the operating systems, and complemented with new features, levels, and so on. This is only possible because modern game computers and consoles are connected to the internet, where the game program can check for updates and download and install them automatically (“in the background”). This has not always been possible. Up to a few years ago, faulty games had to be returned to the reseller or even sent back to the publisher to get an error‐free version in exchange. Sometimes, discs with patches were published, and there even existed how‐to manuals that taught the player how to debug the game on their own. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, even this was an exception. Games with errors remained faulty. This was either because their codes could not be corrected after publication (e.g., because the game had been implemented in hardware ROM chips8) or because nobody detected the error—for example, when the gamer community of a single game was very small and an error was detected too late because the game was hard to play. By the time an error was detected, it could be possible that the distributor had long ceased to exist. Also, most of the low‐priced games of that era neither passed a quality check nor came with any guarantee. The earlier-discussed “Tom Thumb” was one of these games.

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The problem with “Tom Thumb” described here is a good example for a semantic error: the program does not stop because of it; it stays within a code fragment (within a loop) eternally—it shows the halting problem every Turing machine is threatened with (cf. Höltgen 2018: 117–20). The computer itself cannot “recognize” (calculate) that the result of the collision detection routine9 in this specific loop leads to an eternal repetition. The graphical labyrinth of the game semantics is not comprehensible at whole—neither for the computer nor for the programmer—which provoked an error that only could be detected in retrospect. “Tom Thumb” continues an epistemic tradition which Claude Shannon defined in 1952 with his “Theseus” toy, where he came across a very similar error: When he constructed his labyrinth, he detected situations in which the mouse “Theseus” went to the same four positions of the labyrinth over and over. Beneath the surface of this labyrinth (built into its technical subface), four relays detected and steered the direction of the mechanical mouse. In this particular situation, four of these relays directed the mouse into a feedback loop, where the first led it to the second, which led it to the third, which led it to the fourth, which led it back to the first relay. Where the surface shows a mouse that runs in circles, the subface produced a circuit of relays in which inputs got connected to the outputs as in an electric circuit. Shannon detected the error after the labyrinth had already been constructed, by testing it (a runtime error), and named it “singing condition” (Shannon cit. Pias 2003: 474f.). To avoid the singing condition, Shannon added a circuit that checked if the same relays had been passed by the mouse six times. In this case, one of the relays would switch irregularly so that the mouse could escape the loop, purposely breaking the original rule (turn left by 90 degrees when touching a wall). A very similar problem came up during the design of the computer game “Breakout” (1976). The only rule of the game is to hit a ball with a bat to play it against a wall where it destroys one of the wall’s bricks. The rebound angle of the ball when hitting the paddle, the side barriers, or the wall stems from real-world physics: incidence angle equals (centrosymmetric) emergent angle. Instead of using the value of the incidence angle and transforming it mathematically, the emergent angles were programmed into the game manually: the ball rebounds at only seven different angles from the paddle during the first six contacts. It then changes its emergent angle irregularly every six hits. This behavior was built in not only to raise the level of difficulty (by simulating a kind of real-world irregularity) but also to avoid a “singing condition.” A feedback loop like that could happen easily since the game’s graphics are of a very low resolution—the playfield especially uses a very coarse screen raster. To avoid an eternal back‐and‐forth of the ball between the paddle and the wall

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(which would be an easy way to win), the ball changes its angle after every six contacts with the paddle. For software‐based computer games, these kinds of glitches are significant. Computer games create a world with distinct rules which are represented by their code, which in turn is based on specific (syntactic) rules. Thus, the programmer has to fuse two different kinds of rules by asking himself: “How do I express the game rules using the rules of this language?” Programming errors show the programmer that he/she is only considering an ideal world.10 They are evidence of the intrusion of the real world into that ideal sphere of clearly formulated rules. Because of this, programming errors sometimes make ideological, psychological, or other subtle “blind spots” of the programmer’s thinking visible. In “Blue Max,” a plane‐fighter game, the programmer did not consider it possible that anyone would bomb their own home base. Reaching the home base at the end of a level is normally used to refuel the plane and to reload ammunition and bombs for the next level. If the player bombs this home base, he is unable to land and the game code cannot reach the routines of the level ending. This leads to a breakdown of the normally well‐defined playfield graphics which consist of graphically redefined/designed characters. Instead of showing these pseudo-graphics, the screen fills with ASCII signs: letters, numbers, and other signs show up where normally meadows, trees, and rivers would be seen (Figure 16.2, upper left). This “schizoid” conflict of two condition tests ((1) Has the end of the level been reached? (2) Has a building been bombed?) leads to a kind of synaptical displacement activity in which the program suddenly shows its own code base to the player and disenchants the bitmap‐graphic illusion of the game world. Normally, the user is protected from such glimpses of the code—this is why graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were invented to separate the subface of the code from the surface of the icons definitely. The graphic surfaces of modern operating systems stem directly from vintage computer games and are used for the same purposes: [T]he discursive formation of computer games runs parallel to that of the GUI: interaction revolves around perception, hand–eye coordination, and discerning errors. (Krapp 2011: 75)

Computer games and their errors not only show what is (unbeknownly) going on in the programmer’s mind but can also show what is invisibly going on within the computer’s hardware and software as well. Like GUIs that can compensate their user’s input errors, “Blue Max” ignores the wrong input (bombing the hangar) and continues running after the screen has broken

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Figure 16.2 Upper left: the image of “Blue Max” crashes and shows its symbolic subface. Upper right: when the player of Atari’s “Battle Zone” (1983) on the VCS gets hit, the graphics screen crashes impressively. Lower left: the “energy field” graphic, which divides both halves of the screen, consists of the game’s program code that has been made visible by sending it to the Atari VCS’s graphic chip TIA. Lower right: the Atari version of “Bug Hunt” shows design errors as real bugs that can be corrected (defeated) with a light gun. down. But then, instead of the well‐defined graphic elements above which the player’s plane flies from an isometric perspective, there are vertically scrolling data and code fragments. This shows that computer graphics are only an illusion built on symbolic code and data—the landscape is built from tiles which are redefined ASCII characters and which are designed in a way that only gives the impression of an isometric perspective when vertically scrolling down. By “bugging” the system that runs “Blue Max,” we gain insight into the black box: “By showing the syntacti[c]al structures in computers, we see nothing else, but the physical reality of computing: possible functions of the machine” (Trogemann, Viehoff and Roch 2000: 13). This graphic visualization of code had also been used to simulate randomness. In “Yar’s Revenge” (1981), on the Atari VCS an “energy shield” divides the screen vertically. A similar effect appears when the player’s character gets hit. Both random graphic effects are obtained by sending program code to the graphic

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processor and shifting it through its color registers. The tank game “Battle Zone” (1980) for the same gaming platform uses a scrambled graphic screen when the player’s tank is hit. The player views the game from a first-person perspective. Getting hit seems to open the view into the machine processes rather than to block the view to the playfield. Showing the subface becomes a part of the game aesthetics, and both games are pausing their immersion to provide an insight into their technological features. The computer we should have forgotten to play with comes back into our consciousness and inscribes itself into the intradiegetic world of the game.

Gaming (with) Code Like nearly all other 8‐bit computer games of the 1970s and 1980s, “Blue Max” was programmed in assembly language. The original version of the game was published in 1984 for Atari home computers, which contained the popular MOS 6502 microprocessor. This was the microprocessor around which the very first commercially developed microcomputers had been built: Apple I and II, Commodore PET, VIC‐20, C64, and all Atari 8‐bit home computer models (even the Atari VCS uses a functionally reduced version of that CPU: the MOS 6507). For computer games and game computers, the 6502 CPU seemed to be the first choice. This is why adaptations of “Blue Max” for other home computers could be realized in a comparatively short time: The same code could be used with only the actualization of memory addresses and adaptations to the specific I/O circuits (for graphics and sound). This is why the error described earlier appeared in the C64 version of “Blue Max,” too. Computers that were based on the competitors of the 6502 CPU (most likely the Z80 by Zilog) differed fundamentally in architecture and programming language, a difference that becomes clear when comparing the quantity of instructions: 131 legal opcodes were built into the MOS 6502; 585 instructions could be used with the Z80 CPU. This hints at the “orthogonality”11 of the instruction sets of both microprocessors: most opcodes for the 6502 could be used with all addressing modes, and there were only three internal multipurpose registers. In the Z80, on the other hand, twenty-two highly specialized registers and very specific commands for dedicated addressing modes and operations are implemented to allow for the most comfortable programming possible with such a machine‐oriented language. This difference between both CPUs now allows us to consider the differences between the “Blue Max” implementations for Atari/C64 computers and a Z80‐based system like Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum.

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Remembering the obligation of the programmer to write understandable and error‐free code, it becomes apparent that a more orthogonal CPU design tempts the programmer to write more idiosyncratic routines for computer games than an architecture that “bosses around” the assembly language programmer with its specialized instruction set. From my own experience programming software (especially games) for both CPUs, I assume that the number of games for 6502 systems exceeds those for the Z80 because the gaming experience was carried over to the programming itself.12 The “Blue Max” code for the ZX Spectrum (respectively its Z80 CPU) had to be written from scratch—even when the original source code was available for the adaptor. This is why the illegal move of bombing the home hangar in the Atari version could be prevented and does not occur in the ZX Spectrum adaptation of the game. The impact a particular CPU could have on the programming style and therefore on the functionality or dysfunctionality of a computer game can be examined in another popular game which contains a runtime error: “Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress” (1982) was the very first installment of the popular RPG series that was not written in BASIC but completely in assembly language. It was also the first of the “Ultima” games that was not restricted to the Apple II system; adaptations for different 8‐ and 16‐bit systems were published between 1983 and 1985. The original version, though, came with a specific programming error which only showed years after its publication. The game code used illegal opcodes,13 which worked perfectly with the 6502 CPU of the original Apple  II computer, but failed with the upgraded 65C02 CPUs of its successors (Apple IIe/IIc/IIgs). Since the game was outdated by the time these systems hit the market, it was never debugged—like “Tom Thumb.” Only by hacking the modified machine language code into the computer’s RAM (performed by the gamer!) the program could be run on the newer Apple computers.14

Hacking and Cheating When a programming error occurs, the ludic element of the game is interrupted: its narration stops and the immersive effect (namely the gamer’s implicit15 question about the predetermined way through the program) disappears. This disruption of the gaming process through focusing on its “programmatic apriori” results in a complete change of atmosphere, which is comparable with the moments in “Yar’s Revenge” and “Battlezone” when the

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code is visualized. In most cases, this effect is unwanted, but there are some games where such an intrusion of the machine is a (literal) “win” for both the player and the game’s atmosphere. When starting “Space Invaders” (1980) on the Atari VCS, pressing down the reset button causes the player’s cannon to shoot with double frequency. Walking Pac Man (in the same named game on the VCS) through the tunnel on the left or the right side of the labyrinth awards the player a breather from being hunted by the ghosts.16 These effects cannot be classified as programming errors; they are regular violations of the games’ rules—made possible by code fragments that are rarely known by the gamers, the so-called cheats. In most cases, it is unknown if these cheats were put into the game code on purpose (e.g., for testing of the game by the coder) or if they are based on programming errors.17 If the gamer can activate a cheat by pressing specific keys after the game had started, we can assume intent. In “Lode Runner” (1983), for example, the gamer gets an extra life if he/she presses CTRL‐E; by pressing CTRL‐U, the next level of the game can be entered (but scores cannot be saved to the high-score table anymore). Even in “Tom Thumb” the programmer hid a cheat in the code. By moving down the joystick (instead of pressing the fire button), the starting position of the character can be set to the last door he passed (instead of starting the game all over). Most vintage computer games do not start right after they are loaded in the computer’s memory. This makes it possible to alter their code for manipulations with a disassembler program.18 The disassembler makes it possible for the gamer to search for the code parts that regulate gameplay or define the game’s rules. Specific game variables (number of lives, entering points for the next levels, types of weapons, etc.) or gameplay elements (sprite collision detection) can be “cracked” with a disassembler. Back in the days of home computer games, crackers published “trainer versions” with this feature so that the gamer could easily define which elements of the game he/she wanted to alter before starting the game. Sometimes the RAM addresses that contained the gameplay information of specific games had been published in magazines, so gamers could alter them without a disassembler by just a BASIC command. Typing in POKE 13420,0 after loading “Tom Thumb” (and before starting the game with RUN), for example, leads to the deactivation of the sprite collision of the character with hostile elements of the game. The negative side effect of this would be an immortal character that cannot die even in desperate situations like the (glitchy) one described earlier. Cheats represent one of the earliest forms of emancipatory intrusions into microcomputers by their users. By cheating a game, the gamer transgresses the limits of the game system (its hardware and software) in a playful manner—he/she is “playing with a game” (Krapp 2011: 77) on its meta‐level

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instead of playing a game in the classical sense. This way of playing resembles hacking: Hacking undermines the notion of proper or improper application; to a certain extent, it deconstructs ‘misuse’ itself by demonstrating that the notion of technical function, bound as it is to a human intentionality of purpose, makes no sense in the case of computers. (Pias 2017: 88)

Cheats and hacks pave the way for professional engagement with computers since hacking is always a form of programming on a meta‐level. With early microcomputers—for which compilers and decompilers19 were not available—programming/hacking meant learning assembly language and understanding the machine on its lowest layers. Since this practice was mostly based on the “trial and error” (Ashby 1960: 82–4) method, one could say that hacking is a kind of gamification of programming.

Simulation as Endless Gaming with Errors “Tom Thumb” is a game without an end—and this is not a game‐theoretical description. It is the programming error that closes the door. The labyrinth game, describable as a normal‐form game with perfect information,20 becomes a program that does not even meet the functional requirements for games—if it is not possible to win a game, it does not invite the player to play it. Still, such a corrupted game could be described and classified within game theory and even be seen as a playable game: by reevaluating it as a ludic simulation of a failed labyrinth excursion (Pias 2017: 165ff.). As a conclusion to this chapter, I want to suggest such a systematical reevaluation of computer errors, in which “glitches become aestheticized, recuperating mistakes” (Krapp 2011: 76). Alan Turing (1953: 289) pointed to the fact that the only thing computers can do is to simulate processes of the real world within algorithms that can be understood to be “playing as if . . . ,” and this is why all games are simulations and all simulations are games: a word processor plays a letter‐writing game, an email client plays a postal service game, a video player software (in addition to playing videos) plays that it is a video player, and so on. Following this thought, a programming error has to be considered as failed simulation and cracks and cheats as programmed constructivism. I am building my game world as I want it to be. If the rules of the simulation become very complex, any simulation will become a computer game in a narrower sense, namely when altering a parameter of the simulation will lead to unpredictable

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results. The more complex a simulation is, the more the user will like to play with it because it mutates from a game with complete information21 to a Bayesian game22 where not all players are familiar with the game’s rules and, therefore, the result of a game move is only predictable through statistics. The possibilities of playful exploration of the rule system and its emergent outcomes frame the attractivity of such games. A computer game whose rules can be undermined at any point by semantic programming errors comes very close to this definition of a simulation. This kind of game seems to be possible only in theory—or as a part of an art project. “Errors in art and design are considered as something positive or even necessary to achieve certain results and behaviour” (Trogemann, Viehoff and Roch 2000: 4). Artworks dealing with the topic of error show them as a chance for an unexpected outcome of a machine that is defined by total internal determinism.23 The Berlin Computerspielemuseum (Berlin Computer Game Museum) exhibited “ROM CHECK FAIL” (2008) as such a game,24 and there have been other, more popular experiments to portray programming errors as simulation games. “Bug Hunt” (1987) shows this in a very technical manner. The player plays an Atari hardware designer who is trying to debug the last remaining errors from his game circuits when suddenly real bugs (as the manual names them) appear on the board (Figure 16.2, lower right). The player then has to shoot the bugs to be promoted to “true Atari Game Designer” (manual). Considering that the game setting describes the subface of a computer, the bugs seem to stem from its surface. Like the moth that Grace Hopper detected in the Mark II relay, the bugs occupy the signal processing board. Since “Bug Hunt” brings these errors to light (of the cathode ray tube monitor) by flipping the main board upside down, it only seems appropriate that they can be exterminated with light. By the use of a light gun, the player will be promoted a debugger. The last example tries to show one of the most postmodern escalations of gaming with errors. “Little Computer People” (1985) tells the story of the game designers David Crane and Sam Nelson, who detected strange glitches while programming and composing with their home computers. So they decided to visualize the inside of their computers as a house to watch and study its inhabitant—the error (Figure 16.3). In the manual of “Little Computer People,” they claim they were surprised when suddenly a little man showed up and moved into the house. Crane and Nelson allegedly found out that every computer hosts such little computer people who are responsible for computer errors. Everytime a computer owner does not show the appropriate respect to his/her computer people, errors occur. So, Crane and Nelson decided to publish their simulation software “House on the Disc,” so that anybody would be able to meet his or her very own little computer people and tame them. The game “Little Computer People” contains this

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Figure 16.3 “Little Computer People” (C64 version) shows an anthropomorphized computer error (left) and the implementation of the Y2k date error (right). paratext as a kind of sociological field study (with forms and diagrams) that provide the possibility to examine the game character as if it was an individual. Players can interact with it by typing commands into a little shell and have to find out about the language skills of the little computer people. The game has no end—even if the character dies or leaves the house.  “Little Computer People” is a playful rationalization and visualization of computer errors, of interventions by players, and of hardware design flaws. Even in this visualized error the work of Grace Hopper is alluded to—not the actual bug of the Mark II computer, but the fact that “Little Computer People” suffers from one of the most infamous runtime errors of all time. After starting the game, the player is invited to enter the actual time and date to synchronize the time of the game with the time of the gamer (for authenticity). Ironically, the program offers only the last two digits of the year to enter—a common practice in 1985. Later, this error became known as the millennium bug and it was originally introduced by no other than Grace Hopper herself when she invented the programming language COBOL in 1959. In COBOL, a year entered could only consist of two digits to save memory. This oversight was sustained in numerous programs across the next decades—finally, also in “Little Computer People.” Here, it is responsible for locking the simulated bug into a real runtime error, causing it to remain stuck in the twentieth century eternally.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Jana Pauls for her copy editing. 2 The term and concept of the “subface” had been introduced by the cybernetic artist and media theorist Frieder Nake: “Everything that comes from the computer exists twice: as a sensually recognizable surface and as a

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Miscommunications symbolically manipulable subface. The surface is for us, the humans. The subface is for them, the computers. For us everything starts with the senses, for the machines everything starts with code. When somebody wants to program a computer he/she has to learn to think like a machine would think if it were able” (Nake 2010, own transl.; cf. Nake 2006). Philip Bohjahr emphasizes this kind of technological access which I am writing about: “The gamer remains [. . .] the last instance for evaluating if an error occurred or not” (Bojahr 2012: 158). This means that the search for errors can be seen as an alternative way of gaming (the defective game). The touching of sprite/shape graphics can be determined by the machine automatically as a kind of “semantic error” within gameplay. This so-called “sprite collision” produces an interrupt signal which forces the CPU to stop its actual processing and jump to a specific routine where the occasion will be handled. It is the same technical process that is implemented as an “error trap” within CPUs to intercept specific software problems. See Wolfgang Ernst’s chapter in this book. “Event this method does not guarantee perfect results because tests can only show the absence of errors but will not prove the presence of them” (Grams 1990: 4—own transl.). Sherry Turkle (1984) researched the evocation processes of users and programmers of computers in the 1980s when it came to an “intimate confrontation” between the technology and the private users in their homes. There are many faulty games for the Atari VCS gaming console that were never debugged (cf. 2600 Connection O.J., Höltgen 2012 and 2019). The collision of pixels shows one specific connection between the surface and the subface of the computer. The graphical surface of a computer game is not only the semantic frame for the gameplay but also a necessity for the program’s progress. The set bit (pixel) is initially stored in the screen RAM but—by the rules of this hardware compound—there it becomes a signal that is sent to the monitor where it appears as a glowing dot/pixel. Checking the screen RAM’s condition of this bit is nothing different than checking if the pixel is shown at a specific area of the screen—or not. Nake defines programming as “prescinding, parameterising, recursive thinking” (Nake 2010). “Orthogonality means that features can be used in any combination, the combinations all make sense, and the meaning of a given feature is ­consistent, regardless of the other features with which it is combined” (Scott 2008: 242). Instructions for game programming are hard to find within contemporary assembly language manuals for the Z80, while the 6502 invited many authors (like Zaks 1983) to publish books on computer game programming. This seems to prove my thesis. The 6502 and the Z80 CPU contain such illegal (or better named: undocumented) opcodes. They are the result of the emergent (6502) or hidden (Z80) structure of the micro program. With the Z80, most of these undocumented opcodes perform successful operations because they are consequences of

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the prefix technology that was introduced with this microprocessor to raise the number of possible instructions (see: http://www.z80.info/decoding. htm). With the 6502 in contrast, most of the rb. 120 illegal opcodes (see: http:​//www​.oxyr​on.de​/html​/opco​des02​.html​—scro​ll down for the “illegal Opcodes” section) lead to a breakdown of the system or do not do anything (like the NOP instruction). For further information, see Young (2003). “There is a Bug in the old version of Ultima (non‐remake) where it becomes impossible to hit a target ship in space if you are using an Apple IIe, IIc or IIgs (anything beyond a II or II+).” Details about this error can be found in Percival (1996) and compgroups.net (2005). Claus Pias argues a switch in perspective between the player and the game. It is the player who is being played by the game (e.g., pressing a button on time to gain an asset) (cf. Pias 2017: 121). This change of the perspective resembles Wayne C. Booth’s theory of the “implied author” where the reader of a text constructs an image of the author who communicates to the reader through the text. The arcade version of “Pac Man” contains a secret place where the Pac Man character is safe from the ghosts that h(a)unt him. Reaching this point from a specific direction leads to the effect that the ghosts cannot see Pac Man (which means that actually he becomes a ghost, too). Such cheats not only are put into code by programmers purposely but also can be the result of programming errors. In early 2018, an artificial intelligent (reinforced learning) agent played vintage Atari games and learned to use such errors for cheating the game rules. (Cf. Chrabaszcz, Loshchilov, and Hutter 2018.) Disassemblers are tools to retranslate an executable binary file into an assembly language code. The disassembler often structures this code and recognizes the used memory locations as variables. With this tool, not only faulty programs can be repaired even after they have been published but copy protections could also be bypassed or removed. A compiler translates high‐level programming languages into executable machine code. A decompiler does the same vice versa. Like a disassembler, a decompiler adds different features to this process so that the resulting code can be read and understood by humans more easily. A game offers perfect information if all players have full information about all previous moves of any other players—back to the initial move. The information status of a game is called complete if all players are aware of the rules, payoffs, and participants of that game. Bayesian Games (named after the eighteenth-century mathematician Thomas Bayes, who introduced the described theorem) provide only imperfect information, so that the players have to base their moves and strategies on statistical information. In music the genres “Glitch Art,” “Noise,” and “Clicks and Cuts” are using errors as sounds. https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=4FG​9wH08​Zfc (November 21, 2018).

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Cited Games Atari (1987), Bug Hunt. Atari; Atari. System: Atari‐8‐Bit‐Systeme. Bristow, Steve; Bushnell, Nolan (1976), Breakout. Atari; Atari. System: Arcade et al. Crane, David and Gold, Rich (1985), Little Computer People. Activision; Activision. System: Amiga, Apple II, Commodore 64 et al. Garriott, Richard (1982), Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress. Garriott, Richard; Sierra On‐Line, Origin Systems. System: PC, Mac, Commodore 64 et al. Gertz, Udo (1986), Tom Thumb. Kingsoft; Anirog. System: Commodore 16. Iwatani, Tōru (1980), Pac‐Man. Namco; Midway, Namco. System: Arcade et al. Jaeger, Robert (1984), Montezuma’s Revenge. Utopia Software; Parker Brothers. System: Atari‐8‐Bit‐Systeme, Commodore 64, Sega Master System et al. Mechner, Jordan (1989), Prince of Persia. Brøderbund; Brøderbund, Konami, Riverhill‐soft, Ubisoft. System: Apple II, Amiga, Sega Master System et al. Nishikado, Tomohiro (1978), Space Invaders. Taito; Taito, Midway. System: Arcade et al. Polin, Bob (1983), Blue Max. Synapse Software; Synapse Software, U.S. Gold. System: Atari‐8‐Bit‐Systeme, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum. Rotberg, Ed (1980), Battlezone. Atari; Atari. System: Arcade, Atari 2600. Smith, Douglas E. (1983), Lode Runner. Smith, Douglas E.; Ariolasoft, Brøderbund. System: Commodore 64, PC, Mac et al. Warshaw, Howard Scott (1981), Yar’s Revenge. Atari; Atari. System: Atari 2600, Nintendo Game Boy Color, Nintendo Game Boy Advance. Woods, Jarrad (2008): ROM CHECK FAIL. Jarrad Woods; Jarrad Woods. System: Browser, PC, Linux.

References Ashby, W. Ross (1960), Design for a Brain: The Origin of Adaptive Behavior, Dordrecht: Springer‐Science+Business Media. Bojahr, P. (2012), “Störungen des Computerspiels,” in Games Coop (ed.), Theorien des Computerspiels zur Einführung¸ 147–78, Hamburg: Junius Verlag. Chrabaszcz, P., I. Loshchilov, and F. Hutter (2018), “Back to Basics: Benchmarking Canonical Evolution Strategies for Playing Atari,” Neural and Evolutionary Computing. arXiv:1802.08842, https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08842 (November 21, 2018). Compgroups.net (2005), “Ultima 2 Strength Increase Bug,” http:​//com​pgrou​ ps.ne​t/com​p.sys​.appl​e2/ul​tima‐​2‐str​ength​‐incr​ease‐​bug/1​12384​0 (November 21, 2018).

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Ernst, W. (2012), Chronopoetik. Zeitweisen und Zeitgaben technischer Medien, Berlin: Kadmos. Grams, T. (1990), Denkfallen und Programmierfehler, Berlin u. a.: Springer. Hagen, W. (1997), “Der Stil der Sourcen. Anmerkungen zur Theorie und Ges‐chichte der Programmiersprachen,” in W. Coy, G. C. Tholen, and M. Warnke (eds.), Hyperkult. Geschichte, Theorie und Kontext digitaler Medien, 33–68, Basel: Stroemfeld Verlag. Höltgen, S. (2012), Pongs’n’Chips. http:​//www​.simu​la‐ti​onsra​um.de​/blog​/2012​ /03/1​8/pon​gsnch​ips/ (November 21, 2018). Höltgen, S. (2018), “End/Zeit/Ge/Schichten des Computers. Von den Apokalypsen des Computers und der Unendlichkeit des Rechnens,” in G. Friesinger, T. Ballhausen, J. Schoßböcke (eds.), Endzeit. Das Apokalyptische zwischen Politik, Prognose & Technologie, 103–22, Wien: monochrome. Höltgen, S. (2019), Pong Studies: A Comparative Philological Analysis of Tennis Computer Game Adaptations (In preparation). Krapp, P. (2011), Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture (Electronic Mediations), Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Li, F., H. Williams, and M. Bogle (1999), “The ‘Millennium Bug’‐ Its Origin, Potential Impact and Possible Solutions,” International Journal of Information Management 19: 3–15. Nake, F. (2006), “‘Das doppelte Bild’. Bildwelten des Wissens,” Kunsthistori‐sches Jahrbuch für Bildkritik 3 (2): 40–50. Percival, M. (1996), Original Ultima Space Ace Patch. https​://gr​oups.​googl​e.com​ /fo‐r​um/?h​l=en#​!msg/​comp.​sys.a​pple2/rEwRhM5hsHI/Z7knStMvSvUJ (November 21, 2018). Pias, C., ed. (2003), “Cybernetics—Kybernetik 1,” in The Macy‐Conferences 1946–1953: Transactions / Protokolle, Zürich: diaphanes. Pias, C. (2017), Computer Game Worlds, Zürich and Berlin: diaphanes. Scott, Michael L. (2008), Programming Language Pragmatics, 2nd ed., Amsterdam et al.: Elsevier. Sneed, H. M., M. Baumgartner, and R. Seidl (2012), Der Systemtest. Von den Anforderungen zum Qualitätsnachweis. 3. Auflage, München: Hanser. Trogemann, G., J. Viehoff, and A. Roch (2000), “Interfaces and Errors,” in H. Diebner, T. Druckrey, and P. Weibel (eds.), Sciences of the Interface, Proceedings of the International Symposium at the Center for Art and Media— Karlsruhe, Genista, Tübingen, 2001, 96–110. Turing, A. (1953), “Digital Computers Applied to Games,” in B. V. Bowden (ed.), Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines, 289–310, London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons. Turkle, S. (1984), The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, New York: Simon & Schuster. Young, S. (2003), The Undocumented Z80 Documented, Version 0.91. http:​//www​ .z80.​info/​zip/z​80‐do​cumen​ted.p​df (November 21, 2018). Zaks, R. (1983), 6502 Games, Boston: Sybex.

17

We Interrupt This Program On the Cultural Techniques of “Technical Difficulties” Jörgen Rahm‐Skågeby

Introduction Not only is noise pervasive in a vague way, it is unavoidable. The optimization of receivers’ and signalers’ behavior does not result in escape from the consequences of noise. (Wiley 2015) A theory of cultural techniques that, like Serres’s, was to posit the phatic function as its point of departure would also be a history and theory of interruption, disturbance, deviation. (Siegert 2008: 35) This chapter examines interruptions to flows of mediation. More specifically, it will seek to examine interruptions as cultural techniques (Siegert 2015), aiming to elucidate their respective ontic operations, cultural functions, and revelations of opportunities for agency. The different interruption techniques studied in this chapter include freezes, static, and requisitions. Naturally, this is only an initial selection, and represents by no means a systematic range of examples. The chapter will trace these techniques across media forms (including TV broadcasts, home computer hacking, and video game streaming). The chapter is based on the fundamental assumption that breakdowns are capable of revealing previously ubiquitous and/or obscured aspects of mediation (James 1991; Star 1999) or that they can be productive and innovative sources for communication in their own right (Barker, this volume; Kelly 2009; Krapp, this volume). As Mako Hill states: “Errors are underappreciated and underutilized in their ability to reveal technology around us” (2011: 28). Paraphrasing Adorno (1983: 232), we could even

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say that “Interruptions are the medium in which the noncommunicable is communicated.” In summary, the chapter will reflect on what interruptions to media flows, and the way these are handled can tell us about mediated communication, by tracing them across historical and contemporary media forms. It must be emphasized straight away that there might very well be reason to distinguish between different conceptualizations of the phenomenon in question. Noise, error, glitch, disruption, interruption, jitter, and jam (just to mention some of the more common concepts) all have different connotations. As such, asking what criteria that are offered to distinguish one conception from other types could very well be a source of more nuanced insights. While this chapter will mainly orientate around the notion of interruption, it will also initially include other conceptions. The reason for this is firstly that there is an overlap in the use of concepts in the literature. Delimiting notions beforehand might prematurely exclude potential analytical insights. Secondly, the aim of the chapter is not primarily to create a theoretical typology, but to propose a tentative empirical variantology, and then theorize the included examples using a breadth of potential concepts. The chapter is structured as follows: first, a theoretical background of noise, interruption, and breakdown is provided. Next, the concept of cultural techniques is introduced, followed by an analysis combining empirical examples, both historical and contemporary, with exploration supported by the theoretical framework. The chapter ends with a summarizing conclusion, broadly arguing that by taking the interruption as a starting point, and then looking for delineations engendered in/by its many different forms, we see how separations exist in symbiosis and gray zones, and how they can also switch positions in terms of function and meaning.

Interruption in Theory Seeing how this chapter will focus on technical difficulties and interruptions to mediated flows, it seems only appropriate to start from the very beginning— in the “mother of all [communication] models” (Hollnagel and Woods 2005: 11) (Figure 17.1). The Shannon‐Weaver model of communication (1949) presents a perspective on interruption (or noise) as an unwanted modification of a signal, meaning that “the received signal is not necessarily the same as that sent out by the transmitter” (65). As such, noise brings two consequences. On the one hand, and most intuitively, an interrupted or distorted signal would mean that information is lost. On the other hand, it paradoxically also

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Figure 17.1  Shannon(‐Weaver) mathematical model of communication. expands the variety of information that a specific communication system can convey. From a social science perspective, this expanded range of potential information is usually treated as (more) nonmeaningful disturbance without any sense or vital significance. For information theory, however, noise provides a certain “richness” and “informational variation” from where a signal can be detected: It is generally true that when there is noise, the received signal exhibits greater information—or better, the received signal is selected out of a more varied set than is the transmitted signal. (Shannon and Weaver 1949: 19)

Put simply, noise also adds information (from the position either as an external source or as an internal ingredient, blended in the message itself). From this theoretical paradox, this chapter will try to understand what cultural meaning can be attributed to various forms of noise and interruption. At this point, it should be acknowledged that several scholars have already addressed glitch, noise, error, and interruption, from different media theoretical viewpoints. Bødker (2017) emphasizes how communication breakdowns can be “seen as an invitation to consult the senses and any felt aspects of the event that stand out in the form of embodied affect” (281). Taking a phenomenological, affect‐oriented, and personal approach, he proposes the use of “meditations” as moments both produced by and reflecting on interruption. Here interruption entails both interruptions of continuous mediated flows and interruptions to affective states. In a similar way, James (1991) highlights how most of us have no idea of what is going on behind the shiny surfaces and uninterrupted flows of media machines, and hence how many practices are entirely dependent on the capacities of said media technologies. When he states, “it is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are,” he offers a view, similar to Bødker’s, where interruption (in this case of a TV broadcast)

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leaves people stumped, and as such offers us moments for reflection on what this interruption to an otherwise constant flow can mean. For Star and Haraway, interruption of communication is arguably more infrastructural and political. Star (1999) emphasizes how a ubiquitous and, many times, indiscernible (and working) infrastructure of information management and communication becomes visible first when it breaks down. Like for James and Bødker, interruption becomes a moment of revelation. The difference lies in scale, as Star turns her attention toward how larger systems of systems are subtending sociocultural practices, cultures, and norms. The impact that infrastructural design decisions have on groups of people, specifically in terms of social injustices, comes to the fore. Relating more to art, Ballard (2011), Barker (2011), and Krapp (2011) all take a starting point in the aesthetic potentials of errors. Ballard, who makes sophisticated analytical use of Shannon and Weaver’s model (and presents a much more elaborate account of the cultural‐analytical potential of this model than is done in this chapter), argues that noise is a too-often-overlooked material precondition for the transmission of information. While the specific meaning of noise (at least in art) is open to experience and interpretation, Ballard shows how the position that noise holds in contemporary culture can open up to many critical comments about, for example, power, justice, and truth. Barker further illustrates how the actualizations of errors are “processes that shake the system free of its precise or pre‐programmed functioning” (57), while at the same time also depending on these very preconditions for their actualization. That is, the actualization potential of errors is contingent on the existence of something (a system, a standard, a norm) to interrupt, to deviate from, or to perform an error within. Interestingly, the conceptual tables could be turned here. Krapp (2011) raises the question of what is interruptor (someone/something who interrupts) and what is interrupted: A steady, uninterrupted, monotonous sound carries little or no information beyond the fact that there is a source emitting a sine wave, but if it is interrupted, that already allows for encoded messages according to the scheme, for instance, of Morse code. (xii)

The question is, then, is interruption operating in a steady flow of noise or in a steady flow of signal? From a communication perspective, the interruption commonly connotes something that causes a stoppage or break in the continuity of signal (e.g., an interruption of a speech act, or a commercial break in the flow of television programming1). But, as Krapp demonstrates, the opposite could be equally true. Noise is constant and inevitable; signal is disruptive and anomalous. Thus, depending on the

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current state of transmission, or rather, the emergent patterns of conduction, both signal and noise can be either negation or generation (or somewhere in‐between). As Vallee states, speaking instead with the terms contiguity and interval: “Mediation is contiguous, but it is also interrupted. It oscillates between coming together and coming apart” (2017: 137). There is, thus, a symbiotic relation between noise and signal in mediation. Media (or cultural techniques), as that which makes distinctions between ontological positions, have been theorized in Serresian terms of parasitism (Cole Young 2015; Siegert 2013), but considering Krapp’s and Vallee’s interjections, what could, in this case, be gained from reading it as a relation of commensalism, or even mutualism? Parasitism would imply that cultural techniques (as the parasites) benefit from the association, while the host (the relation between sense and nonsense) is harmed (this interpretation comes across as less intuitive), or that cultural techniques act as vectors transmitting a disorder of some kind to the relation it then engenders (this interpretation is perhaps more valid). However, the Serresian parasite also changes to operate as an integral part of the system, or a condition of possibility: “In this way the parasite attests from within order the primacy of disorder; it produces by way of disorder a more complex order” (Harari and Bell 1982: xxvii). As such, the parasitic relation seems to have much analytical potential when it comes to analyses of, say, media technologies as parts of bigger ecological or geological systems. At the same time, without the engendering of distinctions (performed by cultural techniques and, later, media technologies), the difference between noise and signal would simply go undetected—if integral to the system, and if the parasite is not an “unhappy addition that it would be best to expel” (Harari and Bell 1982: xxvi), is it in its “evolved form” a parasitical relation as such? Perhaps, it is more a question of exactly what noise that is being ignored and what signal that is being detected (or rather, with what fidelity and sensitivity cultural techniques are implemented in specific media technologies). As Winthrop‐Young states: “The communication/noise boundary [. . .] depends on the ways in which various media distinguish or filter out order from disorder” (2014: 386). This brief, but diverse, survey of “interruption in theory” has shown how moments of interruptions can be tied to ethical, political, aesthetical, techno‐cultural, relational, interactional, ontological, and phenomenological exposures of different kinds. It is clear that the interruption of communication is very productive in theoretical terms, but it is also a very evasive concept, which raises questions about the relation between cultural technique, medium, noise, and signal. Echoing the introduction, this chapter seeks to reflect on what interruptions to media flows, and the way these are handled can tell us

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about mediated communication, by tracing them across historical and contemporary media forms. More practically, it aims to develop a tentative variantology of “technical difficulties” discussing their ontic operations, cultural function, and potential revelations of opportunities for agency.

The Cultural Techniques of “Technical Difficulties”: Some Examples While the preceding theory section has focused on conceptualizations of interruption (and related concepts), this chapter also wants to introduce a “meta‐theoretical” approach before providing some empirical examples, namely that of cultural techniques. Winthrop‐Young (2013) defines cultural techniques as the “basic operations and differentiations that give rise to an array of conceptual and ontological entities which are said to constitute culture” (5). Providing more detail, Siegert (2015) elaborates on cultural techniques and suggests that they are characterized by five theoretical qualities: 1. Cultural techniques are conceived of as operative chains that precede the media‐theoretical concepts they generate. 2. Cultural techniques are agential, but also act differently in (relation to) different cultures. 3. Cultural techniques are oscillating between material and symbolic operations. 4. As such, cultural techniques produce (nonanthropocentric) distinctions through ontic operations (e.g., between real/virtual, inside/outside, human/animal, man/machine). 5. As epistemic interfaces between the real and the symbolic, cultural techniques have the capacity to both stabilize and destabilize culture. As such, cultural techniques become a way to bridge cultural history and media history, by acknowledging the “originary technicity” of culture and bodies. A focus on concrete practices and symbolic operations becomes a way to explain the work performed by media. Siegert (2008) notes that such practices and symbolic operations include many ways of making delineations—be they religious, scientific, pedagogical, political administrative, or biological—to exemplify. Distinctions are inherent to culture, and these distinctions are processed by media technologies in different ways. As mentioned, media have been theorized as “the parasitic

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third: neither sense nor non‐sense, but that which engenders the distinctions and operations required for media to do their communicative and ordering work” (Cole Young 2015). As such, cultural techniques are performative in the epistemological and aesthetic judgment of whether something is part of sense or nonsense (or whatever dichotomy is in focus). Like Siegert says: “communication is not primarily information exchange, appeal, or expression but an act that creates order by introducing distinctions, and this is precisely what turns means of communication into culture techniques” (2008: 35). Leaning on the framework of cultural techniques, this chapter will now move on and ask the question: What kinds of delineations are actualized in different interruption techniques? Specifically, the chapter examines the freeze, static, and the requisition.

The Freeze The freeze‐frame [. . .] leads in two directions, one that relates primarily to narrative and the other that relates to the materiality of the film. (Mulvey 2006) In this prefatory quote, Mulvey points to the fundamental delineation between narrative and medium specificity engendered by the freeze. On the one hand, the plot halts (and gives rise to new delineations, see further). On the other hand, the freeze-frame is, in itself, a reminder of the specific capacities and underpinning mechanics, of the mediating technology. So, taking a closer look at the narrative direction first, there are, of course, lots of tropes in cinematic or televised storytelling making use of the freezeframe, for example the record scratch—freeze-frame—voice‐over. This cliché exists in various combinations. In one form, it introduces a character to a narrative (often being a quandary situation), dubs a vinyl record scratch (in itself a reference to a “party is over” trope) on top of it, freezes the picture in, or just before, a particularly difficult moment, and then proceeds with a voice‐over stating something along the lines of “Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. It all started . . . .” In this type of trope, the narrative is then backtracked, creating a delineation (and continuity) between past and future. In one of its other, more recent, forms, the freeze-frame is usually not interrupted by a vinyl record scratch. It occurs, however, again in, or just before, a character is facing a particularly problematic moment. The difference is that the freeze-frame then shifts to black and white, with a (deep male) voice‐over stating, “It was at this moment

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s/he knew s/he f**cked up.” In this form, the freeze stops progress in an attempt to prolong the moment of anticipation, before the actual disaster is revealed. In many ways, this is opposite to how freeze-frames are sometimes used to end a narrative (see, for example, Three Days of the Condor [Pollack 1975], Thelma and Louise [Scott 1991], Gallipoli [Weir 1981], and Funny Games [Haneke 1997]). While there could, naturally, be interpretative differences between different freeze-frame endings, they also have in common that they potentially leave users with a “loss of anticipation” or “loss of closure” (and perhaps frustration) instead.2 Here the freeze‐frame actualizes an open‐ended ambiguity, rather than a definite resolution or certainty about the imminent course of action (although, in some cases, it is arguably just a postponement of probable death). Thus, in these narratively oriented cases, further delineations rely partly on the type of storyline that has preceded the freeze. The freeze ending actualizes distinctions between anticipation and frustration, confidence and insecurity, past and future, finite and infinite, arrival and departure.3 Following the more material direction in Mulvey’s quote, the freeze becomes a reminder of the film reel, and the flow of (still) images creating the illusion of movement and progression. As such, the freeze in film is paradoxical—it is a narrative pause, but also a continuous machinic flow of repeated identical frames. All the examples earlier relate to deliberate freeze‐frames, used as cinematic cultural techniques, but do the delineations apply to nondeliberate freezes as well? Well, taking the freeze during a live broadcast as an example, there is certainly the same delineations between pause and progress. That is, while the picture is frozen, the event (say, football match, concert, or computer game) factually continues elsewhere. More so perhaps, it also actualizes the delineation between narrative and medium specificity. That is, for viewers, focus is immediately turned from narrative toward the mediating technology—by reaching for remotes, restarting apps, checking connections (wireless or wired), or even banging stuff. Further, materiality is present as a solution to problems with recurring freezes, as increasing technological capacities is often put forward as an immediate remedy to them (e.g., during video calls, gaming, or streaming)—such as more internal memory or a faster internet connection. However, depending on the genre of mediation (and underpinning media technology), other conceptualizations of the delineations are arguably valid, for example, process and idleness, or software execution and hardware copy. One example is how, in relation to older home computers, the “freezer” function became a sought‐after feature in peripheral machinery. The pressing

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of the “freeze button” would arrest execution of code, but keep the internal memory intact, allowing for a “dump” of its contents or an alteration of execution parameters. Thus, it creates a temporary stasis where code can take material form (either as code on a storage medium, such as a tape or disk, or as a screen dump/hardcopy on paper).

Static Static was the first image experience when installing a new analog television set at home, and it was usually the last experience when the channel or the station finished its daily program, helping thousands of people sleep on the sofa. (Treske 2015: 14) As Treske points out, in digital culture, static is perhaps rarer and rarer. Again, this has much to do with medium specificity, and in parallel, static has many colloquial appellations. In 1936, in the UK, BBC introduced the 405‐line television system—a positive video modulation system, where interference would manifest itself as bright white spots on the screen. As such, UK viewers would come to refer to static noise as “snow.” In other countries, likely using negative video modulation systems, interference was discernable as black spots on a white background—causing visual metaphors referring instead to (swarms of) ants, bugs, bees, or fleas. Colloquialisms included myrornas krig (Swedish), hangyák háborúja (Hungarian), and semut bertengkar (Indonesian), all translating into “war of the ants.” Other languages expressed it in more general terms, such as ekran karıncalanması (Turkish), meaning “screen seizure.” To backtrack, on analog TV sets, static noise is displayed when there is no detectable signal for the antenna receiver, or when there is no decodable electromagnetic pattern on a video tape. Instead, the antenna picks up atmospheric noise, cosmic microwave background radiation, and noise caused by external or internal electronic devices and components. Perhaps as a response to the lack of static as a medium‐specific expression, LZX Industries, a company designing creative video instruments, recently presented the War of the Ants noise generator.4 This apparatus is based on avalanche noise, which is a form of noise that emerges when the so-called avalanche breakdown occurs. This is an electronic phenomenon in semiconductors or diodes, where electrons rapidly gain momentum, resulting in a very irregular or jagged current flow, generating a certain noise (which can then be amplified) (Figure 17.2).

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Figure 17.2  The War of the Ants module in action (picture with permission by LZX Industries). Static, as a “noise floor”5 (Grundrauschen), is in the first case a lack of signal (and reception of something cosmic), and in the second case it is recreated as an emulated desired signal (now emanating from within the medium itself). In both cases, there is a delineation generated between the static of space and deliberate intelligence. This is perhaps even more highlighted if taking the search for extraterrestrial life as a case. When monitoring the ubiquitous noise of the universe, any distinguished intergalactic signal becomes a potential signifier of culture. At the same time, the static on the analog TV screen (or the avalanche noise of the War of the Ants unit) is a microcosmic signifier of cosmos—a medium‐specific condensation of something vast and ancient. This idea has also triggered spiritual imaginaries, in the shape of, for example, ghost hunters and after-death communication studies.6 That is, for some mystics and human mediums, background noise and static has been (and continues to be) a source for electronic voice phenomena—a layer of reality, accessible through certain media technologies, where signs of (after) life could (ideally) be expressed. However, in reverse, static can also be a cultural sign of certain death. The snowy screen of death (or, generally speaking, a noise floor received by any medium) is a common formula, or trope, where the sudden absence of a signal (in exchange of static) implies that not only is the transmitting machinery idle, but the human operator of the signal has also (likely) been terminated.7 The “eerie” atmosphere of analog static has also been effectively used by the web original series L O C A L 5 8. This series of videos effectively illustrate how interruptions (including also, for example, emergency alerts

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and subliminal messaging), as mediated by specific technologies, seem to incite a certain supernatural imaginary among viewers.8 Static‐generating machines can also be used as a form of social delineator—as a cultural technique blocking, and cancelling out unwanted noise. Looking at white noise machines, nature sound recordings, noise‐cancelling headphones, and sound‐filtering apps and devices, Hagood (2019) argues that “media function as a controllable interface between subject and environment—and as an interface between a society’s ideological imperatives and the personal poetics of its citizens’ self‐making, self‐defense, and self‐control” (4). Focusing on affective states, Hagood seeks to go beyond pure transmission of effective meaning, and instead claims that these media technologies (which he terms “orphic” media9), while allowing for subjective control, may also suppress sonic as well as social difference. The delineation actualized by such media devices is one between oneself as an introspective, self‐absorbed, and corporeal being,10 and oneself as an extrospective, social, and convivial being in the world. On the one hand, they provide their users with a certain autonomy to stay unaffected in a cognitively and ideologically overwhelming existence. On the other hand, Hagood contends, they may reduce tolerance and bolster unjust and prejudiced views of the external world. While this has been both a brief and diverse exposé of static and its medium specificities and cultural expressions, all examples point to cultural techniques which engenders distinctions between, among other things, monitored‐for signal and noise floor; static of space and intelligence; life and death; cosmos and microcosm. And again, noise and signal, display a symbiosis of meanings, changing significance depending on the cultural technique applied.

Requisitions By requisitions, this chapter refers to situations where an interruption comes in the form of an external occupation, or even a hijack, of an infrastructure, a process, or a signal. Examples include the emergency broadcast, the newsflash (“we interrupt this program to bring you . . .”), the technical difficulty intermission, the remote access, radio silence, and the systems programming “interrupt” function. Emergency broadcast system setups vary nationally, but they commonly include a requisition of current media infrastructure in the interest of the state (and its citizens). Radio, being a resilient media technology, is often a primary medium. Technically, emergency broadcasts commonly depend on specific

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receivers set to certain frequencies or channels, that are then programmed to override ordinary broadcasts. Once the emergency notification is complete, programming returns to normal. In this case, interruption arguably becomes a “parasitic fourth” (attaching itself to an already-mediating channel), but again, it can be questioned whether a parasitic (rather than commensalist or mutualist) relation is the best metaphor. Perhaps not surprisingly, the emergency broadcast, as a cultural interruption technique, primarily actualizes a delineation between normalcy and emergency. A variation on the theme of emergency broadcasts is the newsflash, often stating, “we interrupt this program to bring you . . . .” This is perhaps more prominent as a pop‐cultural trope than a real‐life phenomenon (although it does happen—most commonly in relation to celebrity deaths or terrorist attacks). The newsflash interruption separates between the unremarkable and the truly sensational, drawing and directing attention to a specific media event. As an opposite, the “we are experiencing technical difficulties” interruption seeks to draw attention away from some kind of intermezzo— while still maintaining a signal. Today, the practice is uncommon in TV broadcasting, but has possibly increased in the context of individual live streaming. Instead of demarcating the unremarkable and the sensational, this interruption delineates between the exposed and the obscured. For some reason, that which was showing is suddenly no longer appropriate for viewer disclosure, and needs to be veiled. Another form of requisition is the imposing of radio/electronic silence.11 Arguably, there are two forms that need to be distinguished: silence in radio and silence from radio. In the first case, we may turn to Crisell, who states: “Though it is natural for us to speak of radio as a sound medium we should remember that the absence of sound can also be heard. It is therefore important to consider silence as a form of signification. It has both negative and positive functions which seem to be indexical” (1994: 52). In its negative function, it produces “dead air,” which can, if sustained for too long, engender a sense of dysfunction in the mediation (a sonic equivalent of the “snowy screen of death”). In its positive variant, it can signify a meaningful silence, capable of conveying physical actions, pathos, irony, and humor, for example. While silence in radio (positive or negative) is not a requisition, as defined in this chapter, it required some elaboration to distinguish it from the other form. Silence from radio, on the other hand, is a form of structural requisition of the absence of signal. This is primarily done for reasons of security and safety (such as increased capacity for relaying and monitoring faint distress signals or (military) operations security (OPSEC)12). The rationale of protecting oneself by keeping silent can be related to how there are now social movements, public discourses, and individual projects emphasizing the need

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to go off‐the‐grid, encrypt communication, or to refrain from using social media entirely. In a way, recent concepts, such as surveillance capitalism (Zhuboff 2015), revive the notion of radio silence (as well as encryption and OPSEC), but now more as a form of grassroots resistance against ubiquitous datafication, tracking, and aggregation.13 Finally, a form of interruption that relates to both the freeze and the requisition is, what is known in systems programming simply as, an interrupt. An interrupt is a hardware or software feature where some form of external signal (a software instruction or an electronic interruption request) alerts the operating system (and processing units) to momentarily “pause” its current execution in order to perform another, more urgent, task. When the task is completed, the paused processing continues from the point of interruption. As such, it “freezes” a certain flow of processing in favor of a higher prioritized one, but it could also be viewed as a requisition of resources during a particularly critical moment. Either way, in its material form, interruptions of processing are an inherent and regular condition of computation, necessary for continuous operation.

Conclusion Calling sound “noise” is an act of judgement with sonic, social and aesthetical ramifications. In making such a differentiation, one acts to classify certain sounds and their makers as undesirable. (Ward 2019: 8) Whether something is noise or message depends on whether the observer is located on the same level as the communication system (e.g., as a receiver) or on a higher level, as an observer of the entire system. [. . .] If exclusion and inclusion, parasite and host, are no more than states of an oscillating system or a cybernetic feedback loop, then it becomes necessary once more to inquire into those cultural techniques that, as media, process distinctions. (Siegert 2008: 43) This chapter has looked at three variants of interruptions—the freeze, the static, and the requisition. All of these relate to a distinction between signal and noise, but also to many other delineations (such as between arrival and departure, software and hardware, cosmos and microcosm, agency and incapacity). The interrupt as a cultural technique points us to ethico‐onto‐epistemological questions of both media materiality and cultural

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practices. The disparate examples, sprawling lines of analytical inquiry, and conceptual connections construed in this chapter may come across as, more or less, accidental. Granted, they are certainly not systematically complete or perfectly arranged as theoretical foundation. They are, however, a tentative attempt at discovering connections and overlaps in the ontic separations they produce. Taking the interruption as a starting point, and then looking for the delineations engendered in some of its many different forms, we see how separations also exist in symbiosis and gray zones, and how they can switch positions in terms of function and meaning. As such, future work includes two immediate directions. First, to theorize the potential difference between various concepts used to address communication interruption, such as noise, glitch, error, jitter, and jam. Secondly, to continue to examine more concrete examples of specific interruption techniques and the distinctions and delineations they produce.

Notes 1 See, for example, Geiger and Reeves (1993). 2 Naturally, there are freeze-frame endings connoting a happier culmination (e.g., The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Death Proof). 3 Works by, for example, Bill Morrison, Chris Marker, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Raymond Bellour, and Sean Cubitt provide examples of freezeframe analyses that go well beyond this chapter. 4 https​://lz​xindu​strie​s.net​/prod​ucts/​war‐o​f‐the​‐ants​ 5 Put simply, noise floor is a measure of all (unwanted) noise sources within a certain measurement system. 6 See, for example, the After Death Communication Research Foundation (https://www.adcrf.org/). 7 See, for example, Aliens. 8 For more detail on L O C A L 5 8, a video essay and analysis has been uploaded to YouTube by Nexpo (http​s://w​ww.yo​utube​.com/​watch​?v=u2​‐QGh0​DkMI)​. 9 Based on the Greek myth of how Orpheus saved the Argonauts by playing his lyre and singing, drowning out the enticing calls from the Sirens, who would otherwise have lured the seamen and the ship into capsizing. 10 Chen (1998), studying the Walkman, refers to similar processes as “electronic narcissism,” but argues that they are, indeed, a sign of mental health. 11 For many, radio silence connotes a historic procedure, but it has a modern, and individual, equivalent where it can refer to an arrangement between two (romantically involved) parties to not maintain interpersonal communications any more—a mutually requisitioned interruption on a relational, rather than structural, level.

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12 OPSEC can be defined as the protocol used to safeguard individual pieces of data, which could be aggregated to form larger patterns. 13 This could be compared both to Haraway’s proposition to introduce noise as a form of political resistance against unceasing codification of anything possible and to Hagood’s notion of orphic media as an individual countersignal to overwhelmingly noisy and capitalist surroundings.

References Adorno, T. W. (1983), Prisms: Essays on Veblen, Huxley, Benjamin, Bach, Proust, Schoenberg, Spengler, Jazz, Kafka, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ballard, S. (2011), “Information, Noise, et al.,” in M. Nunes (ed.), Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures, 80–96, New York: Continuum. Barker, T. (2011), “Aesthetics of the Error: Media Art, the Machine, the Unforeseen, and the Errant,” in M. Nunes (ed.), Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures, 42–58, New York: Continuum. Bødker, M. (2017), “‘What else Is there…?’: Reporting Meditations in Experiential Computing,” European Journal of Information Systems 26 (3): 274–86. Chen, S.‐L. S. (1998), “Electronic Narcissism: College Students’ Experiences of Walkman Listening,” Qualitative Sociology 21 (3): 255–76. Cole Young, L. (2015), “Cultural Techniques and Logistical Media: Tuning German and Anglo‐American Media Studies,” M/C Journal 18 (2). Retrieved from: http:​//jou​rnal.​media​‐cult​ure.o​rg.au​/inde​x.php​/mcjo​urnal​/arti​cle/v​ iew/9​61 Crisell, A. (1994), Understanding Radio, London: Routledge. Geiger, S. and B. Reeves (1993), “We Interrupt This Program . . . Attention for Television Sequences,” Human Communication Research 19 (3): 368–87. Hagood, M. (2019), Hush: Media and Sonic Self‐Control, Durham: Duke University Press. Harari, J. v. and D. F. Bell (1982), “Introduction: Journal à plusieurs voies,” in J. v. Harari and D. F. Bell (eds.), Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Hollnagel, E. and D. D. Woods (2005), Joint Cognitive Systems: Foundations of Cognitive Systems Engineering, Boca Raton: CRC Press. James, C. (1991), Clive James on Television: Criticism from the Observer 1972‐1982, London: Picador. Kelly, C. (2009), Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Krapp, P. (2011), Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mako Hill, B. (2011), “Revealing Errors,” in M. Nunes (ed.), Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures, 27–41, New York: Continuum.

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Mulvey, L. (2006), Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image, London: Reaktion Books. Shannon, C. E. and W. Weaver (1949), The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Siegert, B. (2008), “Cacography or Communication? Cultural Techniques in German Media Studies,” Grey Room, 26–47. Siegert, B. (2013), “Cultural Techniques: Or the End of the Intellectual Postwar Era in German Media Theory,” Theory, Culture & Society 30 (6): 48–65. Siegert, B. (2015), Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real, New York: Fordham University Press. Star, S. L. (1999), “The Ethnography of Infrastructure,” American Behavioral Scientist 43 (3): 377–91. Treske, A. (2015), Video Theory: Online Video Aesthetics or the Afterlife of Video, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. Vallee, M. (2017), “Contiguity and Interval: Opening Media Theory,” Media Theory 1 (1): 137–43. Ward, M. C. (2019), Static in the System: Noise and the Soundscape of American Cinema Culture, Oakland: University of California Press. Wiley, R. H. (2015), Noise Matters: The Evolution of Communication, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Winthrop‐Young, G. (2013), “Cultural Techniques: Preliminary Remarks,” Theory, Culture & Society 30 (6): 3–19. Winthrop‐Young, G. (2014), “The Kultur of Cultural Techniques: Conceptual Inertia and the Parasitic Materialities of Ontologization,” Cultural Politics 10 (3): 376–88. Zhuboff, S. (2015), “Big other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization,” Journal of Information Technology 30 (1): 75–89.

18

Glitches as Fictional (Mis)Communication Nele Van De Mosselaer and Nathan Wildman

It is 1911 and I am in the Wild West, casually wandering towards MacFarlane’s Ranch on horseback. Suddenly, I spot something strange in the air: cowboys, hats on their heads, soaring through the sky while flapping their arms. One of these birdmen lands on a fence in front of me, and starts to happily whistle a song. His legs are strangely retracted beneath his body, his arms folded behind his back, and his head twitches from left to right. When I approach, he hurriedly flies away.

The so‐called “manimals” described in this passage are a glitch phenomenon encountered by players of an early version of Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego 2010). Due to an unknown coding malfunction, some of the virtual animals that populated the game’s world, most infamously the birds, were inexplicably replaced by human‐animal hybrids. Specifically, while the bird behavior stayed intact, the 3D models of small feathery birds were replaced by 3D models of full‐sized men wearing cowboy hats. Any player seeing these birdmen would likely conclude that there were flying cowboys in the fictional world of Red Dead Redemption. However, game scholars and philosophers of fiction would likely deny that Red Dead Redemption depicted a fictional world in which there are flying cowboys. Instead, they would treat the manimals as mistakes in the presentation of said world, unintentionally brought about by a malfunction when rendering it, as evidenced by the fact that the glitch was removed in an early patch. More generally, within video game studies, glitches are often described as an interesting part of the player experience, for example as possibilities to gain unfair advantages in games (Bainbridge and Bainbridge 2007; Newman 2008; Meades 2015), expressive tools to create humorous effects (Jaroslav

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Švelch 2014), jarring confrontations with forms of nonhuman agency (Janik 2017; Gualeni 2019), and ways to create glitch‐art (Menkman 2011). But when it comes to the specifically fictional experience of video games, there seems to be a consensus that glitches have no role to play except for breaking the players’ feeling of immersion and the reality effect of the game’s fictional environment (cf. Holmes 2010: 261; Kubiński 2014: 135; Janik 2017: 75). Here, we focus on the underexplored fictional relevance of video game glitches.1 For this purpose, we will make use of philosophical theories of fiction, as well as standard suggestions about how best to deal with unintended errors within fiction. Focusing on glitches like that of Red Dead’s manimals, we argue that glitches, more than any kinds of mistakes in traditional, noninteractive fictions, can actually have a significant influence on the fictional worlds of the work in which they appear. In particular, we will show that some glitches generate new fictional content without this content being intended by a video game’s creators, and will offer practical ways for dealing with the inconsistencies that inevitably accompany such glitch‐generated fictions.

Background: Fiction as Intentional Communication Within contemporary philosophy of fiction, fiction is often characterized as “originating in a particular kind of authorial intention: an intention that story content be imagined” (Stock 2016: 206). More specifically, the core idea, which originates in Currie (1990),2 is that fictions are works consisting of fictive utterances, which are characterized as the sort of utterance where, if a sufficient number are present in a text, the whole counts, for that reason, as a fiction. That is, it’s what we might call a “fiction making unit” [. . .] These accounts offer at least one necessary condition upon fiction, as a whole: it must contain fictive utterances. (Stock 2016: 205)

In turn, fictive utterances require a fictive intent (Currie 1990: 35). That is, a fictive utterance “prescribes imagining: in uttering, its author intends, and intends to communicate her intention, that the reader (or hearer) should imagine the utterance’s content, as a response to understanding it” (Stock 2016, 205–6). More precisely, Currie defines fictive utterances3 in the following broadly Gricean manner:

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U’s utterance of S is fictive if and only if (iff) U utters S intending that the audience will (1)  recognize that S means P; (2)  recognize that S is intended by U to mean P; (3) recognize that U intends them (the audience) to make believe that P; (4)  make believe that P. And further intending that (5)  (2) will be a reason for (3); (6)  (3) will be a reason for (4)

(Currie 1990: 31)

On this understanding, fiction is built up out of fictive utterances, which are made with the intention that their content be imagined. This characterization of fictional utterances also helps address questions about what is (or is not) part of the content of a given fiction. For the intention‐based definition of fiction is often dismissed as being an instance of the intentional fallacy (originally introduced in Wimsatt and Beardsley 1946). When it comes to fiction, the worry is that something (and anything) can become fictional as long as the author intends it to be true in his work of fiction. However, even if Conan Doyle had the firm belief and intention that (say) Sherlock Holmes was a member of a peculiar race of aliens, “we would go wrong in concluding that it was true in the story that Holmes is an alien being” (Currie 1990: 109). This is because, to make something fictionally true (and hence part of a fiction’s content), authors must not only have the intention that the reader imagine what they utter, but also that the reader can recognize this intention (Currie 1990: 109–10). Only that which is uttered with the intention that the reader will (be able to) imagine it is genuinely a fictive utterance. In this way, while the intention of the author is essential when it comes to making a text a fiction, mere authorial intention does not (fully) settle what is fictionally true in the work. Finally, to rule out exceptional cases in which authors might prescribe imaginings about content that is actually true, philosophers have added different extra conditions to the intentionality requirement. For example, Currie adds the condition that “if the work is true, then it is at most accidentally true” (Currie 1990: 46), Davies that a proposition can be fictional even if it is true, provided its truth is “not the reason for its inclusion in the narrative” (2007: 46), and Stock that true utterances are part of the fictional

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content if they are connected to utterances the content of which is invented and intended to be imagined (2016: 213). In the end, however, these extra conditions are all minor additions to the overall conception of fiction as a special kind of intentional communication. The general idea, then, is that any content communicated with the intent that the audience imagines its truth is fictional, and a fiction is a collection of such fictive utterances.

Dealing with Mistakes: Charity and Disregarding One direct result of treating fiction as originating in the intentions of a creator (or creators) is that, whenever an error sneaks into a work of fiction, it should have no repercussions for the associated fictional world. Whenever something is not perceived as being intended by the work’s creator, for example because it is an obvious error or causes glaring inconsistencies within this work, it will not be a part of the fiction. Typical examples are typos in novels, like Rowling’s repetition of “1 wand” when listing the required Hogwarts school supplies in the first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: Other equipment

1 wand 1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2) 1 set glass or crystal phials 1 telescope 1 set brass scales 1 wand Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad

(Rowling 1997: 53)

Recognizing that Rowling did not intend to write “1 wand” twice, it would be wrong for readers of Harry Potter to imagine that all students of Hogwarts need two wands. The same goes for cinematic inconsistencies like crewmembers walking into the frame or historical characters wearing modern watches because actors forgot to remove them. In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Verbinski 2005), for example, a crewmember in a cowboy hat can be seen standing in between the pirates when Jack Sparrow takes the helm of the Black Pearl. In this case, viewers should not imagine that this man is on Jack’s ship at all, because he is unintentionally there.

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The main strategy to deal with inconsistencies and incoherencies in fiction is to quite simply ignore them, disregarding the consequences they would have within the fictional world. Matravers refers to this as the disregarding strategy: the reader simply ignores or puts aside as a flaw the contradictory part of the narrative, and tries to make sense of the rest of the story without it (2014: 131). Walton describes this as “the charity principle” (1990: 183), referring to the fact that fiction appreciators should be charitable toward fiction creators, and not dwell on parts of works that might cause fictional inconsistencies. Finally, Currie suggests that the most desirable thing the reader can do upon encountering inconsistencies in fiction is simply not use the inconsistent descriptions to infer anything about the fictional world (Currie 1990: 87).

Fictional (Mis)Communication in Video Games While the previous sections discussed fiction in general, from here onward we will focus on video game fiction. Both within philosophy of fiction and video game studies, scholars agree that most video games are works of fiction (cfr. Tavinor 2005, 2009; Meskin and Robson 2012; Robson and Meskin 2016; Cova and Garcia 2015).4 Connecting this with the more general approach to fiction described earlier, it is natural to say that, insofar as video games are fictions, they are so because they involve a specific kind of communication. The creators of a video game—that is, the entire creative team of designers, artists, and programmers—create certain content with the intention that players imagine this content upon seeing it virtually represented when playing the game. For example, when creating the game Assassins Creed Unity (Ubisoft Montreal 2014), a code was written that, when interpreted by (say) the PlayStation 4 system, caused specific visual and auditory representations to be displayed by a connected TV. This was done by the creators of this game, who had the intention that, when players perceived and interacted with these representations, these players would imagine being an assassin in Paris during the French Revolution. As such, Assassins Creed Unity is a work of fiction (in the sense characterized previously), presenting its players with a fictional world. Due to the nature of communication within the virtual realm, however, many things can go wrong when creating video game fiction, including programmers making mistakes when writing the game’s code and gaming systems wrongly interpreting said code.5 Unintentional and unexpected noises introduced to signals or messages communicated within the digital

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realm are often called “glitches” (Menkman 2011: 26–8). Such distortions are quite common in video games. While playing Assassins Creed Unity, for example, many players encountered characters whose heads disappeared, or who had partly missing faces. Players of Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios 2011) are often confronted with texture glitches, in which surfaces of the represented environment became blurry or pixelated. Fallout 4 (Bethesda Game Studios 2015) has numerous ragdoll glitches, in which the supposedly lifeless bodies of defeated enemies start spinning around and flailing their limbs. Glitches like these originate in faults of the underlying mechanisms that are responsible for the rendering of the fictional world, and they typically reveal the workings of these mechanisms to the player (Menkman 2011: 30; Janik 2017: 70). Notably, developers sometimes deliberately introduce pseudo‐glitches (or “glitch‐alikes,” cf. Moradi 2004, 10) in their games. For example, in Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady Studios 2009), when players approach the character of Scarecrow, who is known for incapacitating his enemies by showing them their biggest fears, the screen suddenly freezes and the video game seems to glitch. This “freeze” is, however, a scripted event that the developers intentionally put in the game. Similarly, Fez (Polytron, 2012) appears to glitch, reset, and reboot at several points in the game. This is merely the game working as intended, indicating that something is deeply wrong in the fictional world, which the player must put right. By intentionally bringing these pseudo‐glitches about, developers can comment on the media–fiction relationship inherent to video games by consciously foregrounding the medium through which the video game fiction is given. In this way, pseudo‐glitches are quite similar to metafictional elements in more traditional fictional media, in that they are deliberately integrated within the fiction, but also highlight the video game’s status as an artificial construct, revealing and emphasizing its fictionality and mediatized nature (Nicol 2009: 35). Although pseudo‐glitches are, strictly speaking, not glitches (as nothing is unintentionally going wrong in the game), players, at least in the first instance, tend to interpret them and treat them in the exact same way as real glitches. From the perspective of video game’s fictional worlds, glitches are both unintended by this world’s creators and the cause of inconsistencies within this world. As such, they are prime candidates for the disregarding strategy: they should simply not be taken into account when reconstructing what is fictional within the video game world. Video game scholars seem to agree. Kubiński describes glitches as “elements which reveal mediated character of the virtual reality” (2014: 135), and McMahan calls them “poor design elements that jar the user out of the sense of “reality” of the [game‐world]”

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(2003: 76). Holmes says that “[g]litches are ruptures and irruptions in this reality‐effect, and are, therefore, in the context of the virtual worlds in which they appear uncanny” (2010: 261). And Janik concludes that “[a]s a result of this, the player is no longer playing inside the video game environment, but rather with the digital object itself ” (Janik 2017: 75). Indeed, rather than as parts of the fictional worlds of games, glitches are taken to be distortions of the presentation of this world that reveal the mediated character of a game’s fiction and ultimately destroy the player’s fictional experience of the game world. The consensus seems to be that, when engaging in video games’ fictional worlds, the presence of glitches must be disregarded. In this way, like typos in novels or crewmembers that accidentally wandered into frame in a movie, glitches are unintended by fiction creators and prone to cause inconsistencies within the fiction. Consequently, it is natural to think that glitches have no fictional relevance. This is not the whole story, however: some glitches actually do generate novel fictional content.

Generative Glitches and Unintentional Fiction Consider again the manimal glitch. Every player seeing the manimals would be motivated to interpret them just as fictional as the non‐malfunctioning animals in Red Dead Redemption: they cause the player to imagine certain states of affairs in the exact same way as well‐behaving 3D‐models in the game would. Alternatively, take MissingNo., a glitch Pokémon that would appear in GameFreak’s Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue (1998) if players overloaded the game’s memory in a particular manner. Nintendo’s official line is that MissingNo. is a “programming quirk, and not a real part of the game.”6 However, many players have interacted with MissingNo. within the fictional world of the game, even including it as part of a team used to beat the Kanto region’s Elite Four. In this way, when the glitch occurs, MissingNo. is a part of the game, despite Nintendo’s proclamation otherwise. Other similar glitches include the corrupted blood incident in World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment 2004), the minus world in Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo 1985), and Gandhi’s predilection for nuclear weapons in the Civilization series (MicroPose 1991). In all these cases, the relevant glitch seems to prescribe an imagining, even though they were not meant to occur. And the way players and scholars talk about these glitches already betrays their fictional relevance; for example, MissingNo. is described as a “Pokémon” and the manimals as “human‐animal hybrids” which could be found “during exploration of the wilderness” (Janik 2017: 74).

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Let us label these glitches generative glitches, because they generate completely new fictional content in a way unanticipated by game developers. When a generative glitch appears, something is fictionalized without an author‐driven mandate to imagine it. As such, generative glitches are in contradiction with the earlier discussed account of fiction: how can a glitch, an unintentional error, be an instance of fictional communication? In other words, how can some states of affairs in video games be unintentionally fictional?

Dissolving the Contradiction The key to dissolving this apparent contradiction requires being clear about the specific nature of fictional communication in video games, something that has not been adequately accounted for by philosophers of fiction. As interactive fictions, video games generate fictional truths in a different way than noninteractive fictional media like literature and film. This has important consequences for the fictional relevance of errors in video games, which are more likely to be interpreted as generating fictional events than typos in novels and goofs in movies. First, unlike typos and movie goofs, video game glitches do not merely manifest in the way the fiction is presented, nor are they mere background events that can be easily isolated from the official fictional goings‐on. This is because when a manimal or MissingNo. appears in a game, the player, who takes on the role of a character within the fictional world, is already interacting with it, either spatially (as players are inevitably located somewhere in the fictional world relative to the glitch) or in more substantive terms (e.g., by fighting the manimal/MissingNo.). Generative glitches are intimately intertwined with unambiguously fictional events: namely, the actions the player‐character undertakes. Thus, because they are interacted with at least by one fictional character (specifically, the player‐character), generative glitches impact the fictional world. Contrast this with what would happen were, for example, Harry Potter to remark on how strange it is that all students need two wands, or if Jack Sparrow were to ask the strange man in the cowboy hat what he is doing on the Black Pearl. In these cases, the relevant mistake—Rowling’s typo and the crew’s mislocation—would make certain things true in the relevant fictional world; for example, it would be true that Hogwarts students are required to get two wands, and that there was a strange man in a cowboy hat roaming the high seas. However, this would also render the “mistake” no longer a

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mistake; instead, it would indicate that something “funny”—for example, a bit of meta‐textual commentary—is going on. This is not what happens with generative glitches. Players acknowledge that a mistake has happened, but this mistake engenders new fictional truths. Second, due to the specific, mediated way in which video games generate fictional events, players are likely to take representations in video games as generating fictional truths regardless of their unintentional nature. Video game designers simply do not have the same control as creators of novels and films do over which events become fictional in the world they create. Video games are interactive fictions because they give players the power to make certain things fictional within video game worlds (Wildman and Woodward 2018). When playing Dark Souls 3 (FromSoftware 2016), for example, it might be true in one player’s game that Siegward of Catarina dies while fighting the giant Yhorm, while in another player’s game, Siegward never even meets Yhorm. In other words, players are only prescribed to imagine Sieward dying by Yhorm’s hand when, based on the choices they made, the game shows them a representation of Siegward’s death. More generally, whatever players are prescribed to imagine when playing video games is highly dependent on the representations they are shown while playing. And which representations they are shown is partially determined by the games’ creators, partially by the player’s actions, and partially by the game system’s processing of the code/ player inputs. The upshot is that although game creators create a framework of many potential fictional events, they alone are not doing the “fictive uttering.” Instead, the game system shows the player which events they are prescribed to imagine to be true in the game’s world based on the choices these players have made (which are constrained by the framework). For this reason, one can say that the narrator of the fictional content of video games is not the game’s creative team, but rather the set of player and game system (Thabet 2015: 43). In a way, it is the game system prescribing players what to imagine by rendering certain virtual representations. Thus, when a malfunctioning game system shows a player glitched representations, these representations generate fictional events in a way that typos in novels or goofs in movies do not. In conclusion, some glitches seem to provide novel prescriptions for imagining. Due to their nature and the way they appear in the game, these generative glitches are not mere mistakes in the way a game’s content is presented, but rather part of this very content. In other words, generative glitches are expressions of the ontology of the fictional world: if they appear in a game, they express how things are in that fictional world. As a result, players should not ignore their presence in the game’s fiction, but rather take them as generating or constituting real events within the world of the fiction.

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Dealing with Fictional Inconsistencies However, not ignoring the fictional events caused by such glitches means allowing strange, uncanny, and often problematical inconsistencies to enter the fictional world of the game. Remember that the disregarding strategy implied that fictional events should be ignored not only when they unintentionally entered a work of fiction but also when they would render the fictional world of this work inconsistent (Walton 1990: 183; Matravers 2014: 131). As generative glitches are, by definition, glitches that should not be ignored when it comes to a game’s fictional content, we cannot use the disregarding strategy to deal with the inconsistencies they bring along. There is no disregarding the flying cowboy manimals, no matter how otherwise realistic the depiction of the Wild West is. So how then should we deal with inconsistent fictional events caused by generative glitches? Moreover, even without taking into account glitches, inconsistencies are ubiquitous within the video game medium, as the incorporation of gameplay elements within the fictional world often makes for strange fictional representations (Juul 2005; Hogenbirk et al. 2018). Think, for example, of the fact that Mario has three lives and keeps dying and reincarnating (Juul 2005: 123–30), the fact that health bars fly over characters’ heads but should not be imagined to fictionally be there (Van de Mosselaer 2019: 200–1), or the fact that complete video game worlds come to a standstill whenever players press the pause button (Hogenbirk et al. 2018: 3).7 Thankfully, there are multiple ways to handle these situations. Specifically, Matravers details a number of strategies for dealing with inconsistencies in literary fiction (2014: 131–5). In the remainder of the chapter, we will discuss how each of these strategies are often already applied to video game fictions and how they can be especially useful for dealing with glitch‐generated, inconsistent fiction. First, there is the weird world strategy (Matravers 2014: 132). Here, the reader pretends the story takes place in a “weird” world, in which the described seemingly inconsistent events are actually perfectly possible and normal. Players of video games regularly apply this strategy, accepting that the fictional world of the game is one in which people, for example, can take multiple bullet hits and heal of all injuries after hiding for a few seconds, or in which people can pick up and put objects in their backpack, even though the relevant object is far too big to fit.8 The weird world strategy is extremely useful when it comes to making sense of various glitches. For example, Goat Simulator (Coffee Stain Studios 2014) is packed with glitches, because, when an early, unfinished version of

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it full of bugs and glitches was shown on YouTube during early development, the designers realized players actually liked the glitches. So they left them unfixed in the final version of the game (Farokhmanesh 2014). As a result, the main character (a goat) constantly warps and extends in outrageous ways, flies away without reason, sinks through the ground, and ragdolls. Playing Goat Simulator inevitably involves accepting that the fictional world of this game is one in which goats are elastic and gravity frequently fails. The weird world strategy might also be used to incorporate the manimal glitch within the fictional world of Red Dead Redemption by interpreting this world as a freaky version of the Wild West in which human‐animal hybrid species roam the prairies. A second option is the reconciliation strategy, which consists of finding “a way in which the narrative could be made coherent” by reasoning (Matravers 2014: 131). Players can employ this strategy by adding their own fictional information to the game’s world in an attempt to explain away/recontextualize encountered inconsistencies. For example, the Dark Souls games (FromSoftware) are famously laced with inconsistency and incompleteness; characters die out of nowhere and suddenly turn out to be mere illusions, and dragon tails turn into swords when shot with enough arrows. Yet, Dark Souls’ fans are quite skillful at reconciling these inconsistencies via careful application and interpretation of known history and lore.9 This strategy can also be effective for making sense of fictional inconsistencies caused by generative glitches. For example, take the many (unofficial) narratives that have sprouted around Pokémon’s MissingNo. (Janik 2017: 76–7). Players often tried to explain Missing No.’s existence by making up backstories and by treating the glitch as just another, albeit somewhat weird, Pokémon.10 Newman describes how the Pokémon community reconciliated the unintentional Pokémon’s existence with the official fictional world of the game: [G]aming communities around Pokémon have made these ‘glitch Pokémon’ real. Giving them a category of their own to sit alongside the Fire, Water and Leaf monsters is just the beginning of the assimilation. Fanart and fiction abounds. Rita Buuk (n.d.) and Mandy Nader (2004), for example, have both written narratives that attempt to detail the backstories of MISSINGNO and ‘M while hand‐drawn sketches, computer‐generated artwork and even cookies inspired by the likeness of ‘M bestow upon the characters a reality and position within the canon of the game regardless of Nintendo’s official protestations to the contrary.11 (Newman 2008: 118)

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As such, some gamers succeed in reconciling the glitch with the official game narrative, so that, in their make‐believe game, MissingNo. unproblematically is part of the fictional world. Lastly, there is the rejection strategy, in which story incoherencies are taken to be misreports by the narrator (Matravers 2014: 131). This strategy is not to be confused with the disregarding strategy. When playing Mario, for example, we disregard some parts of the interface—we simply do not imagine that our high score is really floating in the sky—but we do not disregard Mario’s (apparent) in‐game death. Instead, the death is rejected as a mistake in the telling of the story, caused by our failure while playing the game. In other words, the death happens in a certain (fictional) telling of Mario’s adventure, but this telling misrepresents what really happened in the fictional world. Generative glitches can also be understood in this way; for example, we might say that Red Dead’s John Marston only sees the manimals because he had too much to drink. Notably, the rejection strategy is especially useful when it comes to inconsistencies caused by pseudo‐glitches, which can be interpreted as representations of the unstable mental or epistemic state of the characters through which these events are focalized. In Batman: Arkham Asylum, for example, players can seamlessly integrate the (pseudo‐)glitched scene within the game’s fictional world by interpreting the glitch as Batman’s hallucination under influence of Scarecrow’s terror drugs. Similarly, players can treat reboot sequences in Fez as representing the player‐character’s way of coming to terms with the tears in the fabric of space and time occurring in his world. In this way, the rejection strategy allows integrating incoherent scenes in which (pseudo‐)glitches occur into the fictional world without this world becoming inconsistent. In conclusion, there is no reason to say glitches should be ignored when it comes to fiction because they cause inconsistencies within the game’s fictional world. Such inconsistencies are ubiquitous in video game fiction, and we are both used to and well equipped to deal with them, as there are a number of potential strategies to make sense of them available to us.

Conclusion We have argued that some glitches can have fictional relevance as unexpected influencers of the intentional fictional communication between game developers and players. Glitches like the manimals in Red Dead Redemption and the glitch Pokémon MissingNo. in Pokémon Red and Blue generate fictional content without there being an author‐driven mandate to imagine this content. Although these glitch‐generated fictions are often inconsistent,

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there are several strategies for dealing with these inconsistencies. These strategies are, moreover, quite natural for players of video games to use, as they already play important roles within the experience of video games which operate perfectly as intended. In the end, both the unintentionality of glitches and the inconsistencies they cause within the fictional world are no reason to completely disregard them when it comes to video game fiction. Indeed, as events that take place within the fictional world of the game, many glitches should simply be taken to be fictional events themselves. In so doing, we hope to have shown the fictional relevance of video game glitches and, above all, to have initiated a broader exploration of glitches as significant components of the fictional experience of video games.

Notes 1 We focus on glitches for the sake of brevity, but our discussion applies equally to game bugs. This is mostly because the glitch/bug distinction is not always clear. After all, errors that are perceived as consequences of unexpected system failures (and thus as glitches) are often the result of mistakes made by the programmer (and thus are bugs). Moreover, bugs caused by programming errors are often lumped together with glitches in popular discourse (Janik 2017: 77–8). 2 Though see also Davies (2007: 43–8) and Stock (2016: 213–5). 3 The focus on “utterances” does not mean that the intention‐based fiction definition only applies to spoken or written texts; visual representations can equally be characterized by a fictive intent (Currie 1990: 39). 4 Aarseth (2007) contends that video games are virtual, rather than fictional. However, there is no obvious incompatibility between Aarseth’s conception of virtuality and the notion of fictionality employed here. Further, the “most” qualifier is required because there are some video games, for example Tetris (Pajitnov 1984), The Chessmaster 2000 (Software Toolwork 1986), and Puzzle Bobble (Taito 1994), whose status as fiction is questionable. As this issue is irrelevant to our present concern, we here focus on those video games that are fictions, setting aside the potentially problematic cases. 5 See Höltgen’s chapter “From Bugs to Features” for a detailed overview of various possible errors, bugs, and glitches in video games. 6 https​://ww​w.nin​tendo​.com/​consu​mer/s​ystem​s/gam​eboy/​troub​le_sp​ecifi​ cgame​.jsp (accessed on July 20, 2019). 7 For further discussion about such “incoherence” in video games, see Van de Mosselaer and Wildman (ms). 8 Space Quest 3: The Pirates of Pestulon (Sierra On‐Line 1989) has a gag about this phenomenon, with the main character storing a massive stepladder in his trouser pocket.

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9 For example, the videos and comments on VaatiVidya’s YouTube channel. 10 Although we here call MissingNo. a “weird” Pokémon, the newest generations of Pokémon games introduce (officially fictional) Pokémon that are arguably at least as weird as, if not much weirder than, MissingNo. (e.g., Mimikyu, which looks like a badly drawn Pikachu; Klefki, which looks like a ring of keys; and Garbador, which closely resembles a pile of trash). This makes incorporating MissingNo. into the official Pokémon world significantly easier. 11 Note that Newman uses the world “real” to describe the fact that fans were making MissingNo. a “real” fictional character, and part of the fictional narrative of the Pokémon universe.

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Contributors Timothy Barker is Professor of Media Technology and Aesthetics in the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of two books, Time and the Digital (2012) and Against Transmission (2017), both of which outline a media philosophical approach for addressing questions of time and mediation in the contemporary world. His research interests include digital media theory, philosophies of technology, game studies, and process philosophy. Reidar Due is Associate Professor in French Literature and European Cinema at Magdalen College, Oxford. Previous books include Deleuze (2006) and Love in Motion, Erotic Relationships in Film (2013). His forthcoming book Ethics of Spectatorship: A Hermeneutics of Forgiveness is due to be published by Brill. At Oxford, he is one of the convenors of a master’s program in Film Aesthetics. Frances Dyson is Emeritus Professor of Cinema and Technocultural Studies at the University of California, Davis, and Visiting Professorial Fellow at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, University of New South Wales. She is the author of The Tone of Our Times: Sound, Sense, Economy and Ecology (2014), Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture (2009), and the web-based media project “And then it was Now” on E.A.T., 9 Evenings, and Pavilion (Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, Montreal 2007). Wolfgang Ernst is Professor for Media Theories at the Institute of Musicology and Media Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin. His research covers media archaeology as method, theory of technical storage, technologies of cultural transmission, micro‐temporal media aesthetics (chronopoiesis), critique of history as master discourse of cultural and technological time, and sound analysis from a media‐epistemological point of view (time objects and time signals). His books in English include Digital Memory and the Archive (2013), Sonic Time Machines (2016), and Chronopoetics (2016). Stefan Höltgen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department for Musicology and Media Studies, Berlin Humboldt University. He publishes on the history

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of computing, computer games, and the archaeology and epistemology of digital media. John Hondros is Lecturer in Media and Communication in the Department of Sociology at City, University of London. He is the author of Ecologies of Internet Video: Beyond YouTube (2018), which is an ethnographic investigation of the webs of relationships in which three groups of video makers found themselves when distributing their work on the internet, analyzed within a relational materialist framework that draws upon the work of Deleuze and Latour. Stephen Kennedy is Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Greenwich. His work extends across Media, Digital Arts, and Sound Design. His research interests lie at the intersection of theory and practice in relation to the political economy of contemporary communications technology. He is the author of Chaos Media: A Sonic Economy of Digital Space (2015) and Future Sounds: The Temporality of Noise (2018). His work involves reformulating the idea of noise as a means of supporting philosophical frameworks capable of accounting for the complex nature of contemporary digital environments. He is also a practicing musician and composer and has worked with a range of artists to produce soundscapes for digital performance environments and film soundtracks. Alex Lichtenfels is Senior Lecturer in Film Production at University of Salford. His research focuses on the interplay between aesthetics and politics in film style. He is also a filmmaker who devises and uses collaborative filmmaking processes. He recently coedited a special issue of Performance Matters entitled “Copresence With the Camera,” showcasing new approaches to practice as research in filmmaking. Ella Klik is a postdoctoral fellow at the Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Van Leer Institute. She is currently working on her first manuscript Undoings: An Archaeology of Erasable Media, which offers a historical-theoretical exploration of deletion and exclusion in recording technologies from the invention of the phonograph to the present Maria Korolkova is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications and the current head of Media Portfolio at the School of Design, University of Greenwich, where she also leads MA Media and Creative Cultures. She teaches, writes, and curates on visual culture, intermediality, urbanism,

Contributors

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and media theory. She has curated public events internationally, including Barbican Centre, London, and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Peter Krapp is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and there he is also affiliated with the Departments of English, Music (Claire Trevor School of the Arts), and Informatics (Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science). He studied in Germany, Britain, and the United States, and taught at the University of Minnesota and at Bard College before coming to Irvine; since then he held visiting positions in Taiwan, South Africa, Germany, and Brazil. Among his main publications are Deja Vu: Aberrations of Cultural Memory (2004), Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture (2011), and the forthcoming book Feedback: Reading Game Industry Circuits (2021); he was also an editor of Medium Cool (2002) as well as of the Handbook Language‐Culture‐Communication (2013). Andrea Mariani is a Lecturer at University of Udine, where he teaches media theory and heads projects for the Digital Storytelling Lab. He has written books about media and exploration cinema (L’Audacissimo viaggio (2017)) and Italian experimental cinema during fascism (Gli anni del Cineguf (2017)). In 2015, he founded the Media Archaeology Workshop at the MAGIS Gorizia International Film Studies Spring School. He deals with media archaeology, documentary cinema, and avant‐garde and modernist cultures. He is currently working at the SSHRC project “International Amateur Cinema Between the Wars (1919–39),” coordinated by University of Calgary (Canada) and at the MISTI‐Global Seed fund Project “Sensing Dolce Vita” together with Massachusetts Institute of Technology of Boston, about sensorial environments and mid‐twentieth-century theaters. His articles have been published on Italian and International peer‐review journals such as Film History, Necsus, Bianco e Nero among others. Mani Mehrvarz is a filmmaker, media artist, and an adjunct professor at the University at Buffalo. His art/research with moving‐image explores various forms of database cinema, interactive documentary, and video mapping. Mehrvarz’s current research explores technologies of magnetic memory in the contexts of media archaeology and object philosophy. He is one of the two founding editors of MAST journal. Currently, he also is serving as the director of Buffalo Documentary Project, design strategist of UB Arts Collaboratory, and the curator of Media‐as‐things Collective. His media installations and documentary films have been exhibited and screened worldwide since 2006

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Nele Van de Mosselaer is a PhD student at the Center for European Philosophy at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. As a philosopher and video gamer, she wants to expand the research field of the philosophy of fiction, which traditionally focuses on literature, theater, and film, and proposes a new approach to imaginative participation in fiction in light of the video game experience. In her thesis, titled “The Paradox of Interactive Fiction,” she investigates what the video game experience can tell us about the relation between fiction, imagination, emotion, and action. Maryam Muliaee is a media artist‐researcher based in Buffalo, New York, working with video/sound installation, multimedia performance, experimental animation, and locative media. She is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Media Study in the University at Buffalo, teaching courses in video/sound production as well as seminars in film/ media theory. Her research interests in media archaeology, new materialism, and feminist aesthetics have informed her recent publications (with Peter Lang Publishing and in peer‐reviewed journals such as Ekphrasis). Muliaee is also the cofounder and lead editor of MAST: The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory. Jörgen Rahm‐Skågeby is an associate professor at the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University. His research interests include media archaeology, humanistic HCI, and posthumanism. His work has been published in Journal of Information Technology, Popular Culture, Design and Culture, and Artnodes. Ellen Rutten is Professor of Literature and Chair of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Amsterdam and, in the academic year 2019–20, Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam. Her research interests include Russian and global contemporary literature, art, design, and media. She is the author of Unattainable Bride Russia: Gendering Nation, State, and Intelligentsia in Russian Intellectual Culture (2010) and Sincerity after Communism: A Cultural History (2017), among other publications. Rutten leads the research project “Sublime Imperfections: Creative Interventions in Post‐1989 Europe” (University of Amsterdam, 2015–20) and is editor‐in‐chief of the peer‐reviewed journal Russian Literature. Dominic Smith is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee, Scotland. His research interests lie in phenomenology and contemporary European philosophy (Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein,

Contributors

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Deleuze), philosophy of art and literature, and philosophy of technology. He has published in each of these areas, in journals including Angelaki, Deleuze Studies, Philosophy and Technology and Techné. His latest book, with Bloomsbury, is Exceptional Technologies: A Continental Philosophy of Technology (2018). Thomas Sutherland is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Lincoln. He is presently authoring a book entitled Speaking Philosophically: Communication at the Limits of Discursive Reason. Nathan Wildman is an assistant professor at Tilburg University, and a member of the Tilburg Center for Logic, Ethics, and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS). His research focuses on topics in metaphysics, philosophy of language, logic, and aesthetics. He is especially interested in the foundations of modality, the logic of fictional truth, and the aesthetics of interactive fictions.

Index accidental images  226–9 accidental recordings, aesthetics of  217–30 accidental images  226–9 avant‐garde  224–6 brief exposition  218 experimental art  224–6 photographic history  218–21 technical control, consideration of  221–4 accidental technological discoveries  82 A C I D G E S T (2017)  152–3 actor‐networks  166–8 Actor‐Network Theory (ANT)  163 Ada  269 Adorno, Theodor  36, 284–5 aesthetics  23–4, 26–9 coherence  185–8 of displaced materiality  135–46 enfolding-unfolding  153 failure  150–3 historical genealogy  29–30 of imperfection  23–4, 26–9, 34–8 noncommunication  150–3 unintentional media  217–30 alliances  164 allure  157–8 Amiel, Henri  239 analog signals  79 anamnēsis  122 Angels: A Modern Myth (Serres)  13, 105 Apple  229 Aquinas, Thomas  7 A Quivering Marginalia (AQM)  15, 97–101, 115 n.4 Arendt, Hannah  65 Armstrong, Louis  35

Arnheim, Rudolf  224, 227 Aron, Raymond  66 ARPAnet connection  251–2 “Art as Device” (Shklovsky)  36 Art of Imperfection, The  34–5 artworks  278 aspirations  67–8 Assassins Creed Unity  304–5 assemblages  163–76 deterritorialization  165–6, 169–70, 175 identity  166 macro  166 media  168–75 micro  166 overview  164–5 territorialization  165–6, 169–70 visionOntv  168–71 Atari VCS gaming console  273–6, 280 n.8 Atkinson, David  239 Atlas of Emotions: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (Bruno)  135–6 aufschreibesysteme  58–9 authenticity  27, 36–9 avant‐garde art  224–6 axiomatics  125 Baas, Maarten  28 Badiou, Alain  64 Balbo, Italo  233–4 Barker, Timothy  14, 115 n.1, 287 Barthes, Roland  218–19 “Battle Zone,” tank game  274 Bauman, Zygmunt  108 Bayesian Games  281 n.22 Being and Time (Heidegger)  83 Bell, Daniel  67

Index Benjamin, Walter  35–6, 197–212, 217 Blaud, Monsieur  240 Blip  169, 173, 175 blogging services  27 Bloom, Peter J.  237 “Blue Max,” plane‐fighter game  272–3 Boddy, William  39 Borges, Jorge Luis  108 Botha, Marc  58 breakdowns  237–8, 286–7 Breton, Andre  224 broken tools  156–60 Brown, Bill  156 Brown, Steven  112 Bruno, Giuliana  135–6 “Bug Hunt”  278 “bugs” (computer)  6, 37, 83, 175, 265–79 Caché (2005)  184 California Community Media Exchange  163, 174–5 celluloid nitrate  141–4 channels, communication engineering  85 chaos  15 charity  303–4 cheating, game  275–7 cinemas  141–4, 181–2 cinematography  241–2 circuit bending  82–3 Claridge, Claudia  186 Clark, Herbert H.  3 coherence truth systems  180–5 collage  137 colonialism  233, 245 Comics Creative Space workshop  214 n.17 Coming of Post‐Industrial Society, The (Bell)  67 communication  1–2, 48–9, 191 beyond semantics  126–9 boundaries of  14

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breakdowns  237–8, 286–7 breakdowns in  3–4 disastrous  197–212 electronic devices  79 errant  3, 6–9 function of  50 interruptions of  285–9 mathematical model  49, 85 mistructure  14–17 networks  117 noises in  1–3 parties  2 philosophy of  2–3, 5, 112–15, 117–30 Platonic dialogue  119–22 postal system of  14, 46–59 Shannon‐Weaver model  285–6 symbolic exchange  63, 75–7 systems  4, 6, 9–14 theory  11–12 translation and  110–12 as transmission  47–50 truth and  180 as understanding  50 visual  138–46 ways  6 communities  164–5 Community Media Center of Marin (CMCM)  174–5 Comolli, Jean‐Louis  181 compilers  281 n.18 compressed signal  106 computer archaeology errors  265–79 computer (games), errors in  83–5, 270–4 coordinated universal time (UTC) system  89 Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library  98 Couldry, Nick  24 Crane, David  278 creativity  3, 8–9, 12, 49, 82, 100, 237 cultural techniques of interruptions  289–90

324 Currie, G.  301–4 cybernetics  117–19, 126–9 datamoshing  82–3 Davis Media Access (DMA)  174–5 Dawson City  141–4 Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)  141–2 debuggers  269 debugging  83 Decasia (2002)  142–3 DeLanda, Manuel  163–6, 168–9 Deleuze, Gilles  6, 55, 163 democracy  64–8, 75–7 abstract/incomplete  75–7 rationality and  73–4 democratic membership  61–77 elites  61–2, 64, 67–9 out of democracy  75–7 outside of parliament  64–7 Derrida, Jacques  50–1, 63, 90–1, 256 “Der Sandmann” (“The Sandman,” 1816)  31 desert media  232–45 automobile crossing  237 breakdowns  237–8 colonial bureaucrats  239–41 mechanisms and temporal discreteness  237–9 migrant’s mobility  239–41 photographic interruptions/ missing film  241–4 scattered space/time  244–5 theory  233–9 Desombre, Stéphane  246 n.11 deterritorialization process  165–6, 169–70, 175 dialectical method  63 dialogues  120–2 difference  115 n.2 digital command  222 digital errors  150 digital failure  149 digital networks  79–80

Index digital vs. analogue  108 dignity  77 disassemblers  281 n.17 disastrous communication  197–212 Exceptional Technologies  205–12 localising philosophy  201–5 “Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay, The”  197–212 technology, philosophy of  199–201 Discs (1970)  154–6 displaced materiality, aesthetics of  135–46 celluloid nitrate  141–4 holes  144–6 wallpapers  138–41 disregarding  303–4 domain name system (DNS) errors  253 Donation of Constantine  7 Doyle, Conan  302 Due, Reider  14 Dyson, Fran  15 Eco, Umberto  3, 7–8, 12 effectivity  77 n.1 electronic media, vitality of process in  154–6 elites  61–2, 64, 67–9 Elle (Verhoeven)  16, 180–91 coherence aesthetics and  185–8 coherence truth systems and  180–5 Energy of Delusion (Shklovsky)  8 energy of errors  8–9 enfolding-unfolding aesthetics  153 entropy  2, 51, 79–80, 87 Ernst, Wolfgang  12, 14, 154, 222 errant communication  3, 6–9 errant media systems  163–76 errare  135–7 Error: Glitch, Jam, and Noise in New Media Culture (Nunes)  5, 149–50

Index error between keyboard and chair (EBKAC)  251, 257 errors  6–7, 14, 15, 79–80, 92, 135–7, 284–5 circuit bending  82–3 in computer (games)  83–5, 270–4 datamoshing  82–3 domain name system  253 energy of  8–9 and fiction  300–12 internet  251–62 logical  268–9 media‐analytic misconception  80 modernity and  74–7, 259 philosophy of  188–91 programming  266–70 runtime  269 semantic  268, 280 n.4 syntax  268 technical  255–6 from time‐critical media functions  88–90 transmission  253 Exceptional Technologies  205–12, 213 n.14 Excommunication (Galloway, Thacker, and Wark)  5 experimental art  224–6 Exploit, The (Galloway and Thacker)  5 exteriority  164–6 FA; see Forensic Architecture (FA) failure  149–60 in artwork  150–3 media‐as‐things  150, 154–6 electronic media, vitality of process in  154–6 instability  156–60 and noncommunication aesthetics  150–3 through miscommunication  152 fake communication  108–9

325

fake news  1, 67 fech-fech  246 n.10 feedback  80, 126, 271–2 Fezzan  233 fiction charity and disregarding  303–4 contradiction  307–8 and errors  300–12 inconsistencies  309–11 as intentional communication  301–3 (mis)communication in video games  304–6 unintentional  306–7 fictive utterances  301–2 First Book of Foundations, The (Serres)  103 Fishzon, Anna  36 Flusser, V.  150–5, 160, 228 Forensic Architecture (FA)  145–6 formalism, mathematical  122–9 Foucault, Michel  48, 56–7, 65, 256 Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (Deleuze)  138 freeze  290–2 French, Stephen  28 Fuhrmann, Wolfgang  242–3 functional imperfection  28 Funny Games (1997)  184 futurism movement in Russia  138–41 Galloway, Alexander  5, 11 gaming (with) code  274–5 gara  246 n.10 Gatti, Attilio  242 Geimer, Peter  219–20 Gifts of Imperfections, The  28 Gilmore, John  260 Gioia, Ted  24, 34–8 glitch art  224, 265 glitches  15, 300–12, 312 n.1 Global Positioning System (GPS)  89 Graziani, Rodolfo  234 Groupe μ  137

326 Guattari, Felix  15, 163 guemira  236 Habermas, Jürgen  50, 52–3, 61, 66, 69, 73–4 “Habit: The True Aesthetic Criterion” (Flusser)  150–1 Hacker Manifesto, A (Wark)  5 hacking  275–7 Haneke, Michael  183–8 Harman, Graham  156–7 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone  303 Harvey, David  49 Haskell, Molly  183 Havelock, Eric A.  10 Heidegger, Martin  64, 256 Heider, Fritz  83 Hepp, Andreas  24 Her (Jonze)  31 Hermes pentalogy  117, 122–6, 129 Herzogenrath, Bernd  137, 143 Hill, Mako  284 Hobson, Marian  50–1 Hoffmann, E. T. A.  31–2, 34, 38–40 holes  144–6 Höltgen, Stefan  17 Hondros, John  15 Hopper, Grace  83, 266 “House on the Disc”  278 HTML error codes  16, 251–62 HTTP; see Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) HTTP errors  262 humanness  3, 12, 32, 38–9 Huppert, Isabelle  183 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)  254–5 I Ching (Book of Change)  7 immanent critique  61, 63–4 imperfection aesthetics of  23–4, 26–9, 34–8 early twentieth century  34–7

Index fandom  29 rhetoric of  23–4, 26–9 romanticism  30–4 strategies  37–40 importation  118 impurities  14 Inadvertent Images (Geimer)  219–20 information  79 Information  83 information theory  79, 117–18, 119 Innis, Harold  10 institutionalism  62, 67–8 intentional electronic noise  81–2 intentional miscommunications  79 internet errors  251–62 interruptions  284–97; see also noises of communication  285–9 cultural techniques of  289–90 freeze  290–2 requisitions  294–6 static  292–4 theoretical background  285–9 iPhone  229 Ireneo Funes story  108–9 Irving, David  144–6 Italian East Africa  233–4 Italian Ethiopia  234 Italian North Africa  233 jazz music  34–8 Jobs, Steve  229 Jonze, Spike  31 Kabakov, Ilya  141 Kalpokas, Ignas  181 Kamenskii, Vasilii  138 Kaspe, Irina  26 Kennedy, Stephen  15 Kittler, Friedrich  10–11, 48, 58, 256 Klik, Ella  16 knowledge  125 Korolkova, Maria  15 Kracauer, Siegfried  219

Index Krämer, Sybille  48–9, 51–4 Krapp, Peter  5, 16–17, 286–7 Krechi, Fitturi  246 n.14 laissez faire  65 language crossing  27 La Pianiste (2001)  183–4 Lapis Satricanus  86 Laruelle, François  188–91 LaSalle, Mick  183 Latour, Bruno  114 leap second  89–90 Lefort, Claude  66 Leibniz, G. W.  118 Leninism  64 liaisons  164 liberalism  65, 77 n.3 Lichtenfels, Alex  15–16 Licklider, J. C. R.  257 Liferay content management system  168–9 Lipstadt, Deborah  144 “Little Computer People”  278–9 LiveJournal  171–3 localising philosophy  201–5 “Lode Runner”  276 logical errors  268–9 Lukács, Georg  63–4 lure  158 McCormack, Jon  15, 97 McLuhan, Marshall  10, 83 Magritte, René  137 manthanein  122 Marey, Étienne‐Jules  227 marginalia  98–100 Mariani, Andrea  16, 52 Marks, Laura  153 Mars  103–4 materiality  219, 291; see also displaced materiality, aesthetics of accidental  219–20 of commodity culture  153

327

media  245, 296–7 for truth  186 mathematical model of communication  49, 85 mathematical theory of information  14 mathematics  122, 125, 127–8 matheme  131 n.10 Mattern, Shannon  235 Matter of Life and Death, A  111 media archaeology  81–7, 242 assemblages  168–75 cultures, transcultural approach to  24 desert  232–45 errors in  80 messenger  52–4 misconception  80 non‐dialogical  50–1 technology  4, 10–12, 14–16 temporality in  155 uncertainties in  80 unintentional aesthetics  217–30 media‐as‐things  150, 154–6 electronic media, vitality of process in  154–6 instability  156–60 meditations  286–8 Mehrvarz, Mani  15 Menkman, Rosa  224 message bearing systems  4, 9–14 messages  86–7 messenger  52–4 metamorphosis  158 Miro Community  168–9, 175 Mirza, Haroon  152 miscommunication  2–14, 67, 106–9 approach to  11–12 with Bush aide  179 capacity for  12 definitions  3–5 democratic membership and  61–77

328 glitches as  300–12 intentional  79 in linguistics  3–5 as misunderstanding  2–4 model of  3, 46–50 non-intentional  79 technology and  9 wallpapers  138–41 misleading political slogans  1 misreadings, technological  87–8 mistakes  80–1; see also errors Mitrenina, Marina  27 Moccia, Francesco  246 n.12 modernity  74–7, 259 Monumentum Ancyranum  87 Morrison, Bill  141–3, 146 Muliaee, Maryam  15 Müller, Jan‐Werner  61, 69–72, 75, 77 Mulvey, Laura  182 music  98–101, 105–6 glitch  98 Mussolini, Benito  233 Muybridge, Eadweard  227 myths  110 Narboni, Jean  181 nationalism  66 Nazism  64 Nelson, Sam  278 Nemoianu, Virgil  24, 30–2, 34, 37–8 neologism destinerrance  90–1 Nicolai, Carsten  158 nitrate films  141–4 Noise Channels (Krapp)  5 noises  14–15, 86–7, 105–7, 117–18, 130 n.4, 153, 256 in communication  1–3 vs. message  86–7, 121–2 struggle against  119–22 un/intended electronic  81–2 white  12 non‐dialogical media  50–1 non-intentional miscommunications  79

Index Nuijen, Chris  225–6 Nunes, Mark  5, 149–50 objectivity  77 n.1 online writing  27–8 “On the Minute”  205–7 Open Media Project (OMP)  174–5 orthogonality  280 n.11 Otth, Jean  81 overcommunication  108–9 “Pac Man”  281 n.16 padonki  28–9, 38–40 Paik, Nam June  81, 224 Palmer, Helen  140 Parasite, The (Wolfe)  105 Parikka, Jussi  5, 149 Parker, Charlie  35 Participatory Culture Foundation  175 perfect imperfection(s)  28 perfection  23 technological  23 Peters, John Durham  2, 48 philosophy  1–4, 127–9 of communication  5, 48, 71–2 core areas  129–30 of errors  188–91 history of  129–30 of language  5 localising  201–5 political  61–6 of technology  16, 199–201 of transport  117 of truth  189–90 photography  138, 217–21, 224–9 Pictures of Sounds: Wittgenstein on Gramophone Records and the Logic of Depiction (Sterrett)  106 ping of death  90 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Verbinski)  303

Index pixel  280 n.9 Platonic dialogue  120–2, 124–6 Plotnick, Rachel  222, 229 poetry  36 Pokémon Red/Blue  306–7 political ideology  62–3 Polo, Marco  7 populism  61–4, 67–72 populists  64 postal communication system  46–59 aufschreibesysteme  58–9 historical examples  46–8 non‐dialogical media  50–1 technologies  56–7 as technology of care  55–7 transmission, characteristics of  51–4 postal system of communication  14 post‐truth  179–81 Powell, Michael  111 Pressburger, Emeric  111 programming  280 n.10 programming errors  266–70 computer games with  270–4 logical errors  268–9 runtime errors  269 semantic  268, 280 n.4 syntax errors  268 Proust, Marcel  85 punctum  218 Pushkin, Alexander  27 Rahm‐Skågeby, Jörgen  17 “Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay, The”  197–212 rationality  73–5 recording technologies  106–7 Red Dead Redemption  300 reflexivity  74 repeaters  79–80 repetition  115 n.2 requests for comment (RFC)  251–62 requisitions  294–6 Rerverso‐Meiniet, Luigi  242

329

RFC; see requests for comment (RFC) Riis, Morten  83 romanticism  30–4 Rome (Serres)  112–13 runtime errors  269 Ruskin, John  32–4 Rutten, Ellen  14 Sahara  232–45; see also desert media Saito, Yuriko  29 Sampson, Tony D.  5, 149 Sargeant, Winthrop  34 Schott, Andreas  87 Scorsese, Martin  142 self‐image  61 semantic errors  268, 280 n.4 Serendipities: Language and Lunacy (Eco)  7 serendipity  7–8 serir  246 n.10 Serres, Michel  2–3, 8, 12–15, 48, 103–5, 110–15, 117–30 communication beyond semantics  126–9 formalism  122–6 importation  118 mathematics, views on  118, 121–2 noise, struggle against  119–22 Platonic dialogue, views on  120–2, 124–6 structuralism  117–18, 122–6 Shannon, Claude  1–2, 14, 49, 90, 271 Shannon’s labyrinth  90 Shannon‐Weaver model of communication  285–6 Shaviro, S.  158 Shiftology of Russian Verse: An Offensive and Educational Treatise (Kruchenyhk)  140 Shklovsky, Victor  3, 8–9, 12, 36, 40 Shundai, Dazai  30 Siegert, Bernhard  49, 53, 57, 289–90 signal‐to‐noise ratio  85–6

330 silence  105–6 Siliva Zulu (1928)  242 simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP)  254 simulation  277–9 Slapovskii, Aleksei  27 Smith, Dominic  16 SMTP; see simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) Smurova, Varvara  26 software errors  83–5 sound art  97–101, 105–6 sound installation  15 Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture, The (Parikka and Sampson)  5 Spicer, Sean  179 Star, Susan Leigh  235 static  292–4 Sterrett, Susan G.  106 Stones of Venice (Ruskin)  32–4 storytelling  108 Strakhov, Nikolai  8 structuralism  117–18, 122–6 subface, technology  84, 265, 279 n.2 Suskind, Ron  179 Sutherland, Thomas  15 symbolic exchange  63, 75–7 syntax errors  268 Talbot, Henry Fox  228 tanyant  25–6 Taylor, R.  257 technical errors  255–6 technological perfection  23 techno‐logics  79–92 accidental discoveries  82 circuit bending  82–3 datamoshing  82–3 destinerrance  90–1 errors in computer (games)  83–5, 270–4

Index messages vs. noises  86–7 misreadings  87–8 mistakes  80–1 signal‐to‐noise ratio in cultural tradition  85–6 uncertainties/errors in media theory  80 un/intended electronic noise  81–2 technologies  9, 37 exceptional  205–12 media  4, 14–16 miscommunication and  9 philosophy of  199–201 postal communication system  56–7 recording  106–7 subface  84, 265, 279 n.2 territorialization process  165–6, 169–70 terror  151 Thacker, Eugene  5, 11 theologico‐political  66 theory of communication  11–12 Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas)  61, 69, 73 Thermin, Lev  81 thing theory  156 This Is Not an Apple (Magritte)  137 This Is Not a Pipe (Magritte)  137 time‐critical media functions, errors from  88–90 Tolstaia, Tatiana  23, 25–8, 39, 147 Tolstoy, Lev  8–9 “Tom Thumb” game  266–7, 270–1, 277 Tool‐Beings: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (Harman)  156 transcultural discourses  24–5 transformation  167 translation  110–12, 126, 167 transmission errors  253 of information  47–54

Index Trap for Judges, The  138–40 Trump, Donald  179, 181, 188 truth, models of  179–91 coherence truth systems  180–5 communication and  180 conditions  180–1 Turing, Alan  277 Turner, J. M. W  110–11 Tynyanov, Yury  6, 139 uncertainties  79–80 Undercurrents, UK activist group  163 Understanding Media (McLuhan)  83 un-intentional electronic noise  81–2 unintentional media aesthetics  217–30 accidental images  226–9 avant‐garde  224–6 brief exposition  218 experimental art  224–6 photographic history  218–21 technical control, consideration of  221–4 utterances  312 n.3 Valladares, Carlos  186 Van de Mosselaer, Nele  6, 17 van Lack, Dick  235 van Pelt, Robert Jan  144 variantology  17, 285–9 Venus  103–4 Verhoeff, Nanna  241, 243 Verhoeven, Paul  15–16, 180 Verkaaik, Oscar  29

331

video games fiction  304–6 glitches  300–12, 312 n.1 Viola, Bill  83 Virilio, Paul  3, 9, 49, 143–4, 146, 223 visionOntv  163, 168–71 visual communication  138–46 “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (Mulvey)  182 Visuelles feld (2000)  158–60 Vodennikov, Dmitrii  27, 40 Von Neuman, John  1–2 Vostell, Wolf  81 Waarsenburg, D. J.  87 wallpapers  138–41 Wark, McKenzie  5, 11 Warner, Gary  15, 97 Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts (Bauman)  108 Weizman, Eyal  145 white noise  12 Wiener, Norbert  119, 262 Wildman, Nathan  6, 17 Winthrop‐Young, G.  288–9 Wittgenstein, L.  104–15 Wolfe, Cary  105 Worldbackwards  139–40 “Yar’s Revenge”  273–4 Young, James  180 YouTube  173–4 Zorin, Andrei  8 Zylinska, Joanna  221, 228

332