configuration

[Alan Sondheim]

configuration

configuration is pure thought. it's the alignment of abstraction and
ideology with machinery. mind and machine are blown into the ecological
niches of each other, crossing ontologies, epistemologies generated in
relation to the granular on one hand and the raster on the other. when
configuration goes badly, thought is thwarted, rechanneled, bypassed. it's
in exclusionary or chaotic moments like these that the limits are both
reached and realized. the future is already crossing borders,
transgressing the present.

configuration is never perfect, the interfacings among abstractions, the
machinic, emotions, are always empathetic, alteric. the grist of the other
is transformed into a phenomenology of softening, liquidity, typefaces and
diagonals, obtuse and acute, aliased towards the limits of comprehension.

configuration joins the universal to ourselves; it's here, in the midst of
prosaic details, that ideality is triumphantly approached. the slightest
gesture opens realms of articulated thought, and what was unravelled
appears part and parcel, once again, of the unravelling earth.


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