21

[Alan Sondheim]

21
Distinctions among protocols and interfaces; every interface is protocol;
every protocol interfaces; each is pole ("poles") the other; each
participates in flattening. What is external to protocol: inconceivable
content, subjectivity; what is internal: invisibility, objectivity. From
GPS through VLF radio: the measurement of the world, its skein. What is
required for visibility, what technology, organism, protein? Protocols
extend perceptual tacit knowledge; functionality. Of etiquette let it be
said it is first and foremost exclusionary. Cybernetic feedback
designates. Protocols distinguish, differentiation and integration in
dialectic. The symbolic remains unread; the symbolic is transparent,
readable. For the first time a three-dimensional map of the second planet
from the sun is available for visual search with or without placenames
given a desktop configuration of sufficient power. Protocols are the mute
inverse of stewardship; they do not serve; they serve-to. Interfaces are
not end-points; they bridge ontologies, continue the flow. Mind locates
nowhere; is located nowhere; extensions extend without center, centering.
Mind locates within presencing present; mind locates nowhen; is located
nowhen. The purpose of philosophy is to pare; to pare even the ladder or
the propositions. Philosophy has no purpose; it is not an exhibition; art
is exhibition and venue; philosophy chatters; philosophy is doing and
reading philosophy is a continuation of doing. Reading philosophy is the
pretense of interface; doing philosophy problematizes protocols. To do
philosophy is not to have done with philosophy.
22
"I have promised you a journey which is a journey of no return; a journey
of conceptualization or imagination; a journey within the imaginary. There
is no return in return; there are no loops in looping; what fits has
always fit; what does not fit remains incommensurate. If I integrate:
flattening and the apparition of death (which never appears); if I
differentiate: disturbance and the reality of organism (which always
appears; always is apparent). This philosophy - this of all philosophy -
tends towards particulation, particulate matter; tends towards emission;
tends towards gathering." Reverse Sheffer stroke and its dual: from out
there, possibly from A or B, the appearance of A or B; B; from out there,
the appearance of A and B. From a distance: the disturbance. In the
neighborhood: flattening and absorption. The abacus of infinitely fine
grain appears to the base infinity; the abacus of extraordinary
differentiation signifies presence of the framework. What was once
dialectic clearly has no resolution or leap; no tendency towards
bootstrapping elsewhere. Instead: continuous dialog, information,
absolutely mute: indiscernible processes. The world is infinitely
invisible.
23
Infinitely invisible: What is seen on the surface of granite for example
hides interior grains. The granularity of the world is always already
inaccessible; art serves to make symbol of substance; of the surface of
substance; of the cloak or masquerade. Art is farming-out; physical
analysis is farming-out; microscopy is farming-out. Microscopes/telescopes
reveal everything and nothing; occurrences continue on
ontologically-cohering n-dimensional manifolds. Everything is what it
appears to be; nothing is what it appears to be; everything is leveled,
intertwined, intermingled, mingled, muxed. Ontology only goes so far to
the portal of universal origin, "big bang" and inflation, just as
increased accelerator energy may conceivably generate "new" and unexpected
phenomena forever - the only limitation is economics (Brillouin). Nothing
satisfies; ontologies may be enumerated, epistemologies extended to
theoretically-infinite tolerances; it is all the same - not ennui (that
surely is different) or boredom (that surely is different as well) or
defuge (the same). One might say this is a "condition of the age." Of
course there is no thing-in-itself; there are always already others.

[24 forthcoming]

[images at http://nikuko.blogspot.com]