TEN Square.

Prof. Bourbaki, Semiotic TEN Square, 2015 (derived from Callon et al., 1992 & Greimas, 1976)

Semblable & Different.

Hans Otte, Buch der Klänge XI, 1979-1982. 

Les différents processus de mutation d'un son en un autre son ou d'un ensemble de sons en un autre ensemble constituent la base même de mon écriture musicale, l'idée première, le gène de toute composition.

Le matériau découle du devenir sonore, de la macrostructure et non l'inverse. Autrement dit, il n'y a pas de matériau de base (cellule mélodique, complexe de sons, durées, etc.), dont la grande forme constituerait une sorte de développement a posteriori. C'est le processus qui est premier, c'est lui qui gère la mutation des figures sonores et qui amène à en créer sans cesse de nouvelles. Je suis même étonné de découvrir à quel point les sons engendrés par ces processus dépassent, et de loin, ceux que l'on pourrait imaginer a priori, abstraitement et hors du temps.

Dans ma musique, le son n'est jamais considéré pour lui-même mais toujours passé au crible de son histoire: où va-t-il? d'où vient-il? Telle est la question que je me pose à chaque instant de la partition que j'écris.

À la limite, on pourrait dire que le matériau n'existe plus en tant que quantité autonome mais qu'il est sublimé en un pur devenir sonore sans cesse en mutation. Insaissisable dans l'instant, il ne se laisse discerner et appréhender que dans la durée.

Mais cette affirmation m'amène à en rectifier le contenu, car c'est bien en fonction de leurs qualités acoustiques propres que les différents types de sons sont intégrés au processus et qu'ils déterminent une certaine durée. Il existe donc, en fait, un réseau de relations continuelles, un incessant va-et-vient de la pensée entre le matériau et le processus comme entre le micro et le macrocosme.

Déterminer de quelle figure sonore il part et vers quelle autre figure il s'achemine, tel me semble être le choix essentiel du compositeur aujourd'hui. Reste le temps, le temps de cette mutation, qui est la forme même de son délire.

DYNAMISME

Il m'est désormais impossible de considérer les sons comme des objets définis et permutables entre eux. Ils m'apparaissent plutôt comme des faisceaux de forces orientées dans le temps. Ces forces - c'est à dessein que j'emploie ce mot et non le mot forme - sont infiniment mobiles et fluctuantes; elles vivent comme des cellules, avec une naissance et une mort, et surtout tendent à une transformation continuelle de leur énergie. Le son immobile, le son figé n'existe pas, pas plus que ne sont immobiles les strates rocheuses des montagnes.

Par définition, disons que le son est transitoire. Un instant isolé ne se définit pas, non plus d'ailleurs qu'une suite d'instants isolés minutieusement décrits et placés de bout en bout.

Ce qui nous approcherait d'une meilleure définition du son, serait la connaissance de l'énergie qui la traverse de part en part, et du tissu de corrélations qui gère tous ses paramètres.

On peut rêver une écologie du son, comme science nouvelle mise à disposition des musiciens...

Déjà, la pratique du studio électronique nous a fait apprécier les composantes du son, non comme des données isolées, ainsi que l'a si bien fait remarquer la musique sérielle en définissant et en isolant soigneusement les paramètres, mais comme un réseau complexe d'interactions et de réactions multiples entre ces paramètres. Chacun sait, par exemple, que deux sons ayant des fréquences très proches provoquent des battements. Si ces battements sont très rapides, ils altèrent le timbre, s'ils sont plus lents, ils engendrent des événements périodiques que nous percevons comme des rythmes. On sait aussi que l'intensité est déterminante pour la perception de la hauteur, que l'appréciation du timbre est, pour une large part, fonction de la durée etc. On pourrait ainsi allonger infiniment la liste des ces interférences qu'engendrent nos capacités perceptives et leurs limites.

D'autre part, il n'est pas inutile de rappeler que les paramètres ne sont qu'une grille de lecture, une simplification, une sorte d'axiome qui nous permet d'aborder le problème du son. Ils n'ont cependant aucune existence réelle pour l'écoute car nous percevons le son globalement, totalement et non analytiquement.

BALISES

Il reste que nos sens, dans leurs limites, ont besoin de repères pour apprécier un quelconque mouvement. Il ne s'agit ni d'une cellule sonore ni d'un matériau de base à développer mais d'une sorte de balise infiniment simple que chacun doit pouvoir percevoir et mémoriser. Nous en retiendrons deux:

- la périodicité rythmique;

- le spectre d'harmoniques (autre forme de périodicité).

PERCEPTION: LE SEMBLABLE ET LE DIFFÉRENT

Notre perception est relative; elle compare sans cesse l'objet qu'elle vient d'appréhender à un autre perçu auparavent ou encore virtuel, localisé dans notre mémoire. La différence ou l'absence de différence qualifie toute perception.

Nous ordonnons ainsi le perçu non en fonction d'une norme unique mais en l'insérant dans un réseau de relations pour en dégager la qualité intrinsèque.

En d'autres termes, un son n'existe qu'en raison de son individualité et cette individualité ne se révèle que dans un contexte qui l'éclaire et lui donne sens.

Je considère comme essentiel, pour le compositeur, d'agir non plus sur le seul matériau mais sur le vide, sur la distance qui sépare un son d'un autre son. Aborder le semblable et le différent comme base même de la composition musicale permet en effet d'éviter deux écueils: la hiérarchie et l'égalitarisme.

Gérard Grisey, Devenir du Son in Écrits ou l'Invention de la Musique Spectrale, Éditions MF, 2008, p.27-30.

Merci à F.M.

Practice & Context.

Prof. Bourbaki, Inventing frames & diffusing overflows, 2015.

 

A logic of learning

One type of learning is 'learning by doing' in the sense familiar to economists as a downward shift of an average cost curve as a function of cumulative uninterrupted production (Yelle, 1979). There is also learning in the sense of (radical) innovation; Schumpeterian 'creative destruction' and 'novel combinations'. The challenge is to explain the latter type of innovation and learning. That is subject to uncertainty rather than risk. And the point of uncertainty is that it yields the problem of induction or, more precisely, the problem of 'abduction', as Peirce (1957) called it. Quite apart from justifying a novelty once it is achieved, in the 'context of justification', how do you go about the development of novelty, in the 'context of discovery'? How do you go from ('abduce from') and existing working modus operandi to a new one that in the future will turn out to be better but which now is not known? Of all the new things you could think of doing, how do you choose the correct one, or even one that is viable, and how do you know whether you know all the options (Holland et al., 1989)? The problem of uncertainty is precisely that you do not. This connects with and important issue in Austrian economics: how is it that an entrepreneur can be right s/he venture into new areas? In Herbert Simon's terms: if uncertainty precludes the 'substantive' rationality of choosing the best from available options, we need a 'procedural' rationality or heuristic, in the form of some modus operandi that is likely to succeed.

Of course, one possibility for a process of adjustment is random trial and error. This would make economic evolution as blind as biological evolution. And, indeed, the lack of rational evaluation by especially small firms injects an element of randomness that contributes to variety. But although rationality is bounded and entrepreneurship entails an element of gambling, people do think, make inferences and limit risk, and they are not always wrong. So how, as a firm, could one go about 'abduction', and maximize chances of survival? Usually, the answer in theories of abduction is to proceed via 'adjacent possibilities': to project an existing practice into a context that is sufficiently similar to have a chance of success, and allows for some prediction of likely results, while it is sufficiently different to yield novel experience and indications for further change with a chance of success. That principle is extended below into a few basic principles of a 'logic of development': principles that maximize the chance of survival in an economic selection environment. 

The first requirement for survival is ongoing production during adaptation: without it we starve even on the road to success. The second requirement is adaptation to novel opportunities and threats. How to do both? How to reconcile continuity and change? How to combine exploitation with exploration? How to go from utilization of existing resources to the development of new ones? The core principle here is that one should not surrender an existing way of doing things before both the motive and the opportunity for a replacement are evident. Before the need arises such a move would be wasteful, and before the opportunity arises it would be impossible. Thus a certain amount of conservatism is rational, but it can easily become excessive and block innovation. There is a trade-off between the need to adapt and the costs involved in terms of uncertainty of whether novelty will be successful, and uncertainty about the organizational repercussions (March, 1991). To make the step to novel practice, one must be prepared to 'unlearn' (Hedberg, 1981): no longer taking established procedures for granted. Thus a necessary (but not always sufficient) condition for innovation generally is that there is perceived need, mostly from external pressure, a threat to continued existence or a shortfall of performance below aspiration levels, as has been the dominant in the literature on organizational learning (see the survey by Cohen and Sproull, 1996).

The following heuristic principles of development and learning are now derived. The first principle of abduction is that one needs generalisation of a successful practice to novel but 'adjacent' contexts, where it is likely to succeed (so that it satisfies the requirements of ongoing production), while it is also likely to run into its limitations, so that we may discover the boundaries of its validity (so that it contributes to the requirement of exploration). Next, as the practice runs into its limitations, it should be adapted to the local context to solve them. This is the principle of differentiation. Again, attempts to adapt contribute to ongoing production as a condition for survival as well as adaptation. Typically, such adaptations are inspired by comparisons with similar, 'adjacent' practices, which in the given context are in some respects more successful, and elements from these more successful practices are imported into the local context at hand. This exchange of elements from different parallel practices, in a given context, is the principle of reciprocation. In language, reciprocation is the operation of metaphor or analogy. As the practice becomes more and more differentiated across contexts, efficiency losses appear owing to lack of standardization, economies of scale foregone, complexity of ad hoc add-ons. Novel elements inserted from outside often do not fit well in the structure of current practice, and for the full utilization of their potential require a more fundamental restructuring of practices in a novel practice. This is the principle of novel combinations or accommodation. This is where the previous preparatory steps lead to novelty. But then, at first, the novelty is indeterminate. Knowledge is partly or wholly tacit: to the extent that novelty works, it cannot yet be fully explained. Much experimentation is needed to find its best form(s), for the novelty to 'come into its own', and to become standardized in a 'dominant design' (Abernathy and Utterback, 1978). This is the principle of consolidation. After that has been achieved, one can move into the next cycle of development, starting with generalization. What feeds exploration while maintaining exploitation is an alternation of variety of practice and variety of context. The resulting cycle of learning is illustrated in Figure 1. The claim is that this procedure is the best answer to the problem of how to maintain continuity (exploitation) while preparing for change (exploration).

The hypothesis now is that these principles of abduction, being conducive to survival, constitute a fundamental 'logic' or heuristic of development which is applicable, with appropriate elaborations and enrichments, at all levels of learning/development/adaptation, and at the level of individual people, organizations, industries and national economies. Thus it should, among other things, serve to specify the relation between equilibrating (Walrasian, Austrian) entrepreneurship and dis-equilibrating Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. Furthermore, this 'logic' should also help to indicate how in processes of development the different levels of people, firms, industries and national or regional economic systems tie into each other. Of course, the hypothesis has to be argued more in detail and then tested extensively. The hypothesis has been inspired by the work of the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1970, 1974; Flavell, 1967) on individual cognition. 

Note that, while in a procedural sense the heuristic is optimal, it need not yield a unique or optimal outcome. It allows for path-dependence and suboptimal outcomes, and the path taken depends on context and coincidence. Different economies can develop different structures. 'Logic' is put between quotation marks because it is a heuristic rather than a logic in the sense of indicating a sequence of stages that is logically or epistemologically necessary. It is a heuristic in the sense that it is generally the best answer to the problem of abduction; the best way of exploring while maintaining exploitation. However, stages will overlap: there is generalization during consolidation, differentiation during generalization, exploration of novel combinations during reciprocation. Stages may occasionally even be skipped, and innovation can occur less systematically, more randomly and spontaneously (Cook and Yanow, 1993), when an obvious opportunity presents itself without much exploration. But as a general rule one needs to accumulate failures to build up the need for change, as well as hints at what directions to look in: indications of what changes could be made with some chance of success.

Bart Nooteboom, Innovation, Learning and Industrial Organization, Camb. J. Econ. 23, 1999, pp.131-133.

Exploration & Exploitation.

Procrastimotion, Ringworld, 2012.

A central concern of studies of adaptive processes is the relation between the exploration of new possibilities and the exploitation of old certainties (Schumpeter, 1934; Holland, 1975; Kuran, 1988). Exploration includes things captured by terms such as search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, innovation. Exploitation includes such things as refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection, implementation, execution. Adaptive systems that engage in exploration to the exclusion of exploitation are likely to find that they suffer the costs of experimentation without gaining many of its benefits. They exhibit too many underdeveloped new ideas and too little distinctive competence. Conversely, systems that engage in exploitation to the exclusion of exploration are likely to find themselves trapped in suboptimal equilibria. As a result, maintaining an appropriate balance between exploration and exploitation is a primary factor in system survival and prosperity.

James G. March, Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning, Organ. Sci. 2, 1991, p.71.

Fog of War.

Non attributed, UH-1, s.d.

 

#1: Empathize with your enemy

#2: Rationality will not save us

#3: There's something beyond one's self

#4: Maximize efficiency

#5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war

#6: Get the data

#7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong

#8: Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning

#9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil

#10: Never say never

#11: You can't change human nature

Robert S. McNamara, Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, 2003.

Courtier & General.

Joseph Koudelka, Le regard d'Ulysse, 1994.

What had changed most definitively for Debord was not the possibility, or the need, for revolution but the fact that the idea of a collective enterprise had collapsed. Other forms of organizing and promulgating subversive activity had therefore to be found. It seemed, in the first instance, that the best way to channel this impulse was through Champ Libre itself, to which Lebovici seemingly offered a free hand to Debord as 'literary director'.

Although he assumed this role, Debord also preferred to keep himself at some distance both from the day-to-day running of the group and the authors themselves. Debord had long since believed in the importance of invisibility and invisible agitation as a key Situationist technique and principle (the terrifying events in Italy, in the wake of the Piazza Fontana bombing, had convincingly borne this theory out) and he saw his position as a way of furthering what Alexander Trocchi, now long disappeared from view, has called 'the invisible insurrection'.

Amongst the books which Debord was reading in Florence and in Paris were Baltasar Gracian and Baldassare Castiglione as well as, inevitably, Machiavelli. The importance of these books was that they offered social, philosophical and political theories which not only sought to provide a model of cultivated behaviour but also, no less importantly, an ideal of action and interaction which formed the basis of the model Renaissance society. Debord found here parallels with his own previous experimental notion of the Situationist International as a micro-society; in these texts he discovered a way of preserving the notion of micro-society which was defined less by its collective decision-making process but rather by forms of individual behaviour. Friendship, honour, and the practical uses of the classical ideals of reason and self-knowledge were now becoming central to Debord's thought, behaviour and ultimately his writings.

In Castiglione, Debord found justification for his emphasis on activity and writing which engaged directly with its time, but also looked beyond, to future readers who had not been born yet but who might find in his texts a constitution of philosophical ideas closely linked to the comple demands of real life. Castiglione's most important work was his book Il libro del Cortigiano ('The Book of the Courtier') written in 1528. This was translated into French in 1850 by Gabriel Chappuis and republished by Champ Libre in 1987 (it was also translated into English by Sir Thomad Holby, and apparently read by Shakespeare, as The Courtier). This book was not only a treatise on how to be a perfect courtier ('known for all men as someone who is excellent,' writes Castiglione) but also a historically accurate and detailed account of life at the court of Urbino, the representation of a perfect city-state. The perfect courtier, according to Castiglione, is one who is able to bring together military and literary skills and use them with equal facility. Most importantly for Debord, Castiglione is concerned with the individual and his action, rather than with society as a collective whole. In this sense Debord's reading of Castiglione marks a decisive shift in his thinking away from social analysis and towards an individualistic theory of behaviour. It was also important for Debord that Castiglione argues against the false idealism of the Christian doctrine, stating that all moral judgements are both subjective and reversible ('Truth it is, many things seeme at the first sight good, which are ill: and many ill, that notwithstanding are good'). Most crucially, the book celebrates a perfect age based on a political philosophy which gives equal importance to the full measured enjoyment of the material aspects of life as well as theory or speculative thought.

Baltasar Gracian, writing a hundred years or so after Castiglione, offers a vision of the world which is slightly darker that that of his predecessor, probably the result of his education at the hands of Castilian Jesuit priests and his early career as a writer of chronicles in Zaragoza and Madrid. For this reason he is often quoted as an influence on Schopenhauer. For Debord, Gracian's most important work was El oraculo manual y arte de prudencia, which was translated into French by Amelot de Houssaie in 1684 (and reissued by Champ Libre in 1972) as L'Homme de Cour, or The Courtier. In this book Gracian presents 300 maxims which aim to instruct in the proper ways of conduct those who live alongside princes and men of power. Gracian emphasises above all the specifically Spanish qualities of desengano and agudeza. The first of these is to be translated as 'disillusion', but to be understood as a refusal to be fooled by the world and its appearance. The second, agudeza, is a term most often used in relation to the conceptista poetry of Gongora and Gracian himself. The term conceptista is generally understoof in Spanish as meaning 'witty, allusive or involved' and conceptista poetry is distinguished by an extreme for of concision, lack of similes and an essentially medieval approach in which the poet established an occult relationship with the universe.

What mattered most for Debord in the writings of Castiglione and Gracian was that they defined rules of moral and political action in a society which had not yet lost the sense of itself as a unified entity and in which the individual could therefore still influence great events. So, although the turn to an individualistic philosophy seemed a retreat, and to this extent was symptomatic of the introspective mood of the post-68 Left in the 1970s, it was also however, at least on Debord's own terms, a way of seeking to clarify present and future strategy in 'the society of the spectacly' in which the individual had been reduced to a mere spectator.

(...)

The architecture of the Auvergne reflects both the uncompromising landscape, of extinct volcanoes, inacessible ravines and grassy upland hills, and its political instability. It was not until the eighteenth century that the Auvergne lost its reputation as a land of brigands, insurrectionists, and anti-monarchist agitation. Many houses were constructed as a defense against roaming bands and private armies as well as the elements. The weather changed constantly and almost instantaneously from calm to wild and savage storms. The house of Champot seemed at times under siege from the elements, a factor which made the house feel like a fortress. This provided the perfect metaphor for the way in which Debord, the retired revolutionary general, was now beginning to conceive of himself and his relation to the outside world.

(...)

During the long winter days and nights in Le Minour, when there were no guests or they were exhausted from conversation and entertaining, Guy and Alice spent many hours drinking and playing war games. Games of strategy had always fascinated Debord; it was an interest which long preceded his discovery of Johan Huizinga and could indeed be traced back to childhood when, to escape Manou, his mother or his siblings, he would retreat to the back of the house in Cannes and obsessively plan campaigns with his lead soldiers. In 1975, in a second-hand shop in Paris, Debord had come across and old ware game which he had renovated. A brass plate, made by René Viénet, was attached to the side of the game. It read: 'Kriegspiel Clausewitz Debord'.

The rules of the 'game of war' were entirely based on the theories of Clausewitz and on the basis of eighteenth-century warfare, that is to say wars which were fought across territories not yet fully defined by nationhood or empire. Each territory in the game was divided into arsenals, fortresses, a mountain pass and nine mountains, which were untraversable, blocking fire and communications. The aim was the complete destruction of the military potential of the adversary, to be achieved by destroying all combat units or taking all the enemy's arsenals.

In this the game was also faithful to Huizinga's notion, for so long a central part of Situationist strategy, that the essence of war is also the essence of art. As in art, it is the lightning strike of the bold gesture, unpredicted and unpredictable, which is most likely to destroy an enemy's positions and clear the field for new manoeuvres. The war game was also most poignant, as Debord was assuming a new status as a thinker rather than a revolutionary participant in his age, a poetic suspension of the passage of time as in the poetry of Mallarmé or the paintings of Malevitch. 'In the unfolding of this Kriegspiel,' Debord wrote, 'all time is equal: the solstice of war where the climate never varies and night never falls before the invitable conclusion of the conflict'.

Andrew Hussey, The Game of War, Jonathan Cape, 2001 (various excerpts).

Anachronistic Distinctions.

Behind the scenes, Green ninja + hair dye commercial actress, 2014.

An article by Asger Jorn brilliantly attacked a society which accorded 'leisure' its highest social value and thereby, with the nodding complicity of managers, experts and sociologists, 'tried to sneak their way to a fully automated society' in which the individual, exhausted by work and dazed by pleasure, had lost any sense of himself as a unique subject.

(...)

This was because modern civilisation, argued all the Situationist writers, was based on a con-trick. Instead of living a life according to the principles of subjective desire, each individual was persuaded or conditioned (there was only a slight negligible difference between these two terms) into accepting the mediocre comforts of modern society. This was the process by which life was turned into an empty vessel, a 'spectacle', and it was the coercive power of this 'spectacle' which had to be opposed and fought in the most urgent terms. Glamour shots of bikini-clad sex kittens, images of commodified desire who were preening themselves or pouting à la Bardot, were placed alongside Situationist writings which were in equal measure imperious, sarcastic, aristocratic and contemptuous.

(...)

Back in Paris, Debord loudly claimed that he was not in the slightest bit interested in the activities of high-life international trash. Others detected an asperity in his tone which belied a certain jealousy of Rumney's easy access to high-life finance. More particularly, even at this stage, Debord was clearly interested in the possibility of having his life and work funded by a patron. This apparent dependence could be philosophically justified because, as Debord read it, it was a Renaissance model of artistic activity which placed art, politics and philosophy on a more intimate and human footing and therefore entirely separate from the twentieth-century model that dealt art as commodity. Secondly, it was a well-known commonplace that, as Machiavelli pointed out, contrary to appearance, such a relationship gave ultimate power to the artist, not the patron. The work of the Florentine artists of the early Italian Renaissance, who worked directly under the patronage of the Medicis but whose art was universal and spoke eternal truths, was clear proof of this fact. Debord was already reading at this stage not only Machiavelli's The Prince but also The Discourses, as well as Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier which, along with the Bible and The Prince, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had famously kept by his bed. These books would accordingly become guiding works for Debord in later years.

(...)

Most notably in late May Debord had given a lecture to a research group convened by Henri Lefebvre under the auspices of the prestigious Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique. The title of the lecture, 'Perspectives on conscious modifications in daily life', was pompous and academic enough to please Lefebvre's research students. The content was however an undiluted call to arms in the name of a revolutionary transformation. 'Everything depends,' Debord argued, 'on the extent to which you dare to ask this question: how do you live? How are you satisfied? Not satisfied? This must be asked without for a minute letting yourself be intimidated by the various adverts which are aimed at persuading you that you are happy because of the existence of God, Colgate toothpaste or the CNRS'. 

(...)

The book was published in an elegant, plain white jacket, with a small photograph of Debord and the rubric: 'Guy Debord, born in Paris in 1931, is the director of the revue L'Internationale situationniste. He has also made several films which are out of circulation.'

The text itself was divided into 221 theses, rigorously numbered and orderedn each one developing or building upon the previous argument or assertion so that, in the true Hegelian fashion which Debord admired, the theory as a whole contained the sum of its parts. If the first influence was thinkers such as Karl Korsch, Gyorgy Lukacs and Anton Pannekoek, who were considered to be the inheritors of the 'young' or 'true' Marx, the revolutionary theorist of alienation whom Henri Lefebvre had set in contrast to the official Marxism of the French Communist Party. To this extent, it seemed, The Society of the Spectacle could be read as part of the general debate on the French left outside the French Communist Party, a debate which included Edgar Morin, Henri Lefebvre, the Socialisme ou Barbarie group, about the primacy of everyday life in revolutionary theory and practice.

(...)

Debord does not simply attack the obvious visual manifestations of modern society - advertising, television and the mass print media. He analyses in a rather more nuanced fashion the way in which the fragmented aspects of modern life are brought together in the images which the spectacular society makes to represent itself. This process is most clearly seen, he says, in the development of the modern cult of celebrity which serves to represent all the qualities - happiness, tragedy, freedom - which are missing in the anonymous lives of spectators.

(...)

In recent years, the term 'society of the spectacle' has itself become a cliché, entering the post-modern lexicon to describe any contemporary process, from the playful pursuit of designer consumerism, economic and cultural globalisation, the internet, celebrity worship or the way in which Western democratic political parties occupy interchangeable positions having abandoned the anachronistic distinctions of Left and Right. Having entered the language of contemporary life, the term 'society of the spectacle' is also somehow understood to imply a complicity with its illusory nature.

(...)

The Situationist International did not approve of bombs, but it did not approve of hysteria either, especially when emotions swung away from the promise of revolution. On the morning of the 18 December a pamphlet entitled 'Il Reichstag bruccia?' ('Is the Reichstag burning?') could be found scattered around the Piazza Fontana and factories throughout Milan. It was signed by 'Friends of the Internationale' and published in the names of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists who were condemned to death in Massachussetts in 1921 for alleged armed robberies and whose innocence became a cause célèbre throughout the world. The text had in fact been composed by the Situationist International and it accused the Italian state of having a hand in the Rome and Milan bombs. Terrorism was denounced as most commonly a 'primitive and infantile demonstration of revolutionary violence' and the fruit of 'failed revolution'. These particular massacres, it was argued, were, however, a new, more spectacular form of violence, sanctioned by the state in order to frighten and coerce the populace. This form of terrorism was the brutal exposed reality of the society of the spectacle.

When the Situationists wrote this text, which caused an outcry on the Left as well as the Right, few even on the extreme Left dared to think that this was possible let alone already happening. It would be several years before the role and the activities of the Italian intelligence services known as 'Gladio' and their hand in the bombings would be fully known and revealed in the international press. It was the Situationists who had been the first to unveil the new tactics mounted by the spectacular society in its self-defence, the deliberate provocation and even murder of citizens which would ward off threats from the insurrectionist Left with the so-called 'strategy of tension'. 

(...)

The Real Split was not however a mere settling of scores. It also advanced and moved on many of the arguments of The Society of the Spectacle and, in particular, presented a withering analysis of modern conditions of production and consumption in which 'the executive is the epitome of the consumer-spectator'. This is because, unlike the genuine proletariat in the factories, the managerial or executive classes do not fully acknowledge their status as cogs in the machine of production, emphasizing their distance from the proletariat by consuming higher value consumer goods. This is, argued Debord, 'man as a thoroughly dependent creature who feels duty bound to lay claim to freedom itself, idealized in the semi-affluent nature of his activity as a consumer'. It was this man, 'the former student', Debord warned, who was also shaping the physical conditions of the modern world: 'The work and leisure requirements of the executive are what now dictate the transformations currently laying hold of our urban fabric, from office blocks down to the tasteless fare dished up in restaurants where his strident tones leave other diners in no doubt about how much training his voice has received from exposure to airport Tannoys.' The executive, the man who though he owned the world, was, said Debord, no more or less than 'le plouc', an old French slang word still in use, which denoted a gormless rural oaf, completely at odds with his environment. The same term, he went on, should be applied to women in modern society whose idea of liberation was to harbour the same needs and ambitions as the 'executive oaf'. The result of this process, in which 'executives always pretend to have wanted what they have got, and the distress occasioned by their secret dissatisfaction' was described by Debord as a new form of alienation, a 'gilded destitution'.

Andrew Hussey, The Game of War, Jonathan Cape, 2001 (various excerpts).

Isolement Ancien.

Angelo Borrego Cubero, The Competition, forthcoming (via arch daily)

La relation entre architecture et politique a fait l'objet, au fil des années, de nombreuses recherches. Le rôle de l'architecte et de l'urbanisme a été analysé comme la projection au sol de l'image des institutions sociales, comme la traduction fidèle en villes ou en bâtiments des structures de la société. Ces analyses soulignent la difficulté qu'a l'architecture à agir comme instrument politique. Convoquant avec nostalgie le cri de ralliement un peu étouffé des "condensateurs sociaux" révolutionnaires dans la Russie des années vingt, certains ont pu prôner l'utilisation de l'espace comme un outil pacifique de transformation sociale, comme un moyen de modifier le rapport entre l'individu et la société en fabriquant de nouveaux modes de vie. Mais les "clubs" et autres bâtiments communautaires qui étaient proposés présupposaient non seulement l'existence d'une société révolutionnaire, mais exigeaient aussi la croyance aveugle en une lecture du béhaviorisme selon laquelle le comportement d'un individu pouvait être influencé par l'organisation de l'espace. Les révolutionnaires de l'architecture, conscients que l'organisation spatiale pouvait certes modifier temporairement le comportement d'un groupe ou d'un individu, mais n'impliquait pas de changement dans la structure socio-économique d'une société réactionnaire, continuèrent de chercher ailleurs de meilleures bases. Leurs tentatives pour trouver à l'architecture un rôle qui soit sinon révolutionnaire, du moins socialement agissant, culminèrent dans les années qui suivirent les événements de Mai 68, avec les bâtiments dits de "guérilla". La valeur symbolique et exemplaire de ces derniers résidait dans leur détournement de l'espace urbain et non dans l'aspect de ce qui était construit. Sur le front culturel, le mouvement "radical" italien concevait le projet d'une destruction des systèmes de valeurs établis, à la manière surréaliste. Ce pré-requis nihiliste du changement économique et social constituait une tentative désespérée d'utiliser les moyens d'expression de l'architecte pour dénoncer les orientations prises par les institutions en les traduisant en termes architecturaux: "vérifier où allait le système", dans une approche pleine d'ironie, en concevant les villes d'un futur sans espoir.

Sans surprise, c'est la question du système de production qui conduisit finalement à des propositions plus réalistes. Visant à une redistribution de la division capitaliste du travail, ces propositions cherchaient à comprendre de manière nouvelle le rôle des techniciens dans la construction, dans le cadre d'un partenariat réfléchi, directement inscrit dans le cycle de production, déplaçant ainsi le concept d'architecture vers l'organisation générale des processus de construction.

C'est pourtant la position bien peu réelle (ou bien peu réaliste) de l'artiste ou de l'architecte qui pourrait constituer leur réalité même. Exception faite de la dernière position évoquée ci-dessus, la plupart des approches politiques pâtissaient de l'isolement des écoles d'architecture qui tentaient d'offrir à la révolution leur connaissance de l'environnement. L'architecture selon Hegel ("le supplément") n'avait pas, semble-t-il, l'étoffe révolutionnaire requise. Où l'avait-elle, après tout? L'architecture recèle-t-elle, dans son isolement si ancien, davantage de pouvoir révolutionnaire que toutes ses transpositions dans les réalités objectives de l'industrie de la construction et de l'habitat social? Est-ce précisément dans l'absence de fonction de l'architecture que se trouve sa fonction sociale? Il se pourrait en définitive que l'architecture n'ait guère d'autre raison d'être.

Bernard Tschumi, Le Paradoxe Architectural in Architecture et Disjonction, Éditions HYX, 1994 (2014), p.39-41.

Complex Acronym.

Jungle, The Heat, 2014.

'The common misapprehension is that a messy desk is a sign of a hard worker.'

'Get over the idea that your function here is to collect and process as much information as possible.'

'The whole mess and disorder of the desk on the left is, in fact, due to excess information.'

'A mess is information without value.'

'The whole point of cleaning off a desk is to get rid of the information you don't want and keep the information you do want.'

'Who cares which candy wrapper is on top of which paper? Who cares which half-crumpled memo is trapped between two pages of a Revenue Ruling that pertained to a file three days back?'

'Forget the idea that information is good.'

'Only certain information is good.'

'Certain as in some, not as in a hundred percent confirmed.'

'Each file you examine in Rotes will constitute a plethora of information,' the Personnel aide said, stressing the second syllable of plethora in a way that made Sylvanschine's eyelids flutter.

'Your job, in a sense, with each file is to separate the valuable pertinent information from the pointless information.'

'And that requires criteria.'

'A procedure.'

'It's a procedure for processing information.'

'You are all, if you think about it, data processors.'

The next slide on the screen was either a foreign word or a very complex acronym, each letter in bold and also underlined.

'Different groups and teams within groups are given slightly different criteria that help inform what to look for.'

The Personnel aide was thumbing through his laminated outline.

'Actually there's another example of the information thing.'

'I think they've got it.' 

The CTO had a way of turning one foot out perpendicular to its normal direction and tapping it furiously to signal impatience.

'But it's right here under the desk thing.'

'You mean the deck of cards?'

'The checkout line.'

They seemed to believe their mikes were off.

'Christ.'

'Who'd like to hear another example illustrating the idea of collecting information versus processing data?'

Cusk was feeling solid and confident, as he often did after a series of attacks had passed and his nervous system felt depleted and difficult to arouse. He felt that if he'd raised his hand and given an answer that turned out not to be correct it wouldn't have been that big of a deal. 'Whatever,' he thought. The 'whatever' is what he often though when he was feeling jaunty and immune from attack. He had twice actually asked women out when in this cocky, extroverted, hydrotically secure mood, then later failed to show up or call at the appointed time. He actually considered turning around and saying something jaunty and ever so slightly flirtatious to the noisome Belgian swimsuit model - on the upswing, he now wanted people's attention.

At age eight, Sylvanshine had data on his father's liver enzymes and rate of cortical atrophy, but he didn't know what these data meant.

'There you are at the market while your items are being tallied. There's an individual price for each item, obviously. It's often right there on the item, on an adhesive tag, sometimes with the wholesale price also coded in the corner - we can talk about that some other time. At checkout, the cashier enters the price of each grocery, adds them up, appends relevant sales tax - not progressive, this is a current example - and arrives at a total, which you then pay. The point - which has more information, the total amount or the calculation of ten individual items, let's say you had ten items in your cart in the example. The obvious answer is that the set of all the individual prices has much more information than the single number that's the total. It's just that most of the information is irrelevant. If you paid for each item individually, that would be one thing. But you don't. The individual information of the individual price has value only in the context of the total; what the cashier is really doing is discarding information, which in the cashier runs through a procedure in order to arrive at the one piece of information that's valuabe - the total, plus tax.'

'Get rid of the layman's idea that information is good. That the more information the better. The phone book has lots of information, but if you're looking for a phone number, 99.9 percent of that information is just in the way.'

'Information per se is really just a measure of disorder.' Sylvanshine's head popped up at this.

'The point of a procedure is to process and reduce the information in your file to just the information that has value.'

'There's also the matter of using your time most efficiently. You're not going to spend equal time on each file. You want to spend the most time on the files that look promising in terms of yielding the most net revenue.'

'Net revenue is our term for the amount of additional revenue generated by an audit less the cost of the audit.'

'Under the Initiative, examiners are evaluated according to both total net revenue produced and the ratio of total additional revenue produced over total cost of additional audits ordered. Whichever is the least favorable.'

'The ratio is to keep some rube from simply filling out a Memo 20 on every file that hits his Tingle in hopes of jacking up his net.' Cusk considered: An examiner who filed no Memo 20s ever would have a ratio of 0/0 which is infinity. But the net revenue total would, he reflected, also be 0.

'The point is to develop and implement procedures that let you determine as quickly as possible whether a given file merits closer examination -'

'- that closer examination itself involving some type or types of procedures blended with your own creativity and instinct for smelling a rat in the woodwork -'

'- although at the beginning of your service, as you're gaining experience and honing your skills, it will be natural to rely on certain tested procedures -'

'- a lot of these will vary by group or team.'

'Incongruities on the Master Files, for one thing. That's pretty obvious. Disagreement of W-2s plus 1099s with stated income. Disagreement of state return with 1040 -'

'But by how much? Below what floor do you simply let an incongruity go?'

'These are the sorts of matters for your group orientation.'

Sylvanshine now know that two separate pairs of new wigglers were actually, unbeknownst to them, related, one pair through a liaison five generations ago in Utrecht.

David Cusk was now feeling so relaxed and unafraid that he was almost getting drowsy. The two trainers sometimes established a rhythm and concert that was soothing and restful. Cusk's tailbone was a tiny bit numb from settling back and slumping in his seat, resting his elbow casually on the foldout desk, the heat of the little lamp of no more direct concern than news of the weather somewhere else.

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, Penguin Books, 2012, p.342-345.

Dynamic Configuration.

Professor Bourbaki, Early Diagram, 2014.

The first notion mobilized by the author is that of diagram. This concept, borrowed from the work of Gilles Deleuze, extends the notion of “agencement socio-technique”. The socio-technical agencement is one of the central concepts of the anthropology of the sciences and technologies and, more particularly, of actor-network theory (ANT): describing a combination of human beings and technical devices that are caught in a dynamic configuration (the agencement acts), it emphasizes the composite and distributed character of all action and the impossibility of definitely separating humans from technologies. It is agencements that are primary and which give their meaning to categories such as States, markets, families or, more fundamentally, determine the relevance and significance of major divisions, such as those between humans and non-humans or between nature and culture. The notion of agencement is richer than that of dispositif (as defined by Michel Foucault), since it implies the idea of (distributed) action, whereas dispositif is more static. The concept of diagram makes it possible to stress the variety of different configurations to which agencements can give rise.

M. Callon, “Europe wrestling with technology,” Econ. Soc., vol. 33, no. 1, 2004, p. 121.

Codified & Tacit.

Professor Bourbaki, IMG_2269, 2014.

Notes on Asheim et al.

Asheim et al. propose a typology of knowledge. It is a way of going beyond the binary argument of whether knowledge is codified or tacit (restrictively narrow understanding of knowledge, learning and innovation). Indeed, Asheim et al. (2011) offer an alternative conceptualization. The distinction between analytic, synthetic and symbolic knowledge was originally introduced by Laestadius (1998, 2007) as an alternative to the OECDs classification of industries according to R&D intensity. This classification tends to exclude engineering-based industries from high-tech industry statistics. Asheim & Gertler (2005) and Asheim & Coenen (2005) further developed the classification in order to “explain the geographies of innovation for different firms and industries using knowledge bases to show the broader organizational and geographical implications of different types of knowledge”. Symbolic knowledge was added in Asheim et al. (2007) to analyze the growing importance of cultural production. 

This is typological thinking at its best, in the form of “ideal types” (empirical input constituting the ideal type exists in reality, but the ideal type itself does not exist). I should look up the Weberian link to this notion, because it rings a bell and could build a connection with German sociology. Pre-Darwinian typological thinking is based on the idea that morphological functions perfectly match the environmental structure a given entity lives in. This perfect fit forms a timeless kind (remember that in pre-Darwinian science this was often used as an indication of the existence of a benevolent Designer as shown in Lane et al. [2005]). 

Analytic: Economic activities where scientific knowledge based on formal models and codification is highly important (i.e. biotechnology, nanotechnology). University-industry links and networks are important and more important than in other knowledge bases. Codification is more frequent because knowledge is based on reviews of existing studies; knowledge generation is based on the application of scientific principles and methods; knowledge processes are more organized (R&D departments); outcomes tend to be documented in reports, electronic files or patent descriptions. Activities require specific qualifications/capabilities of the people involved such as analytical skills, abstraction, theory building and testing. The workforce needs research experience or university training. Knowledge creation in the form of scientific discoveries or technological inventions is important and may lead to patenting and licensing. Knowledge application is in the form of new products and processes and is often carried out by new firms and spin-off companies formed on the basis of radically new knowledge and inventions. 

Synthetic: Economic activities are based on novel combinations of existing knowledge. Occurs in response to need to solve specific problems coming up in the interaction with customers and suppliers (i.e. plant engineering, specialized advanced industrial machinery and shipbuilding). Products are “one off” or produced in small series. R&D is less important and takes the form of applied research. University-industry links are relevant, but more in the field of applied R&D than in basic research. Knowledge is created less in a deductive process or through abstraction, but more often in an inductive process of testing, experimentation, computer-based simulation or through practical work. Knowledge is partially codified and tacit knowledge is more important due to the fact that it often results from experience gained at the workplace (learning by doing, using and interacting). More concrete know-how, craft and practical skill required in knowledge production and circulation. Provided by professional and polytechnic schools or on-the-job training. Overall, this is rather incremental innovation, dominated by the modification of existing products/processes. Since this is less disruptive, innovation takes place in existing firms and spin-offs are relatively less frequent. 

Symbolic: Economic activities based on the creation of meaning and desire as well as aesthetic attributes of products, producing designs, images and symbols, and the economic use of such forms of cultural artefacts. The increasing importance of this knowledge can be seen in the development of media production (film-making, publishing, music), advertising, design, brands and fashion. This is innovation intensive (creation of new ideas and images rather than actual production processes). Competition isn’t based on the use-value but on the sign-value of brands. Input is aesthetic rather than cognitive and this demands specialized abilities in symbol interpretation and creativity than mere information processing. This knowledge is incorporated and transmitted in aesthetic symbols, images, de(signs), artefacts, sounds and narratives with strong cultural content. Tied to a deep understanding of the “everyday culture” of specific social groupings. This is essentially tacit knowledge and context specific. The acquisition of essential creative, imaginative and interpretative skills is less tied to formal qualifications and university degrees than the practice in various stages of the creative process. The process of socialization (rather than formal education) in the trade is important not only because of know-how but also know-who (potential collaborators with complementary specialization through informal interaction in the professional community).