C.4 ~ F.686
Waves patterns: past, present and future?
by Camilo
(2022)
(*) One day I wrote about myself being infront of a computer. Just before coming to the Netherlands. Back then I was writing about contemplation and web.
** Relationships with human and non-human transform.
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Hace un tiempo, sobre las Luz que les hablo dejo de ser poética. Es un hecho y me fastidia, me fastidia verme agotado frente a ella, pensando en todo lo que no fue fuera de ella, quisiera no haber visto todo lo que vi, haber visitado todo lo que visité. Still visiting, still exhausted, Jawwww Porque recordarlo no es un problema, es lidiar con el cuerpo agotado, el cerebro estúpidamente agotado, incapaz de atender. Soy adicto, sí. Libero oxitocina, dopamina frente a mi pantalla. Me quedo ahí, hipnotizado, embrutecido, me pierdo y hace rato que dejó de ser poético. Arderá y desde adentro iluminará lo que proyecta la luz. Tóxica transformación. Scroll, scroll, scroll. scroll,scroll,scroll ¿Cuándo se acabará? Me pregunto siempre ¿En qué momento produce la gente que postea* constantemente? Es decir, ¿no hacen más? Programan todo? Cuantos twits en un solo día? ¿Cómo puede ser eso posible? No hacen más. Yo pasivamente consumo, pero ellos activamente responden. ¿Qué más hacen? ¿De qué viven? ¿En qué momento se concentran?*
(2022)
It hasn’t change so much. still in front of a computer.
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Diffraction Methodologies
The following is a fragment of the thesis. Permeable Territories: Between reflection and diffraction weaving a living publishing practice. Until here the disertation contextalized my publishing experience and introduce a reflective approach to it from the manifesto format.
Reflection for me has been a tool for thinking. Intuitively, I find reflexivity the way to ask myself questions critically. To dig into thoughts and develop a conversation with the reality that surrounds me, by asking questions about it, I see myself engaging with what I think is a conscious thought process.
Diffractive methodology on the other hand is a critical approach to theory and knowledge construction that seeks to open up the binary approach of reflective thinking. Donna Haraway and Karen Barad elaborated this critical thought as part of their contributions to feminist theory and new materialisms. They propose to look the diffractive physics phenomena of waves to engage critically with reality.
When reading Haraway and Barad’s theory of diffraction, I understood that, without being aware of it, when reflecting on the world I am approaching it from a distance. Reflection let us see the world from the distance. Haraway argues that reflexivity is founded in representationalism, which is embedded in a scientific knowledge: “a scientific realist believes that scientific knowledge accurately reflects physical reality, whereas a strong social constructivist would argue that knowledge is more accurately understood as a reflection of culture, rather than nature”(Barad, 2007, p.86). One is projected into the other, like imprinted stamps on a surface.
Therefore, reflection acts from the idea of a mirror, which in fact is a reflective object. By providing an accurate image or representation of the object mirrored, the reflection is exposed to be known, described, thought, identified, etc. There is never an act of relation between the observer and the reflected more than proximity and identification of similarities. In fact, according to Haraway a mirror just displaces the same elsewhere, setting up additionally worries about copy and original and the search for the authentic and really real (Barad, 2007, p.86). The already known reductionist approach of science.
This thought drives me to question how actually such an embedded idea implies a certain attitude to the world. I recognize in reflection the capability to find common ground. By looking for the same elsewhere there is an activity that connects conceptually the reality. Reflections as the process of finding intersections between the thing that I already know within the present reality. It is a thinking process that elaborates and digests critically, but it is, in fact, linear and binary. Again, like the image in the mirror.
Diffraction makes emphasis not on the intersections between things but on their relationships. It happens when waves -light, water, sound- encounter an obstacle and form a multitude of patterns as they pass through. This image of interferences among waves is what Donna Haraway and Karen Barad want to draw attention to. Haraway(2007) sees diffraction as an optical metaphor for the effort to make a difference in the world. To her, diffraction patterns record the history of interaction, interference, reinforcement, difference. In contraposition to reflection, it is about heterogeneous history, not about originals nor uniformity. Unlike reflection, diffraction doesn’t displace the same elsewhere in more or less distorted form. Diffraction can be a metaphor for another kind of critical consciousness. “It gives us the opportunity to become more attuned to how differences are being created in the world, and what particular effects they have on subjects and their bodies” (Barad, 2007, p.273). Seeing and thinking diffractively, therefore, implies a self-accountable, critical and responsible engagement with the world. But what does that mean in practice? How can it be a concrete methodology? And how can I relate it to the publishing practices?
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método-rumiante = ["Lento", "perezoso", "poco productivo",
"poco sexy", "grande", "excesivo", "de cuero muy duro",
"poco delicado", "poco refinado", "camina lento", "es ocioso",
"dejado", "abandonado en sus formas"]
(2022)
I don’t feel we are understanding the ruminant method yet. How can I stop being productive. How is this different today?
print(metodo-ruminante[0])
Lento
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I found this notes on my computer. Part of a trash-bin of last thesis thoughts. ↓
*** “Las TIC y toda su infraestructura son también tecnologías de la movilidad porque trasladan significados de un lugar a otro, como también lo hace la traducción.” Pág. 45.
**** Technologies move.
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Relational cards finally are perfoming diffraction, they propagate mostly through sound where there is no repetition, and they generate themselves based on diffracted personal intentions. Participants trained themselves to conjure and bring to matter different ways to relate thought. Glossary cards are served in multiple homes and they contain collective but contextual beleives, propositions, logics, resources.
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Challenging the structure
I see in glossaries a key idea to understand the foundation of the paradoxical spaces I’m stepping on. Glossaries are common elements inside books. Typically made as a list of terms and descriptions, they usually exist inside non-fiction and fiction books to clarify terminology, explain words or give context to the text. But, most of all they create meaning at the very base of a book. By explaining specific words within their context, each description makes part of the book’s foundation. Fundamentally, glossaries don’t guide the reader, they accompany the reader; building up the soil to step on, without being the path to walk through.
In the context of literary theory, a book’s glossary is what Gerard Gennette(1997) describes as a paratext. Investigating how texts operate with each other, he highlights how every text is presented inside a book using elements that are not part of the text itself. According to him, titles, subtitles, index, dedications, epigraphs, etc. are thresholds to the text. Elements that mark a start to the text without being a boundary or a sealed-border (Gerard Gennette, 1997, p. 1). In those words, glossaries can be seen as the permeable space inside a book that gives context to the reader. According to Allison Fagan, researcher on bilingual glossaries in latinx literature, “The glossary is a way to create context, for those readers who wanted it, without interrupting the flow of the story” (Allison Fagan, 2016, p.61).
The structure of the glossary is usually a list in alphabetical order placed at the beginning or end of a book. It follows a concrete order because it aims to communicate accurately. Going letter by letter and describing word by word, every glossary is always accessible. In fact, It seems to decrypt the texts’ foundations by classifying its key entities into a clear, direct and ease-to-use rule book for the reader.
Either made by the editor or the author themselves, every glossary is essentially the result of gathering, describing and classifying specific words and technical terms used by the author.
Analyzing this process and its structure, brings up some problems. To me, setting limits through tight definitions, one after the other, turns the glossary-making process into an exercise of drawing sharp borders surrounding definitions. An act of making strict containers and putting “non-living” entities inside. Like territories defined on a map. A practice that would sector the glossary as a space. In fact, if this space is the foundation of the book, it is one marked by strong borders and delimited areas using lines between concepts and meanings. It would be naive to deny that this can be useful, but it’s important to highlight that by recognizing the existence of the limit, an attitude of power is revealed. The reasons to choose terms and descriptions may be questioned.
For Hope A. Olson “classifications are closed systems […] they represent some concepts and not others”. She argues that, “no classification will ever be inclusive” (Olson, 1998, p.235). Therefore, the clarity of such a structure inside the glossaries implies the constrain of the threshold, and its apparent impossibility of being open and fluid. Furthermore, generally the description gathered inside each entry of a glossary follows what Olson describes as a “mainstream act of classification” which means it usually follows “structures developed by the most powerful discourses in a society”. By tracing limits between words and descriptions, there is a “marginalisation of concepts outside the mainstream”. Everything beyond those descriptions and explanations becomes irrelevant or assumed to be known. In glossaries is easy to fall into marginalisation and closed pictures of the world. They seem to be the gatekeeper of book knowledge as unidirectional puzzle solvers or the key to understanding. Rather than a threshold, usually they become a wall. A surface to post a rulebook for comprehension.
Nevertheless, I believe glossaries may be explored as the open space the image of a threshold suggests. When describing a paratext Gennette(1998) uses as an example Borges’ description of a preface. He describes it as a vestibule: the space inside a house “that offers the world at large the possibility of either stepping inside or turning back”. Such a space is one space in itself, but it, as a threshold, suggests movement. Its passageway characteristics draw intimate connectivity from the house to the street. After opening the door to a book, the reader has a space to move, interact, continue or step back. a paratext inhabits these moments for the reader. They are elements and entities themselves that simultaneously facilitate movement from, and to the text in a double-way
direction. As the same as the vestibule of Borges, I believe glossaries can be seen as a space for freedom and fluidity where relation-ability and critical thought can emerge: elements inside books that facilitate interactions between the inside and the outside of a book. Letting readers ask questions about the construction of knowledge they are reading. Why have these words been defined in this way? Who chose them and who defined them? Or what are the intentions of classifying them as they are classified?
In contraposition to such a constrained structure that draws limits by classifying, and instead acknowledging a diffractive methodology. I want to experiment with shapeshifting in glossaries. In the following sections, I am going to introduce two possible attempts to re-think and diffract the glossary. First, I’ll explore the etymology of “glossary” to find radical approaches to its form. The glossary will transform into a “layering of annotations” where footnotes are annotations that enrich the text’s meaning. And second, I’ll visit Allison Fagan’s article Translating in the Margins: attending to Glossaries in Latina/o Literature(2016) to exemplify how the glossary project we are making for publishing can subvert the dominant and oppressive culture of knowledge by criss-crossing between languages.
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***** Es contra la idea de eficiencia que el rumiante es menos máquina y más animal. (Lucressia Masson, 2015)
(2022) > The following text was part of a reflection about internet and long sessions in front of a computer. Overwhelm, satiety, anxiety, curiosity, astonishment, rage, satisfaction and dissatisfaction as constant as constant affections between the struggle to believe to know something and to know nothing.
En las mañanas me levanto,
tomo una ducha, hago desayuno y
enciendo el computador.
...
Horas después,
mi atención regresa a
la taza vacía del café
que tomé acompañando
la sesión. Me levanto de
la mesa y con una extraña
sensación en el pecho aparece
siempre la misma pregunta:
-¿Qué he hecho esta mañana?
-Otro baño de luz blanca —me respondo—
Intento convencerme
de que la relación adictiva
con el internet tiene bajo ese nombre
un carácter fresco y saludable.
Las horas frente a la pantalla
dejaron atrás revistas, libros,
memes, películas, imágenes, artículos,
artistas, personajes, conceptos, chistes...
Información que me llevó a
más información como una cadena
de hipervínculos infinitos de novedad.
Una concatenación frenética
de contenido vasto e inagotable;
el internet en sí mismo,
un baño de luz sobreabundante
e inaprensible.
Agobio, saciedad, ansiedad, curiosidad,
asombro, rabia, satis- facción e insatisfacción
como afectos constantes entre la lucha
por creer conocer algo y no conocer nada.
(2022)
The following drawing was part of a series of drawings made in 2021 during quarentine about slowing down and contemplating the internet. This one was about a xpub special issue. This happend before getting accepted to the course.
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(2022)
During the end of the first year of the course, a tutor proposed us to imagine new accounting systems as an excercise of understanding accounting from its root “to reckon”. I imagined the following. (By that time Colombia was going through a rough wave of police brutality. Today, I’m writing this on election’s day. I hope people will vote for a change.)
Accounting systems: (to reckon) take in consideration the breath
Without adding one on the top of another, breathing extends dispersedly through time and space. It marks a moment leaving one behind. This system doesn’t accumulate, this system expands and contracts. It exposes reasons that just the body knows.
Some visual representations of the system during a conversation:
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C : ∿～Giga Juan, or more accurate ～∿ ∿～Juan the Horse is a video and a meme at the same time.～∿ ∿～* Memes are everywhere and they are～∿ ,～∿ among a bunch of things,～∿ ∿～a minimum cultural expression of a Society. ～∿ ∿～* I like to think that they exist to transmit “the less” with “the enough”.～∿ A short piece of valuable cultural expression.～∿
∿/But, despite the valuable action, being aware that some of them are critical. what could be the maximum? ～～∿ ∿/ and when do you decide to laugh when you just want to scream.\∿ ∿～Furthermore, what is to laugh here in the global north about the minimum if the global south is burning, dying.\∿ ∿～Today, I find myself in a frustrating and shocking situation. ～～∿ ∿/People are dying in my country by police brutality.～∿ ∿/I don’t want to laugh. \∿
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Radical Glossary: a layering of annotations
“Las etimologías nos acercan a lo que fuimos, lo que nos dijimos cuando las cosas eran de otra manera” (Obligado, 2021)
The etymology of the word glossary comes from the Latin term ‘gloss’ which means ‘annotation’, and also ‘layer’ in English. Therefore, radically –from the root –, a glossary can also be seen as the layer of the book that accompanies the reader through annotations. The glossary as a ‘layering of annotations’
I understand annotations as small gestures from the reader to a text. In the form of notes or short explanations, it is an act that makes a strong connection between them both. I think that, by annotating, the reader is giving back something to the text. The notes on the margins of a book expand the text by introducing new information that didn’t exist before, but furthermore, give new thought to it.
To me, the annotated thought inside the margins of the book becomes a conversation between the reader and the text. A conversation I like to think happens as an intimate act of reciprocity. Intimate because it appears from a close encounter, and reciprocal because both are giving from themselves to each other.
(2022)
visit http://diffraction.attempt.press to see more attempts to diffract.
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By infiltrating the players real-life communication platforms, mixing fictive content with the real, the players are left in a constant state of wonder. Often times, they will share gathered information and puzzles to collaborate and solve them together in order to get further in the game. To facilitate this, players might self-organize themselves on online platforms, using Reddit threads for example. ARG games like Cicada 3301 attracted international attention with a very dedicated community forming as the game unfolds.
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