εμπειρισμός

WHAT IF... Ernst Mach was right?

NOT-SURE-YET...

WHAT IF... Levinas Chose the Wrong Other?

It has been quite a week since Nervemeter and its co-pilot left. At the start of the week I realised Levinas might be completely of false consciousness. During the week I realised that structuralism is almost everything. Today I realised Kant is responsible for the embrace that art and philosophy have shared for 150 years. I suppose it was the kind of week that should have run in reverse.

Why do we throw names around and console ourselves that what we make has a bearing on existence? Really, we are exercising a faculty that Kant initiated. In the heroic Critique of Judgment the subjective is objectified. It is a very old idea but it is perhaps the most instrumental in the relational aesthetic brought forth now with work like nerve meter. While it may seem like it inhabits an almost complete vacuum in mass society it does not. It might be in the *margin but if it were not for the possibility of bringing the names and ideas of continental aesthetics to bear on it would be very much more in a vacuum.

To consider that a work like Nerve Meter inhabits an almost-vacuum is for it to equally inhabit almost everything. What is the bearing of D&G on the work? Well, the work has a purchase on material relations. Or does it? As boxes, cables, transmission and reception its a synaesthetic/linguistic model of the mega-network shorn of its threat to engulf us. In this sense it is something like Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics of reassurance, that for a while, it all might seem simple that we cannot but occupy nodal points in a muddled net.

What if Levinas was looking at the wrong other? "What if" comics used always engross me as a child. As an adult the fascination has moved over to the continental squad. In my episode for this week I am folding up and unfolding the question "what if Levinas chose the wrong other...". Without exploding the question of WW2, what if the priveleged other was malicious? As I understand it, in a war crimes tribunal the soldier cannot be held responsible for what the general ordered him to do. The reverse is however true, that the head of control can be punished for the body committing the act. The same is true to some extent of a corporation. Is Levinas suggesting the soldier's priveleging of his commanding other is in fact an ethical position prior to exercising critical faculty, which in this case might have meant ommission rather than commission of a malicious act? I think this cannot but be a submerged iceberg in the work of Levinas. An ethical relation with the other that comes before an ontological position could be perilous. Of course, the other that Levinas speaks of is possibly not such elastic an idea to stretch around this scenario. After all, it is just a hypothetical exercise.

What is the relationship between the problematised relation with the other and Kantian possibility and Mearleau-Ponty's reassurance found in our Nerve Meter? Almost nothing. In other words, almost everything. All of this attention is focused toward that remaining question.

A welcome note...(The tale of two cities and one hungry mechanism)

So, the sojourn is over, The Nerve Metre is back in storage awaiting its time and place for continued interstitial negotiation. The inhabitation of Conical Inc made manifested some interesting outcomes - text, dialogue, interactions were accumulated, and continue to do so, databases were extended as were the territories of the installation itself. The frequencies drifted through Fitzroy, and the art pod that is Conical; and the frequencies of Fitzroy and Conical were re-fabricated through the modular apparatus. The 'modular' association took on a whole new realm, in a zone known or becoming known for its modularisms; readymade styling outlets provide the new money with their creature comforts, 'the look' to impress family and friends, signifier's of the upwardly mobile. The conductor decided to purchase his own wheeled apparatus, so as to negotiate the terrain in search of sonorous zones hidden in the cityscape. Underpasses, alleyways, interstitial realms ready to be sampled and re-applied. Grand gestures were admired, documented, however later deleted due to memory issues and the ongoing nature of the Nerve Metre, its hunger for fresh frequencies playing into the hands of the pan-capitalist war machine once again! The conductor was forced to make harrowing decisions about which outputs and previous creative responses were to be released into the either in a bid for megabytes, so as to feed The Metre. The moving image became the sacrificial, to make room for the new sonorities the NM required.
Again, The Nerve Metre tapped into the electric rhizome of the urban structure with apparent ease. Light switches, traffic lights, human presence, became modes of activation, implantation on the sonoral level. On opening night and very tired and some what delirious conductor let slip that the 'no-go-zone' of touch, would bring the mechanism to life. The 'director' was heard spreading the notion and several individuals were seen tinkering with the delicate antennae, some making a return visit for more 'play time'. The more subtle individuals realized the (NM) was already aware of their presence without the need for direct contact. They observed and listened, trying to situate the aesthetic into their favourite basket. The conductor, empirical by nature acknowledged the responses, always aware of the prescribed baggage that the artist/critic/viewer/curator will carry about like the turtle with its shell. The Nerve Metre was alive again...and up to its old tricks, though the conductor felt naked, where could he find a shell. Once again the (NM) had left him with explaining to do, and the one hour of sleep the previous night made this a some what excrutiating task. The 'oracle' made this somehow more bearable by engaging in the conductor's musings on the potential next phaze.