Massaging Images: Synergy, Modulation, Mutation (#criticalwriting #RL)
Format: video transcription (selected life archives)
I had an urge to record my idea+thought since I was in a rut, writing became slower, and video did it faster than my keyboard.
09.15.20
00:00:00–0.01.19:
(Test..test…) My rumbling will begin on new-media utilisation and its technicity’s dillemas. I do understand the pandemic pushes us to find the alternative of proximity, efficiency, and artistic capability. I do understand how our “temporary” time is getting swayed and is rendered into one medium. Still, the discussion surrounding digital media often revolves around either the cultural or political sphere rather than the media’s culture itself. I have been filled with dismay by the dull and regular topic on the digital image or new media in contemporary art practice. Sometimes, I ask myself, “am I a shitty purist?” I do not know; I was just being sentient on a boring discussion. Instead of talking on this culture or that geopolitics, the genesis technicity of information exchanges between machines shall be more emphasised in the milieu of becoming digital; it goes the same way for the digital image since the machine does not allow the arbitrary movement; everything is chained to the organ system. However, we are not fully conscious of this functional organ, and in exchange, we are even trying to eradicate, alienate, and extinguish it with the anthropocentric disposition. The longer the system is alienated, the deeper we are not aware of its function; we discard the polytechnic principle, and in consequence, the image and its organ are no longer sensitive to information exchange. On the other hand, such pandemics and digital phenomena force me to re-think, re-evaluate, and reflect those cases. What is the new about digital image and new media in the context of the techne ecosystem? I know it is tricky to embark upon this question as we are trying to avoid formalistic tendency, but we have drawn a vast distance between technique and aesthetics. We forget that techniques facilitate the evolution of aesthetics. (cut)
00:01:30–00.02.17:
I have got a massage and now feel like a slime, no more stiff muscles. I always think that massage is a sophisticated invention, like how you press the joint with perfect precision can reduce body tension. This mechanism is surprisingly coherent to the digital image. We examine massage through the totality of movement; it must be done repetitively with the correct technique in specific areas; the image harbours the similar characteristic to a massage— it must be analysed as if we were massaging not by dot or line, but by the sub-complex element — the process, which is repetitive, dynamic yet systematic, and general yet particular. The image never dwells on inertia as it always moves to generate either a montage or sequence or inhabiting the medium or mutating to construct the images’ network. Henceforth, I propose a thesis ‘the most radical form of images is a network’ — pulsated body that needs a massage to relax the system’s muscle, so the image and its power can be widely distributed.
And I also realise, when I shot this video, I am massaging the image from the way I set the angle to press the on/off button, it requires particular action. I think whether network becoming or image becoming, both demands an impulse motion, resulting an axiological reverse process in which the network is also an image and imagining. To integrate the image’s techne into aesthetics, an image must be discussed in the universality of technical objects so that we are conscious on data information modalities. Deciphering the image in technical matters will not make the study of the image too formalistic or limited; instead, it will broaden in the sense of aesthetic functionality and image genesis. (cut)
00:02:17–00.03.06:
Frankly, I want to shout out loudly “the image has always been data”, including energy that turns into an electromagnetic wave. It is just that the contemporary makes it more attune in an axiomatic sense with a concrete utilisation (industry). Let’s say analog video, yes the generated image is also loaded with data as the system manipulates energy into form, yet the system and controls are closed; image processing, therefore, is inductive or arguably still abstract. We will never know the generated colour or shape as we produce an image through an idea or abstractism — image after knowledge or experimentation. The cybernetics is indeed hugely exciting but is insufficient to explain current images phenomena because cybernetics presupposes images as inductive data and are surrounded by closed system repetitions rather than deductive ones. It is also profoundly extracted from abstract knowledge and has not yet reached a practical or concrete stage. In contrast, the contemporary images both generated and captured are deducted by a series of data sets that continues to beseech the trinity of the organ system “SYNERGY, MODULATION, MUTATION.” (cut)
09.25.20
00.01.03–00.02.07:
What if the annotation system for retail items on display in the supermarket was applied to massage? Well, I am considering using the computer vision to locate the massage’s best position based on the customer data record. It will be much efficient and highly pleasurable. Maybe, we can capture messages’ image on YouTube or even PornHub (laughing), annotating and labeling the image until it is obtainable as data set. I see this implementation, as well as implication, can guide us to the development stage of an image from abstract idea to concrete industrialism. I will not deny the digital images carry industrial and capitalistic remarks, they are intended for practical usage and a medium of money or information exchange, but that does not mean our comprehension is strictly on the side, ignoring techne culture and the milieu becoming image. (pause)
Well, strong synergy is thus required to build the study of the image in order to become critical, radical, yet playful. I see massage as an ideal example of synergy between body (medium)-movement (technique)-nerve (system), the same way we record the video: camera (system) -frame (medium) -shutter (technique). The image is the totality of habitual technique that cannot be ignored or diminished carelessly; instead of shunning the techne, we had better evaluate what the discourse market of contemporary art has dictated us to be! (cut)
00:02:09–00.03.40:
I am probably rumbling right now, but I won’t let this wild analysis of mine be forgotten the next day I wake up. Synergy…(pause)… digital image requires haptic and technical synergy; the haptic synergy is more physical, mediating the image’s physical environment before the system creates a new environment. From capturing images with the camera to making graphics with a stylus, the haptic synergy accommodates the pre-environment transfer to a new medium where the data image will be processed to a system ensemble, but many do not realise that we have entered into a technical synergy since the physical image (eye) becomes digital. A single motion of shooting, one stylus point movement that performs repetitively distributes data accumulation on the system and will give continuous commands to the system to generate an image. That’s how the machine works; one command to the system will create another chain of it. (pause)
However, beware of the situation when the images are coming to us massively with no dependable variable because we need to massage those images to eliminate contingency from the accidental data and determine the continuation of other related images. A pressure on a nerve point giving orders another nerve to respond. Thanks to computer vision, it helps us systematically massage images through the annotation process, which becomes key to machines’ first logic. The annotation must or can be done accurately by humans, although I have seen that many offer instant annotations, nothing can beat human inductive rationalism. There is no pure automation as long we are still the mediators for data exchange. Autopoietic is the biggest misunderstanding of human to machine. (cut)
00:03:42–00.05.40:
The selected images or samples will be annotated by capturing specific areas per screen and then labeling the image by prepared category. This process is carried out continuously until the required data sets are acquired to form a new system environment. Are we completely entering a technology synergy? Not yet, as long as the mediation of data synergy and transferred data has a physical trace from the last environment — the image we perceive; the synergy will be entirely obtained after the generated data set from the annotations is integrated into the data environment prepared by the system. At the same time, the synergy is needed for cultivating response-ability through repetitions, which I prefer to call habitual movements; so that the environment created by the system is ready to process the data image that has been labeled and given treatment. When the data is prepared to enter the system environment, then technical synergy can be fully achieved. (pause)
Time becomes a critical currency in the new environment because temporality is compressed together with the data system; the unit of time is swapped with the data processing interval. When does this temporality accumulate in the data-trace since it can disrupt the machine network? The synergy amalgamation lays a foundation for MODULATION as the fundamental aspect for becoming a network; from the spatialisation of temporality, modulation allows data in the new environment to be eliminated: does the data match the system, does the data overlap, does the data still carry a physical trace? Thus, the re-training process of more extensive random data is necessary to check the accuracy of specific target. If synergy requires repetition, modulation requires iteration of algorithms to optimise the parameter of accuracy. (pause)
However, the process is quite damnable; it forces the machine to detect images with a specific pixel area and pattern and if it occurs vainly, the iteration will return to the repetition stage, making the initial synergy be destabilised. The data accumulation and time interval will be wider and uncontrollable. Modulation is eternally bound to order and scalability where system is sequential and nearly impossible to break by using formula since it is attached from the beginning of the techne synergy and covers an absolute scale. It also indirectly makes modulation a debatable domain in new media studies which allows the image to shift from ontological to epistemological register: not how to represent power or culture, but how to transform resistance into an image and flourish it in industrial techne culture. Through modulation, grasping the image is about how to be partial, and cultivating partiality to achieve universality. (pause)
We can say that the modulation is viable when the system generates a specific image segmentation by predicting a series of random images; the data image thus reaches the ensemble stage and locks entire synergy, order, and scalability, as well as not allow either chaos or destruction in a system’s chain. In the meantime, the image is being modulated from a closed system to an open system where the image will glide through the contamination of other images and create an image network through successive iterations of the trace data system. And this is the MUTATION stage — an image meets another image, returns to itself, and duplicates another image. Mutations require recursion, burying the initial and weaving data image continuously, the image becomes a network of its own, albeit not all images can be mutated according to the coded and ordered system, like the virus that fails to mutate or mutates into a new type that is more dangerous with a larger scale of virulence. I call this anomaly mutated image as a rhizomatic image — disrupt the original network and create its own. What is more dangerous is that mutations demolish the infected host, namely the actual network, leaving residuals that can eventually destroy the order. The image is a network that is continually being haunted and hunted down. (cut)
______rafikalifi
