Digital Materiality: Making the Incomprehensible (Unbegreifliche) Perceptible
Symposium:
- ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art
- More presentations from ISEA2011:
Session Title:
- On the Persistence of Hardware
Presentation Title:
- Digital Materiality: Making the Incomprehensible (Unbegreifliche) Perceptible
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Panel: On the Persistence of Hardware
This paper reports on a series of experiments that were conducted as part of a practice-led PhD, which explored the digital potentials at the interface of hardware and software through creative practice. The laboratory-style experiments develop along a trajectory from noise within existent (computer) systems towards speculative interfaces, where conceptions of materiality of hardware and software are brought into question. Digital processes are omnipresent and yet remain imperceptible and incomprehensible (unbegreiflich) – easily being misunderstood as immaterial. This paradigm of the digital immaterial however is highly problematic, and challenging it becomes particularly important in the light of relays between technological developments and cultural concepts that develop into so-called Digital culture. Creative practice has a particular position from which to challenge existing paradigms. The experiment here was used not as a strictly normative scientific method, but as a process that engages in continuous evolvement and invention, while celebrating the constructedness of the pseudo-scientific laboratory. The series of experiments makes use of the von Neumann architecture that treats software and data the same and through different processes transforms software processes into perceptible dynamic matter.