A letter to Frank Scheffer
Dear Frank
Thank you for your mail.
SONIC ELEMENTS for me is the third and final installment of a tryptych that explores what happens to the image in the age of digital reproduction.
SONIC FRAGMENTS, the first episode of the trilogy, was a collective exploration of how the digital process produced a fragmented image of reality. This fragmentation then became reality. In other words, we discovered during the process that reality copies its image.
SONIC GENETICS, the second episode of the trilogy, was once again a collective exploration, only this time we researched the survival mechanism at play in the tremendous pool of replicating digital images. We discovered that there was an inexorable tendency for certain images to replicate themselves faster, and more successfully than others. Thus, that digital imagery is in fact alive.
SONIC ELEMENTS, the third episode of the trilogy, will now synthesize the results of both earlier, collective experiments, into a defining, or concluding, work, wherein you and I will rigorously expose each other’s digital creations to this process of digital fragmentation and genetic survivalism. In essence, our goal is to uncover and immobilize the four elements of the digital apocalypse. The fate of the digital Youniverse depends on our success. We must not fail!
Yours in digital anarchy for a liberated future-zone
Aryan Kaganof
December 4th, 2005 at 9:22 am
hey kaganof:
the feel of this statement is great -i hope you didn’t the impression that I’m a great editor the other day… I merely meant that I get a little irritated when people use big academic words to show off that they know them, and use them improperly because they never bothered to look them up. I usually ask when I don’t know what something means, and if I don’t ask, I won’t use it.
Anyway, the first part of your statement sounds a bit like theories around multiplicity (kind of fragmented personalities, which we all have; many identities in each person, rather than one, and the exploration thereof), cross-referenced with Baudrillard’s hyperreality (”more real than real.” how jaws looks like a real shark, and real sharks look fake).
In final paragraph:
1. do you really want to use “concluding” work, if it’s alive, and others might still alter it? perhaps qualify it with “our defining,…” rather than “a defining”?
2. What’s genetic survivalism?
nathaniel
http://nathanielstern.com
December 4th, 2005 at 9:23 am
genetic survivalism
refers to the images that “survive” the levels of re-mixing
everything that a re-mixer has chosen to use
has “survived”
and i believe that only the most powerful, most immediate, most pregnant images
survive a re-mix
therefore these are the images that actually drive a narrative
they are the “fittest” images
December 5th, 2005 at 6:43 am
dear brother,
nathaniel’s remark about the ‘concluding’ work crossed my mind as well
on the other hand working on something as if it is the last one is always attractive