gijs text

In 2007, a technology was developed that made it possible to experience feeling in an artificial limb (Nature, 29/01/2007). Note that ‘Feeling’ is not to be understood as some passive experience, like a simulation; it works both ways: the artificial limb is in all its movements directed by thought, while the mind responds to what it senses.

Rather conventionally, the artificial limb was still installed in its proper place.

However, the conventionality of such a ‘proper place’ came soon to be questioned by artists, philosophers, and the sexually confused. For one can think of a great many ways to install an arm, in no way less functional than when on the right side of the chest. It could just as well have an interesting roll to play at the other side of the room. And probably even more so, in someone else’s.

So now, near future, I can feel it, when you touch your mouse.

But, it has to be admitted, it was far from easy to accept our distant-body-parts as our own. Embarrassingly, it still seemed more natural to accept the experience of distant-touch like something of a Dionysian intoxication, as a religious experience, rather than as something we could control.

So, in the beginning, we could only undergo the stimulations passively.

~Raphael, Tempi Madonna, 1507-1508

That is, if we someone to touch our distant-body-parts at all. Because that became another problem: in order to get touched, we had to make ourselves desirable.

So now we had two problems to solve:

1. How to understand ourselves as a unity
2. How to make others want us

Looking back, we see that the 2007 bionic girl learned to operate her arm very quickly. How did she do that? It was not so difficult for her because her arm was placed where an arm conventionally would be found. How exactly does one remember the proper place of a dismembered arm? What is this convention of where what should be? In other words: what is the Operating System that made it possible for her to understand the new arm as her own?

It was her sense of self.

This sense-of-self was given to her by the others around her: they gave her words, images and expectations. By looking right back at her, they offered her a mirror.

~Bold Britney

And so we discovered what was needed in order to unite our distant-body-parts, and do so in such a way that it would be a presentable unity for others to desire. This operating system is known as: identity. Identity is the software that can do for the distant-body-parts-technology, what Microsoft Apple did for the computer in the 1980’s, that is, to give the hardware a language.

However, this time we did not need to write a new language, for we had unknowingly created it all along. We had been developing it ever since we called ourselves human. Only, we thought we were doing something else. What we now see as the construction of an OS, we had always misunderstood as a philosophical, or spiritual search for the self. We had confused the need to see ourselves as a whole, and the need for others to perceive us so, with presuming the actual identities we happened to think ourselves whole with, as being necessarily those.

While looking all around, we have found nothing necessarily so. But in doing just that, we have developed numerous forms of life. So while we might not have found ourselves some true source, we have created a rich system of contingent forms instead.

A rich system of contingent forms is known as: language.

So instead of finding sense of self, we developed sense of language. We are not human anymore, nor anything else. We are the language we create.

I would like to propose a new medium for interdisciplinary communications. Not a medium that can convey meanings, but a medium that is laying the groundwork for all possible meaning. That might sound rather universal and abstract, but in fact it is the most sensuous medium, as the following example might clarify:

If two people were to get shipwrecked on a desert island, miles apart from each other, what then could best be done in order to find one another? This problem cannot be solved without introducing something new into the story. This new thing will then be an exemplar of the sensuous medium I am proposing to use.

If the shipwrecked want to find each other, it is not enough for them to rely on reason only. For instance, they might think it a good idea to write wait for me here in the sand. A fairly reasonable thought, it seems. However, because it is, the other person is most likely to make the same plan and make his own sign. Having two meeting signs is very unreasonable.

Shared thoughts are of no use if not applied to some shared thing. So really they ought to turn their attention to their environment. What will most likely catch their eye? The thing that is most noticeable. The island might consist of: lots of sand, palms and a mountain. Of course then the mountain is the most noticeable thing. For instance in being the only one, the only one shaped like an eagle, or printed in bold. As the mountain is so very noticeable, it is reasonable for one to assume it will manipulate the other’s senses likewise. Thus making the mountain the most perfect thing to which they can assign their shared thoughts, and make it their meeting place. Now, this most noticeable thing exemplifies the sensuous medium I am proposing to use:

Things

Things. are of such a kind that they open up possibilities for communication, without actually saying anything. The only demand is that they are noticeable, so that they will be part of people’s environment. In making them noticeable, we can use tried methods, like for instance: authenticity, uselessness, or simply charm. And because we have discovered things to be so perfectly adaptable to any situation, and as such able to survive any specific meaning, I have found that they indeed offer the most suitable interdisciplinary glue.

Sometimes, philosophers think truth to be accompanied by a certain state of mind. And sometimes this state of mind is then regarded as the actual goal of the search for truth. For example a state of * is reached when one would be in possession of the right judgements. This is what the first Sceptic also must have been thinking. Longing for *, he’s off to search for truth, just like any other philosopher would. However, quite different from the dogmatic philosopher, he sees himself obliged to suspend his judgement when he doesn’t find any truth. Then, as if by accident, he reaches the desired state of * anyway. As if by accident, because he expected this desired state as an effect of being in possession of the right judgements, and not as an effect of suspending them.

This is how the discovery of ourselves as construing agents is to be understood: not as the discovery of our power of creation, or our freedom of choice, but simply as the discovery that we must have been constructing. As the observation of a specific connection between contingent parts we had apparently been making.

The story of Apelles illustrates this. Apelles the painter was searching for a technique that would create a realistic effect of foam on a horse’s mouth. When he doesn’t succeed in finding it, he gives up, and angrily throws his sponge at his canvas. Then, by accident, he reaches the desired effect after all. The effect is found by not searching instead of made up. Apelles discovers accidentally a connection between the bumping of a sponge at a painting, and a realistic effect of foam. Is Apelles from now on aimlessly handed over to Destiny? No, of course not. Now he can develop a sponging technique. In retrospect, the sun doesn’t seem to rise every morning again by pure accident.