What is a digital thing, anyway?
Now perhaps we have a better sense of how much is contained in that little word "see." Seeing is not a certain mode of thought or presence to self; it is the means given me for being absent from myself, for being present from within at the fission of Being only at the end of which do I close up into myself.
From Eye and Mind
M.Merleau-Ponty 1964.
Essay on Rioji Ikeda’s Continuum at Centre Pompidou, 2018
Before delving into questions of meaning, interpretation, and perceptual affects, it’s essential that a physical examination precedes the metaphysical. Therefore, the first question I will tackle is the simple “what are they [A (continuum) & the installation ‘code-verse’], actually?” To this end, I will inquire as to what distinguishes digital things from analogue things, and if digital things are reducible to their mode of display or storage. The “what is it,” question gives rise to several problems relating to translatability across media and intuitive tendencies to limit constitutive materials to the physical. The artist does not exist in isolation; canonical concepts that came to the fore in the context of minimal sculpture and conceptual art pertain also to code-verse and A,namely the notion of the dematerialised artwork. I will take “dematerialised” to mean an artwork with a non-visual emphasis.
The installation space that houses the screens where the visual elements of code-verse take place is a uniform black. The floor is a soft black carpet: an invitation to sit. code-verseproudly asserts a digital look, making use of familiar symbols: 1, 0, +, -. These symbols do not invite decoding or reading but behave more like blocks of black and white or off and on. The soundtrack that accompanies these visuals cements the conclusion that the visitor is likely unaware that they are making that this is a digital thing. The soundtrack does this through its exclusive use of electronic sounds: white noise, rhythmic-melodic blips, white noise/static, and raw unmediated sine waves[1]. Occasionally the sounds feel as though they are at the very edge of the range of human hearing. Whether these sounds are digital or analogue is hard to know from the work alone, as ‘electronic’ does not constitute ‘digital’. For example, sounds produced by analogue synthesisers imply the digital while they are analogue systems[2]. Electrical circuits are analogue insofar as current, voltage, power, etc. Today, most electrical systems are digital systems, following widespread digitisation in the 1990s[3], therefore it is worthwhile to note that electronic does not necessarily equal digital. However, the storage of soundtracks is likely digital so I will treat it as such.
Ryoji Ikeda was a musician before he began working across disciplines:
His albums +/- (1996), 0°C (1998), matrix (2000), dataplex (2005), test pattern (2008) and supercodex (2013) pioneered a new minimal world of electronic music through his razor-sharp techniques and aesthetics.[4]
As such, the 5 large speakers that make up A do not evoke an oboist[5] - the complete lack of modulation in sine waves is such that they are very distinguishable as non-instrumental sounds. The individual unmodulated tones combined with the cold, sculptural arrangement of speakers does nothing to imply a hidden performer. The sound requires digital storage: the plaque on the gallery wall with the name and material constitution of the artwork states that each speaker in A contains a computer. Friedrich Kittler describes the means by which computers store information in code that at its core is made up of strings of binary digits (bits): “Inside the computers themselves everything becomes a number: quantity without image, sound, or voice.[6]”
Turning to code-verse, it’s conceivable that the same video and sound could be displayed on a variety of different screens and/or speakers with no change in its source code. This would entail a difference in the appearance of the artwork. Equally, code-versecould be shown in the exact same manner of installation with one minute change to its code. This alteration would likely change the appearance/sound of the artwork, (or potentially corrupt the file). Due to the reducibility of computer-stored information to binary code, digital media is highly translatable. Digital images are translatable across all screens. More generally, any digital media can be converted into any other type of digital media — any file format can be converted into any other file format[7]. Therefore, there are very few degrees of difference between digital media types. Therefore, the artwork is its mode of storage, its reduction to code. This renders the visual and sonic elements of code-verse one thing.
So, code-verse can be reduced fully to its source code, its soundtrack and visuals should not be considered separate. That digital information is translatable across different modes of storage and/or playback is not sufficient for a definition of a digital thing. In Languages of Art, Nelson Goodman - as part of a wider discussion establishing a ‘general theory of symbols’[8] - employs a criterion of “finite differentiation,”[9] to make the fundamental distinction between digital and analogue objects. Everything that is digital is “finitely differentiable,” whereas analogue values are continuously variable. This rests on the notion that representational systems are made up of lots of small possible physical objects: ‘tokens’ which are symbols that when combined might constitute representation(s)[10]. Compare an analogue, mercury thermometer to a digital thermometer. The distinction between the digital and the analogue rests upon the notion that analogue systems (in this case, the mercury component of the thermometer) are “dense;”[11]where density is a feature of any system that measures continuously varying values - analogue systems are differentiated because they are dense[12]. Goodman’s condition of finite differentiation is met by the fundamental nature of the binary. Data are discrete: if computers code for imagery (or indeed anything) in binary digits (bits) then that imagery contains a finitude within its code. Digital objects are objects composed of a set of bit sequences[13], and therefore are differentiated and not dense.
There are a few problems with defining the digital by this condition of finite differentiation. It is conceivable of a scenario wherein someone (pre-computer) generates a key for turning visual art making methods into another art-method. One could manually devise a set of rules for converting image values (e.g.: colour) along a grid into values for sound or text.
Therefore, a common storage of information and common translation is not exclusive to a digital technology. Secondly, it is not necessary to limit the constitutive materials of medium to the physical, i.e.: digital media is not more reductive than the written word. The language of binary code is a symbol system of differentiable symbols qua alphabet. There is a strong similarity with notational systems, but they are not necessarily digital. Finally, another artwork by Ikeda Superposition(2008-) upends Goodman’s distinction through its emphasis on the notion of the quantum bit or “qubit.” The title refers to the concept of quantum superposition and its applications in computing: if a value encoded by a digital quantum computer can be 0 and 1 at the same time then the digital is no longer finitely differentiable.
Similarly, the work exhibited in Continuumwas intended to curate an experience that encompasses both sides of this dichotomy. The experience of being-in-the-world is continuous; the act of having an intimate relationship with digital devices comprised of, but not limited to, our personal computers and smartphones is to engage with many discrete systems. Devices collect and transmit data such that our light switches, boilers, banking, transport, everything is connected through a digital 4th-dimension.
…Unity and multiplicity, the organic and the divisible, wave and particle, analogue and digital…Our scientific representations of the world have always alternated between these two opposed modes of interpretation. [14]
To describe code-verse and Aas ‘digital’ artworks is not inaccurate, but, to a degree, perfunctory. The experience of visiting these artworks spans the continuous and the discrete. As my body moves through space to hear those 5 precise frequencies ‘A,’ those frequencies are discrete while my experience of them is discrete and highly spatial. As I sit and direct my gaze at the fast-moving forms in code-verse— black and white, off and on — with my phone in my pocket and with a tacit understanding that what I am being shown is ‘code,’ I, the visitor, am having a continuous experience of code-verse. These artworks are concerned precisely with this dichotomy. The name of the exhibition derives from Leibniz’s take on the continuum problem[15] — a problem that deals with the infinite divisibility of things that appear to be continuous: space, motion, etc.[16]. These ’opposed modes of interpretation’ cannot be theoretically synthesised, yet in life one only has continuous experience no matter how distinct objects of perception are. This is one such polarity made explicit by Continuum.
The work shown in Continuumincorporates data-based sounds — sine waves in both; glitches in code-verse— and uses them in a self-referential way that defines a relationship between the visitor, apparatus, and the artworks themselves. A functions as more than a deconstructed soundscape; it also operates as a sonic experiment wherein the apparatus serves to test the visitor’s auditory senses. Aestablishes a sensory bond between the visitor and apparatus, between the organic and synthetic, human and inhuman. Phillip Brophy notes that the tonal sine wave is “the sonic realisation of a graphical visual display. It requires no imagined synthetic corollary because its sonority is the outcome of its visuality, and its visuality is the outcome of its mathematical determination.”[17] Thus, the sine wave is a precise sonic output of a graphical display, far removed from an oboist or other acoustic physical object. Ikeda incorporates data-based sounds that can only be found within an electronic environment. This emphasis on the interaction between the inhuman (playback device) and the human (visitor) is one such polarity explored by Ikeda through his work.
1.1 Digital as Dematerialised
Thus, it’s clear that Goodman’s definition of the digital/analogue distinction, as pertaining to art-objects, does not translate well to a postdigital age. Famously cited in The Dematerialization of Art[18], Joseph Schillinger (1948) predicts 5 “zones,” in the evolution of art: 1. Pre-aesthetic, a stage of mimicking beauty in nature; 2. Traditional, religious-aesthetic, art as a means of expressing faith/glory to god; 3. Emotional aesthetic, artistic expression of emotions, art-for-art’s-sake; 4. rational aesthetic, Modernism, empiricist experimental art; 5. Scientific post-aesthetic art, scientifically functioning art, fusion of art materials and art forms with a final “disintegration of art,” as the work becomes purely abstract[19].
The disintegration Schillinger predicted is obviously implicit in the break-up since 1958 or so of traditional media, and in the introduction of electronics, light, (and) sound…[20]
Art in 1968 was undergoing the same radical upheaval it had been for much of the century. Minimal art making being “characterised by empiricism,” and conceptual artists continuing the endeavour of formal reduction through their use of text as medium. The idea of the dematerialised artwork — which Lippard reframes in 1973 as “a deemphasis on material aspects (uniqueness, permanence, decorative attractiveness)”[21]— pertains to these works by Ikeda too. Dematerialised art is ‘post-aesthetic’ insofar as it serves to emphasise the invisible. For the ‘original’ dematerialised artworks (minimal sculpture) this non-visual emphasis was the notion that vision is inextricably tied to motion, and the formation of the Gestalt[22]. It is clear that both code-verse and A share that interest in the embodiment of the visitor. However, code-verse in many ways denies the visitor a Gestalt: code-verse has a similarity perhaps to science fiction; I cannot add anything perceived as missing[23] to the visual installation therefore it denies closure; proximity is moot as it is not situated in real space; and the physics of the imagined space continually change and warp such the closest one can get to something matching a preconceived notion of space is continuously disrupted. The Gestalt theory of the mind as having a tendency to perceive patterns based on these rules is intensely disrupted by Code-verse.
Terms like “post-aesthetic” fall flat but the idea of the dematerialised art-object will be useful for continued examination of the work[24]. Taking some of the essential qualities of a dematerialised artwork to be[25]
1. A non-visual emphasis; and
2. The suspension of realism and consequent limit of visual information given as a result of the artwork being highly abstract,
then A is a dematerialised artwork in the same way that Robert Morris’ L-Beams (1965) are: the 3 L’sparallel the 5 A’s. A and code-verse are perception-dependent to the extent that they are not reducible to a source code, in a very similar way to L-Beams not translating to a photograph. They require installation. Therefore, if code-verse were on a USB stick in my pocket, I would not have code-verse in my pocket, just a potential for code-verse [26]. Code-verse and A ought not to be imagined simply as ‘digital’ artworks but ‘dematerialised.’
Briefly, with regards to Schillinger’s proposed timeline of art: the technological revolution that has in recent years culminated in the hyper-connected world of today was unknowable to anyone writing in the 1950//60s. The idea of the dematerialised artwork falls a little short for code-verse. This is a result of the cultural context in which the work was made and subsequently exhibited. Dematerialised virtual art objects have a unique capacity to span cyber-space and real space at the same time. Postdigital art-objects address the humanisation of digital technologies. Exhibitions can be simultaneously shown at a number of sites via augmented reality (AR)[27]. The work shown in Continuum are typical of this new postdigital installation art. Regarding the postdigital environment, a comparison can be drawn between the internet and the interactive spaces Ryoji Ikeda creates: where participants are invited to move, participate in, and form the space.
Thus far, interrogating the difference between digital and analogue things has led to an attempt to reduce the artworks to their digital storage. That all digital information is reducible to binary code does not entail that a digital artwork will retain its identity if translated to another media type. The condition of finite differentiation also fails. There is no need to limit fundamental materials to the physical; nor is translatability across media types exclusive to the digital. A(continuum) could not be A(continuum) with 5 portable speakers; the file containing soundtrack and visuals for code-versedownloaded and played on a smartphone would not share an identity with code-verse.The artworks are not reducible to their source code. That code is necessary but not the completeness of the artworks. What is shown in Continuum is ephemeral insofar as it is spatial and perceptually unusual. The work is more than its material constitution or score, unlike painting, sculpture, built installations, music or theatre. Merleau-Ponty prefaces Phenomenology of Perception with the astute “the most important lesson which the reduction teaches us is the impossibility of a complete reduction.”[28] The ideas presented so far constitute an argument as to why these artworks are not reducible to their mode of storage. The physical reduction of a digital artwork such as code-verse to its source code fails to capture the essence of the artworks as objects with specific perceptual affects.
[1] A tone with a single frequency. Its waveform, usually displayed on a two-dimensional graph of amplitude against time, is that of a sine wave (mathematical description of a smooth oscillation).
[2] Simple analogue synthesisers consist of a fundamental circuit attached with some variables: type of wave (sine/square/sawtooth/noise); amplitude; and frequency. Amplitude and frequency are both determined by affecting the voltage through the circuit which is represented discretely (i.e.: 440Hz or 10V) but is in fact continuously variable.
[3] De Mauro, Greco, and Grimaldi. A formal definition of Big Data based on its essential features 2016.
[4] “Ryoji Ikeda - Biography”
[5] Traditionally, orchestras tune to the A of the principal oboe.
[6] Friedrich Kittler Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. 2
[7] i.e.: a .jpeg can be converted into .pdf; .mp3; etc.
[8] Nelson Goodman Languages of art: An approach to a theory of symbols.1976 226-30
[9] ibid.
[10] Tokens “a, b, c… etc.” do not represent anything; ‘cab’ is representational. The alphabet, being a notational system, bears similarity to digital measurement instruments.
[11] "A scheme is syntactically dense if it provides for infinitely many characters so ordered that between each two there is a third." Languages of Art 136
[12] A second example: the small differences in marks that can lead to an entire picture denoting a different subject (e.g.: ‘likeness’ in a portrait can be derailed by minute mistakes in line).
[13] Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System 11
[14] Ryoji Ikeda — Continuum; Interview Between the Artist and the Exhibition Curator
[15] ibid.
[16] Richard T. W. Arthur, “The Labyrinth of the Continuum,” Oxford Handbooks Online, December 27, 2018, https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199744725.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199744725-e-003
[17] Phillip Brophy, “Sine Qua Son” in Abstract Video: the Moving Image in Contemporary Art ed. Gabrielle Jennings and Kate Mondloch. (University of California Press, 2015) 227
[18] John Chandler and Lucy Lippard, "The dematerialization of art." Art international 12, no. 2 (1968): 31-36.
[19] Joseph Schillinger, The Mathematical Basis of the Arts(University of Michigan Press, 1948), 17
[20] Chandler and Lippard, The Dematerialization of Art 33
[21] Lucy Lippard, Six years: the Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (United Kingdom: University of California Press, 1997), 5
[22] As Robert Morris writes, “While the work must be autonomous in the sense of being a self-contained unit for the formation of the gestalt…the major aesthetic terms…exist as unfixed variables that find their specific definition in the particular space and light and physical viewpoint of the spectator.” “Notes on Sculpture part II” In Art in Theory, 1900-1990: an anthology of changing ideas. Eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) 818
[23] In the sense that one can imagine what the back of a cube looks like despite not seeing it.
[24] This does not defeat the previous conclusion drawn that code-verseis reducible to the source code beneath its visual/sonic presentations; A(continuum)also is a Digital Thing but is less reducible to an idea of source code due to its necessary spatial qualities, but the sound itself remains digital. It has already been shown that “digital,” is insufficient to describe these works.
[25] The presentation of a whole instead of something composed of parts is a key part of the idea of the dematerialised artwork but does not apply here.
[26] The same argument could be made for Pipilotti Rist’s Lap Lamp(2006), Pascal Dombis’ Irrational Geometrics (2008), or Victoria Sin’sA View From Elsewhere, Act 1, She Postures In Context (2018) etc.
[27] Seeing the Invisible 2021, an AR exhibition premiered simultaneously at 12 locations around the world and featured 13 artists; similarly, Marina Ambramović exhibited her first AR work The Life in 2019; and countless other artists are exploring the use of AR in contemporary works
[28] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception xv