cybernetic

Linda Brigham reviews the Spring and Fall 1995 issues of Cultural Critique.

Where is the real you? Behind the eyeballs, right; the center of a panoptical cinema, your virtual head spinning around like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist. Watching the world go by.

Wrong. The address of the Enlightenment Subject has been vacant for a long time, and the front door now opens on a brick wall, or on the threshold of an abyss. So where do we send the mail? One answer to that question is the subject of two special issues of the journal Cultural Critique, subtitled “The Politics of Systems and Environments” (Spring and Fall, 1995). As William Rasch and Cary Wolfe explain in their introduction to the first number, the term “systems” stands in the place of the old subject, and “environments” replaces the old object. Like the old subject/object dichotomy, systems and environments are relative terms; each system becomes environment to another system. But systems and environments also manifest reciprocity: in complex self-referential systems (organism and societies for example), systems-as-observers (an ocular metaphor for perception in general) know they observe observers.

This thesis aims to investigate digital methods of signification in order to examine the impact of the apparatus on poetic expression. This is done through a critical analysis of the translation process from analogue to digital, in the sense that even as we read a page we are in fact translating sight into sound. The resulting effects of this change in form are explored in order to understand their impact on meaning-making in the digital realm. Through this interrogation the comprehension and definition of ePoetry (electronic poetry or digital poetry) is extended, by exposing the unique affordances and specificities of digital expression. Digital poetry theorists such as Loss Pequeño Glazier posit that the emerging field of electronic literature is composed of interweaving strands from the areas of computer science, sociology, and literary studies. This is reflected in the interdisciplinary nature of this thesis, which necessitates an engagement with the broad areas of translation, literature, and digital media studies. Currently the pervasiveness of digital technology and access to the Internet means that the creation and consumption of online content such as ePoetry is becoming seamless and apparently effortless. Whilst recent studies have explored electronic literature as a field, there is a noticeable deficit of research that specifically focuses on ePoetry, a deficit that this thesis seeks to rectify. Within this work cybernetic and technosocial theories of communication are drawn on which provide as much emphasis on the apparatus, as is afforded to the author and reader. Traditional poetry criticism is problematised with reference to its suitability for application to online works in order to develop a comprehensive ePoetry rhetoric that explores not only what is being said, but also crucially how it is being said. Theories of translation are also used as a context in which to analyse the transposition of poetry from analogue to digital. This framework then forms the basis for a study that explores the move from print to pixel by analysing qualitative ePoet interviews as well as their corresponding ePoems.

In tandem with this installation, we propose to present an approximately ten-minute-long collaborative theoretical paper entitled ‘ə-măn’yoo-ĕn’sĭs.’ BRIEF DESCRIPTION āmanuēnsis is a Latin word derived from ab + manus, or “by hand.” Originally used to refer to slaves, the word was later applied specifically to personal secretaries. We (Claire Donato and Timothy Terhaar) work as freelance amanuenses in Brooklyn, NY.
Our presentation will be twofold, taking on the form of both a scholarly presentation and an onsite installation. Throughout the conference, we will set up and run an on-site transcription booth.
Conference attendees will be invited to sit for exactly five minutes at the booth, to be monitored
by a timer. Each participant will be expected to assume the position of the Source in producing
dictation. At the end of the five-minute session, the participant will receive a hard copy of his or her document.

In addition to the on-site transcription booth, we plan to present a theoretical paper composed
using two compositional processes, which we are calling bimanuensis and anuensis. Via
bimanuensis, each of us will try to verbally articulate a theory of the process of transcription while
the other takes dictation. Via anuensis, we will directly appropriate language from documents
we’ve been paid to transcribe. Responding to the material and immaterial demands of transcription
processes, our presentation will alternately mimic and comment upon the cybernetic relationship
between the transcriptionist, the medium, and the Source (the employer, either embodied or
represented by a recording). We will argue that the position of transcriptionist exemplifies a
teleological form of becoming-machine that all laborers are imagined to aspire toward within
capitalist ideology. The transcriber, we will posit, inhabits a digital body that exists on a continuum
between pure receptivity, or total constraint (vis-à-vis the ‘exact’ reproduction of text), and
flexibility (vis-à-vis some notion of ‘accurate’ reproduction of text). Ultimately, we hope to build
upon existing theories of virtual bodies (N. Katherine Hayles), fractalized labor (Franco “Bifo”
Berardi), and feedback (Friedrich Kittler, Lawrence Weiner) while employing a non-traditional
presentation format that speaks directly to the conference theme of ‘affordances and constraints.

(Source: Author's abstract, 2012 ELO Conference site)