[spectre] ad undas @ Breakthrough Event - saturday 27th June 2009

[Ana Buigues]

For those interested,

Just a reminder about the ad undas project by Bjørn Magnhildøen and
Ana Buigues - as part of the Breakthrough Event.





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ad undas
http://noemata.net/adundas/

AD UNDAS is a social network service using the sea as medium. The
network uses messages in bottles as the main communication. More than
connecting and interacting with other people, as in Facebook, MySpace,
Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., ad undas aims at a dislocation of
representation (people, time, space), and an uncycling of events, as a
breakthrough from semi-closed web circuits towards a widening
perception of communication and state of affairs, expressed in the
three-fold strategy of listening, gleaning, and littering.

Breakthrough saturday 27th June 2009
The second server of ad undas network -"vibrate 'tourists'"- will be
launched saturday 27th June 2009 as part of the Breakthrough event
distributed across Berlin locations, inter-network and radio space,
organized by _____micro_research [Berlin]. Read more at
http://1010.co.uk/org/breakthrough.html
Server is setup for sending and receiving messages in the
Mediterranean Sea. Communication with the server is done via this
website, the Breakthrough event interface/IRC, and the physical
location. The event is documented live with webcams, and communication
feeds and logs. Go to the event page at
http://noemata.net/adundas/breakthrough/

deep thoughts
Ad undas, latin: to the waves. Expression used in relation to failure
and loss. Here the term is used also in another sense, of a
communication layer on a lower level (than failure and loss), likened
to an UDP datagram protocol(2) in some sense in its stateless,
unreliable service, often used in streaming applications; though here
the destination doesn't have to be specified; actually in our use
nothing have to be specified.
More than stating merely with mcluhan the medium is the message this
might implement a physical W.A.S.T.E protocol (pynchonian and/or the
file sharing network application).(3) While the network application
WASTE uses strong encryption to ensure that third parties cannot
decipher the messages, here the encryption is performed by the medium
itself - instead of message encryption we have medium encryption -
J.L. Borges writes about two labyrinths, one of them being a desert,
and Chuang-Tzu (Zhuangzi) uses the expression "hiding the world in the
world"(9) - steganography as non-steganography(10).
In the Pynchon W.A.S.T.E. communication system messages are
distributed via trash bins (today called 'recycle bins'), which turns
around ideas of form&content/text&context and other epistemological
pairs; and here to the extent of uncycling them - one might then call
it an 'uncycle bin', breaking the loop of medium/message,
message/trash, failure/loss, sort of a hole, or another - deeper,
primordial? - layer more in accord with the informè (formless) of
Bataille, rejecting ideas of both form and content and the futility of
thinking within them (and about the formless itself).(4)
Thus suggesting 'ad undas' also to mean to 'let go' (ressentiment, bad
faith, master-slave) or to 'let be' and its janus-sided no will/will
to nothing of the last man (robinson crusoe)(5); or the last will of
no man (breakthrough, displacements, islands)(6); or again the
negative as the strengthening element, glue, in (social)
relations/communication, looking at communication from the
unperspective of the formless, or the sea, which is already one, as if
leaving communication redundant or reflective as with the Solaris
sea(7).

technology
The network protocol of ad undas consists of the methods listening,
gleaning, and littering.

  * listening. a passive, receptive state of being sensitive to
surroundings, to the degree of being immersed and displaced,
reflected, even lost, delirious. interpretation of incoming messages -
what is a message? - turning it towards another implementation of a
paranoiac-critical machine(11) - of which the first one might have
been eniac, the first general-purpose electronic computer. the ability
of the brain to perceive links between things which rationally are not
linked. The listening asks what is a message (paranoia) to ask what is
a message is to ask about the medium (critical). Dalí described the
paranoiac-critical method as a "spontaneous method of irrational
knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the
associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena". see ganzfeld
procedure below.
  * gleaning(12). the gleaning layer is built on top of the
listening layer, collecting left-overs, marine debris(13) that appears
significant to the network regarded as messages from the sea. the
paranoiac-critical listening layer, expanding the conventional message
data packet, is listening for unforseen communication in unspecified
formats. Gleaning takes place as the messages appears as messages via
the detour of the paranoiac-critical listening medium. messages are
picked up, collected, computerized if possible and finally made public
to reach a unique receiver. the listening/gleaning operator is called
an 'uncorker', an uncorking of messages in regard to gleaning, and an
'uncorking of form' within the listening layer.
  * littering. sending messages to the sea. one the one side the law
might call this littering, on the other side a W.A.S.T.E. protocol
deliberately distribute its messages as litter as a form of
encryption. a littering operator is called a 'corker', as in corking
messages, and when it comes to the form layer (listening) it is viewed
as as an uncycling of events. a corker is uncycling events, an
uncorker is recycling them.

vibrate 'tourists'
The sea shore setting as a ganzfeld, complete field, of sky, horizon,
sea... the divide line of main european cultures apollean/dionysian, a
uniform gravitational line - an event horizon for rationality, soft
noise, unpatterned sensory stimulation... with the ganzfeld effect(14)
the brain amplifies neural noise in order to look for the missing
visual signals. The noise is interpreted in the higher visual cortex
and give rise to hallucinations. when it comes to listening, or to the
abstract function of understanding and interpretation it would give
rise to messages as an recycling of events. "in a typical ganzfeld
experiment(15) a 'receiver' is left in a room relaxing in a
comfortable chair with halved ping-pong balls over the eyes, having a
red light shone on them. The receiver also wears a set of headphones
through which white or pink noise (static) is played." ganzfeld
experiments have yielded results that deviate from randomness to a
significant degree, and that these results present some of the
strongest quantifiable evidence for telepathy to date.(16) "The term
breakthrough describes a sudden shift in understanding or
technologies, and, finally, a clearing (Lichtung), an entry into
unknown and unmapped territories. An enclosure is breached allowing
access to another, totally unforeseen state or space. Communication is
thus implied, a new form of exchange, perhaps between two otherwise
unconnected domains, between the living and the dead, between many
worlds. What does the sheer possibility of a breakthrough imply for
communication between the past and the future?"(17). Space tourism
could be done with ganzfeld uncycling as opposed to a Space Opera and
the Sea Org's eternal return of the same. W. Burroughs on
scientology(18)- "There is a basic incompatibility between any
organization and freedom of thought". Extreme social networking:
members of the Sea Org sign an employment contract with the
organization for one billion years. Sea Org members, in accordance
with Scientology beliefs, are expected to return to the Sea Org when
they are reborn. The motto of the Sea Org is, "Revenimus" or "We Come
Back" in Latin.(19). Burroughs' "vibrate 'tourists'" - dislocation of
the traveller and the private subconsciousness, an uncycling of the
organization of thought, islands, ad undas versus revenimus, the
tourist of a ganzfeld vibrates in the absence of returns. you start
off in something familiar, like this banal sea send and social network
cycle of status updates and what's on your mind streams of
consciousness already breathing exhaustion and bored tourism, into an
unsettling and unpatterned vibration of neural noise stimulation, the
paranoiac-eniac-critical-schizophreniac soft machine - listen, glean,
litter - background noise to foreground figure, the psychoanalytical
gleaning of failures or uncycled messages, grounded. Aural, tactile
media: materialized, not visual. one might view the ganzfeld as
tactile, as a materialization of thought, more than 'noemata' the
ridiculous organizational object of thought, in its absence of
returns. the aural field or its ganzfeld would also yield the tactile,
as opposed to the visual detachment. the dislocation of tourists,
uncycling the visual and private sea, seen as a deceptive perspective
meetingpoint, a point of view, one finds the aural, vibrations, even
more, or less, dislocated through listening, through the tactility of
unpatterned matter, number and mass, gleaned and littered as lost and
found unforseen communication.

ad undas is part of the project "Internet killed the video arts, Nerve
endings : Neverendings, Stream of conscious nets / Dreams of
consciousness, I am from the gaps in my thinking" supported by
Art&Technology @ Norwegian Cultural Council.

footnotes
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE
4 http://radicalart.info/informe/
5 nietzsche-deleuze: the truth-sayer: all is vain - to will nothing - no
will - will to nothing - the man who wills to go under
6 http://1010.co.uk/org/breakthrough.html : The term breakthrough
describes a sudden shift in understanding or technologies, and, finally,
a clearing (Lichtung), an entry into unknown and unmapped territories.
An enclosure is breached allowing access to another, totally unforeseen
state or space. Communication is thus implied, a new form of exchange,
perhaps between two otherwise unconnected domains, between the living
and the dead, between many worlds. What does the sheer possibility of a
breakthrough imply for communication between the past and the future?
7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel) : The planet, called
Solaris, is covered with a so-called "ocean" that seems to really be a
single organism covering the entire surface. The ocean shows signs of a
vast but strange intelligence, which can create physical phenomena in a
way that science has difficulty explaining. The alien mind of Solaris is
so inconceivably different from human consciousness that all attempts at
communication are doomed (the "alienness" of aliens was one of Lem's
favourite themes; he was scornful about portrayals of aliens as
humanoid).
9 But if you could hide the world in the world, so that there was
nowhere to which it could be removed, this would be the grand reality of
the ever-during Thing. --Book VI: Part I, Section VI, 6. Other
translations: i) You think you do right to hide little things in big
ones, and yet they get away from you. But if you were to hide the world
in the world, so that nothing could get away, this would be the final
reality of the constancy of things. ii) Hiding something small within
something larger might seem like the appropriate thing to do, yet
anything could still be carted off. If a man were to hide everything in
the world within the world, there would be no place left for anything to
be removed to. Living things are already constantly in this great
situation.
10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital_steganography -
"Image of a cat extracted from above image" - how to put the cat in the
tree, disappearing chesire cat.
11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoiac-critical_method
12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleaning
13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_debris
14 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_effect
15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment
16 Dean I. Radin (1997). The Conscious Universe:
The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena. HarperOne.ISBN 0-06-251502-0
17 Breakthrough workshop, _____-micro research [berlin]
http://1010.co.uk/org/breakthrough.html
18 William Burroughs: Ali's Smile - Naked scientology. 1972
19 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Org


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