From: "Randall S. Willcox" <rswillco@acs.ucalgary.ca>

> Doug, if either you or Melissa did go to the Stengers lecture I'd
> like to know (v.roughly) what Stengers was talking about. And what about
> this seminar on Virtuality? I wouldn't mind attending - virtually.
> Best wishes,
> Paul. 22/11/95

I am also very interested in the application of d&g to theories of virtuality and/or hypertext (esp. hypertext). if anyone has any thoughts on this subject (or references) i would very much appreciate hearing about it.

Randall

From: Paul Bains <P.Bains@uws.edu.au>

Hi, Randall,
Guattari's Chaosmosis intersects with these issues:

"Here we are no longer floating in the Signifier, the Subject and the big Other in general. The heterogeneity of commponents (verbal, corporeal, spatial...) engenders an ontological heterogenesis all the more vertiginous when combined, as it is today, with the proliferation of new materials, new electronic representations, and with a shrinking of distances and an enlargement of points of view. Informatic subjectivity distances us at high speed from the old scriptural linearity. The time has come for hypertexts in every genre, and even for a new cognitive and sensory writing that Pierre-Levy describes as 'dynamic ideography.'

Paul Bains, 25/11/95

From: Sean Cooper <scooper@best.com>

I think I picked up on this thread late, but as someone who also has an interest in this direction of DG's thought, I'll offer a few references that I have been following up on of late:

_Hypertext/Theory_, George P. Landow, ed. (Johns Hopkins Press, 1994). This collection of essays on contemporary hypermedia deals extensively with the work of Derrida, Barthes, and of course Deleuze and Guattari, the latter particularly in Stuart Malthroupe's "Rhizome And Resistence: Hypertext And The Dreams Of A New Culture," which includes extensive consideration of DG's concepts of smooth and striated space (here figured as the space of writing), the rhizome, of course, and the possibility of intelligently elaborating non-linear writing models and processes, post-book, non-hierarchical modes of conceptualization and argumentation, etc. highly recommended.

_Hypertext_, George P. Landow (Johns Hopkins, 1992). The bible of current hypermedia discourse, and a good overview of concepts, applications, technologies, and recent advances. Extended (and extremely well-informed) discussions of Derrida and Barthes are the dominant (philophile) theoretical moments of the book, but Landow's discussion of other contemporaries in both literary theory and technology are insightful. Also recommended (or, perhaps, instead) is the hypertext version of the book, titled "Hypertext In Hypertext"--an interesting application of many of the book's principles, and including much supplementary material not present in the dead-tree version. Available for both Mac and PC.

_Hypermedia And Literary Studies_, Paul Delany and George P. Landow, eds. (MIT Press). Haven't finished this, yet, but the essays are split pretty evenly between theory and application (discussions of concepts deriving from philosophy, literary theory, cultural studies, technology, and, of course, hypermedia studies). Surprisingly, reference to Deleuze or Guattari--at least if the index is to be believed--are absent. Again, I haven't finished this yet, but my sense so far (I've read two or three of the essays) is that this is the least interesting and useful of the three.

I would also recommend, although I haven't been able to find a copy of it myself, the book "Applied Grammatology" by Gregory Ulmer. If any listers have read this or are familiar with its arguments I would be interested to hear their impressions. Ulmer's point of departure seems obvious enough, but given his particular orientation toward hypermedia studies and the essays by him I've read, both in _Hypertext/Theory_ and elsewhere (check the web; there's a lot out there) his work sounds particularly interesting...There's also a collection of essays out about hypermedia and education, although the title escapes me. Interested parties can email me privately if they want a specific reference (this would be easy for me to do).

Also, as one who is anticipating graduate studies involving elements of philosophy (D&G, primarily), literary and cultural studies, and hypermedia theory and application, I would be interested in any feedback listers could offer regarding programs and/or campuses that could support these various interests (particularly DG and/or hypermedia studies).

Thanks.
sc

From: Nils Roeller <nils@khm.uni-koeln.de>

Investigating quots for an article (Kunstforum International) on Deleuze and his relationship to the computer I would like to ask your support. I found only quotations refering to the computer in Mille Plateaus (First Chapter), and in La Logique de Sens (Series 8th). Do you know others sites in his work? For a first approach to Deleuze please look here.

Thank you for your help.

Nils Roeller

From: douglas edric stanley <destanley@teaser.fr>

You will excuse me the delay...

Yes, I was at the lecture, as well as Melissa, although she digged it much less than I did. It wasn't quite what we expected I think but so what. It wasn't really a lecture by Stengers, but rather a collaboration between Stengers (who claims to be working on "theatricality") and a theatre-troupe heavily invested in contemporary philosophy called "Les peripheriques vous parlent". One could easily say that it was an "animated" evening as the whole thing was orchestrated to get the audience to become part of the "theatricality" in a sense, and so we were agressed from all angles in either subtle or obvious ways. Well, who knows, very Paris 8-style - like it or don't according to your tastes : mais au moins ca bougait.

Oh yes, their slogan was "philosophes debout". Which either translates as "Stand up philosophers" or "Philosophers Standing Up" - depending on your mood.

In fact the troupe itself has been doing VERY interesting things for a few years now. They originated at Paris 8, were influenced by people like Deleuze and Guattari and have since moved into an insane asylum outside of Paris. As to whether their theatre is "Deleuzian" or "Guattarian" I think you can stamp a big no on that, it's not quite applied philosophy....Let us just say that it is close to Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty and I mean that quite literally. Most of their "interventions" do not even take place on a stage, or if they do they turn the whole situation around. They have been working with a lot of artists and/or artist-intellectuals in and around Paris, etc., and the results are supposedly interesting but I can only confirm that through heresay as I've been following the story at a distance through the occasional spy.

As for Pierre Levy's class, well, I cannot tell you much because the assholes in the computer labs smoked me right into bed for five days with a migrane, flu, asthma, and whatever else you can add on. I couldn't even look at a computer let alone walk to the bus stop. So I've missed his last class where he promised to give me more details on some of his ideas. Of course Bain's reference to Chaosmose was more than relevant.

You know, rhizome has become a kind of catchword in "Cyberspace": almost as if Gibson or McLuhan were a little old-hat and hipsters had to find other dinosaures...Well, of course it's a perfect reference, but honestly I think it's a little too obvious and everyone seems to be using it here in Paris - or at least when I mention that I'm working on Deleuze and interactivity I can kind of hear a two-beat and ding: "Oh yes, the rhizome and all that... I see..." Frustrating as my work is much more interesting than that I think...I mean, it's already been done - a Deleuze-Guattari "Rhizome CD-Rom", I mean, although it was more of a maquette than a finished project..... Rhizome !? I feel like feigning ignorance.... It reminds me of when I saw the queen of some unnecessary country standing in Jean Nouvel's new building ("La Fondation Cartier") at the opening night gala speaking to The Television about "transparence". After something like that, it's just impossible to go on talking about "transparence". Well, seems around here "rhizome", as well as "hyper-texte" are getting a little too comfortable. I suppose we need to resucitate them a little, reinject a bit of life back in. Start reminding people that not every CD-Rom is a rhizome, although some are. For example, there are CD-Roms that use a closed structure. The ties are already programmed. You click here and end up there, do in again and the same thing happens. Now, if all of the readings in a sense come back to the same point, as in a game like Myst (to take one example) I don't really consider that non-linear. It is merely non-linear in the same sense that a film narrative can be non-linear or a book for that matter. =46or in the end, all the loose threads forceably organize themselves around a certain spool (The Butler Did It).... But there are ways in which a closed-structure can nevertheless take on a rhizome growth. And that is if the reading itself, on the semiotic level let us say (on the side of the "production" of sense), one is constructing an entirely new context each time one passes through the same closed-circuit....It's like what they describe in Mille Plateaux when you see Chess compared with Go. Suddenly the thing turns lateral, meanings local, and so on.

This might be a little difficult to imagine, at least for me it is because there are not really any examples.

The CD-Rom encyclopedias are not closed structures, they're just data bases and are constantly doing word-searches. Yes, there you have a closed set of playing pieces but the whole structure is Rhizomic. Yes, ok, there you have a rhizome. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about is even more difficult because even the playing pieces are organized. Figee, I wan= t to say: frozen, stuck, planted there, you cannot move them. But in passing through them, and in the way, context, and moment in which you pass them, there your passage, your "itineraire" is the rhizome. I simply don't have english words here. Itineraire, passage...

This is a very immediate problem. For, encyclopedias are great, but they remain encyclopedias.

We should be able to imagine other interactivity-rhizomes. Internet too is great but there's the phone bill, and give me a break if speed doesn't come into factor. If you want to "write", "compose" (call it what you will) with the rhizome as a model, the CD-Rom, or the "personal computer" desktop itself remains (if only from the point of view of distribution) to be a major point of reflection. Think about it. The rhizome is always coming around the corner. As for auto-constructing-structures as I think we will see in a few years, again we don't really know what that's going to create: we simply have the concept - bascially the rhizome - to go on. As to what we are to do with it, green light....But again, that's a few years, if that. As for CD-Rom's, they are there, they can distribute themselves laterally (hint, hint) so it would be interesting to try to think about the rhizome in the here and now, let's say.

Utopias are great - go construct it. Dream your Rhizome future. As for me, I'm on the side of Foucault and his "Heterotopias". A million little utopias building themselves all over the place, in diversity, in contradiction with themselves....It's not quite what he meant but in a sense, oui...We can talk about what could be great, wonderful, utopic - but it's more interesting to see what rhizomes can and are constructed right now.

I'm writing all this late at night. Excuse my scatteredness...They are my first responses to come to mind after these first posts about Deleuze and Guattari and Computers, etc. Again, people just post "this interests me" without getting into the subject. My god, implicate yourselves! What the hell is the interest in writing on an international discussion group "I'm interested in...." ?

So what?! I mean, everyone is interested in something. Hi, I'm Bill, I'm interested in flowers. Hi,
I'm Julie, I like flying, donughts, and apple strudel... Hi I'm Pete. I like....

Please, if your interested in something, propose something! Of course we're all interested in technology and Deleuze and Guattari. But you're going to have to do a little work. What do you want me to do, do the work for you? Hi, I'm Larry, and I'm interested in Cheesecake. To which I'm suppose to respond with my special recipie for Cheesecake, I suppose?

Douglas Edric
Paris 27.11.1995

From: "Randall S. Willcox" <rswillco@acs.ucalgary.ca>

RE: Doug's last message:

Hi, I'm Randall.
I agree with your assessment, Doug, of the obviousness of the rhizome model vis a vis hypertext etc. I suppose what I'm "interested" in at the moment with respect to d&g and hypertext is the possiblity of positing aesthetic models that would help elucidate hyperfiction in particular.

For instance, Jameson's appropriation of d&gian "shizophrenia" as an aesthetic model "rather than a diagnosis" in relation to "language writing" -- characterized via Lacan as "a break in the signifying chain" -- seems to have a particular resonance with hypertext. Not (primarily) because of the associative logic of hypertext links/nodes but, rather, because of the potential for the intervention of that logic (lines of flight etc.), the potential for a textual perfomativity of deterritorialization (or de-reterritorialization) relative to oedipal capitalism and its relation to the object status of the book within that economy; specifically, the status of the book as Marxist "commodity fetish" and the referential economy within which such an inscription is made possible.

Likewise, I am "interested" in the potential of hypertext as a-referential/auto-referential (I won't say "non-referential" since I don't believe that is possible) writing which disrupts signification in relation to what Ron Silliman terms (ala Marx) the "referential fetish."

I apologize if I am not very rigorous in my explication of these notions, and if I happen to raise more questions than answers (I am, afterall, only just beginning a Master's degree and haven't yet worked through a lot of these notions, having only come to d&g fairly recently and having only purchased a modem in september).

ps I wanted to address your raising of utopian vs heterotopian notions in relation to virtuality (something i've also been considering lately, but, alas, I'm about to be timed-out on my connection).

pps any good recipes for cheesecake?

Randall

From: DAYR@fin.admin.usfca.edu

There is also a text on Hyper text that uses the notion of Rhizome in a postmodern culture of a few years back by Kathy Burnett.
Sorry if you felt like we wanted you to "do the work" for us, Douglass. You offered to give your comments and we accepted.... I, for one, would like to see a discussion of the rhizome which goes beyond the notion of "hypertext" as it is now used. The discussions which I have seen seem to talk about hypertext as an already composed or formalized series of linkeages which the user has the option of combining. This sense of agency of composition is far less engaged with the real than was either some of the cut-up experiments, etc. of the avant-garde (if we are talking of literary hypertext) or even with something like e-mail which has a human agency from which a sense of repetition can issue. What Guattari speaks of in Chaosmosis as hypertext seems to involve a _variety_ of machinics, both technological and non-technological, which allow the 'new' to be repeated into, or rather, as, a future. This, to my mind, makes it different from the usual sense of hypertext, which, as a preformatted arena is really not rhizomatic in any radical sense because the future is already laid out. This is only, really, information retrieval formed with multiple links.

Ron

From: douglas edric stanley <destanley@teaser.fr>

This is very interesting. But fuzzy. Can you clarify for me (with chapter references perhaps - as I only have the French ed.)....? What is this "new" that is repeated as a future? A new that is a repetition - hmmm - this seems to be the definition of all text, or writing in general: an already-repetition (exterior, a technical device - a "techne") and yet projective, constructive. Is this where the "new" comes in?.... Again, I'm lost. Really I DO do a lot of philosophy work here in France, but the context is different and talking about concepts like this might seem easy to you, but it's not to me. Some patience please...

Douglas Edric.

From: Steven Shaviro <shaviro@u.washington.edu>

I just picked up a copy of _Chaosophy_, by Felix Guattari. It is a book in the Semiotexte Foreign Agents series, and it contains (in English translation) a number of Guattari's short pieces and interviews that aren't easily available elsewhere. Some of the material comes from the long-out-of-print 1977 Semiotexte issue on Anti-Oedipus, and some I've never seen before.

S

From: ENGROSEN@acs.eku.edu

On rhizome and cyberspace/hypertext:

There are a lot of folks who have been writing about the relationship of deleuze and guattari's notions of rhizome, smooth and striated spaces etc. The best of the bunch I think is Johndan Johnson-Eilola, whose book on hypertext should be out pretty soon from Ablex. He also has quite a number of pieces out in places like Journal of Advanced Composition where he tackled first the smooth and striated dimensions to hypertext.

On hypertext as a pre-formatted environment: that's an important point. In my essay in Hyper/Text/Theory I discuss the seductive nature of physics tropes grounding the rhetoric of liberation in hypertext theory with reference to the relentlessly geometric (striated) nature of hypertext (contingency and self-organization vrs determined trajectory and geometric forms). I do so in order to unmoor those claims with respect to precisely the constraints implied by those striations. Stuart Moulthrop's essay is in part an attempt to respond to my critique of the liberatory claims for hypertext and I think some of what he says does make sense.

I also critique my own tendency toward those claims for liberation exemplified by the hypertext authoring system I developed for freshman writing classes which explicitly attempts to model invention as a self-organizing system with reference to the work of Ilya Prigogine and Gilles Deleuze. I received a grant from Wayne State in the spring of 1990 to finish a prototype, and while still flawed, is currently under review at Eastgate Systems. Its called The RHIZOME Project, and attempts to *use* the striated space of hypertext to create linear and recursive processes to simulate creative and analytic thinking procedures. But, alas, those procedures must necessarily conform to the logocentricity of argumentation given its pedagogical function so it domesticates any real benefit from ways in which the terms "becoming" and "lines of flight" are offered concrete form by offering structures (immanent planes) through which they can become manifest.

The best theoretical piece laying out hypertext's capacity to do that is Moulthrop's essay on The Garden of Forking Paths in Landows collection on Hypermedia, which resonates nicely with our fellow Deleuze-Guattarian Tom Weissert's piece on Prigogine and the Borges short story in Kate Hayle's collection on chaos and literature.

Another take on this (with a withering critique of RHIZOME's claims) is a piece coming out that I co-authored with Jimmie Killingsworth in IEEE Transactions (Dec issue, lead article) which looks at complexity theory and computer interface design, beginning with a mediation on the aleatory nature of the icon as a sign-function. Its approach is first Peircean, but rejects that for an approach that is implicitly deleuzean, although the discourse draws more explicitly on the works of Prigogine and Varela. As some of you folks know, I'm keen on the explicit connections between D and D&G's work to recent complexity theory in both physics and cogsci.

Anything that applies to hypertext systems would naturally apply to the internet and to the www, and of course Hakim Bey's book TAZ lays out the territory and interpretive possibilities with remarkable foresight.
Hope this helps......mer

From: "Julean A. Simon" <simon@berlin.snafu.de>

hi douglas

my name is julean simon, austrian, livin in berlin, working on a research network-project which aims at finally connecting a couple of schools, finding some *innovative* approach to coop.learning and to study it in action. a friend of mine and i do the conceptual work for the core learning environment (pedag. background, system-philosophy, specification of the concrete environment).

developing an understanding of the problem we had similar thoughts about closed/linear structures. most systems including www are primarily designed to support the retrieval of info (*info* since its even less than information, which is less than knowledge,...). author-ware often allows for different routes only where it does not conflict with the linear-developed context, etc. i dont think more open structures are restricted for technical reasons, technology just supports the mainstream of usage. so we dont go for the all new paradigm (basically ht is a good idea), but try to make the system support different usage.

we call the environment DisNet - stands for discursive networking. different from retrieval oriented systems we see the priority in the generation and differentiation - not of information, but - of contexts. to support this we try to provide particular operational and representational means (typed links, coupling of different levels of context.rep, etc.) and hope to suggest a Projekt-Methode -like approach (project-method ?) as basis for user-user- and user-system-interaction instead of fixed-outlined curriculum, rule/step-based proceeding and multiple-choice.

Well, we dont know if this will work out. at the moment the first rudimentary, buggy version has been finished; nobody has really worked with it yet. but this empirical thread is only one to move along. perhaps we could get a little more in depth on the theoretical level, what constitutes a context, how may it be represented in its dynamics, ...? i also found rhizome to be a good approach

regards, julean

From: douglas edric stanley <destanley@teaser.fr>

Well you seem to be at least going in an interesting direction. Let us look at it this way: you want to avoid passive information "retrieval". ok. (quick note: Deleuze too seemed to oppose this type of information. In his "Qu'est-ce que l'acte de creation?" he talks about "the news" where we are supposed to act as if we believe the information presented to us on television - not even to believe it, just act like we believe it.)... So, information-retrieval is out.

At which point you turn to context ("we see the priority in the generation and differentiation - not of information, but - of contexts..."). Well, if you look at my post, this was the major point I was getting at. How is it that context creates at every moment in a reading a certain "dynamic" that is not limited to a single point of view, to an information as "BELIEVE THIS"? How is it that context creates a point of view?....
I think the answer the question of context is quite simple, and is contained on your typical HTML page: ENTRANCE - EXIT ... What is context on the net? It is WHERE you enter, or better said: FROM WHERE you enter a page, and where you exit. Not only where you go to when you exit, but where on the page do you exit. If you visit an Etruscian wall mural after reading a text on Etruscian art, it is not the same thing if you visit the same Etruscian wall mural after reading an "introduction to wall mural art" page. And yet both links can be just as valid, the problem is, what do you do with the user when he gets to the wall mural. Does he go back, move on? To what? etc... These are all typical context problems on the internet.
So the question of entrance-exit is both the solution and the problem. Because if you want to create a pedagogical atmosphere (and artists too need to look at this pedagogy situation because it's essential to all hypertextes) you of course are going to "orient" the user. But this limits his point-of-view, creates a singular context, a singular entrance-exit to the information. So you're in a difficult situation: create an open pedagogy...? Is it possible?

It seems that your project wants to create such a possibility, but I didn't quite understand what you propose? What is a Projekt-Methode approach?
If you will permit me, I myself have been thinking about this problem. What if you were to create a semi-autonomous browser? Something that would organize the entrances and exits of pages, that in a sense would read the pages, and based on certain criteria would decide the relevancy of the page for the given subject (to be defined by the user/program/etc) and offer links to other pages which would have a similar amount of similar information and organize the order of entrances-exits based on frequency or proximity with other relevant subjects...?... I'm being somewhat vague, I know, but I think the general concept is what is important here and gets into the rhizome: a semi-autonomous browser would take the general chaos of the net, would try to organize temporary connections between pages based on certain criteria. The Rhizome would be the net itself, and the semi-autonomous browser would be the building of secondary-level rhizomes, or counter-rhizomes.... I.e.: the autoconstruction of links based on criteria, or based on a certain number of "concepts operatoires" (operational concepts). These operational concepts would be like little programs entering into a chaotic situation and seeing what they can make up of the chaos....And the operation concept would just be a WAY of organizing the information. Giving it a context. The independance of the operational concept and/or semi-autonomous browser on one side and the information on the other is essential. They must have this autonomy or semi-autonomy. Otherwise you're again organizing the user in a restrictive way. But if the semi-autonomous browser did not understand the content of what it was reading, but merely organizing it around given criteria (operational concepts) then you have something interesting.

Again, I'm just forging a few quick remarks based on your project description. You didn't give us much to go on! If you could explain a little further, I could perhaps give you some more comments...

Good luck.

Douglas Edric
Paris. 30.11.1995

P.S. Might I add here that "ENGROSEN@acs.eku.edu" has just posted an excellent resume of articles on these issues that sounds VERY interesting. Only, two questions: 1) can you describe in more detail your project? And 2) can you please give me a few references for some of the articles you cited, most specifically the article you will apparently publish in the December issue of IEEE transactions. What is it? Where can a Parisian get it?

I should mention that there is someone at Paris 8 where I am at at this moment that has been working on auto-generative hypertext structures and has of course been influenced by Prigogine. Someone wrote here a few days ago asking what university deals with Hypertext and Deleuze? Well, I cannot help be reply, Paris 8 of course, Deleuze's old univerity...

From: "Julean A. Simon" <simon@berlin.snafu.de>

douglas,
...
ok.
well, we try to "avoid" information retrieval to be the dominant or exclusive task in the conceptualization of this HT-sys. that is not to say that it has to be avoided as such - it has a certain function; the question is how to balance it with other functions of a working environment, that also may be desirable. when you say passive you characterize the participation of a user. but the process of information retrieval (listening, watching, reading, getting something from the library, ftp-ing) may also be characterized as active, selective,...especially seen from a constructivist perspective.

obviously the interaction with a text - or more general the interaction of a percptive system with the sensedata it generates, the interaction of a cognitive system with its own states - the interaction in time signifies a context as a dynamical phenomenon. the interactions of participants in a discourse establish what i think maturana/varela call a "consensual domain", which i understand as the basic structure for the differentiation of a context. a single point of view makes sense in the context of a specific set of more or less defined premises or references and is in many ways premise for other points of view.
(perhaps i would use the word concept instead of point of view ?) with "generation and differentiation - not of information, but - of contexts" i mean: there is more than procssing the sentence "rabin assassinated" as such, we relate its meaning to some context; though, the accelerated delivery, the parallelity and quantity, the particular use of structures to suggest a claim for authority, etc. often do not allow for the gen&diff of a context, thus, if at all, one takes it as a believe_me-information.

These are all typical context problems on the internet. i guess, this is the typical problem, or question to address, of an author who is given/takes the authority to define and lay out a context in front of his audience/reader/student. this allows, but also forces the author -if it would be possible at all!- to control all contextual aspects. one2many-organization is useful in specific situations, but first of all we are *used to* it. networks, due to their structure should provide for more interaction, intervention, interference - in tendency. then the process of context generation is not a global enterprise but based on local processes, distributed among participants with diverse approaches, tested on various hypotheses, misunderstandings have better chance to be solved, it is less dependent on linear development of threads, feedback loops do their work... current html-browsers do not really support these processes, email and list are much more on this line.

to my understanding (of art) artists should not look at any pedagogical situation

providing users with tools or strategies to orient themselves does not necessarily imply orienting them.

i understand that in creating a hypertext you are confronted with an entrance-exit problem, but i dont see entrance and exit as typical or general features of information or context; perhaps i mis-understand, please enlarge.

i dont know the english terminology: Projekt Methode, germ. is a pedagogical approach, perhaps originated somewhere around piaget (?), that opposes Frontalunterricht, frontal-teaching (?) where a teacher in front of the crowd, following a clear course-outline based on some strategy to finally reach explicit goals. project method uses group-dynamical methods to motivate them to work on a subject in a self-responsible way. the teacher is observing and guiding this open process which does not have a concrete, preconceived final-goal. in tendency the project-method is one of the more appealing approaches, since it is a multi-factorial situation i think its efficiency, consequences, etc. have to be evaluated from case to case, though.

there are lots of attempts in this direction [semi-autonomous browsers], e.g. agents. of course we also thought about that and will have to develop features with similar technology, for more modest purposes, though (complexity-, redundancy-reduction, etc). if you search for technical solutions to automatically net information, it could well be that the outcome is only of technical interest. however, if you want information to interconnect it makes sense to start at the generation of information. it reads as if you had forgotten the authors of the information on the net. why only use the information as such, why not also use the authors competence in establishing contexts - i know, you are doing it by participating in this list. what i mean: its worth to further develop this email/list-business on a technological, as well as organizational level, and also use ideas like hypertext here,...
the current hypertext-applications, especially www, as i see it, have a tendency towards theme-park, shopping-mall, advertising, channel-flipping,...well, i use it, sometimes i find something. the links more or less establish an arbitrary world_wide-context. i am not sure it would improve, netting it more densley.

sorry, i didnt want to focus too much on this project, rather follow some related aspects, as we did sofar and see if there is a connection with D&Gs rhizome... i would love to continue on this track
regards, julean

From: douglas edric stanley <destanley@teaser.fr>

Yes. I agree, "point of view" is not interesting. This is why I immediately reformulated "point of view" into a more general concept of "context" and even more specificially, as an "entrance-exit". When I said "point of view" I was merely saying that this is how we generally understand context, information retrieval, activity, etc. Whereas I was simply trying to say that much of this is more of a question of "point of entry" and "point of exit" than "point of view". So I agree entirely, although I do not quite see why you replace "point of view" with "concept". A concept, in my little personal dictionary, is more of a process of the creation of cognative systems, ontological systems, etc., that will thereupon "declencher" other systems (I don't have the translation for declencher, excuse me). But information-retrieval, the creation of contexts, or "reading in general" is not a concept for me. It is more of a situation. The concept would be an apriora, i.e. the concept "rhizome" or whatever. But contexts, points of view, points of entry and points of exits are not concepts. But this is my personal opinion. I don't know what it really adds to the general discussion.

As well, you made a quick remark that irked me...

Well, if I said this stupid word, "artists", it was simply to make something clear. Unfortunately, what I thought was an easy cliche, seems t= o be even more cliche than I thought... Suggesting that an "artist" (as you seem to do) has some sort of restricted domain in which s/he should work ("artists should not look at any pedagogical situation") is just dumping us back into the old separation-of-knowledge/heirarchization-of-knowledge blah, blah, blah... Take an "artist" duo like Diller + Scofoldio (sp?): here we have architects looking at the question of interactivity, creating installations (in "galleries" I might mention), and stamped with the BIG Ol' interNATIONAL stamp "ART". But they're really architects because they're dealing with space, even if they're deterritorializing it. Or perhaps they're just "theorists". But they're constructing things, and they're looking at interactivity which is necessarily tied into the same problems of interactivity that "pedagogy" is dealing with.... I mean, artists have always stolen from everywhere. Artists have always been interested in everyone else's problems, and appropriated them for themselves. Literature, philosophy, science, and certainly politics! "Art" is not the same thing as "pedagogy" but is there not a possible common-problem amongst the two?

Yes, this is a good critique of the situation, and a good assessment of what we need. I agree, there is an obvious intuitive and active organization going on inside e-mail lists: i.e. based on the more collective and rhizomatic "interests" of the users, in such a way that the object itself (the "listserver") itself becomes rhizomatic: grows in one direction due to interest, then dies off due to lack of interest, meanwhile growing in another direction because of interest, etc.... all locally. And all of this is absolutely lost in the theme-park world of html pages. And yet on the other side, an html page offers something that e-mail lists absoutely needs. Is this not, then (again) both the solution and the problem? I mean, how many times do you see references to html pages on this listserver? Just the other day (are there days on the Internet?) someone ragged me out for not having read the archives on the subject of the rhizome-internet. And yet this is not my fault! How was I supposed to know that such an archive existed? Well, I went immediately to the archive, and there it was: poof! full of relevant discussions that had already taken place. But again, as a listserver is not interconnected, but merely archivized, I passed by a relevant link not out of stupidity or lack of interest, but due to the lack of knowledge of the link. How many times have you missed an exhibit or film or T.V. program (in France there are sometimes interesting T.V. programs) simply because you'd missed the link? The other day I missed Regis Debray (not a genius, I know, I know) on ARTE simply because I hadn't walked to the corner to buy a tv-guide for two francs... Same problem with the e-mail groups. Go off on vacation, come onto a discussion group too late, and "ooof!" you miss a whole area of interesting information. Now, this is life and we shouldn't complain, but it is interesting to think about: you seem to suggest that a rhizomic-link-authoring-system would be possible. Is this the direction you are going in? Because that's interesting. What if the user, like the e-mail user, could interact with the content, produce links on a page and have the page auto-organize itself around the newly introduced link? This would use the intelligence of the user. The machine would simply follow step.

Douglas Edric
Paris. Lundi 4.12.1995

From: "Julean A. Simon" <simon@berlin.snafu.de>

okay, i thought of replacing *single point of view* with concept; but i guess we agree on the use of the words *concept* and *context*, more or less.

[Art and Pedagogy]: well, things always have something in common. but, on the basis of which common feature do you want to characterize and categorize them. of course, art steals, looks for problems...- media, e.g. also steal and also are *interested in everyone else's problems*: is this the condition on the basis of which art functions? perhaps it is dangerous to cite adorno these days, anyway, i like one of his characterizations of art as (i hope i recall correctly) something that has inherent its own extinction. i would not think that traditional pedagogy could accept this as its description, - no, actually as its program, since pedagogy is strategy. (perhaps you mean knowledge-acquisition instead of pedagogy?)

And the rhizome is an appealing image, for sure. but as i look closer: isnt it a cognitive model on the level of an observer (of the global structure)? as i understand it, in the biological rhizome the structure-information rather resides in local neighbourhood-relations. Transfering this to language interaction, i dont see where you get what we understand by context if the participants in a discourse argue strictly on a local level. that reminds me to a method in conversation-therapy by rogers (i think his name was), where the therapist only e.g. transforms the clients statements into questions, to keep him talking. thats not what we want in a discourse, do we? i have to admit, its a while ago i read *rhizome* and at the moment my copy sits on a shelf 1000km from here... have i overlooked something?
...

Yes, its one important line to get the machine follow step - but thats not at all simple. thats why first of all, before investing into machine-intelligence for context-generation we think of exploiting the competence of the user. could you define *auto-organize itself around the newly introduced link*
regards, j.

From: douglas edric stanley <destanley@teaser.fr>

I do not really know the work of Adorno, but I agree that is a very interesting idea. Yes, art and extinction are absolutely related. Although Deleuze said something similar in a conference (in "Qu'est-ce que l'acte de creation?"), he put the accent on a different aspect:

"Quel est le rapport de l'oevre d'art avec la communication? Aucun. L'oeuvre d'art n'est pas un instrument de communication. L'oeuvre d'art n'a rien a faire avec la communication. L'oeuvre d'art ne contient strictemment pas la moindre information. En revanche, il y a une affinite fondamentale entre l'oeuvre d'art et l'acte de resistance. Alors, la oui, elle a quelque chose a faire avec l'information et la communication: a titre de l'acte de resistance... Alors que les hommes qui resistent n'ont ni le temps ni parfois la culture necessaire pour avoir le moindre rapport avec l'art.... Malraux developpe un bon concept philosophique. Malraux dit une chose tres simple sur l'art. Il dit: c'est la seule chose qui resiste a la mort.... Reflechissez. Qu'est-ce qui resiste a la mort? Sans doute, il suffit de voir une statuette de trois mille ans avant notre ere pour trouver que la reponse de Malraux est plutot une bonne reponse."

I quote Deleuze not only because this is supposed to be a discussion group on Deleuze and Guattari, but because it has everything to do with what we are dealing with here. I said in my first "message" that artists should look at these problems of pedagogy, certainly when it comes to conceptualising what the generation of hypertext content could be. Hypercontext, if you will... Well, you responded to this by saying that artists shouldn't look at pedagogical problems, if only for the simple fact that pedagogy looks to accomplish strategic tasks whereas art would rather spend its times creating a relationship with the ephemeral. Now, I'm using Deleuze to suggest that, yes, art is in an intimate relationship with its dissapearance, but exactly at the moment when it resists just a relationship. I think the work that best comes to mind is Maurice Blanchot's wonderful little novel "L'arret de la mort": at once (in french) a death sentance, and yet at the same time, an "arret", a freeze-frame, an arrestation, a freezing of death itself. Precisely the moment it is condemned to death.

So what is pedagogy up to on it's side of the question of finitude? Well, in a sense, we could say that THE CURRENT STATE of pedagogy is more geared towards information and communication. It has its "messages" to "communicate", it has its "codes" to communicate them, and the classroom is nothing but the place where such a "transfer" of information takes place. Much like the current state of the internet html page. In a sense (an I insist, only in a sense)....

But what stops us from imagining another model for pedagogy? It's funny, because I just posted a pretty nasty rant on the Derrida forum suggesting just such a conceptual problem of "how to teach Derrida" There was some dopey university professor asking for cute little Derrida quotes to give to his class. A bit like a "best of Derrida" double-CD... This of course is a very different situation (Derrida is not Deleuze), but my response there is just as valid here: we must construct the pedagogical "scene" on the model of the event - l'evenement - and the event always "has inherent its own extinction." It is a process, if you want.

Who says that pedagogy itself does not have something to ask itself on the side of art's very specific problems? Deleuze suggests, for example, that art can very well use communication, however only if just such a usage takes place in a more general process of resistance. (Resistance, I should mention is a very charged word in French: Resistance moments, Frence resistance, etc). Why couldn't pedagogy too have something to do with the ephemeral promise of art? What is a promise? Is not pedagogy - let's just call it teaching, damn it! - totally caught up in the question of the impossible promise?

I have two examples, to perhaps further take us into this problem. One was reminded to me by someone I'm supposedly collaborating with. The last few days I've been very concerned with the question of the "evenement" when it comes to closed systems (and more specifically the CD-Rom) and one of my responses to the problem of interactivity in a closed system is the creation of "micro-evenements". Tiny little events. Well, as my collaborator informed me, this was precisely the problem of Fluxus. And she's right. Body art at the time was a bit on the side of transforming the body in the name of some end, of simply deforming the body, of taking it from point X and pulling it over to point Z. Whereas the Fluxus problem was more of trying to find the "milieu", the between, the area, the zone, the territory in which micro-events TOOK PLACE. What does that mean "to take place"? Is this not the question everyone is asking themselves? Well, =46luxus responded with micro-gestures, working in the micro-gestural: brushing your teeth, standing, drawing a line, holding a sign, eating a hamburger (I'm cheating with Warhol but it's appropriate). All of this takes place in what Deleuze would call "la duree". In the breath of a movement, not its two end-points.... Now, why do I mention all this? Because it is precisely what I'm trying to use to transform the whole question of "experiencing" a work of art. How to render experienceable the work of art. The work of art in its passing we might say. And this is entirely a question of pedagogy. I'm supposedly creating a CD-Rom that IMPLICATES the "visitor". And all this is so much more reduced than what you seem to be doing with Internet Reading-systems. But in a way I'm suspended somewhere between the artist and the teacher. And I have to admit, although it's somewhat difficult, I'm quite happy and quite comfortable in this position. It is quite a relief trying to maintain that "milieu". A bit like when Nietzsche said that the Ubermench walks from mountain peak to mountain peak as so many steps over the abyss. And it is this somewhere-between-creation-event-and-pegagogy-information-retrieval that interests me.

I remind you, I hate this expression, "work of art".

Now, my second example, is a bit more personal, and yet appropriate for this discussion list... I was watching a cassette of one of Deleuze's lectures from the Universite de Paris 8, Saint-Denis, and I couldn't help but be touched by the proximity of Deleuze to his students. Everyone remarks this: Deleuze was litterally SURROUNDED by his students: the room so damn small and the demand so large. So you've got a kid crammed up next to him taking notes, another lighting up his cigarette in Deleuze's face, and third trying to squeeze in behind, tripping over a backpack, reaching for a patch of floor. And what is Deleuze doing in all of this chaos? Well, in such a lovely manner, he was doing Deleuze. There are other cassettes but the one I was looking at was the more or less available tapes of a lecture on the fold. And like any interestsing professor (there are still a few here and there in Paris) Deleuze spent the entire course constructing micro-events. It wasn't a lecture. It was quite litterally a cram-session. A sort of odd philosophical research lab. Experiments, etc...Of course Deleuze was talking, but it was somewhere between a performance and a construction site. You couldn't understand jack shit if you weren't wearing a hard-hat and climbing on the beams with him... Again, why do I mention this? Well, I'm simply trying to say that what was interesting about this lecture was that it wasn't a lecture. It has nothing really to do with Deleuze, rather just attests to the fact that what is most interesting in pedagogy are those things that construct themselves as an event. It is the whole context that becomes interesting, and the "user" is not simply Nietzsche's open-ears, but rather a part of the event. The user, the student, has to become a part of the event to get anything out of it. And shit if Deleuze's courses don't look like they were difficult. But all kinds of freaks were hanging out in them: architects, painters, musicians, a few philosophy students, my computer lab technician. Because the event just requires an activity: as Nietzsche says, the creator looks for other creators to create. Is this not absolutely the future question of pedagogy when it comes to the Internet?

So pedagogy could just take a look at this scene once and a while? Why is pedagogy based on strategy? Who says?

When I said local, I didn't mean signifier1 attaches itself to signifier2 which attaches to signifier3... You Rogers example sounds like a typical analytic-junky-machine: TALK! DAMN IT! Same deal with the television.
Local was mentioned in the same sense that one could perhaps say that the rhizome is entirely local. A rhizome is simply an underground root system that attaches itself to other root systems and sends out shooters in all directions. When it meets the air for example, there is nothing arborescent about it. It is not all the million roots building up to ONE BIG DADDY-TREE. It is a million little directions all at once. The co-presence of heterogenious space. And this is what I meant when I said local. Local means that you have neither heirarchized distance between one element and other. They are absolutely implicated on the same plane. In the same territory. Nor is there some sort of abstract organizing principle. When you are local you are ephemeral. This discussion for example. I've gone from pedagogy to art to classrooms to smoke inhilation to CD-roms to the rhizome to resistance and so on. But we're still on the same local level of discussion. And we all know that in a matter of time - it's already taking place - this local discussion is going to die. It's already dead in a sense. Internet is entirely about haunting. Well, this discussion which is not a work of art has your "inherent extinction" so dear to art. This discussion is somewhat pedagogical, non? But we all know its a dead topic and with each posting all we are doing is re-animating the corpse. I'm being quite serious here. Think about how many times you've seen posted something that interested no one?

In a way, it is not for me to define ["auto-organize"]. I mean, I was going in this direction and then last Friday I read an interview that explained my idea more pragmatically than I ever could. It was in the 8 Decembre, 1995 Cahier Multimedia which is found in every Friday edition of Liberation. They also have an internet adress which usually publishes the interviews. So you can see it yourself by pointing your browser to
http://www.liberation.fr (if you're in Europe)
http://www.netfrance.com/libe/ (if you're in the U.S.)

But here's a few translations (warning! French business men have a really shitty speaking and writing style, I'll try to clean it up but it's not easy):

INTERVIEW: Phillipe Courtot, president de Verity

Liberation: There are already a number of research tools on the Internet. What does Verity add to this list?

Courtot: The generation of services of the type Infoseek, Architex and Yahoo are characterized by the development of private technologies. These instruments do indexation (listing and organization of different files) and research documents. Our technology allows the user to initiate research on non-indexed documents. Where the classical services are content to combine words, we allow the user to do research with concepts but by constructing them himself. For example: if you're asking for a list of american presidents from 1929 to 1945 on a classical service, you will have responses concerning "president", "list" and "american" but not all the results will be pertinent. Our system Topic however doesn't do the research with each of the words listed treated independently, but rather constructs a concept in which meaningful links will bring together notions like "american president", "list" and "dates".

Liberation: What will be the decisive advances in research and documentation= ?

Courtot: First of all, automatic summaries (resumes) of texts. Up to this point, summary-programs have worked on the basis of the statistical occurence of words. One simply takes the phrases which most use the desired words in the text. The results are not very impressive. But in using concepts that are fabricated by the user, we are able to produce satisfactory summaries from the point of view of meaning. The summary of a document in real-time becomes an assistant to navigation. Another direction is the use of "intelligent agents", those little programs that go fishing for information according to your centers of interest and put them into your mailbox. They are even more interesting in the sense that a new generation of agents, such a those created by the company General Magic, can take over from there in order to effectuate certain tasks. The Verity agents inform you that the plane you were counting on taking has been cancelled while the General Magic agents automatically contact your secretary or go about looking for another flight to book you on...

I thought you might find this interview a better clarification of what I was trying to describe. Although I was of course speaking about something a bit broader than this Verity guy;s products, I think it's good to see some practical examples of what was just a conceptual wandering in the dark.
I was quite suprised in fact.

Take care,
Douglas Edric
Paris. 10 decembre, 1995.

From: CJ Stivale <CSTIVAL@cms.cc.wayne.edu>

Thanks to Melissa yet again for her work in getting the Sartre quote, and *translated* as well. Thanks also to MER for his succinct post with extremely useful references and a slight request: I wonder if he, or Jon Beasley-Murray, can recall the month(s)/year that this list's members discussed the question of rhizome/cyberspace. I think it was earlier this year, but I can't quite pin it down thumbing through folders of saved text.
One reason I ask this is to concur a bit with the direction of Ron Day's last post in response to Douglas Eric 27.11.1995, particularly the end of DE's post beginning with: "I'm writing all this late at night. Excuse my scatteredness... They are my first responses to come to mind after *these FIRST POSTS about Deleuze and Guattari and Computers, etc.*" <My emphasis> Late night posting and scatteredness are synonymous, so no excuses needed. But scatteredness can give rise to poor reflection, both on possible previous strings and writers on this list who *have* given time/energy/thought to these matters, and on the possible reception of statements such as this:
"Again, people just post 'this interests me' without getting into the subject. My god, implicate yourselves!'
as well as "Please, if you're interested in something, propose something! Of course, we're all interested in technology and Deleuze and Guattari. But you're going to have to do a little work. What do you want me to do, do the work for you?"
Speaking only for myself, no thanks. However puny my own efforts may be, at least I can seem to avoid the hectoring, Jamesonian ("Always implicate yourselves!" as the next commandment...) tone of this tired (and tiresome) post.
As for "To which I'm suppose(d) to respond with my special recipie <sic> for Cheesecake, I suppose?", well, there's an idea a lot of us seem to resonate with, even if one never touches the stuff.
In a more productive vein, could Jon re-post some of the rhizome/cyberspace string from the archives or, if that's not possible (end of semester *is* upon us in the USA where the archives are archived), at least refresh our memory on where they might be browsed? Thanks. Charles J. Stivale, early morning, two cups of coffee, raring to go...

From: ????

I've been moving through "Smooth and Striated Space" in ATP and I keep running into a problem, or a space that this chapter particularly expresses.

Although D&G explicity revoke binary schema at many points -- look to the Intro, for example where they advocate not directly opposing arborescent models to rhizomatic models -- it at times seems as though they return to it very easily, without hesitation. The example here is of course the division of smooth and striated space -- the striated that marks out territory, operates from a center, builds the State apparatus vs. the smooth that exists only in the distance between points, suggesting complexity over progress, the nomadic, and the war machine. Does this not seem an explicitly two-sided scheme, in which there exists a basic binary system onto which can be superimposed an number of other opposed systems? ("State apparatus-War machine", "rhizome-tree", "center vs. collection of points", all attach onto the "smooth-striated" opposition.)

Then again, it might be necessary to distinguish binary from biunivocal, as they do in the Introduction. The binary sets up two terms, one of which it privileges, and overlays other schemes onto the primary set of terms. The binary does not ask or allow for disruption, deterritorialization. Whereas the biunivocal relies on two terms that function as strange attractors (to use terms of chaotic dynamics). It has a middleground that allows for the disruptions of smooth space. The biunivocal can give way to an entirely striated system, but on the other end it allows for the possibilities of a smooth space. And it allows one set of terms to be brought in conjuction with another not in terms of a hierarchy but rather as aggregates in parallel. (Every attempt to bring D&G's concepts to a metaconceptual level is again swallowed by those concepts themselves. De Man would close a rigid binary scheme of figural vs. literal in endless paradox, D&G make the system operate.) What I'm getting at: I'd like responses as to whether I'm on the right track here. Frankly, this whole problem of the binary and the biunivocal has been with me since even before I picked up ATP, and D&G have helped to solve (or should I say to complicate) this dilemma in part, but I still cannot understand precisely where they stand in this respect.
My four half-pence.

From: douglas edric stanley <destanley@teaser.fr>

Think of the internet. I know there are those out there that don't agree, but I don't care. Even with HTML pages, you have a destratified space, which is the general rule - and absolutely heirarchized/stratified/arborescent spaces which are from the inside, destratified, etc... A very interesting situation if you think about it, and absolutely what Deleuze and Guattari say about Smooth and Striated space in the last chapter of Mille Plateaux: a smooth space can pass into a striated space, and vice versa. The internet can be totally arborescent (a university server for example can have a general menu of topics ("admissions", "records", "departments", "staff" which lead to a second-level set of topics ("english despartment", "information sciences", and so on down to the local level of "staff member", "special news for english department students", etc...). Meanwhile, on each of these pages, or on many of them, could exist links to another page, on the opposite side of the planet, in a totally different context. Which of course would have another link to a totally different context, on a different server in another country, and so on. And all of these links would be absolutely logical, or at least locally-organzed amongst themselves, and yet at the same time would "reside" in absolutely heterogeneous contexts. This then, would be the smooth space that grows out of the striated, and the striated space, that connects itself to the smooth space.

Douglas Edric
Paris. 4.12.1995

From: Graham John Sharpe <gsharpe@sfu.ca>

while the striated--smooth model does seem troublesome as it seems to set up binaries, i think you do help to make more sense out of it by distinguishing between binary and biunivocality.

it's too easy to seem them as opposites. and perhaps one reason we cannot do that is because neither 'space' is fixed. each is in a continual process of 'de' or 're'-territorialization (becoming). i'm reminded of D&G's comment in ATP about how deterritorialization "is always relative, and has reterritorialization as its flipside or complement"(54). i feel this works too with striated and smooth space, but again always in a process of becoming.

i wish to some degree that D&G had followed up on "holey space" (ATP 500) and its communicative role between striated and smooth. "holey space" seems to be a way to characterize this process of change 'between' these spaces - holey space as becoming. D&G's 'holey space' = D's 'fold' --- or at least that what i've been trying to work out for this past while. if the project turns fruitfull, i'll let you know. or if you know of others who have already followed this thread,
i'd be greatfull for info.

graham

From: Paul Bains <P.Bains@uws.edu.au>

Given the extended discussion of Deleuze and Heidegger, here's a bit of Guattari on Heidegger:

"Technical machines install themselves at the intersection of the most complex and heterogeneous enunciative components. Heidegger, who turned the world of technology into a kind of malefic destiny resulting from a movement of distancing from being, used the example of a commercial plane on a runway: the visible object conceals 'what and how it is.' It unveils itself 'only as standing-reserve inasmuch as it is ordered to insure the possibility of transportation' and to this end, 'it must be in its whole structure and in every one of its constituent parts on call for duty, i.e. ready for take-off'. This interpellation, this 'ordering' which reveals the real as 'standing-reserve' is essentially operated by man and understood in terms of a universal operation, travelling, flying...But does this 'standing-reserve' of the machine really reside in an already-there, in terms of eternal truths, revealed to the being of man? In fact the machine speaks to the machine before speaking to man and the ontological domains that it reveals and secretes are, on each occasion, singular and precarious.

From: ENGROSEN@acs.eku.edu

RHIZOME stands for Research on Hypertext as an Interactive Zone for the Open Mediated Essay. (A lot of red wine and spaghetti produced that). Originally developed by myself and Tom Ellis, RHIZOME approaches invention as a self-orgnanizing system by drawing on the thinking of Deleuze-Guattari, Prigogine and Maturana and Varela in order to create simulation models of creative and critical thinking. Its "written" in Hypercard 2.

Its under review with Eastgate, but if you promise to beta site the stacks in writing courses or in a writing lab I'll be glad to send you a copy.

mer

From: John Miller Lenti <jlenti1@icarus.cc.uic.edu> Subject: iso: rhizome-like search engines/directories

The attached text is an introduction to an architecture project that is "posted" on the web. Its process is exposed to the public and relies on critical input; it is a landscape of making. We are intrigued by rhizomes and will be including your site within ours, thanks for the relevence.

In creating our site, it became immediately apparent that however "smooth" the internet appeared, it is simultaneously "striated" because of the inability to cast tenticles to other sites. Ideally, after initializing information search, you should be able to page FORWARD to access relevant information in a rhizomatic model.

We understand that "Roulette" approximates this and wondered has there been any other thoughts about tagging linked sites with this sort of compass.
We want to use the web as an analogue for creating space.

Sincerely,
Lenti (jlenti1@uic.edu) University of Illinois at Chicago Dept of Architecture

Please visit our site

This web site has been created by architecture students from the University of Illinois - Chicago. It is designed to attract topical information concerning a competition sponsored by the New Jersey Institute of Technology entitled, New York: The Lost Archipelago.

The site (New York Harbor) has been arbitrarily gridded and imbedded with a layer referred to as Manhattanism , an interpretation of Rem Koolhaas retroactive manifesto, Delirious New York. Each of us in the studio owns a piece of real-estate to develop as we see fit. As one s cell becomes enriched with information we presume that the structure of the cells will develop its own characteristics, independent of cells adjacent to it. It this sense, this web site is in itself an act of manhattanism; ...a system of [256] solitudes...a metropolitan archipelago of [256] islands of its own making. To test Koolhaas hypothesis, the site relies on congestion and density. It will be our responsibility to create critical and systematic objectifications of delirious associations and interpretations. We are exploring the validity of the Paranoid-Critical Method...the Conquest of the Irrational.
Each cell is thus located and provided with an infrastructure. Diagrammatically the site looks like this:

[Diagram Here]

Eventually these associations may warp Manhattanism as other systems become more relevant and efficient. The layers that build up each cell will push this text to other locations, but in the spirit of delirious associations, never removed. The site might begin to look something like this:

[Diagram 2 Here]

[The web site s] purpose is not the fastest possible determination of all the details of the [site], but on the contrary, the postponement of its final definition to the last possible moment so that the concept of the [site] remains an open matrix that can absorb any idea that can increase its ultimate quality.