Editors' Note: The following are two responses to Article 44, "The Cybernetic Delirium of Norbert Weiner" by Stephen Pfohl.
Dr. James Rupture
182,000 jobs in motion. Seventy countries.
Market value $64 Billion.
An
implosion
of I'm led to image
tears.
I love the advert tattooing your sex.
You love my CK Infinity.
Or so
I'm led to imagine.
Day dream. On credit.
This is cybernetic capital.
This is ultramodern power.
Adapt or
you're toast.
The smell f brnng flsh.
i-o-u
(nobody not even the rain has such $mall hands
Splice
cybernetic capital
ultramodern power
ultramodern capital
cybernetic power
Melody and I had to run to the mall yesterday to get money for her ticket to Iphegania. Very high, we entered
cybernetic capital
ultramodern power
ultramodern capital
cybernetic power
time-out-of-time. This is what capital uses to stand in for the TAZ; this is an opposing pole or field; virtual space (dis)embodied: a dream-within-a-dream, nexu$ of power - the mall as a point at the conjunction of force lines that span the world. Magical capital, sacrificial altar, church, mosque, synagogue.
spatial disorientation: mirrors on all sides and surfaces reflect each other into infinity and reflect spectacle into being. If the 3rd order simulacra is an image with no referent endlessly repeated, this is its home and vanishing point. It breeds and is born in the mall, transmits itself into the human host here. It is more of a feeling than a particular image, however.
This feeling is generated purposefully and encompasses all senses. Overwhelming empty spaces (mirrors and architecture, huge vertical hole surrounded by balconies of shops) demand filling, and they can only be filled by... goods, of course. This need is of course endless, insatiable; like the infinite reflections of vacuum that produce it, if it were real it could never be filled. The production of an unending de$ire.
Sound: this architecture also means that the mall is a giant resonating chamber. Awash in reverberation (which effect is used, in the conventions of cinema audio especially but any audio in general, to signify dreaming, intoxication, or flashbacks in time), all sounds in the space blend with one another in a muddy dance that obscures originary points, paths of travel, distances, and directions.
The size and shape of this space also produce, below everything and almost unnoticed but (because it is) omnipresent, a single, steady bass tone. This tone acts like a cushion or pillow, which works with the wet reverb to buffer the body against anything harsh, sudden, or uncomfortable. Tones like this make people relaxed; they are wonderful aids to falling asleep. They can be terrifying because they surround the body entirely, blurring its edges and stroking them sensually.
Time: there are, of course, no clocks to be seen; time here flows according to the passage of coins and bills.
cybernetic capital
ultramodern power
ultramodern capital
cybernetic power
We arrived at the cash machines. They have now all been replaced with the touchscreen model... I had been, the day before, at the MIT Media Lab Brain Opera open house, at which I played for a while with an interface based on the same technology - peizoelectric sensors that read the charge on the skin - but applied to music: a screen with liquid computer-generated image substrate that is played (it translates grid coordinates and pressure into alterations of a melody that plays over headphones) by drawing in this substrate with a finger. I learned that they were not entirely satisfied with this interface, partly because all technologies in the Brain opera are designed to be as non-intrusive as possible; the fact that people have to remove their gloves in order for the sensors to pick up the electric charge on the skin is a problem...
Gloveless, i entered my password on the ATM screen by pressing the proper screenal "buttons." Watching others around me, I fell deeply into a perception of our actions as identical to those of rats in a lab: press and take cash, press and take cash, press and take cash. Spend. Press and take cash, press and take cash, press and take cash. Work. Press and take cash, press and take cash, press and take cash. Spend...
cybernetic capital
ultramodern power
ultramodern capital
cybernetic power
As I plucked my $ from the metal lips of the machine, I looked up into the video eye. Behind me, the next person in line removed her gloves. I now noticed the plastic of the screen, dirty with fingerprints.
$erial numbers? check.
video record? check.
fingerprints? check.
the owners of the lab keep very careful tabs on the rats.
cybernetic capital
ultramodern power
ultramodern capital
cybernetic power