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Ontogenic Unity and 16 Sessions
Benjamin Eakins
C5 is engaging the contemporary systems of notation, whether they be
computational (the individual processing machine or the network unity
known as the internet), or socio-economic-political (the corporation as
both inscribing body and inscription). In 16 Sessions, the datum
generated by Joel Slayton's piece Not To See a Thing is
re-contextualized. It existed originally as the data describing a path,
or movement and rotation, in three dimensional space; it is relocated to
become data describing a "path" in the information space of the web. In
the work, the datum is initially approached as the basic element of the
individual processing units text, and is migrated to address its role as a
text in the networked entailment meshwork. The data, within these
semantic contexts, expresses itself in highly consistent ways. Certain
attributes or characteristics become apparent, manifesting themselves in
different ways in each context. The ability of the data to be organized,
or find its own organization, becomes an important issue. The data,
making itself manifest in expressive behaviors, may be seen as evidence of
the data acting as an ontogenic unity. It is questionable whether the
data itself can function deductively, however, in any other contexts.
Outside of a mathematically structured semantic context, the datum would
no longer be able to maintain their identity, and the appearance of the
data as a unity would collapse.