Planetary-Scale Dancing
Published May 29, 2021
The scroll is as much a structure
of agency, something we do, as an aesthetic one, a representational metaphor for
planetary-scale computation. Endless scrolling interfaces are an aesthetic arrangement
capable, not only of conferring sense to the over-production of networked data,
but also of actively inciting its proliferation. As an aesthetic category, the
scroll is the form through which objects of data-extraction, that is users, experience
the multi-agent network of planetary-scale computation as something meaningful.
At the same time, the scroll is the symbolic motor that makes this cultural
infrastructure possible: it translates the distributed yet hierarchical collective
agency necessary to maintain the techno-social process of digital image-making
(which can be framed as the cultural correlate of planetary-scale computation)
into a limited form individual agency. Which, in turn, is configured as binary unambiguous
terms easily interpretable as electronic commands (data). The scroll is a
medium whose experience implies action in the same way in which music used to entail
its performance or in which videogames require individual agency within multi-agent
artificial rule-spaces. The scroll retrofits planetary-scale cultural sensing to suit the human by
reconfiguring human experience itself — in a very similar way in which parties
or clubs make us dance to the music, the scroll compels us to scroll to the
scroll.
Feautured sounds:
JOJO POSE - Instrumental
- Flixterr; Jojo Pose - Apollo Fresh
Feautured memes/music genres: AMV; JoJo’s Pose
Related to on TikTok: #Jojopose; #AMV; @bost.anime; @_suigetsuu; @iammacskyrunner; @leanbeefpatty; @lxros; @snitchery; @foxytheva; @pain.lullaby
Other related media: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure;
“JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and the Rise of the AMV” Video-essay by Michael Saba;
Stickerbrush Symphony from Donkey Kong Country 2
Further reading:Bratton, B. (2019).The Terraforming. Moscow: Strelka Press.
Mitchell, W. J. (2015). “Realism and the Digital Image”. In W. J. Mitchell, Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics (pp. 49-64). Chicago: University of Chicago Press
JOJO POSE - Instrumental
- Flixterr; Jojo Pose - Apollo Fresh
Feautured memes/music genres: AMV; JoJo’s Pose
Related to on TikTok: #Jojopose; #AMV; @bost.anime; @_suigetsuu; @iammacskyrunner; @leanbeefpatty; @lxros; @snitchery; @foxytheva; @pain.lullaby
Other related media: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure;
“JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and the Rise of the AMV” Video-essay by Michael Saba;
Stickerbrush Symphony from Donkey Kong Country 2
Further reading:Bratton, B. (2019).The Terraforming. Moscow: Strelka Press.
Mitchell, W. J. (2015). “Realism and the Digital Image”. In W. J. Mitchell, Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics (pp. 49-64). Chicago: University of Chicago Press