Hyperobjects | Evan Isoline
Guest Column #028
“Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.”
—André Breton, Nadja
Objects are in groups ordered so as to form categories.
Objects are on their faces arranged on a scale to create boundaries defining the dimensions of one another.
Categories are connected or grouped through morphonomic sorting and cataloguing.
Assembling of objects, objects in parallel lines.
Objects are being filmed in mirror formations.
Objects suspended in laser mesh sequences self-organize into geometric patterns.
The disjunctive proportions of objects enter into perfect rhythms.
Objects in indeterminate states of material condition mutate under a pulse of black light.
Objects form a boundaried (or boundaryless) complex, auto-arranging in clusters and compact structures.
Objects conjoin in swarm configurations.
Objects are in conjunction but not in proportion.
Objects cohere and fall in on one another.
One by one, objects combine to form a single object; the object fills two square feet of a wide-angle photographic tableau. A dark liquid pooling underneath it.
The presence of the liquid presages the anticipation of an imminent—or apparent—climax.
The space environing the object continues to decrease in scale relative to the object’s incremental yet rapid growth in mass, size and density.
The relationship between the object and its immediate environment has grown disproportionate and unstable.
The object continues to grow, metamorphosing.
A structural collapse and an ejection of the form and mass associated with the object out of the environing space precede the event.
The expulsion of the object is surrounded by a rapid expansion of particles and waves resulting in a phosphene-hued flux.
The object spontaneously enters an ever more dense and homogenous state of matter, descending to the boundary of a cosmic singularity, a region of infinite densities and voids, where it ceases to be an object at all but is now a kind of field or horizon—one where the state of matter is essentially undifferentiated and formless. A kind of deus absconditus —or the sense of an absence.
This disruptive expulsion of light and sound is the focus of attention for a concentrated survey of material onlookers.
A virtual mosaic of momentary perspectives emerges and is measured against one another.
A complex, miscellaneous, suspended data cache appears.
Some observations are excluded from the mosaic—for example, the glimpses of individual casualties incidental to the flying debris, shrapnel and fire.
Individual observers are engaged in the event-space by means of mobile devices, whereby browsing histories, keystroke patterns, biometric identifiers, draft messages and metadata are automatically uploaded to data centers in multiple storage locations.
Other control subjects are engaged via augmented ocular devices and neural implants.
The scene remains static and shows a dynamic alternation of event/exhibit; the scene remains in a spectacular and/or penultimate state.
Some observers are leaving the scene.
Some observers are re-entering the scene.
Individual observers are re-entering the scene after having left.
Some observers are not re-entering the scene but are already attending performances of its reenactment.
Images taken from drones appear in a separate group and are excluded from the mosaic for the sake of utilizing advanced 3D map photogrammetry software and Lidar modeling solutions.
Parallels between individual subjects and the group are noted by a digital image analysis program.
Images of individual subjects and the group are used to create a composite image that represents a collective subjectivity.
Meanwhile, a new informational assemblage emerges, resulting in a higher order of meaning and representation: A “collective subject” born at a particular location and within a particular circumstance, which is an agent that can exist in multiple locations at the same time and interact with other subject formations in multidimensional space.
An algorithm determines the highest order of meaning and representation of the composite “collective subjectivity”.
This abstract entity creates a new paradigm for the purpose of securing personal, collective, and global objectives.
Communications between the individual subjects create a semantic scaffolding for the expression of the collective subject.
Individuals with certain characteristic traits are identified, grouped and confirmed as possessing particular collective characteristics —in other words, they are identified as a representative sample.
A distinction of individual attributes is used to establish additional shared characteristics among individuals, and ultimately between groups.
The new information is then used to suggest an omnipresent perspective, a meaning, to a new empirical experience of the world. An objective experience of the world is constructed.
The resultant global perspective is submitted to further speculation, classification and decision-making in order to create a picture of the world, which becomes both more coherent and refined.
Ultimately, individual experience becomes stripped back to its essence, reduced to a reified abstraction of perception. The world is isolated and classified, which allows for a resolution of disparate questions concerning human experience.
It is as if each individual is in a room together but also individually in rooms of their own. Like particle simulations of spacetime. Temporal and spatial dimensions seem to evaporate and everything just seems to be happening everywhere simultaneously.
From the perspective of the collective, there is the intelligent and symbolic representation of the entire universe, from which observations may be drawn and new modalities formulated.
Through awareness of a higher, cosmological order of events, concepts and values emerge specific to the collective. Ultimately, this omnipresence becomes a hyperobject of cognitive and symbolic interaction.
Analyses reach more abstruse modes of social communication. Data transcription captures infinitesimally diversified cause/effect chains, sub-distributed–transpositional permutations of cumulae in spontaneous streams of metadata.
First-person thought manifestos and dream sequences, customized song playlists, commercial algorithmic profiling, targeting, and advertising systems. Alpha beta fluctuations, childhood memories. Anthems, jingles, chants.
Symbolic instantiation and interrogations of chaos, a boundless range of aesthetic panoplies and blurs of sensation, often fueled by incessant repetition of already-existing themes.
A shared vocabulary, a collective computational template for affective symbols, a sense of what meaning means, for how to articulate it.
Phases, of differentiation, of instability, of conflict, a challenging sensory experience and hyperadaptive cognition. Smart machine-induced awareness of accelerated perception. A new ability to apprehend analogic development and sub-animate or inhuman gestures of abstract knowledge and understanding.
Body thermogenesis, conditional influence of out of body experience. Point to point. Hypnotic duration, motion sickness. Physicality against scalar distention. Massive decomposition of set points. Non-linear architecture. Wormhole travel.
Perceptual system, perspectival public interface. A token acknowledgment. Profit as the domain of productivity. Prescriptive fundamentalism, death economics. A condition without history: sadomasochism, domination and submission. Resurrectional memory-wipes. Resets. Practical sigil magick. Eco-catachresis. Mimetic desire.
Obfuscate.
Controller, effector.
Exploit.
Actuator, individuator.
Attack.
Tooth and nail. Cloak and dagger.
Aspect. Zonation. Field extension.
A novel commodity, a fuckhole, rot as a facet of selfhood. Non-equilibrium condition, non-equilibrium steady states, continuous entropy production in the flow field. Proxy. Systems theory. Development of fourth-dimensional VR simulators. Dream skins.
High resolution audio of footsteps on gravel. The clearing of a throat. Mute internal thoughts. Glancing at your hands held out. Eyes blurring / blinking / eyes-closing-effect in first-person POV.
A shot from the perspective of a passerby whom you have failed to notice observing you from a distance of approx. 200 yards.
Cut to camera array of real-time third person view of yourself (protagonist/player character) from the outside (slightly above and behind), allowing you to establish a wider and more objective view of your body within its surroundings.
Loss of (protagonist/player) perspective cutting to B-camera documentational footage of ambient surroundings as seen at a distance from a number of different possible perspective angles in montage:
A suspension bridge crossing a river. Its tall arches swathed in verdant tree foliage. An open window, a steeple, a white wedding veil.
A piece of poultry. Accents of eggshell-colored light. A mason’s scaffolding. Cabbages, tablecloths. Bullet holes in a cathedral wall.
A brick on a yard. A packet of matches. Such mundane materials as sticks of manure, rungs of dry-heated feed, sagging hoe carts, chaff, and the occasional branch of hawthorn.
Bricks of stripped stone against stucco. An old woman, a veranda. A plethora of flowers. Doors and gates, torn fly screens, blinds. A convoy of jeeps.
A courtyard fence featuring hand-forged iron with crescent and serpentine shaped scrolls. An alley. An outhouse. In the innermost enclosure of a plaza: a load of fruits, a barrow of vegetables.
The pungency of open-air fish markets, bakeries, cafes, and an array of lit tobaccos. A sudden whiff of marmalade. Carriages on the quiet side streets. A shattered glass, a handkerchief.
Stalls at the harvest festival: roasted chestnuts, brined olives, butter cookies, cakes, and spiced wines. Horses with bridles. A tangle of disused tools and industrial machinery. A drop of spilled petrol, a butcher’s hand.
Beds of freshly fallen petals. Rifle blasts at dawn.
Two companions who nod to one another. A pale pink toreador’s costume. False trails of footprints in the white sand of a desert: of trackers. A 16th century antiphon inscribed in black and red inks on a vellum of calf skin. Bells ringing from a nearby church. Nocturnal processions.
The passage through streets. The passage from one building to another, from one room to another.
Deep shadows. A mouth agape: empty. A coin and a letter opener on a bedside table. The tooth of a forgotten child. Crumbs and stale grain. Emulsified liquids. Ash.
Extracts from a stricken man’s monthly account of events, including the excise, imposts, stock prices. Fragments. Photographs. Medical reports. An old poem torn from a book.
The perspective jumps once again, this time to jerky video footage incurring colour shifts, black bars over the screen, heat warps and sudden losses of detail as if shot by an amateur —a pedestrian— looking in on you through the windows of your home.
You are at home alone at night getting ready to watch a movie. You have been looking forward to watching the movie for weeks. On camera, you are seen preparing food and a beverage, though despite the extent of your preparation, the footage shows you falling asleep in the middle of the movie. The video camera zooms in, tightly framing your face. Your eyelids are doused in watery light projected by the screen, your head begins to nod backwards, and your hands slacken and then drop into your lap. You are not aware that you have fallen asleep and believe you are experiencing what happens next in the movie as you enter the hypnagogic state between wakefulness and dream —and for you, the movie goes on and on and on…
There are no actors, just people walking around, doing things. It begins in an old train station, where a woman with a suitcase is talking with someone else who you take to be a police detective. They pass through the fluctuating throng of travelers and into a diner, and the detective goes to get coffee. The woman joins him at a table. Against the unbroken din filling the terminal, the two converse through subtle exchanges of intense eye contact, as well as in sequences of soft, semi-melodic hums. It is in black-and-white, shot on high-contrast film with a grainy, scratchy look. The woman is wearing a vintage chanticleer hat accented with striped owl feathers. The camera pans and slowly zooms into the shadow beneath the diner table, revealing the woman moving a small spherical object between her elegantly manicured thumb, index and middle fingers.
The detective lights a cigarette. His cracked lips dryly spit away an unwanted strand of tobacco and spill an ornate concentration of smoke that is carried off on a draught of air upward past his squinting eyes followed by the camera spiraling higher into the meticulous and relentless revolutions of an electric ceiling fan and on to the activities and interactions of other individuals in the diner such as a man secretly watching the detective over the upper edge of a daily newspaper and finally into the terminal between the itinerant bodies of travelers entering and exiting the station.
Roberto Matta. La Vertue noir. 1934. Oil on canvas. 76.5 × 182.6 cm. Tate Modern, London.
Evan Isoline is a writer and artist living on the Oregon coast. He is the author of the books Philosophy of the Sky and DƐVDMVTH (11:11 Press). You can follow him on Twitter @evan_isoline.