Intro Possible Bodies
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/inventory/?about
So-Called
so-called is an operation to suspend assumptions, prejudices, blackboxes, naturalizations, familiarizations, and so forth.
It makes so-called realities available for re-figuring, jokes, problematisations, twists, flips, inventions, re-entanglements, re-assemblages. It also is a way to sense/reflect on/reveal some of the implicancies that hold the so-called real in place.
turning the probable into the possible
realism/realness/truthfulness
uncertainty, agnosticism
axiomatic structuration
cartesian anxiety
calling = naming, naming as identifying; 'so-called' as a way to make sedimentation of orderings emerge.
bodies vs so-called bodies: reminding of the political f(r)ictions of kingdoms, species, specimens, bodies.
an array of languages world worlds, so-called, so-numbered, or so-measured, so-represented, or so-sensed worlds.
-> verbal and textual languages, theatrical language, mathematical paradigms, technoscieces, phenomenology, etc.
the atrocity exhibition
realism/realness/truthfulness
uncertainty, agnosticism
axiomatic structuration
cartesian anxiety
calling = naming, naming as identifying; 'so-called' as a way to make sedimentation of orderings emerge.
bodies vs so-called bodies: reminding of the political f(r)ictions of kingdoms, species, specimens, bodies.
an array of languages world worlds, so-called, so-numbered, or so-measured, so-represented, or so-sensed worlds.
-> verbal and textual languages, theatrical language, mathematical paradigms, technoscieces, phenomenology, etc.
the atrocity exhibition
Figuration vs so-called
CASES:
Item 125: Disappearing around us
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/inventory/?125
so-called conservation:
- el del rinoceronte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ_kf9HrkN0&feature=emb_logo (min 1.24 - min 3.38)
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Item 122: Apples are red, leaves are green, branches are brown, sky is blue and the ground is yellow.
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/inventory/?122
so-called quality:
- el de la fruta de Amazon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl3XzBWpZbY (min 0.22 - min 1.35)
so-called determination:
- semantic sensing en huertas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kt6AKc9ZnA (min 18:46 - min 20.23)
so-called optimisation:
- el de LIDAR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBUCGxZq_xg (entero)
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Item 072: Visible Human
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/inventory/?072
Item 071: Visible Woman
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/inventory/?071
so-called non-invasiveness:
- el de visible human https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GPB1sjEhIQ (min 0 - min 4.00)
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Item 061: The Fragility of Life
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/inventory/?061
so-called truth:
http://www.fragilityof.life/
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Item 117: FOLDOUT
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/inventory/?117
so-called belonging/fugitivity:
- el de las fronteras https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcafQngxhBU (min 2.24 - min 3.17)
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TEXTFRAGMENTS
Apples are red, leaves are green, branches are brown, sky is blue and the ground is yellow.
Apples are red, leaves are green, branches are brown, sky is blue and the ground is yellow.
Mangoes are red, leaves are blue, branches are green, sky is black and the ground is yellow.
Almonds are blue, leaves are red, branches are black, sky is blue and the ground is white.
Mangoes are black, leaves are white, branches are yellow, sky is red and the ground is white.
Fugitives are blue, branches are red, sky is yellow, leaves are black and the ground is white.
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/book/index.php?title=So-called_plants
We write 'so-called plants' because we want to problematize the limitations of the ontological figure ‘plant’ and the isolation it implies. It is a way to question the various methods whereby finite, specified and discrete entities are being made to represent the characteristics of whole species, erasing the nuances of very particular beings. We are wondering about the way in which computational renderings of so-called plants reconfirm the figure-background divide that Andrea Ballestero discusses in her study of the socio-environmental behaviour of aquifers.[6] This not only happens through the default computational gestures of separation and segmentation, but also by the way cycles of flourishing, growing, pollinating, nurturing of 'plants' appear animated while being technically suspended in time. Such divisions and fixities are the result of a naturalization process that managed to determine 'plants' as clearly demarcated individuals or entities, arranged on landscapes along which their modes of existence develop under predictable and therefore controllable conditions. It is this production-oriented mode that 3D volumetrics seem to reproduce.
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/book/index.php?title=So-called_plants
In computer tomography, traditions of math, computation, perspective and anatomy join forces to perform exclusionary boundaries together, identifying tissue types at the level of single pixels. In the process, invisible insides have become readable and eventually writable for further processing. Cut along all-too-probable sets of gestures, dependent on assumptions of medical truth, indexality and profit, slices have collaborated in the transformation of so-called bodies into stable, clearly demarcated volumes that can be operated upon. The making visible that tomography does, is the result of a series of generative re-renderings that should be considered as operative themselves.[14] Tomography re-presents matter-conglomerates as continuous, stable entities and contributes strongly to the establishment of coherent materiality and humanness-as-individual-oneness. These picturings create powerful political fictions; imaginations and inventions that provoke the technocratic and scientific truth of so-called bodies.
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/book/index.php?title=Invasive_Imagination_and_its_agential_cuts
We suspect a twist in the hierarchy between gravitational forces. It does not lead to collapse but results in a hallucinatory construction of reality, filled with floating ‘bodies’. If we want to continue using the notions of 'context' and 'situation' for cultural analysis of the so-called bodies that populate the pharmacopornographic, military and gamer industries and their imaginations, to attend to their immediate political implications, we need to reshape our understanding of them. It might be necessary to let go of the need for 'ground' as a defining element for the very existence of the ‘body’, though this makes us wonder about the agencies at work in this un-grounded embodiments. If the land is for those who work it, then who is working the ground?[16] "Disorientation involves failed orientations: bodies inhabit spaces that do not extend their shape, or use objects that do not extend their reach"[17]
The co-constitution of so-called bodies and technologies shatters all dream of stability, the co-composition of foreground and background crashes all dreams of perspective. When standing just does not happen due to a lack of context or a lack of ground, even if it is a virtual one, the notion of standpoint does not work. Situation, though, deserves a second thought.
https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org/book/index.php?title=The_Possible_Bodies_Inventory:_dis-orientation_and_its_aftermath
As If
https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/becoming-digital/248073/as-if/
By regressing complex environmental data into a generalized pattern, the lived and multivalent specificities of black lives are represented “as if” the visual matrix maintains no connections to historical category, stereotype, or a moral imaginary.
While the technologies illuminate sentient and computational concerns, they also unearth human-machine phenomenon that might otherwise remain hidden or obscured from vision. In this way, machine learners are as much relational as they are operative in the shaping of perception “as if” they are direct simulations of sentient intelligences—as illustrated in desires for more “natural” or sentient-like behaviors in speech generation/recognition, robotics, and artificial intelligences.
In this sense, computer vision becomes an act of thought that privileges the view that individuals are created on the basis of coherence and categorical division. In this way, the relation between human reason and artificiality emerges as an immediate contradiction of perceptual domains. While one—the human—is based on a multivalent array of lived realities, the other is founded in a nominalism devoid of dynamism. This astonishing circumvention of indeterminacy naturalizes and objectifies the variant ways in which human beings live their lives to a degree that any mode of coexistence becomes no more than a transcendental presence brought forth by a single epistemological point of view.