Hubertus von Amelunxen: continuation of lecture on Punctum/Becoming/Photography

Punctum:

-Transubstantiation→ substance
-Translation (literal bread into flesh)
-Symbolic Becoming (without being vulnerable to propoganda)
-Violence of imposition of host onto subject (without ejaculation necessarily being profane).
-The host as “partial object”.

The Inverted Book:
In 1830’s Mallarme conceived of a book leaving the book. Creating a mise en scene-→
Alludes to Dada & Surrealism & Oulipo. This piece was the beginning of “digital poetry” which allows for computer programmers to now compute “generative text” through algorithmic programming.

George Perec “Life of a User’s Manual”.
“House of Leaves”

“The photograph is the absolute particular […] The punctum is a partial object.”
-Barthes.

Gregory Ulfers “Electronic Monument”, 2005.

“self-analysis= self-preservation”.

“Translation doesn’t envisage itself like poetry is plunged so to speak in the forest of language but outside it, opposite the forest without entering it. IT calls and penetrates the original where the echo in its own language can resonate with the work of a foreign language.” Laplanche translating Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator”

-Being in or out of the forest. Perhaps its being everywhere with the guidance of god or the uncanny.

[Narcissus (image) & Echo (sound)→ the emergence of sound within film; a movement towards the other. Appropriating alternate audio onto moving-image as a means to re-play or re-enact the original relationship of Echo & Narcissus.]

[An echo of reflections gathered and harbored in oneself; to echo one self while moving further into the other’s echo which in turn, echoes others echoes. Repetition simultaneously accumulates and collapses on the shoulders of Narcissus and Echo solidifying and emptying the relationship towards oneself.]

Punctum→Translation→Reproduction.

Benjamin refers to “spatial” translation. Defines the movement of translation that “does not want to be self enclosed and reduce the other to the terms of self but rather a move towards the other.”

Reproduction is related to the event, what took place, light. Presentation and dimension. Benjamin’s reproduction destroys the “uniqueness” of a work of art and moves toward a work of art in order to seize and then submit it. Reproduction does the contrary. Brings the work of art towards the person.

The moment of the unique, the singular that is lost in reproduction or repetition in every mimesis only emerges at that very loss. (A question if that loss becomes gain.) That is to say reproduction is a double movement. The moment is not extinguished. The withdrawal is the 3rd. Reproduction preserves singularity that was withdrawn thus creating a 3rd.

“The reproduction carries the reproduced into a sphere of principled otherness.”
Irwin Panofsky.

Original---------------------------------------------------------------------------→ Reproduction
Artists lie here between the process in the threshold of technique and translation of aura.

In photography everything will have always already happened.

Catastrophe of photography= gift of death

[To already have been there in the photo
even before having seen the photograph.]

“Photography is suspense without any particular expectation.” –Lyotard

Benjamin smokes hashish in Marseille, 1928.
Here he uses the term “aura” for the first time and defines it in several ways. One being
“the unique constellation of space and time.” Aura is loss.

[karmic reproduction of a generation.]

How to go about doubling or generating “loss” in the auratic sense.


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Siefgried Zielinski: Art & Technlogy Lecture
Music Automatons.

Music Automaton. Horological Devices. Time based.
Robotic flute player –Waseda University playing Korsakov’s “Flight of a Bumble Bee.”

Relation of text & image-→
Al-Jazari’s “Book of Theory and Praxis of Mechanical Arts”. Published manuscript, 1206. Arabic. from Diyabarkir, Kurdistan. Unity between technical and aesthetic capability—still a modern attitude which came much later.

Most automatons built in 19th century when clockworking was undergoing through period of inflation.

Autamatons built to celebrate the functioning univerise, sacred. Built to demonstrate technical capabilities of the engineer.

Elephant Clock, 12th century by al-Jazari. Listening & Watching time.

Automaton for Handwashing, 1206. Al-Jazari.

Drinking Device, Al-Jazari, 1206.

Giovanni Bautista de la Porta→ dark chamber experiments-→ cinema. His friends thought “the perfect illusion has the status of reality.”-→ 3D Cave @ Brown.

Al-Muradi “Book of Secrets”, Cordoba 11th century. Emir of Qatar

“Leonardo 3” reconstruction group based in Milan, Italy. Leonardo3.net

Ramib Llull “Ars magna generalis”→ reduced and formalized complex concepts from the Bible to generate knowledge from the Bible as a means for distribution.
Cryptological device/knowledge system executed via mechanical devices to generate combinatorial forms of thinking.

“Muqaddimah” astrological poetical device-→