The Cyborg Subject Parallax Realities, Functions of Consciousness
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THE CYBORG SUBJECT PARALLAX REALITIES, FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE VOID OF SUBJECTIVITY GARFIELD BENJAMIN BMUS MMUS A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WOLVERHAMPTON FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY AUGUST 2014 This work or any part thereof has not previously been presented in any form to the University or to any other body whether for the purposes of assessment, publication or for any other purposes (unless otherwise indicated). Save for any express acknowledgements, references and/or bibliographies cited in the work, I confirm the intellectual content of the work is the result of my own efforts and of no other person. The right of Garfield Benjamin to be identified as author of this work is asserted in accordance with ss.77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. At this date copyright is owned by the author. Signature ……………………………………. Date …………………………………………… ABSTRACT This thesis contributes to the fields of digital technology, consciousness studies and cultural theory by reassessing the relation of the contemporary subject to physical and digital worlds. By moving beyond the materiality of these worlds, this investigation will position the subject as a cyborg: a series of relations within consciousness that defines the reality and psychological construction of the subject across and through physical and digital perspectives. The functions of consciousness are set out as Existence, Meaning, Virtual, and Real, and their shifting relations defined in terms of physical and digital modes of consciousness. Using Slavoj Žižek’s conception of parallax, applied ontologically to digital technology, and introducing a new framework for analysing consciousness as a series of relations between functions, the void of subjectivity is defined as the gap between physical and digital worlds. Within this framework the work of Gilles Deleuze and the philosophy of quantum physics are employed to negotiate a disruption of conventional reality with the Virtuality of thought and matter respectively, towards the conception of the subject as an engaged spectator. These methodological tools are developed to analyse cultural phenomena that highlight and challenge our consciousness of the relation between physical and digital worlds. Online and gallery-based digital art interventions, avatar-mediated spaces, computer games and representations of digital technology and culture in literature are examined in order to assess specific relations between functions, drawing the discussion towards the antagonism between Virtuality and Reality within the construction of the cyborg subject. Through these analyses, a critical position is established through which the contemporary subject is able to achieve the rupture of a minimal distance towards its own parallax position to confront the void of subjectivity between Virtual and Real functions of consciousness and between physical and digital modes of cyborg reality. iii iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS v LIST OF IMAGES ix GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii INTRODUCTION 1 Hypothesis/Research Questions 1 Context 4 Territories of digital theory 4 The cyborg reconsidered 5 Žižek, Deleuze, quantum physics 8 Methodology 10 Structure 12 Theoretical Framework and Terminology 17 Subject/Consciousness 17 Existence 18 Meaning 19 Real 20 Virtual 20 Physical 21 Digital 22 Parallax 23 1 THE OPEN SUBJECT: MEDIA(TION) BETWEEN WORLDS 25 1.1 Remediations of thought 26 1.1.1 Realigning realities 27 1.2 Cyber-War Machines and Virtual Nomads 29 1.2.1 Tools to Weapons 29 1.2.2 Anti-social network 32 1.2.3 Self-Destruction 36 1.3 Parallax Thought in Parallel Worlds 37 1.3.1 Redefining the parameters 37 v 1.3.2 Alternate worlds and systems 40 1.3.3 Self-Augmentation 44 1.4 Maurice Benayoun: This is Not Technology 45 1.4.1 Not object, not immaterial 45 1.4.2 Not cut off from the world 49 1.4.3 Not finished 52 1.5 Self-mediation 55 1.6 Conclusion 56 2 THE EMPTY SUBJECT: VOID-IN-ITSELF IN ART 59 2.1 Not decentred but desubstantialised 60 2.1.1 One or many gaps? 61 2.2 Bodies without Organs without Bodies 63 2.2.1 The surface of consciousness 63 2.2.2 Hyper-cartography 66 2.2.3 The flow of Virtual and Real 70 2.3 A-Particle Physics 72 2.3.1 Vacuum 72 2.3.2 Nothing in particular 75 2.3.3 The limits of thought 78 2.4 Pascal Dombis: Irrational Subjectivity 80 2.4.1 Geometric permutation 80 2.4.2 Lenticular distortion 84 2.4.3 Technological disruption 87 2.5 Inaccessibility 90 2.6 Conclusion 93 3 THE ABSENT SUBJECT: OBJET A-VATAR IN CYBERWORLDS 95 3.1 Disembodiment 96 3.1.1 The stain in my gaze 97 3.2 Expressing Difference within the Subject 100 3.2.1 Thinking constructing the subject: Me, iSelf and eye 100 3.2.2 One and zero as two infinities 103 3.2.3 Theatre of superposition 105 3.3 Observing Fragmentation across Worlds 106 3.3.1 Participating in pieces 106 3.3.2 Wave/Particle duality 109 3.3.3 Consciousness of superposition 112 3.4 Second Life Art 113 3.4.1 Avatar as object 113 vi 3.4.2 Avatar as expression 116 3.4 3 Avatar as interface 118 3.5 Big A-vatar 121 3.6 Conclusion 124 4 THE UNDEAD SUBJECT: VIRTUAL MONSTERS IN GAMES 125 4.1 Monstrous undeath 126 4.1.1 Between two deaths 127 4.2 Becoming-Death 129 4.2.1 Becoming-animal/-monster 129 4.2.2 Sorcerer, outsider, undead 133 4.2.3 Undeath in non-games 136 4.3 Quantum Immortal 138 4.3.1 Quantum suicide 138 4.3.2 Observation and cyberspace 141 4.3.3 The subject beyond the game 144 4.4 Portal: GLaDOS 145 4.4.1 Computer as monster 145 4.4.2 Beyond physics: immortality awaits 148 4.4.3 (In)human monsters? 150 4.5 Are Monsters ‘Real’? 152 4.6 Conclusion 153 5 THE IMPOSSIBLE SUBJECT: CYBORG FUTURES IN FICTION 155 5.1 Homo hypersapiens 156 5.1.1 More than myself 157 5.2 Cultural Fictions, Fictional Cultures 158 5.2.1 Propositional protagonists in the cyberpunk canon 158 5.2.2 Cyber culture as minor Culture 161 5.2.3 Fiction and progress 164 5.3 Inconceivability and the present 165 5.3.1 The view from a black hole 165 5.3.2 Beyond physics 169 5.3.3 Either side of the technological singularity 171 5.4 Hannu Rajaniemi: Just Add Quantum 173 5.4.1 Fractal memory in the future 173 5.4.2 Causal consciousness in the present 176 5.4.3 Quantum games reversing the past 179 5.5 Infinite Regress? 182 5.6 Conclusion 184 vii CONCLUSION 187 Contribution to Knowledge 192 Further Research 194 BIBLIOGRAPHY 197 CULTURAL ARTEFACTS 212 viii LIST OF IMAGES Fig.1 No Fun 33 (2010) © Eva and Franco Mattes Fig.2 Freedom 35 (2010) © Eva and Franco Mattes Fig.3 Google Street Ghosts 40 (2012) © Paolo Cirio Fig.4 the 120 days of *buntu 42 (2011) (Creative Commons) Danja Vasiliev and Gordan Savičić [Attribution Unported license 3.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/] Fig.5 Tunnel Under the Atlantic 47 (1995) © Maurice Benayoun Fig.6 Tunnels Around the World 48 (2012) © Maurice Benayoun Fig.7 Stolen Life 50 (2006) © Maurice Benayoun Fig.8 Emotion Forecast for Urban Screen 54 (2011) © Maurice Benayoun Fig.9 Wissengewachs 64 (2007) © Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau Fig.10 The Conversation 65 (2009) © Ralf Baecker Fig.11 The Living Web 70 (2002) © Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau and Roberto Lopez-Gulliver Fig.12 Mobile Feelings 71 (2003) © Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau Fig.13 Life Writer 73 (2006) © Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau Fig.14 Spin 81 (2009) © Pascal Dombis Fig.15 Antisana II 83 (2000) © Pascal Dombis ix Fig.16 Irrational Geometrics 84 (2008) © Pascal Dombis Fig.17 Crack 89 (2012) © Pascal Dombis Fig.18 Void Archipelago 90 (2012) © Trisme Trs Fig.19 Avatar DNA 108 (2006) Angrybeth Shortbread [Image © Garfield Benjamin] Fig.20 The Loneliness of Being 110 (2008) Ian Pahute [Image © Garfield Benjamin] Fig.21 Portraits 114 (2006-7) © Eva and Franco Mattes Fig.22 Imogen and the Pigeons 120 (2013) Bryn Oh [Images © Garfield Benjamin] Fig.23 The Path 131 (2009) © Tale of Tales Fig.24 The Path 132 (2009) © Tale of Tales Fig.25 The Graveyard 134 (2008) © Tale of Tales Fig.26 Limbo 136 (2010) © Playdead Fig.27 Braid 142 (2008) © Jonathan Blow/Number None Inc. All images copyright their respective owners, reproduced with kind permission. x GLOSSARY TERMS AS USED IN THIS THESIS Art game: Computer games that challenge the gaming medium aesthetically or conceptually, favouring the creation of new modes of experience over conventional game mechanics. See Chapter 4 The Undead Subject: Virtual Monsters in Games. Consciousness: Thought as a process; the self-positing of the subject as thought; the gesture of the cogito; the surface assemblage of the subject. See Introduction: Theoretical framework and terminology. Cyborg: The human subject between physical and digital worlds. Beyond the part- human/part-machine prosthetic conception, this is an expansion of consciousness itself. The resolution of the internal antagonisms of the cyborg can be considered a state of posthumanism. See Introduction: The cyborg reconsidered. Engaged Spectator: The process of observation through which the subject and its world come into being, each marked by the other; in art, the necessary role of the viewer in the participatory or interactive gaze. Functions of Consciousness: The four processes by which consciousness creates itself to form the subject, the alignment of which defines the construction of physical and digital worlds: Existence: Being-function of consciousness; the gaze, denotation, the observed universe, appearance.