Network Aesthetics Network Aesthetics Patrick Jagoda The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London Patrick Jagoda is assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago and a coeditor of Critical Inquiry. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2016 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2016. Printed in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 34648- 9 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 34651- 9 (paper) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 34665- 6 (e- book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226346656.001.0001 The University of Chicago Press gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago toward the publication of this book. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jagoda, Patrick, author. Network aesthetics / Patrick Jagoda. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 226- 34648- 9 (cloth : alkaline paper) ISBN 978- 0- 226- 34651- 9 (paperback : alkaline paper) ISBN 978- 0- 226- 34665- 6 (e- book) 1. Arts—Philosophy. 2. Aesthetics. 3. Cognitive science. I. Title. BH39.J34 2016 302.23'1—dc23 2015035274 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). This book is dedicated to an assemblage of friends—including the late-night conversational, the lifelong, and the social media varieties— to whom I am grateful for inspiration and discussion, collaboration and argument, shared meals and intellectual support. Whenever I undertake the difficult task of thinking through and beyond network form, I constellate you in my imagination. Contents List of Figures ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Network Aesthetics 1 Part 1: Linear Forms 39 1. Maximal Aesthetics: Network Novels 43 2. Emergent Aesthetics: Network Films 73 3. Realist Aesthetics: Televisual Networks 103 Part 2: Distributed Forms 139 4. Participatory Aesthetics: Network Games 143 5. Improvisational Aesthetics: Alternate Reality Games 181 Coda: After Networks (Comes Ambivalence) 220 Notes 229 Index 299 Figures 0.1 Journey (2012) 2 0.2 We the Giants (2009) 6 0.3 Network visualization of a Flickr tag search (2013) 20 0.4 Twitch Plays Pokémon (2014) 25 1.1 Visualization of Instagram network (2012) 48 2.1 Bob Barnes and Prince Nasir Al- Subaai from Syriana (2005) 93 2.2 A CIA agent from Syriana (2005) 94 2.3 The CIA’s God’s- eye- view from Syriana (2005) 94 2.4 Migrant workers from Syriana (2005) 99 3.1 David Parenti from The Wire (2006) 109 3.2 Bulletin board from The Wire (2002) 112 3.3 Mapping a network from The Wire (2002) 123 3.4 “America at War” from The Wire (2002) 131 4.1 Main interface of Uplink (2001) 150 4.2 “Global” map interface of Uplink (2001) 151 4.3 Between “sleeping” and “waking” in Between (2008) 158 4.4 Basic gameplay in Between (2008) 158 4.5 Expanded inventory in Between (2008) 159 4.6 The impossibility of a direct encounter with the other player in Between (2008) 165 4.7 The sublime landscapes of Journey (2012) 167 4.8 Journey Stories Tumblr blog (2012) 169 5.1 Marionette “rabbit hole” from The Project (2013) 197 5.2 Final event from The Project (2013) 201 5.3 The Grand Ort from The Project (2013) 207 5.4 Twitter account for The Project (2013) 212 5.5 Facebook page for The Project (2013) 212 6.1 Collaborative collage from Speculation (2012) 227 Acknowledgments In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Samuel (Chip) Delany suggests two distinct but overlapping terms to describe social ways of being in the world— “contact” and “networking.” Contact may take place in line at the grocery store, in intense conversation at home, or at the copy machine at work. Networking, on the other hand, may happen at conferences, cocktail parties, or workshops. During the time I have worked on Network Aesthet- ics, I have been fortunate enough to learn a great deal from friends, family, and colleagues through both contact and networking, from intimate con- versation and casual exchange to face- to- face debates and indirect inspira- tions, that I can capture only provisionally through my citations and these acknowledgments. Any project— even a single-authored monograph— is a large-scale col- laboration. A number of people volunteered significant time and attention to help me move through countless drafts of this book. This project would have been absolutely impossible without the sustained and meticulous close reading of manuscript drafts by Scott Bukatman, Jim Hodge, Keith Jones, Patrick LeMieux, Tara McPherson, Daniel Morgan, and Priscilla Wald. I’m grateful for advice and ongoing conversations, in the years leading up to publication, with Lauren Berlant, Bill Brown, Jim Chandler, Hillary Chute, Cathy Davidson, Frances Ferguson, Abe Geil, Tom Gunning, Tim- othy Harrison, Katherine Hayles, Tim Lenoir, Tom Mitchell, Larry Roth- field, and Avery Slater. I also owe much to a quarter of intense discussions with my co- instructor Eivind Røssaak and the graduate students who par- ticipated in the Center for Disciplinary Innovation “Network Aesthetics | Network Cultures” seminar at the University of Chicago. People who have been equally crucial to my thinking, without neces- xii Acknowledgments sarily needing to read a single draft, are my family, especially Irus, Ziggy, David, and Mark. Also, thanks to Kristen Schilt, who has taught me some indispensable things about shared projects, queer families, and thick part- nerships. I’m thankful for more local (but no less important) contributions from several colleagues along the way. For help with the introduction: Adri- enne Brown, Andrew Leong, Nasser Mufti, John Muse, Debbie Nelson, Zachary Samalin, and the University of Chicago English Department. For shaping my thought about chapter 1, I’m grateful to the participants of the “Networks in American Culture/America as Network” symposium at Mannheim University, at which I presented an earlier version, especially Wendy Chun and Regina Schober. For help with key conceptual points in chapter 2, thanks to Ian Baucom and Fred Moten. For chapter 3, I appre- ciate a close reading by Phil Kaffen. For chapter 4, thanks to the attendees of the “Debating Visual Knowledge” symposium at the University of Pitts- burgh, the Post45 workshop at the University of Chicago, and the “Every Wednesday Lecture” at the Franke Institute for the Humanities, at which I presented this work. Also, I appreciate feedback on earlier versions from Stephanie Boluk, Doron Galili, Mollie McFee, Lisa Nakamura, Scott Rich- mond, and Richard Jean So. Of all of the parts of Network Aesthetics, chapter 5 required the greatest number of risks and revisions. I consider myself lucky for exchanges with David Levin and Leslie Danzig, as well as Sha Xin Wei, the students of my “Transmedia Games: Theory and Design” course, and members of the To- pological Media Lab with whom I created the alternate reality game (ARG) The Project. Also, special thanks to participants in my “Network Art: Dis- tance, Intimacy, and Correspondence” independent study, with whom I began to really think through the complicated form of ARGs: Peter Mc- Donald, Phil Ehrenberg, Ellen Kladky, Bea Malsky, Kalil Smith- Nuevelle, and Ashlyn Sparrow. From my collaborators at the Game Changer Chi- cago Design Lab, especially Melissa Gilliam, I have learned so much about creating alternate reality games. This chapter would also not have been possible without the generous fellowship from the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry that allowed me to experiment, fail in in- teresting ways, and, as a result, find my way to more nuanced thoughts. For his careful attention, throughout the review and editorial process, many thanks to Alan Thomas at the University of Chicago Press. Also, I ap- preciate the patience and crystal- clear responses to my queries from Randy Petilos, Joel Score, and my careful copy editor, India Cooper. I’m grateful Acknowledgments xiii to my RA Eran Flicker for help with chapter 3. Also, many thanks to my fantastic RA Joshua Kopin and to Stephanie Kaufman for their careful assis- tance in preparing the final manuscript. Additional proofreading assistance came from Bill Hutchison, Haitham Ibrahim, and Jean Thomas Tremblay. Finally, I’m also grateful for the structural elements that have allowed me to write this book. The Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in New Media at the University of Chicago enabled me, in both my teaching and research, to delve into fields such as television studies and game studies and to exper- iment with practice- based research and game design. The eventual revi- sion process was also made possible by the Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellowship, and the faculty and graduate students of the American Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin. * * * An earlier, shorter version of chapter 2 was published as “Terror Networks and the Aesthetics of Interconnection” in Social Text 105 (2010): 65– 90, © Duke University Press, and is republished here with permission; and an earlier, shorter version of the coda appeared as “Network Ambivalence” in Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture 4, no. 1 (2015): 108– 18. Introduction Network Aesthetics Only connect! E. M. Forster (Howards End) Something huge and impersonal runs through things, but it’s also mysteriously intimate and close at hand. At once abstract and concrete, it’s both a distant, untouchable order of things and a claustrophobically close presence, like the experience of getting stuck in a customer service information loop every time you try to get to the bottom of things. Kathleen Stewart (Ordinary Affects) Encounters with Network Form In E. M. Forster’s 1910 novel Howards End, the protagonist Margaret Schle- gel urges the individualistic Henry Wilcox, “Only connect!” Margaret’s “sermon” to Henry counsels intersubjective sympathy and implores him to “live in fragments no longer.”1 In this early twentieth- century moment, prior to the outbreak of World War I and the full- blown onset of modernity, Margaret’s idea of connection seems a perfectly innocent moral imperative for Henry’s salvation.