Depth Technology: Remediating Orientation DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Peggy Eileen Reynolds Graduate Program in Comparative Studies The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: Professor Brian Rotman, Advisor Professor Philip Armstrong Professor Barry Shank Copyright by Peggy Eileen Reynolds 2012 Abstract According to sociologist Niklas Luhmann, "The 'blind spot' of each observation, the distinction it employs at the moment, is at the same time its guarantee of a world." To make a distinction, in other words, is to build a world, to establish a boundary, a bounded interior, a self. It is to orient oneself by separating inside from outside and to further the possibilities of one’s persistence by incorporating into this newly formed interior a sign or map of this initial distinction. Tracing the originary orienting gestures of the human and the form these take as sign or map then constitutes the central theme of this dissertation, one which opens onto an exploration of how the new digital economy contributes to the radical reflexivity which characterizes the current material- discursive milieu, even as, by expanding access to the virtual, it increases the potential for an immanent orientation of the human. My method, then, is to investigate the co-constitutive orientation strategies of the human and those forms and patterns which help it construct and distinguish itself from its material-discursive environment. Such forms as grids, circles, hierarchies, vortices, spirals, vortex rings and fractal structures are regarded as little machines; each works in and on the human in unique ways, and each has developed methods to insure its continued survival, collaborating with entities at various scales, including the human, ii to replicate its morphogenetic program. I argue that as the human shifts from a vision- centered to a body-centered model of perception, we should expect to see certain of these forms – static, bounded, Euclidian – being supplanted by those which convey something of the human’s newly legible reality – dynamic, non-linear, topological. The grid, for example, which, together with the human, laid out a spatial plane of thought, now becomes, in the new economy, a fractal network of links and nodes. The hierarchy, the dominant model for social relations (reified, as it is, by the mediating effects of stereoscopic vision), gives way to a flat ontology, or one in which all entities, regardless of scale or material-discursive status, are understood to construct equally the space of relations. And the dialectic, rightly employed by critical theorists to model time as neither circular nor linear but as a spiral, gains dimensionality and becomes, like a Klein bottle, a self-enfolding, topological manifold. An investigation into the geometric forms employed by the human in its originary orientation then forms the hinge, cardo, or cardinal points of this dissertation; the shift from a visual towards an affective rendering of spatiotemporal coordinates, its narrative unfolding; and a flat (fractal) ontology, its material-discursive milieu. iii This document is dedicated to my mother Sheila T. Reynolds and in loving memory of my father Paul G. Reynolds. iv Acknowledgments I would first like to thank my colleagues Dr. Sandra Garner, Dr. Kate Dean-Haidet and Rita Trimble, whose unflagging support over the years has made this dissertation possible. I would also like to thank Dr. Margaret Lynd and my committee members Dr. Philip Armstrong and Dr. Barry Shank for guiding me faithfully towards completion of my degree. I owe a debt of gratitude to my sister, Jill Reynolds, for supplying some of the illustrations included herein, and to Ann Hamilton, Michael Mercil, Dr. Eugene Holland and Professor john powell who have provided me with various opportunities for pursuing and deepening my research. I most especially want to thank my advisor, Dr. Brian Rotman, whose work has greatly inspired my own and whose encouragement and wise council have given me the confidence to complete this dissertation. And no one has done more to make sure this dissertation was brought to completion than my partner and untiring editor, Dr. Marie Cieri, whose patience and fortitude know no bounds. v Vita 1976 ...............................................................Francis W. Parker High School 1997 ...............................................................B.A., Honors, Hunter College, CUNY 2005 -2006 .....................................................Graduate Research Associate, Department of Art, The Ohio State University 2006 – 2009…………………………………………………Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University 2007 ...............................................................M.A., Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University Publications “Reconfiguring the Space of Agency in the Digital Age,” Saint Louis University Law Journal, Childress Lecture edition, Summer 2010. Fields of Study Major Field: Comparative Studies vi Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgments................................................................................................................ v Vita ...................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ...............................................................................................................vii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... viii Chapter One: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter Two: A Genealogy of the Grid ............................................................................. 34 Chapter Three: Artifacts of Vision.................................................................................... 95 M-set Interlude .............................................................................................................. 142 Chapter Four: A Topological Dialectic ............................................................................. 164 Chapter Five: Strategies of Persistence ........................................................................ 201 Figures ............................................................................................................................. 235 References ...................................................................................................................... 237 vii List of Figures Figure 1. Phosphene groups.............................................................................................. 42 Figure 2. Diagram of reflexive closure and reentry .......................................................... 46 Figure 3. Cross-sections of smoke rings .......................................................................... 47 Figure 4. Time lapse images of interacting smoke rings ................................................... 53 Figure 5. Cross-section of a vortex ring ............................................................................ 59 Figure 6. Hippodamian plan: Miletus................................................................................ 64 Figure 7. Eratosthenese’s map of the world ..................................................................... 67 Figure 8. Aristarchus’s diagram of sun, earth and moon ................................................. 70 Figure 9. Ptolemy’s conic projection................................................................................. 74 Figure 10. The grid employed in perspective drawing ..................................................... 79 Figure 11. Descartes' vortex theory of matter ................................................................. 86 Figure 12. Aristotle's scala naturae ................................................................................ 107 Figure 13. Cross-section of eye cup morphology ........................................................... 166 Figure 14. Time lapse images of lens placode folding .................................................... 166 Figure 15. Menger sponge .............................................................................................. 190 viii Chapter One: Introduction Orientation can thus be said to be originary, invariable, irreducible, so constantly physical that it becomes metaphysical.1 – Michel Serres To judge from the number of journal articles produced in the last decade which invoke the term “mapping,” one might think that a new spatial dimension had been discovered. Topping over one and a quarter million entries, a nearly three hundred percent increase from two decades prior, it also would appear as if researchers have been laying claim to this newly revealed territory at a ferocious pace. But where, exactly, is this new dimension to be found? Surveying the range of topics on which these articles report, one finds researchers mapping everything from “growth and gravity with robust redshift space distortions” and “surface plasmons on a single metallic nanoparticle” to the “discursive inquiry into the self.” Clearly, the computational revolution has played a role in the furtherance