{"id":7,"date":"2009-04-28T16:23:30","date_gmt":"2009-04-29T00:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/?p=7"},"modified":"2013-03-10T20:33:08","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T04:33:08","slug":"an-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/2009\/04\/28\/an-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"An analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s something unwittingly abstract about our interactions with virtual worlds, yet our language implies a kind of physicality: we move from page to page, we follow links, we send mail, we visit sites.\u00a0 The structure of the internet and the way in which we interact with it has come to change the way we think.\u00a0 The virtual space in which we move about disembodies the arbitrary linearity of language. \u00a0Through the use of the book, language, and thus thought, were linear. \u00a0Now, however, language and thought no longer move in this linear fashion: hyperlinks have become commonplace, if not expected, communicating information in many dimensions at once.\u00a0 This method of transferring information in language has forced thought to alter its structure. \u00a0But there is something unsettling about the erratic nature of hyperlinks.\u00a0 Because of their immateriality, hyperlinks distract one\u2019s ability to sift through and be confronted by the priorities of text.\u00a0 The structure of one\u2019s thought crumbles, and one is left with a mass of information without any methodology or teleological aim.\u00a0 There thus remains in thought only a mechanistic moving about from one subject to the next, without any solid connections.\u00a0 There is little or no continuity, only abstract constructions through which one passes.<\/p>\n

How does one put into words the significance of physicality? Namely, the significance of being grounded to the ground, of perceptual and sensuous experience, without which we are\u00a0paralysed\u00a0with anxiety.\u00a0 There comes an attachment to the words, their meanings and significance when they are written on a page as opposed to when they are merely floating in virtual space.\u00a0 Language falls apart once confronted with its own inadequacies in translating the physical to the abstract.\u00a0 Thus every philosopher comes to a moment at which she must establish a relationship between the structures of thought and experience that forge a continuity between thought and experience.\u00a0 Every theory of semantics comes to the point at which it must decide which structure imposes itself on the other: experience on language, or language on experience.\u00a0 At a basic level, it is experience that imposes itself upon language, but after the elementary stages of the learning of language have passed, language imposes itself on one\u2019s interpretations of experience in thought.\u00a0 In this way, although experience is the source of what can be known, it is the structure of language that is the media through which one experiences the world, or takes in information about the world, and determines what is this known<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My aim in this project is to examine the relationship between snippets of information that add to the whole of a linear narrative, and the structure in which this information operates.\u00a0 The physicality of the hypertext makes one\u2019s interaction with it awkward and frustrating, yet grounding.\u00a0 The \u201clinks,\u201d which are made of embroidery thread (each link with its own colour to ease the process), become inevitably entangled.\u00a0 And the flipping through the hyperlinked texts becomes almost frustratingly time-consuming.\u00a0 However, one has a consistent sense of calm: the original text is there in your hands; the entire stack of linked texts are at your disposal, in your control<\/em>.\u00a0 One\u2019s thoughts do not become erratic, forgetting where one began, or if there was any goal in beginning the task of reading the text.\u00a0 It is a tangible construction with which one can interact.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I wanted to extend the sense of physicality to that of the type-written linked texts.\u00a0\u00a0 In using word processors on computers, one is used to the constant deletion of mistakes.\u00a0 In using a type-writer, however, one must either discard one\u2019s work completely and begin anew, or \u2018x\u2019 the mistakes out.\u00a0 The text is thus littered with x\u2019s and coffee stains that reaffirm its physicality.<\/p>\n

The text itself is an examination of a fictional text: a story about a possible world in which the city develops consciousness and rationality.\u00a0 The city in this non-pre-existing text is viewed through Leibnizean hermeneutics.\u00a0 Each item of text, that is, the hyperlinks and the main text, addresses the problem of physicality and abstraction, displaying the absurdity of the hypertext as a medium: the movement through abstract space and the immateriality of physicality.\u00a0 Although, it is not directly communicating these ideas: it presents the audience with an experience.\u00a0 An experience that can only be felt<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something unwittingly abstract about our interactions with virtual worlds, yet our language implies a kind of physicality: we move from page to page, we follow links, we send mail, we visit sites.\u00a0 The structure of the internet and the way in which we interact with it has come to change the way we think.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":429,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/linkingabstraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}