Executing Liveness

2 Dec, 2016 @ Digital Culture, Aarhus UniversityWinnie Soon | artist-researcher | www.siusoon.net

Img src: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/kultur/northside/traet-af-valgkamp-dr-bringer-det-bedste-fra-northside-direkte-til-dig

Img src: http://solonoche.com

Img src: https://i.stack.imgur.com/

Img src: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-GvbPWWc5Xc/hqdefault.jpg

Img src: http://cdn01.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/cloud-storage.jpg

liveness is a conflation of many concepts, and has no single, fixed definition beyond a vague sense of immediacy and 'nowness'.

(Newell, 2009, p. 13)

Liveness in digital culture

Data is constantly perceived as a stream (Berry, 2011, 2012, 2013; Fuller, 2003), indicating its characteristics of vast volume, speed of update, continuous flow and delivery. The concept of streams now characterises the internet rather than web pages (Berry, 2011, p. 143). Data streams indicate events that are regarded as the latest and instantaneous versions. The now that we experience through perceptible streams is entangled with computational logics.

(Soon, 2016)

Continuity / Flow / Stream

http://image.syracuse.com/home/syr-media/width620/img/news/photo/2014/09/10/15811588-mmmain.png

The network structure of today’s communication channels and of their information stream is often understood as providing a direct connection between users and services or between two communication partners, even though there cannot be any direct connections on digital networks. The metaphor of the flow conceals the fact that, technically, what is taking place is quite the opposite. There is no stream in digital networks.

(Sprenger, 2015, pp. 88-9)

Principle organization of a playback buffer. Reprinted from Internetworking: Technological Foundations and Applications (p. 783), by Christoph Meinel & Harald Sack, 2013, Berlin: Springer. Copyright 2013 by Springer.

when a stream of data is sent via a distributed internet network the logic of buffering and data processing are constantly performed through the presence and absence of data. A display of a throbber presents […] a reality that is conflated with invisible material infrastructures and interruptions as well as the absence of material substrates.

(Soon, 2016)

How does the temporality of code inter-actions reconfigure our understanding of digital culture? How might we begin to discuss digital culture in a different way?

Winnie SOON | Ph.D Fellow | www.siusoon.netSchool of Communication and Culture

The Center for Participatory IT

The Spinning Wheel of Life ( work-in-progress)

Take away

1/ Digital culture is conflated with technical and operative processes

1/ Digital culture is conflated with technical and operative processes

2/ You are encouraged to think beyond and behind interfaces.

1/ Digital culture is conflated with technical and operative processes

2/ You are encouraged to think beyond and behind interfaces.

3/ The ‘now’ is a rendered snapshot, presenting multiple realities that lie at the heart of time-dependent logics and these logics exhibit different rates, tempos, pauses and rhythms at multiple sites and scales.