‘Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!’ by Paul Virilio

the twin phenomena ‘immediacy’ and ‘instantaneity’

‘the primacy of real time, of immediacy, over and above space and surface is a fait accompli and ushers a new epoch’

21st century in connection with the absolute speed, is the ‘invention of a perspective of real time, that will supersede the perspective of real space’

the cyberspace did not yet encompass: ‘that of contact, of contact-at-a-distance: tele-contact’

‘A Fundamental Loss of Orientation’ /‘to exist, is to exist in situ, here and now, hic et nunc’ - it is being ‘threatened by cyberspace and instantaneous, globalized information flows’

‘disturbance in the perception of what reality is’

‘loss of orientation regarding alterity (the other), this disturbance in the relationship with the other and with the world’

‘there is no such thing as globalization, there is only virtualization’

‘instantaneity-everything now happens within the perspective of real time: henceforth we are deemed to live in a “one-time-system”’

‘if history is so rich, it is because it was local, it was thanks to the existence of spatially bounded times’

‘real time superseding real space’

“glocal”- local+global : local has become global, and the global has become local

‘such a deconstruction of the relationship with the world is not without consequences for the relationship among the citizens themselves’/ ‘nothing is ever obtained without a loss of something else’

‘no information exists without dis-information’->‘choking of the senses’

'Cinema and Telecommunication/ Distance and Aura' by Lev Manovich

Writing about telecommunication and telepresence, 

These technologies collapse the physical distances, uprooting the familiar patterns of perception which grounded our culture and politics 

Small Optics (3)

Big Optics is real-time electronic transmission of information, “the active optics of time passing at the speed of light” 

If information from any point can be transmitted with the same speed, the concepts of near and far, horizon, distance and space itself no longer have any meaning

Every point on Earth is now instantly accessible from any other point on Earth

Big Optics locks us in a claustrophobic world without any depth of horizon 

Virilio asks us to notice “the progressive derealisation of the terrestrial horizon,…resulting in an impending primacy of real time perspective of undulatory optics over real space of the linear geometrical optics of the Quattrocento” (4)

He mourns the destruction of distance, geographic grandeur, the vastness of natural space, the vastness which guaranteed time delay between events and our reactions, giving us time for critical reflection necessary to arrive at a correct decision. 

The regime of Big Optics inevitably leads to real time politics, the politics which requires instant reactions to the events transmitted with the speed of light, and which ultimately can only be efficiently handled by computers responding to each other. 

Film - collapses distances, bringing everything equally close and destroys aura * as well as video conferencing

To Virilio- film became part of the human nature, the continuation of our natural sight (Small Optics)

-in contrast to Big Optics of instant electronic transmission 

Electronic transmission function as a two-way communication (5)

Via telepresence, she can also be “present” in these locations. She can affect change on material reality over physical distance in real time *interactivity 

‘Progressive diminishing and finally complete elimination of something which both writers see as a fundamental condition of human perception—spatial distance, the distance between the subject who is seeing and the object being seen’.  —> 인간, the betweeneness* (6)

Distance becomes responsible for creating the gap between the spectator and spectacle, for separating subject and object

Distance allows the subject to treat the Other as object; in short, it makes objectification possible 

Distance guaranteed by vision preserves the aura of an object, its position in the world

Space, Place and Atmosphere: Peripheral Perception in Existential Experience

by Juhani Pallasmaa
in Christian Borch (ed) Architectural Atmospheres: On the Experience and Politics of Architecture, Basel: Birkhauser Verlag. 2014.

the Ecological approach to visual perception

by James J. Gibson

“ecological psychology”

How do we see the environment around us?
How do we see where we are in the environment?
How do we see whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going?

optical or acoustic, or haptic, etc. patterning that would best correspond to actual perceiving in the world no longer seemed like stimulus but information
‘structured energy that was information about environmental sources’

I should get back on Part II The Infomation for Visual Perception

Bachelard and the Epiphanic Instant

‘Poetry is a metaphysics of the moment’, Vertical time

‘He defines the poetic moment as the “principle of an essential simultaneity in which the most scattered and disunited being achieves unity’ / discontinuous and disruptive

‘”Real” poem signals a stopping of ordinary clock time, introducing instead a dimension of “verticality,” in depth and in height’ 
“Reverberation” from Poetics of Space (1957)

‘Sensible simultaneities invoking deeper metaphysical correlations that cannot be experienced in chronological time’ 

‘Vertical temporality- examples in Joyce’s Ulysses  or Proust’s Remembrance of Times Past 

‘past and future are rein scribed in a timeless moment’ —> evokes imagination* 

Buddhist idea of the empty moment as a free detachment from the horizontal cycles of samsara, as in the famous Heart Sutra—“form is emptiness, emptiness if form”
Emptiness is not empty but fuller than the greatest fullness itself : another deep ambivalence conjured in the eternal instant.

Poetic instant- ‘imagination is the well-spring of ethical as well as poetic values’
Poetry has ‘no interest in time as duration that dissipates echoes. It seeks the moment. ‘ 

‘He defines the instant as a sudden burst of consciousness calling for an acute act of attention.’ 

‘One experiences the instant, he claims, as an act of concentrated will; and will is to be understood as a radical moment of decision that is simultaneously a deep moment of listening’ 

‘The instantaneous time is far removed from the clock time of everyday life. It is the moment of the transformation of forms’ 

‘Bachelard’s phenomenology of the instant involves a radical ethics of empathy’ 

‘The self for Bachelard, as for Buber, is less a substance or cogito than a dynamic relation to the endlessly surprising other. Bachelard’s philosophy of the instant takes the form of a phenomenology of relations understood as sympathy, reciprocity, and surprise’ 

‘In the poetic instant, in short, the temporalizing horizons of “before” and “after” dissolve to reveal a bare inaugural moment. This is the moment when a lighting bolt of cosmic time traverses personal time in a fire of intimate intensity’ 

‘Death of linear time is reborn as vertical time’ 

‘Mode of reverie, that attitude of attention which combines will and decision with a deep receptivity toward an incoming gift’ 

“Time can be reborn but it must first die” -L’Intuition de l’instant 

Foams and Networks: Sloterdijk and Latour’s Atmospheric Philosophies

(2)

‘Sloterdijk wants to emphasise spatiality as the determining ontological characteristic of humanity’ 

‘A new conception of the human as inherently relational and spatially determined: a being in spheres’ 

‘Bubbles can be seen as an accurate morphological metaphor for the basic structure of human interaction’ 

‘Creating our living environment’-> ‘reconceptualising humanity through spatiality’ 

Sloterdijk analyses the spatial relationships between the human and its technological world through architecture, urban planning and environment 

“Foams (2016) “ 

‘Due to the increasing level of global interconnectivity, and the rapidly rising population, we have shifted into an epoch in which all human actions are determined, and potentially limited, by their proximity to other humans’ 

=> metaphor of a ‘foam’ / separated by easily collapsable thin walls 

(4)

Latour’s actor-network theory => ‘all entities in the world-from nanoparticles to bodies, groups, ecologies and ghosts - are constituted and reconstitued in shifting and hybrid webs of discursivee and material relations’ = meaning the social must only be seen as a relational network of actors and actants, both human and nonhuman, who act within it, and not as an object of study in itself 

(5)

‘Atmospheric conditions act as the determinations of our spatial relationships with one another’ 

“While networks are good at describing long-distance and unexpected connections starting from local points, spheres are useful for describing local, fragile, and complex ‘atmospheric conditions’” (Latour, 2011, 471) 

(6)

atmosphere=>not just the air we breathe but  ‘a sphere of existence which acts as a ‘life-support’ system containing within it a multiplicity of elements of which the particulate matter in the air is merely one’ 

-> can relate to the climate crisis which incorporate technical, social, empirical, and ontological nature of the spheres we exist within 

the art of the stage set as a paradigm for an aesthetics of atmospheres

by Gernot Bohme

atmosphere- communicates a feeling to us as participating subjects (2)
powers to affect the subject / tendency to induce in the subject

making -> manipulating of material conditions, of things, apparatus, sound and light
Can we make atmosphere?
=> “setting the conditions in which the atmosphere appears” / generators (4)

Really Actually Windy: On Environments, Technologies, and Dividual Performances by Johannes Birringer

“How space is occupied, how atmospheres become elemental and induce specific affective responses, how atmospheres are engineered (performed) to direct or trick our hearing, seeing, and sensing” (3)

On Scenography

by sodja lotker & richard gough

‘Everything we do and almost everything comprehend scenic formation - landscape, site and setting - but also a way of constructing the physical, perceptual and emotional environment of/for the event’ (3)

‘There is no such thing as an empty space (as once proposed by Peter Brook (1968)) - every space is an environment, is already resonant; it has its character, a psychology and a memory and, if nothing else, little invisible scars.’ (4) => 여백

‘The space performs even before the actor walks across it. The character of a space is the way that it positions us and spaces our actions’ 

‘Scenography is the many-layered environment of a performance that creates spatial contexts and activates positioning’ -> looking happens with the whole body

‘Scenographies have power over us they, command our attention and affect our emotion.’ 

‘Integrate the two spatio-temporal strands into a unified structure’ (5)

playfully and insightfully arrests time through space (on stage) evoking a kairological (as opposed to chronological) sense of time (on stage)

“the expressive organization of space”—a practice of daily life and a fundamental of communication and being human

문화의 시대 그림읽기[讀畵]와 여백(餘白). Yeo-Baek (餘白, Empty Space) and The Art of Reading a Painting (讀畵)

In East Asian paintings, the concept of Yeobaek serves as a pictorial device that allows the phenomenon of a constantly changing "process" to be captured. Without incorporating Yeobaek, which represents the principles of space and time working together, it becomes challenging to depict the realization of this dynamic phenomenon on the canvas.(306)

The empty spaces (Yeobaek) serve as open windows that enable communication and flow. (306)

Empty space (Yeobaek) is never a static or stagnant space; it is a vibrant space imbued with the essence of vitality, characterized by "spatiality that encompasses temporality." It is a space that contains a sense of energy and dynamism.

Considering the concept that nothing is a fixed substance and is subject to constant change, when we examine the spatiality of empty space (Yeobaek), we find that it is never a static space. Instead, it is a space characterized by "spatiality that encompasses temporality," possessing a vibrant energy and dynamism. (315)

In East Asian thought, placing significance on what is unseen rather than what is seen is a common philosophical perspective. It acknowledges the importance of the invisible and intangible aspects of existence. This perspective recognizes that there are profound meanings and influences in the realm beyond what is directly visible or apparent, emphasizing the interconnectedness of the visible and invisible realms. It encourages a deeper understanding and appreciation of the subtle forces and underlying principles that shape our experiences and the world around us. (316)

empty space (Yeobaek) can be considered one of the greatest inventions in East Asian painting, serving as a visual language of silence and a sculptural form of breath (316)

‘The application of Yeo-Baek (‘void space’)’

‘The ineffability of Do’

‘Yeo-Baek or the void is something ‘depicted without the act of depicting’’

It is ‘never a fixed, stationary space, but one ‘of dynamic, ever-changing nature, filled with energy’’

Technique of Hong-Woon-Tak-Wol: leaving the moon itself untouched by only painting the surrounding space of the moon

‘The visually empty space in aesthetic sense becomes no longer ‘empty’’

‘Breezy, fluid, and open feelings to the painting, but also expresses the philosophical notion that each object is not separate from the space or other objects, and that everything, including the space, is all interconnected’

Perception of Time and Space in Aesthetic Experience: Presentness, instantaneousness, and the experience of ‘passage’ and ‘real time’ by hyunjean lee

‘What kind of perceptions are provided by such an experience of real time?’

‘modern media is under siege by real-time technologies’

‘the real-time electronic transmission of information, particularly the “twin phenomena of immediacy and of instantaneity,” brings pressing problems to the fundamental condition of human perception’-by Paul Virilio

‘Cyberspace is one such example of where the notions of immediacy and instantaneity chracterize its effect on human perception. It is based on telecommunication, which is the real-time elctronic transmission of information’

‘Virilio mourns the destruction of distance. He warns of the progressively diminishing and disappearing fundamental condition of human perception, the distance between the subject who is seeing and the object being seen’

‘the loss of distance can be directly connected to the loss of distance for reflection’

‘the relative clam, relative slowness, and relative distance seem to provide us with time for reflection’

‘time for reflection … gives them chance to interpret, think about, and reckon with the sense of oneself and the world’ → connect the concept with fudo