Spencer Roberts, University of Huddersfield.

Paper Title: "Newsdrip: An (A)Political Flow"

Abstract:

Newsdrip is an art installation that examines global political flow.  In creating a real-time representation of the online news media it highlights the micro-political ruptures that occur from moment to moment on a macro-political plane.



The installation raises questions concerning the textual and ideological mediation of events. Our software analyses the front pages of a number of online news sources and calculates the frequency at which specific place names occur. This information is used to trigger a series of dripping devices that are suspended above corresponding locations on two submerged maps. The drip rate is determined by a given location’s prominence in the media. The resulting disturbance of the water’s surface produces a kinetic reading of the news that questions the stasis of language and re-mobilises the event.

The project was conceived during a visit to the city of Sofia in Bulgaria, when bombs could be heard falling in the nearby Serbian territories. The Bulgarian media was expressing concern that the country would be drawn further into the war. The sound of hostilities, coupled with an almost fatalistic expectation of impending involvement, rendered the notion of clearly defined borders problematic. This served to foreground the concept of a sphere of influence and to suggest the ripple as a fertile form of representation.

The Newsdrip project lends itself to a Bergsonian or Deleuzian framework and we have in the past interpreted it in these terms. Curiously, approaching the work in this fashion produced a strangely apolitical body of writing. This seems ironic given the fundamentally political ontology of Deleuze.


The aim of our paper is to reconcile the political aspects of the Newsdrip project with Bergsonian and Deleuzian philosophies of flow. In so doing we will examine a range of contemporary and historical approaches to the politics of process.

Project Website: http://www.undergroundmole.org/newsdrip/

Newsdrip: An (A)Political Flow

Newsdrip is an art installation that is concerned with the analysis, expression and restitution of global political flow. As such, it has a tangled relationship with the concepts of flux, form, representation and structure. Our aim here is to explore the political dimensions of the project whilst sketching various contours and thresholds of a politics of process.

The idea behind the Newsdrip is very simple. A computer analyses the front pages of a number of online news sources. It scans the text for place names and then plots their frequency of occurrence onto the surface of two counterposed maps. The first of the maps represents the world as seen from a Western perspective (focus UK). The second represents the world as seen from the East (focus Iran). The data for each of the maps is drawn from a series of live news sources originating from the appropriate locale.

The final piece is a kinetic, networked, water-based installation. The maps are drawn onto the floor of an enclosed space and submerged beneath pools of shallow water. Droplets fall from the ceiling onto the surface of the water to illustrate points of immediate geographical and political significance. The rate of dripping varies with the frequency of the occurrence of recognised nouns, resulting in a rippling and disturbance of the surface of the water. The outcome is a highly aesthetic, physical form of graphing: a representation of the culturally significant with a visual, temporal and acoustic richness.

The project was conceived during a visit to the city of Sofia in Bulgaria, when bombs could be heard falling in the nearby Serbian territories [1]. The Bulgarian media was expressing concern that the country would be drawn further into the war in Europe. The sound of hostilities, coupled with an almost fatalistic expectation of impending involvement, rendered the notion of clearly defined borders problematic. There was a sense in which the tearing of the land, the migrating sound of altercations and their affective psychological correlates seemed to transcend the notion of fixed and prescribed geographical borders. Together they seemed to question the notion of geographical stasis, emphasising both the fluidity of boundaries and the political construction of territory.

The gravity of the conflict foregrounded a set of brute material conditions, but also demonstrated the importance of memory, expectation and desire in the construction of day-to-day affairs. There was a degree of fit between these very subjective qualities and with what seemed to be happening to the landscape on a purely material level. This served to emphasise the breadth and reach of a pervading political influence, and it is perhaps in light of this that the ripple began to seem such an apt and fertile form of representation.

Although supported by a technological and programmatic infrastructure, the Newsdrip has a predominately aesthetic, political and philosophical orientation. An antagonistic interplay between micro and macro conceptions of structure permeates the project. They stand opposed, throughout the work, translating, transforming and adjusting one another. We can see this most clearly on a linguistic level. We might argue that news reports operate as a kind of textual sanctioning or settling of the flux and fluidity of events. From this perspective, the journalist selects and amplifies a series of micro-political changes and in the process becomes implicated in the construction of our macro-political landscape. Despite sometimes radical differences in political allegiance, the mainstream media collectively settle upon a landscape of what counts as ‘newsworthy’ or legitimate discourse.

Our software treats the flux of Internet news reports as an ever-developing literary concordance. The undulations of any particular noun can be charted as it progresses and recedes over time. The collation of these frequencies reveals a temporal linguistic structure - an index of collective media attention. The patterns that emerge seem at times surreal. In 2003, a year that had seen the outbreak of the Iraq war, the noun that showed the highest statistical peak from the perspective of the UK media was the word 'Christmas'.

The practice of journalism might be viewed as a form of abstraction or filtration; a process of selecting and emphasising certain aspects of an event whilst minimising or quieting noise. As a consequence, an apparently solid political landscape emerges, along with a common agenda for discourse. This landscape, much like the bordered geographical territories that serve as its primary orientation, can be considered as a form of striated space. In this Deleuzian sense, the language of the news media can be thought of as a gridding, segmenting and overcoding of the micro-political ruptures that are initially constitutive of the event.

When represented on a map, certain aspects of a geographical territory may be emphasised through the employment of a specific projection. In a similar fashion, an event can be given a different emphasis when seen through a specific journalist’s lens.

It is important to consider that despite its textual mediation, the news supervenes upon the behaviour of a collection of physical occurrences; it gains much of its character from the individuated actions that people, or bodies, have performed. When presenting a case for interpreting history in terms of a micro-sociological analysis, Deleueze and Guattari write of the 1789 revolution:

‘What one needs to know is which peasants, in which areas of the south of France, stopped greeting the local landowners’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 216).

Cited in Paul Patton, Deleuze and the Political, 2000. [2]

The newsdrip project sets one form of overcoding against another in an attempt to reanimate the event. If the news media is engaged in a practice of daily abstraction, the Newsdrip project presses this practice further. Through a process of sifting, compacting and collating online reports, it produces a still more abstracted form. In scanning the textual content of stories for the occurrence of place names, all additional forms of context, evaluation and commentary are removed. All qualitative data becomes subject to an overtly machinic process and this results in a purely quantitative, statistical index. By employing this data to drive our dripping devices, we are in some sense able to reconstitute or re-mobilise the event. The frozen statistical information is subject to transformation as it is released in the form of droplets onto the surface of the water. The resulting disturbance produces a kinetic reading of the news that seems at odds with the stasis of the written report.

The play of light, the audible acoustic dripping and the visible signs of confluence are central to the aesthetic of the Newsdrip. Each of these qualities provides its own tangible, affective layer. The lack of additional informational context and the reduction of news reports to statistical frequency, however, are of comparable aesthetic importance.

When confronted with a rippling, relational plane, presenting itself as an index of collective media attention, the audience must engage in speculation concerning areas of disturbance or activity. To employ Deleuzian terminology once more, this extreme form of abstraction might be provocative of altogether new lines of flight when it engages with an audience’s attention. They find themselves reflected on the surface of the water, amid the refraction and distortion of territorial lines.

The Newsdrip resists any contextualisation of its statistics; the reports themselves stay hidden. In this sense, the work introduces a degree of subjectivity, indeterminacy or escape into its clearly defined, repetitive procedure. It is only in part intended as a model or representation of worldly affairs. It as much aims to generate questions, slippages and fictions in the face of overcoding. Ultimately, the project becomes a spectacle with the capacity to generate events of its own, by eliciting from its audience a creative response.

The conflicted status of the Newsdrip with respect to representation, places it in a peculiarly hybrid position in relation to Deleuze’ categorisation of art, philosophy and science. In one sense it might be interpreted diagrammatically as a scientific tool of representation - as being in some sense a picture or model of the news. However, problems arise when attempting to characterise it in this fashion. In the first instance, the project seems too imbued with process. It privileges movement at the expense of stasis and might best, in virtue of this dynamism, be considered a machine which has representational parameters. Likewise the disturbance and rippling of the water, though rich with aesthetic import is not in any sense pictorially veridical. We might say that there is a truth to it - but it would be misleading to suggest that the water’s interference correlates precisely with anything occurring in the world.

There is a clear sense in which the turbulence of the water alludes to a process of some sort, but its value remains questionable in purely representational terms. Presented as a visualisation tool, we would need to acknowledge the many extraneous variables introduced by the artists in the name of aesthetics. As a thought experiment it seems captivating; as a scientific experiment it is poorly controlled.

Evaluated as a form of artistic expression, the work can be read as an aesthetic device for bringing about perturbations or difference. This seems in keeping with Deleuze’ conception of art and philosophy as sharing in a collective concern with the generation of questions. The Newsdrip would be considered aesthetic in Deleuzian terms as it is concerned in equal measure with provocation and affect. It is intended as a thing of beauty, which is also capable of stirring in its audience a potentially difficult and lingering response.

It is through the same emphasis upon questioning that the Newsdrip becomes entangled with philosophy. It might be considered as an attempt to engender a fresh philosophical vocabulary or as an attempt to make a political statement without resorting to words. Breaking with a primarily linguistic tradition, it exploits the striated character of language to bring about a physical process that might foster an uncertain but productive sequence of events.

Thus far, we have been considering the representational qualities of the Newsdrip with respect to its depiction of global affairs. There is, however, an alternative sense in which it might be considered a form of representation. If, continuing our philosophical theme, we attempt a metaphysical interpretation of the project, we might consider the Newsdrip as a portrayal of a politically oriented field effect. Arguably, the Newsdrip is as much a depiction of a process metaphysic - of Schopenhauer’s Will, Nietzsche’s Will to Power or Bergson’s Elan Vital - as it is a representation of the news.

Process metaphysics has always had something of a turbulent relationship with the political. There is an emphasis in Nietzsche, Bergson and Deleuze upon a process of differentiation. That is to say, there is an emphasis upon a force that is concerned with the fostering of novelty and the generation of difference. Deleuze goes as far as to suggest that this notion of differentiation is the basis of the fundamentally political order of things [3]. For Deleuze it is the tendency of things to rupture and break - to extract themselves from hierarchies and tend towards the minor - which is the basis of micro-political life. We might observe evidence of this, albeit in a textually mediated and therefore somewhat molar fashion, when we witness a moment of ‘breaking news’ in the context of the Newsdrip project.

The notion of process seems peculiarly neutral. It has, at different points in history been associated with a diverse spectrum of political thought. There is an almost pantheistic quality to much process thinking. It derives its political import anthropomorphically, through the attribution of character to the patterning of a process. That is to say, a process may be characterised as a harmonising force - as a commitment to the notion that all, being connected, is in some sense ultimately one. Conversely it may be characterised as a Dionysian force, breeding turbulence, anarchy and cultivating disorder.

Henri Bergson’s relation to early twentieth century thought is of interest here. Bergsonian philosophy was essentially optimistic. He emphasised the importance of the subjective, the qualitative and the organic, proposing a holistic force that resisted categorisation but was nevertheless, in some sense, a unity. It was the nature of his Elan Vital to be on the one hand all encompassing, and on the other creatively differential. Bergson was criticised by commentators during the First World War for expounding an overly idealised and harmonious characterisation of process. The overt hostility between nations troubled any notion of fundamental metaphysical unity.

Ironically, organic forms of process thinking have also been seen as allied to, or justificatory of, various forms of fascist or totalitarian thought. Mark Antliff, has identified a strain of organic process thought that was used in part to characterise the notions of the supreme individual, collective consciousness, class, race and the notion of the spirit of the nation that fueled strains of French and Italian Fascism [4].

A similar Bergsonian influence can be found in the characterisation of the Volk as it is presented in much German propaganda from the Second World War and also in the illustrations of national unity as portrayed by Soviet poster campaigns emphasising love of the motherland.

Writing on the death of Bergson in 1941, Georges Politzer wrote in La Pensée Libre, no. 1:

“Italian fascism, like German Hitlerism, borrowed many things from this Bergson… The “static’ and the “dynamic” have become words of common usage in the vocabulary of M. Mussolini who, in a completely Bergsonian manner, had classified capitalist states as “static” or “dynamic” …. In the same way when, in a Paris speech, M. Rosenberg qualified Germany as a “profoundly creative vital force,” and a “true life value” he was using a slogan that Bergson had invented to describe France in 1914-18. Finally, the “trial of intelligence,” as well as the elegy for instinct and “intuition,” were widely used throughout the world by all forms of reaction.”

This blindness to, or smoothing over of ‘difference’ in totalitarian states is the target of Milan Kundera in his famous definition of kitsch. Kundera suggests in The Unbearable Lightness of Being that kitsch represents a totalitarian refusal to accept any of the contradictions, individuations and complexities of life. He writes that,

"Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch." [5]

Bergson in some way addressed this issue by conceiving of oppositional forces. He proposed an antagonistic relationship between life and matter. Matter was conceived as tending towards stasis, whilst life was conceived as tending towards creative, vital forms of change. In his speech entitled The Meaning of the War, Bergson characterised Germany as a nation that had once been concerned with life, imagination and poetry, but which had become corrupted by a machinic ethic in its liaison with Prussia [6]. Bergson suggested that as an outcome of this association, the newly mechanised Germany became concerned with stridently exploiting and exhausting material reserves with the aim of territorial dominion. He contrasted this machinic ethic with a fundamentally moral and creative force that was continually able to remake and replenish itself, and suggested that this resolve would, ultimately, triumph.

Bergson’s speech is particularly interesting in this context as it serves as an example of a philosopher employing an initially apolitical metaphysic as an instrument of wartime propaganda. The move from description to ethical evaluation seems interesting in relation to the development of an overtly political form of metaphysics. Bergson’s conception of the meaning of the war places his metaphysics in a firmly ideological context.

The notion of oppositional force is further explored and amplified in Delueze’ philosophy. In Deleuze’ ontology there is move away from a conception of a singular macro field or process and a move towards a multiple view of fields within fields. Deleuze attempts to establish a metaphysic that is suited to contemporary complexity theory with its many thresholds, attractors and spaces for emergence [7]. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari are on the one hand attempting to provide a metaphysics which fits with complexity theory’s findings and general orientation, whilst on the other they are attempting to construct an ideology that is suited to an anarchistic outgrowth of Marxism.

It is characteristic of Deleuze to describe the idiosyncratic and neologistic vocabulary that he develops throughout his work as being in no sense metaphorical [8]. It is also characteristic of him to describe politics as being in some sense prior to Being [9]. It is interesting how Deleuze, when speaking of machinic assemblages, bodies without organs, lines of flight, deterritorialisation, the molar and the molecular, can provoke radically opposed responses from political commentators. At times he is venerated as an inspirational force, whilst at others he is decried for seeming to be in some sense detached from the real by virtue of this vocabulary [10].

Much of the difficulty in engaging politically with Deleuzian philosophy comes from a tension between the activist’s desire to act as a political force in the world and Deleuze’ dissolution of subject and object into molar constructs formed from more fundamental, and intensive forces. There is sometimes a degree of incredulity that in the full material circumstance of war, in the face of starvation, rape, torture and death, Deleuze can be writing about ‘bodies without organs’. This echoes the critical response to Bergson’s metaphysics at the beginning of the First World War.

It would seem that primarily there is a tension between Deleuze’ materialism and Deleuze’ metaphysics. Deleuze is critical of transcendence with respect to metaphysical discourse, and this critique is sometimes framed in political terms. However, his characterisation of immanence might legitimately be viewed as a model of transcendence in its inverted form. Deleuze appears to be formulating a metaphysics of the under-or-inside of our worldly affairs.

Despite his own hostility to transcendence, many of the forces that Deleuze describes are nevertheless distanced from our experience of the world. It is perhaps this metaphysical quality of Deleuze’ thought that jars with the more traditional, empirically oriented activist, and yet resonates strongly with the disciple or convert.

The behaviour and discourse of political activism seems primarily concerned with a macro-political and macro-material plane. This seems to accord with the level of resistance directed towards Deleuze from his more traditional, materialist critics. Delueze’ metaphysics, despite its emphasis upon minorities, and despite its ethical affirmation of life, facilitates through its dissolution of the subject, a rather depersonalised reading of the world. In terms of social action, this is not necessarily a counter productive strategy. The same methods of defamiliarisation that seem disconcerting in application to ourselves, could, by the same token, be felicitous in the production of overtly political action. Such methods are no doubt most effective in circumstances when an agent is confronted, very materially, with the face of their opponent.

The Newsdrip does lend itself to a process metaphysic, and we have in the past interpreted it in these terms [11]. This did, however, produce a strangely apolitical body of writing. The project is premised upon the documentation of change, and much of its appeal stems from an engagement with uncertainty. The Newsdrip documents the unpredictable unfolding and actualisation of the moment. It is at once silent, and heavy with import - a form of anti-propaganda that reambiguates the event.

It might be considered kinetic art, but with a longer, networked reach.

Spencer Roberts, 2007.

3245 Words, excluding references.

Website: http://www.undergroundmole.org/newsdrip/

Contact: s.roberts@hud.ac.uk

References:

[1] Pettican, Anneke (2000) ‘Lucky Strike’, in Virtual Revolutions:  The Other Side of Zero, Video Positive: CAIR, Liverpool John Moores University.  

[2] Patton, Paul (2000) Deleuze and The Political: Routledge.

[3] Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, London: Athlone Press.

[4] Antliff, Mark (1993) Inventing Bergson. Cultural Politics and The Parisian Avant-Garde: Princeton University Press.

[5] Kundera, Milan (1984) The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Faber and Faber.

[6] Bergson, Henri (1915) The Meaning of The War: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd.

[7] Delanda, Manuel (2002) Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, London: Continuum.

[8] Deleuze, Gilles (1989) Cinema 2: The Time Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, London: Athlone Press.

[9] Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix (1987) A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, London: Athlone Press.

[10] Patton, Paul (2000) Deleuze and The Political: Routledge.

[11] Pettican, Anneke, and Roberts, Spencer (2006) ‘Graphing a Permanent Flux’: online publication http://www.undergroundmole.org/newsdrip/newsdrip.php?s=3