Surface. Signal. Structure.
Every artistic transformation eventually produces its own form of criticism. At first the new work appears strange or difficult to categorize. Reviewers attempt to interpret it using the vocabulary of earlier traditions. The results often feel slightly misaligned. The critic describes the surface of the work but fails to identify the deeper conditions that produced… Continue reading The Lighthouse
Popular music was understood as a form of emotional transmission. A singer felt something. A band translated that feeling into sound. A listener heard the result and recognized the emotion contained within it. The technology of recording allowed the performance to travel across distance, but the underlying mythology remained intact. Somewhere at the origin of… Continue reading Pop Muzik
Photography of the human body appeared in images mostly as evidence. A photograph testified that a person had stood before a camera at a particular moment in time. The image functioned as a record of presence. Even when photographers manipulated lighting, composition, or exposure, the viewer still understood the photograph as an encounter between a… Continue reading The Signal Body
For most of the twentieth century moving images were understood as recordings. A camera captured light reflected from objects in the world. The result was stored on film or magnetic tape, preserving a sequence of frames that could later be projected or broadcast. The technology allowed events to travel across distance and time, but the… Continue reading The Unstable Image
Literary history stories behaved like paths. A narrative began somewhere, moved through a sequence of events, and eventually arrived at a conclusion. The reader progressed through the work in roughly the same order the author had arranged it. Even the most complex novels preserved this basic structure: a line extending from the first page to… Continue reading The Great Code
People's identities were once formed in rooms. The process was rarely dramatic. It happened slowly, through repeated encounters with the same environments and the same people. Schools, neighborhoods, record stores, workplaces, bars, libraries, clubs. Each place carried its own customs, tastes, and informal hierarchies. A person moved through these environments and gradually discovered what seemed… Continue reading The Algorithmic Self
There was a time when people believed the internet would liberate culture. The argument appeared everywhere in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Magazine profiles, technology conferences, college dorm debates, early blogs. The internet would dissolve gatekeepers. It would break the monopoly of record labels, publishing houses, film studios, television networks. Anyone could publish. Anyone… Continue reading The Internet That Ate Subculture
The past was always difficult to access. Books were scarce. Recordings were rare. Films circulated slowly. Archives existed in libraries and institutions whose contents were limited by geography, cost, and time. Even the most educated artist worked within a narrow field of available references. The imagination filled the gaps. Cultural memory was selective because it… Continue reading The Infinite Archive
The modern artwork increasingly resembles a device whose internal workings remain hidden. One can observe what enters the system and what emerges from it, but the rule governing the transformation often remains partially concealed. A sequence of sounds, a set of images, a narrative pattern—these appear on the surface, while the structure generating them remains… Continue reading Black Box
The New Poetics 