In the framework of Resonance, an exhibition of the Goethe-Institut New York curated by Rivet and work by Agency, Faivovich & Goldberg and weareQQ, Diedrich Diederichsen was invited to deliver a talk that would tackle some issues of object-oriented thinking within the arts, as well as considering the potential for resonance among entities relevant to contemporary practice (human, non-human, animate or inanimate). Because of Hurricane Sandy, Diederichsen’s talk had to be cancelled, but this change of plans led to a conversation between Diederichsen and the curators, Rivet (Sarah Demeuse and Manuela Moscoso), about the topics he had planned to bring forward. ...

Robotics and soft AI are bringing everyday changes both to the work field and to our free time. How does this condition reflect itself on the artistic practice? Can we humans liberate ourselves from our anthropocentric viewpoint and accept the intellective superiority of machines? Will we be able to overcome our fear of automation? In the utopian view of a fully automated production, not only work ethics should be re-thought, but also our certainties about aesthetics.

Similarity has long been excluded from reality in both the analytical and continental traditions. Because it exists in the aesthetic realm, and because aesthetics is thought to be divorced from objective reality, similarity has been confined to the prison of the subject. In The Being of Analogy, Noah Roderick unleashes similarity onto the world of objects. Inspired by object-oriented theories of causality, Roderick argues that similarity is ever present at the birth of new objects. This includes the emergent similarity of new mental objects, such as categories—a phenomenon we recognize as analogy. Analogy, Roderick contends, is at the very heart ...

Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects, Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought of Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that he calls “onticology.” This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that ...

What is consciousness? What is it like to feel pain, or to see the colour red? Do robots and computers really think? For that matter, do plants and amoebas think? If we ever meet intelligent aliens, will we be able to understand what they say to us? Philosophers and scientists are still unable to answer questions like these. Perhaps science fiction can help. In Discognition, Steven Shaviro looks at science fiction novels and stories that explore the extreme possibilities of human and alien sentience.

For the Summer 2012 issue of e-flux journal we are very pleased to present a special “Animism” issue guest-edited by Anselm Franke, curator of the exhibition by the same name. Even if you missed Animism on tour in Europe since it began at Extra City and MUHKA in Antwerp in 2010, you have probably learned of its encompassing mobilization of the systems of inclusion and exclusion defining “science” and “culture.” The various stages of the exhibition have shown the discourse of animism to be a crucial skeleton key for releasing the deadlocks formed by the repressed religious, teleological, and colonial ...

This set of five pamphlets documents a seminar given recently by Alexander R. Galloway at the Public School New York, a self-organizing educational program where class ideas are generated by the public. “French Theory Today” explores a new generation of French voices—Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, Quentin Meillassoux, and François Laruelle—whose work has, to varying degrees, only recently emerged in the English-speaking world. Each night of the seminar consisted of a lecture followed by questions from and discussion with class participants. As Galloway suggests in the online class proposal, the goal was “not to set in aspic a ...

Objects in object-oriented ontology (OOO) are mysterious and inexhaustible entities. But since OOO grants ontological priority to objects, it should have an easy time referring to objects. But this is not the case. In The Interfact, Yoran researches the question of how OOO refers to an object’s haecceity, its “thisness.” He starts with an investigation into OOO’s eponymous practice, object-oriented programming (OOP) and identifies not just a plethora of parallels, but finds OOP’s concept of interfaces (as structured ways of object confrontation in time) a promising tool to describe both the rift between all objects and their relative stability. Yoran then extends ...

While there’s been an OOO buzz of late in the art world, we would like to take some time to look closely at specific suggestions made by some of the group’s most vocal advocates–Graham Harman and Levi R. Bryant–alongside some by Isabelle Stengers. We’re particularly eager to consider “object-orientedness” and/in contemporary art. We suggest two simple activities: reading and conversation. We have selected brief texts and the ICI has scanned and uploaded them to their server. These sessions are of an informal nature: while Manuela and I will give a general introduction to the text, the idea is to consider ...

The title of this book is designed to provoke two lines of thought. First, there is the incredible effect of anthropomorphic machines on human imagination and culture. Anthropomorphism has a power to direct attention away from the alien nature of a technological object. Second, the philosophical study of the way machines sense and act in their worlds is essential for breaking free of the anthropomorphic effect. Tessa Leach argues that this is the foundation upon which we must base a study of technologies without undue emphasis on their human origins, which often means breaking free of the way that we ...

Manifesto of Haecceitics – or Some notes on helping to become a Dogmatic Metaphysician. A guide for the Artist (under erasure). Haecceity is the ‘whatness’ of an object, and a dogmatic metaphysician – pre-Kantian, founded his (and it was a he) knowledge on the grantee of God, that things could be known – for sure. Notably in Descartes – God being a clear and distinct idea, and a guarantor of certain (dogmatic) knowledge, and also in Leibniz… and the scholastic philosophers. This was critiqued by Kant famously in his first critique – where knowledge was based on a priori categories of ...

Gabriel Tarde’s Monadology and Sociology, originally published in 1893, is a remarkable and unclassifiable book. It sets out a theory of ‘universal sociology’, which aims to explicate the essentially social nature of all phenomena, including the behaviour of atoms, stars, chemical substances and living beings. He argues that all of nature consists of elements animated by belief and desire, which form social aggregates analogous to those of human societies and institutions. In developing this central insight, Tarde outlines a metaphysical system which builds on both classical rationalist philosophy and the latest scientific theories of the time, in a speculative synthesis ...