Matter In-Formation

Digital mediation doesn’t imply a disembodiment–any form of madiation implies some kind of embodiment–and, neither, as we’ve seen, it’s opposed to matter. On the contrary, it allows a new way to approach embodiment; matter here is essential, because matter is produced and mediated through these discrete variations, through this understanding of the digital as a form of mediation. 

The digital proposes a format for an specific matter in-formationThe digital doesn’t abandon materiality. Instead, it provides a format through which material processes become differentiated and represented. Matter becomes informed through discrete operations. Digital mediation produces specific configurations of matter in-formation. What matters philosophically is how digital systems organize material processes into identifiable forms. 

From this perspective, the digital should be understood as a form of informational organization. The digital establishes conditions under which values can be produced, exchanged, stored, and transformed. Its significance lies in the establishment of operational frameworks.

Discretization and the Production of Fixed Units
A central assumption in many philosophical debates is that continuity is primary while discreteness is secondary. According to this view, discrete units are merely abstractions imposed upon an underlying continuous reality.While such positions correctly emphasize process and becoming, they risk reducing discretization to an illusion. Discretization is better understood as the production of fixed units within a continuous field. It does not, in any sense, negate continuity; rather, it makes continuity intelligible and actionable. Every act of differentiation establishes boundaries. These boundaries build values, identities, and operational distinctions.

Language provides perhaps the clearest example. Linguistic signifiers establish a set of data, as differentiated units, that is put in-formation and within a specific technical logic and multilayered complexities. Words isolate figures from backgrounds, a thing and its other. Allowing the appearance of specific formats for identities and exchanges.

Through language, we go from the discrete towards a continuous, and from continuity to discretized into symbolic forms of structures or contextualities that are built upon the very continuity of the in-formational dynamic that is being built from the previous discretization.


Is it truly possible to escape the continuous? As we see, the existence of discrete and continuous can’t work as a linear, mechanical, binary order of reality. Instead, we propose a dynamism that works recursively, understanding what has been discretized as a very simple scale; the scale of the unit. That is something that is not contained, but something that, once activated, can become an unscalable part of a dynamic process of continuity, that is, a process where the unit becomes in-formation.

We are not saying here we should understand the continuous as analog and analog as an opposition towards digital. A digital form of mediation is also a specific form for becoming information, that is, a specific format for the continuous. Rather than only mediation, digital establishes a closed framework that acts as a map, that is, as a form of economy, where value is produced, distributed, exchanged and stored in a very specific way.

Discretization is, first of all, a dynamic towards the production of the fixed, the static, that is, the very way the outputs of mediation works; allocating an enclosed value, following a certain format, producing a set of orders and units that compose and fragment an extensive continuous into something surrounded by ends, and composed by different fixed ends on itself. Somewhere where discretization becomes evident is, we would say, language, as a form of mediation that is capable of producing discrete values and operating them into specific formats.

The digital works with this very logic, and so it does that we could easily say that language works digitally. The digital is indeed a form of understanding mediation and, in this way, it is also a way of establishing formats through which information can appear as discrete units.

Through this understanding, we can see the digital as a defining dynamic that specifies itself on how representation emerges and how it can be activable and operable. In this sense, we see the process of discretization as economic in its broad sense, because it organizes the production, circulation, and storage of the values that it produces at the time these are produced.

The Digital and the Boundary
One of the most provocative claims in contemporary digital theory is that the digital should be understood as a condition of thought. Without opposing this, we propose a break with that definition and the distinction it assumes from techno-logical dynamics. The way we see it, a technical logic is a condition of thought itself, and can’t be differentiated that much from any form of discretization dynamic. Such a claim suggests that thought operates through processes of abstraction and differentiation analogous to discretization. The thing is what it does. –Intelligence and Spirit, 2018, Reza Negarestani. The digital would then be itself a form of thought if it’s already a format that allows thought to happen–through discretization.


Since abstraction occurs through a critical dynamic, it takes the form of mediation within a generality; producing the abstract involves repeating the thing upon itself; this requires a process of discretization in which the repeated thing is defined. This way, abstraction discretizes (separates), and abstraction also repeats (unifies). Actually, this abstract leap is the dynamic that brings about the fragmentation into units which defines discretization. Discretization plays a fundamental role in this process. The process that makes possible the step between what is repeated and what is generalized is also the one that is assembling a thing, bounded, surrounded, that is to be differentiated and discretized.


Before a category can unify, that is, to make the unit, boundaries must be established. Abstraction and discretization are thus deeply intertwined. If there is no access to the production of an objectified, tokenized, reality–that is, a set of fragmented values that could be activated and operated within an information process–without abstraction, then the digital can be understood as a form of thought insofar as it provides structures for differentiation and repetition. The digital can then be understood as a technology, that is, a technical logic, a general condition under which thinking is produced and its operability becomes formatted.
Against Metaphysical Discreteness

This claim risks confusing epistemological operations with ontological descriptions. Fragmentation and differentiation is something that happens within a techno-logical framework. We could argue that a technical logic happens through the interaction with the possible; a technical logic is a specific mediation dynamic that rearranges and produces value. Something that, for example, any body with mass does.

Discretization provides a framework within which differentiation occurs. It presupposes formats capable of producing identifiable units. Without such frameworks, it becomes difficult to explain how difference emerges in the first place. This said, we cannot argue that reality is–ontologically–discrete at its more fundamental level because whatever that is discretized is also becoming in-formation into other complex and emergent units and fragmentations. In other words, we will say that whatever is discretized is always instantly in a tendency towards becoming discretized into something else. If we were to establish one fundamental state of things, such as it being the discrete, we would be talking here about some sort of essence of everything. Something that, for example, can be understood at a linguistic level, in the sense of discretizing information into signifiers, or even in the way language produces identity absolutes in its own way of producing its signifiers. But at the same time, would be cancelled by the very implications of the critical characteristic we see in language when it’s happening, that is, when its technical-logics are being activated. We say, this way, that the world is happening in-formation at a fundamental level, and discretization is only a way for this information to iterate and be grasped. In other words, discretization is the only way of representing movement while its format is that of the static.

We would propose, then, that reality is neither fundamentally continuous nor discrete. The key point here is movement, and understanding the world as a procedural dynamism where nothing is entirely fixed. On the other hand, discretization implies a sort of staticity, something that can make the materials of thought to work, to exist as themselves. We aim to establish a difference between what is operative and what is happening when it becomes part of an operation, that is, a difference between the discrete and the discrete in-formation. Information is dynamic. It is characterized by movement, transformation, and processuality. Discrete units emerge through operations that stabilize portions of informational flows for them to be operative. This way, we can say discretization designates stabilization and differentiation. Neither term can be reduced to the other, both are deeply tied.

Representing Movement as Something Fixed

Overview

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

RELATED PUBLICATIONS

“If it looks like painting, it is painting” is, perhaps, a statement that may sound somewhat problematic—and, in fact, is not entirely true. The statement is more complex than it seems. Thus, rather than focusing on the question of “appearance”—whether something looks like something else—this article aims to outline the importance of the technical logics of art within their contextual framework, and how these define the artistic “object” far better than the means of its production. In this sense, rather than strictly focusing on appearance, the aim of this text revolves around the phenomenological question of art and its effective functioning from a material standpoint.

see all publications

RELATED PROJECTS