邊界
biānjiè research group

邊界_RG is an artist collective and a research group. They work at the edge of language, memory, and machine cognition. Their collaboration explores the aesthetics of the recursive interplay between generative systems, speculative design, experimental essay...(learn more)

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Ian Margo & Fakewhale Interview, d/wb project

How to find inner peace Carl Olsson

Coasean Bargaining at Scale Séb Krier

Crisis Media: Sonic Architectural Synaesthesia, Stochastic Redundancy and Nuclear Post-Humanitarian Tactic Yidi Lola Wang

Chatbots as Psychoanalysts, or, ‘The Talking Cure Morgane Billuart

Creative Liberation or Digital Colonization?, David Lazăr

The Artificial Unconscious, Germán Sierra

Artificiality and Emotions: Beyond the FleshMorgane Billuart

Fango 1000 & Large Lore Models, dmstfctn, Alasdair Milne, Eva Jäger

What Is Artificial Experience (AX), William Morgan

[S02] Six Short Essay Compilation On Digital Frameworks

--.--.2025.GLOB Ian Margo
S02 publication
in-formation digital culture digital frameworks grammar formatting
digital research language gaming /to play design speculative design

邊界_RG [implicit-explicit] (IMEX) w/ SYBIL residency

08.12.2025.BER.GER

Ian Margo Alexandre Montserrat

Sybil in-formation digital culture digital frameworks grammar formatting
digital research language gaming /to play speculative design

On Digital Frameworks:

The works compiled here were originally published on s02.bianjie.systems page

On Design

Any organization implies a design. That is, any form of design requires or produces a system of relation and organization. Relation implies opposition, from a minimum of two orders, and opposition implies the production of value through differentiation and abstraction. We understand this from the aesthetics (which always implies opposition) of Matthew Fuller & Eyal Weizman:

Abstraction is the capacity to recognise patterns whether or not they are related to an observable phenomena.1
-Fuller & Weizman, 2021.

We use here their definition in reference to the processes of abstraction that would occur between sense and making-sense2, since they reveal the productive capacity of such processes where, implicitly, one operates with what is “recognized,” that is, with what is signified and with that which will be newly signified. Or, put differently, the process by which a certain pattern is recognized without the need for a phenomenal ground would be the process of abstraction through which new value would be produced and localized.

Abstraction can work as a form of transformation and translation that also implies differentiation. A touch between humans is not sensed as merely material contact—it has meaning.3
-Fuller & Weizman, 2021.

Beyond the contextualization of the event, touch here appears with an attributed meaning (or value), that is, with a specific localization that activates a sign producing a concrete signified: the object of the sign. More than a transformation, what we face is a translation—an output that does not contain its object but rather re-presents it as an activatable token. It is in this process of translation, in this instant between the object and that which objectifies it, that abstraction and differentiation occur: the instant in which ground is granted to figure, in which the signifier is able to sustain itself upon the Otherness of what has been extracted.

The level of abstraction is a method for modeling a system with a given set of data.
-Yuk Hui, 2016, discussing Floridi.4

The sign would thus be what is given as activatable in a process of abstraction. The system, which does not remain static, is subject to the contingency of the instability produced by the signs that configure it. The system, then, constantly depends on transformations and translations, since its sets of data may be re-signified through processes of abstraction. We would say that any distribution of value is potentially also the production of value through new levels of abstraction. This can be observed in any temporality we apply to any technology.

Design appears, therefore, in the operativity of value when it is arranged in specific organizations, and it is implied in any construction of discourse, these being subject to activation (and modification, which is the same) as values in new configurations as well. We understand design as the production of directionalities and differences which, while they require a work of “recognition” of signs, are also productive of new processes of signification. Thus, we think of design as intrinsically related to the production of economic systems and vice versa. An economic system would, in itself, be a form of design.

On Chains of Association

A chain of association is a process of abstraction. As we explained in On Design, the process by which a certain pattern is recognized without the need for a phenomenal ground would be the process of abstraction through which a new value would be produced and localized. Chains of association are not linear but evolutionary. They mutate and restart with a given set of data that will be activated through the introduction of a minimum of two orders in opposition. This given set of data exists only as the possibility detached from it when activated and, therefore, does not operate directly in the chain of association. Its transformation or modification could be understood as a mediator.

We start from the semantic morphology of V. Flusser, where action is understood as:

A process of modification of substance. 1
-V. Flusser, 1964

Here we rather understand that it is an activation that is a modification of substances. The grammar of a chain of association, or its installation with a limited pattern of operations,2 comprises a minimum of two activations until the chain restarts, relocated from a new given set of data. They are part, first, of a process of mediation (the mediator is produced from and upon the orders, when these activate the set) and, second, of a process of abstraction (the mediator is activated upon the orders establishing the association), which produces the new set.

A chain of association as an operation without activation (or anguish) would occur if the modification of the processes leads to a given set of data identical to a previous one, establishing a repetition or singularity.3 Either this is what happens when internally activating any chain of association where, as we see, a series of transformations is established or certain transfers occur between different orders, or this operation without activation would come to constitute a new given datum within a set that would give rise to other chains of association.

While activation is the modification of substances and not action, action would gather a series of activations in itself, being not only relational (oppositional) but also a process of mediation or a chain of association. Action may aim at a final activation, and it is dependent on a contingent series of activations, but each activation has a recursive effect, extending and applying such activation to all the orders involved in it. The chain of association would thus function as a producer of value. As Fuller & Weizman say:

Aesthetics (dependent on processes of mediation) is not only about sensation or receiving information understood as a passive act; it is also about perception, the making sense of what is sensed. This entails models of knowledge production. 4
-Fuller & Weizman, 2021

Here we would argue that it is not knowledge that is produced in making-sense5, but, as we saw in On Design, it is value. We would understand sense as the given set of data that functions as a ground through which a chain of association is constituted—that is, the value assigned to the signifier. Each activation would have as its object each order involved in its process, thus being immediately recursive: We would say, then, that every chain of association is a reflexive process.

On the Grammar of Format in the Digital Framework

Within the digital field of action—particularly in the aesthetic field, which we understand as operative, abstract, and productive through processes of mediation (see On Design)—we see how the format and its material operative sequence (or grammar) are constituted recursively as in-formation, emerging from the operativity of systems rather than through interaction with static objects.

The format is the grammatical logic (type) of information, namely: its localization as token and its operativity. We might say, then, that it is an uncontainable content, detached and only existing operatively as detached. For Jean-Yves Girard, information is not wrapped by the format; rather, it is the format that conditions its access, interpretation, and use.1 We thus understand format as that which defines the field of action of information. For Stiegler, grammatization is precisely the technical formatting of experience into discrete units.2

We can understand the technical logic of format as a technical support, that is, as a set of inscriptions, languages, and cultural materials that constitute an already-there (or a given set of data).3 As we saw in On Chains of Association, these sets exist as possibilities detached after their activation; a modification is required, the given lets escape a limited series of possibilities that will be key for contextualizing and enacting—or formatting—any interaction with the possible. Within this logic, the already-there or given set of data constitutes, in itself, human structurality. We might say, then, that technics is constitutive of time, as well as of the assemblages and associative and oppositional maps that produce value, knowledge, and interaction with the experience of the possible:

If the already-there is what constitutes temporality in that it opens me out to my historiality, must not this already-there also be constitutive in its positive facticity (…) in the sense that its material organization in form constitutes historicity itself, prior to and beyond history?4
—Bernard Stiegler, 1994

If we understand grammar as the material operative sequence of a specific format, immersed in processes of opposition and association, then in the reflexive framework of digital contingency it becomes possible to conceive information—as Simondon reminds us, it never comes given 5—as that which is detached from the set and must be activated in a process of abstraction and sign production / production of a new given set (see On Chains of Association). Stiegler’s question of technical temporality is thus essential, for in defining technics as constitutive of time, he allows us to see how processes of activation and action within digital dynamics of mediation, activation, and association establish a specific temporality with limited operativity (a formatted grammar), which necessarily emerge from specific temporalities produced by alternative abstractions, abstraction being defined here as the new given set of data.

Format here is not, as we have seen, a mere envelope of information; rather, it is what allows for its operativity and its specific constitution within its grammar. Put differently, information is not contained in a given set of values; instead, it operates from this set in an extensive and recursive manner upon it once activated. Information immersed in a process of mediation (or technical process) thus defines the given set of data (or values) as a concrete axis of temporality. The activated value is matter in-formation.

Within the digital framework, format allows for the constitution of non-static objects, capable of unfolding iterative and self-referential processes. These recursive systems institute a type of technical logic that not only operates upon information but also produces and transforms it in cycles of permanent feedback. In this sense, the digital framework reveals itself as a malleable recursive field of action, where information is continually reinscribed from new alternate sets, and where format is traversed and marked by its openness.

On Activations and /To Play

Play presupposes the existence of a world in which playing makes sense 1
—W. Freudenheim, W. Morgan, 2024

Understanding making-sense as the production of value (see On Design), we would say: play arises as a potentiality that presupposes that the interaction of possible values occurs constituting a world in which such interaction is possible. My friend Sima says:

To play is to collectivize the interaction of the experience of the possible 2
—Sima Parajua 2022

The possible here is what detaches from the set, and the interaction of experience is the format produced by activation or play. If the format is constituted through play, we understand this as the activation that produces the already-there, the historicity from which the set of values departs3, which we would call the operative space or field of action, being, as we have seen, “an activation is a modification of substances”4 (see On Chains of Association), and action would be the set of activations or operative space within a reflexive process or chain of association.

There must be a set of initial conditions by which to play 5
—W. Freudenheim, W. Morgan, 2024

We would understand this as the given set of data that produces (or from which is detached) the possible. The operativity of the possible values produced by play constitutes both the formation of systems and the performativity of the already-there or the given set of data, that is, an activation and a process of abstraction, as well as the localization in the world of that which is activable (we understand this as narrative or the real).

In the context of the videogame, which we approach here by revisiting Galloway’s idea of the cultural object as something subject to simulation software associated with computational devices,6 we can introduce and understand play within the digital cultural framework (see On the Grammar of Format in the Digital Framework) as a field of action in itself (that of play), configured by systems of value and processes of abstraction and activation. In this framework, he continues:

The player, or operator, is an individual agent who communicates with the software and hardware of the machine, sending codified messages via input devices and receiving codified messages via output devices.7
—Alexander R. Galloway, 2006

Here Galloway understands the player as operator, that is, as the agent of interaction, the activating axis of the given set of data (see On Chains of Association). The operator is, then, the agent who becomes possible from the impotence of the set, modifying (activating) it now as a set or operative space, immediately incurring the grammar of the format (or its operative materiality).

However, he poses the following: “Software is data.”8 We would say, rather, that software defines the format of data activation, that is, software is the grammar of information, and a video game or digital game would correspond to any system designed (see On Design) to make possible the interaction and activation of data and to constitute the production of information and of value. That is to say, within the context of operativity determined by the format9.

The historicity of the video game or the digital game emphasizes movement and its performativity, both through computational capacity and through the introduction or reproduction of “video” (in video-game). This question of movement, and “the importance of representing movement”10, is already implicit in the digital framework (see On the Grammar of Format in the Digital Framework), which is constituted by operative and recursive systems that constantly depend on modifications and activations. The digital framework is defined by the immediacy of movement, each instant constituting an activation, thus being a mobile presentation, a general format disposed by “nature” to re-present movement.

In this context we cannot simply speak of video-, nor of a fiction externalized to an operative reality, but of a simulated world-building that self-verifies by producing operative and activable values, and that extends beyond the historical idea of the video game.

We must return to the general concept of play to understand that, in the digital framework, any interaction is linguistic, any activation is in itself play. And beyond the nihilistic atmosphere this might seem to pose, the digital framework situates language—and, more importantly, its systems of activation and processes of abstraction—on a plane, for the first time, immediately in relation/opposition to objects (or at least to certain types of objects).

We would say that the object is not given; it is the chain of association that produces them.

On Display

Indeed, no material recording is ever quite pure: it is always an interaction of different forms of recording each partially erasing prior states. So the transformations that are fundamentally part of aesthetics are also about losing what might be read as data as much as inscribing it. Information should be understood as matter in-formation.1
—Fuller, M., & Weizman, E., 2021

If we understand data as what is given in a set, we can comprehend aesthetics as a process that involves chains of association (see On Chains of Association), insofar as data is the starting point but also a possibility detached from an activation that cancels it as something given and modifies it as matter in-formation. As Fuller and Weizman say, it is about losing what might be read as data as much as inscribing it. We would understand inscribing data as activating it (contextualizing it, framing it) as information in a concrete grammar, which—dependent on the corporality of a sensible body, which we may understand through aesthetics—would con-form (format) such data or what is given as a specific value with recursive operativity between the agents involved, let us say, the activating agent and the objectified agent.

The activating agent comes into being through that which will be activated as the detached possibility. We understand the object as an absolute limit, a “container” of a finite infinity of possibilities, that is, an impossibility. As Deleuze says, the brutal form of the immediate, to which he later adds: the infinity of an instant.2 In this way, what is given is static and, against what Lispector proposes when she says that an object is something static in time,3 the object is not in time, for it lacks it. Activation not only establishes directionality but also a temporality upon the datum or the given set. The activating agent, then, only becomes such at the moment it is confronted with a given set that requires activation. This would be, ultimately, that there is no agent without activation and no activation without agent.

The objectified agent constitutes the value of the object. It appears as a potentiality that inscribes activation in a process of signification. A value is assigned, there is a cut, or, what is the same, a depth is added—a figure upon a ground. Matter in-formation appears here detached from the data through this recursive process of activation. The object is inoperative, discontinuous,4 but upon it an operative space is constituted with the appearance that is detached, that is, a kind of grammar of the object or, let us say, the objectified (which we might call the marked, or the target) (see Third Extension).

Matter in-formation displays itself as mediated, as we saw in On the Grammar of Format in the Digital Framework:

In the digital field of action, specifically in the aesthetic field—which we understand as the operative, abstract, and productive through processes of mediation—we see how the format and its operative material sequence (or grammar) constitute themselves recursively in-formation from the operativity of systems rather than through interaction with static objects.

The data becomes operative when traversed by its intra-action5 with the activating agent and is displayed (mediated, represented) as information when objectified as agent. The given set of data immersed in this process requires a cartography or, let us say, this formatting process proposes a series of elements in a system of directionality and value production, that is, the activated data, by being activated, constitute specific localizations. The object, or the processes of objectivization, then, constitute a display that appears not as presentation of elements but as represented elements. In this way we understand that any representation constitutes a play of directionalities, the appearance of a new set of values that arise from the relation among elements, constituting a ground (which we would understand as the context or frame, which here is not proposed as a limit though it necessarily defines a cartographic boundary).

Representation requires a minimum of activation processes to take place, and it constitutes inter-faciality or the specific format, subject to the recursive contingencies of chains of association (see On Chains of Association) and the reflexive processes of transformation and translation that occur when new sets are activated upon it. We may thus understand format as both interface and as disposition, display, of activable or playable values.

We have noticed that within digital objects, the concept of form continues to serve as a technical tendency within computing, although it is now standards that have become universal. Forms are abstract schemes, and standards are concrete objects.6
—Yuk Hui, 2016

On Directional Morphology, Ian Margo

Datum implicit / implied / it can be transferred or stored
Datum explicit / explained / it can be exchange

Every organization implies a design (see On Design). This does not refer to design as something engineered or as that which is “designed,” but assumes a temporality that we could vaguely describe as non-linear. Design within organization is accompanied by the mediating capacity of what is mimetic and reproducible—what we might call that which is understood, or the general. What is understood is that which is applied to an assigned / designated value. What is understood is potential or critical.

Where there is the possibility of having a history, there is also the possibility of having not only the concept of the concept, but also a history of history.1
-Negarestani, 2018.

In this way, we understand design in organization not as an orchestrated structure, but as the given set of data that detaches and suspends itself through a process of individuation that marks the limit of what is assigned2 / designated as organization. Matter in-formation (see On Display) represents the limited structure / the format3 / the organization is mediated > the organization is limited. The establishment of a limit con-forms the mimetic and reproducible possibility—that is, a design (representation is a necessity in the constitution of the limit, or what is limited is necessarily that which is represented). Organization exists insofar as it is a limit, from the black box and its set of laws. The black box / the history / the narratable > The box itself is incapable of containing anything, or the possible content of a box equals everything that can exist between one objectified agent and another. We understand the black box as matter in-formation.

The black box / content in itself, without closure. Yet the content of the box is external to the box, even though it envelops it. The capacity to navigate the interior/exterior extension of the box—that is, to recursively access both the “contained” extension and the “box” extension—constitutes the self-aware agent4, capable of operating the metadata, or the data within the data 5 (see also On Chains of Association).
The self-aware agent is the critical, digital-native agent, who can materially access a kind of pre-signified thing by the box—able to navigate, map, and engage with content.

We understand box as: ground / limit / edge / map / surface of suspension.

Data implicit / implied / metadata >
The content of A is extensive and opposed to A while enclosed by A, but not delimited to A. What A encloses can appear only as that which detaches from A—as critique or potentiality.

Data explicit / explained / metadata >
The signifier is capable of containing a “play,” understood as the collectivization of the experience of the possible (see On Activations and /to play)—the surface of suspension upon which the ground of possibility that detaches itself is con-figured.

The relationship between the activating agent and the objectified agent (see On Display) begins from the temporal and directional necessity implicit in a mediation process—that is, from the assimilation of the possible from the immediate to the mediated—constituting an oppositional, reflexive, and recursive structure based on the understanding of movement and its consequent representation. This relationship/opposition establishes a play of directionalities that prevents the individuation of the thing and its content as a stable body. The object itself (the thing and its content) is inoperative and immediately unstable both spatially and temporally, as it requires a potential system that extracts a relationship between the object and an opposing otherness (signified and signifier), which prevents its existence as an isolated whole.

Meaning, as we see, is not found in the signifier and cannot touch it. Value is not given but produced through a formatting process, which occurs by assimilating the detached possibility. The relationship as opposition is given insofar as there is a concrete morphology or embodiment. The black box—or the set of narratives and meta-narratives—configures a technical temporality, which we would understand as mechanical from a local perspective, that is, linear, with a causal input/output relation. This temporality does not condition but is produced by the relationship as opposition or by chains of associations (see On Chains of Association), through the establishment of a relationship between at least two orders.

Fuller, M., & Weizman, E. Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth, Verso, 2021.
Ibid
Ibid
Hui, Y., On the Existence of Digital Objects, University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
Flusser, V. Language and Reality, Univocal Publishing, 2018 (Originally published in 1964).
Stiegler, B. Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford University Press, 1998 (Originally published in 1994).
Deleuze, G. Difference and Repetition. Columbia University Press, 1994 (Originally published in 1968).
Fuller, M., & Weizman, E., Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth. Verso, 2021.
Ibid
Girard, Jean-Yves. “Linear Logic.” Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 50, no. 1, 1987
Stiegler, B. Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford University Press, 1998 (Originally published in 1994).
Ibid
Ibid
Simondon, Gilbert. Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information. University of Minnesota Press, 2020 (Originally published in 1964)
Freudenheim, W., Morgan, W. Interplay. Caldo Worldwide, 2024.
link
Stiegler, B. Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford University Press, 1998 (Originally published in 1994).
Flusser, V. Language and Reality, Univocal Publishing, 2018 (Originally published in 1964).Freudenheim, W., Morgan, W. Interplay. Caldo Worldwide, 2024.
Galloway, Alexander R. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
Ibid.Ibid.Girard, Jean-Yves. “Linear Logic.” Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 50, no. 1, 1987.
Carbajal, Elena (aval0vara). She said it to me.
Fuller, Matthew, and Eyal Weizman. Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth. Verso, 2021.
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, Columbia University Press, 1994. Originally published 1968.
Lispector, Clarice. Água Viva, New Directions, 2012. Originally published 1973.
Bataille, Georges. Erotism: Death and Sensuality, City Lights Books, 1986. Originally published 1957.
Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, 2007.
Hui, Yuk. On the Existence of Digital Objects. University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Originally published 2012.
Negarestani, Reza. Intelligence and Spirit. Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2018.
Simondon, Gilbert. Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information. University of Minnesota Press, 2020 (Originally published in 1964)
Girard, Jean-Yves. “Linear Logic.” Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 50, no. 1, 1987
Negarestani, Reza. Intelligence and Spirit. Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2018.
Hui, Y., On the Existence of Digital Objects, University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

邊界_RG [implicit-explicit] (IMEX) w/ SYBIL residency:

‘implicit-explicit’ questions the status of ‘gaming’ by tracing the dynamics and processes that constitute it as such; that is, an approach to gaming from a perspective that seeks to distance itself from the socio-cultural material determinations that make up the question around play in order to bring us closer to its immediate technical (as a mediating process) and theoretical characteristics and, in this way, effectively propose a novel and experimental approach.

‘implicit-explicit’ is an interface-based, graph-based game in which a body is constructed through linguistic input. This body is mutated through navigation and movement that emerges from the central possibility of destabilising and re-stabilising the parameters and positions of its content. These modifications and activations of linguistic content allow one to navigate a sort of labyrinth of interfaces, open ‘doors’ and accumulate layers of representativeness, following a specific set of parameters and operating from questions that delves into the possibility of an effectively operational content within the digital framework. The project seeks to use on-chain tools and LLMs to propose a multiplayer experience through the accumulation and decryption of these bodies, generating economies based on complexity and the increase of layers of representation of linguistic/body values through the possibilities that may emerge from the modification of these bodies.

Thus, the goal is to mutate a body into higher stable complexity using content inputs &/or modifications. It can be played solo exploration or competitive multiplayer. Both (Singleplayer and multiplayer) share more or less the same goal. Multiplayer goal, though, goes more around accumulating the most complex bodies within the community. Singleplayer's goal is to stabilize and add complexity to one single body.

At 邊界_RG, we are interested in pursuing a line of research parallel to the development of the game that delves into notions of play, activation, data and metadata, object and objectivity in the digital framework, on-chain temporalities, interactivity, convergence, format, grammar, signifiers and memory, in relation to the production schedule and in collaboration with other artists and researchers involved in our collective.

This project emerges as part of Sybil's residency, where, for six months, the 邊界_RG team will be working on developing the project with the help of collaborators.
During this time, the 邊界_RG team is committed to producing an extensive series of parallel materials related to this project, which will include both research practices and new publication formats, as well as artistic side projects working with different materials, physical events and more.

find more about the project and how to collaborate here

help us funding this project here, or directly contact us here

feel free to contact us for any question mail x instagram

IMPLICIT-EXPLICIT
OPEN CALL_邊界_RG<>SYBIL

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