digital-philia

I am interested in the moves that Deleuze and Guattari make concerning desire and process. I believe that this relates to our ‘feelings’ for digital media. From the Anti-Oedipus they establish three meaning of process. The first being production “is immediately consumption and a recording process.” Then he mentions the enregistrement and uses it as way to think about how this process might function. According to the translator it has a variety of meanings one of with is the “process of making a recording to be played back by a mechanical device (e.g. phonograph), the recording so made by (e.g. a phonograph record or a magnetic tape).” What immediately struck me was that he is referencing analog technology and techniques. With most of the analog technology, of our not so distant past, the ‘process’ shifts and in a way so does our perspective. This in part is due to the concept of ‘destructive editing’. You record on the magnetic tape or film but when you edit you destroy your original in the process. With digital technologies this editing concept has changed to ‘nondestructive editing.’ Your original file (movie, music, pictures, ect.) are preserved as information. This gives one the ability to indulge in any combination or multiplicity in the process. You can have your cake and eat it too. And what do you know? You ate it but still have it*. Perhaps this changes the nature of our desire? Has it become more of a fatel attraction? Or maybe it is just another schizophrenic hiccup in the ‘process’.


*Common contemporary artist joke.
At a cocktail party a sculptor leans over to a video artist and whispers into their ear:
S-What does a prostitute have in common with a digital photographer?
V-What?
S-You got it, you sell it . . . whoa, what do you know . . . you still got it