Vague Terrain

Technical Ensembles and VJ Setups

'Setup' is the term commonly employed by VJs to describe the technical ensemble that they use to perform visuals, live or in 'real-time'. As a technical ensemble, the VJ 'setup' is extremely interesting, because it links together a wide range of technical objects, from standardised, mass-marketed machines, to home-made or hacked devices. Objects in the ensemble range from highly developed computing technology optimised for real-time image processing, to screens made from simple white sheets. Many VJs use software written specifically for VJing, which can range from unique programs developed by just one programmer, through open source communities and micro-businesses, to larger and more established companies. Almost all VJ software is sold transnationally via the internet. Adrian Mackenzie (who has written extensively on the work of Simondon) characterizes a technical object's existence as 'somewhere between a transient, unstable event and a durable, heavily reproduced structure' (2002, p.14). Within the setups used by VJs, we see durable, reproducible objects alongside transient objects in an ensemble that is repeatedly reconfigured. I would like to sketch the processes of concretization taking place within the VJ 'setup', and to explore further the nature of the technicity of ensembles.

For the purposes of this account I would like to describe the technical setups used by a group of VJs at an event called AV Social, which is dedicated to showcasing a range of artists performing VJ and audio-visual work. In this case the bar already had a large screen, speakers and projector installed permanently. VJ Anyone, who organised the event, arranged cabling from the projector to a V4 video mixer, and to preview monitors. All the other VJs who were playing had brought along their own 'setups' (the equipment they preferred to use). The VJs were performing from a table in the corner of the room, slightly segregated from the audience but with a clear view of the screen.

'Changeover' in this event was a series of reconfigurations of the technical ensemble corresponding to each new VJ or VJ group taking over the visuals on screen. These periods of changeover were met with much seriousness and anticipation. On the table there were room for two VJ setups, which were both simultaneously connected to the video mixer, usually with only one in use. When the time would come for changeover, the next VJ would arrive, cue up their material and check connectivity was still in place. The VJ whose work was finishing would then talk with this VJ to ensure they were ready and then switch over to their work using the video mixer. They would pack down their equipment, while the VJ on next would be setting up theirs, reconfiguring the ensemble.

The VJ technical ensemble in this case remains radically open. It is very much a transient event, rather than a resilient structure (although it incorporates technical individuals which are themselves very durable). If concretisation refers to the process of stabilisation through which diverse realities intersect, then this VJ ensemble is subject to variable processes of concretisation as different parts of the ensemble are reconfigured, bringing different elements, individuals or sub-ensembles into relation with each other.

I would like to focus on the setup of two VJs performing together from a collective called Pixelshifter. This group has developed a custom piece of software called rDog, which is a graphics synthesiser. rDog was programmed in C++ and runs on a laptop optimised for real-time graphics processing, with using a highly developed graphics card, a large amount of RAM, and a sound card with sixteen inputs. rDog runs using the Microsoft Windows operating system. The software uses the characteristics of each sound input from instruments or microphones to control the parameters of effects and transitions on the shape or movement of pre-programmed video and still imagery. These parameters can also be controlled directly using a MIDI controller, which in this performance was a motorised Behringer 2000.

Through the process of concretization, the divergent realities that form technical elements are temporarily stabilized. These specific realities that form the genesis of the technical element are also preserved relationally within it. We can therefore say that technical objects exist 'genetically' (Mackenzie, 2002, p.15). The genetic relations belonging to each technical element, individual and sub-ensemble are also then included in the technical ensemble. These nested sets of convergent realities within each element exist now in relation to each other element within the ensemble. Processes of concretization within the ensemble involve the processes of negotiation between these elements. Simondon implicates concretization in the solving of tensions within the ensemble. Ensembles may concretize differently through the reconfiguration of the relationality between the technical elements. If technicity is the degree of concretization of the technical element, then technical ensembles such as Pixelshifter's setup are composed of the technicity of the technical elements that constitute them. Technicity is distributed across the ensemble.

We can see how apprehending the technicity of Pixelshifter's VJ setup as a sub-ensemble quickly becomes problematic. If each technical individual is a set of relations composed of technical elements which are themselves sets of relations, then thinking about this sub-ensemble nested within the larger ensemble of the continually re-configured VJ setup brings us to an extraordinary level of complexity. In Simondon's formulation, specific usages of technology are integrated into a framework that builds upon these to account for much larger technical ensembles, which easily incorporate orders of all kinds, discursive and material. The problem of scale remains with Simondon's account, as thinking about globally distributed ensembles such as the internet leads to extreme topological complexity.

The realities that congeal to form the technical element have their own spatiality and temporality, and therefore networks of elements brought together in an ensemble create a spatially and temporally distributed ensemble.

Spatial reticulation consists in the fact that technicity cannot be contained in a single object. An object is only technical if it occurs in relation with other objects, in a network where it takes on the meaning of a key point; in itself and as an object it only possesses the virtual characters of technicity which actualize themselves in active relation to the ensemble of a system. (Simondon trans. Mackenzie, 2002, p.14)

The complexity of a technical sub-ensemble such as Pixelshifter's VJ setup cannot be understood through relations of matter and form. Rather it must be understood through the organization of the technicity of technical elements. The technical object is only technical because of its genesis as a network of relations, from the realities that constitute the technical elements, to the organization of the technical elements into individuals or sub-ensembles, and their intersection or separation from other parts.

We can rethink Pixelshifter's sub-ensemble as having distributed technicity. The laptop computer they use is formed of a wide-range of technical elements, each designed for a highly specific purpose. These are the results of research, design, development, and testing undertaken by diverse actors in transnational corporations. They are part of particular technical lineages, they have been produced in one location, perhaps by sub-contractors, assembled in another, sold in another and shipped globally to the consumer. The computer retains the margin of indeterminacy present in all machines that allows them to be 'used', but it also remains partially open to reconfiguration through the replacement or addition of parts. The operating system and bundled software has been conceived and created as part of a complex trajectory within diverse organizations, across globally distributed arms of transnational companies. The operating system is in one sense open, as it enables other pieces of software of all kinds to run. However, Windows is also closed to radical redevelopment as its source code is proprietary. We can imagine here the unification of many different orders, from imaginative, to geographical, financial, physical, and discursive. Then we can consider rDog, the live performance software written by VJs in London for transnational concert tours, using a globally accessible programming language. rDog relies on the computer to run and therefore the technicity of the computer and operating system, as well as the sound inputs and MIDI controller (not mentioned here) are implicated in any account of the software's technicity. This tiny imagined snapshot of the genesis of these technical objects merely hints at the spatio-temporal complexity engendered by Simondon's relational formulation.

In his account, Simondon also provides us with a more detailed picture of the temporal existence of technical relations, which explains how a focus on the genesis of technical objects can also account for ensembles in development.

Technicity is a mode of being only able to fully and permanently exist as a temporal, as well as spatial network. Temporal reticulation consists of resumptions of the object in which it is reactualised, renovated, repeated under the very conditions of its initial fabrication. (Simondon trans. Mackenzie,
2002, p.14)

The technical object, which undergoes its genesis through a set of relations, is then re-actualized through the repetitions of interactions across this dispersed network of relations. In this sense we can talk about the iterability of an object, in relation to the object's level of concretization. The iterability of the rDog custom software and the computer are different and yet implicated. rDog, as a piece of custom software which is activated by external input such as music, or a MIDI controller is much more unstable; it is open to continuing development by the team, and must be reconfigured by them for new performances. The computer as a technological object is extremely stable and iterable, as the interaction of the technical elements and their milieus have been designed and tested to become a mass-produced artifact. Iteration is an important notion because it implies a cyclicality or repetition of the genesis of the object, which also opens up the possibility of change or further development within the object's resumptions. Concretization can be understood as a kind of 'history' of an object; that which gives the technical object its consistency at the end of an evolutionary process.

Individuation and VJ Setups

So far this analysis has explored the genesis of technical objects relationally. It has pinpointed technical ensembles as composed of the technicity of their elements. Technicity is distributed spatially and temporally and allows us to understand technical objects as a spatio-temporal network of relations. Simondon's framework has exposed the reasons why technology is difficult to apprehend for individuals and collectives, and dissolved the fixed ontological status of matter into a network that includes the material and discursive. Now I would like to explore how life is implicated in Simondon's relational understanding of technical objects. Human actors have already been implicated in analyses of VJ setups, and now I wish to go further in understanding how technical relations can be constitutive of the human. We must turn to Simondon's understanding of the individuation of technical and living entities as transductive processes. 

In theorizing individuation, Simondon reverses traditional approaches that begin with the discrete individuated entity and seek to uncover a unified principle that governs the development of the individual in its singularity. Rather Simondon prefers to 'understand the individual from the process of individuation rather than the process of individuation by means of the individual' (1995, p. 300). He focuses on individuation as a 'primordial' process, explaining 'it is this process that at once brings the individual into being and determines all the distinguishing characteristics of its development, organization and modalities' (1995, p. 300). Rather than understanding the individuated being as something discrete, in and of itself, Simondon asserts that the individual is only relative to the whole being. The figure understood as the individual is only one stage in the individuation of the living entity. This notion of individuation through phases introduces the question of an interesting temporal complexity to the living being.

Individuation must therefore be thought of as a partial and relative resolution manifested within a system that contains latent potentials and harbors a certain incompatibility with itself, an incompatibility due at once to forces in tension as well as to the impossibility of interaction between terms of extremely disparate dimensions. (Simondon, 1995, p. 300)

Simondon introduces the living being relationally as a 'system' within which there is much latent potentiality, but also problematic tensions introduced in part by the difficulty of interaction between the disparate orders that constitute it. The living being has within it an 'incompatibility with itself' - that which pushes it temporally out of step with itself - a conflict central to the being's genesis.

The relative resolution that Simondon explores here can be understood through his idea of metastability, which stands in contrast to conventional understandings of stability or equilibrium. These are characterized by the prior release of all potential energy in a system, preventing any further evolution. In contrast, metastability is the state of temporary resolution that is affected not as a fully static state, but as one point within the being's individuation. Within the metastable system further 'becoming' is always possible because of potentialities latent in the system. Simondon points to the 'conflictual character' (1995, p. 309) of metastability - it is not a fully resolved state, and within it still exist tensions, and potentialities for further evolution.

Simondon understands the genesis of living entities as progressing from the pre-individual being 'the being in which there are no steps' (1995, p. 301) or phases; '...individuation corresponds to the appearances of stages in the being, which are the stages of the being.' (1995, p. 301). Incompatibilities resonant in the being through the difficulty in mediating between different orders are resolved by the entity through the activation of potentials latent in the pre-individual reality inherent within it. When the potentialities latent in the system set in motion the transductive process of individuation the entity goes through further development. The processes of motion and structuration that Simondon describes are undertaken in stages, conversations between different orders of magnitude.

Mackenzie understands technological actions within this framework as existing within this zone of potentiality, from which stabilised concepts such as the VJ subject discussed previously only 'precipitate retrospectively.'

A technological action or hack inhabits a more intimate, potentialised middle zone out of which form and matter, subject and object, self and other only precipitate retrospectively. Abstraction can occur in this middle zone, and relations arise here, precisely because forms, norms and institutions do not fully determine it. (Mackenzie, 2006, p. 203)

This notion of a 'potentialized middle zone' is extremely important point for any discussion of technology and collectivity, demonstrates that subject formations are not ontologically prior, but come into being through the intertwined individuation between living and technical entities. In Simondon's framework, unity and identity are only applicable to a being's stages, because the 'individual' is only one part of the ongoing development of the larger being.

Individuation is a transductive process that works to resolve inherent tensions within the entity through the mediation between and stabilization of divergent orders. Transductive processes are structuring forces, those that once set in motion work to structure a domain, so that each structuration serves as the constituting process for the next transductive progression. Individuation is itself a transductive process that can be 'physical, biological, mental, or social' (Simondon 1995, p. 313). The conflicts within the living being and the technical object are temporarily resolved through transductive processes of progressive modification and restructuring, acting as mediators between the seemingly disparate orders. Through these successive processes of structuring 'a modification progressively extends itself at the same time as this structuring operation' (Simondon, 1995, p. 313). The processes in technical individuation through which sets of relations produce relations and so forth start to gain clarity. Individuation is 'following a course in which preliminary tensions are resolved but also preserved in the shape of the ensuing structure' (Simondon, 1995, p. 301).

Further knowledge of these processes allows us to rethink Pixelshifter's VJ setup in terms of phases or stages of structuration in which the living entity is inferred in the relational framework of technical individuation. The milieu from which the design and creation of the computer emerge can be described after Mackenzie as this 'potentialized middle zone' where technical-human relations are formed through the stabilization of multiple different orders via the technical object, and from which notions such as subjectivity follow. This introduction to individuation in living entities allows us to include the mental, imaginative or psychic orders of those people involved in the development of the computer. We can say that the 'human' part of this formulation is partially constituted through the relational framework of technical action. These relations form the genetic logic of the development of the ensemble of relations we call a 'PC' and as such are preserved within it. We can also trace alongside this the development of the operating system. Each of these individuations that the computer undergoes are phases in its development, and the stabilizations of relations become structurations that enable the next level of modification to take place. The development of rDog is interesting as the lineage of the development of the computer and operating system are already nested in its development. The system of rDog was developed specifically by the Pixelshifter team to resolve a set of localized constraints, which were technical, financial, and geographical. These would undoubtedly involve the imaginations of the team, and also their memories; all the events that had shaped them, the phases of individuation that they had been through. As the software goes through each new revision, release and testing so the individuals are structured as part of these processes. From this notion of individuation I want to move to explore how the individuation of the VJ takes place directly through the individuation of the VJ technical ensemble.

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