User:Notes on "Fandom of Labor"/notes the interface effect ch 4

The interface effect 13-11-25

Disingenuous Informatics

Is 24 a Political Show?

Culture and the problem of meaning. Distinguishing between competing interpretation has allways been the domain of hermeneutics (science of interpretation). Ostensibly= outwardly appearing as such. Media artifact Games and images must be interpreted in different ways, television also. 24 “the show is America” set in post 9-11 America. Is 24 political? A prism into the nation itself its anxietys about terrorism. What is the meaning of 24 in the digital age. 24 is essentially propaganda, indictment most commonly heard from the left. Produced by Fox a right wing television network Habeas corpus: binnen bepaalde tijd moet iemand op de hoogte worden gesteld van zijn misdrijf. Public vetting of current debates, such as the interpretation of the show second season contemporaneous critique of the faulty intelligence that lead up to the Iraq war. Common conclusion 24 is performing political work within culture, it advocates a utalitarian moral philosophy pits dubious short term actions against the greater good of the contemporary state. Ne millenium spin to utilitarian impulse probably teleological sense of total utility. Teleolological final causes exist in nature, meaning that, analogous to purposes found in human actions, nature inherently tends toward definite ends. Maximized goods hold the very horizon of moral truth, utopia or fascism. Urgency is a natural sublimation of the information age. Political solution is dependant only on the computer cycles available to execute it. The challenges are always informatic because they hinge in the abilities of cybernetic systems to operate smoothly without obstruction. Modern day threaths (reliant on cybernetic systems) have become in itself binary.

Deeper structure: the utilitarian moral philosophy appears via a number of narrative and and formal details. the digital clock non diegetic time code that appears regularly before and after each commercial interuption and from time to time during narrative action. The time is an excuse if there is zo little time in the teleologcal sense that it verantwoord the bloodspill for the greater good.

Marxist totality theory (echoed later by georg lukacs as “the whole” was an indicator for political consciousness. Obtaining knowledge of the future desires in terms of the material present, closely with achieving a progressive social consiousness. Utilitarian position is interesting not for the expedient solutions it proposes but for yje way in which it prohibits alternate moral frames. Expediency:hat is politic advantageous rather then what is right or just. The alienation of what is here and now in exchange for some profiting later. There are no absolutes. Totality has a triple life in 24. experiential moral holism. The whole must be brought to the fore if one is to make any coherent social life. Hacking. In control society information systems are always in a state of self – exploitation. The informatic system specificaly defined not as an integral object but as a flexible network of command and control which is only actualized through it's own transgression by another informaic source. Pervasive: spread throughout Protocol is always followed through. Facilitates going in the dark in the form of the state of exception. But protocol is also what must be circumvented. Mode of indiviation is part of what defines informatic spaces. In the end breaking the rules is always to achieve better efficiency. These employees cannot “clock out” are chained to their jobs. Reification: to convert into or regard as a concrete thing: to reify a concept. In this mode there is a heightened ownership of one's labor within an ethic of self-worth and spiritual achievement. Real life is an interuption. The contemporary work work space is everywhere n the show. The exceptional is always articulated via the normal nd vice versa (sweatshop). Spaces of surveillances populate the show. The normal work environment is the panoptic work environment. Communications are able to be monitored at all times. (Irony is that each looming catastrophe faills to be averted by this crack team). There is no domestic space on this show at all. All sexual or familial relationships transpire witihn the walls of ctu headquarters. (sweatsshop if you leave the floor we will hurt you). Also no care for personal health. Forced labor (in marxs terms): the work day is extended absolutely to 24/7, the productivity is measured by the raw horzion of ones own life force.

The real time of the show is actually 16.8 hours instead of 24. During those interruptions commercials happened. The time “lost” in the commercial from the 24 hours is the “reality gap” of reality telivision. Each minute is of crucial importance and valorized by the next. Every second is valorized but only as a hegemonic televisual sign ot as a signifier for a chronolgy of reality. Information as aphrodesiac epistimlogy the origin of things plottwists by the minute for every flash of blood there's an equal nr of cognitive tricks and twists.

Torture and interrogation are never questions of punishment in 24. The body is a database torture an algorhitm. There is never pleasure in his sadism he gets results, it is oure consequentialism. Data equals life, if there's no more information in the body it's executed or discarded.

Informatics as style. Morphing makes montage no longer central or necessary (Manovich). By using splut screen the show suggests that there is something to be gained aesthetically by seeing more than one discrete perspective at the same time on the screen. The expressive relationship between any cultural artifact and the larger geopolitical context inwhich it exits.

Traditional montage is less effective in displaying networked rationality. Notion of differnece in space is better suited to a single plane which is then bisected one or more times. Polyptych montage.

The polyptych is a visual simultaneity. The polyptych allows multiple kinds of cross talk take place entirely within the interface. “were all connected” Robert altman rhizomatoc stems from underneath surface of earth imbrication an overlapping of tiles. This unique brand of narrative and visual simultaneity is a newly identifiable formal technique of control aociety. Serendipity of interconnection.

24 is a political show because the show embodies in its formal techniquethe essential grammar of the control society, dominated as it by its specific network and informatic logics. What is the ideology of aetshetic? Formal grammer of any given aesthetic medium. The totalizing event. Specific socio historical realisties will emerge in the reading of any cultural artifact. The subjects resposibility is to identify expressive connections between the formal construction of the medium and the socio historical realities in which it is embedded. What is the ideology of the aesthetic? It is an historical and material productive circuit which both prescribed in a stochastic if not outright manner the formal grammar of any given aesthetic medium.