CYTTER.datalab

What is the essence of identity? What constitutes the essence of a thing? Is it the functional context in which it sees itself embedded? Is it about immanent markers of identity? My once so useful reading glasses, which always provided the necessary perspective, are now an abstract relief, or rather, they now possess a relief-like quality; this has been wrested from them. The object, i.e. the glasses, were subjected to CYTTER's systematic-calculative logic, measured, gutted and finally translated into a »new«, no less physical form, which, even if it may not seem so, is fundamentally part of the experience of the object.

At the end of February 2021, I receive an invitation email to participate in the CYTTER.datalab project and go to the website. One can register and then mail an object to the data lab. This object then goes through a series of translation steps in the lab with different intermediate digital and analog results. At the core of the data lab is a network of machines (scanners, mills, drawing machines, programs, and also manual reproduction processes) through which an object can circulate for any length of time, receiving new digital and analog realizations over and over again. In fact, after a series of steps, the translation process is stopped and the object sent in receives a new analog form, which is sent back to the participants by mail. Today, April 1, 2021, I received my transformed version.

The drawing comes from below, lines create spaces on top of the paper. A diversion is held in check.

What if the digitised object is not static, inanimate, supposedly fixed in space and time, a thing, but a breathing, pulsating body? Something that lives, that is fleeting, that changes every moment? How does the machinic capture modify what is perceived as a body? And what does it take to machinize the body and its movements in the first place? An investigation.