Linien schaffen Zwischenräume auf dem Papier.

The drawing comes from below,
lines create spaces on top of the paper.
A diversion is held in check.
Diversion (1)

64 Sprünge, das Ende liegt mit einem
Sprung am Anfang – eine Art Schleife.

64 jumps. The end falls into the start, a kind of loop.
(Compare: Rösslisprungzeichnungen, 
Netzwerkgraf, Switzerland, 1771)
Diversion (2)

Eine Webstruktur – ein Text. Bögen

und Unten – ein Bild für die Wand.

A woven text. 
Arches are excited what comes next. 
From top to bottom - graffiti.
Diversion (3)

Pflüge und Ochsen ziehen Furchenraster ins

Feld. Von Außen nach Innen und von Innen

nach Außen – für Eselsbrücken – eben.

A plough draws furrows into the field.
Inwards and outwards - mnemonic rhymes.
Diversion (4)

neun Felder. Es ist ein Quadrat dritter Ordnung,

The Magic Square. 9 fields are marked.
Field 5 is not taken. You see a third order.
Diversion (6)

A transfer - from place to place.
Machines give and take signals.
Diversion (7)

Under a cloud there is changeover around
nothingness. Nine is all one.
Diversion (8)

The pattern of the drawing rises from
a tablecloth. Flags come from the street.
Diversion (9)

Um Fünf herum. Umwegforschung

»Every relation entails a translation or
distortion [of] the constituents [of the thing].«


(Harman 2015: 69)

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? Or is it much more about correlational aspects of existence? The fact that we always »

« things only with direct reference to our respective situation becomes clear at many points in the processual present: as long as I have no use for a certain device or for a thing that remains indeterminate, it does not exist for me either. It may then be present, as a physical entity that I can trip over, that demands space, but it is, 

to use Martin Heidegger's words, not at hand

.
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, was subjected to the systematic-calculating logic of 

, measured, gutted and ultimately translated into a »new« no less physical form, which, although it may not seem so, is fundamentally part of the experience of the glasses. The relief was thus inherent in the glasses all along, slumbering as unactivated potential under the solid surface - 

 - and could only be brought to light because the measures of machine perception were in turn allowed to »turn freely«, 

the human corrective was reduced as far as possible to the impulse-giving, advisory role of the discourse partner

. What I now hold in my hand is not so much an object as a process, which I am only able to approach heuristically through selective objectification. A process that, according to an explicit thesis, requires a human observer to step outside himself in order to be understood. Abstracting from oneself, enduring the machine-induced irritation, is an important part of understanding. But what does it mean to understand this process? How is it even possible to throw my own everyday modes of perception over the proverbial heap in order to grant an advance to a different logic of execution? An explicit thesis could be that the 

 enables entry into the process that is the thing itself.
What about the role of the human being in the face of the increasing computerisation of the living world? Christian Doeller's work CYTTER (

) playfully finds new answers to the pressing questions of peculiar agency and sustainable interpretative sovereignty in techno-social power structures. The objects fed into the system are measured according to a system-immanent logic that differs from the human-intuitive conception, sometimes seriously. A colour code reveals the function of the individual elements: blue for 

. This colour coding is arbitrary in that it does not directly interfere with functionality, but merely encourages an unfolding narrative on the part of the human observer.
The identity of objects is only revealed to us with direct reference to our own existence. We recognise a game cube with its six sides and the obligatory eyes as a component of many games because we are used to reducing it situationally to its function for our particular execution. In many ways, a conceptually well-embedded cube disappears behind an overarching narrative. Would I now have to call the artefact I hold in my hands after it has been translated / distorted by the CYTTER a cube as well? Or would the possible cube have negated itself with the decontextualisation? In any case, the glasses I entered only provide the necessary perspective in a figurative sense.

Where does nothingness begin? It begins with the expectation, the expectation of an (indeterminate) something. At the same time, everything that is to be recognised must first be defined and contextually outlined. At the beginning of recognition, therefore, there is a no less complex process of translation, as exemplified by CYTTER. But from the beginning: first a brief outline of the meaning of flowing time as well as the basis of what is to be understood as translation in the course of this essay.

The concept of translation is as old as life itself: the biochemical process of (endo)symbiosis can be understood as tantamount to 

the offer of interdependence from one side and the agreement of the other to actually enter into a union of this kind.

 What finally unfolds is a basic communication in which (optimally) 

both sides benefit, or at least neither side is adversely affected.

 (Cf. Margulis 2018) The collaboration of two (or more) molecules, for example, may result in the emergence of an entirely new entity that itself follows a different logic, »as when hydrogen and oxygen interact to form water.« (DeLanda 2011: 1) These emergences have their origin in relational events. Thus, it could be said that chemical reactions and their respective »end products« truly express without exception the fundamental importance of relation for phenomenal being.
The same applies to the objects that provide the source material for the processual installation of CYTTER.datalab: in the course of the performative installation, these (supposedly) clearly describable, visually recognisable objects are (counter)understood as mere snapshots of a much more far-reaching process. ) heuristic that makes it possible to establish a narrative that arranges itself along a usually linear timeline. Via the (re)path of digital genesis, it becomes possible to approach the pressing mystery of existence; what it means to recognise things for what they are is ultimately always accompanied by claiming contextually constituted interpretive sovereignty. »It is necessary that what is should be determined in some way so that it can become, and then be determined in some other way. This must be this and not that or anything else, so that this can become that or anything else.« (Meillassoux 2014: 99) The context in which a thing as such tends to present itself is thus permeated by a fundamental contingency that goes hand in hand with a continuous actualisation in which translation - as a potential (not yet realised) - must always already be thought of. For »if something is, then it must be contingent.« (Ibid.: 102)
In a different and yet similar way, James Beniger's (1986) thinking focuses primarily on control, but he means a form of intersubjective processing (of data) (the situational transfer together with adequate adaptations, i.e.: translation), which in its consequence leads to the result that we have »learned« to interpret as a network for the purpose of (hierarchical) control. 

Control, in Beniger's sense, is ultimately a way of describing the organisation of living matter.

 To now transfer this principle of the living to non-living (in borderline cases even non-material) actors is a relational act; 

.
»As speed increases and seeks to replace 'control' of the environment, the real time of interactivity finally replaces the real space of physical activity« (Virilio 2015: 134). Paul Virilio's view of the present as a state of affairs determined by (process) speed is also significant in the context of CYTTER.datalab: for example, the time that the system takes or has to take in order to reach an 

 is like a slow motion that enables a particular reflection on the discursive construction. The discourse here is a negotiation between human-profane sense-making and techno-logically measuring sensing.
The origin of the 

 of the present is thus to be sought more than ever (as it were, always already) in the relation. The relationship between social and technical reality sees itself as largely hybrid, so that the discourse that seems necessary to conduct must be considered ontologically relevant. A different relationship between the actors involved would result in a different (physical) configuration of the present. Thus, the objects so centrally asserted by object-oriented ontology are merely expressions of a certain relational interplay: the fact that they know how to assert themselves in their respective places is largely due to their mutually individuating tendency: they can never achieve a truly individual state in purely logical terms.
In Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, the following lines can be found: »The structure of the Being of Zuhandenem als Zeug is determined by the referrals.« (Heidegger 1967: 74) In other words, the utility is determined to a large extent by the environmental parameters to which the stuff is exposed, with which it can/must interfere in order to ultimately find a niche in which it knows how to produce its effect. In the context of CYTTER, the evaluation of presence and accessibility changes insofar as the generated data sets condemn the input object to »mere« presence, while at the same time rendering it as accessible for the further process under the sign of a sophisticated techno-logic.

Sensing & Sense-Making /
Behaviour & Experience

»We [...] only experience ourselves 'in time'«

The epistemology of sensors or (actuator) sensor systems, i.e. the question of how they perceive the world, enrich it with (subjective) meaning and thus participate (equally) in the genesis of the (human) lifeworld, is becoming increasingly urgent 

. In contrast to human individuals who construct a consistent narrative along the linear timeline, this connection is by no means so obvious in relation to technical systems. The principle of the encyclopaedic database, in which spatial as well as temporal relations generate differentiated meanings, is the prominent principle of a digitally structured context - and thus also that of the technological parts of the (life) world. (Cf. Manovich 1999) The synchronisation between these two fundamental principles, the narrative and the database, is also dependent on manifold translation processes. According to Juri Lotman (1990), the »semiosphere« thus created - on the side of human understanding - is to be understood as a constantly hybrid state - a veritable »continuum« - in which meanings tend to oscillate and in which no static can be discerned: everything ultimately remains in an originally relational processuality. CYTTER illustrates this fact impressively: it is always possible to add another feedback loop, to render the translation even more extreme. No two translations behave the same; not even those of CYTTER. The »predetermined breaking points« - especially the low-tech parts of the technical system that are susceptible to wear and tear - provide a certain degree of execution-oriented contingency 

that ensures that no two results behave absolutely the same

. We are always dealing with unique specimens, even though the respective result is not completely arbitrary, i.e. follows a comprehensible path.
The subjective reference of the use of information, among other things, also calls for »sense-making«. Making data, once acquired, versatile also means enriching it with (subjective) meaning. The close connection between »action« and »meaning« (cf. Dourish 2001: 107 f.) is a guarantee for a development that can claim to be »progress«. Sense-making also and especially has a temporal component that ultimately recurs to a consistent narrative: experiences made become the basis on which, in turn, new information can be categorised and incorporated. At the same time, new data always carries with it the potential to shake this foundation, so that it can be divided into a time before and a time after the respective 

. Sense-making is thus closely linked to the topos of interpretation, which in turn is an important component of (successful) translation. Interpretation can thus be understood as »making narrative sense of what one is supposed to be up-to-date with.« (Couldry & Hepp 2017: 114). When I try to relate the two situational ends of the excerpted 

 of the CYTTER.datalab (i.e. my glasses and the relief) to each other, I, as a deficient human being, am dependent on coming up with an interpretation in the form of a story. The heuristic brevity of the sequence is so revealing because it allows for an understandably consistent narrative (in time). The more convoluted a context of meaning is presented, the more likely problems of comprehension arise, which can extend to resignation: »To the extent that we lack ways of making sense of [the temporal] change (of configuring it with our other ways of making sense of the social world), a problem of figurational order arises.« (Ibid.: 120)
Translation also has a prominent place in relation because it is a necessary part of symbolic interaction. The anticipation that is necessary in the use of 

symbolically composed (medialised) communication

 requires (at least) two-stage translation: first, a situational target state must be defined, then the path to this state must be transmitted in decoded form; the effect of the entered »data« on the recipient must always be taken into account. A first translation. Finally, the evaluation of the effects must have a corrective effect on the initial input; this is the second translation, which can be successively followed by several such iterative cycles.
In this sense, perceiving always means making a fundamental distinction, distinctions between affordances that exist simultaneously and contingently to each other. In this respect, humans and technical systems are very similar: a technical sensor can communicate a qualitative difference in the here and now, similar to how the receptors of the human body transmit current data from the environment to the brain. »[T]he mind functions no differently than a calculating machine,« Merleau-Ponty (1966: 34) says with direct reference to the work of Edmund Husserl. What seems to be true at first (naïve) glance, however, turns out to be a fatal misjudgement on closer inspection: where in humans the sense-making process helps to transfer what is perceived into a (sense-making) narrative that helps them to adjust their behaviour in relative resonance to what they have previously experienced, on the side of technology there is the purely encyclopaedic recording of data points; one looks in vain for a superordinate temporality with reference to machine behaviour. (Mechanical) behaviour is ultimately dependent on a (pure) observational performance from the outside, whereas (sensual) experience has a temporal-relational component that refers to the reflexive mental life. 

This is the basis for anticipation, which in turn influences a necessary change in behaviour.


The sense-making process is conveniently divided by McCarthy & Wright (2004) and Wright et al. (2008) into six discrete yet significantly interrelated phases: 1. anticipating, 2. connecting, 3. in- terpreting, 4. reflecting, 5. Interpreting, 4. reflecting, 5. appropriating, 6. recounting. (Cf. McCarthy & Wright 2004: 124 ff.) This form of (human) sense-making enables (social) subjects to embed their experiences in a narrative and thus to enter into a circular learning process in which the respective stages are directly related to each other and thus know how to mutually condition each other.
Whether I still recognise my object exposed to the CYTTER after it has passed through the installation depends largely on how much I am prepared to engage with the logic of execution. In the end, it remains irrelevant whether I fully understand the immanent set of rules of the CYTTER; the narrative that knows how to settle on the basis of this digital-cultural phenomenon is the necessary baseline - the keynote - to uncover a process of sense-making, as it is always at work in situations of everyday perception.
As Graham Harman's initial quotation already suggested, what constitutes the perceptual world as such is a discourse between things: »Crucial to everything is [...] the dispute between hidden objects and the distorted or translated forms in which they appear to other objects [including people, J. K.]« (Harman 2015: 148). (Harman 2015: 148) Even if object-oriented ontology (OOO) has some shortcomings, such as the bad habit of putting objects at the beginning and always referring relations only to them instead of, on the contrary, letting objects emerge from relational processes, it still seems extremely fruitful and consistent to give both distortion and translation their prominent place - albeit with a different impetus.
Where in the everyday context: »'Data' must be rendered 'actionable' [...], which means selecting and excluding, 'rul[ing] out, render[ing] invisible, other potential futures'« (Couldry & Hepp 2017: 136), ambiguous alternatives must (be able to) be thought of as a vanishing point in the context of artistic research, as exemplified by CYTTER.datalab. Where the volatile domain of the social is to be brought into an objective data form, there is also always the possibility of misinterpretation or the danger of misunderstanding or even situational incomprehensibility. (Cf. ibid.: 131) An emancipatory practice can thus only be about detecting these moments of non-functionality and placing them in a reflexive-productive manner 

against the (Western / Eurocentric) idea of absolute objectivity

. And it is precisely this state of affairs that is so succinctly addressed by the culmination of CYTTER. Our everyday perception is put to the test, it is countered with a technocentric kind of sensing, so that coagulated modes of perception can be broken open and the constructed parts of our common (life) world can once again be fed into the discourse as active potentials.
»Words like 'touch' or 'movement' are made for people [...], for people and their human world and their human bodies« (Krafft 2020: 57). A system as represented by the CYTTER, on the other hand, inevitably creates its own idiosyncratic ways of accessing the world, or rather it worlds in a different form. And through this exemplary unfolding experience of contingency, it is possible to make one's own, seemingly self-evident, modes of perception fluid, to put them to the test so that a new ecological consciousness can unfold.

Die Vermessung einer neuen alten Welt

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.

According to legend, when Galileo Galilei, who had taken up medical studies in Pisa around 1580, observed the swinging chandeliers in the local cathedral, 

. This discovery is also legendary because it provided the precondition for the first accurate pendulum clock, i.e. the first precise clock ever, and perhaps also anchored something like 

the idea of an objective time in the thinking of modern Europe

. To determine the duration of the pendulum's movement, Galileo, in the absence of a timepiece and as had long been customary among natural scientists, used his own pulse. However, the astonishing regularity of the pendulum's motion, which he had just established through the regularity of his pulsating body, neatly discredited this conventional means of time measurement: for now, suddenly, with the astonishing regularity of the pendulum in view, the irregularity of the pulse had become evident, which is said to have prompted Galileo 

to turn the idea of time measurement around and instead to determine the pulse by means of the uniform motion of the pendulum, for the benefit of medicine

. This reversal of the way of looking at things also set in motion a readjustment of perception: the movement of the pendulum, which could be translated into a physical law because it was regular, determined and therefore calculable, now made it possible to measure the contingency of the pulse, its situational responsiveness to the environment or condition of the living body, which had been tolerable until then. The pulse was suddenly too imprecise, dependent, an expression of all the unpredictable effects on the body. The pendulum thus also paved the way for tracking down the reasons for the contingency of the pulse by means of precise machines.
It was the inventor and physician Santorio Santorio who put Galileo's idea into practice 

when he invented the pulsilogium in 1625 at the latest

. This is an instrument based on the pendulum for measuring very small changes in the pulse that escape the senses of the physician. 

It was Santorio, incidentally, who modified the Galileo thermometer so that it could be put in the mouth

 - just one of many larger and smaller devices in the slowly growing machinery of evidence-based medicine.
However, it should be noted that even the precision of pulse measurement with 

the pocket watch commissioned by John Floyer around 1707

, which he had made specifically for measuring the pulse, was still based on the medical practitioner using the sense of touch to feel and count or record the pulse. The tactile (self-)touch by a human being remained the basis for making sense of the pulse; the machine was only an accessory.

Human touch, as it had long been handed down and indispensable in the art of feeling the pulse, received extensive competition from machines with the emergence of physiology as an exact natural science at the beginning of the 19th century. Physiology relied on the experimental investigation of both animal and human bodies and their nerve pathways, their modes of reaction, all kinds of substances, intrusions and stimuli, in order to find out something about their commonalities and specifics in this way, in order to mathematically-physically measure the living. This required the »search for reliable objective characteristics through the application of chemical, physical and physiological techniques«, 

as Karl von Vierordt, physician and professor at the first independent chair of physiology in the German-speaking world, put it in his theory of the arterial pulse in 1855

whose history can be traced back at least to 7th century BC China

, was to be turned into a modern science of pulse counting and recording. And for this purpose, according to Vierordt, a reliable objectivity was needed, and that meant: a technical externalisation, not only of time, but of feeling itself. This externalisation of feeling, however, had to be just as sensitive to the process of pulsation as it had to be insensitive to other processes - such as breathing, vibrations, noise, lack of concentration, distraction, and so on. For this purpose, Vierordt designed a technical device, a machine for the precise measurement and direct recording of the pulse, which he called the »sphygmograph« and 

 of the sphygmograph is placed on a superficial, not too small artery, each expansion of the artery corresponding to the cardiac systole raises the lever arm

 upwards, while it sinks when the artery contracts. The end of 

 thus describes a circular movement which, for the same pulse size, increases the closer the application point of the pulse is to the fulcrum 

 of the lever. If the hair were simply attached to the other end of the lever arm 

, the tip of the hair would have to move away from the paper even with only insignificant deflections of the lever arm, so that the pulse movements could not be properly written down on the paper [...]. The examiner, who can stand, sit or lie down, places the arm horizontally under the plate p in such a way that the longitudinal axis of the arm is perpendicular to the rod A. Since the pulse must necessarily be recorded many times enlarged, it is essential that the arm remains still during the experiment [...].

Vierordt's explanations make it clear that under the more than complicated application of the measuring instrument, which had to take into account many subtleties and interfering factors, the now approximate art of feeling the pulse was transformed into an exact »technique of pulse examination«. This was based on the simple fact that the living body can also be understood in its actual »pulse mechanics«, i.e. 

 that can be experimented with and measured quantitatively. The pulse could thus be recorded and calculated, and normality and regularity could be precisely distinguished from deviation and change. 

What until then and for centuries had had to be expressed semiotically through images, metaphors and descriptions, integrated into taxonomies and narratives, could now be represented in numerical series, diagrams and curves.

The basis for the diagrammatic transformation, in which the pulse beat became a curve and produced evaluable series of numbers, is a translation process that is worth dwelling on briefly: 

the small plate p, of which Vierordt writes, passes on the very fine movement of the pulse via a »feeler lever«, and thus sensomechanically, to a kymograph, a device that inscribes the movement of the feeler lever on sooty paper as a track.

The paper in the kymograph, in turn, is mounted on a rotating drum that must be driven as smoothly as a clock, for instance by means of a spring motor.

 In this apparatus, three translation processes take place: a sensomechanical one from the pulse to the platelet, a mechanical one from the platelet to the lever, and a graphic one from the lever to the rotating paper. The result is a paradoxical immediacy: because 'only' technology is interposed, and not the human sense of touch, now discredited as unreliable, because the result is a standardised representation that is largely immune to chance or subjectivity, which can be experienced visually and calculated precisely, the sphygmograph comes a little closer to nature. In the face-to-face of the doctor with the patient, which functioned via a finger-to-hand, a sensomechanical-graphical machine infiltrates, which becomes the anchor point of a different kind of conversation: A rarely conscious, 'only' tangible, very fleeting bodily process suddenly becomes apparent for all present (and even for the future), becomes a point of reference, even opens itself up to (self-)comparison. While it may still be necessary to evaluate and discuss the implications of the curves, the authority of the word now hangs on the aegis of the curve and thus the number. And Vierordt emphasises that the sphygmograph is by no means only good for examining pulses, but also respiratory movements, heart movements or even »

the movements of the cerebral membranes etc. must be easily recorded graphically by means of the sphygmograph

«, a trend that had long since begun with modern physiology and had thus found its medial principle, on which Étienne-Jules Marey, among others, was then able to build and further develop in a smaller, more manageable, more refined way. Vierordt was also by no means the first to dare to invent a technical device for recording the pulse. 

He was preceded by a series of experiments that can be traced back to ancient Greece and hint at a violent tradition of hair-raising experiments, vivisections and torturous animal testing.

The sphygmograph as an exemplary innovation for systematically getting closer to physiological events can be used to study the sensitisation of media technologies. Only in the combination of a recording device - the kymograph, which Carl Ludwig had already used for his first physiological experiments in 1846 - 

and the idea of pressing a small brass plate directly onto the artery (and not inserting a glass tube into it, as Ludwig apparently still did)

 did a reliable device come into being. Its clou consists in the use of a sensor, namely the simple brass platelet p, which, through the way it is integrated into the apparatus, acquires a specific sensitivity for fine mechanical movements and thus becomes the decisive interface between the fleeting bodily process and its recording. It is only through the appropriate sensory element that the possibility arises of translating the otherwise fleeting, non-conscious and above all situational process of the pulse beat into a curve directly at the moment of occurrence, and this in real time, without having to damage the body or hinder the process.
Three important shifts result from this machinic arrangement of body process, sensor and recording apparatus: firstly, the sensor makes it possible to ensure a subjectless link between body process and media technology that appears neutral, leading to an independence of the measuring instrument. If the art of feeling the pulse was also characterised by numerous aids - be it breathing techniques, counting aids, amounts of water or mechanical watches - now the processes of feeling, sensing and recording can be taken over by a device that only needs to be used correctly and whose recording needs to be interpreted. From now on, and with all the further inventions that add other sensory components to the kymographic recording, training on the device is required. The human component only frames the process of measurement, it ensures the application of the instrument and the interpretation of the results. However, even the humanless recording by the machine still needs humans, as mediators, to operationalise the machine. But it now releases them from their subjective dependence on their sensory sensitivity, because the machine becomes the guarantor of objectivity.


Secondly, something is taking place here that could be described, following Joseph Vogl, as a »denaturation of the senses

«. This does not necessarily mean the replacement of the human ability to feel by an apparatus with a sensor, but above all the computerisation of the sensed process. The sensory translation is a transmission; here, an event becomes a signal and can be represented as a mathematical function, which can be shown as a series of numbers, a curve or a diagram. In Vierordt's reflections on his results, however, it becomes clear 

that it is the sense of sight that retains sovereignty over the medical fact, simply because it can grasp with a glance everything that deviates in the series of numbers or in the curves

.
Thirdly, this also works against a change in the culture of sensibility: Whereas previously an introduction to the art of feeling the pulse was necessary, one's own sense of touch had to be refined, the right moment had to be found, the interpretation had to be learned, now it is a matter of reading out the application, the correct handling of the apparatus and the recognition of deviations from the standard curves and numbers. The focus is no longer on the body, even if it is in the form of one's own body as a medium, but on the apparatus and its result. From touching to applying, from traditional knowledge to dedicated know-how, which can know smaller and finer differences without having to take into account the medical practitioner's sense of touch, while presupposing the careful handling of the sensitive apparatus.

Vierordt's research into bodily processes and his inventions for measuring them were important for the emergence of physiology as a science, 

but they were in the context of a comprehensive flourishing of experimental bodily research, especially in the German-speaking countries of the 19th century

. Machines and instruments of all kinds emerged to measure movement, force, nerve stimuli, to record and scientifically determine sight, touch, smell, hearing and feeling. It was no coincidence that this development coincided with the beginning of the age of the laboratory. In the laboratory setting of scientific research, the laws of physics, chemistry and biology could be empirically addressed, and the measuring instruments, tools and machines were no longer merely stored and collected to be brought out for demonstration purposes. The laboratory created an instituted space for the actualisation of knowledge wrested from nature and tickled out by experiment. Here, substances, equipment and machines, organisms and organs, procedural knowledge and the craftsmanship of many hands could come together to create facts in situ. The laboratory was thus also the place where knowledge was achieved through the skilful arrangement of subjective experience with those objective technicisms of which Vierordt was so convinced. Of course, this required an arrangement in the literal sense that could bring the bodies in the room into a suitable rhythm with the equipment and experimental objects. 

Justus Liebig's chemical laboratory in Giessen, for example, which was set up in 1839

, indicates how central it was to distribute the experiments over different tables and to spread the tables around the room in order to allow both division of labour and accessibility. In Carl Ludwig's Leipzig laboratory complex, which opened in 1869 as the Physiological Institute and of which floor plans were even made, the separately linked complexity of the room structure becomes even more apparent: microscopy, work with mercury, vivisections now have their own rooms, the storage of birds, fish, rabbits, dogs and horses takes place in the annex and in the cellar. Everything gets its designated, demarcated place in neighbourly proximity, while people move from table to table, from room to room, putting equipment into operation, making records, bringing experimental objects, substances or material into place. The laboratory begins to pulsate with its own rhythm.

The laboratory aimed to create controllability, to exclude disturbances, to minimise the noise of everyday life for the researching bourgeois elite

. Animals were given their place away from the concentrated research so that their calls and movements were not distracting. Helpers had to move unnoticed from room to room, for example to stoke the fire, procure materials or tidy up. Children were not allowed in, and for a long time women were only used as demonstration or experimental objects. The same applied to people with disabilities, from poorer classes, from maternity or orphanages, prisoners or inmates of closed institutions, and People of Colour, especially in the so-called colonial territories - 

the laboratory revolution of the 19th century brought with it a surge in animal and human experimentation, in which the disenfranchisement of living beings was increasingly exploited and justified by so-called scientific progress

. The laboratory was thus not only a place of exclusion, the laboratory was also that institution that placed a logic of research above the welfare of living bodies and began to trait them with its substances, devices, procedures and machines. It was only here that a largely controlled environment could be created to investigate the supposedly endogenous differences of sensory, neurological, motor or immunological capacities of different groups of living beings or to find their commonalities. And this required appropriately sensitive instruments that objectified and justified the measurements, that potentiated the observation, and the handling of the instruments had to be carefully trained to apply them to the bodies. The laboratory was the space where training and potentiation of the sensitivities of instrument and researcher could take place, while exploiting the sensitivities of the animal and human bodies being researched. Here, in this paradigmatic place of Western modernity, an equally paradigmatic subjugation of the sensitivity of the body to a new, machine-borne culture of sensibility took place.

Puls Maschine Labor Empfindlichkeit

Some thoughts on Christian Doeller's 
CYTTER.datalab

»How do machines see the world? In his artistic research project CYTTER, Christian Doeller deals with the question of how sensors, data filters and digital production processes change the way we look at ourselves and our environment.« 


(From the invitation card to the project) 

At the end of February 2021, I receive an invitation email to participate in the 

 project and go to the website. You can register and then send an item by post to the data lab. This object then goes through a series of translation steps in the lab with different digital and analogue intermediate results. The core of the data lab is a network of machines (scanners, milling machines, drawing machines, programmes and also manual reproduction processes) through which an object can circulate for any length of time and receive new digital and analogue realisations again and again. In fact, after a series of steps, the translation process is stopped and the object sent in receives a new analogue form, which is sent back to the participants by post. Today, 1 April 2021, I received my transformed version.

The following thoughts are not a review or even a critical appraisal of Christian Doeller's project, but rather a further translation. Part of the nature of digitisation is that it does not follow the rules of the object to be digitised, but its own. No digitisation process can capture all the properties of an object; in a sense, it does not get involved with its objects at all, it cannot do so on principle. It therefore doesn't matter which object we digitise, the surrogate we create primarily reveals the structure of the digital, not that of the analogue object world. This became clear to me when I was thinking about which object to send to Doeller's data lab. Even the specifications for the object (1 pc, max. 30 cm × 30 cm × 30 cm, max. 5 kg) are indebted to the digitisation process and the associated machines, perhaps still to the postal service's conditions of carriage, but certainly not to our universe of objects. The machines and the rules and processes inscribed in them automatically generate digital existences of the object. What is thematised here is the process of objectification itself, rather than the concrete object. The concrete object is indeed the cause and reason for the initiation of the process, but the process itself does not ask whether it does justice to the object. In the same way, I do not ask whether I am doing justice to Christian Doeller's project with my text. His project is the trigger for my thinking, but I follow my own interests and do not trace the intentions of his artistic research project. I translate his project into my own thinking space, so to speak. Just as the transformed object I received back today is a translation that no longer bears any apparent resemblance to the noodle I sent on its way weeks ago, my text makes no attempt to establish superficial correspondences to Christian Doeller's project. It is a translation, not a reflection, precise description or mathematical mapping. Between our two objects of exchange - the noodle and the piece of linoleum floor - there are hidden but clear, reconstructible relationships; the translation of Christian Doeller's project into my text is less stringent, in that it is non-digital. But there are undoubtedly connections. 

In the common sense, »object« is a term for everything that confronts the subject (the cognising I) in the external world. It is therefore about things in our environment that we can perceive, that trigger sensory stimuli, that we can look at, touch, sniff and identify as an entity. So we want to initially disregard imagined objects that we can only imagine. At the latest when it comes to digitalisation, we will realise that it simply doesn't work that way with objects. The objects that we manufacture industrially today or measure and produce scientifically in laboratories must be defined differently. In addition to the concrete properties, there are a number of abstract ones that are implemented primarily in the network of machines. With handcrafted objects, the manufacturing process could still be described as an interplay of tools and materials with the knowledge and skill of the craftsman. Craft skills have evolved slowly and have often been changed only gradually over long periods of time. The more automation advances, the more drawing processes and algorithms now come to the fore. The human being recedes to the same extent. Objects of the digital world are above all a network of relationships that exist between sign systems in computers. This goes so far that algorithms on microchips, for example, develop the next generation of microchips without engineers being able to understand the individual decisions in detail. 
Even if it is machine-made, our initial noodle is still a real object that we can easily identify and perceive in our environment. An object that is even small enough that we can put it in an envelope and send it by post. On the website I see other objects that have been sent to the lab. So far there are 26, which have been translated in a total of 182 steps. I see mostly everyday objects there, a pen, a bicycle helmet, a pen holder, a piece of money, the leaf of a houseplant, a table mirror in plastic foil, toys, a bicycle inner tube, and so on. All things with which we surround ourselves, which are directly tangible, already within reach of our hands, when we are asked to send »an object« to a laboratory. Not an everyday request! There is a story to some of the objects that went to the lab. From the short descriptions on the registration form, we can see that they are connected to something for their owner, i.e. personal signifiers. Whether this history had an influence on the lab process they were subjected to, we don't know. My guess is no. Upon arrival in the lab, the objects lose their previous context and enter a new one. They lose their origin and meaning for their former owners, becoming scientific objects where only the physically measurable manifestation matters. 
So I ask myself, what happens to my noodle when it ends up not in my stomach but in the lab? Normally we eat noodles. Because of the previous cooking, the noodle absorbs liquid, becomes bigger and soft. We chew it up and in the stomach it is broken down into components that can be used by the body, the rest is excreted. Through the digestion process, the noodle disappears. Not its physical components disappear, the atoms and molecules become part of other processes, but the noodle as a perceptual unit disappears. Our laboratory noodle, however, is now not cooked and eaten, but digitised. Digitising is therefore something different from digesting. The noodle is not dissolved into its components, but it serves to produce something second. After digitisation, we not only have our original noodle, but also a digital image. This poses a problem: What is the relationship between the digital image and the original noodle? What actually happens in this process of digitalisation? That something is happening is already evident in the objects of exchange. I send away a food item and get back a piece of linoleum flooring that has been processed with a milling machine. How are these two objects connected?

Objects are entities of the material world. In other words, things in the outside world to which our perception, our cognition and also our actions can be directed, but which we assume exist independently of our contents of consciousness. As soon as we begin not only to perceive an object or perform actions on it, but to write about it, a strange doubling already comes into play. There is the object and at the same time a text, signs that are not part of the object but nevertheless connected to it. Semiotics deals with the structure of such connections, with the relations of signs and their meanings. Whereby signs themselves are not objects, but schemata of action, especially digital signs! The 

, the supplementary sheet to the object, which had to be filled out and sent to CYTTER.datalab together with the object, also brings a duplication into play, it demands a description in order to define the objects in more detail. With such descriptions, the detachment from the object and its duplication begins. A further step in determining objects more closely on the basis of signs is to assign or deny them quantitative and qualitative properties. The objects are classified on a scale from 1 to 10, at the ends of which there are two opposing terms. Is the object rather flat or plastic, rather hard or soft, rather reduced or complex, etc., properties, in other words, that we can determine, even if only subjectively, but still halfway comparable, by visual or haptic inspection of the object. Quantifications are the essential mechanism for digitisation. The supplement itself is also digitised and thus acquires a dual existence. How the contents of the PHYSIOLAR, i.e. the descriptions and quantitative characteristics created by the participant, enter the further digitisation process remains hidden. Like most things that cross a laboratory threshold. Many characteristics that we measure in the laboratory are no longer accessible to direct perception anyway; they are quantities that can only be determined with the help of technical devices and complex machines and discussed in technical terms. On a laboratory analysis of my blood that I have just been given, I read that the platelets in healthy human blood should be between 140 - 160 per nl, the haemoglobin between 13.7 - 17.5 g/dl and the leucocytes in a range of 4.20 - 10.10 per nl. I see that my values are in the desired range, but what do these values mean? How did this division into normal and abnormal come about and how can such values be determined? These qualities of blood, which are not directly accessible to human perception, point to the fact that empirical knowledge today develops primarily in the confrontation with objects in complex technical environments. 
According to Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, the »epistemic things« of science are first formed in complex experimental arrangements in the laboratory. This process is neither inevitable nor conclusive. Therefore, not only planning and control determine everyday laboratory and research life, but also improvisation and chance. In a second step, what is recognised in the laboratory can itself become a technical object with which further epistemic things can be investigated. Laboratories are therefore always places of objectification, i.e. they first produce the objects they pretend to only measure. The cultural meaning of the word blood is therefore completely different from the meaning that the modern medical practitioner attaches to it. In most cultures, blood is a symbol of life and sacrifice, whereas in modern medicine it is a complex system for identifying diseases and planning medical interventions. Today, determining the blood count is a standard process in medical laboratories. The individual blood values, once as epistemic things themselves the result of research processes, are condensed into medical vocabulary and now realised in technical equipment. The blood values are inseparable from the laboratory equipment that measures them. Empirical findings coagulate into methods and practices that are held together by new terms and implemented in technical equipment. These technical settings can then be used to investigate further research questions, a process that knows no end. 

Until the 1980s, the places of computing, the computer centres, already resembled medical, chemical or biological laboratories on the outside. At the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, where I wrote my first small programmes for calculating machines as a freshman at the Institute for Mathematical Machines and Data Processing, the computer centre staff sat behind glass, in air-conditioned rooms, shielded from the users. Only the operators, a very skilled profession at the time, had direct access to the machines. The user programmes on punch cards were packed into boxes suitable for the machines and pushed through slots into the machine room. From then on, they were placed in the laboratory processes and removed from the user's control. One never knew when the operator would take the box out of the slot, feed the contents to the punch card reader and start the process. The results printed on continuous paper were then pushed back into the anteroom through other slots. In my first attempts, all I got back were error lists, most of which were longer than the programmes themselves. These data centres have disappeared with the spread of PCs. Today it's mostly cloud computing that still takes place in air-conditioned data centres. We only get to see these places in photos and usually don't even know where they are. Communication with them is entirely through networks. When we talk about computer labs today, we usually mean something different from these high-performance computer centres. Namely, rooms with a manageable number of networked computers. In addition, there are usually a number of other machines that serve as interfaces between the digital and analogue worlds. Or we see apparatus in which processes take place that are controlled by the computers. While computer technology has become smaller and smaller over the years, interface processes remain stuck in the analogue. The digital is pure structure and thus not bound to a specific material or physical realisation, whereas analogue material processes cannot be reduced in size at will. The size and structure of the interface technologies, the sensors and actuators, i.e. the devices that realise the reciprocal transition between the analogue and digital worlds, are half arrested in the analogue world and half in the digital. 
What makes laboratories special, however, is not what is apparent, their equipment and architecture, but what takes place in them. What takes place is not self-explanatory, nor can it be decoded and understood by mere observation. By their very nature, laboratories are black boxes. Part of the nature of the black box is that it cannot be decoded by its input/output behaviour. I send in a noodle and get back a plastic engraving. This process does not in itself allow conclusions to be drawn about the internal structure of the laboratory. I could try to test whether it is a trivial black box. In that case, every time I send a fusilli noodle to the lab, the same object would have to come back. But as long as I don't have an understanding of the laboratory processes, I can never be sure that I won't suddenly get something completely different back the (x + 1)th time, even though I have received the same thing x times. Christian Doeller tries to counter this inaccessibility of laboratory processes in his CYTTER installations through »

«. Here, visitors can enter the installation (in times of Corona via livestream) to take a close look at everything and ask questions. Lab assistants are on hand to answer questions about the CYTTER system. How is it decided which path an object takes through the lab? When is it »finished translating«? What influence do the specifications in the PHYSOLAR have? On the basis of which parameters do the machines work on the translations? Is there a »back«? How do the algorithms involved work? What role do humans play in the data lab? This is an attempt to dissolve the distance between visitors/participants and the lab, to take them into the world of the lab and bring them a little closer to the processes that are perceived as inscrutable. But even this has its limits. Although individual processes are symbolised in the CYTTER.datalab, slowed down in time and rescaled spatially (for example: the CYTTER.datalab as a walk-in circuit board) in order to make it easier to understand the processes, residues always remain, which Doeller calls »invisible aspects of the visible«. Why is it that these blind spots, which are important for the translation processes, cannot be eliminated through explanation and walking? What is actually the basis of the laboratory assistant's conviction that he knows more than the visitor? And where does this lead end and his own ignorance and blind spots begin? These questions have to do not least with the nature of human understanding. This nature includes the blind spot, a central figure in second-order cybernetics, which shows our fundamental inability to attain complete knowledge. 
What we call understanding is always a mixture of what is visible, measurable, tangible in the external world on the one hand and our abstract concepts, ideas and terms that exist only in our thinking on the other. Gaps in our explanatory models - theories - have their roots in the difference between doing and understanding. Things that we can do do not necessarily mean that we have understood them. A prehistoric man could learn very quickly, by copying, the hand movements necessary to make fire. Yet there was no deeper understanding of combustion processes, he had no theory of fire. In the same way, a digital layman could be taught a series of actions in the computer lab, with which he could transform objects, for example. Anyone who performs the actions with sufficient precision and in the correct order will arrive at the same result, regardless of whether they understand what they are doing or not. Here we also find the origin of algorithms and automation, in the unreflective repetition of processes once understood and functionalised. The programmer tries to penetrate a process to such an extent that he can reduce it to a scheme of action. The action pattern, i.e. the algorithm, itself knows nothing about its actions and has no understanding of the context of its actions. In laboratories, such action schemata are typically distributed across technology and humans; parts are implemented in technology, others are executed by humans. These interlocking processes only make sense when we build explanatory models of the overall system and its context and not just string actions together. Theories must not only be able to explain the perceptible and measurable phenomena in the laboratory, they also span the possibility space for action in the laboratory together with practical knowledge and experience. Essential elements of our theories are abstract concepts, quantitative quantities and fictitious images that allow us to plan our actions and predict results. It is not decisive whether the ideas used are »correct« in an absolute sense. Final certainty is not achievable here anyway; what succeeds are always only improvements. Previous ideas are replaced by new ones that better explain phenomena and with which we can subsequently open up new spaces for action. We know, for example, that the images we have of atoms and molecular structures are auxiliary constructions. Nevertheless, on the basis of these defective ideas, we have been able to develop a variety of new technologies and medical therapies that work well in practice. Our explanatory principles inevitably have gaps and we invent causal chains, concepts and images, Heinz von Förster would say »particles«, to bridge these gaps. For him, »particles« are always solutions to problems that we cannot solve otherwise, i.e. inventions to be able to explain certain problems at all. These elements of our theories and explanatory systems that are not understood and not questioned further cannot be eliminated, only shifted. Our many different explanatory systems are not buildings on eternal foundations, but rather floating platforms that must support themselves. The laboratory specialist's understanding is also a fabric that contains misunderstood elements. Although he has better explanatory models than the uninformed visitor and can therefore do more, his scope of action expands on the basis of his explanatory models. In order to have the same understanding of the processes as the laboratory specialist, the laboratory visitor would have to acquire the knowledge of the laboratory assistant, i.e. implement his imaginative model in his own head. It is clear that this is usually a long learning process that cannot be shortened at will. Every technical term conceals abstractions, complex references and experiences that have often been honed in over many years of practice. Practice labs, in which best practices are applied on an assembly line, are to be distinguished from research labs, which investigate open questions. Research labs follow the principle of objectification described above. 
Epistemic things, i.e. explanatory models, theories and knowledge that is only in the process of becoming, exist not only in the natural sciences, but also in technology and the arts. Technology, which is not concerned with knowledge but with poiesis, i.e. making and producing something new, struggles just like science to find terms that are gradually sharpened and eventually become the standard vocabulary of the next generation of engineers. At the beginning, there are often imprecise questions in a still open space of possibilities for action. Signs (formalisms, terms, methods, algorithms) are always used in this context to capture repeatable actions and, conversely, to enable them. Vague ideas and fragile processes must first be stabilised in the laboratory. Only in this way do best practices slowly emerge, i.e. the entire network of concepts, methods, procedures, devices, theories and descriptions solidifies. Epistemic things, however, exist just as much in art. In this sense, the artist's studio has always been a laboratory. Whereby aesthetic phenomena can also be stabilised without exact scientific causal knowledge. Even if the artistic tools and apparatuses are not necessarily designed to deliver precise measurements or to serve the production of scientific knowledge, but rather the production of aesthetic artefacts, it is also a matter of stabilising and elaborating still imprecise ideas, hunches and unstable processes. An individual artistic style, which is sometimes formed, is always the result of an intensive examination of the artistic material. At the moment, the concept of artistic research is opening up the methods and objectives of certain artistic practices in the direction of science. Traditionally, technology and science form an extremely successful team. Technical development is dependent on scientific knowledge; conversely, scientific research without technology is no longer conceivable today. While the exchange between scientific research and the technical sciences - i.e. between knowing and doing - is firmly established and they both promote and challenge each other, artistic research is still largely excluded from this. In science and technology, artistic research is often still viewed sceptically, although art and technology have at least as strong a connection through poiesis as science and technology do through the goal of knowledge. Thus, at the moment, artistic research is above all an open field of experimentation, borne by enthusiasm and the conviction of the protagonists that engaging with the processes of research will pay off aesthetically, i.e. above all for art. 

Digital data and algorithms not only fundamentally intervene in the social practices of technoscience, but are now shaping social action as a whole. Not least because of this, their methods and contexts are also becoming interesting for art. Computers are first and foremost semiotic machines, i.e. technology for processing information that is in turn encoded in signs. These signs serve above all to enable repetitions of actions. The fact that events can be repeated at all is not only the prerequisite for science, but also for every form of prediction and planning. Without repetition, orientation and goal-oriented human action are not possible. Every method, as well as every algorithm, tries to capture the essence of a repeating process without it having to be exactly the same every time. What is repeated can be captured in very abstract terms and does not have to show itself on the surface of the processes. One of the first human techniques, for example, was making fire. Through long periods of trial and error, of repeated failure and success, successful methods have evolved that allow anyone who knows the sequence and execution of the action steps and applies them to make fire. The entire context, such as place, occasion, performer, even fuel, kindling, etc. can be different each time with limitations, but in the end a fire still burns. Our ideas of what fire is have changed fundamentally over time and become more and more abstract. A formerly mysterious process of mystical power is now explained as a chemical oxidation reaction in which abstractly defined concepts such as oxygen, fuel and heat must be brought into the right relationship. The multitude of ways to make a fire is held together by a unified theory that presupposes an understanding of abstract concepts and can explain why and under what conditions the different methods work. 
Here, then, we find the essence of the digital, in the naked skeletons of methods and theories. Algorithms are sequences of signs, and they also realise nothing more than pure manipulations of signs. They are maximally abstracted forms of life-world processes that only gain meaning through their context, i.e. their embedding in a real environment. This immediately leads to a central question, namely how sign processes that are empty of content can maintain a connection to the world at all? In many ways, is the first unsatisfactory answer. The process begins with what is called digitisation, i.e. the transfer of sections of reality into the world of signs. Digital data are always decontextualised and reduced images of real conditions. If the thing to be digitised is not itself a sign (a number, a letter, a word, etc.), a reduction inevitably takes place. A non-reductive digitisation would have to contain all the information necessary to produce an exact copy of the noodle at the atomic level. Since this only succeeds in science fiction, the common methods of digitisation are always reductions. For example, a noodle, which has colour, shape, taste, ingredients, etc., is reduced to its outer form. And even this can only be sampled incompletely, whereby differences from the original and artefacts come into play. Data is always decontextualised because although signs can stand for something in the external world, they do not encode their context. It is not possible to read from the digital data who made the noodle, who sent it in, whether it had any meaning for me, etc. Contextual information can be encoded in other character strings, but these can neither be complete nor provide information about their own context of origin. If one wanted to encode the contextual information, the problem would continue at the next level, in a process of character generations that cannot be completed. At the other end of digital processes, data is used to produce analogue objects or to control processes in the outside world. Here the reverse process takes place, a recontextualisation. The naked data, the digital surrogate of objects or processes are again phenomenologically charged and embedded in a real-world context. The object becomes visible again, palpable, smellable etc. and now enters into relationships with other objects once more. Not only does a new object emerge, but also a completely new context. I had taken the fusilli noodle out of a package whose remaining noodles have since ended up in the cooking pot. The exchange object, on the other hand, which has no proper name apart from the identification number PHYSO_011 assigned to it in the lab, is on the shelf, where it is trying to relate to the books. Yesterday it was spontaneously used as a coaster for the teapot, the noodle would hardly have been any good for that. Between the digitisation at the entrance and the concretisation at the exit, digital data can undergo any number of edits, i.e. further sign manipulations. These manipulations follow the laws of algorithms, but their meaning can only be set from the outside. And, of course, input and output can be short-circuited so that an object and its digital representation alternately undergo a series of successive transformations. In the case of purely digital transformations, we speak of a digital chain. For example, data can first represent the construction drawing of a house, from which data on static requirements can be calculated more or less automatically in a second step, i.e. in a further drawing process, and these in turn can form the basis of detailed material and construction plans, from which control data for the production machines can then be calculated automatically. At the beginning there is an idea, at the end there are the individual parts for the finished house, and in between there is a sequence of symbol-controlled transformations. 
Let us return to the question posed earlier about how the digital signs in the machine maintain their connection to the world. It should be clear by now that digital data and algorithms are always part of a network of relationships that give them their meaning. The same number can be an account balance, a distance, a temperature, a time and much more. And even if this is fixed, i.e. the number stands for an amount of money, for example, even then it only acquires meaning through its further use and can be judged completely differently depending on the context. The network of relationships that generates the meaning of the signs is, generally speaking, distributed across people, digital machines and environments in which the respective processes are embedded. Such networks of meaning can be realised in very different ways. At present, it can be observed that ever larger areas of meaning generation are being delegated to algorithms and thus removed from humans. But it makes a difference whether the account balance of a customer applying for a loan is assessed by a bank employee or by an algorithm. In the same way, it makes a difference whether the decision on the likelihood of a criminal's recidivism is made by algorithms on the basis of static evaluations of thousands of files or by a judge on the basis of the files coupled with knowledge of human nature and experience. 

We humans can obviously only perceive and judge situations and events from certain perspectives. Once the perspective has been chosen, conclusions are inevitably drawn that are consistent with the chosen perspective, i.e. rationally justifiable and purposeful for concrete situations. The choice of a perspective necessarily entails that all aspects that are not apparent from the chosen perspective are neglected. Other perspectives therefore lead to other results. We can adopt different perspectives one after the other and also combine them in a further step, but adopting one perspective always means reducing, abstracting and decontextualising. We call side effects that which is not part of a perspective of observation. That which shows itself unintentionally and disturbs the beautiful model or the flawless world view. Digital processes are machine embodiments of this principle. Algorithmic processes that are executed embedded in a certain context always realise a certain perspective. If the context changes or situations arise that were not foreseen during development, side effects become apparent. The entire history of technology could also be told as a history of side effects, as a history of consequences that its developers did not have in mind. Algorithms necessarily only care about tiny sections of the world. For them, only what data from the environment or the network are made available for and/or what is implicitly realised in the routines of the software exists. Laboratories also implement perspectives. The network of apparatus, procedures, the knowledge of the employees, the orders of the customers, etc. in a medical laboratory realises its own web of meaning that must seem mysterious to the outside layperson. And even the complex predictive models for the development of corona infections that are currently with us on a daily basis are analyses from certain angles. Observations of corona events from other perspectives lead to different evaluations. That is why we currently see completely different proposals for action for the same initial situation, depending on whether they come from virologists, economists, educationalists or sociologists. Perspectives, seen in this way, always manifest themselves in professions. 
What can this mean for the »non-profession« of the artist and artistic research? Artistic research, like art in general, is not committed to one perspective, it can keep the play of perspectives and the handling of knowledge and its processes of creation open and thematise and question them with its means. Undoubtedly, this will produce different results than those presented by science and technology. For example, artefacts, disturbances and side effects, i.e. what engineers and scientists consider undesirable and try to prevent, can be elevated to a guiding principle in an artistic process. All human practices and all areas of social action, thus also technology and science, contain open, as yet unused possibilities for action and thus aesthetic potential. The potential of these voids can be revealed by questioning, deconstructing and expanding established approaches.