As a part of the Quantum Words Series first in a series of architectonic objects: THE TABLE
Table Stories
When one contemplates a table, two thoughts often emerge–What is on the table? (how is the table set), and Who is at the table? (what is being discussed). These two questions imply both, scenario and materiality. If materiality is informational, and the table is a part of an informational planet, what happens when objects are perceived as clouds?
A table in the digital is never empty, quite the inverse. There is evermore data on the table. It is raw, and unformed, constantly in the process of curation–Indexing, normalising, squeezing, pushing, trimming, arranging. These constant actions form lists of information, make rows and columns. In doing so they write more data, and more information. –A new table. This new table is never fixed–it’s dimensions are not predetermined, they are pre-specific. It’s rows and columns depend on mediation, its position depends on curation. Together they perform a kind of “personal ritual,” articulating each other in multiplicitour ways, always similar and different–the dimensions grow, the table grows–any variable, any position.–A new table. Mediation makes masks, and curation normalises, reduces. They articulate each other. –A new table.
Single intuitive iteration. Verbs are at the table: to curate, to mediate, to measure, to cypher, to code. Nouns are on the table: information, data, elements, indexes, letters, lists. Complexity rises. Everything starts to relate to everything and to itself. It appears in circles and spirals, it grows, mutates and multiplies. There is more and more information on the table, there are more and more tables in the data, there are more and more dimensions to the table. It flourishes in many directions, and leaves multiple traces, –and yet another table is called upon to keep track, to record, to make analogies between them. A virtual diary; counting and relating all current dimensions of the table; constituting new measures, articulating new associations, affects and connections. These measures do not measure the table, they measure its many shadows; its different objectivities.
The table is being set. Information is being encrypted into artificial alphabets; new elements that are a part of an old tradition. New letters change as the stream flows, they add up dimensions to the table. Constituted from letters, numbers, and other elements, they formulate a cypher; the interplay of what is on the table and who is at the table. It is objective and collective, and in being so the table is never settled. It is more and more full, yet the cypher encrypts and makes the information invisible. The table has both appearances at the same time; it is full and empty, depending on who has the cypher. These are a new kind of elements–complex in their appearance, inhabiting different temporalities, acting as clouds.
Clouds are gathering, a play appears on the table. It is a board game where the board in itself is a movement. The game codes are like contracts, open, but in need of articulation. At least for a moment. The next moment can be coded differently. Streams and indexes are curated, information and indexes are measured, letters and information are mediated, elements and letters are coded. An expression of cyphers, constituted Avatars, coded scenarios, simultaneous situations, avatar face articulations, moves and motivations–a game. Multiple plots are played at the same time, each avatar is an articulation of many faces, different moves, and motivations. In one move it is a celebration of contradictions in motion, in the next it is a harmony in stasis. A place where forms meet in streams of formalities. What is on? what is around?, what is off? and what is in? – A different table, a new cypher, an unexpected play.