The event/scene duality, then, is to run parallel to information processes sifting out noise from communication systems. Posing the problem this way (which must be done just to ensure GA’s competitive superiority to post-cybernetic theoretical systems) allows us to notice that constructing a scene has a filtering function, insofar as it sets up an inside and an outside. The symmetry established on the originary scene filters out any extraneous mimesis—that is, any mimetic action not tending toward the appropriation of the central object. Everyone knows exactly what the others are doing. Anyone coming late to the scene would either fit right in or render himself irrelevant, his movements essentially random. But this perfect information becomes a surplus of information, increasing entropy exponentially: everyone knows everyone else wants the object, but no one knows who is going to get it and what the others and oneself will do if the drive to appropriate it continues. Everyone seems capable of anything, and so no information can be derived from the scene. The aborted gesture of appropriation, then, restores that fleeting condition of perfect information in a more sustainable form. From here on in we can always know that we might at least be converging through signs upon the same object in inverse proportion to the degree in which we are converging upon it with the aim of possessing it at the expense of the other. The clearest information then is when we are most certain that appropriative gestures have been suspended—but this information becomes intelligence insofar as we can include in our representations the entire spectrum of possible advances upon the object. The richest conversation, then, would be one in which both participants are completely aware—increasingly aware, as the conversation proceeds—of all that they might do to each other, while also being increasingly certain that they won’t do any of it. It’s in this running up and down the scale of possible but suspended actions and counter-actions that we can see the event “profiled” against the scene.
Scenic/Event Intelligence
Scenic/Event Intelligence
Scenic/Event Intelligence
The event/scene duality, then, is to run parallel to information processes sifting out noise from communication systems. Posing the problem this way (which must be done just to ensure GA’s competitive superiority to post-cybernetic theoretical systems) allows us to notice that constructing a scene has a filtering function, insofar as it sets up an inside and an outside. The symmetry established on the originary scene filters out any extraneous mimesis—that is, any mimetic action not tending toward the appropriation of the central object. Everyone knows exactly what the others are doing. Anyone coming late to the scene would either fit right in or render himself irrelevant, his movements essentially random. But this perfect information becomes a surplus of information, increasing entropy exponentially: everyone knows everyone else wants the object, but no one knows who is going to get it and what the others and oneself will do if the drive to appropriate it continues. Everyone seems capable of anything, and so no information can be derived from the scene. The aborted gesture of appropriation, then, restores that fleeting condition of perfect information in a more sustainable form. From here on in we can always know that we might at least be converging through signs upon the same object in inverse proportion to the degree in which we are converging upon it with the aim of possessing it at the expense of the other. The clearest information then is when we are most certain that appropriative gestures have been suspended—but this information becomes intelligence insofar as we can include in our representations the entire spectrum of possible advances upon the object. The richest conversation, then, would be one in which both participants are completely aware—increasingly aware, as the conversation proceeds—of all that they might do to each other, while also being increasingly certain that they won’t do any of it. It’s in this running up and down the scale of possible but suspended actions and counter-actions that we can see the event “profiled” against the scene.