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Subject: <nettime> Limbo
From: t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>
Date: 16 Jun 1998 07:03:44 +0200

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[This is the transcript from one of the nicer interactive pieces
I've seen: an aphorism broken across the names of nested direc-
tories, which keeps you quickly clicking away to read it. Every
line is a dir name. At one point the hierarchy splits, which is
the second section below ("hypotext"). Dunno who made it. -Ted]


Limbo
Just as in Dante's Inferno
the gates of hell
open upon
the first rim of despair,
Limbo,
so the modern computer,
upon start-up,
launches into
an electronic limbo,
the operating system.
Dante's vision of hell
presented a
mechanical morality,
where, within each circle,
of hell,
the retribution
for specific sins
was extracted
by specific techniques
of torture.
Each computer program
torments digitised quantities
to transform them into
aesthetic qualities.
"The commodity
is quality as
a use object
and quantity as
an exchange value.
This formula,
which is considered
as a renewal
of scientific
concepts by
dialectical
materialism,
would however
be purely static
and useless
if it does not
deal with the
the passage of
quality into quantity
and vice-versa."
Asger Jorn
As quantity,
digitised
information,
is merely
a magnitude.
But through
certain numerical
patterns embedded
within it,
this quantity
interacts with
another quantity
to produce
a perceivable
phenomenon
characterised as
an aesthetic
quality.
The mathematical relationship
between two quantities reveals
itself as quality.
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