Will someone soon extend objectology into the realm of “musical objects”? Here’s some (long but awesome) food for thought:
Introduction:
Bach BWV1001 on “Goldberg Baron Vitta” Guarneri Del Gesu (pictured above):
You can listen to the rest of the concert on YouTube (just need to find all the videos, they are there – go to Kitchen’s page directly) – look for these:
Bach BWV1001 on “Goldberg Baron Vitta” Guarneri Del Gesu
Bach BWV1002 on “Castelbarco” Stradivarius
Bach BWV1003 on “Betts” Stradivarius
Bach BWV1004 on “Brookings” Amati
Bach BWV1005 on “Kreisler” Guarneri Del Gesu
Bach BWV1006 on “Goldberg Baron Vitta” Guarneri Del Gesu
The picture ( or movie ) of an object is an object but another one. It is a big mistake to say though that a picture is merely a bitmap or merely consists of pixels, because this would violate the law or irreductions ( exercise to the reader: why? ). To honor it as a singularity we have to acknowledge that it is a virtuality and potentiality, it has powers and capacities, it is a set of poltergeists etc. etc. This alone grants that the picture of a violine is real and not being something that just exists for us.
Getting there you are, young objectologist. To the important conference you will go and prove your excellence to the Master Objectologists you will, but not yet.
Are old objectologists a contradictio in adjecto?
Actually objectology can be tracked back to Alan Kay who once stated “everything is an object”. It wasn’t meant so much to be the inital big bang of OOO though but rather a design principle for his programming language Smalltalk. Now almost 40 years later many people have acknowledged that “objects have failed”. The young guys today are hot about pure functions, categories, taming imperative through monads, formality, type systems and rigorous analysis. They get sick and angry when dreaded metaphors are thrown on them. So, just prepare for the next big thing in philosophy.
Well, it’s time to leave. I have to work out my ontology.
The earth-shattering significance of, say, a cloud withdrawing infinitely from my telephone (and mutatis mutandis for the phone) still has yet to dawn on me like a thunderous hammercord from the heavens, but I’m hoping for my moment of enlightenment and transcendence. (Mumbles incoherently and fades to silence…)
Actually, significance is not so significant and it is only the real cloud that widthdraws from your telephone much like you do from both, not your various qualities. (Mumbles incoherently and fades to silence…)
Alright there, people, I feel like you are infringing on my territory here (“making fun of objectology” territory)…
…unless you are trying to teach me a lesson and make me feel what it is like when someone takes over your “project” and runs with it in some unpredictable direction. Aha, how clever! Must go think about it for a long time.
Disclaimer!
“Making fun of objectology” is a very different project than “having fun with objectology” which refuses to ride on the now fashionable wave of anti Graharmanism.
It is a serious research project which seeks to unify Graharmanism and onticology using the central concept of withdrawn differences which make a withdrawn difference. So an object exists from one occasion to another by withdrawing differences which produces other differences to be withdrawn.
Dude! “Graharmanism” kicks my sorry “Objectology”‘s ass – it’s got everything, including a reference to Shamanism (or at least it looks like it).
As the Master puts it, “all relations are relations” (did anyone explain the meaning of tautology to him?) so “making fun of objectology” and “having fun with objectology” only seem different but there’s only a degree of difference between them. Why? Again, to cite the Master: “Why shouldn’t there be?” or “Because I want it to be that way” or “Because I like it to be that way and because you are wrong” – awesomeness prevails!
“Because I want it to be that way”
Don’t we all goggelmoggeling our way through life, the universe and everything? Where is the evidence we don’t? Your equally crazy friends that agree with you?
Look, Graharmanism is a dropout program for postmodernists who want to get real but are reluctant to give way to science because scientists or rather philosophers of science are sooo… arrogant and also a bit evil because they want you to run around and say “these are atoms” or “these are neural representations” and force you to admit “I’m an illusion” which makes you really depressed when you are trying it for a while. Hence irreductions. Graharmanists care for apples being real apples, not just atoms. They make the sun shine and the cat enjoy mices.
“Don’t we all goggelmoggeling our way through life?”
Of course we do, but most of us don’t pretend that this sort of stuff (below) is for real and that we are to take it seriously:
Here’s an appropriately Iowan analogy. Imagine a jello salad. Inside the gelatin is a maraschino cherry. A spoon enters the gelatin. The spoon and cherry relate, but those relations are mediated by the gelatin.
Now abstract a level and understand the salad as mere object, the cherry a real object and the gelatin a sensual object (nevermind the spoon for now). The encounter between spoon and gelatin is unlike that between spoon and cherry. The cherry grasps spoon only via gelatin, and vice versa.
In my application of Graham’s theory of vicarious causation, if we take the salad as an object, then I take the sensual relation itself as an object too, with its own sensual and real properties. Thus, the spoon/salad relation is also an object, which, say, with which the hand holding the spoon enters into yet different relations. Further, the human bearing the hand, or salad bearing the cherry, has its own perceptions (that’s what I’ll call them) of the spoon, and those perceptions themselves are object just like any other.
I mean Bogost looks like the most same of them all, but still – I don’t know if this is a joke, but I’m thinking it is not…
Clear like cherryjelly.
No I don’t believe it is a joke and I also like it a bit. There is a subtext which you might miss when you read such a text by Ian Bogost. In programming “ontologies” are used to model data and describe data by other data (metadata). Take a look for example at this semantic web paper. It isn’t at all odd to talk about objects which are self contained entities and send signals to each other and respond to events and relations which are also objects and so on. I mentioned the Smalltalk programming language above which was the first one to model programs in terms of those particular ontologies.
Here is a WP article about ontologies and how they are used in computing science together with many links to particular models. Bogost uses Harmans ontology much in this way.
I think that the very idea that no one noticed objects before is ridiculous – it only takes one person objectologists do not consider an outright enemy to point it out and they are pissing hot tea (as we say in Russia):
I declare Peter Gratton to be clever (I’m sure he will be advised to take it as an insult)
How sensitive are these guys?