Situaesthetics refers to the mechanics of a situation (the form in time of the codes that construct the context of a circumstance). The context of a circumstance is created by a set of codes that function as a framework of rules at any one point in time during the duration of the circumstance. The code is comprised of signs that signify a direction or route to take through the event. If the event is going to a restaurant, the code would be to order food and eat, or wait to be seated and then order food and eat. These codes are learned behaviors that are learned when cognition develops into the ability to follow the codes. People can follow the code only because people have learned the code by understanding the signification of signs.
These signs constitute a semiotic system of an event similar to the semiotics of a language. The semiotic system that defines the code is comprised of signs that signify other signs that in turn signify other signs ad infinitum. This is why the sign no longer signifies anything specific. It is not the sign that has meaning, but rather the network of signs that define a “signifying chain”. *2
A signifying chain found in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot illustrates a high tempo trill like what is heard on an energetic trumpet, but with events instead of tones. Situated on a stark landscape where there is nothing but a tree, two men, Estragon and Vladimir, wake up every morning and can not remember anything from the day before. They use their imaginations as reference to communicate to each other, which leads to endless arguments and fights about what really happened. In one scene, there is an exchange of hats between the two characters, Estragon and Vladimir. They have the hat of an offstage character named Lucky as they trade hats between each other in different combinations.
“Estragon takes Vladimir’s hat. Vladimir adjusts Lucky’s hat on his head. Estragon puts on Vladimir’s hat in place of his own which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes Estragon’s hat. Estragon adjusts Vladimir’s hat on his head. Vladimir puts on Estragon’s hat in place of Lucky’s which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes Lucky’s hat. Vladimir adjusts Estragon’s hat on his head. Estragon puts on Lucky’s hat in place of Vladimir’s which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes his hat. Estragon adjusts Lucky’s hat on his head. Vladimir puts on his hat in place of Estragon’s which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes his hat. Vladimir adjusts his hat on his head, Estragon puts on his hat in place of Lucky’s which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes Lucky’s hat. Estragon adjusts his hat on his head. Vladimir puts on Lucky’s hat in place of his own which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes Vladimir’s hat. Vladimir adjusts Lucky’s hat on his head. Estragon hands Vladimir’s hat back to Vladimir who takes it and hands it back to Estragon who takes it and hands it back to Vladimir who takes it and throws it down”. *3
The hat signifies a different character each time the hat is placed on a different character. At one point it signifies Vladimir, and at another it signifies Estragon all the while signifying a character not present, but who owns the hat. Before the situation with Estragon and Vladimir, the hat had a history as Lucky’s hat. Now, as if pulled from that context like waking somebody up from a deep sleep, the hat is involved in a context that involves Estragon and Vladimir. When the hat is on Estragon, the hat belongs to Estragon. When the hat is on Vladimir, it belongs to Vladimir. And when it is passed between Estragon and Vladimir, the moment it is removed from one head until the moment it is placed on the other’s head, the hat belongs to Lucky. The sign of the hat signifies a different owner and the different owner signifies a different identity that signifies a different history that signifies a different future. The signifying chain is actually a wall, considering that each ring in the chain is connected to a chain making a signifying-signifying chain. As the hat goes back and forth, it loses its reference to Lucky and then loses its reference between Vladimir and Estragon and ends up being thrown to the ground for nobody to use. The hat lost its signifying meaning and could not exist any longer on its own without the reference of Estragon and Vladimir tying it back to Lucky. No one used the hat. Then in real life, Andy Warhol picked up the hat and moved to New York and made a large body of artwork about the hat.
The signifying chain grows like grass in every direction without a center of reference; it oscillates back and forth and winds around the path of the limitless signs, drawing a graph that measures the multiplicity of codes changing from one into another like shapes of curling smoke. When the code changes, the context changes. The change from one circumstance to another circumstance within the same situation is the form of the situation, or the actoptical. (figure 1) Consider a game of tennis at the actoptical level. The actoptical is the signification of the ball by the context of the tennis court. When the ball crosses the net, its signification changes from being offensive to defensive. The ball is offensive to one player and defensive to the other player and at the actoptical point of net cross, the ball’s signifiance switches for each player. The actoptical point is where the domino effect of the signifying change begins; it continues to grow until there is another actoptical switch.
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The actlecular structure becomes a language of object interaction among both animate and inanimate objects. Animate objects use inanimate objects to adhere to the code or change the code according to the “signifying chain”(since these codes are in a constant state of flux, the adhering to the code and changing of the code implies adhering to a changed code and changing an adhered-to-code). Objects have varied degrees of their inclusion in the action and adherence to the code. This measure of adherence within the actlecular structure is called the inobherence (inobherence = inclusion * adherence). Inobtraction is the measure of an object’s inclusion in the action in a way that disregards the code (inobtraction = inclusion * disregard). Inobheraction is adhering to the code and disregarding the code. If a person uses an ink pen to write, they are inobhering the pen code; if a person uses the ink pen to tap rhythmically on the table, they are inobtracting the pen code; if a person uses the ink pen to write, but has a contact-microphone attached to the table and writes in a rhythmic fashion, they are inobheracting the pen code.
The inobherence of cognition is the waking state where patterns of neurons are organized on a framework and the firing neurons interact according to the dimensions of the framework. The inobtraction of cognition is the dream state where the framework is lifted and the neurons fire without containment. Inobheraction is the dream state during the waking state. Consider an analogy to public transportation: The inobherent bus drives along its route; the inobtracted bus does not drive its route; the inobheracted bus drives along its route as well as drives along an unplanned, inobtracted route that winds into and out of the inobhered route, always returning to the route where it left off.
The 2003 Wimbledon Finals is an inobherent action. The players adhere to the tennis code. Wimbledon’s tennis code is regulated to the depth of apparel: tennis players participating in Wimbledon are required to wear white. The inobherent players wear white. From 1988-90 Andre Agassi refused to play Wimbledon because the all-white dress code did not allow for him to wear his signature denim tennis shorts. This was an inobtracted action. The inobheracted action would have been for Agassi to wear white clothes but bring his rackets in a denim bag and use a denim towel.
In a Wimbledon tennis match, the code revolves around the ball’s placement on the tennis court. If the ball is out of a designated area, the game stops. The game begins again after the ball is in the designated area. The intention of the ball placement is to win the point by disenabling the other player from returning the ball. In the 2003 Finals, Venus and Serena Williams inobhere the tennis ball by hitting the ball back and forth within the court lines and stopping the point when the ball is hit out of the designated court lines.
For an example of a tennis player inobtracting the ball, consider a scene from Wes Anderson’s film The Royal Tenenbaums. In this scene, Richie Tenenbaum is playing in the U.S. Nationals Tennis tournament. He is losing dramatically 0-6,0-6,0-4 with 72 unforced errors. He returns a serve from the opposing player, Ghandi, by hitting the ball up in the stands away from the direction of his opponent. He watches the ball soar as though he was a golfer, concentrating to not lose sight of the ball as though it is important where the ball lands. He attempts to return another shot by throwing his racket at the ball, unconcerned with hitting the ball over the net and more concerned with hitting the ball with his projected racket. After the point he sits down on the court. He wears no shoes and one sock.*4
The inobheracted tennis match is musicTennis. In musicTennis, a music composition is used to determine every shot for the tennis player. The tennis player adheres to the code of ball placement on the tennis court. However, the ball placement is not relative to a strategy of disenabling the opponent from hitting the ball, but rather, the ball placement is relative to the intervallic structure of a music composition. It follows the code for tennis, but it also follows the code for music. The tennis court becomes a tennis court and a music staff as one unit, with the action on the court being an action of tennis and music simultaneously.
The inobherent is a contextualization of an action; the inobtracted is a recontextualization of an action; the inobheracted is a derecontextualization of an action. The derecontextualization differs from the recontextualization in that the recontextualization changes the context that in turn changes the code and the derecontextualization retains the context but changes the code, which creates a meta-context that superimposes the original context. The original context is not obliterated by the redefinition of the code, because the redefinition of the code adheres to the original context as well as adhering to the code of the meta-context.
Consider the inobtracted example of the May 1968 revolts in Paris, France. The student revolts, led by a group of artists called the Situationist International, closed down the Sorbonne on May 13 and initiated a worker take-over of the factories which stopped all commerce in France on May 14. The country was shut down until May 17. President Charles De Galle had no solution and rumors spread about his resignation. The occupiers of the Sorbonne elected an Occupation Committee of 15 members and set forth a program for democracy in the Sorbonne and absolute power for the factory workers’ councils. The Occupation Committee inobtracted the university situation and initiated the worker’s inobtraction of the factory situation. However, as the Occupation Committee attempted to promote their Marxist politics needed to continue the university/factory take-over, they disregarded the complaints of other political groups and failed to restore the function of the university that was now under their authority: the loudspeaker system, printing facilities, interfaculty liaison, security, and other administrative functions.*5 They had successfully taken over the country by inobtracting the situation, but failed in the end because their recontexuatlization of the university/factory situation into the revolutionary context did not also simultaneously strategize their codes within the context that they revolted against (inobheraction).
Consider an inobheracted action that occurred in March of 1973 that led to the formation of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Russ Little and Willie Wolfe were taking classes in the Anthropology department at the University of California at Berkeley. Through the Anthropology department, Little and Wolfe spent time interacting with prisoners at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, CA. While conducting their research at the prison, Russ and Wolfe attended meetings of the Black Cultural Association, a group of black nationalist inmates concerned with transforming American society. This interaction with inmates fueled their own revolutionary ideas and they decided to materialize these theories into practice by helping the leader of the group, Donald DeFreeze, also known as Cinque Mfume, escape from prison in March 1973. Cinque hid out in Berkeley, CA with Little and Wolfe and the three men along with Little’s girlfriend, Angela Atwood, formed the Symbionese Liberation Army.*6
The inobheracted action in this historical situation was completed by Little and Wolfe when they helped Cinque escape from prison. Little and Wolfe were students, admitted into the prison to exist within a context of education. Within this educational circumstance, the men inobhered to the code set forth by the “education” context, and simultaneously inobhered to the code set forth by the “revolutionary black nationalist organization” context. These two contexts produce codes that eventually cancel each other out, however, Little and Wolfe inobheracted the situation by using one context to access another context. The men followed the code set forth by the educational context in order to make invisible their subscription to the code set forth by the revolutionary context. They were “under the radar” of the prison guards. They inobhered and inobtracted the prison context. They inobhered the prison context by getting access to the prisoners as students; they inobtracted the prison context by helping Cinque escape from the prison.When the actions of a situation are both inobhered and inobtracted, they are considered inobheracted.
The inobheraction of Rosie Ruiz occurred in July of 1980 at the Boston Marathon. She started the race with everybody, however, Rosie left the course, took the subway, and snuck back onto the course to finish the marathon in first place with a record-breaking time.*7
Amy Goodman inobheracted Bill Clinton on her radio program, Democracy Now on Wednesday, November 8, 2000. Clinton’s people were contacting radio stations so he could take 2 minutes to encourage people to vote. Amy Goodman interviewed him for 30 minutes, grilling him with difficult questions and making him ostensibly nervous.*8
The Situationist International were a group of nonartists who inobtracted the art world by including it in the society that they critiqued viscously. However, they also inobhered it because they continued producing art objects as commoditized product.
Asger Jorn, member of the Situationist International, said, “The situation is thus made to be lived by its constructors. The role played by a passage or merely bit part playing ‘public’ must constantly diminish, while that played by those who cannot be called actors, but rather, in a new sense of the term, ‘livers,’ must constantly increase”. *9 The ‘public’ is inobhered. The ‘livers’ are inobtracted.
Jorn defines Dérive: a mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society; a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances. Also used to designate a specific period of continuous dériving. Jorn uses “ambiances” whereas situaesthetics uses “contexts”. For example, starting a traffic jam or walking around Paris with a map of Berlin.*10
Consider the number map in (figure 3). 1 and 3 are inobtracted numbers because they have different values but share the same location. Number 2 is an inobhered number because its value and its location are equal. In the number map in (figure 4), 19 is an inobheracted number because each 19 has the same value but occurs in different locations.
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Tennis exists on a horizontal x-axis and music exists on a vertical y-axis. Situaesthetics defines the event horizon as the x-, y- and z- axis; the circumstantial time line is the z-axis; a group of z-axes is the situation. The x-axis and y-axis are actions taking place on a circumstantial time line in a situation. When the x-axis, the y-axis and the z-axis are equal, it is an inobheracted actlecular and an anacodal actonic situation. The actlecular uses the value of inobherance, inobtraction, and inobheraction to adjust the subject’s contextual present with the new context (figure 2). The adjusted context includes a unique set of codes that create a composite of the situation’s codes and the codes from the subject’s historical context.
A situation is a network of events within an uninterrupted duration of time. The situation can be understood as a body; a body in time is a living body. The events that make up a situation are the organs in the body. The actions that make up the events are the tissues of cells that make up the organs. The cells are the intentions of an action. The DNA in each cell is the code that signifies the intention of the action. Every situation has a code, however every subject involved in the situation reads the code differently. The actlecular is the perception of this body. The inobherent body uses its hand to pick up an object off a table; the inobtracted body uses its foot to pick up an object off a table.
The situation never begins nor ends, however, there is depth to the event horizon of the situation that demarcates boundaries and defines an entrance and an exit of the subject’s consciousness into and out of the situation; the duration between these boundaries is the circumstantial time line. The event horizon refers to the space-time in which the elements of a situation exist. The event horizon involves both active elements and inactive elements that occur both within an action and on the periphery of an action. This is similar to the actlecular; however, the actlecular refers to only the active contexts within an action. Nonactlecular is an inactive context that does not affect an action. Inactlecular is an inactive context that affects an action and noninactlecular is an inactive context on the periphery of an action that does not affect the action.
A parallel to consciousness defines the actlecular as conscious memory; nonactlecular as unconscious memory; inactlecular as an unconscious memory that affects consciousness but remains unconscious; noninactlecular as an unconscious memory that does not affect consciousness but becomes conscious. As the intention of an action re-codifies the context in turn morphing the signifying chain onto a different dimension of signifiance, the actlecular, nonactlecular, inactlecular and noninactlecular mutate into and out of one another until the subject’s cognition stabilizes the event horizon through understanding the elements of signifiance; this stabilization is reset to non-understanding every time the event horizon changes. The depth of the event horizon depends on the subject’s cognition because the semiotics of the situation can only exist within the subject’s memory. The limits of the subject’s memory limit the subject’s perception; perception limits the recognition of elements in a situation and limits the depth of the situation. Perception organizes patterns of events and memory organizes events into patterns.
There are three memory states: echoic memory and early processing, short-term memory and long-term memory. These memory states relate to the situaesthetics of experience within a situation: echoic memory = actonic; short-term memory = actlecular; long-term memory = actoptical. Stockhausen introduced the concept of three time levels of music experience: form, rhythm and meter and melody. “form, which is everything that happens between, say, eight seconds and half an hour; rhythm and meter, which is everything that happens between one-sixteenth of a second and eight seconds; and melody, which is everything that is organized between one-sixteenth and one-four thousandth of a second”. *13
Snyder mapped these experiential distinctions to the three types of memory, redefining the musical models to connect them to cognition: form, melodic and rhythmic grouping, and event fusion. Echoic memory (event fusion) translates vibration information represented by nerve trains located in the ear, eyes and on the skin. The electrochemical nerve impulses represent the vibrations as continuous raw data creating an echoic memory that decays in less than a second. The echoic memory goes through a “perceptual categorization” that extracts features from the continuous data and encodes similar features into discrete categories or events. The events are organized into groupings based on similarity and boundaries between single events are detected. *14
Long-term memory (form) is comprised of conceptual categories called schemas that are activated when the groupings of echoic memory have similarity to the schematic groupings. These long-term memories consist of inactive content (unconscious information) that must be retrieved from the unconscious. Some of these memories become part of conscious awareness and others remain in the unconscious. These “semi activated” memories that remain in the unconscious continue to affect consciousness by creating context for experience in the form of expectations and semiotic data that can influence the subject’s actions within a situation. The memories retrieved from long-term memory that become part of conscious awareness persist as short-term memory for an average of 3-5 seconds . Rehearsal brings the information back into short-term memory from long-term memory that is then passed back to long-term memory after 3-5 seconds. When the information returns to long-term memory, it is added to the schematic groupings or causes modifications of similar memories. Therefore, the next rehearsal of short-term memory will retrieve a modified version of long-term memory that was modified by the previous short-term memory rehearsal. The fact that memory creation and retrieval is based on similarity, the present tense becomes more similar to the past after the present tense has occurred (in the future). Perception of the present is a recollection of what one has experienced in the past; the recollection of the past is changed by perception of the present. There exists a feedback loop of memory and perception because long-term memory filters what enters conscious awareness and conscious awareness filters what enters long-term memory. *15
Cognition is not a pure semiotic system because memory is altered from experience, causing signs to mutate into one another thereby erasing reference to the original. The relationship of sign to sign exists, but not the relationship from sign to sign if the signs exist in different circumstantial time lines. This is a necessity for survival. Cognition generalizes and abstracts. Consider the Borges story, “Funes His Memory” which illustrates a scenario where cognition is a pure semiotic system. The young Ireneo Funes was bucked off a horse. “When he fell, he’d been knocked unconscious; when he came to again, the present was so rich, so clear, that it was almost unbearable…his perception and his memory was perfect…Funes remembered not only every leaf of every tree in every patch of forest, but every time he had perceived or imagined that leaf”. *16
Situaesthetics mutates with time and grows and dies and changes direction within the context of one subject as well as among many contexts involving many subjects. Its form is a mirror to cognition, creating a meta-cognition of the situation as though the event had a mind only existing among the subjects involved but not belonging to any of them. Objects from one situation reappear in another situation and the actions that are used to identify the objects are checked for similarity the same way the brain processes information based on what is perceived. The actions that share actonic values can be superimposed. It could be tennisMusic. It could be musicTennis. It could be a game of golf based on the stock market. It could be a bike ride through Oakland, CA based on a knot of tape measure. When two or more situations are divisible by the same actoptical value, an actonic translation uses the elements of the multiple situations to form one situation: the cause of one situation creates an affect of another situation within the same experience. Situaesthetics is the translation model that allows anything to be based on anything else.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Wes, director and writer. The Royal Tenenbaums. California: Touchstone Pictures, 2001.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: Semiotext[e], 1983.
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting For Godot. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1954.
Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Goodman,Amy. www.democracynow.org. November 7, 2000.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books, 1979.
Knabb, Ken, ed. The Situationist International Anthology. Caliornia: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981.
Proy, Gabriele. “Sound and Sign”. Organised Sound 7 (2002): 15-19.
Snyder, Bob. Music and Memory, An Introduction. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2000.
Stockhausen, Karlheinz. Stockhausen on Music. London, New York: Marion Boyers, 1989.
Stone, Robert. Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army. New York: Robert Stone Productions, 2004.
“Rosie Ruiz Tries to Steal the Boston Marathon”. www.runnersworld.com, July 1980.
