Any Space Whatever

New Philosophy for New Media, an article by Mark B. N Hansen, discusses an idea about the way in which new media is beginning to transform in the way people can interact with it... i think. to be honest i kept getting very lost in the reading and had to read every sentence several times over again to try and decipher what he was trying to argue, which made it very difficult to get through. everytime i thought i was beginning to grasp what he was saying, a incredibly long and convoluted sentence would through me off and i'd have to back track several sentences to try and get my brain back in order. to be entirely honest, the difficulties i had in reading it caused me to heavily procrastinate in writing on the subject. my mind was struggling to connect the dots, but at the same time, it was influencing the way i considered my surroundings as well as my digital work and artwork in general. something about the reading really hit deep, which caused me to both think about it obsessively, and try to ignore it completely simultaneously. i still don't really know how i feel about it.

but, he did bring up some interesting ideas. the most important one he seemed to focus on was Deluze's Any Space Whatever theory, which i took rather literally in interperating it. Deluze defines it briefly as follows:
Any-space-whatever is not an abstract universal, in all times, in all places. It is a perfectly singular space, which has merely lost its homogeneity, that is, the principle of its metric relations or the connection of its own parts, so that the linkages can be made in an infinite number of ways. It is a space of virtual conjunction, grasped as pure locus of the possible. What in fact manifests the instability, the heterogeneity, the absence of link of such a space, is a richness in potentials or singularities which are, as it were, prior conditions of all actualization, all determination…

now, to be honest, that didn't really clear it up for me. especially when Hanson was insisting that this space could be found digitally. i found it hard enough trying to apply it to the cinema aspect, then the comparison from that to digital really just tossed me into the abyss with regards to understanding this concept.

I did find the artwork he was referencing very interesting, and thinking about it in such a way as is discussed really opened doors for me with regards to possibilities of interactions with artwork including physically causing someone to manipulate their body and point of view to try and connect with your piece. i've been thinking about that very much since  reading the article, and it has caused me to consider the way i want people to interact with my own work eventually. I've never really thought about how people will interact with my work on a physical level, only ever visual or emotional.