Digital Cartography in Smooth and Nomadic Spaces: A Fabulation

Taking the ideas of Smooth and Nomadic spaces of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari from their 1980 book, A Thousand Plateaus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia, this performative fabulation of a talk will attempt to create lines of flight* through, to and from the edges of the digital realm.

Below is an assemblage of some of ideas the talk may or may not fabulate, it will try to be rhizomatic.

*(Cartography) 'What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real … The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can be drawn on a wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a meditation.' (Deleuze & Guattari 1987:12).

*(Smooth and Nomadic) '...each time there is an operation against the State – insubordination, rioting, guerrilla warfare, or revolution as act – it can be said that a war machine has revived, that a new nomadic potential has appeared, accompanied by the reconstitution of a smooth space or manner of being in space as though it were smooth … It is in this sense that the response of the State against all that threatens to move beyond it is to striate space.” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987 385–386)

*(Fabulation) 'Deleuze discusses Bergson’s concept of fabulation (or ‘story telling’) in the last few pages of Bergsonism (Deleuze 1991, 106-112) where it is portrayed as a mechanism that produces an interval within society through which ‘creative emotion’ might arise. Elsewhere, Deleuze uses the concept of fabulation more specifically in relation to a political project (as bridge between the critical (work) and clinical (author)). See, as indicative, the essay ‘Literature and Life’, where Deleuze suggests that “It is the task of the fabulating function to invent a people” (Deleuze 1997, 4). (O'Sullivan 2016:90)

*'A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (French: Mille plateaux) is a 1980 philosophy book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. While the first volume, Anti-Oedipus (1972), sought to "short-circuit" a developing "bureaucracy of analytic reason" in France (between Left political parties and psychoanalysis), the second was intended to be a "positive exercise" in nomadology.[1] Brian Massumi's English translation was published in 1987, one year after the twelfth "plateau" was published separately as Nomadology: The War Machine (New York: Semiotext(e), 1986). Like the first volume, the second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia was politically and terminologically provocative.[2] Deleuze and Guattari discuss concepts such as the rhizome, performativity in language, smooth and striated space, the State apparatus, face and faciality, the Body without Organs, minority languages, binary branching structures in language, deterritorialization and reterritorialization, pragmatics, lines of flight, assemblages, becoming, strata, War Machines, signs, and coding.[3] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Plateaus)

*'Line of flight, a term developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus (1987), designates an infinitesimal possibility of escape; it is the elusive moment when change happens, as it was bound to, when a threshold between two paradigms is crossed. “Line of flight” is Brian Massumi's English translation of the French “ligne de fuite,” where “fuite” means the act of fleeing or eluding but also flowing, leaking (1987: xvii).' (TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly)

Digital Edge celebrates boundary-crossing digital art, design & teaching from the University of the Arts London

The free London event will bring to life some of the university’s most exciting projects and programmes, with demos, talks, videos and music.

Hosted by Fred Deakin (Professor of Interactive Digital Art) and David White (Head of Digital Learning) at Somerset House the event will be a showcase the best of UAL digital activity for an audience from across the university and the wider creative industries.

Attendees will have the chance to learn about exciting digital projects and emerging forms of practice.