photography

[Dave Monroe]

In the novel Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon uses the term
"pornography" to denote modes of representation and reproduction which
fragment continuous experience into discrete, quantifiable, replicable
units -- modes of representation/reproduction which simulate fluid
movement while relying upon discontinuous, static elements. Pynchon's
Gravity's Rainbow focuses chiefly upon two specific varieties of such
"pornography": calculus and film. It is clear, though, that Pynchon's
definition of "pornography" would apply equally well to digital
information processing (or, indeed, to any mode of representation
which can be mechanically reproduced).  Like a movie, which
approximates continuous motion by speedily scrolling through a series
of discontinuous static images, and like pornography, which relies
upon the dismantling of a (usually female) body, digital technology
splinters unified experience into an array of pixels, samples, or
bits.

http://www.2street.com/cyborg/porn.htm

http://www.2street.com/cyborg/top.html

The societal effects of the technological exhumation and circulation
of dead matter are reinforced by the implementation of mathematical
"Analysis" in Gravity's Rainbow. Whereas Rocketry components are
derived from the inorganic chemistry of the benzene ring, the Rocket's
flight trajectory is made possible by the "analytic legacy" emanating
from the calculus of Leibniz. However, calculus (and film) are
"flightless themselves" and are instead "pornographies of flight."  In
expressing the desire for real and living flight, Leibniz's dream of
reducing the world to the ones and zeroes of binary code actually
produces a simulation or pornography of flight.

http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/spencer24.htm

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0308&msg=84627

On 3/5/07, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0010&msg=50144
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0308&msg=84627