Special Focus editor: Natasha Lushetich Series editors: Rudiger Ahrens, Florian Klager, Klaus Stierstorfer Symbolism is cohesive. It gathers heterogeneity over time, across fields of human endeavor and systems of communication. Non-sequiturs, paradox and tautology, appear dissipative. Yet they are highly productive in reticular and fractal ways. Suffice it to look at the philosophical tautology of Parmenides's kind, which suggests that being "is"; at the practice of the koan, which collapses dualistic thinking by way of incompatible propositions, such as "the Eastern hill keeps running on the water"; at logical paradoxes in which the operative logic is sabotaged by its own means, as in Hempel's paradox; at absurdist dramatic texts in which protagonists record empty time in order to mark the emptiness of the time they are recording, as in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape; or at paradoxical games like Maciunas's Prepared Table Tennis played with paddles that have huge holes in them. In all of these examples, the existence-apprehending processes occur via unexpected itineraries, in vacant but nevertheless enunciative codes, in seemingly futile, yet calibrating performances, and in a temporality that is the cumulative time's "other." They catapult the mind into the realm of the extra-linguistic, the para-logical and the meta-experiential, or they transfigure it through a series of reticular iterations. Forty years after Varela et al's groundbreaking work on the embodied, emotional and environmentally embedded mind - that marked a definitive departure from its former strictly rational conception - there is a need to re-examine the territory that lies beyond mind for a different reason: the proliferation of algorithmic logics that rely on the idea of a rational agent (human or algorithmic) making logical, self-serving decisions. This special issue explores neither-rational-nor-irrational forms of thinking and making. It sketches a cartography of a-rational processes of meaning- and knowledge-production that operate across numerous sites, practices, and disciplines: visual and media art; literature; art history; music; dance; film; intermedia and photography. Part I "Ahistoricity, Assemblages and Interpretative Reversals" focuses on the legacy of the (neo) avant-garde and amodernism. Part II "Destinerrance, Labyrinths and Folds" investigates the ways in which the Derridian delays/detours and the Deleuzian folding function as concrete ways of embodied knowledge-production. Part III, "Immanent Transcendence", offers a glimpse into the reticular and iterative structuring of transcendence that does not pre-exist immanence but is its residue.

Who, what, and where perceives, and how? What are the sedimentations, inscriptions, and axiologies of animal, human, and machinic perception/s? What are their perceptibilities? Deleuze uses the word ‘visibilities’ to indicate that visual perception isn’t just a physiological given but cues operations productive of new assemblages. Perceptibilities are, by analogy, spatio-temporal, geolocative, kinaesthetic, audio-visual, and haptic operations that are always already memory. In the case of strong inscriptions, they are also epigenetic events. In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to vibrate with increasing amplitudes at certain frequencies of excitation. In cybernetics and in theories of technology, it refers to systems’ feedback. In Native science, resonance denotes the axiology of positions and events. It’s a form of multi-species perception that emphasises emergent directionality and protean mnemonics. This transdisciplinary volume brings together key theorists and practitioners from media theory, Native science, bio-media and sound art, philosophy, art his- tory, and design informatics to examine: a) the becoming-technique of animal– human–machinic perceptibilities; and b) micro-perceptions that lie beneath the threshold of known perceptions yet create energetic vibrations. The volume shows distributed perception to be a key notion in addressing the emergence and peristence of plant, animal, human, and machine relations.

Technology is a host of social, material, and epistemic transformation techniques, tools, and methods. The common perception of digital technology today is that it is determined, even over-determined. This volume suggests a different view: the digital is indeterminate. Mobilising insights from philosophy, art and architecture theory, mathematics, computer science and anthropology, it situates digital indeterminacy within the wider context of material and immaterial processes, causations, triggerings, modes of unintended conditioning, and their performative working. Part I, Social-Digital Technologies juxtaposes arguments for machinic/algorithmic indeterminacy to those of (over)determination in blockchain, cognitive augmentation, and digital ideology. Part II Spatial, Temporal, Aural and Visual Technologies delves deeper into received ideas about non-digital technologies such as those used for building spatial structures, manufacturing instruments and constructing the visual space. Part III Epistemic Technologies analyses the use of plasticity in cognitive science, contingency in thinking habits, ontogenesis in experimental computing, and divination techniques with an inbuilt margin of indeterminacy. The book's tripartite structure reflects technology's inherent capacity to transform knowledges, practices, and 'the past'.

Who, what, and where perceives, and how? What are the sedimentations, inscriptions, and axiologies of animal, human, and machinic perception/s? What are their perceptibilities? Deleuze uses the word 'visibilities' to indicate that visual perception isn't just a physiological given but cues operations productive of new assemblages. Perceptibilities are, by analogy, spatio-temporal, geolocative, kinaesthetic, audio-visual, and haptic operations that are always already memory. In the case of strong inscriptions, they are also epigenetic events. In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to vibrate with increasing amplitudes at certain frequencies of excitation. In cybernetics and in theories of technology, it refers to systems' feedback. In Native science, resonance denotes the axiology of positions and events. It's a form of multi-species perception that emphasises emergent directionality and protean mnemonics. This transdisciplinary volume brings together key theorists and practitioners from media theory, Native science, bio-media and sound art, philosophy, art his- tory, and design informatics to examine: a) the becoming-technique of animal- human-machinic perceptibilities; and b) micro-perceptions that lie beneath the threshold of known perceptions yet create energetic vibrations. The volume shows distributed perception to be a key notion in addressing the emergence and peristence of plant, animal, human, and machine relations.

Every politics is an aesthetic. If necropolitics is the (accelerated) politics of what is usually referred to as the 'apolitical age', what are its manoeuvres, temporalities, intensities, textures, and tipping points? Bypassing revelatory and reconstructionist approaches - the tendency of which is to show that a particular site or practice is necropolitical by bringing its genealogy into evidence - this collection of essays by artist-philosophers and theorist curators articulates the pre-perceptual working of necropolitics through a focus on the senses, assignments of energy, attitudes, cognitive processes, and discursive frameworks. Drawing on different yet complementary methodologies (visual, performance, affect, and network analysis; historiography and ethnography), the contributors analyse cultural fetishes, taboos, sensorial and relational processes anchored in everyday practices, or cued by specific artworks. By mapping the necropolitics' affective cartography, they expand the concept beyond its teleological, anthropocentric, and reductive horizon of 'making and letting die' to include posthuman and posthumous actants, effectively arguing for the necropolitics' transformatory, political potential.

Drawing on a range of methods from across science and technology studies, digital humanities and digital arts, this book presents a comprehensive view of the big data phenomenon. Big data architectures are increasingly transforming political questions into technical management by determining classificatory systems in the social, educational, and healthcare realms. Data, and their multiple arborisations, have become new epistemic landscapes. They have also become new existential terrains. The fundamental question is: can big data be seen as a new medium in the way photography or film were when they first appeared? No new medium is ever truly new. It’s always remediation of older media. What is new is the medium’s re-articulation of the difference between here and there, before and after, yours and mine, knowable and unknowable, possible and impossible. This transdisciplinary volume, incorporating cultural and media theory, art, philosophy, history, and political philosophy is a key resource for readers interested in digital humanities, cultural, and media studies.

Drawing on a range of methods from across science and technology studies, digital humanities and digital arts, this book presents a comprehensive view of the big data phenomenon. Big data architectures are increasingly transforming political questions into technical management by determining classificatory systems in the social, educational, and healthcare realms. Data, and their multiple arborisations, have become new epistemic landscapes. They have also become new existential terrains. The fundamental question is: can big data be seen as a new medium in the way photography or film were when they first appeared? No new medium is ever truly new. It’s always remediation of older media. What is new is the medium’s re-articulation of the difference between here and there, before and after, yours and mine, knowable and unknowable, possible and impossible. This transdisciplinary volume, incorporating cultural and media theory, art, philosophy, history, and political philosophy is a key resource for readers interested in digital humanities, cultural, and media studies.

Every politics is an aesthetic. If necropolitics is the (accelerated) politics of what is usually referred to as the 'apolitical age', what are its manoeuvres, temporalities, intensities, textures, and tipping points? Bypassing revelatory and reconstructionist approaches - the tendency of which is to show that a particular site or practice is necropolitical by bringing its genealogy into evidence - this collection of essays by artist-philosophers and theorist curators articulates the pre-perceptual working of necropolitics through a focus on the senses, assignments of energy, attitudes, cognitive processes, and discursive frameworks. Drawing on different yet complementary methodologies (visual, performance, affect, and network analysis; historiography and ethnography), the contributors analyse cultural fetishes, taboos, sensorial and relational processes anchored in everyday practices, or cued by specific artworks. By mapping the necropolitics' affective cartography, they expand the concept beyond its teleological, anthropocentric, and reductive horizon of 'making and letting die' to include posthuman and posthumous actants, effectively arguing for the necropolitics' transformatory, political potential.

Spanning a hundred years (1910 - 2010) and three geographical locations - Europe, Japan and North America - this unique book examines the capacity of performance to recode reality. It argues for a seamless continuity between philosophy, critical theory and artistic practice. Each chapter ends with scores, providing readers with the opportunity to explore the discussed ideas in an embodied, and, where applicable, interactional way. The book's analysis of such landmark phenomena as the ready-made, action painting, intermedia, feminine writing, identity politics, cyborgian bio-art and ludic (h)activism make it an invaluable source for practical theorists, and undergraduate and Masters-level students of Performance Studies, Performing Arts, Fine and Visual Arts and Cultural Studies.

Spanning a hundred years (1910 - 2010) and three geographical locations - Europe, Japan and North America - this unique book examines the capacity of performance to recode reality. It argues for a seamless continuity between philosophy, critical theory and artistic practice. Each chapter ends with scores, providing readers with the opportunity to explore the discussed ideas in an embodied, and, where applicable, interactional way. The book's analysis of such landmark phenomena as the ready-made, action painting, intermedia, feminine writing, identity politics, cyborgian bio-art and ludic (h)activism make it an invaluable source for practical theorists, and undergraduate and Masters-level students of Performance Studies, Performing Arts, Fine and Visual Arts and Cultural Studies.