Deleuze and Guattari and the Machinic Phylum
01.09.06Initial Draft of Ideas Concerning the texts of D&G
The following is from a paper that I am now in the process of drafting. It is a first attempt at understanding the very complex thought of Deleuze and Guattari and their understanding the the 'Machinic Phylum'. I feel very close to this subject matter because as a materialist, artist, and the son of craftsmen it is important foor me to understand the philosophical and historical implicaitons of creating and using materials.
The first term that I would like to talk about, one that in the past few decades has come into existence and that I have found to be extremely important in understanding the arts (aesthetic and material) and sciences, is the concept of the Machinic Phylum.
The machinic phylum was first given to us in the texts of Deleuze and Guattari. Influenced particularly by the texts of Heni Bergenson who understood that the future was "truly open-ended, truly indeterminate, and the past and present as pregnant not only with possibilities which become real, but with virtualities which become actual." (DeLanda 1997), Deleuze and Guattari set out to understand that "all spheres of reality, including geology, possess virtual morphogenetic capabilities and potentialities." (Ibid)
To give an example of this trait, say I am an artist and I am making a series of prints or drawings. I am not interested in just making one but instead I am interested in fleshing out all possibilities of one design that I have stumbled upon during my years of training and creating. I am creating a series of 300 drawings based on one drawing. Now, all my drawings are not going got look the same. I am going to draw each drawing in the beginning based on my prototype. After a few drawing I may discover that I have unleashed some extremely interesting property in the drawing that I would like to pursue in a different direction. I soon begin to flesh this idea out until another not entirely dissimilar idea or composition begins to emerge. I then take this most recent emergent trait and begin to flesh it out and so on. Sometimes I may not like the direction that a series is going and I may backtrack several times in several ways and pick up where ii left off. Through this series of drawing one thing begins to unravel. There re millions of possibilities that can be fleshed out.
We can also do this type of 'fleshing out of possibilities' on the computer. In a way it is very much like we are taking a drawing and simulating its evolution. By scanning in a drawn picture or drawing directly on the computer we can put the drawing or image in a computer program and run algorithms on it. The algorithms will search and find all the possibilities that the drawn line can proceed in, it is then up to the designer or artist to pick which possibilities that they are interested in pursuing and then running the algorithm on that new design. And so on and so on.
This is an example of the machinic phylum at play. Though Deleuze and Guattari did not, in their most vivid instance, describe this materialistic act in the same way as I (and as Manuel DeLanda does when talking about art) did, as a way to create art, they did - and named it so appropriately - by trying to understand the flows and the properties of metals as metals created a path through history much the same as a series or drawings create a path and a history:
"the machinic phylum is materiality, natural of artificial, and both simultaneously; it is matter in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as a conveyor of singularities and traits of expression..." (D&G ATP
And in relationship to metals that guide that flows of mater:
"Metallurgy is the consciousness of thought of the matter-flow, and metal the correlate of this consciousness....metal is coextensive to the whole of matter, and the whole of matter to metallurgy. Even the waters, the grasses and varieties of wood, the animals are populated by salts of mineral elements. Not everything is metal but metal is everywhere." (D&G ATP)
They then go on to talk about the hand of the artisan and how the material traits of metal guide the artisan in the path to create. Just as i have exemplified in how a drawing can flow and evolve through paths of choice and paths of material properties - (pencil on paper will yield different properties that paint on canvas or computer simulations) - metal has had a historical path, albeit quite a much longer one than an afternoon drawing session, in a similar way, metal must be heated to a certain temperature, banged with a hammer - etc, until properties that are inherent in the metal (imperfections, foreign substances) begin to emerge:
"Finally when working a metal into shape, the artisan must also follow the accidents and local vagaries of a given piece of material. he must let the material have its say in the final form produced. This involves a sensual interaction with metals, applying a too in a way that does not fight the material but conforms to it" (DeLanda 1991 p.30)
"In other words, the blacksmith treated metals a active materials, pregnant with morphogenetic capabilities, and his role was that of teasing a for out of them, of guiding, through a series of processes (heating, annealing, quenching, hammering), the emergence of a form, a form in which the materials themselves has a say" (DeLanda 1997 p.2_
To go back to Deleuze and Guattari:
"an artisan who planes follows the wood, the fibers of the wood, without changing location. But this way of following is only one particular sequence in amore general process. For artisans are obliged to follow n another way as well, in other words, to go find the wood where it lies, and to find the wood with the right kinds of fibers. Otherwise they must have it brought to them: it is only because merchants take care of one segment of the journey in reverse that the artisans can avoid making the trip themselves." (Deleuze & Guattari, ATP p,409)
At first it might seem strange some of the examples that I have used. What I am really trying to understand here and get a grasp on is a philosophical and theoretical discourse on the materiality of form and how form through filtering though some system (whether it be the artists hand or even some naturally occurring process) can eventually emerge. I think understanding complex systems and trying to understand networks as continuing flows and NOT as static totalities is central to my current thesis: understanding material flows and how seeking out the path of least resistance through artistic and artisan analogies both historical and contemporary can help us to understand how to bypass a sluggish and outdated political and education system.
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