SURFACES AT LARGE AND THE MEANNESS OF MEASURE
This paper is an experiment on the form of the essay itself which seeks to circumnavigate its own content. While attempting to describe, it regards the dangers of the measure and precision from the outskirts, without risking collision by claiming to execute such precision itself. Intended initially as a physical print with no binding, allowing pages of the essay to fall into place like leaves of a tree in autumn, to be read as it has been written: fragmentary, leaping from one page to the next, getting lost in its content, in order to find one’s self again.
Accidents, errors, and mistakes become compositional features that are embraced as those precious moments in which reality breaks through the rather strange facade of precision that is called for and generally expected. As Agamben highlights in his lecture on the resistance of art, the unfinished, or mistake in the perfect weave is that very thing which allows its author to escape imprisonment by their own design [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=one7mE-8y9c&t=379s [/note ] . And so rightfully we should acknowledge and embrace the minor error: the slip of the hand, the smudge of ink… The mark of the author left behind, not by their own intention but as a result of their having been in the same place and time as the work – intricately involved in its production through material manipulations. It is only because of the author’s intention, his aim for precision, that the error therein as a juxtaposed feature gains its importance and its beauty. As Francesca Hughes (2014) illustrates, the architect’s relationship to precision and material intolerance has run rampant to the point of redundancy, and near fetishization. It is no longer a question of how things come together, but of a strange longing to remove one’s+- self from the material at hand through machinic practice and digital tools that enable and encourage a practice of designing while ignoring material.
[inmargin]Figure 1. [/inmargin]
Time itself does not go tick tock to the rhythm of the clock. Nor does time stop when a timer reaches the zero mark. It simply continues, at exactly the same speed – fluid and undivided, in fact, indivisible. Yet there exist sharp lines that dictate the precise moment a second has elapsed for the entire planet – offset by hours across timezones that further split time – of course, clinically measured with satellite clocks to ensure we all live ‘in the right time’. Daylight savings provides a succinct example of how our understanding of shared time is simply an agreement on international scale, not necessarily a shared experience. Time itself does not care for its own passing, nor does it stop to make sure we are all in sync with it every second. The striation of time is but one of many arbitrary lines that cut through abstract space [note number=3] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,’1440: The smooth and the striated,’ in A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia , trans. Massumi, Brian (Bloomsbury, 2017) . .
David Claerbout speaks of a heterochrony, or the multiplicity of duration being in constant conflict with clock-time in his work [4] Durational Cinema (Springer EBooks, 2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76092-2_10 [/note ]. When thinking of duration (multiple) as opposed to measured or ‘clock’ time (singular, static), duration implies that time begins to fracture into multiple parallel lines. Moving at the same speed but not in the same moment, the time in which this paper is written, edited, and read are somehow contained within the paper itself, and experienced only as individuals. When contending with these notions of multiple times, individual moments, the collapse thereof in an image and the projection of it into the future, one wonders, in which moment do we live? It seems difficult to grapple with the idea that all persons live in different moments, however also difficult to believe that I exist at the same moment as the person who is reading this sentence.
[inmargin]Figure 2. [/inmargin]
Much like the image, we generate models that mimic properties of reality. In turn the model is studied and analyzed and understood in order to make projective analysis and speculation about the ‘real’ world which contains the model. Models often have a coherent internal logic, a consistent pattern, a recurring set of behaviors that make them predictable, and so our use of these models in analyzing reality generates a world in which we anticipate certain things to happen based on a model of our own construction. However, the world is not as we made it of our own construction.
As such we can use a mathematical notation to understand that on the one hand, reality does not equal the model, while at the same time, reality as a set contains the model within it. While the model still technically adheres to the physical laws that govern the larger context, it is framed off, closed from the open systems of the actual, and ‘scaled down’ such that measure and impact have greater margin for error when scaled back to the reality of 1:1.
Reality ≠ Model
Reality = {Model}
[inmargin]Figure 3. [/inmargin]
In the words of Walter Benjamin, ‘The concept of technique represents the dialectical starting-point from which the sterile dichotomy of form and content can be surmounted.’ [note number=5] Walter Benjamin, ‘The Author as Producer,’ in Understanding Brecht, trans. A. Bostock (Verso, 1998). Sterile because form and content emerge together, are necessarily linked and dependent on each other, and ignoring their social, and temporal context reduces their relationship greatly.
It is as a result of technique that a work comes into being – it is the method and process by which formation transpires as opposed to stagnant form, and in doing so the work becomes encrusted with a surface that encloses the content within. And so the question for this paper and for any thing would be: what is its content, where are its limits, its framing, or surface that encloses it and provides form, and perhaps most importantly how have they been generated?
The difficulty within this paper is its attempt to define a trap that it itself is desperately trying to avoid falling into: the pinning down of an idea, a false sense of security by causing its stagnation and death. The paper is a critique on the measure, and the description and simulation of a behavior of that encrusted surface that is in constant movement.
Much like the lighthouse, which serves to warn of danger, the boat trying to circumnavigate a peninsula does not set course directly for that beacon to find out what the danger might be but rather sails by at a distance, along its periphery. That periphery is necessarily dependent on the beacon, on the promise of danger towards it. At the same time however, the boat traveling along the periphery provides no independent confirmation of those rocks which it seeks to avoid (there is no collision). It is by virtue of the fact that the boat stays sailing, that it proves the rock-free nature of the waters it sails.
As a result, this paper, as an experiment on the form of the essay, seeks to circumnavigate its own content. Always regarding the dangers of the measure and precision from the sidelines outskirts, without risking collision by claiming to execute such precision itself. In its structure, pages of the essay may fall into place like leaves of a tree in autumn, to be read as it has been written: fragmentary, leaping from one page to the next, getting lost in its content, in order to find one’s self again.
That is to say, the surface as a fluid – not necessarily the fluid surface, however this is where one might begin as a means to analyze and conjecture on the nature of surfaces at large, ie the nature of all surfaces, but also, the surface as something that has effectively escaped capture.
‘The depth has to be hidden. Where? On the surface.’ [6] Buch der Freunde (Suhrkamp, 2nd edition , 1989). . Indeed the surface contains more depth than what initially meets the eye – the material world is necessarily textured and rough. Much like the geological formation of mountains, which so clearly express their internal stresses and external erosions in rock faces as John Ruskin describes in his conception of the Deep Surface, all matter in its formation develops a surficial crust – evidence of external and internal forces [7] The Sympathy of Things. Ruskin and the Ecology of Design . (Bloomsbury, 2016). . The world is rough, and space is textured since it is no abstract concept, but exists within the material world.
By modeling the planet based on formerly gathered (measured) data, we can project within that model into the future and anticipate how the model, and therefore perhaps h++++++++ow reality will proceed (protention). However, between each cyclic recurrence and each anticipated future, there is a slight discrepancy from the previously collected data (often due to a problem of measurement). In this difference, the unexpected, or as Deleuze [8] Difference and Repetition (Bloomsbury, 2014). would conceptualize Nietzsche’s ‘eternal recurrence of the same’ [9] R. Lanier Anderson, ‘Friedrich Nietzsche,’ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, effective March 2025, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2024/entries/nietzsche/ . lies a greater truth than in the expected, the stereotypical, the archetype, the preconceived and correctly executed story. It is in this way that the act of repetition can be said to engender difference [10] Artmachines: Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon . Trans. Verderber, Suzanne, and Holland, Eugene W. (Edinburgh University Press, 2016). . Because repetition is an action that operates in time, often engaging with material conditions, it can never produce an identical result. Just as Ursula Le Guin decries the typical narrative [11] Dancing at the End of the World (Ignota Books, 1986). : ’that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead)’ I contend that there is a need to ‘miss the mark,’ or rather, acknowledge that we consistently miss the mark in our attempt to reach it. It is in the subsequent moment that what happens next is unknown, the stuff of panic, adrenaline, and urgency as the hero must give chase to the beast that still lives.
Indeed, when generating planetary models we encounter great difficulties, many of which are the results of the material world not quite ‘hitting the mark’ according to our systems of measure. Primarily, the Earth is, in fact, not spherical, not only thanks to its mountain ranges and valleys, oceans and other topographic features, but even if simplified and considered smooth, it possesses an ellipsoidal form that shifts to the gravitational pulls of the moon and sun. This ellipsoidal form, of course, complicates measurements across the globe, as the curve along the surface is not consistent (in its gradation, there is a variation of the curve – it remains continuous however). Similarly, the moon’s orbit around planet Earth is not neatly circular but ellipsoidal with a ‘ mean’ eccentricity of 0.0549 (note again the mean measure entering once again) [12] NASA effective January 2024, https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/moonorbit.html#:~:text=The%20Moon%20revolves%20around%20Earth . . Our orbit around the sun is likewise ellipsoidal, and in turn, as our solar system revolves around the Milky Way we return each time to a different location – how does one return to a different location? To further complicate the matter, the general expansion of the universe implies that we travel in an ellipsoidal spiral – moving laterally whilst revolving around a series of planetary masses. Never returning to where we once were, we continue along an uneven, helter-skelter trajectory through the apparently infinite expansion that is space. Consequently, the tidal interval is never a neat and tidy quantity of time, like 12 hours, but rather, 12 hours and 27 minutes, followed by 12 hours and 16 minutes, and then 12 hours and 39 minutes [13] Tideschart , accessed January 22, 2024, https://www.tideschart.com/Panama/Panama .
There is a slippage in the transcription of a mark on paper, or the trace left by water on a wall. The slippage is not only one of coincidence, but in its representation, – be it through spoken or written words, or some other means of signification (photography, painting, illustration) – it is a consequence inherent to the representation’s inability to be the thing it is showing. There is a difference between the photograph and the world it depicts. As such it makes a mistake, an error – in attempting to describe or capture that which can only ever be experienced, or perhaps we are mistaken in our assumption that this image depicts some reality that in fact no longer/ never existed within our ability to experience it – a photograph is always a collection and compression of multiple moments in time, no matter how fast the shutter speeds. It is, therefore, an illusion; [14] we do not experience the compression of time, only its escape passage. This does not discount the work itself, as it generates its own experience: we experience the photograph as an object in time – however one cannot speak of a site analysis inherent through drawings or photographs, but rather, one is caught in the world of analyzing the drawings and photographs as they themselves are.
We begin to analyze a work, not the thing it represents. We fool ourselves into thinking that the image is the site, or that the map is the site when it is not. We engage in a folly of judgment by framing the image as something not part of our co-temporal context, but rather, or existing in its own spatio-temporal reality belonging to the site.
The tide does not level out perfectly flat to reach its measured baseline, or maximum line for the day on the ‘correct’ or appointed minute before receding or rising. Furthermore, the mean sea level of every ocean and sea is distinct from each other, despite being one total body of water, since the basis for their measurement is based on a geodetic system with ‘datums’ that supposedly stay fixed in relative position to other objects – of course, they do not. [15] Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia, accessed January 22, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System The Panama Canal makes use of its own datum, to bridge the gap between the Pacific and Caribbean oceans; which have a 20cm (higher on the pacific side) difference in average height [16] Kirkpatrick, RZ. Panama Tides. In H. A. Baldridge (Ed.), US Naval Institute Proceedings (Vol. 52/4/278). (Menasha, WI: U.S. Naval Institute, 1926). Retrieved from https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1926/april/panama-tides. [/note ]. This is, also most peculiarly, an ‘average difference’. In other words, it is the difference in height between two annual averages, both of which are fluctuating continuously. The actual or specific difference at any given moment can be is much greater, or less.
Protention, as conceived by Edmund Husserl and later Bernard Stiegler (1998) [note number = 17] Bernard Stiegler, Technics And Time Volume 1 , The Fault Of Epimetheus, trans. G. Collins & R. Beardsworth (Stanford University Press, 1998). , is the projection of memory- it is a future passed (be it as imagined, or through technical object, the core concept remains). Paradoxical as it may seem, it is a necessary feature of the human experience – it enables us to anticipate, speculate, and exist between one moment and the next comfortably. As Derrida outlines in his book, Memoirs of the Blind , the hand seeks out, before the eye, in search of… [18] Memoirs of the blind: The self-portrait and other ruins , trans. Brault P.-A. and Naas M. (University of Chicago Press, 1993). There is at once, in this moment, an anticipation of a handrail, or for the next footstep, the anticipation of meeting the floor. Simultaneously, however, there is an apprehension . The position of a handrail or floor cannot be known without action, a seeking-out, and a sense of expectancy. So, there is an apprehensive manner to this progression; it is not without caution that the blind charge forth in the dark. There is always the chance that there is no floor, but a cliff. This occurs in the same way that one might write a sentence, be they blind or not. Words are sought out one by one, or in phrases as the sentence is stringed together; rarely entirely thought out and then to the beat enunciated or typed out written. [19] Likewise, any illustrative act, photograph, or architectural drawing anticipates some as-of-yet unknown result. There is talk of a ‘sightlessness’ in the creative act – an inherent indeterminacy, a sense of not-yet knowing, a chance for falling, that the tracks might run out.
The surface is that very boundary by which we are able to recognize a difference between two distinct things – but is, in fact, non-existent as a 2D entity in a three-dimensional space. It cannot be singled out, removed, or captured by its distinct form but is the manifestation of a Deridian difference – that is to say, in the same sense that a word gains its meaning from its distinction to other words, our ability to recognize a thing as such is due to its distinction from its surroundings [20] Margins of Philosophy , trans. B. Stocker (Routledge, 2020). . This distinction occurs at the surface, where one material collides with another, at the periphery of form – this distinction exists in a state of continuous change, or continuous state of becoming; the surface ‘happens’ just as the frame on a painting, the Parergon to the work, happens as a means to separate the painting from the wall, the work from its surroundings [21] The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Ian McLeod (University of Chicago Press, 1987). . Understanding reality in a state of constant entropic movement and flux, in which objects dissipate and tend towards a homogenous mixture, when, where, and how does their shared surface disappear and a homogenous mixture emerge? Perhaps, the differential surface was never there in the first place – which would (alarmingly) seem to suggest, we are already living in some sort of homogenous mixture, save that our embodied experience in the material world gives matter its distinction. We should evaluate the process by which this dynamic entity (the surface) takes shape, modulates, speaks to that which is contained by it and that which is extensive beyond it.
In keeping with the inherent slippage in this topic – trying to capture the uncapturable, this essay is also ‘structured’ as a fluid. Taking inspiration from William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (the title of which emerges from a misspoken line of poetry – a detail which will emerge as relevant in due [or prior] course). [22] Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia, accessed January 19, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Lunch#cite_note-EndlessNovel-6. The following and preceding sequences of information are not chaptered, and can be /have been read in any order. The emphasis becomes no longer on the precise and pinned down sequence of paragraphs, words, or sentences but rather on that very slippery thing that happens between them in the reader’s experience. As such, the paper also opens up to misreadings, committing itself fully to the multiple possibilities and experiences that any text might have on an audience. As a result, the paper approaches its topic from the periphery – much like the behavior of the surface and the impossible measure that escapes capture, the paper intends to explain by doing, behaving like that very surface, rather than pretending to ‘precisely’ describe it. And so, images of draft versions – traces of the paper in various states of its formation are left visible. As a result, the sentences that are struck out are somehow both there and not there; they exist in the final version only to indicate their removal, as well as to reveal that they once were.
The fluctuations that are inherent and continuous in the liquid surface across all axes of movement are the consequence of a myriad of factors: wind, oceanic currents, gravitational pull(s), continental topographies, depths… and at the very basic level, the form and material of the surface beneath the liquid, we can call this the ‘sub-surface’. At the same time, however, that sub-surface is rearranged by the continuous movement of the water, taking on the shape of a ripple, by the material being lifted and deposited in particular locations as opposed to others; the surface as we know it is broken up, shifted, and reconstituted. There is a quality of continuous, repetitive, and different movement that is apparent – and so there is no ‘Site’ as can be described by its relative position to other material (see for example, the description of the opening scene of Act 1, in Samuel Becket’s, Waiting for Godot: [23] Waiting for Godot (Faber and Faber, 2006), 1.
A country road. A tree.
Evening.
That is to say, there is no stagnant site, one without moving points shifting, changing landscapes are the only given. As Samuel Becket opens his play Waiting for Godot with simple scenography, he provides us with two objects and a time. Their spatial relation to each other is completely undefined, however, they simply exist in one time, ‘evening’. It is for the stage director to place them within the frame of the stage, open for rearrangement.
This relative ‘sitelessness’ is further enforced by an unsituated understanding of place: site gives way to non-site (Smithson, & Flam. 1996). [24] Robert Smithson, the collected writings , ed. Flam, JD (University Of California Press, 1996)
In the words of the otherwise speechless character, Lucky: [25] Waiting for Godot (Faber and Faber, 2006)0000000000.
‘[…] flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labors abandoned left unfinished digger still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard (mêlée, final vociferations) . . . tennis . . . the stones . . . so calm. . . Cunard . . . unfinished . . .’
Because to claim finitude is to reject duration. The finished state is an illusion as much as five centimeters or three hours are. Since there is no stagnation, only movement, the work can never be finished – like Sisyphus, [26] The Myth of Sisyphus (Éditions Gallimard, 1942). only, without effort to accomplish our supposed goal (of progressing), we are in a state of continuously rolling downhill, never to reach…
How exactly to know where any one thing is in a system of moving parts, other than to assume for the time-being that they are not moving, and give measure from one surface to another. It is the distance between these surfaces that make the difference – and recognize that the measure will never be true. It is a cruel trick we play on ourselves by aiming for a precision that does not exist, not in the absolute – rather, it is asymptotic, tending to perfection but never reaching it. Instead, an average, or mean will have to suffice. Since we can never truly provide the height of the water’s surface, a position at which it is never existing is instead selected: the mean level, at all times both above and below the water’s surface. The meanness of the measure derives from its averaging abilities and its seductive promise of a knowledge we do not really have. Let us not be seduced by the siren song that a definition seems to provide: the false security that one knows something with absolute certainty.