Kittler's There is no Software puts a case for a physical limit to binary programmable computation. The text fascinates me because each time I read it I get a bit more out of it. It's partly down to Kittler's strange mixture of literary/cultural theory, geeky tech knowledge, and germanic philosophizing. But there is something interesting in here.
The capacity of programmable computers (that is, machines characterised by the physical separation of elements allowing them to be treated as 'virtually' discrete in computational processes) places an irremediable limit on their capability to model - and, I extrapolate - to become - 'natural' connective systems. In short, the sheer physical amount of hardware needed to model connective systems grows out of all proportion to the size of the system being modeled (weather forecasters have had this problem for ages; according to a recent article I read they now introduce noise into their equations to make them more accurate!) .
Kittler's parting shot is particularly intriguing, he suggests that we should reverse the trend towards discretizing components, and utilise the inevitable 'noise' and chaos that goes on at a quantum level but is 'filtered out' by the discretization of components: basically he is saying that to break this computational barrier we need to 'compute' with lumps of matter, which would necessarily be non-programmable, that is, we will eventually jettison the synthetic simulated microworlds of discrete simulation and the (metaphysical) idea of 'software'.
I also like his treatment of the stratified layers of software engineering as a form of cryptography carried out 'on behalf of' but also in some sense 'against' the user (certainly rings true speaking both as a coder and as a user of MS product). He also discusses the definition of 'information' as against signal noise, with a reference to new definitions that deal with 'buried redundancy'. Interesting choice of phrase here which links to crypto, in several senses (the complicity of the dead and the secret or hidden). In software engineering they speak very clearly about 'hiding' things from the user for their own good. Isn't this procedural complex of abstraction, encapsulation and 'hiding' functionality under screens and pleasant metaphors, also a description of commodity-production in general?
A lot of interesting offshoots from this, arguably more interesting than the ostensible subject of Kittler's paper. But I'm still left with questions about his central point about computation (I admit, my eyes always glaze over when people with beards who read New Scientist start to talk about Turing). Is Kittler's argument irrelevant given that, in fact, computers always are linked to real networks of physical stuff? Would 'quantum computing' still be Turing-based?. Not sure where the idea of a device that allowed any amount of quantum noise - a non-abstractive computer - would take us really. A 'highly connected, non-programmable system', 'a physical device working amidst physical devices and subjected to the same bounded resources' would just be the disappearance of computation into...stuff; in general, wouldn't it? If you can't program it, in what sense could it be 'made use of'?
This programme on BBC about Pixar as the manifest destiny of animation; a beardy bright-shirted californian extolling pixar's vacuous overworked corporate progimations:
'In a Pixar film, you don't get anything for free; everything you see, every little detail, has to be thought of, has to be engineered, and put in there, that's why it takes us four years to create a film'
Yeah, and that's why they're all so fuckin shit, mate.
Next (this man, as most californians do, reminds me of the fast show character Prof. Denzil Dexter):'What really drives the films is still good old-fashioned stories'
Yeah, heard it all before. Just like Oasis and their good solid old-fashioned pop songs that you can't not like without being made to look churlish and miserly. Listen, storytelling may well be a wonderful and ancient art - it doesn't necessarily follow that if you spew up an lumpy puddle of every cliché you ever saw and emboss it with a bit of wiseguy irony, you become Homer's rightful heir.
Another phrase I must quote. 'The enhanced realism of computer characters'. What can I say. The pursuit of realism in this sphere is so blind, so utterly misguided. Art doesn't become great by cultivating accuracy but by a process of translation from the real of sensation through the body and mind of the artist to the real of the artistic medium. Nothing against the use of digital, but meticulous modelling of the physical is not of itself sufficient.
Across the atlantic, and next up is that plasticine chicken man, with his pathetic rejected-last-of-the-summer-wine-scripts britflick sausage factory. Hardly preferable. IMHO being 'represented' by this stuff is worse for the UK than Hugh Grant. Also it seems to be a typical example of miraculated mass appeal - everyone's always saying how great it is, so it must be...but...er...it's not, it's tired, unambitious, samey tat.
Now (this wasn't mentioned in the programme) over the channel....I saw Belleville Rendezvous a couple of weeks ago and was impressed - it's the first time I've seen digital animation integrated with traditional animation to some purpose; other than shouting at the viewer 'look we've integrated digital animation with traditional animation'. Fantastic sound design and soundtrack, very close to those early cartoons' melding with jazz. Obviously intentional. The film 'pays dues' but not in an annoying self-satisfied way.
Equally obvious, BRV is influenced in all the right ways by the wayward genius of Jacques Tati. Like Tati, not afraid to take risks with boring the viewer by using stretched compressed and twisted duration itself as a humorous device. And because it takes the risks therefore it isn't; at all boring, but has consistency, thickness, solidity, guts. It's great animation because it uses all the things that are important to animation - time, plasticity, non-human characterisation, judicious sound-sync.
To go back to the point on computer animation. What you really notice in Belleville Rendezvous is the translation of affect, of sensation, into images of the becomings of fantastical living bodies. Not a modelling of 'real' bodies that 'look as if' they are labouring under some type of emotion. There is; a difference. It's encouraging that BRV shows that, as I suspected, it isn't CGI that's the problem, it's the people who are using it, the way they're using it. It's to do with the commercial structure of filmmaking. I think it's also something to do with the auteur; - as far as I could see, BRV was conceived and produced by one person with a singular vision (although there were a huge number of people involved). Aardman tries to score points on this too, although the stuff becomes less apparently idiosyncratic and more evidently a tacky heritage scam with each repetition. Pixar and co. are obviously completely unable to take the risk of going with one person's vision, and, here as elsewhere, mediocratize by corporatizing. Vive le France!