Exposition on 'Site as Procedure as Interaction' by Anil Bawa and Patricia Reed

I would like to acknowledge the publishers at Urbanomic, Robin Mckay for providing me with a hardcopy of 'Construction Site for Possible Worlds' when I inquired about the possibility of reviewing it in July 2020. Given the state of my affairs, I have been unable to present a comprehensive review thus far for which I owe something of an apology to professor Mckay. 

In lieu of this, I hope I may partly compensate them for my trouble by presenting a reading of a paper in the collection - 'Site as Procedure as Interaction' by Anil Bawa and Patricia Reed. 

Before I do this I must also say something about why I think the concept of a site is as vital today as when Lacanians like us sought to emphasize interactions in a discourse spatially, rather than reduce a study to its geographical coordinates. A muddy puddle if you will: reflective fo some of the antagonisms and stakes, which yet animate the construction site for possible worlds.

To begin: 'Proposition 0: All procedures of worlding require a deconcretization of the Actual.' - We who have grown up in cities may not be unfamiliar with construction sites. It is easy to be lulled into complacency via the drone of a cement mixer, as we observe a building come together. An activity which can take months if not years. And as necessary the construction of the new tenements may be in our metropolis, we find invisibleized questions such as whether the people who built it would ultimately live here? Or where does the immense materials for such constructions come from?

There is also however the dimension of that which is familiar as we index our paths in the world; often making an address rather than merely sending one. 

When a labourer hammers on a pillar being erected, it is rare that he considers what living in such a dwelling would be like. This however is the very possibility, of a home finding an inhabitant, that makes the entire exercise possible. This would of course call for some neighbourly interaction inasmuch as worlds do meet. As a minor axiom of my own - I may say that a site becomes a world when it learns of its relations to others. 

'Proposition 1: A world is always a model of a World.' - Our habitations, our dwellings if you please, exist for us in our frames of reference. These are what makes 'worlds', 'distinct' and 'identifiable.' These frames are what allow us to create novel forms of self-reference.

Nelson Goodman is cited, from 'Ways of Worldmaking' - where he presents the  axiom 'Worldmaking is a remaking of worlds already at hand.'

This of course also allows us to see, indeed - take part in constructing another, if not many other worlds within the present world enclosure; even if we are doing nothing more than making this world intelligible. This entailed act of witnessing however, would also eentail the possibility of the permeability of our world, in vision - yet effectually compossible in a frame which can think their congruence. 

'Proposition 2: Every world summons a topos or site.' - Inasmuch as we are worldly begins we place demands which can be adequately met only via the facilitations of other entities. This is not a transcendentalism. And yet, there may be relations which can only be fulfilled via the recognition of belonging. Less dessert tribe seeking homeland, more misfits trying to place bets on a reunion. Yet bets, as they always are - serve as second order phenomenon. Purposes, their presentations and assessments are what these relations are for. The existential question here that may remain, it would appear to me, are whether these vectors (dare we call them traits?) are univalent in their pursuit of corresponding, let us call it - predispositions. 

A site, whatever else it might be is a place which makes such a meeting possible. As the author makes clear, this is not merely a global situation, but planetary. A planetary situation where the human has been de-centred as a primary agent. 

'Proposition 3: All worlds are actual in so far as they are realiseable.' - Here, the complementarity turns, for while relation may make situations realizable, one world does not guarantee the existence of another. This, indeed is what makes the actualization of worlds possible, an operation immanent to the logic of those worlds. There is however a relation between actual worlds and possible ones. The ability of a world to refer to its own mode of logic can obscure possible worlds beyond it or in excess to its 'immeadiate limits.' It may well be possible that these interactions between worlds as it were are contingent on our frames of experience and their mutation. Ultimately, the difference between the realizable and the possible would be our insistence on an immanent world model that inheres to our 'logical and material invariances' ie. universals. 

A world however is not an event, and, as such, the nature of inherence we are referring to is a modality. When this world can prescribe a program as a mode, we may acknowledge its legitimacy as a modal entity. This modality becomes computational when it 'delineates a structure of relations with an accompanying logic or language.' The realiseablity of a world would hence be contingent on  its structure, language and logic - whose elaboration may confirm the realizability of the world. 

'Proposition 4: Computation is a vector for the realizability of worlds.' - Taking this axiom seriously, we are led to see that the truth of a proposition, rests in our capacity to prove or program a modality which can realize it. This would however also seek justification via a 'locus of interactions.' And, a world is realizable to the extent that a program can be enacted which develops a site of relations, comprehensible but also in a way which can win legitimacy, wether neighbourly, or otherwise. 

'Proposition 5: Embeddings transform the domain of the possible'. - These would perhaps be of most  interest to us as what is augmented by them is as the name suggests, our relative location vis-a vis the object of study. These locations, which some have termed lenses can either 'introduce or eliminate' domains which may facilitate our contemplations. Embedding can hence shift an object through various dimensions. We would also do well however to remember that these are domains of coexistence. The possibility of misusing  'worlding' is real. Hence the advantage of embedding objects across multiple dimensions, with higher dimensional spaces providing for the possibility of new transformations and further possibilities.

To implement any program of planetarity, would require the construction of a site of interactive enablement; a place of worlding if you will, but possibly between people. Worlding here would be facilitated by an address between planes. 

'Proposition 6: Encodings ground the site of a world in language.' - Encodings which here seem to stand in for all ecriture, if not their tongues - expose, nay present the context sensitivity of a world. When worlds are mediated like this, that is linguistically, underpinned by a sign - the authors call this relation a Number. This opens the possibility of morphism between world models, a collective cultural transference if you please, as well as mappings and translations. To quote 'It is through this multidimensional lens that the discrete context sensitivity of location can be exposed to the continuum of an environment in common, and vice versa. 

'Proposition 7: The transformation of possibilia is computational in nature.' - Of course we must first accede that for any given interaction to be computable, indeed for it to be capable, within the worlds they transcribe, we would rely on some indexing procedure. Indeed, with the establishment of such a procedure, we could compute perturbations in interactions from congruences (of discongruences) in the index itself. 

'Proposition 8: Worlds are actualised via recognitive acts of reason.' - Formal invention here remains the chief symptom of the twin emergence of new worlds and new languages. This indeed may be the classical recognitive or double bind of thought and expression. An occurrence which Spinoza would remind us, remains bodily. This dialogicity which emerges is not merely vertical and immanent, but horizontal and exterior. Agency hence is itself multidimensional, and possibly even negotiatory, but always a quality of relation and capacity for transformation, we are reminded. 

'Proposition 9: 'Scale free strategies for worldmaking expose global constructions.' - The global and the planetary here are said to have distinct conceptual and material genealogies. And while the heuristic of a scale free medium may unleash perversion from a particular dimension, it also removes the cover for the testing of their veracity; which is ultimately their universality, transmissibility or truth.

Proposition 10: 'Universals are invariant laws that structure the domains of the actual.' - Our ability to identify isomorphism, between languages or forms of life are what attest to a recognition of universals, which you will notice is a univalent relation, hence subject to expression. Universals by themselves hence cannot close, or totalise the sequence of linguistic forms over which they precide over, acting as laws - without something of a transcendent appeal. 

Even without laws however, we may independently identify an ethics of worlding operational in acts of linguistic transference between worlds, which ultimately is the construction of another. Here, the authors of this text leave us with something of a prescriptive ethics. - "The question at the heart of possible worlds is how to become witness to a world that is not yet concrete, a world that does not exist within the existing frames of reference that configure the perceptibility of concreteness. To be a witness entails not only the ability to perceive, but also the capacity to testify to the ramifications of what has been witnessed. Witnessing is more than seeing. It is not only the agency required to deconcretise the actual (that of seeing the rigidity of self-referential frameworlds of the actual world as contingency, and thus not invariant), but also the agency to participate in the semantic actualisation of non-trivial possible worlds." - This would conclude my reading. 

A brief note on the authors: Anil Bawa Cavia is a computer scientist who works with computational media. He founded speculative software studio in 2009. Patricial Reed is an artist, writer and designer based in Berlin who has previously been a contributor to e-flux and MIT Press.