The specificity of live beings... is "one of a system in unstable dynamic balance, entwined in its orderly structure by a continuous loan of dependent energy in an environment characterized by molecular disarray or by the static order of crystals."
CANGUILHEM, G., Idéologie et rationalité dans l'histoire des sciences de la vie. Ed. Vrin, Paris, 1977, p. 134, translated by ourselves.The notion that virtual space defies the concept of "dimension", with the radical "di" meaning duality, was the starting point for the conception of the http://www.corpos.org website. The three-dimensional concept is also an n-dimensional one, therefore our proposal of a fractal dimension: an "incommensurablemention", or a "webmention".
This reasoning excludes any possibility of linearity. The existing communication technologies, essentially worldwide communication networks, raise concepts that have been for long forgotten by western philosophy. Among these is the impossibility of linearity in the individual, ignored in western rationale for its need of separation, like body and soul, sensible and rational. They both… or together… do not develop in a straightforward way. Just the inebriated try to walk in a straight line. Sober humans walk by imperfectly traced, devious paths. Thus freedom allows, demands, intertwines and disperses.
We will not try to establish our concepts by solid bases nor by sprouting concepts, but by the notion of 'webmention'. The most appropriate metaphor would be the search for concepts that float in the universe of our perceptions/agreements. Among these it is the concept of collectivity, so little remembered by occidental philosophy. Today almost no artistic work involving computer graphics and image processing, graphical interfaces and interactivity, and still, artistic installations, and performances... also all the forms of human work (interlaced actions and thoughts), involving all knowledge areas are not the fruit of a solitary individual. It’s the sense of "we" that allows the individual possibility to exist, whether he desires it or not. Reflecting this, the work presented here (by the Research Group "Corpos Informáticos, assembled at the University of Brasilia in 1991[1]) is the result of a work directioned/thought upon the denotation of "groupwork". This Group stresses the significance of 'we' as connoted by French philosopher Jean-Marie Doguet, where "the other" is distinguished as capable of sharing the pleasure of beauty; beauty capable to give pleasure universally, without "concepts" (Kant). "Universally" understood as equal, that is, capable to share, or not, the pleasure of beauty, without "concepts". "Or not" suggests " the other" as equal, thus equivalent to "we".
This site is designed by Carla Rocha.
It was said: freedom loves the interstices, the dispersions, but also the infinite, features that are impregnated by the idea of "webmention".
On the other hand, western culture always attributed women the ability of thinking by crooked lines, the dispersion, "flanerie", the capacity of losing themselves into daydreams, to the men security, resolution, objectivity and straightforwardness. Thus the worldwide communications network should be space, by excellence, feminine, penetrable, infinitely penetrable. Our work is based on the idea of "wormholes", bends in space, foldings era. Not the one of unfoldings and, over all, not the post-biological one, as proposed by Roy Ascott. In all these foldings are the ideas of the development of the current artistic/scientific sensation/thought where ecology folds upon chemistry, mathematics folds upon physics, philosophy upon psychoanalysis, and arts upon technology. All of them become unstable, permeable, penetrable layers, capable of new interactions: layers of thoughts, sensations over individuals.
Our website folds upon itself infinitely because of the impossibility of replication of the same page. It allows the possibility of unattempted interactivity. It proposes to be presentation, not representation of all concepts above developed.
[1]The group is currently integrated by Alice Stefânia Curi, Carla Rocha, Maria Luíza Fragoso, Milton Marques, Robiara Becker and Maria Beatriz de Medeiros (group coordinator). The group exists "overweb", since we inhabit the spaces geographically denominated "Brasilia", "Philadelphia", "Campinas" and "Paris" the latter one situated in the European Community in a province formerly known as France.