The development of modern information and communication technologies has enabled the spread of tools and procedures dedicated to the discretization of reality, already involving inconceivable and unprecedented swathes of informations. The diversity, volume and velocity of data has made possible a vast set of digital contents: this is not just a form of technical externalization, of data storage, or of symbolic representation, but also the tangible basis for a new form of power, ‘algorithmic governmentality’, which uses the mathematical analysis of (...) this vast gathering of data to prescribe and proscribe particular concrete behaviours. Evaluating these procedures for the discretization of reality, together with processes of dividualization, data behaviourism and personal profiling, this article examines the complex of techniques applied to digital contents. The basis for this examination is here the Deleuzian concept of stratoanalysis: this will initially involve studying the forms and spaces generated and composed by digital technologies, so as to assess the viability of the concept of ‘digital stratum’. By then analysing the relationship between the anthropomorphic stratum and the digital stratum, and the way that algorithmic governmentality strives to control this relationship, it will become possible to propose a line of flight that sets out and sets off from this logic of control. (shrink)

The paper starts from the pages of A Thousand Plateaus (1980) dedicated to the refrain, and identifies a Kantian inspiration in the topics covered: the relationship between milieu and territory, but also the theme of art. Two years earlier (1978), in fact, Deleuze had given lectures on Kant in Vincennes focused on time. Although Kant's paradigm is in many ways far from Deleuze and Guattari’s one, the former may be certainly seen as a significant precedent, especially when we consider what (...) Deleuze said about him in his lectures, defining him a philosopher who “develops a whole geographical conception of thought”. Finally, the article deals with Deleuze's reading of Kant's sublime as a rupture of rhythm and emergence of chaos. In the sublime it is therefore possible to recognize an antecedent to that rhythm flying towards the cosmos that will be discussed as deterritorialization of the refrain in A Thousand Plateaus. (shrink)

This is a translation of the original text, published on Multitudes, realized with the generous permission of the author. Being the transcription of a lecture we decided to maintain the evocative style, as well as the formula "CsO" where originally used.

In many ways, the 20th Century can be regarded as art’s attempts to escape the “tyranny of meter”. Is there a way to think about the rhythm otherwise? Maybe the answer to this all-too-human tyranny of the repetition of the same is something inhuman – in|human rhythms. With the examples of works by John Luther Adams, David Dunn, and Richard Reed Parry, this essay tries to show how with the idea of the human becoming a geological force itself, art has (...) the responsibility to create an awareness of how we live not only in the world, but also are part of that world. A music that ‘performs’ these ‘cosmic dimensions’ of the interdependence of human and nonhuman, by focusing on the in|human of the concept ‘human’ might also teach us something in regard to artistic form – these rhythmic ‘relations of velocity’ ultimately reveal rhythm as the in|human nonlinear pulsation of ‘a life.’. (shrink)

Cybernetic governmentality weakens the capacity of resistant subjectivities to struggle against neoliberal rationality because digitalized subjectivation processes are constantly pushed towards the logics of the market and into codifications of competitive evaluation. Despite the potential for new forms of collectivity contained in the concept of virtuality, technological evolution has disseminated a systemic form of digitality that operates not through collective procedures but through subjective-individualistic ones. Hence arises a danger that was indicated by Deleuze decades ago: that of confusing the virtual (...) with the possible. By constructing a genealogy that is built around Pierre Levy’s optimistic representation of cyberspace, Bernard Stiegler’s work on the contemporary disenchantment of the computerized world, Baudrillard’s metaphysics of code and Antoinette Rouvroy’s analysis of algorithmic governmentality, we will demonstrate that digitality is between us and that this amounts to an irreversible fact entailing a critical confrontation with its current manifestation. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze and Raymond Ruyer have been sui generis morphologists. Their peculiar contributions to philosophical morphology can cast light on some problematic issues concerning the relationship between “form” and “formation”. In this respect, the musical concepts of «rhythm» and «melody» would play an important role insofar as to address respectively the problem of temporality of the living form and the problem of its events-based normativity. In the first paragraph, I address some morphological positions in Deleuze’s philosophy of creation, in relation (...) to his perspective on time and genesis. In the second paragraph I deal with Ruyer’s symmetrical view, which can provide further clarifications on the idea of biological constraints’ modification. The concepts of rhythmic pulsation and melodic orientation are shown to be two crucial coordinates in order to approach the intrinsic features of the living. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to ‘re-read’ the main concepts about the music crafted by Deleuze and Guattari within the context of A thousand plateaus, and make them communicate with the work of one of the most important indie-rock bands of the last years, that means, The National. On one side, we want to rethink the ontology of music that Deleuze and Guattari thought and assemble it with sound materials that come from the indie-rock scene; on the other, this (...) research aim is to reveal the undiscovered revolutionary potentialies hidden within a certain kind of music, in a way that can allow us to look from a different perspective the relation between music and politics. (shrink)

On the plateau 1837: Of the Refrain, Deleuze and Guattari set the stage for an idea of sound as an affective and political entity, whose role is at the core of the construction of subjectivity. The analysis of the Deleuze and Guattari’s plateau allows to highlight the ways in which sound creates affective and cultural territories and their subsequent subjective positions. In this respect, the body becomes a political battlefield through its ability to experience sound both passively and actively. In (...) the central part of the text, the study of Deleuze and Guattari will be approached by the distinction introduced by Steve Goodman concerning two different developments in sonic forces: a dispersive, centrifuge effect and an attractive, centripetal one. Through this examination, will be possible to draw a common line in the works of certain artists and contemporary researcher such as Kodwo Eshun, Ben Frost and Brian Massumi. The peculiarity of their projects lies in the ability to use sound as an instrument to make non- anthropocentric forces audible and perceptible. One of the main challenge of contemporary times is the ethical and political question on sound and its relation to the human subject. How can we remove the human subjectivity to analyze a sonic approach to the Anthropocene? This question will bring to the examination of certain sonic practices that could be seen as fundamental critical instruments for our present. (shrink)

Toward the end of the Nomadology plateau of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari differentiate an ambulant holey space from the smooth space of the nomadic war machine and the striated space of the sedentary State apparatus. Although Deleuze and Guattari only discuss the concept briefly, holey space provides a useful means of framing their remarks on music in general. Music’s holey space is a quasi-territory determined by processes of following sonic movement-matter. Its instruments differ from nomadic weapons and sedentary (...) tools, being characterized by directions of injection, ejection and parajection; the vector of lines of the universe and extemporality; the model of free play; the trait of expression of incantation; and the tonality of affects-percepts. A paradigmatic instance of musical holey space is John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit as performed on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018. (shrink)