Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“And what Jousse, resituated within originary grammar, can give us is a model of originary media, which subsequent media progressively distance themselves from, retrieve and supplement. In other words, I am suggesting a more general application for Olson’s reference to “classical prose” to illustrate the operations of the metalanguage of literacy. Let’s say that the “media” is whatever makes a scene hold together as a scene, and whatever makes it hold together as a scene is whatever provides a space for the sign to signify. This provides us with a kind of continuum for articulating scene and sign: we can see the sign as a minimal “protuberance” on a densely networked or mediated scene; or, we can see the sign maximally, as requiring an extensive articulation requiring only a few “props”; or anywhere in between. To use Gregory Bateson’s definition of “information,” the sign is the difference that makes a difference on the scene, and any judgment on what counts as this “difference” can only be made from within another (disciplinary) scene. So, originary media is a network, a set of invisible lines we could hypothetically draw connecting the sensorium of each of the scene’s participants to each other’s, but also to all the different “parts” (what counts as a “part” depends on the vision, embedded in a body in motion or stasis) of all the others’ bodies. We would even have to draw lines directly from body parts of one participant to body parts of others, as we should assume tacit, tactile and subtle forms of responsiveness on everyone’s part.”

— Adam Katz, Mediated Centrality · 2020 · Anthropomorphics