Digital documents, concepts and physical forms converge into discrete objects as necessary and move from representation to embodiment then back again. This constantly emerging and unfolding behavior is a multiplicity that exists in a cloud of experience. A thought leaves the self and is encoded within a vehicle, which is then experienced by the other and/or the self, which is then re-imagined where finally the cycle loops on itself in a circular causal relationship. This formula is the basis of cybernetic theory and inherent in any act of conscious creation. The machine-human hybrid is a semiotic engine. It fragments knowledge and mutates information through a genetic feedback loop. The basic structure of this genetic system (10) is as follows:

1. Initial population : Content is uploaded to the Internet and/or non-web content observed and integrated into the actor-network of the observer.


2. Fitness evaluation : The content that has generated the most attention/capital is strengthened in the actor-network, creating a subset based on preference.


3. Reproduction : Analysis of preferred content, interpretation and understanding is developed.


4. Mutation and genetic crossover : Synthesis between subset which produces a new population. This could be human and/or algorithmic creation of new content and/or remixing of preexisting content.


5. Loop : Back to reproduction.


6. Termination : The newly created semiotic organism becomes extinct, or it speciates into a new thing which is no longer in the same genus, and/or speciates in a way that does not allow for further reproduction (10.5).

An image-object (18) can perhaps be understood as newly manifested node in an actor-network which attempts to be self-aware of its position in the network, or attempts to understand or modulate its reception by other agents. The subjectivity imbedded within an image-object is self-aware in terms of its production, consumption, and audience. However if this is the primary consideration of an image-object it can be understood as a product by and for the Spectacle of our attention ecology. The essential truth of such an image-object is that it embodies an immense accumulation of representation as the real. We must not blindly accept the spreading ideology of such an image-object as beauty, as the form of the good, or as truth. The fact that this modality has gained ubiquitously passive acceptance echoes the adage, “that which appears is good, that which is good appears” for “the attitude which (society) demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance” (J) .

The societal expectation for an artist in the post-internet (19) era often lies in a constant stream fragmented gestures, constructed to be quickly digested and ‘shareable’. One is no longer expected to maintain a sustained, deep focused attention toward a single purpose nor “help the world by revealing mystic truths” (Nauman) as truth itself has been deemed subjective and abandoned. The ubiquity of an online audience within the multiplicity of a post-internet art practice breeds over-communication and heavily documented minute gestures, creating a hyper-scrutiny of the ephemeral. Yet this scrutiny can only occupy a narrow region of time as defined by the collective attention span of society, which exponentially dwindles in direct correlation to the increasing speed and ease of communication. Such an artist in the post-internet era is a product, by and for themselves and their audience. This sentiment is embodied in many art practices existing primarily as online presence and persona-as-product (20) .

Vierkant questions where the heart of an artwork exists, and concludes that the imageobject is one that “move(s) seamlessly from physical representation to Internet representation”(K) and that the truth of art now lies in this infinite mutability of form. I suggest that the “lack of fixity in representational strategy” (K) used by image-objects is often less in terms of the direct mutability of the digital, and material-semiotics, but rather an exacerbation of the burden of choice, and an embrace of the ironic gesture which plagues modern society. The ironic often plays such a key role in such image-objects, it deserves quoting the following at length:

“(the ironic) makes fun of its own format, and attempts to lure its target market to laugh at and with it. It preemptively acknowledges its own failure to accomplish anything meaningful. No attack can be set against it, as it has already conquered itself. The ironic frame functions as a shield against criticism....Irony is the most self-defensive mode, as it allows a person to dodge responsibility for his or her choices, which means etymologically to “secretlyflee” (subter + fuge). Somehow, directness has become unbearable to us.” (L)

However, this embracing of the infinite mutability of digital matter is not the root of the problem. Rather it seems clear that the development of attention as currency and “capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image”(J) is a virus rotting away at the core of society. This self-consuming activity allows for “technology to become determinant of its own truth”(M), which is the “supreme danger” of technology, according to Heidegger. This kind of activity is machine-based (or aided/informed) production, but it’s the production of alienation, it’s a product of the spectacle not of the real. Perhaps it’s an attempt to create the real through the inversion of mere representation into the real, but this practice immediately, willingly, and happily sacrifices this real back into the Spectacle. This model of working is a continual abandonment of truth. It generates and embraces alienation itself as a product, rather than producing an investigation into the understanding of ones own existence. Of course one could define ones existence by and through the Spectacle, but to completely deny the real and fail to see that which is outside of the Spectacle is truly the negation of life.

These attention based spectacle-fueled image-objects are “a constellation of formal aesthetic quotations, self-aware of (their) ... context and built to be shared and cited” (K) rather than the “essence of technology…the constellation, the stellar course of the mystery”(M). This distinction, however potentially problematic in its dualism, presents two modalities which should be considered with a great deal of importance. One modality is of power and currency, the other is of beauty and truth. As Heidegger states, one modality becomes "transfixed in the will to master it(self) as an instrument”(M) and fails to “hear in what respect one exists in terms of ones essence”(M). While the other reaches toward the essence of technology which “resides in a poetic dwelling near the truth of Being”(M).

Through the lens of Heidegger one could say that the relationship between the imageobject and its components of physical, digital and ideological forms, and the modulation of these components, is a means of ordering as a way of revealing. Heidegger states that Enframing is the “calling out to unconceal the actual”(M) from which “the essence of all history is determined”(M) and that this behavior is “truth setting itself to work” (N). He continues to state that the essence of technology lies in its revealing and unconcealing of the truth. And that “technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens.”(M) What then are the truths that may be revealed by this iterative, self-consuming behavior of society and what is the history that it has defined? Often it is those individuals who are interested in power, not beauty, that write our history.

It seems plausible that this iterative and genetic approach of image-object documentation, mutation, and reproduction, would over time reorder the image-object and reveal, or unconceal, a truth closer to the core of the post-internet condition and the nature of being. However, when novelty itself becomes the goal of a creative system, the strategies of aesthetic mutation become polluted with tropes and clichés. Rather than a swift evolution into new unknown forms, this activity becomes a frantic flailing. This methodology treads water, gasping for the air of truth in a sea of self-referential ironic gestures. If there is sincerity within the work, it’s the sincere embrace of attention as currency, and a willingness to never escape the isolated arena of the aesthetic object. This is an activity “so inextricably linked with a variety of interpretations on Conceptual art doxa”(K), (the commonly held beliefs and often unquestioned opinions) that it lacks a Logos (a ground, an argument, a wider context), necessary to deliver it into Episteme (clear truth, certainty of knowledge). This activity is a tool for the formation of an argument, which lacks both context for the argument, and the argument itself.

To continue using the analogy of genetic algorithms and systems, any such imageobject fueled by an attention based economy may suffer from the hill-climbing problem. Essentially this states that although incremental change may lead to a better solution it may only be a local solution or local hill that has been climbed. While the higher, global hill within the system remains unseen and thereby unattainable. This lower hill is the hill of the attention-based economy, with a shallow and voracious hunger for novelty. The climbing of this hill equates to what forms generate the most attention or spectacle. While the higher, global hill (of which there of course, are a multiplicity) exists in what Heidegger refers to as the essence of technology which resides in “a poetic dwelling near the truth of Being” (M) . These are the moments of experience which broaden and redefine what it is to be human, which enrich, question and give back to the collective pool of humanity, rather than offer up idols and symbols for, and of, consumption. These are gestures inherently born from their use value, not just in a practical and pragmatic sense of use, but also in an emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual use. This is in contrast to gestures born from an exchange value, based solely on economic hierarchies in the language of attention, capital and currency.

This graphic is of course reductive, and it is likely that the higher hill shown here would be best illustrated as existing on another surface, or perhaps another hyper-surface altogether. These higher dimensions of consequence and purpose may unfold and reveal themselves perpetually, remaining forever out of reach. However, failing to witness and reach toward them is "the danger in failing to hear in what respect one exists in terms of ones essence"(M). Reality is a feedback loop, of which we are all authors who must be “affirmed (by) the power of the world to call forth an otherwise inaccessible reality and the ability of art to give shape and significance to the chaos of the universe” (O).