Rhizome all around

The idea of using the term “rhizome” to define or put a symbol on what we have been talking about has proven very helpful – for me at least. I definitely agree with the discussion of Deleuze and Guattari in their application of the word to the Internet with different “nodes”. In almost all respects, it seems you can jump from one place to another from all different directions; however, when I thought about it further, “What about the aspect of servers?” To some extent YES, we can access areas on the Internet when and where we want it, but when a server goes down, that’s it. That information stored is inaccessible. But that’s really the only end-all thing about the Internet from how I see it.

I also found the use of rhizome somewhat applicable to Borges labyrinth as described in the reading. The thought of time forking perpetually toward innumerable futures kind of resembled this idea of the rhizome continuously growing in all different horizontal directions – and how there in always a middle. Well with time, the middle could be the present that has both a past and future.

Finally, in trying to apply this idea to Ascott’s article, I applied it to the idea of art is synonymous with being a teacher. In the matrix, or that space between the artist and the spectator, an infinite number of possible messages can be derived. The artwork can teach so many different people many different things, but to some extent they are all connected, either by the resulting conclusion or by the artwork itself. It may seem that the artwork is the center or beginning, which by definition, a rhizome has no beginning, but really the artwork was the result of the artist’s ideas, which also stemmed from some experience, and so on. It’s just one big organization of chaos.

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As for symbols:

Time: I feel would best be illustrated by a black hole or something like it. We discussed how time is both synchronic and diachronic and I feel that in a black hole, time could be happening all around us at once or still linear.

History: I think history could be effectively portrayed by a pair of eyes because as we discussed history as being a personal experience with our own memory and in order to form a memory you have to experience it, which usually, memories are stored by what we see.