Molecular Twitter Party

Thanks to the Participants!

2009-08-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who participated. Thanks for all the thoughts, tweets, and retweets. You made the Molec ular Twitter Party what it was and we appreciate you showing up, even if for one tweet.

Below are all who took in the event.

Thanks again to (even if you were late):

@crinafly @iamapinkspider @Naxos @DeleuzeGuattari @IlllllllllllllI @thehapacalypse @evilitlsquirrel @blebnet @Cosecha @antupillan @AdelineLuna @broderickchow @rBecky @dasilvaorg @pareidoliac @multiplicit @juhasaarinen @aljones15 @ixmesh @trishaclarkin @ariadna502 @jonjonjonjonjon @Matthew_T_Grant @Eventmechanics @fuzzycontext @MetaJonas @macinearla @wizardofgore @theloveartist @craquelure @waterbears @jaymjordan @lotu5 @jimrhiz @candy_security @melissa_djohnst @redjives @llull @sdv_duras @moritherapy @mousewords @anodyne2art @susandelaney @theartofkEith @oneinchbuddha @BobEaglestone @TeenyR @philkirby @enkiv2 @quinndupont @denidzo @davidbmetcalfe @notthisbody @BrazilTour @troyrhoades @DGconcordance @industwetrust @Sergio_AuCREm @Stanley_1KLVRx @gravity7 @fiandshoegaze @Death_is_Coming @Anadyome @andrewmurphie @TRUE @temirov @RevzNexus @JeffreyJDavis

#MTP >>> EXTRACT

2009-08-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a taster of what has been going on today!

NOTE: Unfortunately due to a bug in Twitter, not everyone's tweets show up in a Twitter-search. Apologies if your tweets are missing from this stream. Your contributions were very much appreciated! We are looking at ways of rectifying this problem for future publication of the #MTP tweets.

@MTwtrP “A thought grappling with exterior forces instead of being gathered up in an interior form, operating by relays instead of forming...

@MTwtrP ...an image, an event-thought, a haecceity, instead of a subject-thought" ATP 378 D&G #MTP

@MTwtrP #MTP “A thought grappling with exterior forces instead of being gathered up in an interior form, operating by relays..."

@MTwtrP #MTP "...instead of forming an image, an event-thought, a haecceity, instead of a subject-thought..."

@MTwtrP #MTP "...a problem-thought instead of an essence-thought or theorem..."

@MTwtrP #MTP "...a thought that appeals to people instead of taking itself for government ministry.” ATP 378

@MTwtrP To what extent can we see Twitter as such an event-thought? #MTP

@troyrhoades Twitter is not so much an event-tought, but rather an assemblage of them. #MTP

@iamapinkspider the macropsychics of twitter and the large aggregates are created by the organised masses of twits microphysics of twtr #MTP

@MTwtrP RT @iamapinkspider: t/ macropsychics of twitter & t/ large aggregates are created by t/ organised masses of twits microphysics of twtr #MTP

@iamapinkspider in that way the event is always returning in twitter ,even if a topic returns, its always a collection of different micro connections #MTP

@troyrhoades Darqnez – Darqnez - Molecular Disfuntion More molecular music #MTP ♫ http://blip.fm/~bghxu

@iamapinkspider the events in twitter due to its constant molecular undercurrents are never finalised always but in the constant process of production #MTP

@Naxos RT @pareidoliac is activism on Twitter predicated on the nature of Twitter itself? Or more to do with users? #MTP

@iamapinkspider the naming of the event or topic is twitter would be a sign which would always be constantly changing #MTP

@sdv_duras RT @Naxos @MTwtrP @pareidoliac - more to do with users #MTP

@wizardofgore Twitter addresses us problems, instead of theorems, exactly like Pasolini: it drives thought to "follow" its own necessity. #MTP

@sdv_duras twitter is a medium, an assemblage (human-computer-network-messageconstraint) perhaps #MTP

@MtwtrP @sdv_duras @Naxos @pareidoliac but the facts of Twitter: brevity, anonymity, connectivity: do surely influence the mode of expression? #mtp

@MtwtrP @sdv_duras @Naxos @pareidoliac and not only the mode of expression but the relations that expression has #MTP

@therrorie RT @Naxos but either is NOT sufficient reason in itself? Does Twitter in its nature INSPIRE a certain mode of thought? <-YES #MTP @evilitlsquirrel The very act of being on Twitter, which some people so actively denounce, seems to act as an impetus to a particular way of expression #mtp

@Naxos @MTwtrP of course, we think that a molecular one yes

@evilitlsquirrel but of course it selects a particular kind of speaker... #mtp

@broderickchow Anyone discussed connection <-> machinic twitter and Deleuze's work on cinema? Non-human eye etc is this not voice independent of body? #mtp

@MtwtrP @broderickchow this is an extremely interesting point. Indeed there is a case to say that technology of Twtr works like that of cinema. #mtp

@MtwtrP @broderickchow ...by cutting us off from our motor-sensory schema, allowing us to be a Beckettian disembodied, stuttering voice!

@therrorie @sdv_duras What is a medium? Doesn't the user become a 'medium' her/himself when using twitter? #MTP

@troyrhoades @sdv_duras Twitter is more than a human-computer-network-messageconstraint assemblage.There are always lines of flight that escape this.#MTP

@iamapinkspider @MtwtrP - good question, it all depends on how much value is given to a specific molecular singularity

@therrorie #MTP #activism Identies are in constant actualisation and on the move - twitter is a very productice catalyst to support that

@iamapinkspider as each twit itself only has a possibility of becoming radicle and is not radicle in itself until it is burdened with that value #MTP

@therrorie @MTwtrP e.g. form and feeling public in realtime but theres definitely more to it #MTP

@MtwtrP @therrorie WHAT is it about Twitter that does this? The anonymity? Brevity? Connectivity? The very fleeting nature of the tweets? #mtp

@evilitlsquirrel @therrorie yes I am interested in how one's Twitter identity - so obviously ASSUMED - influences one's twitteractivity #mtp

@evilitlsquirrel @therrorie because twitter allows us to be whatever we want we can become-activist a lot easier. It makes id supple. #mtp

@Naxos RT @pareidoliac RT @MTwtrP: RT @therrorie: #deleuze international proudly supports Molecular Twitter Party #MTP http://bit.ly/18n0wq

@troyrhoades @MTwtrP but those banal trending topics have some temporary weight on how people Tweet. Tending topics do have a force. #mtp

@therrorie RT @evilitlsquirrel twitter allows us to be whatever we want we can become-activist a lot easier. It makes id supple. #mtp

@iamapinkspider so there is a possibility of individual's twits leading to a collection of popular activism but ... #MTP

@therrorie @evilitlsquirrel Yes and 'hacking' into assemblages which causes sudden and tacit change of identit-ies in any way whatsoever #mtp

@iamapinkspider this would only be a reflection of the constant schizorevolutionary undercurrents in twitting itself #MTP

@broderickchow @MTwtrP as in Billy Budd's stutter, Bartleby's repetition (Critique et Clinique)!

@Naxos @MTwtrP #MTP to my mind what we need to discuss here is if Twitter is the "new" segmentary machine

@Naxos @MTwtrP #MTP and if such machine lead us to activism , molecular activism

@MtwtrP @Naxos (@broderickchow) Twtr "new" segmentary machine in same way as Cinema was - a new technology that removes some constraints #mtp

@iamapinkspider so in that way, even if one particular notion lead to popular activism there would always be a plural multiplicity of ... #MTP

@iamapinkspider other molecular singularities #MTP

@troyrhoades @Naxos What would you consider some of the "old" segmentary machines? #MTP

@wizardofgore @MTwtrP They way by which thought follows thought, its automaticity, describes perhaps the very problematics of the Twittering Machine. #MTP

@troyrhoades @therrorie Twitter doesn't let allow us to be whatever as there are still constraints on how the twittering machine moves #mtp

@aljones15 @iamapinkspider can you expand on the schizo-revolutionary tendencies of twitter? how does it gaurantee a multuplicity? #MTP

@therrorie #MTP 'The segmentary machine mixes rivalries, conflicts, and ruptures throughout the variations of filiation and fluctuations of alliance'..

@troyrhoades @therrorie Some of the twittering machine's rigidity does allow for supple movements like a becoming-activism and becoming identity. #mtp

@evilitlsquirrel @therrorie I like the way a Twitter-ID can be multiple people, and each person can be multiple-Twitterers. #mtp

@MtwtrP @therrorie We are multiple people but are still identified under one becoming-identity #mtp

@troyrhoades @therrorie but also restricts one from every potential becoming there is. #mtp

@iamapinkspider @Naxos - twitter's lines are constanly always picked away like twits are miners digging, creating holes and openings #MTP

@therrorie @MTwtrP @Naxos #MTP Anti-Oedipus - Given the ubiquitous access and formation, I'd say Twitter is pretty close

@evilitlsquirrel @troyrhoades is it not a case of enabling constraints again - every such e.c. is BOTH enabling and constraing #mtp

@evilitlsquirrel @troyrhoades so there we have the molecular-molar entanglement again #mtp

@therrorie @troyrhoades Yes, you are right of course, but that could also mean that the segmentary machine is then a mere ideal? #MTP

@Naxos @MTwtrP In ATP8 Deleuze & Guattari use the telegraph as an example of a segmenatry machine to d e f i n e whats a molecular line #MTP

@MTwtrp @Naxos are there no other examples today - it seems restrictive to focus merely on Twitter. #mtp

@MTwtrp @Naxos telegraph was a groundbreaking technology, twtr is only a small application of the technology of the internet #mtp

@troyrhoades @Naxos I don't think that there are "new" & old segmentary machines just different configurations that emerge into unique assemblages #MTP

@Naxos @MTwtrP a segmentary machine shall be then molecular, i you want to put it that way. to my mind twitter is the new segmentary machine

@iamapinkspider @aljones15 - simply by repetition of a twit, each twit is different, no 2 twits are the same, leads to a becoming of twit itself #MTP

@troyrhoades @therrorie The segmentary machine is not merely an idea, it is an actualizing becoming. #mtp

@Naxos #MTP To paraphrase Deleuze & Guattari: > “Instead of a rigid line composed of well-determined segments, [Twitter] now forms a supple flow→

@Naxos →marked by quanta that are like so many little segmentations-in-progress.” ATP§8 >> #molecularparty # activism join @MTwtrP! #MTP

The ConnectDeleuze Presentation

2009-08-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

Below is what @evilitlsquirrel will be presenting at the beginning of the Molecular Twitter Party session at the ConnectDeleuze conference, which co-insides with the last hour and a half of the Party!

Note the slides for this presentation can be found here.

“Experiment, never interpret”

… Deleuze and Parnet exhorts us in their essay on Anglo-American Literature in Dialogues, and it is in this spirit that the Molecular Twitter Party is taking place. It is an attempt at practising with the creative process that Deleuze called Thought using contemporary technology that is fast becoming a familiar part of our lives. It is an attempt to consider how Deleuze continues to be a useful, practical thinker, allowing us to negotiate with the world, while this world is changing.

I expect most of you here are to some extent familiar with the Internet phenomenon that is Twitter. The current tagline on their homepage is “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.” (SLIDE 1) - something which shows how Twitter itself has become something that it didn't ever expect. The site set up promoting itself to be a tool to keep in touch with friends and family, by way of short 140 character messages relayed in across the net or via a mobile phone text service. Since starting in 2006, it has become something far more deterritorialized than the “real-time short messaging service” that it describes itself as.

To use Twitter, you sign up and create an account, which is distinguished by a name prefixed by the @sign and a customizable picture to go with it. Then you start speaking (or Tweeting) and listening. To hear what someone is saying you follow them. As you continue tweeting, you hope that someone will follow you. (In the early days you could listen to “everyone” but this has now become a preposterous wish with millions of users). You can direct your tweets to someone by adding their @name in your tweet.

Starting out on Twitter is an experiment, it feels a little like taking a step into the ether itself – your tweets feel like they loose themselves in the din. Who cares what you have to say? You scan the unfathomable amounts of messages out there for something interesting (there is a search tool to help you filter all of this information). However, slowly you find yourself becoming part of a network of Tweeters, or Tweeps, that are saying things that interest you, and who seem interested in what you're saying. Suddenly it starts making sense.

From there you learn to use hashtags (a way of marking the topic of your tweet by prefixing words with the hash sign), and to ReTweet (the practice of tweeting a message you like again marking its originator with RT in order to spread it to your followers, who don't necessarily follow the same people as you). You become a dab hand at finding what people say regarding topics that interest you, and you join in (or deliberately refuse to) the global debate of the so called Trending Topics – the terms that are the most used on Twitter at any point in time which range from the revolutionary (#iranelection) to the banal (#threewordsaftersex).

This was the trajectory of my collaborator’s experience, and mine. As we found ourselves stuck in front of the computer working, Twitter started off providing some light relief, but instead ended up providing inspiration. Personally, while searching for the use of the term Deleuze, I followed and was in turn followed by people who shared my interest in the philosopher. I tweeted bits from books, questions and thoughts and received interesting and thought-provoking replies, I considered and engaged in discussions that others started. All in 140character chunks. A restriction that, by the way, turned out to be, in the words of one of my collaborators on this project, an “enabling constraint”: the imperative to conciseness was an impetus to clarity, an impulse to post spontaneous ideas, and encouragement to quick thinking. It was liberating: rather than belabouring ideas and worrying about the “correct” ways of saying and thinking, concepts get thrown out there, into the Twittersphere to sink or float.

“Don't have just ideas, just have an idea. Have short term ideas”, Deleuze and Guattari say in their introductory chapter to A Thousand Plateaus on the “rhizome.” Indeed, it was difficult NOT to be struck by the way our (mine and my like-minded Tweep's) activity on Twitter resonated with some of the key ideas in that seminal work, most immediately and obviously perhaps is the rhizome. Twitter seems to embody many of Deleuze and Guattari’s descriptions of the rhizome, which displays, they say, “Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other.” Each person of Twitter, whose Twitter-stream represents a line, can connect to any other, this creating nodes in a vast rhizomatic grid of Twitter-streams. There have been some interesting attempts at visualising this.... (SLIDES 2, 3, and 4) These images are perhaps what Deleuze and Guattari would call Twitter Plateaus or Milieus – multiplicities without beginnings or ends that connect to other multiplicities, arbitrarily centred on the singular points of a particular Twitter user (here me @evilitlsquirrel and the other half of the Molecular Twitter Party @troyrhoades). Not only is every Twitter user in the middle of a network without beginning or end, but each tweet is an intermezzo in a conversation without beginning or end, all with infinite potential interlocutors.

But Twitter itself is not only just the rhizomatic connections between people. In fact without its “content”, the Tweets, it would not really exist. In this sense Twitter is not only rhizomatic, but perhaps nomadic. The nodes, the points, of the Twitter users are not only fixed points which generate and communicate Tweets, but relays, points that the trajectory of messages made up of a strange type of indirect free discourse pass through. The @you, a larval self consisting of a potential picture and “name”, on Twitter can be as loose a version of yourself as you want. I, a picture and a name. Anonymity is a distinct possibility as are multiple Twitter accounts (conversations with yourself?), multiple users of one Twitter streams, and even automated robotic Twitterers. In a sense Twitter allows us to reach the point where, as Deleuze and Guattari say, “it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves... We have been aided, inspired, multiplied” ATP 3.

Much of Twitter's uniqueness lies in the way that it is the information itself that is at its core, which is aggregated, accessed, relayed, amplified, varied, transformed (and corrupted) by the use of hashtags and ReTweets. There is a “cloud” of information out there (SLIDE 5) belonging to no one and everyone. A rhizome made out of Twitter-stream-lines emanating from thousands of tiny Twitter-selves.

But if Twitter offers the opportunity to become-molecular, to speak as a foreigner or ETRANGER – stranger in one's own language, both in the sense of stuttering, telegraphic messages, and in the sense of being a Twitter-self, stranger to others and to one self, it also exemplifies how one can become-molar, how flows are captured, territories established, points fixed and lines segmented – for humans after all, Deleuze tells us, are segmentary animals. As the visualizations show us we inevitably see things in centres, we always look for limits and perhaps we have to, pragmatically, to cope with the world, and certainly to cope with Twitter. The myriad of sites offering analysis of Twitter streams are a case in point – we seem to always want to determine and quantify. (SLIDE 6)

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari speak of lines with supple and rigid segmentarity: those that flow, connect and diverge freely, and those that become stuck, blocked, unified or overcoded. It starts when centres resonate in points of accumulation, when lines lose ability to bud, and centres that were provisional become fixed, essential, predetermined. One of central questions of this intersection between Deleuze and Twitter is how to quantify this process. At which point does Twitter become rigid? The natural process of connection, of relay and amplification of information, that which makes Twitter so rhizomatic, is the beginning of a process of accumulation: a retweet includes a hashtag, a hashtag is retweeted until it becomes a trending topic, the trending topic (displayed on each user's Twitter page) in turn influences what is Tweeted, amplifying itself. To some Twitter offers a great opportunity for influence – maximizing followers, dominating Trending topics. (SLIDES 7 and 8). Capture of these processes by commercial and political interests is a fact. The Twitter streams become overcoded, all resonating to the same tune for a while. But, perhaps, only EVER for a while, and of course the #iranelection is the current example.

Twitter’s use during the unrest following Iran's recent elections became headline news. Twitter was heralded as a new revolutionary force, allowing people speak freely, disseminate otherwise repressed news and mobilize. While on the one hand Twitter was undoubtedly influential in disseminating information about the events in Iran, on the other hand it could be criticized for its unreliability and corruptibility, the brevity of many peoples superficial involvement in the “green movement” from the secure comfort of their homes, the sudden pressure to support the movement among Twitter users, urging people to turn their pictures green, influencing many who had little understanding of the stakes involved, and so on. But of course each of these criticisms can easily be turned into a positive point: a multitude of versions of events were available, where force of numbers allowed verification of facts, those not usually politically aware had their horizons broadened, and the apathetic were spurred into action, however small. The possibilities and pitfalls of Twitter as a tool for political activism is one of the key points of discussion at the Molecular Twitter Party.

Certainly, Deleuze and Guattari's concepts and terms seem to offer us a good toolkit with which to approach these questions. Twitter is good of example of the fact that a rhizome, as Deleuze and Guattari say, “ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.” A rhizome is a network of BOTH rigid and supple lines; these lines never exist on their own. Nothing is ever completely molecular or completely molar. Can we then say, retweeting Deleuze and Guattari with variation, that on Twitter “everything is political, but every politics is simultaneously a macropolitics and a micropolitics.

So in the spirit of Deleuze's exhortation to experiment, rather than interpret, the Molecular Twitter Party is using Twitter itself to think with and about Twitter. If Twitter is a machine, an assemblage of Tweets that is moved by the desires of its Twitterers; in what way, we ask, does it plug into the State and into the War machine?

Perhaps, in the same way as Deleuze shows us how the technology of cinema allowed us to think time-space in a whole new way, indeed, allows us to THINK in a whole new way, so perhaps We can consider how Twitter is a new way of THOUGHT. Simply equating Twitter with a revolutionary War machine is too simple, but perhaps Twitter offers an opportunity for, in Deleuze and Guattari’s words, “A thought grappling with exterior forces instead of being gathered up in an interior form, operating by relays instead of forming an image, an event-thought, a haecceity, instead of a subject-thought, a problem-thought instead of an essence-thought or theorem; a thought that appeals to people instead of taking itself for government ministry.” As such, despite its detractors, those who see Twitter as frivolous or even dangerous, it deserves to be taken seriously, as THOUGHT. For even the most molecularized line is always under the sway of molar currents, not to speak of microfascisms. And as Deleuze and Guattari say, “the less people take thought seriously, the more they think in conformity with what the State wants.”

The idea for the Molecular Twitter Party emerged from the connection between the tweets of four people on Twitter. As most Tweeps, we all tweeted about things that interested us, from the highbrow to the banal. Deleuze and Twitter, and what we had for dinner. We though a virtual dinner party where we would enjoy wine and food and a good discussion about twitter theory sounded like a fun thing to do. The idea grew into something bigger, ramifying and connecting to this conference, morphing and becoming as a molecular twitter party. It is an experiment, and as such it will not always run smoothly, but here we are, and we're hoping it will show the potential of practical Deleuzian Thought today, the kind of joyful serious thought that doesn't just reproduce either the ideas of the State or the Ideas of Deleuze, but that produces new ideas, constantly in process and constantly connecting and ramifying, without a beginning or an end in the intermezzo.

We now invite you to join the Molecular Twitter Party here and now in medias res...

WHEN TO MTP

2009-08-10T00:10:00.001-07:00

The Molecular Twitter Party will start Monday 10 August 13.00 CEST (Click HERE for your local time) and will go on for TWENTY FOUR HOURS.

It will end with a LIVE 1 1/2 hour session at the ConnectDeleuze Conference in Cologne starting Tuesday 11 Aug 11.30 CEST (Click HERE for your local time).

HOW TO MTP

2009-08-09T23:52:00.000-07:00

How to join the party in a few easy steps!

Join Twitter & follow @MTwtrP. (Ensure @MTwtrP follows you back. Direct message if not)

TWEET! Make sure you use the #MTP hashtag - this will aggregate the party tweets.

Check out what other @MTwtrP followers are tweeting. Search for #MTP and MTwtrP (there are problems with this search, you may want to directly check out or follow people to ensure you get everyone's feed)

Get ready with some light READING or withdraw some conceptual cash from our BANK OF CONCEPTS.

Any problems or questions? Direct Message @MTwtrP

Enjoy!

Bank of Concepts

2009-08-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

As the Molecular Twitter Party approaches, we have suggested some readings for all those participating to think over. To help in this thought-process as the day of the Party draws near, we have compiled a Bank of Concepts. This Bank of Concepts is not a definitive nor a complete list of the key terms, quotes and questions, which we are going to discuss (that is up to all who participate). Rather the Bank of Concepts a series of departures that may or may not become lines of flight during the Party.
Like any bank, feel free to withdraw some concepts but also please feel free to deposit your own in the comments. The Molecular Twitter Party is a participatory event of event-thoughts. The more dynamic the interactions, the more lively the Party will be!

[thought]
[line of flight]
[becoming]

“A thought grappling with exterior forces instead of being gathered up in an interior form, operating by relays instead of forming an image, an event-thought, a haecceity, instead of a subject-thought, a problem-thought instead of an essence-thought or theorem; a thought that appeals to people instead of taking itself for government ministry.” ATP 378

>> Are there connections between the Molecular Twitter Party and the above conception of a event-thought?

“Because the less people take thought seriously, the more they think in conformity with what the State wants.” ATP 376

“All of thought is a becoming, a double becoming, rather than the attribute of a Subject and the representation of a Whole.” ATP 380

>> Are “trending topics” a form of conformity or a line of flight? Or are “trending topics” lines of flight that get captured and retettitorialized into the State apparatus?

Despite these apparently binary terms, Deleuze and Guattari speak of three lines: primitive segmentarity, State apparatus and the line of flight: “We cannot say that one of these three lines is bad or another good, by nature and necessarily.” TP 227

>> Are Tweets lines of flights? What is becoming-tweet?

“Always obey. The more you obey, the more you will be master, for you will only be obeying pure reason, in other words yourself.” ATP 376

>> In what ways can Twitter be seen as an extension of the Cogito: I Tweet therefore I am?

[segmentarity]
[macropolitics-micropolitics]
[molecular-molar]
[deterritorialization-territorialization-reterritorialization]

“In short, everything is political, but every politics is simultaneously a macropolitics and a micropolitics.” ATP 213

“Not only deos each line have its segments, but the segments of one line correspond to those of another…” ATP 212

“Segmentarity is always the result of an abstract machine, but different abstract machines operate in the rigid and the supple.” ATP 213

“The task of the historian is to designate the 'period' of coexistence or simultaneity of these two movements (decoding-deterritorialization and overcoding-reterritorialization). For the duration of this period one distinguishes between the molecular aspect and the molar aspect: on the one hand, masses or flows, with their mutations, quanta of deterritorialization, connections, and accelerations; on the other hand, classes or segments, with their binary organization, resonance, conjunction or accumulation, and line of overcoding favouring one line over the others.” ATP 221

>> How does the concept of segmentarity relate to Twitter?

>> How do the movements of deterritorialization ad reterritorialization manifest themselves on Twitter?

>> What are the possibilities of micropolitics on Twitter? The probabilities of macropolitics?

>> Are Twibes examples of primitive segmentarity?

[war machine]
[State apparatus]

“Packs, bands, are groups of the rhizome type. as opposed to the arborescent type that centers around organs of power. That is why bands in general, even those engaged in banditry or high-society life, are metamorphoses of a war machine formally distinct from all State apparatuses or their equivalents' which are instead what structure centralized societies. We certainly would not say that discipline is what defines a war machine: discipline is the characteristic required of armies after the State has appropriated them.” ATP 358

“The State has no war machine of its own, it can only appropriate one in the form of a military institution, one that will continually cause it problems.” ATP 355

“But the State is not defined by the existence of chiefs; it is defined by the perpetuation or conservation of organs of power. The concern of the State is to conserve.” ATP 357

“The State never ceases to decompose, recompose, and transform movement, or to regulate speed.” ATP 386

“It is not of independence, but of coexistence and competition in a perpetual field of interaction, that we must conceive of exteriority and interiority, war machines of metamorphoses and State apparatuses of identity, bands and kingdoms, megamachines and empires.” ATP 360-361

>> How does Twitter relate to the State apparatus? Is Twitter a tool for a War machine? Are tweets captured and regulated by a State?

>> Because one can search every tweet that has been posted, can Twitter be defined or partially-defined as a State apparatus through its conservation of tweets?

[microfascism-fascism]

“Only microfascism provides and answer to the question: Why does desire desire its own repression, how can it desire its own repression?” TP 215

“There is fascism when a war machine is installed in each hole, in every niche.” ATP 214

“What makes fascism dangerous is its molecular or micropolitical power, for it is a mass movement: a cancerous body rather than a totalitarian organism.” ATP 215

>> What are the dangers of microfascims in Twitter? Does Twitter desire its own repression?

>> Are the mass movements that utilize Twitter at danger of emerging as becoming-fascism?

[nomad-sedentary]
[smooth-striated]

“One of the fundamental tasks of the State is to striate the space over which it reigns, or to utilize smooth space as a means of communication in the service of striated space.” ATP 385

>> Is Twitter a smooth space of communication that is utilized to perpetuate and continue the State’s striation?

“The nomad, nomad space, is localized and not delimited. What is both limited and limiting is striated space, the relative global... [the nomad] is rather in a local absolute, and absolute that is manifested locally.” ATP 382

>> Is Twitter global or local? Is it a nomadic stationary process, undertaken sitting down?

[assemblage]
[machine]

“There are no internal drives in desire, only assemblages. Desire is always assembled; it is what the assemblage determines it to be.” ATP 229

>> In what way is Twitter an assemblage? What is a Tweeting machine? What about a thousand tiny tweeting selves? How and to what does the Tweeting machine plug into?

[rhizome]
[multiplicity]

“Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other... A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.” ATP 7

>> In what way can we figure Twitter as a rhizome or multiplicity? How does it connect to arts, sciences and social struggles?

“Always follow the rhizome by rupture: lengthen, prolong, and relay the line of flight, make it vary, until you have produced the most abstract and torturous of lines of n dimensions and broken directions” ATP 11

>> How does Twitter allow us to “follow” the rhizome? Do ReTweets work as lengthening and variations? What about @replies and @mentions? Are dialogues, monologues, and/or “multi-logues” taking place in the tweetospere?

[intermezzo]
[in-between]

“Have short-term ideas.” ATP 25

“A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.” ATP 25

“The form of exteriority situates thought in a smooth space that it must occupy without counting, and for which there is no possible method, no conceivable reproduction, but only relays, intermezzos, resurgences.” ATP 377

>> Is Twitter an “interbeing”, a medium in which we can exist in between things? Are tweets only intermezzos, short and fleeting, banal? Or do they allow us to think in or of the outside, that is the war machine?

[subjectivity]

“To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied”. ATP 3

>> How does identity work on Twitter – do @names, avatars and the possibilities of anonymity and multiple Twitter streams allow us to reach the point where the I is no longer important?

[language]

“The necessity of not having control over language, of being a foreigner in one's own tongue, in order to draw speech to oneself and 'bring something incomprehensible to the world'.” ATP 378

>> Does Twitter 140 character limit help us to speak as foreigners?

All quotes below are from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. All emphasis using Bold is by the authors of this blog.

Pre-Party Readings

2009-08-04T19:06:00.000-07:00

To assist in dialogue that will take place during the Molecular Twitter Party we ask that participates take a look at the concepts in the following chapters in Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In these chapters are some of the key concepts that we find that have strong resonance with Twitter. In the coming days we will post some of the concepts we feel connect, so keep posted.
If for some reason you do not have the time to read all of the below, we have placed the chapters in order of conceptual focus. Enjoy!

9. 1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity - (currently still seeking a scan)

1. Introduction: Rhizome

12. 1227: Treaties on Nomadology: - The War Machine - (Particularly p. 351-361 and 374-387)

We welcome suggests for others readings in the comments that are relavant to the party.

WELCOME!

2009-08-03T03:02:00.000-07:00

Dear tweeps,

We have been twittering with each other for some time now and the more we immerse ourselves in this new 'segmentary machine', the more it throws up all sorts of ideas, possibilities and problems.

Given the globalizing nature of Twitter and our curiosity about each other's lives, the idea of a dinner party emerged some months ago, a plan to get together in our different locations with our different lifestyles to eat and tweet.

This has lead to the production of a Molecular Twitter Party to share our ideas and lives with each other whilst also thinking about what we are doing through Twitter as a segmentary machine. Essentially, how does Twitter engage us? And how do the various tools of Twitter, such as tweet, retweet, avatar pictures, and hashtags, function to produce a segmentary machine?

Ideas lead to other ideas, and this led to a proposal to the ConnectDeleuze Conference to bring together a Molecular Twitter Party with a set of conversations in a more formal academic setting. Our proposal was accepted meaning that the Molecular Twitter Party will link in with an hour-and-a-half session LIVE at the ConnectDeleuze Transdisciplinary Perspectives Conference in Cologne 10-12 August 2009.

So, we want to invite you to come and join in a Molecular Twitter Party, to tweet with us as we engage both conceptually and affectively with the question Twitter poses to us all: "what are you doing?"

The Molecular Twitter Party will start on Monday 10 August at 13.00 Central European Summer Time (check your local time here) and go on for 24 hours, culminating in the session at the ConnectDeleuze conference on Tuesday 11 August at 11.30 (check your local time here) and end at 13.00 CEST.

We hope to tweet you there,

@MtwtrP

Conference Proposal

2009-08-03T02:56:00.000-07:00

“Panel” Proposal for ConnectDeleuze Transdisciplinary Conference:
A Molecular Twitter Party

Since 2006, Twitter has emerged as a techno-social assemlage presenting opportunities to molecularize expression as well as risks of molarizing tendencies. Twitter is a micro-blogging service that enables users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters known as tweets. Tweeting produces personal activity streams on an individual profile page that may be delivered to others (followers), all in response to the question "What are you doing?"

To further activate this question we invite the Deleuze Studies conference to participate with us in the Molecular Twitter Party (MTP). MTP is a globally distributed community event celebrating the digital encounter between Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts and the twittering machine. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari: “Instead of a rigid line composed of well-determined segments, Twitter now forms a supple flow marked by quanta that are like so many little segmentations-in-progress.” MTP explores the possibilities and limits of Twitter as a new segmentary machine: a device that segments our daily, ordinary lives, de/re/codifying lines of molecular or supple segmentations through the mediation of a micro-blogging publishing system.

Twittering crystallizes the virtual coordinates of two different molecularizing movements: 1) a deterritorializing movement, that not only molecularizes self-constructions and molar identities but also enables the organization of daily activities and the augmentation of lifestyles in pragmatic responses to Twitter's question. 2) a reterritorializing movement, that not only responds to the creation of existential and immersive territories but also to the connections, conversations and affective exchanges between a multitude of users and their twittering segmentary machines. We consider that these movements afford an emergent 'molecular activism' which is our central interest in proposing MTP.

To enable this event, along side the Twitter web-based platform, we will be utilizing a 'Twibe' as an organizing node or molecular interface through which interested Twitterers may connect and participate. As an international community event exploring dynamics of emergence in molecular activism, the party is, both, open to expressive flows in Twitter as a virtual public and to those deriving from the Deleuze Studies Conference. We invite you to come and tweet with us.

The Twittering Machine

2009-07-13T02:10:00.000-07:00

Transdisciplinary Perspectives: Deleuze Studies

2009-06-06T03:24:00.000-07:00

MTwtrP

2009-06-04T08:44:00.000-07:00