SIMULATION by Column One & Jürgen Ploog …..1998
music to leave the state of trance
Limited edition of 400 copies, Rendezvous Radikal (Rec) 06
A Product of Methods to Survive & Cut-Up-Productions Net.


SIMULATION & VIRTUALITY by Jürgen Ploog

Vanishing in the surface. It presupposes the viewer's awareness of dealing with a level or a field of perception, that he faces similar to viewing through a camera. He notes the signals & signs & conceives an image of what he thinks of as "reality". I say viewer (instead of subject or individual), a term that suppresses both the active & the interactive character of the human being ("The human is an animal that consists of segments." Guattari/Deleuze). Only to a small degree does it look at its surroundings, biaingls; rather it relates to it. It is far more subjugated to the blind will of the outside than it could have influence on what it calls "reality". Nonetheless, the image that the communicative human being regards as the outside world is largely a con-struct construct of its perception, its inner world of portrayal, that is. What in daily life remains impossible or reduced to a few ecstatic moments & desperate actions is the major subject of artistic expression. All modern or post modern ends-avour's strive to vanish in the surface. For the painter, the surface is the picture, as language is for the writer. In short, surface is the medium on which he depends. It is a meta-level that takes shape through penetration. Penetrating means losing usual relations. Losing every relation. In this phase it is impossible to navigate relying on outside characteristics. The Intruder (or the perceiving self) depends on its own energetic criteria. In going his way, he concentrates on what he is (or what is in him). Dispersal, the process of penetration, has shattered the conditioned image into fractals, into punctual elements. Perception is dependent on temporary assumptions (that which precedes a new Image) & is forced to focus on possibilities. The "possi-ble- in a mechanically codified universe is the neglected alternative. Figurative forms & the alphabet have predetermined thought on the laws of causality & linearity. After penetrating into matter, physical gaze has dispersed objects into layers of dots & visible forms of being. Linear writing has become a field of possible, necessary & random signs where the eye doesn't move in one direction, but vectorially in all possible directions. In this way the one-dimensional universe of lines has been trans-formed into one of quantums, a universe without any dimensions. "The insight, that everything surrounding us is artificial in the sense that it has been modelled by humans, precisely modelled out of a yawning nothing, marks the step from a histo-ric universe into a universe of dots." (Vilem Flusser) A consequence of this paradigm shift is that differentiation between something "given" & something "made" becomes superfluous &, in all consistency, no longer possible. The world or the image of its perceivable projection (so-called reality) turns out to be a gigantic model of simulation. Simulation here doesn't refer to the limitation of "artificial" portrayal of a discerned "given" image, by means of a computer-generated reproduction on a scre-en, for instance. That would be merely a first, technically comprehensible step. The simulative effect is an attack on the real; a process that no longer relates to the real, but to its representation. This is the vanishing of objects into their repre- sen-tation.

(To give an actual example: Over years I had the opportunity to observe the behaviour of pilots in flight simulators. Today, as it is known, pilots are educated & trained almost exclusively in simulators. A highly developed system of electronic data processing enables to "simulate" the movements of an aircraft under given conditions. Pilots are confronted with conditions that in a real plane would be far too dangerous to try out - think of situations in which a crash risk is taken into account. Whereas in a simulator they can be set up in detail & presented to the pilot so that he can actually "fly" them. A "crash" then does nothing more but demonstrate the consequences of one's mistakes. The method only works because, eventually, the pilot no longer distinguishes between an airplane and a simulator. The conditioning effect of his flight experience neutralizes every difference between a "real" & a "simulated" course of events. The best effect would be that after training in a similar actual situa-tion the pilot notes that the plane behaves exactly like the simulator. Simulation has preceded the "real" interactions between human & machine.)

In a universe of possibilities everything becomes fiction. Meanwhile the process of abstraction has got to a point where more abstraction is impossible. Previous valid equations invert themselves: the real no longer seems graspable (or representable), but fictionalisation becomes vivid & livable. This is the background of total alienation that the individual expectant of given situations experiences. He or she faces a continuous fade out of contents to the point where focussing out truth gets impossible. It is exactly this, which is evoked in the neverending simulated quest for truth, like muckraking journalism in the mass media. Because only since finding truth in the chaos of the real has turned into fiction, its discovery can be simulated for a public that is alienated from the real, that is caught in a closed circuit of simulation, in which the transfer of signs is organised between anonymous institutionalised models such as state, society, media, ecological or political ideology (which molds public opinion & vv.). "In the sphere of signs all signs are simulation in the sense that they make exchanges between themselves but not with something 'rear..." (Jean Baudrillard).

The order of the imaginary. The real is beginning to dissolve into vanishing fragments that follow the suction of an implosion, an unstoppable liquidation of sense. "Sense" seems bound to a vectorial direction, to expansion & colonization of space. to a state of liberation & decontrol. In an applied sense it is the strength of breathing out. The implosive power is directed against it, it is the phase of a "gigantic inversion of a field in the moment in which the degree of saturation is reached" (Baudrillard). It is also a factor of overcontrolling, of a total network. Burroughs once said: "Communication first has to become total before it can be abolished." To a certain degree one could say the same about control. Control has the character of junk, in the sense of being addictive & destructive. Junk & control are synonyms. Power cannot function without control. Control is instrumentalized power & "exerting power for power's sake is the machine of power" (Burroughs). One could also say: power territorializes itself through the control machine. Word & image are instruments of this machine, their instrumentalization being unrecognizable at first sight. It was Baudrillard who pointed out that social rule is based on the disjunction of Transmitters & Receivers, producers & consumers of signs. Separated like this (not through manipulation or censorship) the terror of the codes is able to unfold. Only in simulation the appearance of reality becomes visible once again. It is meant to provoke a reality process. By triggering it, the reality principle is simultaneously exposed as a construct. In mimicry it undermines its claim & thus aims at its collapse. This happens on 2 levels at the same time: On the one hand un-codable absolute difference of the signs (due to which, according to Baudrillard, the system will collapse); on the other computation trying to reshape the shattered things into new forms according to a program. The imaginary (consciousness) therefore is currently seeking a new order, a "variable geometry of signs". Beyond all fixed relations it will change into a spontaneous, nomadic strategy, willingly producing unlikely random events. It will thus penetrate virtual space of alternative worlds, which lies behind programmed reality. "There is not one correct or proper ,reality-, says Burroughs. "'Reality' is only a more or less constant raster. The raster that we accept as 'reality', has been forced upon us by power of the world in control." This conflict only sometimes takes place in the technological dimension of the so-called New Media, even as the inherent possibilities of the media subversively enhance & accelerate themselves. (In this process a crisis of the human - this "alienated animal"- announces itself.) The com-puter is a thinking machine, which not only projects numerical codes to the outside, but in converting the projection to the inside, reprograms everyone's thinking. It re-organises consciousness & thus becomes a structure-shaping instrument of the era of individuals who are able to apply variable geometry, who no longer orient themselves on rigid models, but rather on sketches; who no longer perceive themselves as "subjects in a given objective world", but as "projects of alternative worlds" (Flusser). Making these worlds visible, demands a wild, dissociative handling of signs, without goal, ideology or content. If the fundamental ideology functions on the level of the signifier, it is necessary to leave the territory of total manipulation of codes & mea-nings manipulation; this is the parade ground of a deadly public, in which even counter culture has its district as the inversed simulation of what characterizes the shape of a dead culture.

Does simulation remain chained to a paradigm shift? Phenomenons have slid away in a sphere of projection. To get them back (into consciousness) means to handle them in a programmatic way. Burroughs' control machine is a coding tech unit that simulates contents in order to maintain its power through the encoding Process. It is no longer contents that are at stake & sense is a seductive chimera - an illusion. In the sphere of projection it is the dissimulation of signs one has to deal with... the vanishing while of objects in the state of liberation, in the midst of a teohnified system of overcontrol, of total processing. Communication with a flight machine is only possible on a high simulative level. Checking the reactions of a pilot, what his actions are acing an open field of data. He behaves according to a given program, of course. This program is part of human history. Human identity becomes only visible when the reality program can be altered or stopped. Because everything that is now at stake happens on the background of computation & alienation. Only he, who is able to act according to a variable geometry can escape it. Like surveying landscapes.

"Only in simulation the appearance of reality becomes visible once again." (Jurgen Ploog)

This release is the attempt of a simulation.
It serves for illustrating the practical & theoretical importance of thoughts & theories developed by RADICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM & for illustrating the printed text by Jürgen Ploog. Both the music & the 3-D-pictures serve for directly producing a state of trance. Through an altered perception that manifests itself during that state another (altered) reality is simulated & thus exposes "the reality principle as something made" ...as a construct.
It is possible to isolate the 3-D-pictures from this (trance) context, because they are able to exist in their own right as pure optical simulations. The music on the other hand cannot be transferred, otherwise it would soon be integrated as a form of entertainment music in our "normal" reality.

NON-EXPERIMENTAL music for EXPERIMENTAL listening.
All music was constructed by Column One / Loadman, Schalinski, Brain-Bridge...
produced in April 1997 at the Nihilist Studios Berlin.

For the realization of this construct Column One was:
R.U.Brain-Bridge - tapes, rhythms...
Eyn Lump - background-assistence
r. schalinski - loops
J. Ploog - thoughts & words
Da Egg Love - realizer
cover by r. schalinski & Brain-Bridge
3-D-Pictures by r. schalinski
...translation by A.Piccici