**Links to**: [[Cybernetics]], [[Schema]], [[Structure]], [[Information]], [[Communication]], [[NRU]], [[Nomogram]], etc. >“But the fact itself, this pictorial fact that has come from the hand, is the formation of a third eye, a haptic eye, a haptic vision of the eye, this new clarity. It is as if the duality of the tactile and the optical were surpassed visually in this haptic function born of the diagram.” (Deleuze, _Francis Bacon._ _The Logic of Sensation_, p. 161). What is painting? The externalization of a painterly result. This apparent banality is by no means superficial or overly simplistic: it means we should take into account the entire “genetic” (Deleuze) process of the painting, not just its execution. True-to-nature moving to abstraction move virtuality from one place to another: in true-to-nature attempts we understand something exists out there, a pulling attractor, in e.g., abstract art, we have to think .. “abstraction (...) is a path that recudes the abyss of chaos " abstraction negates the diagram. Abstract art replaces the diagram with a code, acc deleuze, “This code is ‘digital’, not in the sense of the manual, but in the sense of a finger that counts. ‘Digits’ are the units that group together visually the terms in opposition” (p. 84). This can be mentioned for the NRU work: In abstract expressionism “the abyss or chaos if deployed to the maximum. Somewhat like a map that is as large as the country, the diagram merges with the totality of the painting, the entire painting is diagrammatic. ... the {what Deleuze calls “Gothic”} line does not go from one point to another, but passes _between_ points, continually changing direction, and attains a power greater than 1, becoming adequate to the entire surface.” (p. 85) The “power greater than 1” reference to “the diagram ends the preparatory work... " (pp. 83-4) “The diagram is indeed a chaos.. germ of rhythm " (83) august herbin plastic alphabet %% This entry is _majorly_ incomplete, it is not an entry but a series of reminders to write about notes, missing many notes and much #todo. _Ideas for how to complete it:_ - Answer the question: what is a diagram? (and what is it versus things like ideograms, mindmaps, schemas, etc.?) - Finish notes on Deleuze and the diagram - Diagram and cybernetics - Diagram and schema - Maybe Lyotard counter Derrida, Lacan. - Relate to the line (Epistemology of the line, Krämer, see also: [[Line]], [[Linearity]]) _________ ### Deleuze and the diagram “Kenneth Knoespel calls to mind the Greek etymology of the word _diagramma_, whose roots suggest not only that “which is marked out by lines, a figure, form, or plan, but also carries a secondary connotation of marking or crossing out”. Correspondingly, diagrams would not only take care of “order and stability" but would also be a means to “destabilisation and discovery”.[^1] Bacon and Deleuze, the violence of the diagram must not limit the possibilities it offers, it's just “an option”. _Deleuze and the Diagram: Aesthetic Threads in Visual Organization_, [[Jakub Zdebik]], p. 13: ![[Pasted image 20221027175646.png|400]] “A diagram can be seen in the form of three different types of drawings: a plan, a map and a graph (or a schema). ... In a conceptual diagram, the lines marking out a space are abstract traits. The diagram thus does not represent, but rather maps out possibilities prior to their appearance, their representation. This new dimension lies between the visible and the articulable, and therefore traits are not exactly pictures or written language. A conceptual diagram is not like a flow chart, for example, which represents economic fluctuations in a schematic visual shorthand. The diagram does not resemble particular elements in an imitative way; rather, it displays abstract functions that make up a system. The diagram, then, is the dynamic, fluctuating process occurring between static structures. As a concept, it describes the flexible, elastic, incorporeal functions before they settle into a definitive form. The diagrammatic process could be imagined as a physical state or system being atomized into incorporeal abstract traits and then reconfigured into another state or system. The first and second system will be different, but their abstract functioning will be the same.” _Deleuze and the Diagram: Aesthetic Threads in Visual Organization_, [[Jakub Zdebik]], p. 1. “... Deleuze does not dedicate a single work to the diagram. His presentation of the diagram remains indefinitely unformed – from its first to last appearance in Deleuze’s corpus, the diagram changes shape. First mentioned in an essay on Foucault titled ‘Écrivain non: un nouveau cartographe’ (1975), it then appears in _A Thousand Plateaus_ (1980) and _Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation_ (1981) and is later developed in more detail in _Foucault_ (1986). Taken all together, these texts seem to form a small system revolving around the notion of the diagram. And this system has a circular form: starting and looping back onto Foucault after a process of transformation. By tracing the sources of the concept of the diagram, I will provide an introductory map of the diagram’s situation in Deleuze’s thought – and, by extension, this map will reveal the diagram’s characteristics. In _Foucault_, the book in which he finally explains the workings of the diagram most completely, Deleuze defines his concept twice. The first time, the diagram is a new informal dimension; the second, it is a display of relations as **pure functions**. ... Deleuze explains the diagram as an informal dimension by analysing the relationship between two practical formations. **One is discursive and the other non-discursive**. Discursive types of formations involve statements: for example, statements of eighteenth-century clinical medicine or penal law. These discursive formations are involved with non-discursive formations defined as environments: for example, institutions or prisons. Environments determine discursive formations, or statements; and statements, conversely, determine environments. But the discursive and non-discursive formations are different, heterogeneous: ‘Even though they may overlap: there is no correspondence, or isomorphism, no direct causality or symbolisation.’” (ibid. pp. 2-3, my emphasis). ### [[Prison]] and [[Visibility]] p. 5: ![[Pasted image 20221027172833.png|300]] “**Diagram as a display of relations as pure functions** >In the second definition of the diagram, Deleuze is concerned more with the abstract content of the diagram. Within the newly discovered informal dimension, he focuses on the display of relations of pure function. ...{The panopticon} is an architectural structure that operates on visual transparency: the prisoners are controlled through knowing that they can be surveilled at all times. > But the panopticon does not constitute a diagram. Rather, the function of the structure of surveillance is labelled as a diagram. Not the cells and the walls and the tower, but the relationship between the guards and the prisoners within that environment.” p. 5 p. 6: [[Machine]], [[Diagram]] ![[Pasted image 20221027173232.png|300]] “As Bentham says himself, surveillance provides the mind with the power over the minds of others.18 The insidiousness comes from the fact that the function is abstract, and it is non-representational. We are being surveilled but we cannot see it. The diagram makes us aware of abstract forces at play in the organization of systems. Insofar as it brings to light these connective traits between isomorphic systems, the diagram is a map. Deleuze states this clearly: ‘A diagram is a map, or rather several superimposed maps. And from one diagram to the next, new maps are drawn.’” p. 7 [[Schema]] of [[Interest]]: “‘The diagram not only is an explanation, as something that comes after, but also acts as an intermediary {**inter-esse**} in the process of generation of real space and time.’” Deleuze cited in p. 8. My bit in bold. [[Organization]], [[Spatial reasoning]], [[Spatial metaphors]]: “The map is a metaphor, or an image, for the potentiality, the newness, the visual organization and the discovery at work in the diagram. The map also underscores the conceptual element of the spatial nature of the diagram. The diagram is not simply a map of geographical elements but also constitutes a mental geography. The map speaks to how we spatially organize our surrounding space and, by extension, how we organize our thoughts. It does this by being generative – it creates new vistas instead of simply representing what is already there. And being connective is part of its function as a conceptual tool.” pp. 10-11. p. 11, Deleuze using map and diagram interchangeably (like Sellars with noise and sound): ![[Pasted image 20221027174653.png|300]] ___________ ### [[Cybernetics]] “The relationship, explicitly detailed in the work of many early cyberneticians, between the record, the diagram, and communication forms a bridge between our contemporary discourses about archiving, screens, and interactivity and historical concerns with memory, temporality, and representation.” [[Orit Halpern]], [[Beautiful Data]], p. 41. ___________ ### [[Interest]], [[Diagram]], [[Desire]] “Cro-Magnon man drew pictures of what interested him on the walls of caves, and men of all cultures have been drawing pictures ever since. All of us can draw, even those who never learned to write. Writing was not invented until our ancestors learned to record their words on a surface and that is harder to learn than recording an awareness. Ideographs and syllabaries and alphabets would never have been devised if men had not already been drawing for thousands of years. [...] Of all the hand-held tools that have been invented, the sort that makes traces on a surface is especially noteworthy” (Gibson 1978). “... “even in zoology and botany, it was diagrams of complicated structures and the problems of growth and organization which excited my interest fully as much as tales of adventure and discovery.” ... Wiener indicated a desire to see an older archival order, adjoined to modern interests in taxonomy and ontology, rendered obsolete by another mode of thought invested in prediction, self-referentiality, and communication. Wiener’s words anticipate the emergence in the coming decades of a machine design that might indeed surpass the hand or eye of the architect; he imagined a new form of visualization and knowledge. ... He articulated a desire to see previous traditions in natural history and scientific representation replaced by a discourse of active diagrams, processes, and complexity. And Wiener did not dream alone. His memories found concrete expression in such diverse places as the new multimedia architectures of spectacular geopolitics and the minute neural nets of the mind. In the postwar era, throughout the social sciences, neurosciences and cognitive sciences, computer sciences, arts and design, endless flow charts emerged producing images not of an outside world but of the patterns linking thought to action.16 The social and human sciences turned to performance and visualization as a route to innovation." [[Norbert Wiener]] in Ex-Prodigy, quoted in [[Orit Halpern]]'s [[Beautiful Data]], pp. 12-13. “... [[Buckminster Fuller]] .... His argument for an optic of process and the beauty of method are the marks of a midcentury shift in the aesthetics and practices of information visualization. Fuller’s pronouncements mark the rise of a new aesthetic and practice of truth; a valorization of analysis and pattern seeking that I label “communicative objectivity.”". ([[Orit Halpern]]'s [[Beautiful Data]], pp. 12-13.p. 14-15). [[Diagram]]. Below, ibid. p. 16. ![[Pasted image 20221023092225.png]] ______________ ### Diagram and schema What ostensive, isomorphic quality hangs between two examples, joins them? This relates to [[Schema]]. “Also in _Difference and Repetition_, Deleuze discusses the Kantian schema he likens to the diagram years later.” p. 13 (D+D). **Additional ideas**: #todo - Draw diagrams representing a possible “web of language,” and how one cannot isolate a chunk to analyze the rest, without cutting off a chunk. Then: do diagram explaining how diagrams trick you into believing you can. ### Footnotes [^1]: Kenneth Knoespel footnote, “Diagrams as plotting device in the work of Gilles Deleuze,” in: _Uteroture. 171eOrie. Fnseignement_ No. 19, 2001, pp. 145-165, here: p. 146.. http://www.gansterer.org/Text/Nikolaus-Gansterer_Drawing-a-Hypothesis_Figures-of-Thought_Springer-Vienna_2011.pdf