In response to Lone’s previous post on iPads and tracking, here is a diagram of “a life” during the Generating the Impossible workshop that Senselab ran at Meekos in the Quebec countryside in July.
This is a photo of the surface of an iPad—you can see the roof of the log cabin reflected on the screen. In what sense is that a diagram? Is it just a tracking (a kind of wild or complete surveillance, although it speaks no language, despite being the record of interface, codes, writing)? It seems “abstract”, yet it’s about as concrete a recording as there could be—and it’s an asignifying semiotic if ever there was one. What is the relation of the tracking of a past and a diagramming directed toward the future? Or, when do maps or trackings become diagrams (when they become relational, not representational?). It’s certainly a recording of “a life” during a short period of this workshop. I guess now I’m “playing” this recording as part of a diagramming of the future—an asemiotic tracking coming into a diagramming of a concept (of “the diagram”). In any case, this can be taken as my diagramming “a life” #2.
Into the Diagram 