Reflective sandboxing of software code within a machine built to parse it is seen in the case of a computer language like Java which must be compiled and then run as bytecode inside a special runtime environment, or, as with the language C, compiled and then run as “native” machine instructions, or with a simple mark-up language like HTML the specifications for which must be entirely designed into any browser destined to interpret and display it, or also with other interpreted code such as a three-dimensional model whose mathematical values for vertices and textures must be transcoded according to the rules of a given data format and given style of visual projection.
—Alexander Galloway, The Interface Effect (65)
The distinction between code as executable and language as interpretable has a basic horizon in the question of new meaning. Machinic encoding is not capable of making new meaning—only humans are. But caught in the web of mediated processes (as above), humans often fail to recognize the new—or attempt to transcode it in terms of earlier structures of interpretation. The example of the “failed mail art piece” will illustrate this. A package arrives—a flat 9 x 12″ envelope with something stiff inside, marked “do not bend,” mailed by A— M— from Houston, Texas, with a postage label affixed for about $4. On the back of the envelope is written “please take a photo of the cover and return it to the given address.” Unsure of the source of the mailing—with memories of anthrax attacks, the story of ricin mailings (one to a police station in Texas), and concern about the politics of the Post Office—I proceed with caution. Opening the envelope, I find a second envelope—a Priority Mail mailer sealed partly with masking tape but previously opened, sent from a foreign-looking name (T— L—), which could be Chinese or Vietnamese, sent to an addressee I cannot recall but which might have been A— M—. (The addressee of the outer package is not me but C— H—, and I am opening it in my role of household package opener and processor.) Now thoroughly perplexed and alarmed, I put on a respirator and surgical gloves, taken the envelope outside, and open it. Inside is a murky colored photographic image of some kind of technical object or process, like an X-ray of baggage at the airport or the use of X-rays to penetrate the interior of some industrial object for which there might truly be said “no inside.” Attempting to view the inside of such an industrial object could be hazardous to one’s health—the naked human eye cannot see what is there, but a technical use of radiation discloses something of the structure of an interior (like the light bulbs above). It is like a technical cadaver, a gothic object from the unknown realms of production, in China or Vietnam, and not a little terrifying to have it disclosed or revealed in this way. I am in fact repulsed by the entire ensemble—outer envelope, cryptic or coded instructions, especially to participate in some kind of game, mutilated inner mailer, disconnect between sender, receiver, and embedded sender—an entire essay on mediation and the interface could be written here, but I don’t want to pursue it. It seems like an instruction to a procedure to which I did not subscribe or agree, so I (provisionally) toss it in the recycle bin, pending my question to C—, the addressee. I say, do you know anyone named A— M— (transposing letters in the act of recall) and why they would be sending you an envelope from Houston, Texas. It could be some kind of anonymous mail art or prank—I am suspicious of it. C— cannot recall but plugs the name into her computer—first searching her email. It turns out that A— M— was a graduate student in her summer program and had solicited C— in a project to support the Post Office. For $25 she would receive a work of art, which she viewed and chose online, to be produced in or sent from China or Vietnam. (The amount donated would help someone buy stamps.) This she planned to give to me as a present, though she had forgotten that. I said I’m sorry, I didn’t know what it was or who sent it, and threw it in the recycle bin—but I will retrieve it. Later that night I take out the recycling for early morning pickup, forgetting the presence of the mail art project in the bin. I retire; the bin is picked up early as usual. At about 10 AM I realize that I had failed again to “appropriately” respond to the work of art, and it is gone, as visual inspection of the empty bin confirmed. I express my regret for this failure of recognition of what counted as a work of art and my discomfort with the means by which it was communicated to me. I feel bad about this. C—, on the other hand, is philosophical—well, the $25 still went to support the Post Office, and the student’s project, even though it failed. A brief moment of dissensus opens around different perspectives of this incident. Meanwhile I am aware of ever more garbage trucks on pick-up missions in the neighborhood. The loss is irrecoverable while the recycling machine continues. All the while I retain my human memory of what was depicted in the image, which I tried and failed to describe—some kind of technical object or process coming from the unconscious of production, at a third remove, from China or Vietnam. The failure of the mail art project meets my failure to recognize it, and the breaking of human bonds is a possible outcome as much as any affirmation of them—the latent utopia Ernst Bloch would find in a work of art is only a moment of failed interpretation or interpellation. It did not hail me; hailing should come with a frame, perhaps? But no—I was hailed, but negatively, within the constructed environment of a house in the suburbs serviced by machines, where the incorporation and exclusion of manufactured objects in a subroutine within the command and control process of what serves the “reproduction of labor” is held in potential and made available for the new cycles of use. The destiny of the failed mail art piece is assured.
