beta sessions (holophrasis.exe) (2020)

Overview

Session I investigates the holophrastic stage of language development, where the child is able to reproduce sounds of combined words but not not fully ascertain their distinction, as a greater symbol of the ego’s integration into the symbolic order. Action is staged in the digital realm as a computerized consciousness passes through the pre-libidinal stages of development, articulating and mimicking signs like a child learning to speak. The fundamental trauma of the distinction between souls is embodied in the severance of the mother/child bond, enacted with humanity as the parents of digital simulacra. What does it mean to be born without a body? A discarded draft of a larger project in development. All algorithms coded by hand.