Digital Monism: Our Mode of Being At The Nexus of Life, Digital Media and Art

Digital Monism: Our Mode
of Being At The Nexus of
Life, Digital Media and Art
Neal Stimler & Stéphane Vial
Theorizing the Web 2014, April 26th, 2014, New York
@nealstimler & @svial
#TtW14 #c4

What is the origin of this talk?
● @svial's concern w/ our "feeling-in-the-world" is so
important to reflect upon for our value judgments of the
museum experience. #Ttw13 #d2
— @nealstimler, 6:58 PM - 2 Mar 2013.
● @svial: "We take what is on the screen as real. We have
extend our sense of the real. Welcome to #digitalmonism."
#Ttw13 #d2 #museweb
— @nealstimler, 7:04 PM - 2 Mar 2013.

What is the goal of this talk?
● Theorizing the Web is about Theory.
● The theoretical heart of any theory is Metaphysics.
● Metaphysics hides in everyday life.
● We want you to feel the metaphysics.

Stéphane Vial
@svial
1. Principles

What is the origin of Digital Monism?
● Digital Monism is the antithesis of Digital Dualism.
● Digital Dualism is ‘the belief that online and offline are
largely distinct and independent realities’ (N.Jurgenson).
● Digital Monism considers that Digital Dualism
is a fallacious mainstream metaphysics which comes from
the ancient Platonic division of the real in two (duo).
● In opp., Digital Monism is an open scholar metaphysics
revealing the truth about our lived experiences.

What is Digital Monism?
● Digital Monism is the metaphysical postulate that our
human world is inseparably digital and non-digital,
online and ofﬂine or, in obsolete terms, virtual and real.
● In a digital monist view, you cannot remove the online
side of your relationships from the offline side of it.
● In Digital Monism, the human world is a digital-centered
hybrid environment that tends to form a single (mono)
continuous substance, whose name is simply ‘Reality’.

How does Digital Monism relate to
the notion of ‘Augmented Reality’?
● Digital Monism considers that the phrase ‘Augmented
Reality’ is a tautology or a pleonasm.
● Reality cannot be on the increase or on the decline.
Diminished Reality does not exist. Neither does
Augmented.
● The online and the offline are parts of the same Digital-
Monistic Reality.

How is Digital Monism positioned in
relation to post- or transhumanism?
● Digital Monism considers that Transhumanism
movement is also based on a tautology or pleonasm.
● Technology has always been involved in the construction
of the Human Reality and of the Human capacities.
● Humans have always existed with Technology and
Technology has not existed without Humans.
● We have always been Cyborgs (Cyborgology).

the Digital Humanities? (1)
● Digital Humanities (DH) is about digitally engaged
knowledge production, teaching and publishing.
> DH = matter of Knowledge (epistemology).
● Digital Monism (DM) is about digitally engaged lived
experience of reality in all its dimensions.
> DM = matter of Reality (ontology).
● DM is more holistic than DH or DH is within DM.

the Digital Humanities? (2)
● Digital-Monistic lived experiences include globally all
kinds of experiences in human life.
● Digital-Humanistic scholarly experiences (such as
researching, teaching, publishing) are a component of
global Digital-Monistic lived experiences.
● Digital-Monistic museums experiences are another
component of global Digital-Monistic lived experiences
(can be related to Digital Humanities as well).

What is the past, the present and the
future of Digital Monism?
● Digital Monism has been slowly emerging as a new
paradigm for the last 10 years.
● We are slowly awakening to Digital Monism since we
stopped believing in Digital Dualism.
● We must help people to recognize Digital Monism;
being aware of it will help us to build new innovative
lived experiences in concordance with the Digital
Natives needs and ideas.

2. Scenarios of Practice
Neal Stimler
@nealstimler

Scenarios of Practice Are...
constructive processes that design Digital Monistic reality.
● Constructive processes that design Digital-Monistic
Reality.
● Include actions, platforms, applications and roles utilized
in multimodal Digital-Monistic experiences.
● Identified in one’s performative and social uses of digital
technologies (especially mobile and wearable).
● Emerge especially when engaged with museums.

Scenarios of Practice - Components
● Actions: processes of design = making.
● Platforms: unified grounds of cultural, digital, intellectual
and physical on which we practice.
● Applications: program/s with an interface used as tools to
implement the practice.
● Roles: researcher, designer, learner and community
member are positions we take on at different stages of
practice..different stages t

Scenarios of Practice - Aspects
● Performative: transformative progression towards points
of enlightened resonance - reflexive not exhaustive.
● Social: happenings with shared norms/behaviors or
occurrences that lead us across perceived boundaries.
● Individual: done by each one of us through personal daily
interactions and motions of living.
● Communal: peer to peer and group interactions both
synchronous/asynchronous and digital/physical.

Scenario 1 - Text Design
scenario constructed by Neal Stimler

Scenario 2 - Image Design (still/moving)
#TtW14 #c4 #dm

Scenario 3 - Knowledge Design

Scenario 4 - Journey Design

Museum as Digital-Monistic Toolkit
● Museums are critical sites for identifying Digital-Monistic
experiences in our lives.
● The museum as a design toolkit encompasses the range
of expressions and forms that made culture in the past.
● This is an understanding of the museum, art and culture
as tools for contemporary creation and living of a Digital-
Monistic Reality.

3. Conclusions
Neal Stimler & Stéphane Vial

● Performed Scenarios of Practice are the processes by
which we design a Digital-Monistic Reality.
● This is how we live each day, designing the present and
tomorrow - feeling the metaphysics.
● Our cultural, economic, environmental, political, ethical
and social concerns are informed as well by
understanding Digital-Monistic Reality.
● Museums are key sites for awakening to Digital Monism,
and therefore for helping people recognize the true
metaphysics of our Age.

References
● Stéphane Vial, Being and Screen: How The Digital World Changes Our Perception, Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 2013, 335 p.
● Stéphane Vial, There is no difference between the 'real' and the 'virtual': a brief phenomenology of digital
revolution, Theorizing the Web 2013, March 2nd, 2013.
● Nathan Jurgenson, Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality, Cyborgology, Feb 24, 2011.
● About Cyborgology, Cyborgology, Updated Mar 4, 2013.
● Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, Jeffrey Schnapp, A Short Guide to the
Digital_Humanities, excerpt from Digital_Humanities, MIT Press, 2012.
● A Guide to Digital Humanities, Center for Scholarly Communication & Digital Curation, Northwestern
University.
● Ken Friedman, Owen Smith and Lauren Sawchyn, eds. the Fluxus Performance Workbook: a performance
Research e-publication, 2002, PDF.
● Thing/Thought: Fluxus Editions/1962-1978. Curated by Gretchen L. Wagner and Jon Hendricks. New York:
The Museum of Modern Art, 2011. Interactive website of an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art,
September 21, 2011 through January 16, 2012.
● Don Undeen,“All Art is Made by Makers”. Make: 37 (2014), Posted February 12th, 2014 2:27 pm.

Share it!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
International license ‘BY-NC-SA’.

The remarks herein are the personal views of Neal Stimler
& Stéphane Vial and do not necessarily reflect the views of
The Metropolitan Museum of Art or any institution.
Disclaimer

Neal Stimler
Associate Digital Asset Specialist
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York City, USA
@nealstimler
Thanks!
Stéphane Vial
PhD Philosophy, Associate Professor
University of Nîmes
France
@svial
Slides here: http://goo.gl/J0gThb

Digital Monism: Our Mode of Being At The Nexus of Life, Digital Media and Art

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