Jouissance Surplus

“Our existence and the ontology of the objects around us are in a state of perpetual mediation.” – Levi Bryant in Onto-Cartography, an Ontology of Machines and Media

Jouissance Surplus is a suggestive, indefinite state of architecture. I consider it to be one of the most oneiric digital projects I’ve come across lately, engaging in a design journey that, for sure, is more than joyfull (jouissance is French for enjoyment). But better to let te project be described by its makers.
The durational nature of this work necessitates a spatio-hyletic mediation of instantiated matter that does not fixate on the quantification of substantial objects, but instead considers objects as entities in perpetual motion within the spatial outlining of the void. When we engage such an environment we encounter anamorphic objects that shift over time and never assume a definitive figure. Simulated objects are always capable of actualizing more matter than is currently present or embodied within corporeal space, since they are part of to a cartographic domain under constant expansion as infinite hylomorphic possibilities thwart any concrete definition of space.

Courtesy of Chris Thackrey and Simeon Brugger

This inconclusiveness reflects a technical jouissance, or a satisfactory drive that produces infinite surplus of non-standard deviations, to cite Lacan’s term for the apparatus of jouissance. The aim of the machine is not towards any finite goal; in missing the mark we achieve the perpetual satisfaction of overshooting into a quantitative surplus. In other words, less is less, a perpetual surplus is infinitely more, and Mies is rolling in his grave.
Such spatio-temporal matter would account for the astronomical amounts of data seen both in the conception of this project as a bit-stream operation that brought about the output, and in a tendency towards big data growing in digital design. More recently than Lacan, Timothy Morton’s concept of hyperobjects offers yet another source implying the object in motion.

Courtesy of Chris Thackrey and Simeon Brugger

In the case of our studio work, the surplus possibilities of instantiated matter ultimately required curation or a cartographic mapping scheme in order to provide a glimpse into what possibilities could incarnate through such a process. This reflects the incomprehensibility of the hyperobject, amorphic and far too immense to been seen wholly at any given time. The hyperobject suggests our speculations may fall short in the wake of matter that has agency beyond decisions of human comprehension.