1Infrafaces
Essays on the Artistic Interaction
Infr faces
Essays on the Artistic Interaction
by 
Marco Muñoz
2
3Infrafaces
Essays on the Artistic Interaction
by 
Marco Muñoz
4Abstract
Ph.D. dissertation at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 2013
Title: Infrafaces: Essays on the Artistic Interaction
Swedish title: Infrafaces: Essäer om den konstnärliga interaktionen
Author: Marco Muñoz
Language: English, with a Swedish and Spanish summary
The essays collected in this dissertation introduce a new concept in 
the field of interactive art: the concept of infrafaces.
This thesis shows how a new zone is discovered when two 
or more elements connect. In the space that arises, a contact area 
comes into being between the elements involved, and this takes 
place at the moment of their contact and information exchange 
– forming an interface. This interface can in turn be manipulated 
to generate a new space, which forms a contact zone that can be 
opened even further, thus creating new spaces. The new segments 
created within the practice of interactivity are named infrafaces.
Infrafaces are a series of interrelated interfaces within an 
interaction that adapt time and/or space to transform connecting 
elements into new spaces. These spaces act as an interface for the 
next transformation to take place before a new space is opened. The 
infraface is an artistic interpretation of the process of interactivity 
and has the ability to expand the time or the space in between 
the elements interacting, in order to embed new stories between 
them. 
This dissertation explains how, by means of artistic exper­
imentation – through video, installations and the design of in­
terfaces – this new area was uncovered: an area that is an infinite 
zone, close to the paradoxical, but that offers endless opportuni­
ties to develop art, and instead of solving the paradoxes that arise 
in art or technology, develops a way to use these contradictions 
to create a different understanding of our relation to the world.
This thesis also proposes a new approach to the relation­
ship between art and technology, hereby manifesting the ways in 
which our senses adapt to technology. Instead of pretending to 
define and change the world, this project proposes new forms of 
connectivity that produce different interactive applications and 
whose aim is to produce new knowledge. 
This dissertation presents five essays interwoven with artistic 
exhibitions, and also includes the documentations of these expe­
rienced practices, demonstrating the literary and visual potential of 
the infraface – a new concept within artistic research.
Keywords: interaction, artistic research, digital art, infrafaces, in­
terface, paradoxes, art and technology.
5Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to my main supervisor Sven 
 Andersson and secondary supervisor Karin Wagner for their 
 valuable theoretical assistance and warm friendship. I would like 
to offer my special thanks to Anna Frisk, without whom this 
work wouldn’t have been possible. Many thanks to my seminar 
 opponents: Jan Bärmark, David Karlsson and  Johan Öberg. Thank 
you for the  advice and support of my colleagues and friends, David 
 McCallum, Tina Carlsson, Lena  Dahlén,  Katarina Karlsson,  Joseph 
Wideström, Thommy Eriksson, Arne Kjell Vikhagen, Martín Ávila, 
Sara  Nässen, Martin Appel, Jens Rasmussen, Anabel Caro, Kami 
Anani, Claudio Martinez and Joaquin Moya.
My special thanks to my family, Francisco Muñoz, Dolores 
Campos, Sergio Muñoz, Angelica Muñoz, and particularly for the 
help of my sister Martha.
In memoriam Alberto Díaz
6ArtMonitor Doctoral Dissertations and Licentiate Theses No 39
ArtMonitor is a publication series from the Faculty of Fine, 
Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg
ArtMonitor
University of Gothenburg
Konstnärliga fakultetskansliet
Box 141
SE­405 30 Göteborg
www.konst.gu.se
An online documentation of the exhibitions presented in Sweden as a part 
of this research project can be seen at:
http://vimeo.com/tepez
http://tepez.com
Proof reading: Christine Southan Churchill and Martha Muñoz
Graphic design: Marco Muñoz
Layout: Marco Muñoz and Ordbilder Media
Cover illustration: Marco Muñoz and Pia Haggren
Printed by: ALE TRYCKTEAM AB,  Bohus, 2013
© Marco Muñoz 2013
ISBN: 978­91­979993­5­9
Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Digital Representation 
at the Valand Academy, Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, 
University of Gothenburg
7Table of Contents
Introduction 8
I. Exstispicia       
Guts as interface 19
II. Infrafaces
Beyond interfacing 45      
  
III. Superficial Blue
A moment can hold an eternity 67    
 
IV. Burroughs
The paradoxical division of physical and temporal spaces 83 
 
V. Infrafaces II
The origin of life. In the beginning was the action 93  
 
Summary 113      
 
Sumario 117      
 
Sammanfattning 119
       
Timeline 124      
 
Bibliography 126  
8Introduction
In your hands is a collection of texts conceived between 2007 and 2013. Each of these small narratives is part of an ongoing struggle to understand how we are connected 
to each other and to the world, a struggle as desperate as it is de­
lightful and rewarding. We are not only spectators in these texts, 
but also actors who are creating the story through our actions. Ac­
tion is important in this struggle, rather than observation or des­
cription, and so each story was intertwined with a documented 
artistic exhibition.
The stories and the artistic acts share a common denomi­
nator that encourages both the reading of the texts and experien­
cing of the exhibitions: interactivity. Interactivity through tools, 
our bodies or cultural elements. This work questions the spaces 
inbetween every interaction, the borderline between two or more 
elements exchanging information. This book plays with the idea 
of crossing these borders, limits and lines of understanding1— ne­
vertheless sometimes stopping endlessly on the way, in the transit 
zone, at the contact area.
I discovered that in the process of any interaction a new 
place arises, a bridge. This place is paradoxical in the sense that 
it does not only separate and unify, but it can be extended ad in-
finitum. I thought about every time this bridge – this zone of con­
tact or interface – is put to use, and that lead me to develop a 
neologism, something within the interfaces, something below this 
intermediate zone. This new space can be extended. Extending a 
physical area or space in time to embed new stories or actions is the 
basis on which this neologism stands. This artistic interpretation of 
the process of interactivity is what I call infrafaces.
As a result of my research, the five essays forming this the­
sis are based on that neologism. Each story was written using the 
structure that best helped to reinforce its main concept. 
1. Though sometimes crossing this line, like the idea of beings who have crossed 
the border between different countries – Mexico and the United States – or the 
boundary between life and death, or the conscious and the un conscious, or the 
concrete and the abstract.  
9Background // Context 
Geographically the works were created in the Mexican Caribbean 
and in west of Sweden; conceptually they are located in the context 
of digital art and sometimes made with the aid of electronics. Al­
though my area of work is digital art, I wanted to address the tech­
nology from a wide historic perspective, and to focus not only on 
the latest gadgets. As such, this thesis is not limited to computers 
and electronic art, but also provides examples from the Babylonian 
cuneiform tablets up to the presentation of the iPhone 4. Time will 
tell if the artworks and technological examples are still relevant.
As a visual artist I have been working basically with inter­
active art for the past 15 years, producing works that react to the 
user or viewer’s input or participation. I have also worked with 
technology and digital media, electronics, video, sensors, compu­
ters and installations. I have left aside the discussion between digital 
or analogue art and focused instead on playing with the border 
between humans and technology. 
I design devices that help us to communicate or interact 
with an object or work of art. It may be helpful to understand how 
the most basic model of interaction works:
And because interaction is a central part of my discourse I find it 
important to claim that:
A body can only be defined in terms of its relationship with 
other bodies. That is, the inter­relation between objects is more val­
uable than the object itself. The object in isolation, its contempla­
tion or definition, does not arouse interest in the same way as when 
it comes in contact with other elements or spectators, or when it 
takes on the wonderful value as a unifier or bridge for an active 
system of participation where the assistant is no longer passive.2
Those devices that help us to manage the communication 
between an object and a person, or a person and several people, or 
an object and other objects, are known as “interfaces”. Then the 
interface, or gränssnitt in Swedish, is the contact area between a 
viewer or user and its environment. So an interface can be remote 
controls, displays, joysticks, mice, keyboards or cell phones. But 
this definition allows us to encompass other things. So an interface 
2. Cfr. Chapter II Infrafaces, p.49.
A B
C (Interface)
10
can also be a book, clothes, fashion, computers, and even language 
itself. As mentioned in Chapter II, “interfaces are more than a func­
tional technology, they have a cultural meaning shaping the way 
we think.”3
It is worth noting that there may be different interfaces in 
an interactive process. The most interesting thing is that an interac­
tive system can include several interfaces: a cell phone contains a 
display, a display contains buttons, buttons contain text, language, 
etc. We can sort out, analyze, investigate and dig up new relations 
or descriptions indefinitely. When one analyses or creates interfac­
es, new definitions can be developed. Each of these contact lines 
can be extended in the same way each encounter can be delayed in 
order to generate or insert new stories.
Including a story within another is an approach that crea­
tors have always used in films, literature, music or theater creating 
new spaces. Several visual artists decide to seize those non­existent 
neutral areas for themselves and do something new there, render­
ing the invisible visible.4 Similarly, the relationship that exists be­
tween human beings and their environment can be zoomed­in or 
extended several times and, in turn it can be subdivided again in 
order to create new rooms, and we can play in the same way with 
time. But sooner or later this would lead us into a paradox, because 
we could zoom in on a process and dig up new interfaces, generate 
a narrative inside another narrative and so on, over and over, but 
when would it end? Where is the limit in the number of times we 
can deconstruct, sort out or analyze a space, and extend it to find 
new frontiers? In fact, it can be done as many times as we want! Ad 
infinitum. This is one of the basic ideas in the thesis.
This paradox was already of concern in ancient Greece, 
namely for Zeno of Elea in 430 BC. He formulated this dichotomy 
paradox among others, such as, the arrow paradox. This paradox, 
in turn, has appealed to other contemporary writers such as Borges, 
Carroll or Deleuze.
3. Koefoed, Hanson Lone and Pold, Sören: Interface: Digital kunst och kultur, 
Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, 2009, back cover.
4. Cfr. Chapter II Infrafaces, p.62. n. 31.
A B
C (Infraface)
11
I thus went from the development of functional systems called in­
terfaces to the creation of another new concept: the infraface. The 
difference between an interface and an infraface is that an interface 
focuses on the assumption that the connection must have a rational 
function. The user wants the response of the process to be practical 
and predictable. While the infraface is more focused on the process 
itself, finding or creating new places. This may be seemingly para­
doxical, absurd. But as we will see, the nonsense is not as opposed 
to the truth, it is a different kind of truth.
Description of the text // Essay map
To surface these questions, I wrote each essay using a specific struc­
ture which is relevant to each issue and art production. All essays 
are performed in an intermediate space: The first narrative is car­
ried out between 1210 AD and 760 BC, the second story takes 
place between the distance of a window and the floor, the third 
story  happens between the conscious and the unconscious, while 
the fourth chapter takes place between the distance of a gun and 
its target, and the last essay between an intermediate zone when an 
action is carried out between the literary and the real.
 1. The first story, Extispicia: Guts as interface, is a compilation 
of human inventions that each strove5 to tame, measure, commu­
nicate or understand the world and its phenomena – and of course 
to also understand ourselves as influential parts of this world. Each 
of these creations, in my opinion, oscillates, between the art object 
and the object tool (between the useful and the aesthetic). Each 
of these works or devices demonstrates the special relationship we 
have with technology and also how this technology is designed 
to help us understand time, and even to predict it. This is not a 
collection of significant gadgets; these are examples of works that 
function with an extra axis, time. They demonstrate the fragile and 
changing line that has existed between art, science and the esoteric. 
The story is told backwards starting from 2010, the year of the final 
presentation of the late entrepreneur Steve Jobs. It reflects upon an 
enigmatic photo of Jobs holding a mobile phone. The story goes 
through 1934 and the completion of a mural by Diego Rivera, and 
back to the 7th century BC to the founding of the royal library 
of Assurbanipal, a period in which tools were more organic and 
closely linked to rituals. The story finds an analogy between extispi-
cia – a ritual to predict the future – and modern man with a cell 
phone in his hand. 
5. We could add the word strive to each sentence, and have called this A Treaty 
on Striving rather than Infrafaces. 
12
2. The second story, Infrafaces: Beyond interfacing, gives name to 
this treaty, infrafaces, and is told as a man is falling from a window 
towards the ground. As this man tumbles through space towards 
the inevitable contact with the ground he has the opportunity to 
remember his life, and to live it again. This essay helps us under­
stand the fundamental principle of infrafaces: how a physical and 
temporal space can be endlessly divided, each division creating a 
space of possibility for new stories. This essay is based in Zeno’s 
second paradox. 
3. This story, Superficial Blue: A moment can hold an eternity, 
is an infinite chess game. It is a nightmare that takes place in the 
 fevered sleep of chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov the night  before 
he loses the famous match against the computer Deep Blue in 
1997. A moment can hold an eternity. This essay plays with time 
and reflects upon the border between the technological and the hu­
man. Language can act as an interface; this is the basic idea in both 
the essay and exhibition. At the same time the essay discusses our 
relationship with technology and how we perceive time.
4. The fourth story, Burroughs: The paradoxical division of 
physical and temporal spaces, is intertwined with the second and 
is based on an event that would change the life of writer William 
S. Burroughs forever in Mexico, 1952. It emphasizes the artistic 
 po ssibility that infrafaces create in the potential of infinitely division 
of physical and temporal spaces. It reinforces how infrafaces as art 
are deeply related to the nonsense and the paradoxical. It is inspired 
from Zeno’s third paradox, the paradox of the arrow. It approaches 
us to the insight of the paradoxical; how nonsense is necessary for 
the sense, and not the opposite. 
5. The fifth and final story, Infrafaces II: The origin of life. In 
the beginning was the action, ends with the beginning: a set of 
representations of the theory that water is the origin of life. It is 
presented with a series of images of bodies passing through differ­
ent mediums. Images of men diving in the Pacific Ocean. Again, 
this story stops and focuses on the borders, horizons and on the 
surfaces. Though it focuses on the border between water and air, 
it could be any boundary: the human and the technological, sense 
and nonsense. I am interested in the behavior of entities as they 
make contact with other elements, how bodies change both them­
selves and their environment as they cross these limits.
One objective of  these five stories, that were deve loped in 
an intermediate space, is to create an understanding of everything 
that happens within us and around us, and to propose new ways of 
connectivity.
13
Praxis
Parallel to these stories, I experimented through video, installations 
and a number of other different interfaces, collecting documen­
tation of these experienced practices, which are presented in this 
dissertation. Interaction is a central part of my artistic research, so 
this thesis, was intertwoven with artistic acts created in Mexico and 
Sweden. The three exhibitions seek to encourage a different under­
standing of our environment by means of interaction.
1. Extispicia consists of three installations presented in 2007. The 
exhibition is based on a ritual used to predict the future in ancient 
cultures and practiced as a science. Extispicia helps us understand 
the way we try to assimilate our environment using metaphorical 
systems common in diverse domains of thought. 
2. Superficial Blue was presented as an interactive audio and video 
installation, from October to November 2010. The project Superfi-
cial Blue explores the relationship between the human and technol­
ogy not only from a technical point of view, but also approaches 
to this relationship from an aesthetic and cultural perspective. It 
focuses on language as a cultural catalyst and binder between the 
human, matter and environment.
3. Infrafaces was the final show of my research project, presented 
in August 2013. It accompanied the defence of the dissertation at 
the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts in Gothenburg. 
Infrafaces, the exhibition, consists of a series of video of bodies pass­
ing through different mediums. Concentrating in the zone where 
the infrafaces moves, in the border lines, in the contact zones. I 
am interested in the behavior of  entities as they make contact with 
other entities, how bodies change both themselves and their envi­
ronment as they cross these limits and in the inter­relation between 
elements.
Method
Infrafaces propose a new space for the realization of art deman ding 
its own methods. I wanted to reinforce the idea of the concept 
infrafaces in the structure of every chapter. That is why each story 
is written in a form that best represents its unique problem. This 
book is an interface, in the sense that it is an organization of cul­
tural codes arranged in approximately 650 grams of paper; it serves 
as a bridge towards an understanding. But it gradually became an 
infraface: an open wound, a crack in this bridge, opening a new 
place for the realization of art.  
14
Acquiring knowledge can’t be separated from action. We are not en­
tities that exist and then create symbolic forms to comment on our 
practices. Art and language are actively participating in our forma­
tion. There is a constant and simultaneous interaction between our 
practices and our constitution as beings. Artistic research has given 
the opportunity to exercise this interrelation. But as the reader will 
notice, there are even paradoxes in this interaction, and this dis­
sertation asserts that it is important to analyze and take advantage 
of these contradictions. These essays and artworks are nou rished by 
paradoxes, they refuse to be explained using functional processes 
and they have to find their own methods. Is it therefore difficult 
to reach an understanding of the art form via traditional rational 
processes? These stories lead us to the insight of  absurdity, showing 
that nonsense is necessary for sense. This form was  chosen because 
I have the opportunity to challenge conventional ways of think­
ing and established truths and show the need for complementary 
aspects in our understanding. Paradoxes are not failures in logical 
systems, “but forms that reveal how a contradiction is generated”,6 
encouraging us to think in a different manner. The paradox has its 
own meaning which does not contradict  truth in the same way that 
nonsense is not the opposite of sense.7
The concept of infraface focuses on the process rather than 
on the function, underlining the ad infinitum extension of the 
space in between. It avoids Heidegger’s division between physis and 
tekné and all kinds of divisions of the being.8 I do not consider the 
intervention of nature as opposite to human production.
This work was not conceived as a story one will read from 
beginning to end. Every chapter can be read independen tly. That’s 
why some ideas might repeat, but still the narratives are  affected 
by surprise. The way I work with art is based precisely on these 
astonishments: The last chapter is a good example of creation as a 
result of practice. The unpredictable, the unknown, to challenge 
and surprise ourselves and others, is part of art’s great adventure. 
Infrafaces finds its own form of expression based on inter­
relations and self experiences, in the actions. As mentioned, we are 
not only spectators in these stories, but also actors who are creating 
the plot through our actions. Action is in this case more relevant 
than examination or depiction, so each chapter is in dialogue with 
an artistic act. In this way I put myself as the creative subject. I 
strongly believe that the artistic creation by self­reflection can be a 
source of knowledge. It has been an ideal for the academy to reflect 
itself on its own practice and this is my contribution to scientific 
research. 
6. Cfr. Chapter IV, p.87, n. 12.
7. Deleuze, Gilles: The Logic of Sense, the Athlone Press, London, 2001, in the 
Eleventh series of nonsense and Twelve series of the paradox, pp.66ff and pp.74ff .
8. Badiou, Alain: Deleuze “El Clamor del Ser”, Manantial, Buenos Aires, 1977, 
p.51.
15
A new space for the realization of art 
The neologism infrafaces presented here is the idea of  extending an 
area or space in time to embed new stories or actions. The  essays 
and exhibitions in this dissertation have one thing in  co mmon: 
the search for an understanding through interaction, that is, inter­
activity through devices, cultural elements or our own bodies. In 
this inter active process everything that can help us to exchange in­
formation acts as an interface, as a border line. At the moment 
of contact between two or more elements, an area of transforma­
tion – a line, a border, a changing space, an intermediate space – is 
 created; it is this space that interests us because it can be manipu­
lated to include other spaces. 
An interface can contain different interfaces, buttons, dis­
play, text and language, and those in turn can contain new inter­
faces. In the same manner, a space can be divided and embrace 
another space, a story within a story, or a time within another time, 
and so on ad infinitum. These connections form endless chains of 
moving definitions. The possibility of playing with these connec­
tions is the foundation of the concept I refer to as an infraface. 
Thus the infraface creates a new intermediate space between two 
or more elements, and it activates this area according to the artist’s 
intentions.
Infraface is an artistic interpretation of the process of inter­
activity. It is what occurs beyond interfacing. Infraface is the option 
to extend or delay a physical area or space in time in order to embed 
new stories. Infrafacing is a different way to develop interfaces in 
order to size up the inbetween spaces in an interaction to perform 
art.
Although this might lead to a paradox, it does not need to 
be negative. It can open up a creative possibility, because this new 
space between things can be exploited as something effective. As 
we will see in many works of art, neither congruent outcomes nor 
function are indispensable. A paradox has its own meaning that is 
not opposite to truth; it is a different kind of truth such as humor, 
irony, or art itself.
Infrafaces is the possibility to delay the moment of union 
when we perform some action. Infrafaces open up or expand, as 
many times as is necessary, the contact field that emerges when we 
relate to others or to the environment. All the stories presented here 
play with the idea of  crossing this contact zone towards an under­
standing, but sometimes stopping endlessly in the transit zone, in 
the process, even if this maybe paradoxical.
Infrafaces propose a new room for the realization of art 
that demands its own methods. This work emphasizes the process 
rather than the purpose, the ad infinitum extension of the space in 
 between: the infraface. 
A B
C (Infrafaces)
A B
D(Infraface)
C (Infraface)
16
17
...understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal 
fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and rela­
tions which occur to me, how the matter in question was first thought of or 
arrived at, etc., etc.
Ada Lovelace
18
19
I. Extispicia
Guts as interface 
f.01*
* The seer Calchas practicing an extispicy ritual, interpreting the entrails of a 
sacrificial animal.
20
This trip begins in California. There, there is a man controlling the universe. Measuring it. Communicating. The man holds in his hand 
a device. A device with interfaces. A crystal ball. To control the 
future, we must predict it. He uses technology to understand his 
environment, to know his position, to see into the future. He has 
learned from history and he knows that he can change the world 
he lives in. The future of this man is very short. He knows it, yet he 
smiles. It is June 7, 2010, and the entrepreneur Steve Jobs has his 
last  appearance at WWDC.1 Since 20032 he has lost over 20 kilos 
because of an illness, so the wrinkle of his smile appears to be more 
deeply inset into his cheeks. Always with the black sweater that 
makes him look even thinner. The cancer eats his liver. He remem­
bers that once upon a time the liver was considered the vital center 
of the body, until Vesalius in 1540 demonstrated the  importance 
of the heart. In his outstretched hand, Steve Jobs holds the latest 
version of an iPhone 4, an electronic device the sales of which saved 
the company Apple from an economic crisis. This is the company 
he developed in his youth in a garage in California. This tool is 
intended to summarize the advances in communication and in­
formation available to the Western middle class: games, interfaces, 
calendars, maps, motion pictures, telephony... It has been nearly 
six centuries since the first ingenious inventions of the Renaissance, 
where the logos of the Platonists pretended to make statues talk. This 
led to the ingenious ideas of  building residences where, inspired by 
magic, but by physical means, both beautiful and complex palaces 
were created, high walls with acoustic holes in a spiral that ended 
behind the heads of some statues. In this way, an early telephony 
was invented with a communication range of over 200 metres.3 
1. Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.
2. Jobs was diognosed with cancer in October 2003. Isaacson, Steve Jobs: en 
biografi, p.513.
3. Carlsson, Göran och Ågren, Per­Uno: Tankens bilder: om människors vilja 
att synliggöra kunskap och idéer – att förklara världen i bilder, Raster, Stockholm, 
1997, p.36.
21
This leads him to think about the sad story of Antonio Meucci who 
invented the telephone in 1849 to communicate with his ill wife 
still badly suffering from rheumatism, but in his misery Meucci 
could not afford to pay the patent for his invention, something 
that Alexander Graham Bell would take advantage of, patenting 
the telephone and taking the honours in 1876. This causes Jobs 
a little remorse when he thinks of the inventions covered by the 
iPhone 4 and the thought of who actually enjoys the benefits and 
the honors of those patents. Jobs smiles. This device is not only a 
medium for communication – it helps us to organize and to re­
member. Mental systems to help the memory seem vain, such as the 
mnemonics, developed by Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the 
stake in 1600 for his controversial ideas. This device would claim 
to  enable us to understand or to connect us with our environment. 
It tries to be all­encompassing. The real­time network connection 
gives us instant access to all the information required in a 10 cm 
tablet, connected permentantly to a digital library. Jobs then thinks 
about the Royal Library of Assurbanipal, founded in 668 BC. The 
library consisted of thousands of clay tablets with cuneiform in­
scriptions. The Babylonians wanted to document everything and 
for centuries stored information about the political, military and 
intellectual events with a huge bureaucratic system of notaries. In 
the same way as his successor Nebuchadnezzar,  Assurbanipal knew 
the importance of information and history and tried to document 
every event, even the results of soothsayers and clairvoyants. The 
Babylonians believed that the will of the gods was manifested in 
nature or in the entrails of animals. They carried out rituals and of­
fered sacrifices to understand their environment and even to predict 
the future. The extispicia, for example, was an act of premonition in 
which a priest held in his hand an entrail such as a liver, and tried to 
read the divine signs on it in order to interpret, communicate and 
interact with his environment. For Steve Jobs, these stories come 
to mind, and he proudly holds the phone, as one who interprets, 
communicates, interacts and controls the environment. Although, 
for a moment, the device gives him pride, he feels momentarily ter­
rified at the idea of how all the information avai lable, paradoxically, 
opens up more questions than it answers. Just as the almost ma­
niacal need of the Babylonian scribes. He wonders how much we 
actually reach out to one another or to the world around us, how 
much we understand each other and the world, and which tools 
we are missing to properly interpret our environment. He wonders 
if the media link or divide us. For a moment he puts the device in 
the palm of his hand and looks at it as someone who looks into the 
past divining the future. He knows that his future is already very 
short. Only few months later would he leave this world shrunken 
by many inventions such as the one he is holding in his hand. “Oh 
wow, oh wow ...”4
***
4. Steve Jobs’  final words according to his sister, Mona Simpsons’ Eulogy at his 
memorial service on Oct. 16. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona­simpsons­eulogy­for­
steve­jobs.html?pagewanted=all
22
This trip goes backwards. This trip continues in Mexico City at the 
Palace of Fine Arts. There is another man controlling the universe. 
In front of this man is a hand extended toward us holding a crystal 
ball. He also uses technology to look into the future. He has learned 
from history and knows that he can choose the world we want to 
live in. Around the man and the crystal ball science, politics and 
history spin as the man struggles in a dialectical conflict between 
two worldviews: capitalism and communism. The year is 1934 and 
the author is Diego Rivera. To control the future, we must predict it.
Diego Rivera painted the mural Man Controlling the Uni-
verse at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico but, originally, the images 
of this mural were designed to be housed at the Rockefeller Center 
in New York. There is perhaps no better place to describe the ten­
sions of a world divided into two political mindsets than at the 
center of capitalism. Rivera is at the peak of his artistic career and 
will not miss the opportunity to take part in this debate between 
art and power. Rivera painted the mural which depicts, on one side, 
the atrocities of capitalism and religion, conveyed as a warning. On 
the other side Rivera depicts Lenin as a redeemer among workers: 
an African­American, an Asian and a Russian. Rivera’s description 
is simple: On each side of the crystal ball is good and evil: pars 
familiaris and pars hostilis. In the middle, is the man choosing his 
future. Hence the original title for this mural in Manhattan: Man 
at the crossroads. Nevertheless, the unleashed wrath directed towards 
the client who commissioned the work, Nelson Rockefeller, at the 
time, the richest man in the world, is unstoppable. Man at the cross-
roads was destroyed on February 9, 1934. Rivera does not even 
have the opportunity to document his work before it is destroyed; 
Rockefeller prohibits the entry of press photographers as he wishes 
to leave no trace of this offense to capitalism. However, thanks only 
to the speed of one of Rivera’s assistants, it is possible to photograph 
some parts of the mural which was later to be reborn in Mexico 
City with the name Man Controlling the Universe.
This time the man has taken a step forward towards his des­
tiny; in the second version of the mural Rivera predicts another of 
the misfortunes of mankind. On the right part, using the theories 
of Darwin, Nazi soldiers are marching to commit one of the biggest 
butcheries in history. The police in New York control the protests 
while, in the midst of this decay, Rockefeller drinks alongside the 
aristocracy. On the other side of the mural, to the left of the man, 
the promise of another just world is revealed. But who is the seer at 
the center of the picture who uses his environment and his past to 
look into the future? Perhaps it is a magician or a scientist? an artist? 
An entrepreneur? A researcher?
23
This journey takes a step back in time. Rivera presents a map, tells 
us where we are and warns us about the path we want to take. Ri­
vera’s map consists of all that surrounds us. It is Rivera’s profound 
belief that politics and history are essential to enable us to deter­
mine who we are. Rivera is not alone in his warnings. In  Europe, 
Pablo Picasso has started resenting the conflicts of the old conti­
nent. The modernist Pablo Picasso has been living in exile in Paris. 
It is the time of The Spanish Civil War and the war is  cos ting mi­
llions of lives. Even Picasso, the rebellious and revolutionary artist, 
is aware of the value of the works of art of his ancestors. Especially 
obsessed with the Black Paintings and the Disasters of War of Goya, 
he  smuggles treasures belonging to the Prado Museum out of the 
bloodbath of Spain. Picasso knows that all the brutality of the ritu­
als and mythology that we hardly strive to ignore, still live among 
us. For him, it is an undeniable truth in Spain. The Spain of fatal 
events and religious flagellants, anarchists and the communists. The 
Spain that wants modernity and “the dark Spain”. When the coun­
try is divided, there is no forgiveness for the opponent. Franco is 
said to be willing to kill half of Spain if necessary, and he proves that 
on April 26, 1937. The Minotaur, horribly frightened by Picasso 
in his nightmares, appears one afternoon in a Basque village. The 
nightmare or a premonition comes true: a rain of five thousand 
bombs was followed by a machine­gun attack upon the survivors 
on the streets directed at children, women and the elderly. Picasso’s 
participation in 1937 in the Paris pavilion passed almost unnoticed. 
But Picasso’s famous painting Guernica was more than an allegation 
of the possible monstrosities by Italy and Germany. The painting 
Guernica was a prophecy: Germany occupied Russia in 1941.
The man uses art and technology to interpret their environ­
ment and to look into the future. He has learned from history and 
knows that he can choose the world he wants to live in.
f.02. Diego Rivera, Man Controlling the Universe, 1934.
24
These stories have in common the fact that both the paintings and 
the technology to interpret or measure our environment, interfaces, 
are intended to give an idea of  who we are, of our position. Tech­
nology is not an extension of our physiognomy, but a reaffirmation 
of what we are, where we are and where we are heading. Although, 
in the case of works of art mentioned, here there is a negative warn­
ing tone. For Steve Jobs the technological apparatus represents the 
triumph of  art in conspiracy with neo­liberal economics.5
Rivera and Picasso both witness the impact of the failure 
of the romance of modernism. Nevertheless, the existential reflec­
tions upon knowing where we are and where are we going, have 
not always been fatalistic. In the picture of Picasso’s Guernica we 
find the evil eye and the painter uses the flame of art as an antidote. 
However for Steve Jobs and Diego Rivera, technology and science 
have a positive value and are at the center of the universe of the 
entrepreneur’s and the muralist’s vision. A few years before, another 
artist had proposed other means of conveying this. For Paul Gau­
guin, it is not science or technology that is the method or the means 
with which to understand humans, but nature. In the center of his 
vision he put a free man, natural, and in his outstretched hand the 
man is holding an apple, the embodiment of knowledge. The en­
trails in Gauguin’s animals are not shed like the horse in Guernica 
by Picasso. The goat in Gauguin’s painting lives in harmony with 
humans. Religious sculpture does not cause conflicts as in Rivera 
and the picture is not divided in two parts in opposition. The map 
Gauguin describes has a cyclical narrative: on the right side we see 
a newborn baby as a symbol of rebirth. The work of art Where Do 
We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? was finished in 
the Caribbean in 1898.
This trip continues in Haiti, the year is 1898, there is a man 
with his hand extended in which he is holding an apple as a symbol 
of knowledge. Around him, religion co­exists in harmony with na­
ture. He has learned from history and knows that he can choose the 
world we want to live in. Gauguin rejects modernity and technolo­
gy. The painter has taken refuge in the Caribbean, far from a world 
that begins to change at speeds never seen before. Photography had 
begun to revolutionize our worldview and our vision of ourselves 
as a people, while more advanced systems are being developed for 
surveying, with the use of theodolites for example, an optical in­
strument for topographic measurements. This will enhance the ac­
curacy of maps, not only the geographical maps, but also give them 
more accurate scales. Religious, romantic or metaphysical explana­
tions of our origins give way to biological theories. Darwin’s work, 
published in 1859 entitled  On the Origin of Species and the Descent 
of Man was published in 1871. Thus, the realistic painters make 
painting a physical language. Religious mysteries have a response 
here, around us. The history of mankind will no longer be formed 
by the movements of the planets nor by the power of God. 
5. Another example is Salvador Dalí’s Oneromantía. Dalí painted in 1936 soft 
construccions with boiled beans. Dalí also sees in Goya the cannibalism in the 
myth, and imagine a Saturn devouring his own children, as a symbol of the 
slaughter of Spanish people among themselves. In the picture stands the decay­
ing and repulsive figure of the war devouring his own children; the co ­title of 
the work is Premonitions of the Spanish Civil War six months after the premoni­
tion became true. 
25
The second half of the nineteenth century will have to engage reli­
gious truths and new scientific knowledge until finally God would 
die in the pages of The Anti-christ in 1890. In the same way as for 
the artist Courbert, and for the writers Balzac and Dickens, man 
no longer has a guide in the heavens rather he seeks truth on earth, 
in everyday life. 
Some years earlier the Napoleonic campaigns helped to form 
the sense of national romanticism. The European map has been 
quickly re­drawn and Napoleon was keen to take control of the 
new territories gained by the technical military advances. He im­
proves techniques for measuring heights by means of triangulation 
and trigonometry. In 1811 it is possible to make a scientific meas­
urement of terrestrial degrees by the geometrist Jean Baptist Biot, 
while Napoleon is invading Russia.6 While the world is changing, 
the artist makes his observations, but not as a historical illustrator. 
They have learned from history and know that they can transform 
the world we want to live in.7
6. Bachman, Emil: Att mäta himmel och jord: från pyramid till vädersatellit, 
Generalstabens litografiska anstalt, Stockholm, 1973, p.169.
7. For the Spanish painter, Francisco Goya as well, the new Napoleonic map 
does not represent a single relief. For Goya, there is no religious retreat in the 
catastrophic images of torture. From 1810 to 1820 he produced a series of 
paintings called The Disasters of War which depicts the engraving Sad Premoni-
tions of what must Happen. When Goya looks into the future in the silent night 
of his consciousness, he knows about the sleeping monsters waiting. Goya uses 
the art to understand his environment and looks into the future with sadness. 
In the Capriccios he ridicules the absurdity of the cruelty of the Inquisition, 
the arrival of the French army would offer an even more hellish spectacle. The 
spectacle of the disasters of the war. However, with the victory of England, 
Goya knows that the church would return to power, and will create the neces­
sary environment for more nightmares to come. Years before in 1825, while 
in exile, and burdened by the conflicts  in the country, he created terrifying 
murals in his Quinta del Sordo (Deaf Man’s Villa). Among these is the work, 
Saturn Devouring His Children  and  Duel with Cudgels.
 f.03. Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? 1898
26
Artists and scientists who also create maps, tools, devices or in­
terfaces, by interpreting the symbols around them and organizing 
information through cultural codes. They create maps predicting 
what may happen. They use technology to understand their envi­
ronment, know their position and navigate into the future. A few 
years earlier in England, William Blake also interprets the events 
around him as evidence of advents. Blake makes prints, writes both 
poetry and prophecies.
 
 (...) he spoke to England with the voice of prophecies as 
authentic as that of his Hebrew predecessors, with no less 
immediacy on national events, passing on what the Irish 
mystic AE called ‘the politics of time’, the judgment of ‘the 
politics of eternity’. If Blake was a mystic and visionary his 
was no private world – on the contrary his judgments are 
on public events, on institutions both civil and religious, on 
false ideologies, on the exploitation of women and children, 
on the Industrial Revolution, on the atrocity of war.8
 
Blake created the work  Newton. This engraving is particularly inter­
esting because of the tension between art, science and religion that it 
achieves. We do not know whether the figure of Newton,  depicted 
naked and athletic, squats to make his observations as God on 
earth, or if Blake is using this to criticize Newtonian theories. Blake 
is a deeply religious person, but it is a religion created by himself 
and influenced by the Swedish mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. He 
even illustrates his own mythology. Newton’s work  obsesses about 
Blake, but, at the same time, it is a hindrance to him: Newtonian 
mechanics allow no room for God. Newton’s engraving is  almost 
ironic, because what Blake never knew was that the scientific world 
of this time had little interest in publicizing their findings. Newton 
is an alchemist, writing more on thus than anything else. Although 
Blake’s major influences are religion, Milton and Neo­Platonism, 
Newton’s system is in conflict with his theories. “The Newtonian 
system had, Blake held, externalized the ‘outer’ spaces of the uni­
verse from the living and universal imagination.”9
This engraving by William Blake (probably from 1795, 
 although it was dated 1804) shows the graphical representation 
of two worlds in conflict. Both Blake and Newton are religious 
but they develop their own religious vision in very particular ways. 
Newton’s mathematical demonstrations are opposed to the prin­
ciples of the creation as postulated by Blake; science versus imagi­
nation. Blake considers Newton to be pessimistic in his reason­
ing. Blake depicts the figure of Newton as a man obsessed with 
geometric forms that explain, but which do not produce. In his 
outstretched hand the man has a compass, an interface. He uses 
technology to understand his environment, to know his position, 
to see into the future. For a moment he puts the device in the palm 
8. Campbell in Blake, William: Poems and prophecies, Introduction, Bibliography 
and Chronology by David Campbell. Everyman’s library, London, 1991, p. xiv.
9. Ibid.
27
of his hand and looks at it as someone who looks into the past to 
divine the future. Around the man with the compass, art, scien­
ce, politics and magic are revolving as the man is struggling in a 
dialectical conflict between two worldviews: science and religion. 
 Newton is essential in giving us a finite understanding as to how 
we should perceive what we see. I imagine him introducing pins 
behind his eyes and blinding himself by staring at the sun to con­
vince himself of the mistakes in the Cartesian vortex, or separating 
the colors into light rays and perfecting the telescope – which in the 
sixteenth century would become unwieldy with its 200­ foot­high 
form. Newton helps to put the final nail in the coffin of the prin­
ciples of Aristotelian teaching revolutionizing scientific thinking. 
Newton has a side to his character that Blake would have found 
fascinating. Newton is absorbed by the notions of Hermetic Phi­
losophy and the Prisca Sapientia. He searches for a way to demon­
strate the system of the world and he predicts the end of the world 
in 2060.10
The optical revolution and the different understanding of 
our position in the universe will end with old systems and beliefs. 
Astrology will cease to be taught in universities. Although advances 
in disco veries in optics will give way to other philosophical issues. 
Baruch Spinoza polishing lenses until he burst his lungs with glass 
dust is a good example. The debates as to whether or not our senses 
can be deceived even by the finest lenses would encourage discus­
sion about our realities. Similar to a Newtonian room in which a 
halo of light has been decomposed, the painter Johannes Vermeer 
designs similar cabins for decomposing the light. Witty chambers 
where he managed to set up his tripod to paint.11 Vermeer’s paint­
ings are a kind of interface; a contact zone towards an understand­
ing, they are like maps with an axis of temporality. The time in the 
10. http://www.britannica.com.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/EBchecked/topic/413189/
Sir­Isaac­Newton
11. Steadman, Philip: Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Mas-
terpieces, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2001, p.p.26­42.
 f.04, William Blake, Newton, 1795.
28
works of Vermeer gets in through the half­opened windows and 
he wants to be sure it is exactly there that time and space intersect. 
Vermeer often painted maps. There are maps depicted both in the 
work, An Officer and a Boy and The Painter in his Study. 
Vermeer’s paintings evoke the calm after Rembrandt’s 
 Baroque storm. In 1615, geographical measurements were revolu­
tionized using trigonometry. When we look at Vermeer’s picture 
The Geographer in the Netherlands, we see a man who is measuring 
the universe. In his outstretched hand he has a compass: an inter­
face. He wonders how much we understand each other, the world, 
and which tools we are missing to properly interpret our environ­
ment. For a moment he puts the device in the palm of his hand and 
looks at it as someone who looks into the past to divine the future. 
He uses technology to understand and measure his environment. 
But he wonders if technology will link or divide us. He has learned 
from history and knows he can choose the world we want to live. 
Around the man with the compass in his hand revolves art,  science, 
politics and magic, and the man is struggling in a dialectical con­
flict between two worldviews: science and religion. The year is 1668 
and the author is Johannes Vermeer. In order to control the future, 
we must predict it.
f.05, Johannes Vermeer, The Geographer, 1668.
29
A
stronomy, cartography and the new inventions aimed at 
 understanding the universe and finding our place in the 
world, replaced our view of a world of perfect relationships. 
During the Renaissance humankind had accrued knowledge so 
that the human body – the microcosm – was in perfect harmony 
with the universe – the macrocosm. The perfect spheres of Aristotle 
moved in harmony, in perfect circles, producing celestial music, 
which made it possible to predict its movement and thus the future. 
Nevertheless Galileo published in 1616 the book Sidereus Nuncius 
showing the irregularities of the moon and in 1665 Robert Hook’s 
book Micrographia shows a sub­world of imperceptible fleas dwell­
ing in us.12 Paradoxically, if there were not perfect spheres and other 
worlds of microorganisms inhabiting our world, relating these to 
the entire universe would become and exhausting and futile task.
The etching Melancholy, of 1514 by Albrecht Dürer, per­
fectly expresses this feeling. Alongside a man there is an angel hol­
ding the geometric figures known to mankind; signifying the more 
he is aware of his position in the world, the more he is lost and 
alone. Even the melancholy would not be understood as one of 
the diseases produced by the liver. Not only are the observations of 
the world and the universe reformed, but also the anatomical atlas 
showed us still other secrets we did not know about. Melancholy 
was then accepted to be caused by a liver dysfunction because the 
liver had a central symbolic value in their lives. Although Leonardo 
da Vinci in 1507 had drawn the most important organs connected 
to the arterial system, the liver was at that time still considered 
the central and vital pump for our bodies’ vital functions. Rather 
than the heart, it was considered the distributor of blood. In 1540 
 Vesalius confronts a tradition of over a thousand years inherited 
from Galenus. In Bologna, with the viscera in his hands, he invited 
the students to discover the secrets of the blood’s circulation. “Feel 
for yourself ” he exhorted.13
Galileo had the virtue of gaining and compiling know­
ledge relating to the astronomical inventions known at that time. 
He also had the wisdom, or cowardice, to regret some of his con­
troversial statements before being sent to the stake. So we can 
still see the mummified finger of the illustrious hand pointing to 
the heavens on display in a museum in Florence.14 However, Jo­
hannes Kepler’s mother was not as lucky as Galileo and she spent 
14 years in jail accused of witchcraft. This was despite the fact 
that Kepler, upon Tycho Brahe’s death, succeeded him as royal 
mathematician to the Roman Emperor Rudolf II.15 He was occa­
sionally assigned to predict horoscopes of the nobility in Prague. 
 
12. Carlsson and Ågren, Op. cit., pp.104 and 105.
13. Op. cit., pp.109 and 113.
14. Atkins, Peter: Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science, Oxford Uni­
versity Press, 2003, p. 1.
15. Bachman, Emil: Att mäta himmel och jord: från pyramid till vädersatellit, 
Generalstabens litografiska anstalt, Stockholm, 1973, p.109.
30
From Copernicus to Galileo, thinkers contributed to revealing im­
perfections in the crystalline spheres of Aristotle. Notwithstanding 
the Renaissance is a period where astrology, magic and alchemy 
were avidly practiced. The border between being judged by the In­
quisition and the free study of secret knowledge was uncertain. The 
hi story of the Medici family – with which Galileo had problems so 
he had to leave Tuscany – can give us clues. Marsilio Ficino was the 
protégé and translator of Cosimo de Medici. It took the fascinating 
text of the Corpus Hermeticum, a body of literature attributed to 
Hermes Trismegistus, to induce Ficino to interrup t the translation 
of Plato’s work by order of Cosimo de Medici. He started imme­
diately with the translation of this new mystical book that assured to 
reveal the hidden truths of life and the universe. It is possible that, 
in a deeply religious and intolerant society, Trismegistus’ thoughts 
were acceptable because of the alleged connection  between the Old 
Testament, Egypt and ancient Greece. The frontier between art, reli­
gion, magic and science would therefore become fragile, tantalizing 
and dangerous. Not only do we see a blending of religious thought 
with the ideas and theories of the Renaissance, the Kabala, alchemy 
and astrology earned an important place in Court. Through the use 
of magic, it was possible to understand the secrets of the cosmos as 
reflected in humans. Other thinkers, such as Proclus and the ideas 
of Neoplatonism, became significant in the alchemy tradition of 
the fifteenth century. The idea of in fluencing the physical world 
through magic helped to develop complex architectural forms. The 
logos of the Platonists, which claim to make statues talk, lead to 
the ingenious idea of building palaces inspired by magic, but using 
physical means. Amazing gardens and hydraulic systems, as com­
plicated as they were beautiful, were created. Even buildings with 
great walls, with acoustic holes in a spiral formation that ended 
behind the heads of the statues, were built. These ultimately lead 
to the first telecommunication systems with a range of over 200 
meters.16
In this way, alchemy inspired the imagination of science. It 
was the time when Paracelsus had great successes in medicine even 
though he mixed charms, poisons and the influence of the stars in 
order to heal. The influence of the heavenly bodies is important in 
the Renaissance mind. Man’s place in time and space is decided 
according to the relationship of the celestial bodies, according to 
books of antiquity as the Almagest and Tetrabiblos, written by the 
Greco­Egyptian astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy. Everything in the 
world, was influenced by the planets. When the mathematician, 
Girolamo Cardano, who received protection from Pope Gregory 
XIII, received a copy of Tetrabiblos, he quickly claimed that he had 
to change all the ideas of astrology; especially since he also had to 
find a relationship with past events. Thus, thanks to the analysis 
of these events and their recompilation, some of the most beauti­
ful engravings of this epoch were created. These were meticulously 
detailed with systems, ornaments of the era, and metaphorical 
 illustrations representing the planets and their influence on man.
16. Cfr., p. 20. n.3. Carlsson, Göran och Ågren, Per­Uno: Tankens bilder: om 
människors vilja att synliggöra kunskap och idéer -att förklara världen i bilder, 
Raster, Stockholm, 1997, p.36.
31
Although astrology was accepted in higher intellectual circles, it was 
still criticized. Pico Giovanni della Mirandola, under the pro tection 
of Lorenzo de Medici, wrote Oratio de hominis Dignitate, The Ora-
tion of the Dignity of Man, considered a symbol of Renaissance hu­
manist thought. While Mirandola strongly criticized astrology, this 
practice was nevertheless taught in universities. The kings relied on 
the positions of the planets to plan important events and physicians 
also relied on these to detect and cure diseases. But astrology was 
in conflict with the church if used for divinatory purposes: if every­
thing was made up of cyclical patterns, then one could predict the 
future, something that opposed the will of God.
Astrology not only claims to discover the structures in the 
universe as a method of prediction but the astrologers approach 
also wanted to find a way to understand correlation with the whole. 
Nmemonic devices used to express correlations with the whole re­
sulted in the thinker Giordano Bruno, a specialist in Mnemo nics, 
being sent to the stake. Mnemonics are a strategy for creating im­
aginary rooms for organizing and remembering creating mental 
images, a system for remembering through spatial associations in 
the mind. They are credited to Simonides of Ceos in antiquity.17 
Bruno developed a complex mnemonic system where everything is 
in absolute correspondence with everything. Astrology, the  Kabala, 
alchemy, necromancy… everything is in correlation like a gear 
system of a universal clock where time and space come together. 
From music to the zodiac, from minerals and botanics to the spi­
ritual, from memory to divination, everything was inter­linked. On 
February 17, 1600 in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, the originator of 
the most complex and evolved mental systems for association and 
memory, was burned at the stake. Many of Bruno’s writings have 
not yet been deciphered.
Advances in astronomy obviously contributed to the im­
provement of navigation maps. The roundness of the world was al­
ready accepted,18 and Christopher Columbus was preoccupied only 
by the thought of how many food supplies that would be needed 
to travel around the world. Uncharted seas no longer terrified sai­
lors since the navigation compass became a well­known invention. 
The sextant allowed sailors to find their latitude position and the 
first armillary sphere gave them a reliable meridian approach. The 
map created by Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli in 1474 showed Asia and 
Europe juxtaposed separated only by a vast ocean.19 It just re mined 
a cha llenge for sailors to estimate this distance. The Portuguese 
 arrived in Africa in 1445 and the Spanish, by coincidence, reached 
the new continent in 1492. In 1500 Juan de la Costa had drawn a 
map of the world with America included.
17. Draaisma, Douwe: Metaphors of Memory, A history of ideas about the mind, 
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, p.39.
18. Numbers, Ronald L.: Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and 
Religion, Harvard University Press Cambridge, Mass, 2009, pp.21­34.
19. Bachman, Emil: Att mäta himmel och jord: från pyramid till vädersatellit, 
Generalstabens litografiska anstalt, Stockholm, 1973, p.79.
32
During the Renaissance divination and astrology not only contri­
buted to the observation of the world through experimentation, 
creating works of a technical nature never seen before but was also 
seen as a direct link to the thinking of the era, with magic being 
more closely associated with wisdom than quackery. In the fifteenth 
century this was, quite literally, a “renaissance”. Divination was 
commonly practiced although, during the Middle Ages, the rituals 
were performed in secret.
The Middle Ages had the necessary time to flatten the earth.20 
Man’s position in the universe was poised between the promises 
of the highest heaven and the tortures of hell in the depths of the 
earth; in the past was the genesis and in the future was the final 
judgment that should have arrived in the year 100. Nevertheless, 
celestial phenomena were still heralding the end of the world or 
future misfortunes; especially those comets that were purportedly 
connected to the beginnings of the plague. The plague and pests 
regularly scourged Europe in 1346,21 1371, 1383, 1385, 1400 and 
1665. The most recorded cases in history related the presence of 
comets and plagues, including the arrival of The Plague in London 
in 1664 and 1666. Consequently since the Middle Ages, a deeply 
religious society was born with obscure cults. Efforts were focused 
on rescuing scholastic teachings. Even magic, astrology and science 
had trouble finding their place in Europe. Advances and intellectu­
al ideology exchanges were mainly happening in the Arab domains. 
The map of al­Idrisi, drawn about 1160 without parallel circles or 
meridians is a good example of Arabic influence combined with the 
Ptolemy’s theories.22
20. Nevertheless, L. Numbers sustains that the idea of the people in the 
Middle Ages believed that the earth was flat, is a nineteenth century myth. 
L. Numbers, Ronald, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and 
Religion, pp.29­34.
21. De Landa, Manuel: A thousand years of nonlinear history, Zone Books, New 
York, 2000, p.124.
22. Bachman, Op. cit., 63.
f.06, A modern version of Toscanelli’s map 1474.
 
33
 
It would seem that during the Middle Ages, religious fanaticism 
lead to more practical and secret cults. Certain divination practices, 
survived from antiquity; took new forms and were threatening the 
teachings of the church. The Inquisition succeeded in frightening 
many practitioners, but in the Arabian domain, these ungodly prac­
tices were to develop more freely. The scapulimancy practiced in An­
dalusia is a good example. This is a sort of divination performed by 
reading the symbols on the scapular of a lamb, a ritual which seems 
to have been practiced in countries from China as far as North 
America. The parts of the scapula, it’s reliefs and cavities were as­
sociated with the life of the enquirer. In medieval manuscripts that 
have survived with Arabic inscriptions, we can see the zones, their 
names and their functions. According to the characteristics of cer­
tain parts, some future events could be predicted, including the 
death of the person or their relatives, health, home problems, even 
adultery. Everything could be linked to the names of the bones: the 
sea, the socket, the big column, the small cartilage. On the back of the 
shoulder blade the soothsayer had a map with certain associations 
with places in Andalusia. These included Seville, Toledo, Jaen and 
Cordoba and the soothsayer probably exchanged those names when 
he was practicing his runes in another country or region. Thomas 
Aquinas condemned these practices. It is precisely the individua lity 
of the practice of divination, the personal aspect, that was most 
widely criticized during the Re naissance when astrology was en­
joying widespread acceptance. Another method of divination a  little 
more individual in technique and then still popularly practiced is 
quiromancia, palmistry. It is relevant in this case because of its simi­
larity to the scapulimancy and hepatoscopy, but more accessible, and 
with some respectability because Aristotle had once mentioned it.
Within the practice of symbolism and divination in the 
Middle Ages there was a tendency to combine numerology with 
religious symbols. The Holy Trinity, for example, corresponds to 
the number three. Hieronymus Bosch, El Bosco, like other artists 
of his time, painted triptychs. The painting, The Garden of Earthly 
Delights created between 1480 and 1490 is a good example of the 
understanding then of time and space. Closing the doors on the 
triptych shows the Creation with the celestial dome over a flat land. 
Opening the triptych we can see, on one side the past with original 
sin, the present at the center with humans enjoying earthly delights 
and at the other end, the future, with hell represented by warnings 
for our sinful life. However, Bosch blends Christianity with his own 
beliefs in a secret sect. It is said that Bosco was a member of the De-
votio Moderna, and a follower of the ideology of the mystic Meister 
Ekhart, whose Neoplatonic influence led to him being accused of 
heresy. The art historian Marilyn Stokstad speaks of an alchemistic 
interpretation of the traditional symbols in the triptych between 
the salvation of man and the creation of philosophic gold. The mi­
xing elements are the men and the women by means of distillation 
in the “marry chambers” and the trees are represented as stills for 
collecting vapors. This is all is represented as a game where “play” 
means distillation.23
23. Stokstad, Marilyn: Art History, Prentice Hall/Pearson, Upper Saddle River, 
N.J., 1995, p.725.
34
Art, divination and the position of man in relation to the uni­
verse, lost their astrological dimension simply because the vision 
of the cosmos was very limited. The pilgrims looked to the stars 
of the Milky Way only because these would lead them to Santiago 
de Compostela. Detailed maps and life in general focused on the 
recovery of the holy lands during the Crusades. Mysticism linked 
the Middle Ages with the classical Greco­Roman period. Gra dually, 
Christian symbolism would take over the Roman symbols and 
would mystify them. Theology replaced philosophy based on the 
observation of nature. The artist’s primary concern was to approach 
spirituality and he thereby convinces or redeems others to Chris­
tianity through art. Christianity was adopted in Roman times. In 
380, the Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity as the official 
state religion. The monk Dionysius Exiguus proposed to change 
the accounting system of the time in accordance with the birth of 
Jesus, not according to the foundations of Rome. The festival of 
the birth of the Unconquered Sun, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, was 
replaced by the birth of Christ. With the advent of Christianity, 
the worship of Roman deities and divination practices were forbid­
den. The last accepted ritual would be the Eucharist. According to 
the Revelations of Job, the vision of the world is not only flat but 
square. The four corners were confined to Ethiopia, India, the Celts 
and the Scythians.24 The maps created during the period of Chris­
tianity were completed with fantasies added by Christian monks 
without any “scientific” aspiration nor were they based on actual 
observations. The library of Alexandria was destroyed while full of 
Papyri and maps, and Plato’s Academy was closed in 529.
During the Roman period, the world’s geographic vision 
was based on the knowledge of Ptolemy. The Almagest is the work 
that would define the world view for hundreds of years. The earth 
was the center of the universe surrounded by layers of fire and air, 
followed by the seven planets including the moon and sun.25 The 
vision of the universe was thus complete. Everything in the world 
was categorized by Aristotle, the description and relationship of 
the planets in the Almagest, and their influence among them was 
described by the Tetrabiblos. To complete the entire worldview 
Ptolemy drew maps based on the histories of Herodotus and Era­
tosthenes.
Geographical knowledge was essential for the expansion 
of the Roman Empire. The recording of time was also improved 
 according to the needs of agriculture, and feast days and holidays. 
Julius Caesar also introduced the Julian calendar in 45. Political and 
military life was based on the worship of the gods of the  Roman 
tradition. Although several authors began to attack divination, this 
represented an important part of political and military life in the 
Roman Empire. Romulus even had a college of soothsayers. The 
extispicy was practiced professionally and priests accompanied the 
emperors in their military campaigns to guide them in battle. In the 
year 48 BC, the army of Pompey faced the army of Julius Caesar 
24. Bachman, Op cit., p.56.
25. Ibid. 43.
35
as they fought in a battle that was to define the history of the Ro­
man Empire. The battalions had come very close to each other and 
waited for the best strategic moment in which to attack. During 
this stressful time, diviners played an important role in advising the 
emperors since they could interpret the conditions of the universe 
and therefore assess the chances of success. In the same manner as 
in the ritual of scapulmancy, the priests were able to see signs in ani­
mal entrails. These were associated with geographical locations and 
the position of the enemy. The will of the gods written on a liver 
would show them the way on the night of August 9 at Pharsalia.
Artists made sculptures and busts of emperors giving them 
divine qualities as a means of propaganda. The divinities were also 
related to mythology inherited by the Greeks. The artists were try­
ing hard to control the representation of the classical tradition 
without resorting to paganism. Heroic and erotic enterprises gave 
the artist an opportunity to represent the naked man in compli­
cated compositions. The gods and demigods, bearing human and 
animal characteristics, occupy the highest levels on earth and in the 
heavens. Sacrifices to Apollo and the consultation of oracles were 
greatly respected. The interpretation of symbols and signs had a 
profound impact on the Roman mentality. Even the flight of the 
birds was decisive in determining military action. The symbol on 
the coat of arms of Constantine was to frighten the superstitious 
soldiers in the enemy camp, helping him to rise to power in 330.
The Romans assimilated from the Greeks cosmological vi­
sion, the Pantheon, rituals, art, festivals, architecture and philoso­
phy of the Hellenic culture. However, another civilization was to 
have a decisive influence on the Romans, from the letters of the 
alphabet to the tradition of the gladiators, architectural advances 
such as aqueducts, divination techniques and artistic traditions; the 
Etruscans. It is precisely during this period of Etruscan influence 
that one of the most famous bronze sculptures in the study of hepa­
toscopy (a form of divination) was made, namely the well­known 
bronze Piacenza liver. This is a bronze reproduction of a lamb’s liver 
bearing Etruscan inscriptions. It is probable that an Etruscan priest 
lost the artifact while on the run from being attacked by the Ro­
mans in 100 AD.26 The identification of the gods and the actual 
text has always been associated with the mysteries of the Etruscan 
language and the origins of the Etruscan culture. Recent studies of 
this work of art clarify some missing pieces in the understanding of 
the divination during that time. For example the Dutch  researcher, 
L.B. Van der Meer, who analyzed the bronze Piacenza liver in 1987 
argued that the figure can be divided into pars familiaris and pars 
hostilis.27 ( a positive and negative side.) It is thus important to 
know the correct orientation of the figure. Van der Meer proposes 
that, although there is a debate as to whether the positive side is 
on the right, this must be placed facing down and looking towards 
the east.
26. “Because of style this statue is generally dated about 150B.C.” claims L.B. 
Van de Meer, The Bronze Liver of Piacenza, pp.17 and 18.
27. Van de Meer, L.B.: The Bronze Liver of Piacenza, Dutch Monographs on 
Ancient History and Archaeology, Volume II, Amsterdam, 1987, p.147.
36
The names of some deities appear on the divisions of the liver. 
Another researcher, Galeotti­Heywood E. resolves some of the 
questions by postulating that the figure enables a play of light and 
shade, from the sun and the moon, on the reigning deities depicted 
in each of the sculpture’s two fold divisions.28 This figure, only 20 
centimeters long, synthesizes much of the knowledge of man at 
that time in representing the relationship between humans and 
the world. Like a sundial, the shadows tell the onlooker who is 
the reigning deity. The experience handed down over thousands of 
years gave onlookers the means with which to interpret the events 
around them. Everything is important and everything is inter­ 
related. The gods, along with their respective planets, influence the 
microcosm and, by recognizing the paths of the stars, the priest 
feels he can predict the future and somehow control it by asking the 
gods for their influence. The bronze of Piacenza liver was probably 
used as a schematic model for teaching divination. Similar models 
which appeared were used as evidence of events that had occurred. 
This device would claim to  enable us to understand or to connect 
us with our environment. It tries to be all­encompassing. 
In his outstretched hand an Etruscan priest has this artifact, 
an interface. The year is 100 AD. He uses technology to understand 
his environment, to communicate, to know his position and to see into 
the future. For a moment, he puts the device in the palm of his hand 
and looks at it as someone who looks into the past divining the future.  
 
    
28. The Shadows of the Bronze of Piacenza by E. Galeotti­Heywood, Review 
by: W. M. Lindsay
The Classical Review , Vol. 36, No. 7/8 (Nov. ­ Dec., 1922), p. 193
f.07, Piacenza liver, 150 AD. 
f.08,  iPhone4, 2010.
37
This trip continues back in time. It is said that the only  significant mathematic intervention of the Romans was the murder of Archimedes, son of the astronomer Phidias. 
 Archimedes estimated the diameter of the earth in 300 000 sta-
diums or 55, 000 km, a more accurate number than the 40, 000 km 
of Aristotle. The way to learn Euclidean geometry had no shortcuts. 
Euclid was a contemporary and friend of Archimedes and Eratos­
thenes. With the aid of a Gnomon (instrument to calculate the 
length of shadows cast by the sun) it was possible to estimate the 
length of the earth to 250 000 stadiums, or 37 200 km, which is 
very close to the actual measurement of the earth of 40 thousand 
kilometers diameter. Although Aristotle had erred in his estima­
tions relating to the earth’s size, his evidence – as opposed to that 
of Pythagoras – was based on an observation of natures such as 
changes in sea levels, the stars, height of the sun in different places 
and the shadows during lunar eclipses.29
The brotherhood to which Pythagoras belonged was, to 
some extent, secret. They searched through the numbers for the 
intimate harmony of the universe. At that time, the earth had to 
be spherical because this shape is the most harmonic. The vision of 
man and the universe was completed with the ideas of Protagoras 
and his aphorisms, in which he postulated man as the measure of 
all things.  Although no one wanted to openly pronounce on the 
existence of the gods, these had a vital role in the Greek mind. 
Greek culture, considered as the beginning of Western culture, 
strives to assimilate the mythical past and tame the wild. Philo­
sophical schools coe xisted, but not without friction, in a culture 
full of rituals and sacrifices. Politicians consulted priests and made 
pilgri mages to the Oracle of Delphi. If Homer was seen as repre­
senting the poetic vision of the myth, secret symbols and premoni­
tions were to be searched for in his writings, as in the Kabala or in 
the Old Testament. The extispicy is a common practice with seers or 
clairvoyants having a important roles in public life and politics. We 
will try to ignore the link to the east. It will be a fierce struggle to 
tame the savage in man. He believes he can kill the Minotaur with 
order and rationality, but this scary Minotaur will follow him and 
will be awoken while our conscious minds are sleeping, as depicted 
by Picasso and Goya hundreds of years later.30 The tranquility and 
leisure of the Greek philo sophical thinker is dependant on slave la­
bor. The dismembered body of Aristotle, collu ding with the Jewish 
and Christian traditions will be the most accepted spiritual guide of 
man in the West for over 16 centuries.
Copernicus, Galileo and Newton will contribute to cha­
llenge the Aristotelian doctrine, but already by 310 another school 
was opposed to some of Aristotle ideas, the Stoics. The Aristotelian 
being can be defined by the qualities of his nature, while the stoics 
will define him by actions, through the interactivity of the being 
with other beings or things. In the relations between everything.
29. Bachman. Op cit., pp.27 and 34.
30. Cfr. p. 23.
38
 
Because everything is full of symbols, and God is everywhere Thales 
would consequently argue that “everything is full of Gods”. The 
historian Michael Wood says:
 
David Hume thought the abstract idea of God was civi­
lized, while the concrete idea of god was primitive. Fried­
rich Nietzsche thought the reverse. But the point of Thales 
phrase is not argue for polytheism, or to get us to argue 
against it. The point is to ask us to think of the world as 
haunted by the divine, and to see how the divinity can talk 
to us through the world. If the divinity is the single Jewish 
or Christian or Islamic God, he can and he will talk to us 
through the world, but he also talk in other ways: through 
direct revelation, for example.31 
 
In man’s desperate attempt to find this revelation, to understand 
and control his environment, he ascribes meaning to everything 
around him. He asks the oracles and searches for signs in nature 
(mantik), by observing thunder and lightning (keraunoscopy) and 
the flight of birds (hornitomanty).
The Olympian gods will create and prolong the conflicts 
of mankind. Humans will struggle to shake off their influence by 
means of reason, turning to the oracles to ask for help or to rituals 
of divination. Thus we see the expansion of the Homeric world 
painted on the Shield of Achilles: this is delimited by the hazy north 
and by the warm south of the Kingdom of Nubia and to the east/
west by the extension of the Mediterranean. Everything is sur­
rounded by water, by the River Ocean and inhabited, at the bottom 
of the Shield, by the Chimeras, all surrounded by the starry vault.32
The battle of Thermopylae in 434 BC is another turning 
point of Western thought and mans sense of independence. It rein­
forced the identity of the West. They seek to reassert themselves as 
different to the East as opposed to Hellenism.33 But the Homeric 
miracle did not flourish isolated from the rest of the world. His­
tory took thousands of years to recognize the constant exchange 
not only of techniques but also art. The gods of the Babylonian lit­
erature took new forms in Homer and Hesiod’s mythology. Ham­
murabi became Chronos. The scholar of Greek mythology, Walter 
Burkert, claims:
‘Craftsmen of the sacred,’ itinerant seers and priests of pu­
rification, transmitted not only their divinatory and pu­
rificatory skills but also elements of mythological ‘wisdom’. 
Indeed Homer, in an often quoted passage of the Odyssey 
enumerates various kinds of migrant craftsmen…34
31. Wood, Michael: The Road to Delphi, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 
2003, p.9.
32. This might be an interpretation of the whole world or a premonition of 
the brutality during the Trojan War. Homero: La Ilíada, Editores mexicanos 
unidos, México D. F., 1981.Book 18, Lines 478 –608.
33. During the Hellenistic Period the oldest known complex gear mechanism 
was created, the Antikythera. Called the first known analog computer esti­
mated to have been made around 100 BC. Ifrah, Op.cit., p.155.
34. Burkert, Walter: Creation of the Sacred – tracks of biology in early religions, 
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1998, p.6.
39
In the Babylonian songs, we can listen to priests performing rituals 
such as divination. In the same manner, Priam – king of Troy – often 
consulted his priests. The boats are still on the coast and wait impa­
tiently for Acayos to penetrate the gates of Troy. These are the last 
days before the death of Hector, son of Priam, and the fall of the 
walls of “the city of wide streets”. The priests believed in the designs 
of their gods, which they saw as auspicious, and they relied on their 
system. The gods should be by their side, according to the reading 
of the intestines in the sacrifices. Reading the position of the liver 
is not a consequence, rather it has become accepted as a code by 
a group of individuals. Here we find one of the natural bounda­
ries of semiotics, physical phenomena from nature in which similar 
effects are observed. However, it is of the utmost importance to 
recognize that these consequences must have a culturally accepted 
and systematically coded association.35 This happens when a group 
of people, in this case the priests, decide to use something (i.e. the 
intestines of animals) as a sign of something else (auguries).
The Persians will take over the Babylonian calendar after 
their conquest in 539 BC, in the same way as the Jewish captives 
did in 587 BC. From 1500 BC, Mesopotamia had a calendar based 
on twelve lunar months. The numeric system was based on units 
of 60 and survived until today for example in the 360  degree circle 
and in the 60 seconds of the minute. The legacy of Babylonian 
astro logy and the Zodiac reached India, Arabia and Europe. How­
ever, it differs from the tradition of the Almagest. The historian of 
science Francesca Rochberg said:
 
The legacy of Babylonian astronomy in Greek, Indian, 
Arabic, and European astronomy was demonstrable, but 
differences were also discernible between Babylonian as­
tronomy and its western descendants. Babylonian astro­
nomy did not rely or depend on a spherical cosmological 
framework, nor did it make use of geometrical models of 
a celestial body in motion around a central earth, although 
celestial coordinates, primarily degrees of elliptical longi­
tude and latitude, were used. Its goal was not to device a 
model of a planets motion such that visible synodic phe­
nomena, such as first and last visibilities, stations and retro­
gradations, would be secondarily derived from the model.36 
The Babylonians believed that the gods could write in the heavens 
or in the viscera of animals, just as scribes wrote in the tablets. By 
making an accurate interpretation of this scripture they were able 
to interpret future events. Thus, the scribes began to systematically 
collect omens and presages. The Babylonians were convinced that 
the gods were responsible for the auspices. The official compilation 
of astral omens was called Anuma Anu Emlil and was consulted 
by the priests in combination with the observation of stars. In the 
same way, they undertook the task of compiling omens read in the 
entrails of animals: Baratú.
35. Eco, Umberto: A Theory of Semiotics, Indiana University, Press Bloomington, 
1979, p.36.
36. Rochberg, Francesca, The Heavenly Writing: divination, horoscopy, and 
astronomy in Mesopotamian culture Cambridge University Press, New York, 
2004, p.24.
40
After a process lasting thousands of years, the Babylonians had de­
veloped a writing system evolved from the pictograph. This was 
first developed for narrating and then for mathematical calcula­
tions; when the level of abstraction was sufficiently complex they 
did not stop. It seemed that the Mesopotamians had to register 
everything and had maintained large bureaucratic systems for hun­
dreds of years. They were interested in all kind of subjects ranging 
from literature to law and mathematics. The royal library of Assur­
banipal, founded in 668 BC, contained thousands of clay tablets 
with cuneiform inscriptions. The Babylonians wanted to document 
everything and stored for centuries all records relating politics, mil­
itary incidents, intellectual thought, via a huge bureaucratic system 
of clerks. The kings Assurbanipal and Nebuchadnezzar knew the 
importance of information and history and thus wanted to collect 
everything, even the results from soothsayers and clairvoyants. The 
Babylonians believed that the designs of the gods were manifested 
in nature or in the viscera of animals. They thus carried out  rituals to 
understand their environment and predict the future.37 An  example 
was extispicia, the act of premonition, in which a priest holds in his 
hand a viscera such as a liver, and seeks to read the divine signs on 
it to interpret, communicate and interact with his environment. In 
his outstretched hand the Babylonian priest thus holds an organic 
device, a map and an interface. He thus uses technology to know 
his location, and interact with his surroundings.
These stories have a common thread in that both the works 
of art and the technology created to interpret or measure our envi­
ronment, interfaces, are striving to give oss an idea of who we are, 
and our position in the universe. Technology is not an extension of 
our physicality but a reaffirmation of what we are, where we are, 
and where we are going. These technologies generate a paradox in 
that we develop a sense at the expense of others. Our story is that of 
the technology of the interfaces,38 the desire to dominate or control 
the outside, without realizing that, in fact, our history is the adap­
tation of our perceptions to interfaces or machines. These stories 
demonstrate the fragile and changing border line that has existed 
between art, science and the esoteric and how this is constantly 
changing.
37. “The image of the heaven as a stone surface upon which a god could draw 
or write, as a scribe would a clay tablet, complement the metaphoric trope of 
the heavenly. In their discussion of the term lumāšu “constellation,” used in 
a sense of a form of writing with astral pictographs or “astroglyphs.” As they 
have been called,(…) [the] Sumerian mul “star” (or mul­an. “heavenly star”) “ 
can refer  both a star in the sky and to cuneiform sign on a tablet” (…) Time 
metaphor of the heavenly writing therefore related to the constellation to cu­
neiforms signs from which one could read and derive meaning, and thus ex­
pressed that idea that written messages were encoded in celestial phenomena.” 
Rochberg, Op. cit., p.2.
38. “Recognizing that our history is itself technological, a history made up of 
reconfiguring, mutating and proliferating machines” says Colebrook reflecting 
upon Deleuze’s book Cinema in Deleuze: a guide for the perplexed, p. 10. I will 
reuse these thoughts throughout this dissertation, Colebrook, Op. cit., p. 10.
41
For Steve Jobs these stories will come to mind as he proudly holds 
the phone as one who interprets, communicates, interacts and 
 controls the environment. Although, for a moment, the device 
gives him pride, he feels momentarily terrified at the idea of how 
all the technology and information avai lable, paradoxically, opens 
up more questions than it answers, in the same way as the almost 
obsessive need of the Babylonian scribes. We can ask ourselves 
how much we actually reach out to others or to the world, how 
we are interconnected, how much we understand, which tools we 
are lacking to properly interpret or interact with our environment. 
A  Babylonian priest in Ashurbanipal’s service holds a liver in the 
palm of his hand for a moment as one who looks at the past while 
divining the  future. He knows his future is already very short. Only 
a few months later he would leave this world that will shrink due to 
many inventions like the one he is holding in his hand. “Oh wow, 
oh wow ...”
42
Title
Extispicia
Year
2007
Place
Gallery 300m3, Gothenburg
Technique
Mix media, high definition video, digital sound stereo, bones, organic materials, 
glass, plexiglas, compass.  
The liver works as an interface between time and space. The middle point of 
the work is the intersection of the future with the past, the presence and the 
absence. The installation encourages the viewer to find the interconnections 
in our perceptive world through associative ideas depending on the viewers 
position around the artwork.
43
Extispicia was a ritual used to predict the future in ancient cultures and practiced as a  science, 
 especially in Mesopotamia, to collate many different disciplines, for example medicine, astron­
omy, and astrology. Extispicia is the inspection of the entrails (especially the liver) of a sacrificial 
animal. It helps us understand the way we try to assimilate our environment using metaphorical 
systems in­common between different domains of thought. The story of Mankind is a tale of 
interconnections. In order to express this, I presented three works in Autumn 2007 in Gothenburg.
Extispicia
Three art works. Installation, video, mix media.
44
To use those metaphorical systems we establish codes in our cultures. 
Some of these codes are clear and easy to identify, others have become 
ingrained for in our conceptual systems over thousands of years. This 
installation develops some of these codes. An arrangement of bones and 
a repetition of patterns based on the history of science in early cultures.
45
II. Infrafaces
Beyond Interfacing
46
A man falls from the window of his apartment on the Avenue Niel at an acceleration of 9.81 m/s². Motive: indefinite and irrelevant to this essay. He is the victim of respiratory insuf­
ficiency, it is said. On his way towards the ground, a considerable 
part of his life goes through his mind: The death of his brother in a 
Nazi concentration camp, his time as a student of philosophy at the 
Sorbonne, the publication of his writings, his marriage in 1956, his 
retirement from university life in 1987, and an anarchist book that 
he will never finish ... the constant struggle against the dichotomy 
of Arché.1 
Time remaining before contact with the ground: 3.5 se­
conds. Life: 75 years. Year 1995. Month: November. Is it possible 
that 75 years will fit into those 3.5 seconds?
As he is leaving the window­ledge, the faster he falls para­
doxically, the more stories of his life are coming to his mind. The 
man recalls his childhood and with sorrow and bitter acceptance 
the death of his brother in a concentration camp. When his feet 
leave the window­ledge, he thinks about the relationship we have 
with things. How we relate with others and with the world and 
how, in order to understand and facilitate this relationship we nec­
essarily invent artefacts for organizing information. These are ele­
ments that function as interfaces.
The man will feel his body traveling towards the ground 
without resistance, the wind will ruffle his hair, the walls of his 
house will move quickly into his view, then he will recall the time 
as a student at the University of Paris; he will feel young and strong 
and a huge creative desire to write will fill his chest again. The man 
will experience the feeling that life is a story within a story. And 
this, in turn is a story embedded inside another story and so on, ad 
infinitum. These processes of endless repetition lead us to arrive at 
the foundations of a neologism: the infraface.
1. The beginning of the universe or the elemental of the matter.
47
After two seconds, he will remember with great joy his marriage 
with Fanny and the birth of their daughter. He will contemplate 
bodies, how they relate to other bodies and he will consider that 
these interactions determine their state. 
After three seconds He will think about paradoxes, about 
how technology helps us to develop one sense at the expense of oth­
ers. He will think about how we interpret the world through codes. 
He will think about technology, what is it and what it represents. 
He will also feel melancholy, as he recalls an engraving made by 
Albrecht Dürer in 1514 and how useless tools can be.
Before hitting the ground he will neither feel pain nor re­
gret, he will re­live his experiences, feel satisfied as he leaves univer­
sity life and, maybe a little nostalgic pang for not having had the 
time to finish his anarchist book. He wonders if time really exists. 
He considers the possibility of eternity fitting into the interval of 
3.5 seconds thus giving him enough time to review and finish his 
uncompleted book and still have some time left over. He will feel 
that time only exists if we can measure it or articulate it with words. 
He will think that one way of relating with the world is through 
language, but this can be a dictator from which we can only escape 
through action. He will understand that language helps us to relate 
to the world, but he will emphasize that there are paradoxes in this 
relationship.
Finally, a few moments before reaching the ground the man 
will recall more details of his life, until he reaches the point where 
he will see himself again approaching the window of his apartment 
one November afternoon. Paradoxically, the faster he falls, the more 
stories of his life will come to mind.
***
While the man falls from the window of his apartment in Paris much 
of his sufferings and attainments in his life goes through his mind. 
As he dives from the window, the faster he falls, the more memories 
come to him. The man remembers his childhood and then again 
with bitter sadness and acceptance the death of his brother in the 
concentration camp. When his feet leave the window­ledge, he 
thinks about the relationship we have with things. How we relate 
with others and with the world and how we to understand and fa­
cilitate this relationship necessarily inventing devices for organizing 
information. These are elements that work as interfaces.
Time remaining before contact with the ground: 3 seconds. 
The man reflects upon interactivity, exchange, penetration and 
mixing.
When he is thinking about the relationship we have with others, he 
will assert to himself that a body can only be defined in terms of its 
relationship with other bodies. And it is precisely at this junction 
between elements that a contact area, a surface arises, and it is at 
this border where the exchanges occur, where everything happens. 
Everything happens at the border. Thus the fundamental impor­
tance of interactivity, because is precisely the exchange between 
48
bodies that enables us to reach out for the essence of these.  Bodies 
which penetrate each other, blend, merge, intertwine, accept 
with tenderness or reject one another with violence, or vice versa, 
they exchange forms as lovers, or impart and receive harm as en­
emies, they are incorporated as the wine in the glass or the roots in 
the soil. It is only when they are combined that we are able ascertain 
the true state of things. An isolated body lacks interest. It is also 
tedious to try to determine what can be found within the depths 
of this body, that is, trying to define it by its constitution; to try to 
define it by how it is formed is an endless and purposeless task. That 
is, the man will reflect on the constitution of his body as mere flesh, 
blood and bones falling freely to the ground at an acceleration of 
nine meters per second squared. It is then that he will realize that 
his body is a mere combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen 
and nine other elements in different quantities, and that all these 
elements which form his physical constitution can be found in the 
corner drugstore. The man had already reflected on this in a discus­
sion with a pharmacist on Avenue Niel. He visited the pharmacist 
one afternoon because of a pain that he had begun to feel in his 
chest five years prior. As he falls, he will then reflect on the theme of 
science relating to cells and molecules. He will consider that these 
elements are formed of cells and that a combination of organic ele­
ments and neurons allows him think and to articulate his thoughts. 
He will consider that these cells are divided into molecules, and 
that Democritus had already thought, over 2500 years ago about 
these particles which are small enough as to be indivisible and he 
called them atoms. Nevertheless, we now know that these atoms 
consist of a group of electrons attracted to one nucleus. He will 
recall that a few days ago he went for the last time into the cathedral 
of Notre Dame and he looked at an insect flying inside the cathe­
dral, reminding him about Lord Rutherford’s metaphor in which 
the size of an electron inside an atom is just like a fly flying inside 
a cathedral. However, these subdivisions do not end there because 
these nuclei of the atoms are made of a mixture of protons and neu­
trons, and furthermore these protons consist of other fundamental 
particles called quarks… as he falls, he considers the endless and 
absurd task of defining himself on the basis of the innate properties 
which make up his constitution. On the other hand, it is only when 
his body goes into action and is willing to resist or accept exchanges 
that it becomes seductive, attractive, repulsive or magnetic when its 
surface layer is exposed to and willing to open up to receive other 
bodies. On the surface and not in the depths. Everything happens 
at the border.2
This layer or outer surface and the design of these models 
which enable us interact with others or to interpret the world is 
called interfaces. It is the emerging field of contact when we inter­
act with others or with the environment.
2. “Everything happens at the border between things and propositions” argues 
Deleuze in The Logic of Sense, Deleuze, Op.cit., p.8.
49
 
The term, interface is mainly related to the development of elements 
exchanged by means of electronic devices or within the context of 
industrial design. In this work I intend to expand this concept to 
include other cultural activities with a primary focus on interactive 
art. However, I am not only interested in analyzing the interaction 
between humans and computers, electronics or artwork, but rather 
in man’s relationship with others and the world. Considering the 
interrelation between objects and organisms, even at a biological 
level, cells are interconnected within the organisms by cooperating 
with other cells. This exchange is reflected in the impact on our 
environment and culture. Thus, I propose this as an ideal start­
ing point for a new artistic space. It is not only the design of new 
interfaces or the definition of these that is important. The idea of 
manipulate the possibilities of using the interface will lead us in this 
essay –  as the man falls – to introduce a neologism where the role 
of these interfaces is no longer central, but rather the  possibility 
of playing with the interconnections within the interfaces, playing 
with this processes of interactivity and delay or expand the time or 
space at the moment of encounter: the infraface.
As the man sees the gray asphalt approaching, he will re­
call an art exhibition that he saw in his childhood in 1920, in 
Paris. This displayed a work created by the French artist, Marcel 
 Duchamp in a small gallery. No one would ever have thought that 
this would become an icon of interactive art. Interactive art has its 
roots, on the one hand, in the development of military technol­
ogy and popular culture, and on the other hand, in the Dada and 
Fluxus art movements in which audience participation was already 
important. This seems now more relevant to his thoughts, because 
interactive art, rather than the physical characteristics of the work, 
focuses on concept, event and active audience participation. The art 
historian Christiane Paul says:
Digital art did not develop in an art­historical vacuum 
either, but has strong connections to previous art move­
ments, among them Dada, Fluxus, and conceptual art. The 
importance of these movements resides in their emphasis 
on formal instructions and in their focus on concept, event, 
and audience participation, as opposed to unified material 
objects.3 
That is to say, the instructions to carry out an inter­relation  between 
objects, is more valuable than the object itself. Again, the object in 
isolation, its contemplation or definition, does not arouse interest 
in the same way as when it comes in contact with other elements 
or spectators, or when it takes on the wonderful value as a unifier 
or bridge for an active system of participation where the assistant is 
no longer passive.
3. Paul, Christiane: Digital Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 2003, p.11.
50
Terms such as virtuality and interaction were already used in the 
1920’s, not only by Marcel Duchamp but also by Man Ray and 
Laszlo Moholy­Nagy in relation to objects and optical illusions. 
Christiane Paul also mentions, as an example the work of M. Du­
champ Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics) created in 1920 with 
Man Ray4. This work consists of five separate painted plates that 
form a circle when the viewer turns on the switch to activate the 
piece. The idea of  inviting a user to turn an appliance on or off in 
order to experience the changes in a particular work of art, as in the 
case of this Duchamp’s work, requires a prior context which the 
user is already familiar with, and intuitively knows how to operate 
and create the optical effects of the machine being opened. This 
work is interesting as an example of early interactive art because de­
mand the viewer’s active participation in various forms (i.e. requires 
that the viewer stands at a certain distance and at the correct angle), 
and more obviously demands to participate by starting the engine 
of the rotating plates in order to form the optical illusion. So there 
are several elements that are between the work and the viewer, and 
the artist creates links between those, between the subject and the 
object Rotary Glass Plates. Duchamp plays with di fferent interfaces: 
an electronic element – the switch; and adds the user experience 
as a cultural element. Thus, an interface is what helps us to or­
ganize information in a context of communication, a link. In this 
sense not only electronic elements or tools serve as binders, almost 
anything can act or be used as an interface. This is exploited con­
tinuously in art. In turn an interface may contain other interfaces. 
Interfaces also help us to sort and select what we are trained to 
experience with our senses. Thus, this idea of inter acting with our 
environment, to interpret it through codes, could be extended to 
include other fields and culture in general, We can even look back 
thousands of years to the rituals practiced, as we have seen in the 
previous chapter. The cultural significance of the interfaces goes be­
yond its technological function. Interfaces have cultural significance 
that are decisive in the way we relate to each other and transform 
ourselves and the way we think. “We live in an interface culture”5 
4. Paul, Op. cit., p.13 vv.
5. Pold and Koefoed, Op. cit., p.7.
51
   f.09, Marcel Duchamp, Rotary Glass Plates, 1920.
As mentioned, this work consists of five separate painted plates, and 
an electronic mechanism. However, analyzing this artwork through 
physical properties is not as interesting as to highlight their quali­
ties when activated, and when the user decides to interact or not, to 
see how the piece is transformed and it impacts the viewer. We can 
agree with the claims of the Stoics, in the same way as the falling 
man will agree with their philosophies. The Stoics claimed con­
trary to Aristotelian tradition, that bodies are best defined not by 
analyzing their substance, rather by their interactive relationships 
with other bodies.6 In a similar way, the verb is more relevant than 
the substantive, and action or interaction is more relevant than the 
definition. This interaction occurs on the surface, since this is the 
contact zone, through the interfaces and not in the depths.
6. In the Second Series of Paradoxes Deleuze rediscovers the Stoic sage, Deleuze, 
Op. cit., pp. 4­5.
52
Time remaining before contact with the ground: 2 seconds. 
He reflects upon contact zones, borders and skin.
Since the interaction occurs at the surface, this is the more signifi­
cant field. Everything happens at the frontier. The man, as he con­
tinues to fall, will not be concerned about which part of his body 
will come in contact with the ground first, because the first contact 
will always be with the skin, but he will try to guess which part of 
his body will suffer the most. He will think about this outermost 
edge and he will understand that this border is not merely physi­
cal or corporal, that everything can be or can act as an interface. 
However, in this case, he recalls that he read somewhere that the 
skin is the largest sensory organ, being composed of 13, 000 nerve 
cells registering outside information. It protects us, regulates our 
body temperature, it enables us feel; it gives us pleasure or pain. 
Falling downwards at an acceleration of 9.81 m/s², of the 84 kilos 
of this man include two kilos of skin. Then he imagines the skin as a 
great interface. An interface that changes approximately 900 times 
during our lives, but his skin will only be changed approximately 
700 times. He will wonder where the frontiers of this sensory edge 
are, which has a depth of only 0.5 mm. In this respect, artists such 
as Nam June Paik7 have developed several works of art. If then the 
bodies first exchange sensations through the skin, and if any body 
can only be understood through its relationship with other bod­
ies, then the technology and its interfaces, is this contact zone that 
makes this connection possible. The skin is therefore a technology. 
Paik portrays technology as our new skin which enables a techno­
logical interaction with the world. This is even more relevant if we 
are to accept that this surface is paradoxically the most profound. 
The French Philosopher, Gilles Deleuze8 refers to this in The Logic 
of Sense, paraphrasing the poet Paul Valéry.9 “Ce qu’il y a de plus 
profond dans l’homme, c’est la peau,”  “The deepest is the skin.”
For us, the skin is not only an interface (the frontier between 
the internal and external) but as we shall see, this is an infraface. 
This is because the skin is the expression of the depth at the surface. 
Gilles Deleuze helps us to appreciate there is more understand­
ing on the surface than in the depths of knowledge. In the Second 
 Series of Paradoxes, he argues that:
Here events, differing radically from things, are no longer 
sought in the depths, but at the surface, in the faint incor­
poreal mist which escapes from bodies, a film without vol­
ume which envelopes them, a mirror which reflects them, a 
chessboard on which they are organized according to plan. 
7.  Nam Yune Paik. Korean American artist considered the father of video art. 
(20 July 1932 ­ 29 January 2006)
8. Gilles Deleuze. Born January 18, 1925 in Paris, died 4 November 1995. In 
1969 he published Logique du Sens. The Logic of Sense, explores the relationship 
between meaning and meaninglessness, “common sense” and “nonsense”. The 
book consists of a series of 34 paradoxes. 
9. Paul Valéry (1871 ­1945). L’idée fixe. la Pleiade, oeuvres II, p. 215,216.
53
(…) It is by following the border, by skirting the surface, that 
one passes from bodies to the incorporeal. Paul Valery had a 
profound idea: what is most deep is the skin. This is a Stoic 
discovery, which presupposes a great deal of wisdom and 
entails an entire ethic. It is the discovery of the little girl, 
who grows and diminishes only from the edges – a sur­
face which reddens and becomes green. She knows that the 
more the events traverse the entire, depthless extension, the 
more they affect bodies which they cut and bruise. Later, 
the adults are snapped up by the ground, fall again, and, 
being too deep, they no longer understand.10
It is the surface of things and bodies that allows the exchanges, the 
interface towards the outside. Nam June Paik makes us reflect on 
the limits of this area in relation to technology and comments on 
this as one of his most quoted sentences: “Skin has become inade­
quate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body’s 
new membrane of existence.”
f.10, Nam June Paik, Family of robots, 1986.
10. Deleuze, Gilles: The Logic of Sense, the Athlone Press, London, 2001, p.10.
54
Time remaining before contact with the ground: one second. 
The falling man reflects upon technology.
“I use technology in order to hate it more properly”11 claimed Paik, 
the pioneer of electronic art. He puts technology at the center of his 
philosophy as Deleuze does, but from a different perspective. Paik, 
can help us to understand that art in the same way that technol­
ogy, but, on another level, serves to interpret, exchange, or trans­
form our environment. Technology is not only an extension of the 
potential of life, but also, both for Deleuze and Paik, technology 
extends and transforms the capabilities of life. It is worth mention­
ing some further examples of Paik’s work12 since he is probably the 
most representative artist in helping us to understand this shift in 
our thinking. Standing out among his works is a series of sculptures 
and installations called Family of robots, 1986. With this work he 
begins a generation of video sculptures representing members of a 
family, including babies created with Samsungs monitors (the most 
advanced video monitors at the time) while the parents of this fam­
ily were created with old fashion televisions and radios. With these 
video sculptures, Paik relates to the fact that the human brain is 
a consequence of the vertical development of humans. And Paik 
made a comment about our constant exchange with technology. 
By creating anthropomorphic figures with television monitors, he 
makes an ironic example of the humanization of technology. Since 
by developing technology, ironically and inevitably, we transform 
ourselves.
Thus, with these works Paik continues to experiment with 
the frontier between where the human ends and where the techno­
logical begins. However, Paik’s intention is not to define this line; 
rather he experiments with this changing frontier. Paik is one of the 
first artists to exploit the possibilities of the creative process unlike 
the inheritance of Modernism which is focused on the qualities of 
the material.
If technology becomes our skin, the new frontier between 
the human and the world, this border does not really exist, at least 
not passively, that is why in fact technology becomes not an exten­
sion, rather it is thought of as a part of our senses, it is another 
sense such as taste, touch or balance. Thus, technology is not in 
contradiction to the human, rather it represents the reaffirmation 
of our limits and potentiality. Technology helps us to understand 
ourselves. We can only understand ourselves in relation to other 
things, and therefore this shows us how important they are. If we 
are to look at Cinema – Deleuze’s treatise on the creativity of the 
brain confronted with the existence of machines – the writer Claire 
Colebrook says:
11. Paik in Elwes, Catherine: Video art, a guided tour, I.B. Tauris, New York, 
2005, p.35.
12. Other significant works are: Concert for cello and videotape, 1971 and Elec-
tronic Super Highway, 1993. (This is probably the work which gave the name 
to the term Information superhighway).
55
Deleuze installs technology at the heart of philosophy and 
life. Human life does have a power or a potential to think, 
but we can only understand this power, not when life un­
folds from itself, but when this power encounters other 
powers. Only when the human brain confronts what is not 
itself can it be pushed to the maximum (….) only when 
the human encounters the inhuman will we know what the 
human body can do.13 
One second before contact with the ground, the falling man is 
reflecting upon technology and confirming to himself that in the 
same way that his potential can only be validated when it is con­
fronted with other potentials, his brain can only think in terms of 
what is not human. Technology is not only an extension or a sup­
plement of the powers of life. His life changes simultaneously with 
every invention. Technology reaffirms his mental capacities and his 
perceptions at the same time, because his consciousness cannot be 
isolated from external stimuli. There is not a mind and then a per­
ception, rather there is a constant relationship and exchange be­
tween his brain, body and external stimuli.14
That is, in the falling man, he “is” not, he is not living first 
and then he imagines that he falls, his thoughts formed him, they 
are forming his life, and they will form his life. The books he wrote 
are not a consequence of his unchanged life, there is a simultaneous 
transformation, every decision, every written word, every memo­
ry during his 55 years are adapting his perceptions, the man does 
not fall down and then he sees or imagines his fall, rather every­
thing happens instantly. Thus, there is not first a life and then an 
 imagination or symbolism, “life is imaging.”15 Life is that which is 
transformed simultaneously with its own thoughts, productions or 
inventions and the evolution of human life is an adaptation of per­
ceptual reactions.
 It is slightly misinformed to say that life is permanent and 
then that life thinks, remembers and imagines and then invents 
devices to enhance these powers “such as writing, recording or 
symbolism,”16 making us believe that we are creating a stable sys­
tem to control the universe or at least to understand it. However, 
technology and interfaces are not just an extension of life; rather 
they are primarily the interfaces and the connections that attach 
the mind to the world, which are life itself; these vital elements give 
us our potential. These inventions or “technology are a repea table 
practice that maximizes the efficiency of life,”17 but each inven­
tion with its interfaces does not extend our skills, on the contrary, 
it transforms our perceptions, it does not expand them, rather it 
adapts them! It reaffirms us and at the same time causes us to take 
new paths in our evolution. That is why technology is thus a sense 
13. Colebrook, Claire: Deleuze: A guide for the perplexed, Continuum,  London, 
2006, p.4.
14. In these paragraphs I use the introduction that Colebrook makes of 
 Deleuze’s Cinema, in Colebrook, Op. cit., p.5.
15. Loc. cit.
16. Colebrook, Loc. cit.
17. Op.cit., p.10.
56
as the skin, in the same vain as sight. Technology and its interfaces 
transform us and transform life itself. Thus, our story – as we saw 
in the previous chapter Extispicia – is a story of the technology of 
the interfaces, the desire to dominate or control everything around 
us, without realizing that in fact our history is the history of the 
adaptation of our perceptions to interfaces or machines.18
Technology is both an extension of the potential of life – as 
writing is an extension of the brain – and the transforma­
tion of life, for once we can write we can create sciences and 
philosophies that open up new potentials. A technology is 
therefore both a continuation of life and a loss of life (…) 
some paths will be actualized, others will not.19
***
Time remaining before contact with the ground: Half a second. 
He reflects upon the paradox of knowledge and technology.
When the man has traveled three seconds, he will experience the 
feeling that life is a story within a story. He will contemplate para­
doxes, about how technology helps us to develop our phy siological 
capacities at the expense of other capacities. He will think about 
how we interpret the world through codes. He will reflect on the 
fact that the rapid technological development in recent years has 
facilitated many of our capabilities, but at the price of losing other 
potentials in our perceptions. This tension has always existed in 
our relationship with technology, but it has perhaps been most evi­
dent with the advent of the electronic digital boom of this century. 
Technology, in the same way as art, is therefore not in conflict with 
the human, it helps us to understand ourselves; however this un­
derstanding, the same as art and technology, involves certain para­
doxes: We have seen that the skin or the eyes are also an interface or 
a form of technology in the sense that they are selective. We cannot 
see everything at once nor can we feel everything at the same time; 
sight and touch, as interfaces, help us to sort through and select ex­
actly what we are trained to see or feel. Technology marks the evo­
lution of our lives through selective connections; it helps us to give 
priority to certain stimuli, to select the information in the world 
around us by reducing the chaos and complexity, but paradoxically 
at the expense of rejecting other connections.20 
As the man falls he will have enough time to reflect on the 
concept of technology and what this represents. He will feel melan­
cholic as he recalls an engraving by the German Re naissance artist, 
Albrecht Dürer and how he expresses in his painting the futility 
of tools. The man will claim that technology and art are not op­
posed to the human and that they help us to understand ourselves, 
but this understanding, in the same way as art and technology, in­
volves paradoxes, possibly caused by this traditional way of looking 
at technology. The interaction with others and our environment is 
18. “Recognizing that our history is itself technological”, Colebrook, Op.cit., p.10.
19. Op.cit., p.10.
20. Op.cit., p.13.
57
the result of our search for the secret of how to define ourselves, to 
know what we are and where we are, the place we occupy. It is a 
constant search for answers, speculation and extensive analysis. In 
order to control or at least understand our environment, we use in­
terpretation systems or tools, interfaces. Yet in this search, it seems 
that the more we try to approach an understanding of our reality, 
the more reality slips away; it becomes complicated or thickens as 
an abysmal fog, as if it were to open up a space between us and 
our goal. This disappointment, or rather melancholy, of knowledge 
seems to come periodically in history as new paradigms, like the 
collapse of optimism at the end of the Renaissance.21 I mentioned 
in the previous chapter how the new inventions designed to know, 
more accurately our place in the universe, namely cartography and 
astronomy, replaced our conception of a world of perfect relation­
ships. During the early Renaissance, mankind had improved their 
skills so that the human body, the microcosm, was in perfect har­
mony with the universe, the macrocosm. The Aristotelian model 
of perfect spheres moved in harmony in perfect circles, producing 
heavenly music, which made it possible to predict the movement 
of the celestial bodies and thus the future. Until Galileo, in his 
book, Siderus Nuncius published in 1616 wrote about the irregu­
larities of the moon while the scientist, Robert Hooke published his 
book, Micrograph which shows a sub­world of imperceptible fleas 
dwelling in us.22 If there were not perfect spheres and other worlds 
of microorganisms inhabiting our world, the task of establishing a 
correlation of the entire universe would become a task as extensive 
as it would be futile and paradoxical.23
The engraving called Melancholy I from 1514, by Albrecht 
Dürer24 perfectly expresses this sentiment. Dürer created a sort of 
angel holding some geometric shapes and he realizes that the more 
humanity is aware of its position in the world, the more lost and 
alone he is. Melancholy would even cease to be understood as one 
of the personalities which are the diseases or conditions produced 
by the liver. This means that, since ancient times it was believed 
that melancholy, or the melancholic personality, was a disease or 
condition caused by an abnormality of the liver, forming part of the 
four temperaments of the being: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and 
melancholic. This belief was accepted since Hippocrates’s time until 
the knowledge of the Renaissance’s thinkers such as Vesalius con­
tradicted and complicated this understanding. The meditative fig­
ure depicted by Dürer holds, disappointed, in his hand a compass. 
An interface. He collects work tools without getting anywhere. On 
the ground are several carpentry and architecture tools – hammer, 
 pliers, nails, saws an inkwell and a pen, which lie there untidily.25 
21. Cfr. previous chapter, Extispicia formed by a series of examples of para­
digms shifts.
22. Carlsson and Ågren, Op.cit., pp.104 and 105.
23. Cfr. p. 29. 
24. Albert Dürer (1471 ­ 1528). German painter and mathematician.
25. Charles, Victoria. Dürer. New York: Parkstone International, 2011. 
http://gu.eblib.com.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=791316
58
His striving for practical tools suddenly seems to him senseless. The 
changing paradigms give rise to a sort of disappointment, as the 
one created by Vesalius at refuting Galen, or Hooke’s or Galileo’s 
refutations. The new knowledge produces in us a melancholy by 
rearranging our scientific notions or beliefs. They open the way for 
more questions. The more we know, the more we wonder. Thus, the 
paradoxes are evident not only in technology and in our pursuit of 
knowledge, but in every cultural process that requires an interface. 
It seems that the more we try to approach something, the more 
the space opens up between us and our goal (And yet this space 
can be exploited as something effective, as we will soon see in the 
infrafaces).
***
 
f.11, Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia 1, 1514.
Time remaining before contact with the ground: a third of a second. 
He reflects upon the paradoxes of ad infinitum and the difference 
between infrafaces and interfaces.
While the man feels his body without resistance traveling to the 
ground, the wind ruffles his hair and he sees the walls of his house 
quickly passing before his eyes; he remembers his time as a stu­
dent at the University of Paris. He feels young and strong and he 
has, once again a tremendous creative desire to write which fills his 
chest. He feels a sense that life is a story within a story. And this in 
turn falls within another story and so on until infinity. This world, 
in turn contains another world where a man is falling from the 
59
window and is recalling his life. He contemplates Robert Hooke’s 
book, Micrographia, and he has a sense of déjà vu; he is not sure 
whether this thought had already been formulated, or if it is merely 
the persistent memory of a man falling without resistance. He re­
calls having thought that this book shows sub­worlds inhabiting 
other sub­worlds, and so on possibly until infinity. These processes 
of infinite repetition and the paradoxes already mentioned lead us, 
ultimately to the foundations of this neologism: the infraface.
The falling man is not surprised by the foundation of the 
paradoxes of knowledge. The understanding that the more we 
know, the less we understand, is not new for him. But another, 
even more disturbing paradox would give him a great fright. He 
would be terrified for a moment in the same way as when having 
an uncontrollable reflex. Even more frightening than the idea of 
the contact that his body is about to have with the asphalt, is the 
idea of the paradox of the infinite. The thought that one space can 
be divided and embrace another space, a story within a story, or a 
time in another time, and so on ad infinitum. This thought scares 
him momentarily like the feeling of an irrepressible reaction. Then 
he would know that when he is seeing his life passing by, he can 
recall it and re­live it and at this moment when he is re­living it he 
is able to recall it to memory. Then he will recall some passages from 
his stay in Orleans and some of the essays by the writer Jorge Luis 
Borges, which I have used as a pretext to develop this concept. It is 
this concept that lends its name to this entire essay.
The thoughts expressed by Borges regarding some paradoxes 
serve as theoretical support for us in differentiating between an in­
terface and infraface. The Argentine writer wonders about the pos­
sibilities of endless repetitions or time paradoxes. Infinity. In this 
regard, he is particularly drawn to the second paradox of Zeno and 
wrote in The Avatars of the Tortoise, published in 1924, starting by 
evoking the idea of the philosopher of Elea:
Achilles runs ten times faster than the tortoise and gives 
him a head start of ten meters. Achilles runs those ten me­
ters, the tortoise runs one; Achilles runs that decimetre, the 
tortoise runs a centimetre; Achilles runs that centimetre, 
the tortoise, a millimetre; Achilles the Nimble­Footed, the 
millimetre, the tortoise a tenth of a millimetre and so on 
ad infinitum, with Achilles never overtaking the tortoise. 
This is the usual version. Wilhelm Capelle (Die Vorsokra-
tiker, 1935, pag. 178) translates Aristotle’s original texts as 
follows : “ Zeno’s second argument is the so­called Achilles 
argument. He reasons that the slower will not be overtaken 
by the faster, because the pursuer has to pass through the 
place that the pursued has just vacated, so the slower always 
has a decided advantage.” The problem does not change, as 
we see; but I should like to know the name of the poet who 
endowed it with a hero and a tortoise! The argument owes 
its diffusion to those magical competitors and to the series:
      1             1          1                1    1    
    10 + 1 +  ———-  +  ———-  +  ———- -  +  ———-  +… 
                   10           100            1.000          10.000
60
Scarcely anyone can remember the argument that precedes 
it – the one about the racecourse­ although its mechanism 
is identical. Movement is impossible (argues Zeno) because 
before a moving body can reach a given point, it must tra­
verse half of the distance, and before that, half of the half, 
and before that, half of the half of the half, and before...26
This paradox was created primarily to discern the impossibility of 
movement about 480 BC and it was compiled by the philosopher, 
Diogenes Laertius. Although there have been replicas of the para­
dox like the one proposed by the mathematician, James Gregory 
(1638­1675) using the infinitesimal calculation or the one pro­
posed by the historian, Carl Boyer27 as shown in The History of the 
Calculus and Its Conceptual Development. Another argument against 
it is that this paradox requires a continuous and divisible amount of 
time.28 Nevertheless the important thing is the idea of exposing the 
fallacious labyrinths of reasoning. Zeno wanted to support Parme­
nides and warned about the illusions by saying that the movement 
does not really exist. However, rather than emphasize the refutation 
of the movement, the constant possibility of opening a new space 
is just as valid. The movement exists and the falling man sooner 
or later will arrive at the inevitable contact with the asphalt, and 
yet – in the same way as Achilles running in a space, giving the 
turtle the advantage of another stretch – the man, in his fall reflects 
on stories embedded within other stories. Sub­worlds within other 
sub­worlds. The infinite reflection of a mirror in front of another 
mirror is as real as the movement.
These infinite spaces – as we have seen – are not only cre­
ated in the physical phenomena, but also in every interaction. Each 
area of contact, where there is an exchange, offers opportunities to 
be expanded ad infinitum. This is not strange with the problem of 
knowledge. It is the melancholy of a constant and returning slide. 
There is a paradox in our way of approaching knowledge because, 
in order to know we need to refer to another prior knowledge, 
which in turn calls for another knowledge and so on until infinity. 
The problem of knowledge is demonstrated historically and in vari­
ous disciplines, Borges continued:
26. Borges, Jorge Luis: Labyrinths: Avatars of the Tortoise, Penguin Classics, 
London, 2000, p.237.
27. Carl Benjamin Boyer (November 3, 1906 – April 26, 1976) In The His-
tory of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development from 1959 describes the 
development of both integral and differential calculus from antiquity to the 
mathematical problems of Newton and Leibniz. Boyer says that: “If the para­
doxes are thus stated in the precise mathematical terminology of continuous 
variables (...) the seeming contradictions resolve themselves.” p. 295. Other 
solutions have been addressed among others by Bertrand Russell, Peter Lynds 
or Hans Reichembach.
28. One of Aristotle’s refutations in Physics.
61
Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, Mill, Renouvier, Georg Can­
tor, Gomperz, Russell and Bergson have formulated expla­
nations­ not always inexplicable and vain in nature – of 
the paradox of the tortoise. ( I recorded several in my book 
Discussion, 1932, pp. 151­161.) There applications are also 
copious, as the reader has been able to verify. Not only the 
historical ones: the vertiginous regressus in infinitum can 
perhaps be applied to all subjects. It can be applied to the 
matter of aesthetics: a certain verse moves us for a certain 
reason, a certain reason for another certain reason... It can 
be applied to the problem of knowledge: to know is to rec­
ognize, but it is necessary to have known in order to rec­
ognize, but to know is to recognize. How can we evaluate 
such a dialectic? Is it a legitimate instrument of inquiry or 
merely a bad habit?29
This fear of constant regression is actually a possibility for us and 
it helps us understand how a certain art form and its procedures 
work. This art form consequently moves away from the more tradi­
tional scientific methods of analysis. We can cite, for example, the 
work by the Mexican artist, Gabriel Orozco, Ping-Pond Table from 
1998.The work consists of a ping­pong table with a fountain in the 
center, in the middle section where the net should be. Orozco says 
about his work:
The Ping Pond Table is connected to this idea of a new 
space, a new possible space. When you have a normal ping­
pong game you have a net which is enough space between 
two spaces. But when you multiply that space by four, in­
stead of two people playing you have four people playing 
in four tables. You open that space so the net is also open. 
And what you have there is a new space because it did not 
exist before. I am thinking of a new game when I multiply 
by four the knights in the chessboard or when I made the 
pendulum and the billiard table. In this case I opened the 
ping­pong – the net (sic.), that space in between two spaces 
– I opened it up. And I have a tri­dimensional space now 
in­between four spaces. 
That is the space that I am interested in, the in­between 
space. Even in photographs I think what is interesting is in 
between the photographer and the space, which is the same 
as the in­between of the photograph and the spectator. To 
activate that space. To activate means to fill it with mea­
ning and connections so that we can think about it. We can 
connect with it and make it happen as a space and time in 
between things.30
29. Borges, Op. cit., p.242 .
30. http://www.art21.org/texts/gabriel­orozco/interview­gabriel­orozco­
­games%E2%80%94ping­pong­billiards­and­chess
62
 f.12, Gabriel Orozco, Ping Pond Table, 1998.
Orozco appropriates a new space to create a new story, which in 
turn could include a new narrative. The artist emphasizes his inter­
est in the intermediate space and the possibilities this offers. It is 
the activation of a neutral zone appropriated by art. Thus, a space 
may contain another seemingly nonexistent space. Is it not art that 
helps us to visualize that which does not exist? As in the paradox of 
Zeno, this temporary space or time does not exist, but it is possible. 
In this regard, Borges continues to highlight the ability of art to 
display the nonexistent. 
According to this doctrine the world is a fabrication of the 
will. Art – always – requires visible unrealities. Let me cite 
but one example: the metaphorical or rhythmical or stud­
iedly casual diction of the characters in a play. Let us admit 
what all idealists admit: that the nature of the world is hal­
lucinatory. Let us do what no idealist has done: let us look 
for the unrealities that confirm that nature. We shall find 
them, I believe, in the antinomies of Kant and in Zeno’s 
dialectic.31 
Thus art not only has the ability to display the non­existent or the 
paradoxical; as in the case of Orozco’s work, art is able to play with 
this, apparently unreal area. Interactive art constantly uses this 
 opportunity; it does not reject or frighten it, but thrives on it. Art 
can create a new zone that escapes sense, and through action it can 
create endless repetitions. In this way art, and especially interactive 
art, can transform the area of contact – the interface – into a new 
active zone, into a zone which is alive, into an infraface. Thus the 
infraface creates a new intermediate space between art and the spec­
tator, and it activates this area according to the artist’s intentions, 
producing bottomless abysses through the medium of the action 
performed. Obviously this is not unique to visual art, but is perhaps 
more obvious there, it is an act which is common to both literature 
and other creative areas. Borges says about literature: 
31. Borges, Op. cit., p.243.
63
Lotze inserts Zeno’s periodic chasms between the cause and 
the effect; Bradley, between the subject and the predicate, 
if not between the subject and its attributes; Lewis Caroll 
(Mind, volume four, page. 278), between the second premise 
of the syllogism and the conclusion. He relates an endless 
dialogue, whose interlocutors are Achilles and the tortoise. 
Having now reached the end of the interminable race, the 
two athletes calmly converse about geometry…32 
Thus, these paradoxes can be exploited in art or literature and they 
become a resource which is as scary as it is seductive. Deleuze or 
Borges discuss the work of the author, Lewis Carroll. They both ad­
mire the ability of Lewis Carroll to manipulate time between cause 
and effect. Carroll’s work takes place among the space in  between 
the sense and non sense, in the intermediate space that opens when 
the meaning collides with the meaningless. A literary game of para­
doxes creating unusual or esoteric environments in the contact zone 
between language and the unconscious. The language itself implies 
the paradox of infinite repetition because, in order to create defini­
tions we use another definition, and so on in a constant fashion, 
and these different stages of definitions are linked bilaterally by the 
action, by the verb, by dynamic systems of interpretation, by in­
terfaces. However, we can only refer to the environment through 
substantives as fixed or stable things, although these substantives 
only exist on the basis of one which is to occur. For this reason, they 
are, in turn, always conditioned by the action, by a verb, they “are”. 
It therefore follows that they are not fixed or stable; their definition 
is always in a constant slide. These connections form endless chains 
of moving definitions, which could produce a sudden melancholy 
as that of Dürer’s angel who suddenly finds himself surrounded by 
instruments of work but he cannot understand the true purpose or 
the definition of these instruments, and suddenly they become use­
less for measuring or managing any element. However it is the pos­
sibility of playing with the connections between these definitions 
rather than rejecting or freighting them because of their constant 
and paradoxical, changing nature, that is one of the foundations of 
the concept I refer to as an infraface.
The man inevitably falling from the window, only falls a dis­
tance which is relative to its previous position, he is not a static 
man, his memories throw him into the past or the future. When 
the man falls, we do not see or imagine a man “falling”, we can­
not see the verb if this is not frozen momentarily as a substantive. 
The action is visible only in relation to other static elements and 
that is what we notice, the difference, man’s relationship between 
the window and the floor. Both Maurice Merleau­Ponty and Gilles 
Deleuze argue then that the future is not limited to the future, 
rather it is both the past and the future at the same time and those 
paradoxes allow us two meanings simultaneously.33
32. Ibid. p.241. 
33. Williams, James: Gilles Deleuze’s logic of senses: A critical introduction and 
guide, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2008, p.4 and Merleau­Ponty, 
Op.cit, pp. 477 ff. 
64
This idea can also be exploited in the design of interfaces in in­
teractive art. Deleuze’s conception of time in terms of paradoxical 
associations between the past and the future and the ad infinitum 
repetitions create labyrinths that invite us to be endlessly explored 
over and over again. At the moment of contact between two or 
more elements, between two substantives which are seemingly stat­
ic yet interacting, an area of transformation is created, a line, a bor­
der, a changing space, an intermediate space; it is this space which 
in terests us because it can be extended to include other spaces, it 
can be retraced back, it can be expanded to include other zones, 
and it can be paused. Any physical and temporal space can be di­
vided, extended, paused, stretched, etc, and furthermore – and this 
is something that is as scary as it is attractive – they can do this 
until infinity.
Interface design has a functional purpose, as claimed, for 
example in industrial design; an infraface, on the other hand, con­
centrates on the process and not on the goal. It does not have to 
respond to false or true outcomes. Thus, on the one hand, the in­
terface is the area of contact, the moment of encounter, and on the 
other hand the infraface is the activation of this space between the 
elements in an interactive system, in a story, in a play, in one action, 
in the jump of a man from the window of his apartment on the Ave­
nue Niel at an acceleration of 9.81 m/s² in a desperate attempt to 
live once again. The infrafaces include the ability to i ncrease speed, 
to slow down, accelerate, delay, freeze, detain, retard, decelerate, 
pause, expand, extend, magnify, contract, shrink, dilate, prolong, 
intensify, stretch, amplify, enlarge, multiply or divide this meeting 
in order to unravel the opportunities for experimenting with art.
In the case of Paik the artist decides to play with the process, 
with the possibility of manipulation that the novelty of the videos 
in the 80’s gave to him. The video loop, for example, will be a con­
stant technique used in video art. In the case of Orozco’s works, the 
artist arbitrarily decides to double one area duplicating the number 
of participants invited to play the game of ping­pong. That is, para­
doxically he multiplies the consequences by dividing a space, but 
in the same way we could divide this space again and create new 
dimensions and in turn divide it into other dimensions, creating 
a reflection within a reflection and so on endlessly, ad infinitum. 
Artistically, any temporal or physical space can be divided, exten­
ded, expanded, and so on, indefinitely. The infrafaces are a creative 
 opportunity. The infrafaces should be seen as an artistic possibility, 
rather than a strictly scientific concept. The idea of extending in 
time an area or space to embed new stories or actions is the founda­
tion of the neologism presented here: infrafaces. Infrafaces suggest a 
new space for the realization of art.
***
Just before reaching the pavement the man asks himself if is it pos­
sible that, in those 3, 5 seconds of his fall, 75 years will fit? 
When he was leaving the window­ledge, the faster he fell paradoxi­
cally, the more stories of his life came to his mind. The man re­
called his childhood and then again, with sadness and bitterness 
65
came an acceptance of the death of his brother in the concentration 
camp. When his feet left the window­ledge, he thought about the 
relationship we have with things. How we relate with others and 
with the world and how, in order to understand and facilitate this 
relationship we necessarily invent artefacts for organizing informa­
tion. He considered how we interpret the world through codes and 
devices. These are elements that function as interfaces. The term, 
interface relates mainly to the development of artefacts for the ex­
change of information by means of electronic, interactive design, 
or technology in general, and it is my intention here to expand 
the concept to all cultural activity, and to focus fundamentally on 
interactive art. The man had enough time to think about how tech­
nology paradoxically helps us to evolve one sense at the expense of 
others. He reflected upon technology, what is it and what it repre­
sents. The man felt melancholy, as he recalled an engraving made 
by Albrecht Dürer in 1514 and he reflected on how useless tools 
and devices can be.
When the man felt his body without resistance traveling to 
the ground, the wind shook his hair and the walls of his house 
moved quickly into his view, then he remembered his time as a 
student at the University of Paris; he felt young with an immense, 
strong creative desire to write filling his chest again. The man ex­
perienced the feeling that life is a story within a story. And this, 
in turn is a story embedded within another story and so on until 
infinity. These processes of endless repetition lead us to arrive at the 
foundations of a neologism, infraface. The possibility of delaying a 
moment of interaction to open up or expand the contact field as 
many times as is necessary. While the man fell, he recalled an exhi­
bition of the work of Duchamp which helped us to understand the 
beginning of interactive art, and the work of Orozco gave us an ex­
ample of the possibilities of new spaces, while the work of Nam Yuk 
Paik helped us to comprehend our relation with technology. But 
we were not only interested in analyzing the interaction between 
humans and artwork, computers or electronic devices, rather its 
impact on culture and as a starting point to propose a new artistic 
space.
When the man travelled two seconds, he remembered with 
great joy his marriage with Fanny and the birth of their daughter. 
He contemplated bodies and how they relate to other bodies and he 
considered that these interactions determine their state. He under­
stood that the definition of the being is not in the adjectives, sub­
stantives or proper names, nor in the flesh and substance, nor in the 
analysis of the elements of a human being, rather in the actions that 
occur between these, within the relationship between bodies, in the 
meetings, is the verb. It is in the relationship of a man moving from 
the window to the ground or from the ground to the window, or 
from his birth to the moment of contact with the asphalt passing 
through all his life. Thus, infrafaces also are more Stoic than Aris­
totelian, that is to say, the Aristotelian being can be defined by the 
qualities of his very nature, while infrafaces stoically define him by 
the action, through the interactivity of the being. In the encounter 
between the bodies. 
***
66
Before reaching the ground the man will not feel pain or regret, he 
will re­live his experiences and will feel satisfied as he leaves univer­
sity life, maybe there will be a little nostalgic pain from not having 
had the time to finish his anarchist book. He wonders if time really 
exists. He considers the possibility of eternity fitting into the inter­
val of 3.5 seconds before he comes into contact with the ground 
thus giving him enough time to review and finish his uncompleted 
book and then he would still have some time left over. He will feel 
that time only exists if we can measure it or articulate it with words. 
He will think that one way of relating with the world is through 
language, but this can be a dictator from which we can only escape 
through action. He will understand that language helps us to relate 
to the world, but he will emphasize that there are paradoxes even 
in this relationship.
Thus, these lines formed by the thoughts of a man falling are 
intended to expand our relationship with the environment, dela­
ying the moment of union when we perform some action in order 
to open up or expand as many times as is necessary the contact field 
that emerges when we relate to others or to the environment. 
Finally, a few moments before reaching the ground, the man 
recalls even more details of his life; he even sees himself once again 
approaching the window­ledge of his apartment one November 
day ready to jump again. In this manner, we allow the man falling 
at an acceleration of 9.81 m/s² from his apartment in Avenue Niel, 
the possibility of unfolding the course of time before reaching the 
ground and re­living his experiences as often as is necessary, reca­
lling and recounting his stories in different ways and times, with 
infinite possibilities for re­living his life.
Pero el dos no ha sido nunca un número 
porque es una angustia y su sombra,  
porque es la demostración de otro infinito que no es suyo  
y es las murallas del muerto  
y el castigo de la nueva resurrección sin finales.34
 
But two has never been a number 
It is merely an agony and its shadow,  
 It is the demonstration of someone else’s infinity  
and the dead man’s walls,  
and the punishment of the new, unending resurrection.35
34. Lorca, Pequeño poema infinit, Selected Poems, pp. 296­97.
35. Lorca, Little infinite poem, Selected Poems, translated by Greg Simon and 
Steven F. White, pp. 296­97. 
67
III. Superficial Blue
A moment can hold an eternity
68
Dios mueve al jugador, y éste, la pieza. 
¿Qué Dios detrás de Dios la trama empieza 
de polvo y tiempo y sueño y agonías? 
Borges
To think is to remember.
A moment can hold an eternity. On the night of May 9, 1997, the number one chess grandmaster, Garry  Kasparov, was caught in a dream. The next day he was going to 
 confront the most significant game of his life. The international 
press had their eyes on this event. He was confident, sure of his 
mental abilities. Time stops. The next day, Kasparov was going to 
be measured against a machine; a computer developed by a group 
of researchers at IBM. Kasparov, the invincible player from Baku, 
understood at that moment that there was only one thing worse 
than insomnia: not being able to wake up.
He knows he is dreaming and yet unable to return to real 
life; a life of continuous and tidy time. Measurable time. He cannot 
be sure he is awake because the smells, the sounds and the sensa­
tions in his hands seem real, and yet he knows he is dreaming be­
cause he sees himself surrounded and forced to finish a chess game 
that seems endless. And because he has had similar dreams before. 
He can see himself in a gray jacket, a cream­colored shirt and a 
striped tie that he knotted tightly in front of the mirror yesterday. 
He thinks that the only way to escape this dream is not by winning 
the game, but simply by ending it even if he loses. He plays with the 
black pieces. The bishop, as we know, can be moved, like the tower, 
constantly around the board any number of squares until it finds 
another piece or until the chessboard ends. But wanting to slide the 
piece,  Kasparov realizes that the board has no end. The black and 
white squares of the chessboard intertwine with each other end­
lessly, one after another, frame after frame.  Kasparov remembers 
the first time he played chess with his father and he asked his father 
 after each piece of advice he gave: “and why?” to which his father 
gave him another explanation and Kasparov would repeat, “and 
why?” and after his father had entrusted him again with another 
res ponse the child Garry replied again, “and why?” transforming 
the teaching of the game into a childish game that they both found 
absurd and funny, “and why?”. Until one day in adolescence he 
found that this innocent children’s game hid an incomprehensi­
ble mental trap. This trap of knowledge seemed to change a naive 
69
 recreational  acti vity into a sort of fear of unattainable knowledge. 
Each answer requires another question which, in turn, requires 
 another “because”. The questioning eventually consumed his child­
hood. And that feeling causes a lump in his throat today when 
he wants to move the chess pieces. After a black square, there is 
another white one, only to give way to another black piece, like a 
hungry mouth that constantly opens and closes. Kasparov tries to 
wake up; he raises his free hand to his forehead. It is not until he 
passes the bishop piece beside the queen, that he experiences the 
feeling of having already made this move. So, he realizes, first with 
the satisfaction of one who understands a theorem that then gives 
way to sad resignation, that the board has no limits. The board 
never ends, the board is spherical.
White always moves first. I see the photo of Kasparov, his 
despair, his mouth half­open. He sweats, bearing in mind the end­
less dream. Kasparov, 34 years old, had won the first game a few 
days before, a win about which he had not boasted, but was proud, 
as one who wins without effort, but the second game is not that 
easy. The computer seems to remember and learn from Kasparov’s 
previous moves. The computer is playing whites.
In 1996, after 6 years of research, a group of scientists had 
managed to perfect a machine capable of learning and calculating 
possibilities in a split second: Deep Blue. Kasparov had already faced 
and defeated a similar machine a few years earlier, the one called 
Deep Thought, but they agreed on another meeting on the after­
noon of May 11, 1997. This, the sixth game was crucial. Deep Blue 
was a machine consisting of 256 processors examining 200 million 
possible moves per second; it was capable of recalling the scenarios 
of the chess masters. Ironically, any computer today can have a 
cheap chess program which is even more effective than the pride 
of IBM. On Deep Blue’s 19th move, Kasparov realizes that he has 
made an irreversible mistake, and wonders if he, in fact made this 
mistake years earlier in his childhood, in adolescence; the master of 
Russia feels trapped, not by the game, but by himself. Garry thinks 
about surrendering. Time stands still.
Kasparov tries to guess how long he has been dreaming. He 
looks at the clock on his left that is controlling the rhythm of the 
game. But the clock stops at the same moment, on the same move: 
the 18th move. Kasparov knows that it is his turn, and he fears the 
inevitable. He sees himself; the gray jacket, a cream­colored shirt 
and a tie. Opposite him there is a man with glasses, a representa­
tive of the machine putting the information into the computer. 
He takes notes and moves the pieces on the board according to the 
computer’s result. There is an environment of gray and white walls, 
and some bookshelves in the background and lights and video cam­
eras on the other side, and spectators with the expression of inquisi­
tors. Kasparov shakes his head, remembers his dream, he wants to 
escape from this dream. In the room, there are some plastic plants, 
and a carpet with red figures under green chairs. He puts his hands 
on his head, exhales and his eyes seem to jump out of his face. He 
rests his beard in his hand, constantly sweating, takes some notes. 
He would like to stand up and run quickly, opening his arms in an 
expression of “how is this possible, how is this possible!” But his 
legs will not respond.
70
He remembers the story of the Englishman, Charles Babbage who 
designed what is considered to be the first modern computer.1 
Babbage died of kidney failure complicated by cystitis, alone and 
without any fame at the age of 79 on October 18, 1871. He was 
buried in London’s Kensal Green Cemetery with only 3 people at 
his funeral. Kasparov asks himself whether some of his dreams and 
thoughts are divided. He remembers that half of Babbage’s brain is 
preserved in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Sur­
geons in London, while the other half is on display at the Science 
Museum in London. He imagines he could be as dead as Babbage 
and that one half of his divided brain could be preserved and ex­
hibited and still thinking about the game of chess, while the other 
half is at home dreaming without being able to wake up. Kasparov 
tries to return to reality and he remembers some of the works that 
he once saw at that museum. He does not curse technology – he 
knows how absurd it is to lose control and kick the edge of the bed 
after having stumbled over it. He curses neither the abacus nor the 
calculators and he finds no particular reason to curse an apparatus 
that the Greeks built to count and predict eclipses over 2 000 years 
ago, which is actually considered to be the very first computer. But 
right now he cannot remember the name of this machine. Then 
he wonders if some day technology will allow a kind of external 
memory that can be called upon at any time for information, and 
this thought seems to him so funny because it is like a fantasy. But 
actually it is not so absurd, and then he understands that Deep 
Blue is actually a machine that uses a database, in the same way 
we resort to memory to recall our experiences. Kasparov wonders 
where the boundary between the human and the technological lies. 
If technology becomes a new sense, in the new border between the 
human and the world, then this border does not really exist; tech­
nology becomes, not an extension, but a part of our senses, another 
sense such as taste, touch or balance. It is part of our memory. So 
technology is not in contradiction to human nature, rather a reaf­
firmation of our limitations and our potential.2 Technology helps 
us understand ourselves, since we can only understand ourselves in 
relation to the inhuman. Kasparov understands the importance of 
this. Commenting on Cinema 1 – Deleuze’s treaty on how the crea­
tivity of the brain is confronted with machines – Claire Colebrooke 
writes that:
Only when the human encounters the inhuman will we 
know what the human body can do, and only when life 
opens itself up to violence, destruction and zero intensity 
will we be able to discern just what counts as ‘a’ single life­ 
its precarious distance and emergence from all its potential 
not to be.3 
1. Ifrah, Georges: The Universal History of Computing, from the abacus to the 
quantum computer, Wiley, New York, 2001, p.191.
2. Cfr. p.55. n.14.
3. Colebrook, Claire: Deleuze: A guide for the perplexed, Continuum, London, 
2006, p.4.
71
In the same manner as the human brain can only think in terms 
of what is not human; our potential can only be validated when it 
is confronted with other potentials. Then technology is not only a 
supplement or an extension of the powers of life. Technology trans­
forms our perceptions, meaning that the evolution of human life 
is an adaptation of perceptual responses. He understands why it 
seems impossible to know if he is dreaming by consulting his sen­
ses, for his consciousness cannot be isolated from external stimuli. 
There is not his mind and then a perception, but a constant rela­
tionship and exchange between his brain, body and all the external 
stimuli around him. That is, there is not his life first and then his 
symbolism or imagination or dreams, life is imagination.4 Life is 
what is altered simultaneously with its own productions or inven­
tions. He knows that there is not a body and then a conscience as 
Merleau­Ponty was determined to prove, creating the being-in-the-
world to erase the boundaries between being and consciousness. He 
looks back at the clock on the right and he realizes that the being-
in-the-world can only perceive time relative to our relation to static 
objects.5 
Time is, therefore, not a real process, not an actual succes­
sion that I am content to record. It arises from my relation 
to things. Within things themselves, the future and the past 
are in a kind of eternal state of pre­existence and survival. 
(...) What is past or future for me is present in the world.6 
It then seems to him somewhat wrong to affirm that life is un­
changeable, and then this life thinks, remembers and dreams, and 
then invents devices such as computers, recording media or sym­
bolic systems to enhance these powers, believing that we are creat­
ing a stable method to control the universe or at least to understand 
it. But technology and interfaces – the computer with its memory, 
keyboard and screen – are not just an extension of life, they are 
prima rily the interfaces and the connections that bridge his mind 
with the world. They are life itself.7
Even if these inventions or technology with its interfaces are a 
repeatable practice that maximizes the efficiency of life, each inven­
tion does not extend our skills, rather, transforms our perceptions. 
It does not extend them, it suits them!8 They reaffirm us and at the 
same time make us take new directions in our evolution. That is 
why from this perspective the brain is a technology as well as touch: 
the feeling of his fingers now holding the black bishop in his hand. 
4. Ibid., p.5.
5. In 1945 released Maurice Merleau­Ponty his thesis Phénoménologie de la 
perception, establishing phenomenology in France. He expressed a strong criti­
cism of idealism; he claimed that phenomenology is against the idealist return 
to consciousness. Man is not pure consciousness.
6. Merleau­Ponty, Maurice: Phenomenology of Perception, Routledge, London, 
1968, p.478.
7. The basic ideas in this paragraph are again borrowed from Colebrook when 
he introduces Deleuze’s Cinema. But I reshape his comments in order to adapt 
them to this essay. Colebrook, Op cit, pp.4­5.
8. Cfr. p.55. n.14 and 15.
72
73
Stills from the video, Superficial Blue, 2010.
74
 Technology – the computer – is an extension of the potential of life, 
as writing is an extension of the brain9 and technology and its inter­
faces change ourselves and life itself. So our history is the history 
of technology, the history of interfaces, the desire to understand 
and dominate the environment, without realizing that in fact our 
history is the history of the adaptation of our perceptions to the 
interfaces or machines. 
If Deep Blue was programmed to react to the moves of the 
great master, what if Kasparov played sometimes like a fool, as if he 
were using deception, sarcasm or irony in his game?
Kasparov asks himself  why and he imagines that these laby-
rinths of  questions and answers are built by language, perhaps it is 
language itself  that represents the maze that creates new walls to 
each answer. Kasparov dreams. He is dreaming about clear water, 
about his body being born again, his body wrapped up in words, 
formed by means of  words. He thinks that the most effective laby-
rinth is a labyrinth with no walls, like the desert, as Borges said. 
Now he imagines himself  inside the water and this element seems 
a transparent liquid labyrinth. At the time he dreams that he enters 
the water, he sees himself  crossing the line of  language, being born 
again as he learns language. He thinks that all his education, cul-
ture, the advice from his father in his childhood, the lessons learnt 
from the chess master Mikhail Botvinnik and Vladimir Makogonov 
when he was young, were forming him. He imagines every council, 
every word, every letter, every piece of  knowledge as a piece of  a 
puzzle that forms him. The word becoming flesh. Or even better, 
he imagines the words as bubbles giving him shape inside an end-
less sea of  knowledge. He spins around in a fetal position, and he 
is forming and dissolving in water as the words surrounding him 
are creating him. Suddenly, at the bottom of  the water, the sea, he 
finds a strange device. The device consists of  gears, he wanders 
what would this strange apparatus be useful for. The mechanism 
reminds him of  the gears of  a Swiss watch. Finally the name of  
the device he wanted to remember previously comes to his mind: 
the Antikythera Mechanism, thus named because it was found sunk 
in the deep waters of  the islands of  Antikytheras in Greece. This 
device is the earliest known example of  a computer, using a series 
of  gears to perform its calculation.10 The device showed sailors the 
position of  the sun and the stars throughout the year, the relation 
between time and space, and their orientation in this liquid limit-
less labyrinth. Kasparov imagines a man in the middle of  the vast 
waters holding a device in his hand trying to know his position in 
the universe. Kasparov asks himself, why? 
9. Colebrook. Op. cit. p.10.
10. “Recovered in 1901 and probably made between 51 and 81 BCE. It is 
a very complex assembly of at least 21 bronze gearwheels. Possibly used in 
navigation” Ifrah considers it as clearly an ‘analogue calculator’ and for D. 
Solla Price as ‘the veritable progenitor of all our present plethora of scientific 
hardware”. Ifrah, Georges, The Universal History of the Computing, p.155n.50.
75
Whenever he asks why, he knows he is condemned to spin again 
and again in an endless loop of knowledge. Every response, every 
definition with adjectives and nouns requires other nouns and ad­
jectives to be defined... until an idea comes to his mind: the defi­
nition of things, of being, of itself, is neither in adjectives, nor in 
nouns nor in proper names, and neither is it in the flesh of his spin­
ning body turning beneath the semiotic waters. This definition is 
neither in the analysis of the elements that constitute his body nor 
in the attributes like the gray jacket, the cream­colored shirt or the 
striped tie that he tightly knotted in the mirror yesterday, but in the 
actions that occur among them, it is in the relationship of bodies, 
in the collisions, at play, in the encounter between him and a ma­
chine, playing in gerund: It is the verb. In the relationship of a man 
moving under the water, more stoic than Aristotelian, meaning that 
the Aristotelian being is defined by the qualities of his nature, while 
stoically it is defined through action, through the interactivity of 
being, of the game. In the encounter between the bodies.11
The names of the machines seem absurd to Kasparov: Deep 
thought and Deep Blue12 and he understands the scientists’ attempt 
to reach the depths of knowledge. But he thinks about the surface. 
It is on the chessboard surface where the game is played and he 
says aloud, “Superficial Blue”. It all happens on the surface. He 
thinks. He thinks: thinking is to remember. Thus, the computer 
Deep Blue13 is in no way smarter than Kasparov. It is simply a reaf­
firmation of his mental capacity. Deep Blue is not in opposition to 
his opponent. Technology is not a supplement to the thoughts of 
Kasparov’s life, because his consciousness cannot be isolated from 
external stimuli. Technology is only an adaptation of the potential 
of his life.
That is why, to Kasparov the surface seems more important 
in his dream, it represents the border towards the depths. That area 
where the language operates. He imagines language as a horizon 
where our perceptions are translated into signs. A line constantly 
crossed through a messenger, the symbols. Hence the connection 
with hermeneutics and the Greek myth of Hermes. Hermes – the 
messenger of the gods – not only brought the divine or unknown 
messages to mankind but he also transcribed them and made them 
accessible to our understanding, he translated the messages and 
11. In this paragraph I use again Deleuze’s thoughts about the Stoics in the 
Second Series of Paradoxes. Deleuze, Op. cit., p.4ff.
12. Deep Blue was a chess computer developed by IBM. Deep Blue was the 
first computer that made history in 1996 by defeating Russian reigning chess 
champion Garry Kasparov. Kasparov demanded a rematch; but Deep Blue was 
packed after the wining game in order not to be used in chess context anymore. 
The project began as one followed by his successor, Deep Though. 
http://www.britannica.com.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/EBchecked/topic/155485/
Deep­Blue
13. “Superficial Blue” was presented as an interactive audio and video insta­
llation, on October and November 2010 at Gallerie Konstepidemin. Gothen­
burg, Sweden.
http://www. tepez.com
http://privat.bahnhof.se/wb821089/superblue.html
76
made them meaningful. Hermes was the interface between us and 
the environment, the mysterious or inexplicable around or within 
us. Hermes transformed the immeasurable into the measurable, 
and he also transformed the unspeakable into human symbols, into 
history. For Heidegger Hermeneus was the creature that moves, in­
spired by a magnetic force. In any case, our catch is supported by 
the historical network, by memories, by language; Kasparov claims, 
to himself: thinking is to remember.
Hermes is thus the interface between the human and exis­
tence. It is in this relationship that meaning is created. But, as we 
shall see a paradox, is thereby created. Deleuze and Borges attrib­
uted to Gottlob Frege as the developer of this paradox. The paradox 
of the infinite proliferation of meaning by eternal regression. This 
is explained as a proposition that needs to be explained by another 
proposition, and in turn, this requires another proposition and so 
on ad infinitum, an endless proliferation, where there is no previous 
representation. But as we have seen, to avoid this linguistic deter­
mination we should not reduce the sense to mean the extent of the 
proposition of things, but to the space between them, to the space 
that separates and joins at the same time, to the game on the surface 
of the chessboard, to the action.
Kasparov is still dreaming that he is spinning in the water 
and he wonders how he relates through language to time and space. 
He wonders how long it takes to rotate on his axis. He wonders 
if time exists only in relation to things. However, our bodies are 
not expressed in time as things. Thus, his turning body is not an 
object within time. It is time. We live space and we live time. The 
geometric space and the chronological time are mere mathematical 
constructs. They are represented by static things to be measured, 
hence the necessity of the clock which controls the time in the 
game of chess. Nevertheless we do not measure time, we measure 
static things. It is not necessary to stigmatize the interpretation of 
time in spatial terms. The philosopher, Merleau­Ponty criticized 
Bergson when he condemned the notion of spatial time.
In order to arrive at authentic time, it is neither necessary 
nor sufficient to condemn the specialization of time, as does 
Bergson. It is not necessary, since time is exclusive of space 
only if we consider space as objectified in advance, and if 
we ignore the primordial spatiality, which we have tried to 
describe, and which is the abstract of our presence in the 
world. It is not sufficient, since even when the systematic 
translation of time into spatial terms has been duly stigma­
tized, we may still fall far short of an authentic intuition of 
time. Bergson (…) makes time out of a preserved present, 
an evolution of what is evolved.14 
Kasparov is still dreaming that he spins in the water; he feels that, 
in his turning flesh – occupying a space in the transparent liquid 
– is where the space and time are joined. It is in his body floating 
around that he experiences the before and the after. The temporary 
synthesis. Similarly, to Merleau­Ponty time is not a real process but 
a synthesis of our existential dimension:
14. Merleau­Ponty, Maurice: Phenomenology of Perception, Routledge,  London, 
1968, p.482.
77
There must be another true time, in which I learn the na­
ture of flux and transience itself. It is indeed true that I 
should be incapable of perceiving any point in time with­
out a before and an after, and that, in order to be aware 
of the relationship between the three terms, I must not be 
absorbed into any one of them: that time, in short, needs 
a synthesis. But it is equally true that this synthesis must 
always be undertaken afresh, and that any supposition that 
it can be anywhere brought to completion involves the ne­
gation of time. It is indeed the dream of philosophers to 
be able to conceive an “eternity of life”, lying beyond per­
manence and change, in which the time’s productivity is 
permanently contained. Yet a static consciousness of time 
which stands above it and embraces it merely destroys the 
phenomenon of time.15 
Although, Kasparov experiences time through a synthesis of move­
ment as he completes a full turn in the water, spinning and return­
ing to his initial position. It is in his body that he reaffirms the tem­
poral dimensions simultaneously. This temporal synthesis can only 
be experienced through changes. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze 
says, about time and space in the book Cinema 1 that:
For antiquity, movement refers to intelligible elements, 
Forms or Ideas, which are eternal and immobile. (…) 
Movement, conceived in this way, will thus be the regulated 
transition from one form to another, that is, an order of 
poses or privileged instants as in a dance. The modern sci­
entific revolution has consisted in relating movement not to 
privileged instants, but to any­instant­whatever. Although 
movement was still recomposed, it was no longer recomposed 
from formal transcendental elements (poses), but from imma-
nent material elements (sections). Instead of producing an 
intelligible synthesis of movement, a sensible analysis was 
derived from it. 16
Both Deleuze and Merleau­Ponty believe that the future is not lim­
ited to becoming, it is future and past at the same time. Paradoxes 
allow us to express two meanings at a time. Just as in the body, past 
and future are infinitely divided. Thus, the before and after brings a 
paradox. So the future is not limited to a chronological dimension, 
any statement can have a meaning, but expresses at least one other. 
Consequently, the becoming can only be expressed as both future 
and past at once; it is the paradox of the simultaneous affirmation 
of two dimensions.
In the same way that the becoming is not limited to a 
chronological dimension, it is impossible to immobilize the sense 
to define it. The definition of being is not in the static adjectives, 
isolated nouns or proper names, and it is not in the flesh and its 
substance either, but in the actions that take place between them, in 
15. Ibid. p.482.
16. Deleuze, Gilles: Cinema 1: the Movement-Image, the Athlone Press, 
 London, 1986, p.4.
78
the verb. It is in the relationship between bodies, in every encoun­
ter, the meaning is in the collision between us, in the events. In this 
way, it is in the action, not in the predicate, but it is, paradoxically, 
between subject and predicate. Deleuze takes up the theme in the 
Second Series of the Paradoxes of the Effects of the Surface and states: 
They are not things or facts but events. We cannot say that 
they exist, rather that they subsist or inhere (having the 
minimum of being which is appropriate to that which is not 
a thing, a non­existent entity) They are not adjectives but 
verbs. They are neither agents nor patients, but the result of 
actions and passions. They are “impassive” entities – im pa­
ssi ve results. They are not living presents but infinitives: the 
unlimited Aion, the becoming which divides itself infinitely 
into past and future and always alludes the present.17 
The constant transformation of language appears to Kasparov as a 
living organism created by all of us. Formed at random by an end­
less chain of definitions, but in a systematic relationship with the 
human, with himself dreaming, spinning in the water and acting 
as the physical support of language. “Deep Blue,” Kasparov thinks 
about his dream. Just to correct himself later, Superficial Blue, Eve­
rything happens on the surface, on the chessboard, in the mid­
dle line between dream and waking consciousness. Kasparov is no 
longer afraid; he imagines his body resting pleasantly in the waters 
of Genesis. He knows that tomorrow he will face a machine and he 
is no longer terrified. He does not curse technology. He knows that 
in this interaction – regardless of victory or defeat – he is reaffirmed. 
His encounter with the computer appears to be like an infraface, it 
gives him the opportunity to increase, to delay, to postpone or to 
extend the meeting, expanding the opportunities of the game.
Kasparov remains trapped in his dream on the night of May 9, 
1997. Wondering if his dream is not the product of a work of in­
teractive art, and when nobody participates, his dream does not 
exist. Outside time passes by, the time of the mature fruit and the 
seasons. Kasparov has realized that the chessboard has no end, that 
it seems to extend at every move. More squares appear with every 
move he makes. He knows he is dreaming and yet he is unable to 
return to real life. To the life of continuous and tidy time. To the life 
of the time measured with fixed physical elements. He cannot be 
assured if he is awake because the smells, the sounds and sensations 
in his hands seem real, and yet he knows he is dreaming because 
he sees himself surrounded and forced to finish a chess game that 
seems endless. He thinks that the only way to escape his dream is 
no longer by winning the game, but simply by ending it, even if he 
loses. He does not curse technology.
17. Deleuze, Gilles: The Logic of Sense, the Athlone Press, London, 2001, p. 5.
79
But whenever he asks why, he knows he is obliged to spin again 
in an endless loop of knowledge, every response, every definition, 
with adjectives and nouns requires other nouns and adjectives in 
order to be defined... The definition of things, of being, of itself, is 
not in adjectives, nouns or names, and nor is it in the flesh of his 
body spinning beneath the semiotic waters. It is not in the analysis 
of the elements that build up his body, but in the actions that  occur 
among these, it is in the interaction between entities, in the inter­
relations, at play, in the encounter between him and a machine, 
playing in the present participle: it is, essentially the verb.
A moment can hold an eternity. Kasparov is not afraid, he 
likes the possibility of infinite game, the infraface, but he knows he 
cannot wake up as long as he continues wondering …why?
80
Title
Superficial Blue 
Year
2010
Place
Gallery Konstepidemin, Gothenburg
Technique
Interactive audio and video installation, dimensions variable. 
Surround sound 5.1
High definition Video, Interactive loop.
P C, tangent board, podium, video projector, video canvas for back projections 
(250 cm x 180 cm).
http://www.tepez.com  
81
Superficial Blue
Interactive video installation
82
83
IV. Burroughs
The paradoxical division of physical and temporal spaces.
84
I walk through the streets of La Colonia Roma in Mexico City. Here at Medellin Cerrada no. 37 was where William S. Bur­roughs lived in the middle of the last century. Near his home on 
Monterrey Street 122­10 at around 3.30 PM his life would change 
with his wife’s – Joan Vollmer’s – life ending on September 6, 1951.1 
... It’s time for our William Tell act, we will prove to the boys 
that I am a good shot.
 
And rising from his chair, he reached out his hand and grabbed 
his pistol from the table. Without more ado, Joan stood up from 
the sofa, took her half full glass – which was small – and placed it 
on her head. In doing so she closed her eyes, chuckled shyly and 
said:
 
—I can’t look, I hate to see blood.2
Of this event we are particularly interested in two details. The dis­
tance of Burroughs’s gun, an automatic pistol Star 380, from Joan 
Vollmer’s forehead: 2m 90cm; and the speed of the bullet: 320 m/s. 
How many of Burroughs’s stories and thoughts take shape in this 
seemingly short span of time: 320 m/s? The writer García­Robles 
states: “Mexico would leave a mark on Burroughs forever, after hav­
ing killed his wife in a kind of accident and spending a short time 
in Lecumberri jail, a seed was planted in him that would eventually 
grow and give birth to one of the most important visionary writers 
of the twentieth century.”3
Joan lost her balance and fell to the ground. At first everyone 
thought, following the shot, that she was joking and waited for a 
few seconds for her reaction. But when M. saw blood beginning 
1. García­Robles, Jorge: Den förlorade kulan. William S. Burroughs i Mexiko, 
Firework Edition, Hägersten, 2007, p.75. ( My translation)
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
85
to run across the floor, and the intact glass spinning on the tiles 
and heard strange noises that Joan was emitting, he realized that 
Burroughs had missed his target. His first thought was to flee and 
ignore everything, but he pulled himself together and ran for a 
medical student who lived in the penthouse and told Burroughs: 
 
— Bill, I think you shot her.4
Before going into an analysis of the path of the bullet, we should 
consider the term infraface. Infrafaces are derived from the  functions 
and definitions that we have seen about the term interface. That 
is, an interface is a bridge, something that joins or separates the 
environment (art, the world) with humans or humans with other 
humans. It has a specific function and helps the exchange of in­
formation or interaction between whatever it is that it joins. An 
interface can contain other interfaces. The pistol a Star 380 in the 
hand of Burroughs is an interface. The chrome barrel, the armour 
of aluminium, the plastic­coated handle for a better grip, the fixed 
frame onto which the trigger is mounted (and the trigger itself ), the 
piston, the percussion cap, the flintlock, which fits over the frame 
and has a recoil spring, and the firing pin channel that ejects the 
bullet that would come into contact with Joan Vollmer’s forehead 
.320 split seconds later. The gun connects Burroughs to and sepa­
rates him from his wife Joan through an action. The function is as 
stupid as it is straight­forward.
An interface functions as a map to make sense in a commu­
nication process, a map in a labyrinth of information exchange. On 
the other hand, an infraface apparently makes this labyrinth more 
complicated raising changing walls at every step. Infrafaces focus on 
the moment of the encounter and expand it, stretch it or delay it, 
consequently opening new spaces. All physical or temporal space 
can be indefinitely divided, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes 
they have apparently already been predestined. Infrafaces are the in­
teraction in this new space. Thus, Burroughs did not realize that in 
carrying out this game, he not only dramatically changed his own 
life, he reaffirmed it, and the most important here is the unleashing 
of all the stories that were waiting. Burroughs does not make up 
stories; all the stories already existed, and they were predestined, 
were already there, resting in the depths of expectation, waiting 
impatiently to be told, to be brought to the surface. “Everything 
happens at the surface.”5
Burroughs’s case in relation to the concept I’m developing 
here – infrafaces – seems to be relevant. The temporal transgression 
in the management of his stories is evident. Both his work and his 
life are intertwined in a particular way, mutually nourishing each 
other. Garcia Robles proceeds with a description of the events of 
that tragic afternoon in Mexico City:
4. Ibid., p.76.
5. Deleuze, Op. cit., p.5 ff.  
86
...He thought that if Joan so rashly agreed to engage in and trust 
the game it was because of the deep respect she had for Burroughs’s 
aim. In contrast, Woods thought the situation seemed ridiculous: 
How would he explain to Juanita Peñaloza the hole that appeared 
in the wall and the shattered glass every where? He was about to 
take the gun when it was still on the table near him, but he thought 
that this would make matters worse and so he refrained. Burroughs 
was then nearly three meters away from Joan. He noticed her eyes 
were closed. He raised the gun. He aimed at the glass. And pulled 
the trigger. At that time – as he was to discover years later – an 
 addiction to writing invaded his body.6 
I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never 
have become a writer if it were not for Joan’s death (...) I live 
with the constant threat of possession, of taking control. So 
Joan’s death brought me in contact with the invader [sic], the 
Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life­long struggle in 
which I have had no choice except to write my way out.7 
For Robles and for Burroughs himself, it is this event, which would 
change the course of Burroughs’s life and his literary work. For me, 
it is the space between the forehead and the gun what interests me, 
because this is the space which is being activated, and creating sto­
ries, narratives or literary works as the bullet follows its trajectory. 
So, we can say that it is not after this event, but at this moment, 
during the slow flight of the projectile, that at least four works by 
this author rise to the surface, are gestated, are incarnated on paper, 
like a verb incarnated in the flesh.
When aiming the gun, Burroughs thinks he cannot fail and 
recalls the paradox of the arrow. This paradox states that a flying 
arrow does not move, in contrast, it is at rest denying motion. This 
means that a flying arrow is in a specific position at each moment 
in time. But if the increment of time is sufficiently small, the arrow 
will not have enough time to move, and consequently, it will be still 
at that particular moment. Similarly, during the following period 
of time, the arrow will also be still for the same reason. This means 
that the arrow is always at rest. According to this paradox motion 
is impossible.
If everything, when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and 
if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a 
space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motion­
less.8
Similar to the second paradox of Zeno,9 there have been refuta­
tions and proposals to resolve the arrow paradox. These postula­
tions argue that rest is always relative. Although an arrow, or in this 
case a 44 caliber bullet, is perceived as static, we cannot judge their 
position by observing an isolated moment. It is always necessary to 
6. García­Robles, Op.cit., p. 76.
7. Burroughs, William S.: Queer, Viking, New York, 1985, p. xxii.
8. Aristotle, Physics VI: 9, 239b5. p. 123.
9. Cfr. Chapter II, Infrafaces.
87
compare their position with other adjacent moments. Consequen­
tly, when comparing different periods of time, an arrow or a bullet 
is in a different position than it was before and after the compari­
son; which affirms motion.
Another perspective from which to view this paradox is to 
go directly to the definition of velocity, which is essentially an idea 
of change: the change of space at a given time. Thus, by definition, 
a body moves without altering the volume of the space it occupies 
at each moment, it changes space. This means that it occupies the 
same amount of volume, but in a different place at the next incre­
ment of time. Movement, consequently, is the succession of dif­
ferent spaces occupied by the moving element in the succession 
of individual moments that constitute the scale of the considered 
time. Thus, if we assume that the concept of speed/movement can 
be defined rationally, we simultaneously admit that movement, ra­
tionally, in theory, exists.10
Nevertheless the important thing is not to resolve this para­
dox, or to find a rational definition, on the contrary, the impor­
tant thing is to understand that “paradoxes are signs that generate 
and indicate the need for complementary aspects of language.”11 
Art and language are not separate from our practices, they actively 
participate in the formation of ourselves; interconnected with our 
actions. “Paradoxes are not mental puzzles and failures in logical 
systems, but forms that reveal how a contradiction is ge nerated and 
the limits of common sense and good sense.”12
Burroughs, at this moment, is not fully aware of the paradox 
of playing this stupid game of William Tell with his wife, but he 
thinks that he can apply the paradox of the arrow, but by using a 
bullet instead. In the space in between the gun and half full glass 
placed on Joan’s head. The bullet changes space during a certain pe­
riod of time, but if the time gap is small enough and the bullet does 
not have enough time to move, consequently, the bullet will be still 
at that particular moment, and thereby in this frozen moment there 
will be enough time for other actions to happen, sufficient time for 
Burroughs to create his stories, enough time to include his narra­
tives, enough time to shape at least four literary works that rise up 
to the surface:
1. (When Burroughs raises his weapon and aims at the glass, and 
with the other hand supports the gun, Burroughs accepts the re­
quests of Allen Ginsberg and agrees to work on completing a 
certain book. At this moment, he collects the memories of his ex­
periences with the criminals that he runs into in New York, at the 
Lexington Federal Narcotics Hospital – the Prison in Kentucky, 
in New Orleans and in Mexico City. When Burroughs feels the 
texture of the gun in his palm and sees the glass shining on Joan’s 
head and thinks he cannot fail, when he closes his right eye and 
10. Aristotle Book VI of Physics, Preamble (239a 23­b4) in Faris, J.A., The 
paradoxes of Zeno, p.37.
11. Williams, James: Gilles Deleuze’s Logic of Senses: A Critical Introduction 
and Guide, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2008, p.29.
12. Ibid., p.68.
88
reaches out with his hand thus shortening the distance by 46cm, 
he creates a story. A story that takes a personal tone, with descrip­
tions of sexual and addictive acts, this story gestates, waiting and 
wanting to take shape as a text through the confessions of the 
main character in this story, an addict. This fierce literary style 
will mark the 6 remaining years, namely the 3 meters which are 
the distance the bullet travels toward Joan Vollmer’s head). 
...when he lifts the gun and aims it he begins gestating the work: 
Junkie, 1953.
2. (Burroughs pulls the trigger, his index finger pulls against his 
body a small piece of metal that activates the powder in the gun 
chamber and expels a bullet at the speed of 368 km/s, raising the 
temperature of the bullet to 456 degrees. The noisy explosion of 
gunpowder fills every corner of the room and even penetrates 
some walls. As a continuation of Junkie, the bullet will form an­
other short novel, a sequel; the memories are transformed into 
words and embedded as a disease in the pages when he writes the 
memoirs of a trip he made to Brazil in the search of yague – the 
drug that promises the possibility of telepathy. Again Burroughs 
remembers the bars in Mexico City, and in this book he will call 
himself William Lee. He does not yet know that a trial awaits him 
for missing with the bullet and this short story will be formed 
while waiting in the courts). 
...pulling the trigger Burroughs unleashes the book: Queer, 1955.
3. (The bullet leaves the canon, rotating uniformly at 180 000 
RPM or 3 000 feet per second, a heavy cloud of smoke slowly 
dissipates like blood in water. Both of Burroughs’s hands feel the 
destructive action of the machine furiously spitting out the pro­
jectile, every time the bullet spins words are triggered. Each turn 
of the bullet corresponds to 2 345 strokes of Burroughs’s type­
writer, ironically with its own brand name, a black Burroughs13 
typewriter that he would bring on his trips to Tangier and which 
can still be seen in the windowless14 room where he worked and 
which is now a museum thanks to a friend who collected Bur­
roughs’s belongings, the poet John Giorno. This Burroughs type­
writer, [This brand of typewriter, famous among collectors for 
its sober and silent function, also has the ability to write lines 
that are 12 inches long and it allows one to manually adjust the 
paragraphs] types the structure of the Burroughs’s masterpiece 
as disparate vignettes, impressions, as if this structure does not 
really exist, or as if the structure is in the process of changing, 
organic, in movement – just like the sense is. Burroughs called 
13. His grandfather William Seward Burroughs was the inventor of the first 
workable adding machine, he was born in rural area in New York in 1855. By 
1887 the American Arithmometer had manufactured 50 machines. The first 
arithmometer was patented in 1820 by Thomas Colmar. Ifrah, Op.cit., p.127.
14. The “bunker” was the house of Burroughs from 1974 until his death in 
1997; it was located in the basement of the YMCA, at 222 Bowery. Baker, 
Phil, William S. Burroughs, p.174.
89
these impressions routines shaped by the memory of his stay in 
Mexico, U.S. and Tangier, and the experiences of William Lee 
with heroin, morphine, marijuana, opioid, eukodol. Burroughs 
would say in the introduction that Jack Kerouac was the one who 
suggested the title. The bullet seems to stand in his way, in a fro­
zen moment: “The title means exactly what the words say: naked 
lunch, a moment frozen in time when everyone sees what is on 
the end of every fork.”15)
… when the bullet has travelled 2.10cm the result will be: Naked 
Lunch, 1958.
4. (The ammunition travels 2.50 m. The bullet is deformed only 
at the back of it by the pressure of the fire, but does not lose its 
aerodynamic shape and keeps spinning. The bullet turns 456 778 
times on its axis after leaving the barrel; 50cm is equivalent to 
two years in the life of Burroughs and to 1 236 written pages. 
When the bullet moves through time and space, this work occurs 
in 1961, two years after the publication of Naked Lunch. In this 
novel, the human body seems to Burroughs to be a tender ma­
chine. The literary techniques he was developing, called cut-ups 
and fold-in, are imminent, and so letters and words appear based 
on the idea of travelling through time and space to find a Mayan 
priest and the struggle to liberate the soft machine) 
...2m 89 cm: Soft Machine, 1961.
The bullet is irrefutably approaching Joan’s forehead, she stands 
with eyes closed, with a calm expression, confident, her mouth 
slightly open in a smile, the product of alcohol consumption, the 
empty glass over her head, her last words like an echo in the house:
 
“I can’t look, can’t stand to see blood.”
Burroughs plays this game but he does not know that the bullet, as 
it travels, arouses these stories that are waiting for him. The stories 
are like independent and living beings and they are there, waiting, 
taking their own directions, as the tributaries of a wild river. In the 
same way, language is for Burroughs a living organism, a parasite, a 
virus that chooses our minds to live in. It is this struggle to liberate 
language of grammar and syntax rules that would characterize his 
work. According to Burroughs, humans do not know that they are 
infected, in the same way that he does not know that his works are 
being cultivated as the bullet travels. This metaphor of language 
as a living organism should not be considered only as an absurd 
experiment, the technique called cut-ups, is the tool that Burroughs 
uses to dismantle these handcuffs of language. In the same vein, a 
work of interactive art as an infraface or certain poems break the 
barriers of syntax, thus freeing words by weakening the demands 
of meaning.
15. Burroughs, William S.: Naked Lunch, Grove Press Inc., New York, 1959. p.V.
90
In this set of interfaces, of stories within other stories, like Russian 
dolls, we could still include another work: Interzone, 1989. This 
novel functions as a bridge, as a link between the novels Junkie 
and Queer. Interzone is just an intermediate zone, an interface. 
This contact zone is represented again by the addict William Lee, 
Burroughs’ Alter Ego. Lee experiments with chemicals to find this 
middle line between the inner and outer. Even Burroughs uses this 
book to change his narrative from first­person singular (internal) to 
a more experimental style (external) in his next works. This collec­
tion of short stories, Interzone, is for Burroughs like the essays in 
the collection The Crack-Up from 1945 are for Scott Fitzgerald. The 
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze  comments upon these essays. In 
The Crack-Up a concept appears that seems appropriate to Deleuze, 
the concept of the crack. In the Twenty-Second Series of his book 
The Logic of Sense Deleuze says that alcohol opens a crack in the 
work of Scott Fitzgerald.16 For García­Robles there are also drugs 
that open a creative crack for Burroughs. Deleuze argues that for 
Scott Fitzgerald this crack, this wound, is also the interface to the 
outside. For Burroughs the interface is not only between the inside 
and outside. It is a space that is opened up, not with the drugs but 
by the drugs. Is not a destructive act, as the absurd annihilation 
of Joan Vollmer, it is an act that opens the necessary crack for the 
escape of his works, for the accomplishment of the literary fugues 
of Burroughs.
The real difference is not between the inside and the out­
side, for the crack is neither internal nor external but is 
rather at the frontier. It is imperceptible, incorporeal, and 
ideational. With what happens inside and outside it has 
complex relations of interference and interfacing, of synco­
pated junctions – a pattern of incorporated beats over two 
different rhythms...17
For Deleuze syncopated junctions also exist at the border between 
internal and external. Deleuze puts the real difference at the frontier, 
pointing to an intermediate zone. In this essay, and in the same 
manner, I focus on this space in between, in an intermediate zone 
where the apparent repose of a moving bullet takes place. Between 
Burroughs and Vollmer it is this bullet unleashing words, forming 
the literary works.18 
While the bullet irremediably approaches Joan’s forehead, 
Burroughs’s stories between 1953 and 1961 take shape. Literature 
is for him an escape, the only way out, but he must face language 
that imprisons him, a virus. His technique, cut-ups, and fragmen­
tary visions are the tools for this escape, and consequently the rea­
son that his stories seem, at times, senseless. What is actually meant 
16. Deleuze, Op Cit., p.154.
17. Ibid., p.155.
18. Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817 –1881), German philosopher and logician, 
for example, puts these periodic spaces between cause and effect.
91
by the lack of sense? By twisting linguistic structures Burroughs ap­
proaches the illogical. “Nonsense has the dual function of breaking 
with the demands of denotation, manifestation and significance, 
opening up an additional realm for sense.”19 It is impossible to de­
fine sense as a static unit. Although a work of art or a string of 
words appear to have no reference or reasonable meaning in lan­
guage, they work positively to dismantle the false contradictions 
of language. It is impossible to immobilize sense to define it, in 
the same way that the notion of becoming is not limited to a time 
dimension. Any statement can have one meaning, but expresses at 
least one other. It is in this paradoxical relationship of two defini­
tions at once, as the future can only be expressed as both future and 
past at the same time, that the paradox of simultaneous affirmation 
emerges.20 This is the area where infrafaces move, in the paradoxi­
cal space in­between, where the relations of propositions allow us 
two interpretations, in the intermediate space of two definitions at 
once.
 The essence of the elements forming the structure of this 
interaction: the definition of the gun, or the bullet, or Joan’s fore­
head or Burroughs’s hand are not interesting in terms of infrafaces, 
but the relationship between them, the connections between the 
entities forming this structure. Because the understanding of the 
participants in this interactive system is not in their states as iso­
lated elements, such as frozen material and objective matter. The 
elements that take part in this interaction are instead intertwined 
by the relationship between their actions, by the stories formed be­
tween them. Infrafaces prioritize this relationships and the constant 
unfolding of stories that exist in both the present and the past. A 
constant sliding of sense; close to nonsense since sense can only be 
expressed and affirmed by nonsense.21 Infrafaces are the possibility 
to create new spaces in the action between bodies, between a bullet 
and a forehead, in order to displace the centre of the artistic discus­
sion to the game, to the interaction. Infraface is an artistic inter­
pretation of the process of interactivity. It is the possibility to play 
with interconnections. Infraface is the option to extend or delay a 
physical area or space in time to embed new stories. 
Neither the definitions nor the functions of the different 
entities in an interaction are attractive for the infrafaces, nor the 
essence of things or elements, regardless whether these elements are 
a firearm, a bullet, a typewriter, Joan or Burroughs himself, but the 
sequence of interdependent and connected interfaces within this 
interaction which, at every stage, transform time and space, to con­
vert their links into new segments. And patiently wait to serve as 
inputs for the next stories until a new segment is opened, and so on.
19. Williams, James: Gilles Deleuze’s Logic of Senses: A Critical Introduction and 
Guide, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2008, p.68.
20. Deleuze, Op.cit., p.5.
21. This is one of the main arguments of Deleuze in the Logic of Sense, I en­
twined his ideas in this essay to support my concept. Deleuze, Op.cit., pp. 66ff. 
92
This apparently senseless correlation takes form as linguistic ele­
ments in Burroughs’s typewriter. It is in linguistic or symbolic me­
dia as art that it is possible to express these correlations, the interac­
tions between bodies. Sense is not in the essence of these bodies; it 
is produced (as a bullet or an arrow paradoxically moving and static 
at the same time and producing stories on the way). From these 
relationships, in these new and paradoxical spaces a field for the 
creation of art is opened. Consequently, these spaces then serve as 
inputs for the next stage until a new space is opened. 
Infrafaces allow us multiple interconnections through enti­
ties interacting and theirs structures. Through interactivity an act 
with two ends is created, two­sided, an act that transforms itself. 
This gap between the gun and the target is not passive, it is trans­
forming, taking energy from the environment, from memories of 
what has been or could be and is not linear over time; it is fluid 
and dynamic. Unfortunately, sometimes we tend to look for eter­
nal truths and enduring arguments, instead of changing events and 
contingent figures.22 Infrafaces do not search for eternally valid ar­
guments; rather they look for constant changes. Infrafaces propose 
in this way new spaces for the realization of art.
Infrafaces resist one dimensional demonstrations and unitary 
forms of understanding, as humor or irony do. Nonsense is not in 
opposition to sense, like truth to falsehood. Sense is inseparable 
from nonsense. Therefore reason is not bordering on the absurd. 
Infrafaces are another form of sense, approaching the notion of 
nonsense or the paradoxical, but not in opposition to it. “Nonsense 
is not the absence of sense but rather the presence of an important 
kind of sense that can only operate through nonsense.”23
The idea of extending an area or space in time to embed 
new stories or actions is the foundation of the neologism that I 
have been elaborating in this essay. This time, through the para­
doxical idea of a bullet apparently in slow motion across the space 
in between the gun and the target, and bringing up to the surface 
supposedly unconnected stories.
The bullet irredeemably approaches Joan’s forehead. She 
stands with eyes closed. Her expression is calm, confident, her 
mouth slightly open with a light smile produced by alcohol con­
sumption, an empty glass is held over her head. In the room at 
Monterrey Street 122­10 around 3.30 pm, her last words still echo, 
“I can’t look, I hate seeing blood.” The bullet flies spinning on its 
axis, it has already made 671 987 500 turns corresponding to 68 
765 087 217 strokes of the typewriter on Burroughs’s black ma­
chine. The bullet is always in the now, then the bullet is immobile. 
For Burroughs this is the event that will change his life and his 
literary course. The space between the forehead and the gun, the 
interaction in between, the infraface, the game, is what interests us 
as this event activates, and awakens the stories, narratives and lite­
rary works as the bullet passes slowly, very slowly, almost motionless 
along its trajectory.
22. Williams, Op. cit, p.7.
23. Ibid., p.68.
93
V. Infrafaces II
The origin of life. In the beginning was the action
94
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 
And the earth was formless, and void; and darkness was upon the face of  the deep. 
And the Spirit of  God moved upon the face of  the waters...
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the 
firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 
Genesis 1:7 (1569)
MM alias “the fifth” had been a diver for six years performing a show in a well­known bay of the Pacific Ocean. Just like some of his fel­
lows, he climbed half­naked about forty meters to the top of a 
cliff to dive into the ocean in front of a crowd. The popular show 
known for decades gathered people that hungrily applauded after 
each dive. However, in the last four years MM had been chased by 
a constant and disturbing thought. That was because of an accident 
he had had while diving. Since the accident occurred, every time he 
jumped off the cliff, in the wonderful release of his thoughts some 
visions possessed him. He felt he was held prisoner by a text. MM 
had dived in order to smoothly break on through the surface and 
he had been caught in an intermediate zone.
His fellows laughed a bit at him and called him “the fifth”, 
because one time they had gone on a drinking binge he told his 
colleagues about his disturbing visions, he said that he was the fifth 
story of a book of essays, and that he was being used to finish this 
book, and precisely in the fifth and final chapter he was the main 
protagonist. Therefore, his colleagues attacked him with somewhat 
tender and ironic jokes not taking him seriously. His teammates 
also called him “the fifth” because, in the show the five men per­
formed every day, he was the fifth diver due to his diving ability. 
During the showers after the show, his colleagues would play jokes 
on each other. They ran naked through the locker room telling gay 
jokes, striking each other with towels and touching their buttocks. 
“Come here you fifth”, “take this you fifth”. And the fifth respond­
ed defending himself with a wet towel and shouting back at them 
“fifth your mother!”, “fifth your sister!”. Although sometimes they 
got upset, the practice of these games was a kind of ritual, especially 
when a new partner joined them, then they practiced an almost ri­
diculous rite of passage with the new member. They amused them­
selves that way, perhaps to forget or to celebrate the fact that they 
had challenged death at the reefs and that they had come out of the 
sea alive. Until one day MM said that, in one of the visions he had 
had about the book, one of his partners would suffer an accident and 
the body would be found later floating lifeless. MM gave his peers 
95
some details of the events that he had anticipated. He said that as 
he jumped, it was as if time would unfurl and allow him a glimpse 
of the past and the future at the same time, chronos and eon in the 
simultaneity of events. It was as if a wound in time opened a crack. 
What MM had seen in his vision happened the following week. 
MM could not jump that day and he said that, according to the 
vision he had had the previous week, the life of the one who would 
replace him was at risk. The man who substituted him found the 
warning somewhat absurd, and that afternoon, to the amazement 
of a hundred people, he dived into the sea in a reverse double jump 
and a half pike. The man went through the water almost without 
splashing a single drop. As if the water had been hungrily waiting 
for him since the genesis. People applauded eagerly, but when they 
did not see him emerge an awkward silence ensued. The water was 
calm as a satisfied beast sleeping and digesting its food in a leisurely 
manner. The silence became a worrisome murmur, several minutes 
went by, people gradually withdrew, various boats went looking for 
the man without success. The substitute had crossed both the water 
and another border and he did not come out of the sea that night. 
Since then, MM was taken seriously and there was an almost reli­
gious atmosphere instead of the jokes after the show.
One day his companions asked him if any of them were 
also caught up in that book. At times people came to ask if he 
could make any conjectures about the future or see into the future. 
Gradually even people from other places came to ask for help or 
advice, as if he were a kind of oracle. MM resisted the temptation 
to take advantage of his gift of course, since he could easily invent 
stories and convince them with improvised explanations, as some 
doctors, scientists, magicians and various artists tend to do. But he 
could not see events concerning other people, he only knew that, 
owing to a strange coincidence, he was trapped in the pages of an 
essay and someone was writing about a life simultaneously, and 
he was the main protagonist of that essay. He felt that his life was 
directed by the occurrences of an essay writer and every time he 
jumped into the ocean, by means of a peculiar connection, he could 
read what the writer had written in the book. So he could see part 
of his life ahead. MM had become the fanciful product of a literary 
work in progress.
While some people respected him others feared him, and 
some other people looked at him with suspicion and questioned 
him with tests. They argued that, if he was, in fact the protago­
nist in the fifth story of this supposed book in progress, they then 
wanted to know what were the main themes of the book and what 
were the other four stories about? To which MM answered to the 
best of his knowledge and understanding:
It is a small book from a university in Northern Europe. On 
the cover there is a person, a woman, who sticks her tongue out and 
slowly stretches it towards a huge candle. The flame seems to almost 
touch the tip of her tongue, but there is a small space, it is just the 
time of perception without previous experience. A space that is so 
small and so infinite. The title seemed to him a little confusing, 
infrafaces, it made him think about faces, his own face, he thought 
about a hero with a thousand masks, he also thought about the 
96
 notion of having a conversation with someone who was taking off a 
mask and when he thought he would get to know that person, the 
person would remove another mask and so on. What lies beneath 
or beyond the faces. So the book consists of five short stories.
The first story is about a series of creations that try to bring 
us closer to the world, to understand it and organize it through the 
use of artifacts.
The second story reminded him a little of his own story be­
cause it was also about a man who is remembering his life as he 
falls, a space that opens up during this fall. He now understood this 
phenomenon.
The third story moved him without knowing exactly why, 
because he did not understand in detail what it was about, but it 
made him feel an unexplained melancholy. Another man had been 
trapped in an event when he challenged a chess machine.
Moreover, he remembered many details about the fourth 
story; it made him feel a little fear mixed with sense of vertigo, just 
like the way he felt every time he was going to jump. It was about 
a writer who had dramatically changed his life during the path of 
a bullet.
All the stories referred, in a different manner to those gaps 
that arise in every action and how they are manipulated and ex­
ploited in various ways. About the fifth story or essay, his own story, 
he said: “Across the sea there is a man writing a book, that man tries 
to see how we are connected to the world, how we interact, how 
we relate to others and what the common bonds are that keep us 
joined to each other and to the earth”.
The last chapter began as follows:
It carried on with some words in italics taken from the Bible that 
curiously, he had just heard at church last Sunday:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 
And the earth was formless, and void; and darkness was upon the face of  the deep. 
And the Spirit of  God moved upon the face of  the waters...
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the 
firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 
Genesis 1:7 (1569)
V. Infrafaces II
The origin of life. In the beginning was the action
97
Then the essay started with his name:
“MM alias “the fifth” had been a diver for six years performing a 
show in a well­known bay of the Pacific Ocean. Just like some of 
his fellows, he climbed half­naked about forty meters to the top of 
a cliff to dive into the ocean in front of a crowd. The popular show 
known for decades, gathered people that hungrily applauded after 
each dive. However, in the last four years MM had been chased by 
a constant and disturbing thought. That was because of an accident 
he had had while diving. Since the accident occurred, every time he 
jumped off the cliff, in the wonderful release of his thoughts some 
visions possessed him. He felt he was held prisoner by a text. MM 
had dived in order to smoothly break on through the surface and 
he had been caught in an intermediate zone.”
***
MM tried to understand how it was possible that his life had been 
linked to the fantasies of a writer in another continent and he also 
began to think about the bonds that tied him to other people. He 
thought about how different forces and feelings joined him or sepa­
rated him from other people, his family, his friends, or his enemies. 
Whenever he jumped into the sea, he felt a tremendous fear of 
death, he was not afraid of his own death and he was not afraid of 
the feeling of loss of life either, but he thought about the pain that 
his death could cause to others, especially to his wife who was so 
proud of him and often went to the cliffs to see him dive. And he 
called that feeling love. By contrast, sometimes he could not avoid 
feeling hatred or remorse, followed by a desire for revenge, for ex­
ample having such a feeling towards the policeman at the border of 
the United States who had killed his brother when he tried to cross 
to the other side. He imagined his brother swimming in the cold 
waters of the Rio Bravo, plunging downwards as much as he could 
in a desperate attempt to hide while the policeman was waiting for 
him to come up to the surface to shoot him, leaving him forever in 
an intermediate zone, at the borderline. He wondered if all borders 
unify or divide countries, a line, a demarcation. MM wondered 
then if we were endlessly stuck like his brother in that river, longing 
to go through the other side, and also wondering if his brother had 
managed to cross the border physically. In that case, he would have 
left his soul on the other side.
Where exactly is the limit, when do we cross those bounda­
ries, when do we really understand anything? Do we really under­
stand? Do we surpass the line or do we always remain at an inter­
mediate zone searching for our goal? He knew that although the 
years would pass, he would still remain involuntarily joined to that 
border policeman by a circumstance and a feeling of hatred, even 
if he had a good reason to hate him. So MM understood himself 
because of a series of events and relationships with others. And not 
because of his brown skin constantly exposed to the sun, or the 
physical abilities that allowed him to perform stunts in the air be­
fore coming into contact with the water, and certainly not because 
98
of the physical features that his father had implanted in him and he 
in his son, nor by his organs or his limbs, but because of his ability 
to relate to others, by interacting with other people and with the 
world, and also due to the affections he had and the extent to which 
he was affected by others. The influence that others have on him 
to make him happy like his wife is able to, or depressed, like that 
hated border policeman does. MM understood himself better as his 
potentialities increased or decreased.1
Nevertheless, what seemed to be a greater reason for despair 
was the fact that he was not able to know exactly what it was that 
linked him to the mysterious man who lived on the other side of 
the world, and how he became connected to him by means of the 
words that the man was writing. Then it was the book, the lines 
dropped from the text, the pages, each proposition, each phrase 
and sentence that served as an interface, as a contact zone between 
the two men. That book was the link between their lives, literature 
was the point of relationship where their circumstances met, it was 
at that very point, there on the border of the written pages, on the 
surface of the text where the destiny of the diver and the writer 
manifested as the writer was writing, as a symbiosis... and the diver 
was able to catch a glimpse of his future every time he jumped.
But how did he get trapped in the pages that the writer was 
forming? MM remembered the afternoon he got caught in the fifth 
chapter of this book. MM used to resort to mind games in which he 
was making up stories while he was jumping off the reef and then 
he would wake up from his thoughts as he came into contact with 
the water. That space, those forty meters belonged to him, it was an 
open space in which he had enough time to think about anything 
he wanted to. He stood at the edge of the reef and watched the tide, 
waiting for the perfect wave to jump in, as that area around which 
he was jumping was not deep enough to avoid a fatal contact with 
the ground. He remembered stories about comrades, like “Chucho, 
the brick”, who was paralyzed from head to toe after hitting the 
sea­bed, and other, less fortunate colleagues who did not survive. 
Hitting the surface of the water improperly could also be fatal. 
MM knew about colleagues who had hurt their spinal columns 
and busted their backs by hitting the water’s surface. Others had 
drowned after losing consciousness on impact. He found that fas­
cinating, the contact zone. He was fascinated by the two­fold role 
of the water which could either gently muffle the fall, or it could 
receive people violently if they dived in the wrong way. Life is like 
water. He imagined his body gently penetrating the warm liquid of 
the Pacific and he remembered the first night he spent with his wife 
who often went to see him dive. He remembered his body gently 
passing through other means, incorporating pleasantly into a diffe­
rent environment. But if his body came into contact with the water 
in the wrong position, the resistance of the water’s surface at about 
30 mph. could be similar to that of concrete. Even diving feet first 
off a cliff a quarter of that size, might cause a compression in the 
spinal column. He even remembered that falling feet first carried 
the risk of being massively invaded by the water in the ass causing 
severe internal injuries.
1. Spinoza, Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, Part Two: On the Origin 
and Nature of the Emotions, pp.163­225.
99
In fact, it all began 20 years ago, as a game to overcome his fear 
of heights. When he was a child MM discovered that he suffered 
from an acute and uncontrollable fear of heights. Until he became 
involved in a challenge with other children who urged him to jump 
into the water from the top of the rocks and then jump off again 
from a higher summit. So MM developed a mental game to over­
come his fear. The trick consisted in diving with his eyes closed, try­
ing to imagine that he could see himself jumping off, it was a kind 
of mental mirror which reflected him on top of the reef, he looked 
at himself extending his arms towards the sky and jumping off. He 
visualized his body, intact coming into contact with the water. As 
the Zen Buddhist that infallibly shoots an arrow. In the in­between 
space he could see himself flying through that space , and he could 
even invert that space, jumping off from the water to the top of the 
reef, as the one who says a palindrome. Until one day as he pictured 
himself diving, he went a little bit further into his fantasy in order 
to not be afraid, and he imagined that the reflection that was about 
to dive had to imagine another reflection that was going to dive 
too, but this last one in turn had to imagine another man diving. At 
first this thought caused him a more terrifying vertigo than heights, 
but after a while this mental game seemed fun and relaxing, and he 
imagined five, ten or even tens of MMs diving at the same time, 
unfolding like a flower in the summer, like the reflection of a mir­
ror in front of another mirror. MM closed his eyes and wondered 
how many mental copies of men picturing themselves could dive 
in that period of time, and in the forty meters he thought of up to 
thirty five men who imagined themselves climbing to the top of 
the reef, imagining other men climbing and jumping off. And as he 
fell and felt his hair swirling with the wind, he was mentally going 
back to his reality... 34, 33, 32, 31... until one day he felt uncom­
fortably observed, naked. All of a sudden he opened his eyes and 
then he saw a spectator who was watching him intensely, filming 
a video. MM lost concentration and the countdown, and he did 
not perceive the right moment when to straighten his body to go 
through the water with his spinal column in a vertical position. In 
a desperate attempt he hardened his abdomen to fix his position,... 
30, 29, 28, .. simultaneously the men he had imagined, quickly 
tried to return to the mind of their progenitors... 26, 25, 24, 23, 
and yet ... 22, 21, 20 ... the impact was brutal, a warm feeling ran 
down his neck and he stopped feeling his arms and legs ... he lost 
count, he wanted to think of something that gave him strength so 
as to not lose consciousness, his daughter, his wife, but the only 
thing that came to mind was the half­opened eye of the spectator 
with his camera on his face and a little black notebook in his other 
hand ... MM sank without resistance into the sea, trying to wake 
up, but he had been trapped in one of those mental rooms, caught 
in the lines of the writer.
100
Still from video Infrafaces, 2013.
101
MM woke up in a hospital after three days. The doctors had given 
up and considered his return to consciousness was a miracle; it 
seemed that life had been granted to him by another incomprehen­
sible channel. The doctors said God did not want to take him and 
had returned him, and they could not find a scientific explanation 
for the woman who was holding back the tears because she did 
not want her husband to see her crying when he opened his eyes. 
MM had returned to the conscious world as if he had been pulled 
by some other magnetic force. Since he was a child, MM had been 
intrigued by magnetic forces, like the one that drew him toward the 
earth. No matter how high he jumped, he felt he was pulled by an 
elastic force. In the same way he experienced elastic connections to­
wards humans. Towards his licentiousness or habits, towards other 
bodies, responding sensitively to the excitement the same as mat­
ter does, attracting or repelling away like cells do, or like bacteria 
responding to or fleeing from toxicity, attracted like animals during 
the rutting season, or the moon to the earth, or like the insects 
 attracted to light. Gradually he understood that a similar force not 
only obstinately linked him to the earth, but also attracted him 
strongly to his friends, to his addictions or virtues and to his wife.
MM remembered the afternoon when he saw his wife for 
the first time. The first nonexistent contact. It was a Sunday after­
noon and they were quite young. They were walking in the town 
square, around the kiosk in the middle of the square. Men and 
women were walking in different directions around the kiosk, as 
it was customary. They bought ice­cream and they passed facing 
each other exchanging glances and even a smile, which was already 
a symbol of personal attraction. That evening the young people 
and children were playing a game, a game as funny and stupid as 
it was dangerous. No­one knows exactly how they had discovered 
this phenomenon: but if they made contact with a lamp post on the 
edge of the square and a bench in the center of it, an electrical cir­
cuit was closed. To do that, it was necessary that at least sixteen peo­
ple holding hands stretched out their arms to touch both sources of 
energy to produce an electric current distributed among all the par­
ticipants. They looked at each other in amazement with their hair 
pointing to the sky. The screams mixed with loud shrieks of laugh­
ter filling the square and frightening the birds that always returned 
to sleep in dense flocks on the electrical wires above the square at 
exactly 6.30 pm. The parents tried to keep their children from par­
ticipating in that silly game, telling them not to join in such non­
sense, but once the sixteen children had intertwined their limbs, no 
one dared to separate them. MM remembered having seen a group 
of people in the village of his father trying to hug the widest tree 
forming a human chain. It was a human chain that required about 
sixteen people too. And now, in order to make a circuit, the same 
number of beings distributing their energy was necessary. But there 
was a punishment for the one who was first to break the human 
chain. That person would be attacked with cruel, infantile jokes by 
the other participants. Therefore, there were always intense argu­
ments about who had released the chain first: “coward”, “chicken” 
they cried! MM was fascinated by those forces and he imagined all 
the other kids not as flesh and blood screaming and laughing, but 
as batteries loaded with invisible energy and different potentiality, 
transmitting energy, recharging and discharging.
102
That afternoon the children began to gather from one end to an­
other, usually intertwined, one girl and one boy. MM noticed the 
human chain was missing about three people to complete the cir­
cuit. And another kind of electricity ran through his body when he 
saw for the first time the woman, who years later would become his 
wife, waiting at the opposite end. MM ran to the other end of the 
line of people and extended his hand towards her. In the sky the 
birds swirled screaming like crazy, just to settle closely and securely 
beside each other on the electrical wires over their heads.
The sky was turning red, as red as the lips of the girl who was 
now nervously smiling in front of him. He stretched out his hand 
and noticed that fell a few inches short of her, but both of them 
were stretching tenaciously, to close the circuit. Then they saw how 
a plump, sweaty boy was running towards them, surely to come 
between them. And they stretched out as much as they could to 
keep that child from breaking them apart, without releasing the hu­
man chain. The other children screamed and closed their eyes with 
the nervous laughter of first experiences. Then, before their fingers 
touched, a stream of energy was released and linked their hands 
without making physical contact. The electricity ran through the 
limbs of the children that shouted in unison, a feeling of  thousands 
of ants running across their little bodies, tickling from the fingertips 
to the belly until some of them even urinated. The birds that had 
just huddled, flew frightened, and the children looked into each 
others’ eyes in a sort of childish ecstasy, connected by energy com­
ing further away from the bench and the lamp post, an energy that 
seemed to cover the whole square, the church, the forest, the sea, 
the animals, energy trespassing not only space but also time and 
suddenly converged there, in that place, in the outstretched fingers 
of two children who were connected without having touched each 
other... Suddenly the mother of the girl came and took her by the 
other arm and pulled her away breaking the human chain apart, 
but not before receiving a small shock that made her scream! Then 
the other children let go of the human chain too and laughed rau­
cously clutching their stomachs and kicking on the ground. The 
mother ran away with her daughter and MM and the little girl did 
not see each other for some years. And yet they knew that after­
noon, they had formed a bond.
Every night, MM would think about the intermediate space, 
the room between their fingers that had joined without having 
touched, the unfathomable space, a bridge that divides or splits in­
finitely and yet unifies. The space both separated and united them. 
And now she was there, next to his bed in the hospital, taking his 
hand again and saying, ‘I knew you’d come back. Love is stronger 
than death’.
—You’ve been asleep for three days —she told him.
He answered slowly — while I was jumping a special man in the 
audience was watching me in a distinct manner. He saw my impact 
and then something happened ... I cannot forget his eyes, he was 
carrying a camera and a notebook. I was falling so I could only 
see him for a short moment, a small lapse of time, a pause in my 
103
 sequence of actions and yet everything happened so slowly as if 
time stood still. You say it’s been three days and I still feel as if I’m 
falling down, I cannot reach the water’s surface, the surface moves 
further away from me, the faster I fall.
—Well, you’ve fallen and it’s been wrong —she told him.
—No —he said— I keep falling. And as long as he is writing I 
will continue to fall. I found myself stuck in his book.
Several months went by before he tried to dive again. The doc­
tors had told him not to. And he and his wife thought it was not 
prudent either. However, one day he was at the show. The village 
was holding a festival and there were more people than usual. MM, 
the “fifth”, silently joined his teammates and accompanied them 
to the top of the reef. People clapped as they watched them climb 
the rocks. They whistled. As MM climbed it seemed the stones 
were full of life, almost soft at the touch of his toes and hands 
that were clinging to the edge of the rocks. He felt the movement 
of the stones, not the movement at that time, but the geological 
changes which for centuries had turned those rocks into what they 
were now, the air, erosion, the sea. He felt the orogenic and tecto­ 
sedimentary chain passing through the tips of his fingers, the sen­
tence “craton versus orogenic movements” came to his mind. His 
co lleagues thought he had climbed the rocks just to be there with 
them for a while, and they did not say anything to him, they would 
only smile at him and then lower their heads. But when he got to 
the top he took off the rest of his clothes and stood at the edge. 
All his fellows had already jumped and no­one was able stop him. 
There was a stir among the crowd. He himself was not sure if he was 
the one who was going to jump. On the other side of the world, 
the writer was describing the texture of the stones, he wrote: “cra­
ton versus orogenic movements”. MM jumped into the sea ending 
the show with an impressive dive. The over­excited people were 
screaming, cheering and shouting. As he came out of the sea, his 
teammates went up to him and were scornful of him:
—Why did you do that? —They said— you were forbidden to 
dive! 
—It had been written —MM replied. 
One night before going to sleep, perhaps seeking an explanation, 
MM went up to the cliffs alone. He used to go there alone when 
he felt overwhelmed by anything or just to find some peace. From 
the heights he watched the confused world that comforted him. 
At first, he felt a little dizzy due to the vast chaos of information 
around him, his thoughts, his memories, his wishes intertwining 
with information from the senses, the wind on his face, the reflec­
tions on the surface of the sea, the sound of the tide, the tidal water 
splashing against the base of the reef to slowly retreat licking the 
rocks, hundreds of sensations at the same time. The world seemed 
perfect because it was not human, it was a world that expressed itself 
independently: the rocks, the water, the clouds,  matter  expressing 
104
its immanent capacity. MM initially remained oblivious and con­
fused, watching the incomprehensible sea, a blur on the horizon. 
The strange waters, of an unfathomable and dark depth, urged him 
to join them, to be part of the whole, to melt into the liquid, to dive 
into the void like a little piece of butter in boiling oil. He started 
feeling the necessity to dive, to cross the horizon, to feel his body 
fused into different surroundings, to feel the resistance and acces­
sibility when entering a new environment. Penetrating the water 
gave him not only the feeling of understanding, as a spectator, but 
also of being part of the whole, of being part of the vast sea, 
“a single voice for thousands of voices, a single ocean for all the 
drops, a single clamor of Being for all entities.”2 He wanted to jump 
and bridge the distance, to exceed his limits and bring himself into 
the chaos, to stop feeling oblivious, to cease his isolation from the 
environment, to understand, to feel like a drop in the sea.
MM breathed and the sea salt filled his lungs, below, the 
sensual sea seduced him — penetrate me! —the waves whispered 
to him. But, before he dived he saw something floating on the sea. 
At first it seemed to be a big fish, or a large piece of a tree. The 
object remained semi­hidden by the foam of the tide, then it disap­
peared for a few seconds just to emerge again. To his surprise, he 
discovered the silhouette of a body, a human figure, facing up, his 
stomach inflated and shiny, and his eyes and mouth were open. 
It appeared to MM that the body had no eyes, and yet he felt it 
was looking at him, like those ancient sculptures or those church 
altarpieces that seem to follow one with their gaze, saying: “I know 
what you’ve done.” The gentle body had the arms and legs extended 
and seemed to move along with the water saying “come ... jump off 
now, come into my arms, come!” MM was intrigued and it seemed 
very ironic to him that a drowned body could float so easily. How 
useless it was to float when life had left a body! And he remembered 
the words of the priest in the church last Sunday: “In the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless 
and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit 
of God moved upon the face of the waters...” Then he wondered if 
the body he was watching had anything divine, anything biblical, 
but then he became frightened of the idea that in the beginning of 
time, God was dead, resting quietly with arms open and lips parted, 
with an enticing attitude, yet dead. This made him think that in the 
beginning of time, when the Spirit of God moved upon the face of 
the waters, before God even articulated anything, before the first 
words, he had to drown. So in the beginning there was neither the 
verb, nor the word, but the act. In the beginning was the action.
2. Badiou focuses his criticism of Deleuze based on this sentence from 
 Differen ce and Repetition, p.304, cited in Badiou’s, Deleuze: El Clamor del Ser, 
p.11.
105
Just as MM had foreseen the previous week, they found the body. 
He knew that because he had caught a glimpse of it while he was 
diving. The essayist had written it. Every time he dived, in the won­
derful release of his thoughts, in that intermediate space, those vi­
sions possessed him. There was a wound in time. A small crack in 
the linear continuity of human events. A connection with the essayist 
flowed from that wound. Since then, his companions took him 
seriously, the jokes stopped and an atmosphere of concern reigned. 
Some were afraid to ask further, fearing that he would reveal some 
misfortune or give them a kind of prophecy; they treated him with 
a certain fear.
However, the rumor spread and people kept looking for him 
when they wanted to know about special events. They regarded him 
as a sort of medium, as a channel, as an organic interface that had 
the ability to organize information that others did not see. He was a 
living contact that offered them a connection to something hidden; 
He was the messenger, Hermes. Therefore, he angrily defended 
himself trying to explain that he was not a prophet, but a victim 
of a bizarre literary connection. Possibly, he was only being used as 
a metaphor to explain certain concepts. He could not know what 
had happened to the sheep of Mrs. Romina, or anything about the 
infidelities of the bar owner, neither where the prodigal son of the 
Perez family was, nor who was the real father of the daughter of 
Mr. Ramirez.
He remembered having read something in the first chapter 
of that book. Humans always want to make sense of everything 
around them, we seek to organize our environment, understand, 
master, and sometimes use science and art, we use anything we find 
available, nature, technology, our own bodies. Where is the sense, 
what is the sense? He summoned up a story about how people use 
things to understand their environment, to communicate, the in­
terfaces. And he remembered the story of a magical phone:
My friend Pobers, Professor of parapsychology at the Uni­
versity of Utrecht, was sent on a mission to the West Indies 
to study the role of telepathy there, often used among com­
mon people. When a woman wants to communicate with 
her husband or son who is away in town, she talks to a tree, 
and they bring her anything she has asked for. One day 
Pobers was present at one of those events and he asked the 
country woman why she addressed a tree. Her reply was 
surprising and led to solving the whole modern problem 
of our instincts being atrophied by the machines on which 
we rely. This, then, was the question: “why do you address 
a tree?” And this was the answer: “because I am poor. If I 
were rich I should have a Telephone.”3
3. Jean Cocteau in Valadés, El Libro de la Imaginación, p.53 or in The Mor-
ning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier.
106
MM was seen as that mysterious tree capable of communicating 
with people remotely. Thus the days went by. Other events followed 
after the floating body, some worrisome and others light and almost 
cheerful, depending on the mood of the writer, like the time when 
MM found out in a dive that the writer had mentioned that the 
ugly daughter of a colleague would win the village beauty contest, 
or that a woman would give birth to twin boys in a taxi, or that 
some whales would jump near the bay for hours at dusk, or that 
one morning it would rain fish on the main avenue.
Sometimes MM felt liberated, he thought the link or curse 
was over, that the writer had been bored, or had simply given up. 
But the interaction with the writer was like the herpes that had 
infected the cow owned by his friend Tulio. The virus spread or 
healed out of logic until they eventually put the cow to sleep. There 
were days when MM felt like MM, and not like “the fifth”, he felt 
he could act freely, enjoying free will, “the power of organic life 
operating in us”.4
He finally felt he fully mastered his thoughts and actions. 
Thus he found that there were days when he had the feeling of 
being randomly surprised, and that relieved him momentarily and 
he believed that the writer had abdicated, or even died. And he 
was glad for a moment, but then another idea puzzled him: what 
would happen if the writer died? Would he aimlessly wander in the 
exquisite freedom of uncertainty? Or would he be trapped forever 
in a tale without conclusion? But just a few days later he discovered 
the writer had only been paying attention to other issues. May be 
he was sick, in love, or writing another story or simply idle without 
working. Until one day he had another revelation while he was div­
ing, and that night he told his wife about it:
 
—He will come —he said— the writer will come this winter, 
he wants to finish his book and he does not know how to finish it, 
he will come again to observe the divers, and to see if he can find 
the inspiration to finish his book. 
  
MM understood that sometimes he was not only manipulated 
by the essayist, but he also influenced the process of the book in 
return. This filled him with pride and gave him some confidence. 
In any event, in any exercise and action, there is either damage or 
bilateral benefit. Every interaction is reciprocal.
—He will come again to see me dive, he will come up with some 
ideas to finish his book and then I shall be released. —He predicted.
 
The wife said — Now that you know, We must look for him 
 immediately, we have to find him! Maybe he wants to do us a fa­
vor, write something that gives you an edge before the end of his 
book. Do you think you would recognize him after four years?
4. Badiou, Op.cit., p.25.
107
But then his wife had a bad feeling: We must find and stop him 
as soon as possible! Any writer who does not know how to finish 
their work ends up killing the protagonist! Maybe he is thinking 
about your death, he must be stopped! Does he know that you have 
a daughter and a wife? He may not even be aware of this bizarre 
literary relationship, you have to find him and ask him, warn him!
The Gonzalez brothers visited him the following day to ask 
him if he could do them a favor in their next performance, if on 
his next revelation he could see where their grandfather had hi dden 
the money from an inheritance before dying and he tried to con­
vince him by promising him part of that money. The bro thers then 
thought that perhaps it had been a bad idea to trust this secret to 
MM because he could use his gift to find the money and keep it for 
himself. The brothers thought about making him tell the truth. But 
then they believed that it was actually the writer who influenced 
the diver. And when they realized the writer would come again, 
they decided to look for him and kidnap him. Thus, it was not 
only the Gonzalez brothers who began to search for more informa­
tion about the mysterious writer. The arrival of the writer became a 
badly­kept secret. People began to speculate about when he would 
arrive, some religious women saw him as a prophet, o thers as a 
swindler who had to be punished, and others as a sign of the end 
of the world, and different theories about his physical features were 
circulating: corpulent, short, foreign, normal, they even said that 
he would stand out because he was very tall or because he had a 
third eye in the palm of his hand, or because he had the properties 
of a chameleon and could merge with, and get lost in its surroun­
dings. It was said that in the morning he had one look and, in the 
evening a different one.
By December, a foreign crowd had arrived in the town. Fes­
tivals were held in the harbor with boats filled with offerings and 
flowers, street musicians, several bands playing different styles of 
music, accordions, drums, whistles, guiros, trumpets, playing all 
together until it was an unrecognizable melody, it turned into a 
mere bustle of instruments and car horns, whistles and barking 
dogs that stopped the traffic. The children were not at school and 
they danced in the streets to the rhythm of drums. And amid all the 
chaotic din the villagers were looking for the writer.
MM was concerned and he told his wife how to recognize 
the writer among all the tourists who would come to the bay that 
winter:
Not only will he take notes in a little book, but he will also 
try to film the show with a camera — said MM — he will say that 
he will use those images for an art exhibition on the other side of 
the world. He will also request permission from the authorities to 
film at sea level, as he is interested in the horizon, in the moment 
of contact. What will unmask him is that he will try to dive after 
it because he wants to be the subject of his own research. It’s funny 
— he said — he will ask for permission to jump off the cliffs and 
he will say that it is for the sake of “artistic research”.
108
MM and his wife remained silent for a moment, and then they 
laughed hugging each other, it was probably the nerves. “Artis­
tic  research” they laughed out aloud, — what’s that? —“Artistic 
 research”.
The last week of 2012 there was a big crowd at the shows 
of the divers on the famous bay of the Pacific. The chaos of peo­
ple harassing the tourists was uncontrollable and continued to in­
crease, even the police knew about this curious phenomenon and 
tried to impose order, but there were also corrupt policemen who 
 allowed people to get away with things that were forbidden. People 
sold food, cheap toys, badly­made crafts, and Chinese copies of all 
 ma nner of useless products on the street. All the streets leading up 
to the show were blocked, it was such a hot day that one could feel 
it even in the shade, there were slight winds with odors of sweat, 
hormones, sex, sweet, sour and spicy food, hot protein, fish and 
fried corn; the smell of sea­salt and the salt of bodies in move­
ment attracting and repelling each other, exchanging salts. The en­
vironment crystallized. The humidity dripped through the walls. 
In one street a woman had to give birth in a taxi stuck in  traffic: 
red­headed twins to the astonishment of the mulatto father! In one 
corner a woman saw a man passing by and stared at him —it’s 
him! —She cried— the seer! —And she told her son. Her son also 
shouted. People turned back to see the tourist, the confused man 
looked around, other people saw him and approached fast, the man 
did not understand and began to run. In a different corner, some 
people had found another man who had a camera, and another 
crowd began to follow him, the tourist was starting to panic, so 
he fled terrified, throwing his camera away! The show was about 
to begin, people jostled against one another. The authorities were 
thinking of canceling the show that day, two divers were afraid and 
did not want to participate in the show. Several tourists were mis­
taken for the writer, persecuted, insulted, threatened, momentarily 
kidnapped and even seduced! 
The show begins; the divers climb the reef in front of a 
crowd, crazy with excitement, who were influenced by the heat of 
the day and the loud noises. MM’s wife attempts to reach and speak 
with the organizers, with the authorities, she asks them if there has 
been a tourist asking if he could film at sea­level and even if he 
could try to jump. A policeman replied that there had been several 
incidents, some drunks had even tried to climb the reef, it’s crazy, 
he said! She hurried out to look for the writer among the crowd. 
The first diver jumps, the people cheer, then the second one dives 
amid the nearly obscene noise of the screams. 
The impact that the bodies made that day provoked a huge 
echo, the echo of bodies passing through dimensions, an endless 
hollow echo. The sound expanded in concentric circles through 
water, wind, time. Like the sound of an iceberg cracking. The bo­
dies jump into the sea, it is now the turn of the fifth, the woman 
desperately searches for the writer, and when she does not see him, 
yells at her husband through her tears— don’t jump! MM, please 
do not jump...!
109
The sun sets on the horizon crossing the line between the sky and 
the sea, watching the people on the bay as the great eye of a whale 
oblivious to the human misery and glory. An indifferent eye. The 
day ends but the odors remain as mist and the sound of the divers 
persists and water rings expand altering the geological layers. In 
Gothenburg, Sweden the temperature is minus 6 degrees and the 
dawn approaches, people are preparing to go to work despite the 
snow, the news of the day is that there has been a train wreck, and 
a foreign woman has been killed, it is not known whether it was 
made by right­wing extremists or as an honor killing.
On the morning of January 12th, 2013 MM gets up and 
prepares to give his usual show in a bay of the Pacific. On getting 
up he feels lighter – not his body, but his soul. The sun is shining 
and sneaks through a crack in the window, the cock crows and his 
daughter is playing in bed. His wife is still sleeping peacefully by 
his side.
—It’s over, he says to his wife, now I think he has finished his book. 
He did not kill me. I’m alive, I’m free. MM has a feeling that a great 
romance had ended, an immense lost love, he feels melancholic but 
pleased.
They never knew whether the writer (artist, crazy, researcher) really 
attended the show that day or not. If he tried to dive or if he filmed 
the show and made his exhibition.
MM eats lunch, hugs his wife and daughter, and leaves 
home singing. Arriving at the reef he feels a great relief and a great 
joy. MM remembers Cocteaou’s story about the magical tree used 
as a telephone, he thinks about interconnections and the risk or ad­
vantages of getting stuck in an interaction, he meditates about the 
interfaces and in the momentary pleasure of getting lost in endless 
repetitions, and the word infrafaces comes to his mind. He climbs 
the cliff. He stands on the edge, lifts the arms, breathes deeply and 
dives into the emptiness, he is no longer afraid, he does not imagine 
another MM jumping, it is only him alone in the air, crossing the 
scar of time. MM alias the fifth is now free, completely free.
***
110
Title
Infrafaces
Year
2013
Place
Gallery Rotor1, Valand,  Academy of Arts, Gothenburg
Technique
Mix media, High definition video projection, Video monitors. Sound Surround 
5.1
111
This fifth and final story ends with the beginning: a set of repre­
sentations based on abiogenesis,  a theory of water as the origin 
of life. I addressed this with a series of images of bodies pass­
ing through different mediums. Again, I stop and focus on the 
borders, horizons and on the surfaces. Though I focus on the 
border between water and air, it could be any boundary: the hu­
man and the technological, sense and nonsense. I am interested 
in the relation between elements and in the behavior of particles 
as they make contact with other elements, how bodies change 
both themselves and their environment as they cross these limits. 
Infrafaces 
Video installations
112
Infrafaces was completed by December 2012 
and was presented in Sweden in August 2013 as 
a multi­channel video installation.
Action is an essential part of my artistic research, and so 
the last chapter was intertwined with this artistic act. I 
completed this project with video images filmed in the 
southeast of Mexico and they are part of the exhibition 
accompanying the thesis defence.
113
Paradoxes appear in any act. These riddles are part of every practice, and arise in all areas of knowledge. In epistemo logy: the more we know the less we understand. They appear in 
logic, obviously in mathematics, in physics, or even in art, Picasso’s 
phrase seems very relevant: “The art itself is a lie that brings us 
closer to the truth.”1 This dissertation project has been inspired by 
several of these paradoxes, such as the paradox of technology, and 
the paradox of infinite space. Thus, during this research I encounter 
some of those contradictions and this shapes what was to become 
one of the main arguments of this thesis.
I went from the design of interfaces to something beyond its 
rational functions. At first I focused on the developing of models 
of interpretation, the design of interfaces in the artistic context. 
But gradually, and for several reasons, this project changed: for ex­
ample, the understanding that an interface could be almost eve­
rything, including our bodies, and discovering that our senses are 
also a technique; and of course the insight that  paradoxes involve a 
creative potential and another form of understanding.
Everything that can help us exchange information, to con­
trol or at least understand our environment, different tools, for ex­
ample, everything that we use as an interpretation system or that 
helps us to connect elements acts as an interface. An interface is not 
restricted by the design of devices in order to manage information 
within, or by using, technology; rather an interface exists in all cul­
tural activity, even in the language itself.
However, in turn, an interface can contain different inter­
faces. At the moment of contact between two or more elements, an 
area of transformation is created, a line, a border, a changing space, 
an intermediate space; it is this space that interests me because it 
can be extended to include other spaces. Any physical and temporal 
space can be divided, extended, paused, stretched, etc. These con­
nections form endless chains of moving definitions, and although 
this may lead to a paradox, this does not need to be negative. It 
1. If we say this in an ironic way we could say that the only truth in this book 
is that everything that is written here is false
Summary
114
can open up a creative possibility; this space can be exploited as 
something effective. The possibility of playing with the connections 
between these elements, rather than rejecting them because of their 
paradoxical changing nature, is one of the foundations of the con­
cept I refer to as an infraface.
An interface can paradoxically both unite and separate us 
from our surroundings. This paradox can still be used helpfully in 
art or literature, which is something Deleuze and Borges point out 
in the work of Lewis Carroll. In the same manner repetitions ad 
infinitum endlessly create labyrinths that invite us to explore them 
again and again. These infinite spaces, as we have seen in this book, 
are not only created in the physical phenomena, but also in every 
interaction.
While an interface is aimed at a usable predictable connec­
tion, an infraface, on the other hand, focuses on that moment and 
enlarges or delays it to open up a new space. The idea of expanding 
a room or a moment in time to insert new narratives or actions, the 
thought that one space can be divided and embrace another space, 
a story within a story, or a time in another time, and so on ad infini-
tum is the basis of the neologism infrafaces, which is presented here. 
Infraface is an artistic interpretation of the process of inter­
activity. It is what occurs beyond interfacing. It is the possibility to 
play with interconnections. Infraface is the opportunity to extend 
or delay a physical area or space in time so as to embed new stories. 
Infrafacing is a different way to develop interfaces in order to size 
up the inbetween spaces in an interaction to perform art. In this 
way art, and especially interactive art, can transform the area of 
contact – the interface – into a new active zone, into a zone that is 
alive, into an infraface. Thus the infraface creates a new intermedi­
ate space between art and the spectator, and it activates this area 
according to the artist’s intentions.2
The five essays presented here address the issue of the inter­
action and play with the idea of  crossing border lines towards an 
understanding, but sometimes stopping endlessly in the process, 
in these new in between spaces, even if this might be paradoxical. 
The first essay is important because it demonstrates how, his­
torically, the line between science and art is constantly chang­
ing, as is the sense. At the same time, by reaffirming that those 
technologies have another paradox, we develop a sense at the 
expense of others. Thus, our story – as we can see in the chap­
ter extispicia, is a story of the technology of the interfaces,3 the 
desire to dominate or control the outside, without realizing that 
in fact our history is the history of the adaptation of our percep­
tions to interfaces or machines.
 
2. “Art, then, has a reflective virtual power; it does not only emerge from ten­
dencies towards self­maintenance but can also takes those tendencies as its ob­
ject, working to destroy the images of harmony, homeostasis and equilibrium.” 
Colebrook, Op. cit., p.156.
3. “Recognizing that our history is itself technological”, Colebrook, Op.cit., p.10.
115
The second story explains what  infrafaces are, and how they are 
nurtured by paradoxes, and emphasizes the differences between 
an interface and infrafaces. Aristotle was probably the first to 
propose that space and time could be divided ad infinitum; and 
infrafaces take advantage of these subdivisions in order to insert 
new stories. 
The third chapter is based on a famous chess game between a 
man and a computer, its intention is to open a discussion on our 
relation with technology. Not only do we create devices to as­
similate the environment, but the environment is also expressed 
through us. In this way I challenged an old division between 
physis and tekné.
While the fourth essay is a variation of the artistic possibilities 
that could provide the infrafaces, and takes as its starting point 
the life of Burroughs to explain the possibilities of non­sense 
and how it works as a possibility of any sense. The important 
thing is the idea of  exposing the fallacious labyrinths of reaso­
ning.
Finally, the last chapter is an example of how I apply my con­
cept in practice, and by using myself as a creative subject I inter­
twined theory with practice, and the text with the work. That is 
why using my creations as a self­reflecting subject gives me the 
opportunity to reflect upon my own practice.
As the reader will have noticed, this dissertation is not intended 
to propose an ontological definition of reality, nor to ignore the 
different solutions to paradoxes that several authors have already 
proposed. Paradoxes are not only evident within the technique, but 
also in all cultural processes that need an interface and they can 
help us to obtain a diverse approach of understanding.  
By playing with these interconnections I discovered a new 
area beyond interfacing that I called infrafaces. Infrafaces suggests 
a new place for artistic production – an art form that diverts from 
functional processes and challenge our common beliefs and that 
has to find its own  methods. In this way, this project proposes new 
forms of connectivity to create a different understanding of our 
relation to the world.
116
Sumario
Infrafaces: Ensayos sobre la interacción artística. 
Las paradojas aparecen en todo acto. Son parte de todo ejercicio e 
interacción, surgen en todas las áreas del conocimiento: en la episte­
mología (cuanto más sabemos, menos entendemos). Obviamente, 
también en las matemáticas, en la física, en la lógica, o incluso en 
el arte, la frase de Picasso nos parece muy relevante: “El arte en sí 
es una mentira que nos acerca a la verdad.” Este trabajo se nutre de 
varias de estas paradojas, como la de la tecnología o la del espacio 
infinito. Algunas de estas contradicciones fueron formando lo que 
sería el argumento de la presente tesis. 
En un principio se enfocó en el diseño de interfaces, en el 
desarrollo de modelos de interacción en el contexto artístico, pero 
se pasó del diseño de las interfaces a algo más allá de sus funciones 
racionales y predecibles. Este proyecto fue cambiando paulati­
namente por varias razones: el entendimiento de que casi todo 
 puede funcionar o ser una interfaz (incluso nuestros organismos), 
reconocer que nuestros sentidos también son una técnica y, por 
supuesto, la reflexión de que las paradojas conllevan un potencial 
creativo y otra forma de entendimiento.
Todo lo que ayude a intercambiar información, a controlar 
o, por lo menos, a entender el entorno, o todo aquello que se use 
como sistemas de interpretación y que facilite la cone xión entre 
elementos, actúa como una interfaz. Por lo tanto, una  interfaz no 
está limitada al diseño de herramientas para manejar información 
con o por medio de la tecnología, sino que existe en todos los fenó­
menos culturales, incluso en el lenguaje. Sin embargo, una interfaz 
puede contener otras interfaces y estas, a su vez, incluir aún más. 
Esta paradójica repetición ad infinitum  puede crear interminables 
laberintos que nos invitan a explorarlos una y otra vez. Los espacios 
intermedios e infinitos, como hemos visto, no solo son creados en 
el mundo físico, sino que ocurren en toda interacción. En el con­
tacto entre dos o más  elementos se crea un área de transformación, 
una línea, una frontera, un espacio cambiante y de intercambio. 
Es precisamente este espacio el que nos interesa, porque puede ser 
extendido e incluir nuevos espacios. Todo espacio físico o tempo­
ral puede ser manipulado, dividido, extendido, alargado, etc. Estos 
lugares interconectados entre los elementos forman a su vez, al ser 
117
transformados, interminables cadenas de definiciones cambiantes, 
y aunque ello pueda llevarnos a otra paradoja, no tiene que ser 
necesa riamente negativo. Este espacio puede ser expropiado por el 
arte y abrir una oportunidad creativa. La posibilidad de jugar con 
las conexiones entre estos elementos – en lugar de rechazarlos por 
su naturaleza cambiante y paradójica – es uno de los fundamentos 
principales del concepto al que se denominó infrafaz.
La infrafaz es una interpretación artística de los procesos 
de interactividad. Es lo que ocurre más allá de la creación de las 
interfaces. Las infrafaces tienen la habilidad de extender o retrasar 
un área física o temporal para incluir nuevas historias. Crear infra-
faces es una manera diferente de crear interfaces para apoderarnos 
de los espacios intermedios en una interacción. De esta manera, 
y especialmente en el arte interactivo, se puede transformar una 
zona de contacto – una interfaz – en una nueva zona activa, en una 
zona viva, en definitiva, en una infrafaz. Las infrafaces crean nuevos 
espacios intermedios entre el espectador y el arte, y vinculan esta 
zona de acuerdo a las intenciones del artista. La idea de expandir 
el tiempo o el espacio para insertar nuevas narrativas es la base del 
neologismo aquí presentado: la infrafaz. 
Mientras que una interfaz se preocupa por establecer una 
conexión funcional y previsible, una infrafaz, por el contrario, se 
concentra en el momento de interacción para extenderlo o retrasar­
lo. Asimismo, paradójicamente, una interfaz puede tanto unirnos 
como separarnos de nuestro entorno, lo que permite a su vez uti­
lizar provechosamente dicha relación en los campos artísticos.1  Tal 
como señalan Deleuze o Borges acerca del trabajo de Lewis Carroll. 
Los cinco ensayos presentados en la tesis se desarro llan en es­
tos nuevos espacios intermedios, abordan el tema de la interacción 
y juegan con la idea de atravesar líneas hacia un entendimiento, 
aunque a veces se detengan infinitamente en el proceso:
El primer capítulo es importante porque demuestra cómo la 
línea entre la ciencia y el arte, en el devenir de la historia, cam­
bia constantemente, se desliza, al igual que hace el sentido. De 
la misma manera se reafirma que las tecnologías conllevan una 
paradoja: desarrollamos un sentido a costa de otros. Así, nues­
tra historia es la historia de la tecnología y de las interfaces, 
el deseo de entender y dominar nuestro entorno, sin darnos 
cuenta de que en realidad, dicha historia es la de la adaptación 
de nuestros sentidos a las máquinas e interfaces. 
El segundo ensayo explica qué son las infrafaces y cómo estas se 
nutren de las paradojas, resaltando la diferencia entre una inf-
rafaz y una interfaz. Aristóteles fue probablemente el primero 
que propuso que el espacio y el tiempo podían ser divididos ad 
infinitum, y las infrafaces se aprovechan de los referidos espacios 
intermedios para insertar nuevas historias. 
1. “El arte tiene un poder virtual de reflexión; no solo emerge de tendencias 
hacia el automantenimiento, sino que también puede tomar estas tendencias 
como sus objetos, trabajando por destruir las imágenes de armonía, homeo-
stasis y equilibrio”. Colebrook, op. cit., p. 156.
118
El tercer capítulo está basado en una famosa partida de ajedrez 
disputada en 1997 entre un hombre y una computadora. Su 
intención es la de abrir una discusión sobre nuestra relación 
con la tecnología. No solo creamos cosas para asimilar el entor­
no; también el entorno se expresa a través de nosotros. De este 
modo se cuestiona la antigua división entre la physis y el tekné.
El cuarto ensayo es una variación de las posibilidades artísticas 
de las infrafaces y toma como punto de partida un suceso en 
la vida del escritor William Burroughs para explicar las poten­
cialidades del sinsentido y cómo este sirve de posibilidad de 
todo sentido. Lo importante es la idea de exponer y jugar con 
los falsos laberintos de la razón.
El último capítulo es un buen ejemplo del modo de aplicar el 
mencionado concepto en la práctica, y de cómo al ponernos a 
nosotros mismos como sujeto creativo se entrelaza la práctica 
con la teoría, el texto con la obra de arte.
Como el lector ya habrá notado, esta tesis no pretende proponer 
una definición ontológica de la realidad, ni tampoco ignorar las 
diferentes soluciones que varios autores han propuesto para resolver 
las paradojas. 
Estas últimas no solo son evidentes en la tecnología, sino en 
todo proceso cultural que requiere una interfaz, y pueden ayudar­
nos a obtener un acercamiento distinto al conocimiento.
Al jugar con las conexiones en los sistemas interactivos se 
descubrió un área más allá de la creación de las interfaces, a la que se 
denominó infrafaces, las cuales proponen un espacio nuevo para la 
realización del arte. Un arte que se resiste a ser explicado utilizando 
procesos funcionales y cuestiona nuestros sentidos y conocimientos 
habituales, por lo que tiene que encontrar sus propios métodos. De 
esta manera el presente proyecto propone nuevas formas de vincu­
larnos para crear un entendimiento distinto sobre la manera en que 
nos relacionamos unos con otros y con el mundo. 
119
Sammanfattning
Paradoxer förekommer i varje handling. De är en del av varje prak­
tik och uppstår i alla kunskapsområden. Så även i kunskapsteorin 
– ju mer vi vet desto mindre förstår vi. De förekommer i logik, 
matematik, fysik och till och med inom konst. Picassos ord verkar 
mycket relevanta: “Konst är en lögn som får oss att inse sanningen”. 
Detta avhandlingsprojekt har inspirerats av sådana paradoxer som 
teknikens paradox och paradoxen om den oändliga rymden. Under 
min forskning har jag mött några av dessa motsägelser och de har 
starkt påverkat den centrala argumentationen i denna avhandling. 
Jag gick från designen av gränssnitt till något som låg 
bortom den vanliga koncentrationen på  snittets logiska funk­
tioner. Till en början fokuserade jag på utformningen av gränss­
nitt och utvecklingen av modeller för tolkning i ett konstnär­
lig sammanhang. Men så småningom ändrades detta projekt. 
Det fanns flera skäl. Vid närmare betraktelse kan, till exempel, 
ett gränssnitt vara nästan vad som helst –inklusive våra kroppar. 
Våra sinnen kan ses som en form av teknik. Gradvis växte också 
övertygelsen fram att paradoxer bär på en kreativ potential och 
kan aktualisera andra former av förståelse än den funktionella. 
Allt som kan hjälpa oss att utbyta information, kontrollera 
eller förstå vår omgivning, liksom allt vi använder som en tolkn­
ingsram och för att kommunicera, kan fungera som ett gränssnitt. 
”Gränssnitt” handlar inte bara om utformning av specifik teknisk 
apparatur. Det finns gränssnitt i alla kulturella fenomen, även i 
själva språket. 
Men ett gränssnitt kan, i sin tur, innehålla ytterligare gräns­
snitt. När det uppstår kontakt mellan två eller flera element skapas 
ett omvandlingsområde – en linje, en gräns, ett mellanliggande och 
föränderligt utrymme. Det är detta utrymme som intresserar mig 
eftersom det kan visas omfatta dolda utrymmen. Varje fysisk och 
tidsmässig rymd kan delas upp, utvidgas, pausas, sträckas ut. Dessa 
nya utrymmen bildar oändliga öppningar för att introducera rör­
lighet i våra definitioner. Även om detta kan leda till en paradox, 
behöver det inte vara negativt. Det kan öppna en kreativ möjlighet, 
ett utrymme som kan utnyttjas praktiskt och konstnärligt. Möjlig­
heten att leka med förbindelserna mellan dessa nya element och ut­
rymmen – i stället för att avvisa dem på grund av deras paradoxala 
natur – är en av grunderna till begreppet Infraface. 
120
Ett gränssnitt kan, paradoxalt nog, både förena och skilja oss från 
vår omgivning. Men denna paradox kan ändå ha en viktig funktion 
i konst eller litteratur. Både Deleuze eller Borges har pekat på detta 
inslag i Lewis Carrolls arbete. På samma sätt skapar upprepningar 
ad infinitum oändliga labyrinter som inbjuder oss att utforska dem 
om och om igen. Dessa oändliga utrymmen skapas inte bara i de 
fysikaliska fenomenen utan även i varje interaktion.
Medan ett gränssnitt eller interface syftar till en funktionell 
logisk förbindelse, fokuserar ett infraface på kontaktögonblicket 
och förstorar eller fördröjer denna så att en ny plats kan framträda. 
Idén att expandera ett rum eller ett ögonblick i tiden för att infoga 
nya berättelser; idén att en plats kan delas upp och omfatta ett an­
nat utrymme, en berättelse i en berättelse, en tid i en annan tid; 
idén att en sådan delbarhet är essentiellt oändlig – dessa idéer utgör 
grunden för den neologism ”Infraface” som här presenteras.
Infraface är en konstnärlig tolkning av den interaktiva pro­
cessen. Det är vad som möjliggörs inom ett gränssnitts oändliga 
delbarhet. Det är möjligheten att leka med nya sammankopplingar, 
liksom möjligheten att förlänga ett fysiskt område eller fördröja ett 
utrymme i tid så att nya berättelser får utrymme. Infrafacing är 
ett annorlunda sätt att utveckla gränssnitt och syftar till annektera 
ännu obrukade utrymmen inom en kontaktyta. På detta sätt kan 
konst, och i synnerhet interaktiv konst, förvandla ett kontaktom­
råde – gränssnittet – till en ny aktiv zon, en levande zon, inom 
ramen för ett infraface. Således skapar infraface också ett nytt mel­
lanrum mellan konst och åskådaren och aktiverar detta område en­
ligt konstnärens intentioner. 
 
Avhandlingens fem essäer ger fem olika infallsvinklar på fenomenet 
infraface. Essäernas innehåll är som följer
 
Den första essän visar hur gränsen mellan vetenskap och 
konst ständigt förändras genom historien. Samtidigt bekräf­
tas att teknisk utveckling är paradoxal – vi utvecklar ett sinnes­
intryck på bekostnad av andra. Essän är en historisk berättelse 
om teknikens gränssnitt, om hur teknik uttrycker en önskan att 
kontrollera omgivningen. Den handlar också om hur svårt det 
kan vara att inifrån processen inse hur våra perceptioner själva 
gradvis anpassas till våra gränssnitt under loppet av historien.
Den andra essän förklarar vad Infrafaces är och hur de får 
näring av paradoxer. Den betonar skillnaderna mellan ett interface 
och ett infraface. Xenons paradoxer bygger på föreställningen att 
tid och rum kan delas ad infinitum och infrafaces dra nytta av dessa 
uppdelningar för att infoga nya berättelser. Det viktigaste här är 
idén att paradoxer kan ses som kreativa utrymmen och inte bara 
oönskade och vilseledande labyrinter. 
Den tredje essän visar en variant av de konstnärliga möj­
ligheter som infrafaces erbjuder och tar sin utgångspunkt i en hän­
delse i Burroughs liv. Syftet är att förklara möjligheten för nonsens 
att ha mening. Meningslöshet ingår bland premisserna i skapandet 
av mening. 
121
Den fjärde essän är baserad på ett känt schackspel mellan en man 
och en dator och dess avsikt är att öppna en diskussion om vår 
relation till teknik. Vi kan inte skapa anordningar för att införliva 
naturen utan att samtidigt uppmärksamma hur naturen uttrycks 
genom oss. På det sättet utmanade jag en gammal uppdelning me­
llan physis och tekné.
Slutligen är den sista essän ett exempel på hur jag tillämpar 
mitt koncept i praktiken och genom att använda mig själv som ett 
kreativt subjekt sammanflätade jag teori med praktik, texten med 
det konstnärliga arbetet. Tanken att våra skapelser är reflekterande 
föremål ger mig möjligheten att reflektera över min egen praxis. 
Läsaren kommer att inse att denna avhandling inte är avsedd 
att föreslå en ontologisk definition av verkligheten och den vill he­
ller inte förneka de lösningar för olika paradoxer som flera författare 
redan har föreslagit. Men den vill framhäva att paradoxer faktiskt 
existerar såväl inom tekniken som inom alla kulturella processer 
som behöver ett gränssnitt. Genom att leka med sammankopp­
lingar i interaktiva system upptäckte jag hur det finns ett oändligt 
utrymme för infraface inom varje gränssnitt. Infrafaces föreslår en 
ny plats för konstnärlig produktion – en konstform som utmanar 
den funktionella förståelse som gränssnitt brukar behandlas med. 
Detta är en konst som måste hitta sina egna metoder, en konst som 
inte låter sig förstås av ett förnuft som fruktar det paradoxala. 
 
122
123
These exhibitions were presented in Sweden as a part of 
this research project.
An online documentation of these works can be seen at:
http://vimeo.com/tepez
http://tepez.com
124
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Digital Sources
Gabriel Orozcos’ interview: 
http://www.art21.org/texts/gabriel­orozco/interview­gabriel­orozco­
­games%E2%80%94ping­pong­billiards­and­chess
Newton’s biography:
http://www.britannica.com.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/EBchecked/topic/413189/
Sir-Isaac-Newton
Steve Jobs’ final words according to his sister Mona Simpsons’ Eulogy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona­simpsons­eulo­
gy­for­steve­jobs.html?pagewanted=all
About Dürer’s Melancholy: 
Charles, Victoria. Dürer. New York: Parkstone International, 2011. 
http://gu.eblib.com.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/patron/FullRecord.
aspx?p=791316 (accessed July 06, 2012)
Boyer, Carl B. (Carl Benjamin), 1906­1976.The History of the Calcu-
lus and its Conceptual Development. 
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b4062565
Deep Blue chess computer:
http://www.britannica.com.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/EBchecked/top­
ic/155485/Deep­Blue
Piacenza Liver:
The Shadows of the Bronze of Piacenza by E. Galeotti­Heywood, Re­
view by: W. M. Lindsay
The Classical Review, Vol. 36, No. 7/8 (Nov. ­ Dec., 1922), p. 193
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/stable/700792 
Author’s home site: 
http://www. tepez.com
130
List of Figures
f.01, Calchas, Etruscan bronze mirror (ca. 400 BC), Vatican mu­
seum.
f.02, Diego Rivera, Man Controlling the Universe, 1934 
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Palacio_de_
Bellas_Artes__Mural_El_Hombre_in_cruce_de_caminos_Rivera_3.jpg
Mexico City. Palacio de Bellas Artes: Mural “El Hombre en la encru­
cijada” ( 1934 ) by Diego Rivera (part).
f.03,Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where 
Are We Going?, 1898.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Woher_kommen_wir_Wer_sind_
wir_Wohin_gehen_wir.jpg
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
f.04, William Blake, Newton, 1795.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Newton­WilliamBlake.jpg
f.05, Johannes Vermeer, The Geographer, 1668
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/The_Geogra­
pher.jpg
f.06, A modern version of Toscanelli’s map 1474.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Atlantic_
Ocean%2C_Toscanelli%2C_1474.jpg
f.07, Piacenza liver, 100AD.    
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Piacenza_
Bronzeleber.jpg
f.08,  iPhone4, 2010
f.09, Marcel Duchamp, Rotary Glass Plates, 1920.
http://www.lylaandblu.com/image/29844767073
f.10, Nam June Paik, Family of robots, 1986.
http://www.fact.co.uk/media/6329614/NJP%20postcard%20front­1.jpg
f.11, Albrecht Dürer, Melancholy, 1505
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/
D%C3%BCrer_Melancholia_I.jpg
f.12, Gabriel Orozco, Ping Pond Table, 1998.
http://jmfyoungartistprogram.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/series­
concept­gabriel­orozco/#jp­carousel­129
All other images by the author.
131
Doctoral dissertations and licentiate theses published at the Faculty 
of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg:
1. Monica Lindgren (Music Education)
Att skapa ordning för det estetiska i skolan. Diskursiva positionerin-
gar i samtal med lärare och skolledare
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2006
ISBN: 91-975911-1-4
2. Jeoung-Ah Kim (Design)
Paper-Composite Porcelain. Characterisation of Material Properties 
and Workability from a Ceramic Art Design Perspective
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2006
ISBN: 91-975911-2-2
3. Kaja Tooming (Design)
Toward a Poetics of Fibre Art and Design. Aesthetic and Acoustic 
Qualities of Hand-tued Materials in Interior Spatial Design
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2007
ISBN: 978-91-975911-5-7
4. Vidar Vikören (Musical Performance and Interpretation)
Studier omkring artikulasjon i tysk romantisk orgelmusikk, 1800–
1850. Med et tillegg om registreringspraksis
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2007
ISBN: 978-91-975911-6-4
5. Maria Bania (Musical Performance and Interpretation)
“Sweetenings” and “Babylonish Gabble”: Flute Vibrato and Articula-
tion of Fast Passages in the 18th and 19th centuries
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2008
ISBN: 978-91-975911-7-1
6. Svein Erik Tandberg (Musical Performance and Interpretation)
Imagination, Form, Movement and Sound - Studies in Musical
Improvisation
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2008
ISBN: 978-91-975911-8-8
7. Mike Bode and Staffan Schmidt (Fine Arts)
Off the Grid
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2008
ISBN: 978-91-977757-0-0
8. Otto von Busch (Design)
Fashion-Able: Hacktivism and Engaged Fashion Design
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2008
ISBN: 978-91-977757-2-4
9. Magali Ljungar Chapelon (Digital Representation)
Actor-Spectator in a Virtual Reality Arts Play. Towards new artistic 
experiences in between illusion and reality in immersive virtual envi-
ronments
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2008
ISBN: 978-91-977757-1-7
132
10. Marie-Helene Zimmerman Nilsson (Music Education)
Musiklärares val av undervisningsinnehåll. En studie om musi-
kundervisning i ensemble och gehörs- och musiklära inom gym-
nasieskolan
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2009
ISBN: 978-91-977757-5-5
11. Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir (Fine Arts)
Spaces of Encounter: Art and Revision in Human-Animal Relations
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2009
ISBN: 978-91-977757-6-2
12. Anders Tykesson (Musical Performance and Interpretation)
Musik som handling: Verkanalys, interpretation och musikalisk ge-
staltning. Med ett studium av Anders Eliassons Quartetto d‘Archi
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2009
ISBN: 978-91-977757-7-9
13. Harald Stenström (Musical Performance and Interpretation)
Free Ensemble Improvisation
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2009
ISBN: 978-91-977757-8-6
14. Ragnhild Sandberg Jurström (Music Education)
Att ge form åt musikaliska gestaltningar. En socialsemiotisk studie av 
körledares multimodala kommunikation i kör
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2009
ISBN: 978-91-977757-9-3
15. David Crawford (Digital Representation)
Art and the Real-time Archive: Relocation, Remix, Response
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2009
ISBN: 978-91-977758-1-6
16. Kajsa G Eriksson (Design)
Concrete Fashion: Dress, Art, and Engagement in Public Space
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2009
ISBN: 978-91-977758-4-7
17. Henric Benesch (Design)
Kroppar under träd – en miljö för konstnärlig forskning
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2010
ISBN: 978-91-977758-6-1
18. Olle Zandén (Music Education)
Samtal om samspel. Kvalitetsuppfattningar i musiklärares dialoger 
om ensemblespel på gymnasiet
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2010
ISBN: 978-91-977758-7-8
19. Magnus Bärtås (Fine Arts)
You Told Me – work stories and video essays / verkberättelser och 
videoessäer
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2010
ISBN: 978-91-977758-8-5
20. Sven Kristersson (Musical Performance and Interpretation)
Sångaren på den tomma spelplatsen – en poetik. Att gestalta Gil-
gamesheposet och sånger av John Dowland och Evert Taube
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2010
ISBN: 978-91-977758-9-2
21. Cecilia Wallerstedt (Research on Arts Education)
Att peka ut det osynliga i rörelse. En didaktisk studie av taktart i 
musik
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2010
ISBN: 978-91-978477-0-4
133
22. Cecilia Björck (Music Education)
Claiming Space: Discourses on Gender, Popular Music, and Social 
Change
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2011
ISBN: 978-91-978477-1-1
23. Andreas Gedin (Fine Arts)
Jag hör röster överallt – Step by Step
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2011
ISBN: 978-91-978477-2-8
24. Lars Wallsten (Photographic Representation)
Anteckningar om Spår
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2011
ISBN: 978-91-978477-3-5
25. Elisabeth Belgrano (Performance in Theatre and Drama)
“Lasciatemi morire” o farò “La Finta Pazza”: Embodying Vocal Noth-
ingness on Stage in Italian and French 17th century Operatic La-
ments and Mad Scenes  
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2011
ISBN: 978-91-978477-4-2
26. Christian Wideberg (Research on Arts Education)
Ateljésamtalets utmaning – ett bildningsperspektiv
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2011
ISBN: 978-91-978477-5-9
27. Katharina Dahlbäck (Research on Arts Education)
Musik och språk i samverkan. En aktionsforskningsstudie i årskurs 1
ArtMonitor, licentiate thesis. Göteborg, 2011
ISBN: 978-91-978477-6-6
28. Katharina Wetter Edman (Design)
Service design - a conceptualization of an emerging practice
ArtMonitor, licentiate thesis. Göteborg, 2011
ISBN: 978-91-978477-7-3
29. Tina Carlsson (Fine Arts)
the sky is blue
Kning Disk, diss. Göteborg, 2011
ISBN: 978-91-976667-2-5
30. Per Anders Nilsson (Musical Performance and Interpretation)
A Field of Possibilities: Designing and Playing Digital Musical Instru-
ments
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2011
ISBN: 978-91-977477-8-0
31. Katarina A Karlsson (Musical Performance and Interpretation)
Think’st thou to seduce me then? Impersonating female personas in 
songs by Thomas Campion (1567-1620)
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2011
32. Lena Dahlén (Performance in Theatre and Drama)
Jag går från läsning till gestaltning - beskrivningar ur en monolog-
praktik
Gidlunds förlag, diss. Göteborg, 2012
ISBN: 978-91-7844-840-1
33. Martín Ávila (Design)
Devices. On Hospitality, Hostility and Design
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2012
ISBN: 978-91-979993-0-4
134
34. Anniqa Lagergren (Research on Arts Education)
Barns musikkomponerande i tradition och förändring
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2012
ISBN: 978-91-979993-1-1
35. Ulrika Wänström Lindh (Design)
Light Shapes Spaces: Experience of Distribution of Light and Visual 
Spatial Boundaries
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2012
ISBN: 978-91-979993-2-8
36. Sten Sandell (Musical Performance and Interpretation)
På insidan av tystnaden
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2013
ISBN: 978-91-979993-3-5
37. Per Högberg (Musical Performance and Interpretation)
Orgelsång och psalmspel. Musikalisk gestaltning av församlingssång.
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2013
ISBN: 978-91-979993-4-2
38. Fredrik Nyberg (Literary Composition, Poetry and Prose)
Hur låter dikten? Att bli ved II
Autor, diss. Göteborg, 2013
ISBN 978-91-979948-2-8
39. Marco Muñoz (Digital Representation)
Infrafaces
ArtMonitor, diss. Göteborg, 2013
ISBN: 978-91-979993-5-9
The Journal ArtMonitor:
ArtMonitor – En tidskri om konstnärlig forskning från konstnärliga
fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet. No 1, 2007
Johan Öberg (ed.)
ArtMonitor, Göteborg, 2007
ISSN: 1653-9958
ISBN: 978-91-975911-4-0
Konstens plats / The Place of Art
ArtMonitor – En tidskri om konstnärlig forskning från konstnärliga
fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet. No 2, 2008
Johan Öberg (ed.)
ArtMonitor, Göteborg, 2008
ISSN: 1653-9958
ISBN: 978-91-977758-0-9
Frictions
ArtMonitor – En tidskri om konstnärlig forskning från konstnärliga
fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet. No 3, 2008
Johan Öberg (ed.)
ArtMonitor, Göteborg, 2008
ISSN: 1653-9958
ISBN: 978-91-975911-9-5
Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Something – Four perspectives on artistic
research
ArtMonitor – En tidskri om konstnärlig forskning från konstnärliga
135
fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet. No 4, 2008
Johan Öberg (ed.)
Guest editor: Mika Hannula
Art Monitor, Göteborg, 2008
ISSN: 1653-9958
ISBN: 978-91-977757-3-1
The Politics of Magma – A research report on artistic interventions in 
post
political society
ArtMonitor – En tidskri om konstnärlig forskning från konstnärliga
fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet. No 5, 2008
Johan Öberg (ed.)
Guest editor: Mats Rosengren
ArtMonitor, Göteborg, 2008
ISSN: 1653-9958
ISBN: 978-91-977757-4-8
There will always be those that slam on the brakes & say this is wrong...
ArtMonitor – En tidskri om konstnärlig forskning från konstnärliga
fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet. No 6, 2009
Johan Öberg (ed.)
ArtMonitor, Göteborg, 2009
ISSN: 1653-9958
ISBN: 978-91-977758-3-0
Musikens plats
ArtMonitor – En tidskri om konstnärlig forskning från konstnärliga
fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet. No 7, 2009
Johan Öberg (ed.)
ArtMonitor, Göteborg, 2009
ISSN: 1653-9958  ISBN: 978-91-978475-0-6
ArtText
ArtMonitor – En tidskri om konstnärlig forskning från konstnärliga
fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet. No 8, 2010
Johan Öberg (ed.)
ArtMonitor, Göteborg, 2010
ISSN: 1653-9958  ISBN: 978-91-978475-1-3
Passionen för det reala: nya rum
ArtMonitor – En tidskri om konstnärlig forskning från konstnärliga
fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet. No 9, 2010
Johan Öberg (ed.)
ArtMonitor, Göteborg, 2010
ISSN: 1653-9958  ISBN: 978-91-978475-2-0
Distribution: www.konst.gu.se/artmonitor
This thesis, Infrafaces, is about interactivity and analyzes what is happening at the 
exact moment of contact and information exchange when two or more elements 
 connect. The thesis consists of five essays intertwined with interactive works of art 
where the author was the subject of his own artistic research. It states that in any 
interaction a new place arises, but this place is paradoxical in the sense that it both 
separates and unifies and it can be extended ad finitum. This artistic interpretation of 
the process of interactivity is what is called the infrafaces. Infraface is an artistic inter­
pretation of the process of interactivity. It is what occurs beyond interfacing. In this 
manner this essay seeks to encourage a different understanding of our environment 
by means of interaction.
     Marco Muñoz, also known as Tepez, was born in Mexico City where he completed 
his education in Visual Communication at the National Academy of Arts. Presently, 
M M T lives and work as an artist in Gothenburg and Mexico City. Tepez works and 
experiments mainly with interactive installations and video projections.
136
M
arco M
u
ñ
oz              Infrafaces
ISBN: 978­91­979993­5­9
A B
C (Infraface)
A B
C (Infraface)
C (Infraface)