Within the framework of my onticology, I define objects not in terms of their qualities, but rather in terms of their powers or the acts of which they are capable. The substantiality of an object lies not in its actualized qualities, but rather in its powers. Qualities, by contrast, are actions on the part of an object. As I argued in “The Mug Blues“, the blue of my beloved mug is not a fixed and static quality of my mug, but is rather something my mug does under specific lighting conditions. The mug thus has, on the one hand, a “coloring power”, and on the other hand engages in actualized acts whereby the mug does a specific color as a function of its exo-relations to wavelengths of light and different neurological systems, etc. If it is necessary to distinguish between the coloring power of the mug and the blue of the mug, then this is because the mug can produce many other different shades of color depending on variations in lighting conditions. The power is broader than the quality actualized. Who knows what my mug would look like on another planet orbiting a red dwarf star?
This is one way, I think, of understanding Bogost’s unit operations. Ian’s thesis, as I understand it, is not simply that the world is composed of discrete units or substances that are then configured in a variety of ways. For Ian, I believe, the emphasis is not so much on the units, but the operations that follow from units. As with my virtual proper being, attractors, and phase spaces, units act differently when they enter into different contexts or different exo-relations, producing different qualities and possibilities as a result of these couplings. These operations can be the emergence of new qualities with new couplings or exo-relations, or it can be the emergence of new operations users are encouraged to carry out as a result of being coupled to these entities. What Ian wants to think is the becomings and qualities produced as a result of couplings among these nomadic units that only temporarily form stable and long-standing relations.
This is one way of understanding McLuhan’s notorious aphorism that the medium is the message. What McLuhan wanted us to notice is not so much the content of media, what they express in their representational dimension, but rather how media affect new operations in users of media. We should look to the medium itself, says McLuhan, to understand the message. In a striking example in Laws of Media, McLuhan points out that few people would dowse a child in gasoline and light a match. However, many have no compunctions about pushing a button in an airplane to release incendiary devices on civilians doing exactly the same thing. The firebombing of Dresden depicted in harrowing detail by Kurt Vonnegut comes to mind. And this really is the point. Somehow this medium– the airplane, bombs, buttons, etc. –changes our way of relating to one another. These media afford new operations, new local manifestations (the act of the bomber), that didn’t before appear in the world. One way of understanding local manifestation is thus in terms of unit operations. What operations take place as a result of the deterritorialization of certain units and their reterritorialization on other units?
Larval Subjects . 
August 11, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Right. Units are aggregates that function as systems, but which are always amenable to recombination (this is why I find Badiou’s use of set theory useful). Units have logics. Logics have behavior (they operate). Those logics are both internal to the objects (often resulting from emergence) and external to the objects–they extend beyond its boundaries, often characterizing different units. This is directly related to Levi’s weird mereology.
(This is also why the idea of an object’s “creation,” as was debated recently on this blog, is of only modest interest to me. This is also why the “assemblage” is insufficient, since D&G want assemblage to replace behavior, and because it tends toward a positive feedback loop of all-inclusive Anaximanderian apeiron.)
This theory was already proto-OOO when I wrote it, although it does require some work to reconcile with OOO.
August 11, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Ian Bogost: “This is also why the “assemblage” is insufficient, since D&G want assemblage to replace behavior, and because it tends toward a positive feedback loop of all-inclusive Anaximanderian apeiron.”
Yes. This is precisely my issue with D&G. In my terms, what emerges from the feedback loop is a “new and improved” (in my language) upgrade of Nature. Objects qua objects disappear.
August 11, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Nice post Levi,
I wouldn’t rule out the importance of configurability in Unit Operations. Bogost’s Operation is basically built to accommodate both artistic and technological acts in the broadest sense. That of computational execution and procedural transformation. It is the glue that holds units together and causes holism to expand as well reconfiguring it.
I do find the operation of Unit Operations to be the most fascinating part ontologically. Consider that Ian does not rule out system operations outright, only that unit operation configure systems operations into new types of systems. It is amazing how this methodology hasn’t been taken up. Although in email conversation with Ian, he knows how there is dividing line in its reception, between impenetrability and lucidity. I’ve met plenty of game researchers in the UK, who quite frankly have admitted they don’t understand it, or have ignored its philosophical influences.
August 11, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Although in email conversation with Ian, he knows how there is dividing line in its reception, between impenetrability and lucidity. I’ve met plenty of game researchers in the UK, who quite frankly have admitted they don’t understand it, or have ignored its philosophical influences.
This has been a strange experience, overall. I’ve never been sure what to think of it, and I remain unsure. On the one hand, it’s great to see the ontological part of UO finally taken up. On the other hand, books are porous objects and one cannot expect them always to be encountered as wholes. For most game folk, the latter half of UO is what interests them.
August 11, 2010 at 7:01 pm
“books are porous objects and one cannot expect them always to be encountered as wholes”
Indeed.
Its worthy of a Luhmann distinction itself. And it should be considered as a slap in the face of Analytic Philosophy. If the structured arguments of UO ontology are ignored in favour of the consequential analysis of video games, then from my perspective that suggests arguments aren’t building blocks. You can take units out and work with them.
August 11, 2010 at 8:16 pm
[…] 11, 2010 Levi on Ian’s book, HERE. With useful comments added by Bogost, Jackson, Morton so far. Posted by doctorzamalek Filed in […]