The Body and Maths

A quick reflection of Sean Cubitt and the body as a machine.
Sean did focus quite heavily on the negative impact that industrialisation has had on our physical selves. He had a quite Marxist approach to labour, working, the distribution of capital and the free market.


The positives that he seemed to overlook were how free markets and unreliability of employment has broadened peoples skill sets. Our generation is predicted to have a number of career changes and I dont see this as a negative at all. The more skills, the less boredom.
He also said that our bodies will not ever be able to live without machines. It is true, a little scary, but quite exciting. I love machines. Gadgets. Technology and machines along with science and western medicine have lengthened our life span and made us more productive. This ties in with how Stelarc saw machines as an extension of our body, an assistance to our limited capabilities. We are in a sense slaves to machines, always having to use them a certain way, repeating movements etc, but we hold the creating license to innovate them in order to make them better. And are they not slaves to us at the same time? programmed to do what we want?
The question is posed however, in many a sci-fi film; what happens when technology goes wrong? when human programmed robots attack our bodies instead of protecting them? This is where the Eastern thinking of Master Liu would chime in and say that the body can exist harmoniously without machines and often needs time away from them.
I must conclude that technology is an unavoidable means to an end. We need laptops, mobiles and the internet to survive globalised, capitalist society, but we also need to get away from them from time to time.

MATHS

Greg Hjorth presented the idea that pure mathematical theory is permanent, certain, immediate and precise.  It came from (rightly or wrongly decided) the Ancient Greeks. It came hand in hand with religion. Mathematicians were also deeply religious. Maybe this is why maths caught on so much, people before, people were natually compelled to believe in certain things; religion, maths, philosophical ideas.
Now we are much more free, religion is less common, yet maths is still an unquestionable constant. Were people less critical? less questioning? is it not time for a review of mathematics?

He aimed to highlight that althogh Mathematics has been created by the human brain and thus body, once it exists, it is more permanent, more correct, more unquestionable than our bodies. It is MORE of a machine than our bodies are claimed to be, because the theory, time and time again, will always work. Maths is thus a machine that always generates the right answer as long as you play by its rules.

In a world filled with human error where circles are never quite round, mathematics is a reliable procedure whereby if the rules are followed, the answer will always be correct; the circle always round. 

This is where the frustration lies whenever i try to interact with mathematics. all the faults are found in the human error and not in the theory, when, as an arts student, you wish and are told to challenge theory constantly. Your questioning and human error could one day prove to be philosophically profound.
Whereas maths is philosophy applied to numbers and NEVER REVISED. Unlike the body which is constantly revising and bettering itself through evolution, maths is this rigid structure that is for some reason, unchangeable.

Some parts of our body are unchangeable though. From the minute we are born we will look a certain way unless we happen to be in an accident. We are usually symmetrical, we usually have two of everything. So I guess maths can be applied to the understanding of our physical selves in some instances. And it does unite the world in an unprejudiced way, accross cultures, it is a shared cultural artefact.