ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we turned our attention from the dynamic, ephemeral and non-equipmental hypersurface of agency to the analogies of computer-as-pet and computer-as-soft toy. It is now time for a final volution, gyrating from involution to revolution. Foremost, this means analysing which methods of extrication, explanation, exterpretation of digital capacities may apply to a design process that includes poetics as strategies. For example digital mimesis, digital metareproduction, reflection.
Mimesis could provide a valid modus operandi for approaching digitality because it is a way of liaising with the other (the alien), and of producing poetics. Actually the etymological derivation of mimesis stems from the root ma [to measure] via μῖμος [mimos: mime, actor] and μιμητική [dance]. It conveys a strong notion of theatricality, nonetheless including under its umbrella all the arts and crafts. In antiquity, all the arts and crafts that performed mimetic actions had the skills of producing poiesis. With those skills, works of art were capable of recollecting man’s old apprehensive dialogue with the other. This, by recomposing a ‘decomposed (or deconstructed, if you will) image’, asserts Joseph Rykwert, ‘through the gestures of the craft by which the artifact was fabricated’.1
