R&L Logo R&L Logo
  • GENERAL
    • Browse by Subjects
    • New Releases
    • Coming Soon
    • Chases's Calendar
  • ACADEMIC
    • Textbooks
    • Browse by Course
    • Instructor's Copies
    • Monographs & Research
    • Reference
  • PROFESSIONAL
    • Education
    • Intelligence & Security
    • Library Services
    • Business & Leadership
    • Museum Studies
    • Music
    • Pastoral Resources
    • Psychotherapy
  • FREUD SET
Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
eBook
share of facebook share on twitter
Add to GoodReads

Contingent Computation

Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics

M. Beatrice Fazi

In Contingent Computation, M. Beatrice Fazi offers a new theoretical perspective through which we can engage philosophically with computing. The book proves that aesthetics is a viable mode of investigating contemporary computational systems. It does so by advancing an original conception of computational aesthetics that does not just concern art made by or with computers, but rather the modes of being and becoming of computational processes. Contingent Computation mobilises the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead in order to address aesthetics as an ontological study of the generative potential of reality. Through a novel philosophical reading of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and of Turing’s notion of incomputability, Fazi finds this potential at the formal heart of computational systems, and argues that computation is a process of determining indeterminacy. This indeterminacy, which is central to computational systems, does not contradict their functionality. Instead, it drives their very operation, albeit in a manner that might not always fit with the instrumental, representational and cognitivist purposes that we have assigned to computing.

  • Details
  • Details
  • Author
  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
  • Reviews
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 248 • Trim: 6¼ x 9
978-1-78660-608-2 • Hardback • November 2018 • $166.00 • (£129.00)
978-1-5381-4706-1 • Paperback • August 2020 • $54.00 • (£42.00)
978-1-78660-609-9 • eBook • November 2018 • $51.00 • (£39.00)
Series: Media Philosophy
Subjects: Philosophy / Aesthetics, Philosophy / Movements / Critical Theory, Philosophy / Philosophy of Technology
M. Beatrice Fazi is Lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex. Her primary areas of expertise are the philosophy of computation, the philosophy of technology and the emerging field of media philosophy.

Introduction / Part I Aesthetics / 1. Continuity versus Discreteness / 2. Computation / 3. Processes / Part II Abstraction / 4. Computational Idealism / 5. Axiomatics / 6. Limits and Potential / Part III Experience / 7. Computational Empiricism / 8. Factuality / 9. Actuality / Conclusion

Contingent Computation by M. Beatrice Fazi is a brilliantly original work arguing that the contingent does not lie outside computation but at its very heart, in the demonstrations by Gödel and Turing that some problems are incomputable and that formal systems, including computational axiomatics, are incomplete. Her approach opens our understanding of what computers can—and cannot—do to new modes of analysis that introduce contingency into technical systems in an entirely new way, refuting views that see computers as merely mechanical systems incapable of novelty. Highly recommended for humanities scholars and others interested in thinking about the role that computers play in a world that remains unknowable in its full complexity.


— N. Katherine Hayles, Distinguished Research Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles


This remarkable book proposes a radically new vision of computation: one that will equally surprise the rationalists and cognitivists, on the one hand, and the vitalists and affectivists, on the other. M. Beatrice Fazi shows how Turing-style computing -- logical, discrete, and pre-programmed as it is -- also necessarily involves indeterminacy, novelty, and invention.
— Steven Shaviro, emeritus professor of English, Wayne State University


Contingent Computation provides many of the keys to understanding how computing now becomes the reality-forming device par excellence. At the same time, this daring and rigorous book offers new tools for aesthetics.
— Matthew Fuller, Professor of Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London


From aesthetics to abstraction and onwards to experience, M. Beatrice Fazi argues against the usual clichés about computation. Contingent Computation shows that media theorists and machines should be valued based at least on one thing in common: they don’t do just what you expect them to. Fazi’s take on computational indeterminacy is rigorous, rich and rewarding.
— Jussi Parikka, Professor in Technological Culture and Aesthetics, University of Southampton


Digital computation originated from formalizing the limits rather than the data processing power of computation. In the true spirit of the Media Philosophy book series, Fazi takes this as a chance to rethink the computer in favor of the unpredictable. While her argumentation, through the lenses of Whiteheadean terms, insists on the author's "me" against the computational "it", it will be emerging non-classical computers themselves which will truly appreciate the message of this book.
— Wolfgang Ernst, Professor of Media Theories, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany


Contingent Computation

Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics

Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
eBook
Summary
Summary
  • In Contingent Computation, M. Beatrice Fazi offers a new theoretical perspective through which we can engage philosophically with computing. The book proves that aesthetics is a viable mode of investigating contemporary computational systems. It does so by advancing an original conception of computational aesthetics that does not just concern art made by or with computers, but rather the modes of being and becoming of computational processes. Contingent Computation mobilises the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead in order to address aesthetics as an ontological study of the generative potential of reality. Through a novel philosophical reading of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and of Turing’s notion of incomputability, Fazi finds this potential at the formal heart of computational systems, and argues that computation is a process of determining indeterminacy. This indeterminacy, which is central to computational systems, does not contradict their functionality. Instead, it drives their very operation, albeit in a manner that might not always fit with the instrumental, representational and cognitivist purposes that we have assigned to computing.

Details
Details
  • Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
    Pages: 248 • Trim: 6¼ x 9
    978-1-78660-608-2 • Hardback • November 2018 • $166.00 • (£129.00)
    978-1-5381-4706-1 • Paperback • August 2020 • $54.00 • (£42.00)
    978-1-78660-609-9 • eBook • November 2018 • $51.00 • (£39.00)
    Series: Media Philosophy
    Subjects: Philosophy / Aesthetics, Philosophy / Movements / Critical Theory, Philosophy / Philosophy of Technology
Author
Author
  • M. Beatrice Fazi is Lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex. Her primary areas of expertise are the philosophy of computation, the philosophy of technology and the emerging field of media philosophy.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Introduction / Part I Aesthetics / 1. Continuity versus Discreteness / 2. Computation / 3. Processes / Part II Abstraction / 4. Computational Idealism / 5. Axiomatics / 6. Limits and Potential / Part III Experience / 7. Computational Empiricism / 8. Factuality / 9. Actuality / Conclusion

Reviews
Reviews
  • Contingent Computation by M. Beatrice Fazi is a brilliantly original work arguing that the contingent does not lie outside computation but at its very heart, in the demonstrations by Gödel and Turing that some problems are incomputable and that formal systems, including computational axiomatics, are incomplete. Her approach opens our understanding of what computers can—and cannot—do to new modes of analysis that introduce contingency into technical systems in an entirely new way, refuting views that see computers as merely mechanical systems incapable of novelty. Highly recommended for humanities scholars and others interested in thinking about the role that computers play in a world that remains unknowable in its full complexity.


    — N. Katherine Hayles, Distinguished Research Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles


    This remarkable book proposes a radically new vision of computation: one that will equally surprise the rationalists and cognitivists, on the one hand, and the vitalists and affectivists, on the other. M. Beatrice Fazi shows how Turing-style computing -- logical, discrete, and pre-programmed as it is -- also necessarily involves indeterminacy, novelty, and invention.
    — Steven Shaviro, emeritus professor of English, Wayne State University


    Contingent Computation provides many of the keys to understanding how computing now becomes the reality-forming device par excellence. At the same time, this daring and rigorous book offers new tools for aesthetics.
    — Matthew Fuller, Professor of Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London


    From aesthetics to abstraction and onwards to experience, M. Beatrice Fazi argues against the usual clichés about computation. Contingent Computation shows that media theorists and machines should be valued based at least on one thing in common: they don’t do just what you expect them to. Fazi’s take on computational indeterminacy is rigorous, rich and rewarding.
    — Jussi Parikka, Professor in Technological Culture and Aesthetics, University of Southampton


    Digital computation originated from formalizing the limits rather than the data processing power of computation. In the true spirit of the Media Philosophy book series, Fazi takes this as a chance to rethink the computer in favor of the unpredictable. While her argumentation, through the lenses of Whiteheadean terms, insists on the author's "me" against the computational "it", it will be emerging non-classical computers themselves which will truly appreciate the message of this book.
    — Wolfgang Ernst, Professor of Media Theories, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany


ALSO AVAILABLE

  • Cover image for the book Kierkegaard's Concept of the Interesting: The Aesthetic Gulf in Either/Or I
  • Cover image for the book Philosophy of Jazz
  • Cover image for the book The Ethics of Ernst Lubitsch: Comedy Without Relief
  • Cover image for the book Fregean Realism: Frodo Lives! and Other Fictions
  • Cover image for the book Martial Arts and the Philosophy of Sport
  • Cover image for the book Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: An Introduction, Second Edition
  • Cover image for the book Aesthetic Expertise: An Exploration and Defense
  • Cover image for the book Quatremère de Quincy's On the Ideal in the Pictorial Arts
  • Cover image for the book Hypermodernity and Visuality
  • Cover image for the book Becoming Collingwood: Central Themes
  • Cover image for the book Once Upon a Time: Essays in the Philosophy of Literature
  • Cover image for the book Aesthetics Today: A Reader
  • Cover image for the book Between Nature and Culture: The Aesthetics of Modified Environments
  • Cover image for the book Beyond Mimesis: Aesthetic Experience in Uncanny Valleys
  • Cover image for the book Heidegger and Music
  • Cover image for the book Aesthetic Theory Across the Disciplines
  • Cover image for the book Baumgarten's Aesthetics: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives
  • Cover image for the book Aquinas on Beauty
  • Cover image for the book A New Cultural Theory of Aesthetics: Genes, Memes, Symbols, and Simulacra
  • Cover image for the book Beyond Words: Philosophy, Fiction, and the Unsayable
  • Cover image for the book The Aesthetics of Violence: Art, Fiction, Drama and Film
  • Cover image for the book Diffractive Reading: New Materialism, Theory, Critique
  • Cover image for the book New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics
  • Cover image for the book Van Gogh among the Philosophers: Painting, Thinking, Being
  • Cover image for the book The Aesthetics of Food: The Philosophical Debate About What We Eat and Drink
  • Cover image for the book Rhythmicity and Deleuze: Practice as Research in the Musical-Philosophical
  • Cover image for the book Figural Space: Semiotics and the Aesthetic Imaginary
  • Cover image for the book Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, Second Edition
  • Cover image for the book Living Off Landscape: or the Unthought-of in Reason
  • Cover image for the book Imagination Now: A Richard Kearney Reader
  • Cover image for the book An Aesthetic Critique of Digital Enhancement: Government of the Self and Desire
  • Cover image for the book Experiments in Listening
  • Cover image for the book Deleuze and the Humanities: East and West
  • Cover image for the book Kierkegaard's Concept of the Interesting: The Aesthetic Gulf in Either/Or I
  • Cover image for the book Philosophy of Jazz
  • Cover image for the book The Ethics of Ernst Lubitsch: Comedy Without Relief
  • Cover image for the book Fregean Realism: Frodo Lives! and Other Fictions
  • Cover image for the book Martial Arts and the Philosophy of Sport
  • Cover image for the book Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: An Introduction, Second Edition
  • Cover image for the book Aesthetic Expertise: An Exploration and Defense
  • Cover image for the book Quatremère de Quincy's On the Ideal in the Pictorial Arts
  • Cover image for the book Hypermodernity and Visuality
  • Cover image for the book Becoming Collingwood: Central Themes
  • Cover image for the book Once Upon a Time: Essays in the Philosophy of Literature
  • Cover image for the book Aesthetics Today: A Reader
  • Cover image for the book Between Nature and Culture: The Aesthetics of Modified Environments
  • Cover image for the book Beyond Mimesis: Aesthetic Experience in Uncanny Valleys
  • Cover image for the book Heidegger and Music
  • Cover image for the book Aesthetic Theory Across the Disciplines
  • Cover image for the book Baumgarten's Aesthetics: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives
  • Cover image for the book Aquinas on Beauty
  • Cover image for the book A New Cultural Theory of Aesthetics: Genes, Memes, Symbols, and Simulacra
  • Cover image for the book Beyond Words: Philosophy, Fiction, and the Unsayable
  • Cover image for the book The Aesthetics of Violence: Art, Fiction, Drama and Film
  • Cover image for the book Diffractive Reading: New Materialism, Theory, Critique
  • Cover image for the book New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics
  • Cover image for the book Van Gogh among the Philosophers: Painting, Thinking, Being
  • Cover image for the book The Aesthetics of Food: The Philosophical Debate About What We Eat and Drink
  • Cover image for the book Rhythmicity and Deleuze: Practice as Research in the Musical-Philosophical
  • Cover image for the book Figural Space: Semiotics and the Aesthetic Imaginary
  • Cover image for the book Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, Second Edition
  • Cover image for the book Living Off Landscape: or the Unthought-of in Reason
  • Cover image for the book Imagination Now: A Richard Kearney Reader
  • Cover image for the book An Aesthetic Critique of Digital Enhancement: Government of the Self and Desire
  • Cover image for the book Experiments in Listening
  • Cover image for the book Deleuze and the Humanities: East and West
facebook icon twitter icon instagram icon linked in icon NEWSLETTERS
ABOUT US
  • Mission Statement
  • Employment
  • Privacy
  • Accessibility Statement
CONTACT
  • Company Directory
  • Publicity and Media Queries
  • Rights and Permissions
  • Textbook Resource Center
AUTHOR RESOURCES
  • Royalty Contact
  • Production Guidelines
  • Manuscript Submissions
ORDERING INFORMATION
  • Rowman & Littlefield
  • National Book Network
  • Ingram Publisher Services UK
  • Special Sales
  • International Sales
  • eBook Partners
  • Digital Catalogs
IMPRINTS
  • Rowman & Littlefield
  • Lexington Books
  • Hamilton Books
  • Applause Books
  • Amadeus Press
  • Backbeat Books
  • Bernan
  • Hal Leonard Books
  • Limelight Editions
  • Co-Publishing Partners
  • Globe Pequot
  • Down East Books
  • Falcon Guides
  • Gooseberry Patch
  • Lyons Press
  • Muddy Boots
  • Pineapple Press
  • TwoDot Books
  • Stackpole Books
PARTNERS
  • American Alliance of Museums
  • American Association for State and Local History
  • Brookings Institution Press
  • Center for Strategic & International Studies
  • Council on Foreign Relations
  • Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
  • Fortress Press
  • The Foundation for Critical Thinking
  • Lehigh University Press
  • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • Other Partners...