Where is the present when the computer pulses at the wrist every day, when we’re globally interconnected in real time but don’t take in our ­selves for a single moment, just bits and pieces, just snatching a few intensities, when neurons plus communication already makes a consciousness? Is it nothing but a hallucination, in permanent crisis? Does it stand still, get wider, poorer?

 

How does the past change when systems record every second, saving them for the right moment or for all eternity, when contacts, mails, and ­calendar and movement data evaporate like spam in the cloud? Is it forgotten, does it become a lifelong case file, or just get older?

 

What will become of the future when algorithms synchronize our desires, calculate our life chances and mortality rates, when data sets determine our rights? Does it freeze up like a computer screen, does it melt like a glacier, or has it long since belonged to quite different beings?

 

When to switch off? What to look for? How to write? Which lines to draw? Whence self-recognition? DIAPHANES 3—TIME PROBE ZERO SYNTHESIS: ­authors, artists, theorists each with their uniquely discursive temporal sonars, in images, voices, texts, assemblages.