Ethica, Work Without Obstacle: An Interview with Patrick Fontana

Patrick Fontana is a french artist. He takes notes dessinées (notes drawn) from philosophical seminars, books, to produce visual and sound digital installations, performance videos, and a free digital application of Spinoza’s Ethics. His latest project is called Ethica, Work Without Obstacle, which attempts to portray Spinoza’s Ethics in a novel way that will help people to understand it better. Recently, I asked Fontana several questions about this project, and his larger career goals, in an interview.

Unless otherwise mentioned, the pictures below are of notes dessinées used in the creation of Ethica. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Describe the project of the Ethica. What value does it offer to philosophers?

“I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.” Spinoza, Ethics III, Preface.

My desire has been, throughout  the development of Ethica, work without obstacle (early 2009), to propose an immediate meeting with the philosophy of Spinoza by directly immersing the reader in the textual structure of Ethics.

In contact with the philosophers that I met, my artistic research evolved. They were immediately very enthusiastic and today, more than 100 philosophers from around the world have already agreed to take part in the project. They helped me better understand Ethics and why this book is so important to its readers. They gave me keys to better know the man and his work, his life, his time. I also heard their expectations of a digital tool. They trusted me and encouraged me to develop Ethica.

Ethica, work without obstacle is a free internet application for internet and smartphones which proposes a digital and augmented edition of the Ethics by Spinoza (1632-1677).

Thanks to an unprecedented visualization of the text, Ethica makes visible the demonstrative network of the work. The user can see and read freely the text, explore it in a innovative and intuitive way.

By highlighting all its connections, this new digital edition also makes it possible to release all the sequences whose text carries. It thus helps to discover new ways of reading and understanding a work whose power, like that of the God of Spinoza, has not finished producing its effects.

It offers a digital edition of text in 4 languages : Latin, English, French and a new version in Brazilian in progress. Each translation is identical in terms of text design.

For copyright issues we have taken old versions of the text, except for the Brazilian translation of Roberto Brandào. I can not thank Mauricio Rocha (PUC-RIO, Law, Faculty member) enough for helping us find this translation. We hope to find unpublished translations in other languages. Ethica has been seen by more than 11 000 people from 77 different countries since it went online in November 2018.

Ethica proposes in its first version, two modes of readings :

• a linear mode like the paper book with the possibilities to open the referenced texts in the continuity of the reading. The effect produced looks like an accordion.
• A mode through the connections between texts which are presented by their titles that the user chooses to open or close to infinity.

The development of an application is expensive. It was also necessary to fund it. It also took a lot of time and in the end it was necessary to make painful choices for the first version to be operational for its first launch.

We hope that this online version will allow us to find new funding to continue our work.

We would like a new search time to consolidate the computer code with new libraries, to work on new tools like the ability to display two different synchronized translations, a graphic, the Rigorous Counterpoint, digital projections of texts, video commentaries by a hundred philosophers. Through their choices, they offer possible entries to understand Ethics and tracing an original approach to Spinozist philosophy.  Many philosophers can choose the same text, which opens the debate.

Artistic videos called External-nights  are also planned to create a vacancy of the mind, a disengagement of the computer tool, inviting to the dream and the reflection in the reception of the philosophy of Spinoza. All the details are on Ethica’s site of presentation, and are repeated here:

Author and producer: Patrick Fontana
Production: Emmanuel Ryz
Designers: Bachir Soussi Chiadmi, Kevin Tessier

Ethica, work without obstacle, is funded by Conseil régional des Hauts de France, and FEDER, a thematic and structuring project 2015-2018 of the University of Picardy Jules Verne.

Patrick Fontana received in 2013, the grant Brouillon d’un Rêve Pierre Schaeffer from Société Civile des Auteurs Multimédia (French multimedia publishing rights society) (SCAM), and the grant aide à l’écriture et au développement aux nouveaux médias from Centre National du Cinéma et de l’image animée, France, (CNC), with the unanimous decision of the jury. Patrick Fontana and TYGRYZ Compagny, received in 2016, the grant aide à la production DICREAM from Centre National du Cinéma et de l’image animée, France, (CNC).

Ethica has been hosted and supported (2015-2016) by the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’homme, Paris.
The Social and Political Thought Research Group, Brunel University of London participated in the financing of Ethica’s teaser in 2015.

What I like about the Ethica is how it makes use of new technologies in order to help us see a major philosophical text in a new way. Can you comment on the technologies that the Ethica employs?

“Rethinking the interfaces of knowledge/ While most of his projects are embodied in online interfaces, the digital humanities – this field at the crossroads of computer science and humanities and social sciences – have not been concerned with design issues. The almost systematic use of automated publication formats (templates, etc.) shows that the sensitive aspect still exists, even when it is unthought. If the computer / SHS couple gives way to design, digital humanities could then become a critical laboratory for changes in culture in contact with digital technologies.”  Anthony Masure, Teacher-researcher in design

The fact that it is an artist who proposes a digital tool likely to be used in the context of a university research moves the stakes of the production of knowledge, in fact, by the way the application is conceived in a sensitive mode, with a strong design.

The choice of the digital application was quickly imposed because it allowed me to expose the text in an innovative way. So I spent a lot of time learning what it takes to build a digital app. I have no skills in this area. It took me a long time to understand the tools, and find the right people to achieve Ethica.

Naturally, the project had to be realized in an open source context. I am committed to the issues of free and common good. My meeting with the designer Bachir Soussi Chiadmi allowed me to fully realize this application of which all sources of design and codes of it will be shared under free license Gnu GPLv2 via a deposit lies.

Bachir Soussi Chiadmi launched the non-profit organization OLA (outils libres alternatifs) which aims to promote and share free (libre) and open source tools in the fields of artistic creation through practice-based methodology based on the organization of workshops leds by practitioners. In 2016 he co-cofounded Figures Libres, a collective animated by socially-engaged concerns, with the aim of : 1. Carrying the messages by clients with a public, social and cultural utility. 2. Working on free software to create without consuming, to release information, interact and mutually enrich each other. Bachir Soussi Chiadmi is a teacher at ESADHaR le Havre (art school in France).

Here is a description of the technologies used for Ethica.

The database

We are developing a JSON database model adapted to Spinoza’s Ethics, allowing us to dynamically load content into the interface and also to share these contents in a standardized way. This bdd model is constantly evolving in relation to the development of the project.

We also developed a routine python we allow to recover the different versions of the Ethics available in free right on internet as well as a new translation in Brazilian and to format them for our model of bdd json.

Design

Multiple tests and versions of design and graph for the reading interface have all been done under Linux and with free software, mainly Inkscape. We will also share the sources of all these design documents.

The development of the interface

The interface is developed in pure javascript (vanilla). There is no back-office, or server-side code, which makes the application autonomous, to make it available in different contexts : website, desktop application, mobile application. We use the mithril.js interface framework to gain weight and speed of development. This framework is at the same time very light, flexible in these models of use, and very fast.

We have not added any additional js plugin, such as jquery for example, in order to gain execution velocity and because current javascript environments are powerful enough and standardized enough to be used as is. Webpack serves as a development environment, which allows to design the source application of different modules arranged between them. This has the effect of better organizing the code and allow a more fluid collaborative work.

What series of events led to the creation of the Ethica? Do you have any plans to pursue similar projects with other philosophers in the future, or have you done similar projects in the past?

I started making notes dessinées (drawn notes) during seminars in philosophy, art aesthetics and sociology or reading books. I always have a strong desire to better understand the complex world in which we live. These notes dessinées consist of a drawing linked to a fragment of a text read or heard during a speech. Taken in the moment, they are a form of images of words or texts. I try to maintain a strange relationship of proximity and distance, a bit like archeological reliefs with what they are traces, fragments. These notes dessinées are for me a rich field of artistic experiments from which arise a multitude of entanglements of possible forms. The exercise is uncertain and always subjective.

I started to follow seminaries of Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri. I took notes dessinées from books : Capital of Karl Marx, Gilles Deleuze, Christophe Bertossi, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing…

In 2004, My notes dessinées of Marx’s Capital  led me to develop a video-performance, Grenze, in 2D and 3D animations with Pierre-Yves Fave, artist, editor truquist, teacher Motion Design at the IUT of Sarcelles, University of Cergy, France.

In Capital, Marx often uses the words form, movement, mechanism, division, new circumstance, organic limit, transformation, revolution. When he speaks of the worker, he describes him as a very imperfect agent in the production of a continuous movement.

In Grenze, Capital is represented by a cube in perpetual transformation, merchandise by a larva form while the worker is represented by a triangle that is transformed into impoverishing.

Grenze video-performance has been shown in thirty countries around the world.

I invite you to see the video of one of the video-performances, on the internet at https://youtu.be/npH33sXTyqY

“Your ability to ‘put pictures’ into words has found a form and a space that allows it to manifest itself in all its power. I imagine that a multitude of singular forms are possible from the elements thus assembled. I do not know if that’s the way Eisenstein would have put Le Capital in film, but you’ve certainly found a strong and seductive way to realize his dream.” Jacques Rancière

In 2011, my notes dessinées Desintégrations evolved with the reading of Christophe Bertossi’s book The Borders of citizenship in Europe. Nationality, residence, belonging. Migration is a key topic for me that I question regularly. I am for the fundamental rights of foreigners, the duty of hospitality to provide assistance, abused in Europe and in other countries in the tense context of mass migration. This book shows how recent developments are not a reconciliation between nationality, liberal citizenship and immigration.

Now, Pierre-Yves Fave and I continue to work together regularly, producing singular works, sound and visual installations, developed with free software. We are currently preparing a performance-installation called Reaction time : It’s made up of modular and scalable devices, and leads us to look at what human intelligence is and what distinguishes it from electronic processes that get close to it. It summons Gilbert Simondon, Walter Benjamin, David Penrose, etc. In Reaction time, machines are a subject of study.

Spinoza is a particularly systematic thinker who has influenced many people throughout history, myself included. What influence has Spinoza had on you and the people who worked on this project?

Philosophy and life.

In my work, serendipity plays a very important role. One book calls another. It was through my reading of Louis Althusser’s “Read Capital” that I came across Spinoza. I had the intention to read Ethics. I took my time to do it. I read other books, produced other artistic traces before diving into it with Ethica. I do not have, like a researcher, a favorite field. I am free to follow any path even to fall on dead ends and start again.

But what I do know is among all the texts that I have studied and used in my artistic work, Ethics by Spinoza was the one who moved me the most and gave me the greatest joy. A new dimension of thought has been offered to me. This thought in movement that is at work in Ethics, this continuous flow has literally overthrown me.

I have been working  for fifteen years by institutions that welcome people in great difficulty through a workshop, Lectures de Bouches, a workshop of readings of poetry aloud, recorded. I always try to create an interface between my artistic practice and the social field, especially with sound creations based on poetic and literary texts. At each workshop, I improvise, according to the people in front of me. This constant improvisation prevents any speculation on my part. I do not care about the goals I set myself. I let myself be overwhelmed by what emerges from the group, by the moods, the movements, the fatigue, the rhythms of each one. I leave no respite. The process of the workshop is laid bare. And me, too, in a way.

In 2015, during the development of Ethica, I wanted to share Ethics in my own way, in the workshop Lectures de Bouches, with people from around the world learning French as a foreign language at Emmaüs-Solidarity association in Paris. I invited the philosopher Nathalie Chouchan to talk about the affects of Spinoza. We talked about God, a question how much different depending on the country you come from. Personal texts on Spinoza’s Emotions and recordings of discussions were produced, entitled Spinoza Tout-monde to discover on Internet radio R22 Tout-monde.

Spinoza, maybe, amplified the workshop as a place of exchange and knowledge. It’s the others who teach me. To share one’s language, French, but also to be able to interact with other mother tongues. Throughout the workshop, there is this desire to be one with the differences of each, to be one with the words.

I don’t know what influence Spinoza had on my team. I will have to ask them the question.

I find a lot other sources of  inspiration. For example, I’m impressed  by the work of  Walter Benjamin, how he collects information, quotes and how he recomposes them in Paris : Capital of the Nineteenth Century.  Gérard Grisey, initiator of Spectral music in the early 1970s in France, inspire me too. Gérard Grisey who wanted to show a general attitude towards the composition, in relation to certain physical properties of the sound … This idea to spread the speech and to enter inside the sound. Jérome Baillet, Gérard Grisey, foundations of a writing, Harmattan 2000…

Contemporary poetry is also a very important field of experimentation. In particular the poetry of Gherasim Luca which twists the French language. His poetry assembles, scatters the tongue to disperse the meaning deliberately. It snatches words through re composition and deconstruction. I spent a lot of time working around his poetry (lectures, video-performance, radio creations) including LUCA BABEL, audio CD which received in 2014 an award from the Academy Charles Cros, institution that ensures the preservation of sound memory. LUCA BABEL gathers five years of rich and unexpected collaborations with people at Emmaüs-Solidarity association and it is a wonderful manifesto for learning a poetic and lively French language.

These authors included Spinoza, help me to never forget that my artistic work can take an infinity of forms where the senses collide and produce other possibilities, always in movement, like a poem, always in imbalance.

To learn more about this project or to contact Patrick Fontana about his work, leave a comment below or email him at his website linked to in the introduction.