Why we chose “Epithelium”

It's a freaky name. It's not catchy. It's hard to pronounce. No one would run for president if their last name was 'Epithelium.' So why did we pick it. Well, I'll tell you why I went for it. Because it was better than "plasma." Plasma was the other name Al suggested. Whew. Can you imagine working on a project called "plasma?"

ep·i·the·li·um n.
Membranous tissue composed of one or more layers of cells separated by very little intercellular substance and forming the covering of most internal and external surfaces of the body and its organs.

So how did we get this this weird 5-syllable word? What makes it any better than plasma. Well, I have my own ideas about that.

First, we both agreed that the name should have something to do with the body. The show was about "embodying" the virtual, materializing the immaterial, showing the slippages between real space and virtual space. We wanted to reinsert the body-as-material into the Internet. Instead of describing the Internet as a web, a machine, or a network that inscribes itself on bodies (like current medial research that attempts to cybernetically code the genetic body), we tried to reverse it. We inscribed the body on the Internet. The internet is a body, a topology of generative and degenerative surfaces, protective layers, ruptures, and multiplying cells. We liked the viscera, the flows of the Internet. That's what we were trying to get at.

Balsamo argues that embodiment is itself an effect of the processes by which bodies are imagined and constituted. If embodiment is an effect, we can, she writes, “begin to ask questions about how the body is staged differently in different environments.”[4] Following her lead, we can examine cyberspace as an increasingly important environment in which bodies are now routinely staged… the relationship of cyberspace to forms of collective—rather than individual—embodiment and social practice (Mayan Technology, Hactivist Performance: the Electronic Disturbance Theatre By Jill Lane)

… The Net functions through mechanisms invisible to most of its users, who mistakenly believe it to be a seamless communications web. But as anyone who has ever had their account hacked can attest, the Net is neither seamless, nor is it a material entity. Properly speaking, the Internet is not a thing at all, but rather the effect of millions of performances called "packet switching." I n packet switching, messages are sent out via modem from one computer to a "switching node" where they are then divided into workable units. The units are, in turn, transmitted to their destination and reassembled. Packet switching protocol requires a series of computer and telephone calculations, occurring in many different locations around the world, simultaneously. The effect of packet switching, what we call "The Internet," then, is really a series of cooperative performance gestures from multiple computer and telephone … the Net's status as a place is a metaphorical hallucination, although an understandably useful one: one of the ways high performance computing works is to carve space into what was once nothing… (INTRODUCTION: PERFORMING THE DIGITAL BODY -- A GHOST STORY by Theresa M. Senft)

Since I'm into Deleuze (though I don't pretend to understand 1/100th of him), I also liked the idea of surfaces (stratified and smooth) that compose the virtual topology. The internet has always existed in layers. There are the optical wire ruminating under the ground, the hardware processing information under your desk, and finally the computer screen at eye level. The internet as a fabric, a material. For example, sometimes the surface is clearly differentiated, organized, and striped, has distinguishable and stable organization, ideas, clarity, etc. Other times, you get lines of flight. Disruptions. The surface has breaches and divergent paths. Open circuits.
The notion of layers of skin also sparked strata for me: old layers squeezed thinner and thinner, meshing into one another. New layers brushed away like flakes of skin. (I was thinking about time and flow, functions and process) But epithelium is the middle layer: porous surfaces that have not hardened yet: layers that are still permeable, flexible, porous. Epithelium is generative, building and forming new pathways through the material.

**I think what most models lack is a discussion of how the internet can change. On one hand, you’ve got the Utopia theorists saying that the web is a space for infinite possibility. These predictions failed in light of corporate control. (Also, net as surveillance… a hyper-archival space ) The internet in some spaces is just as rigidified as any metropolitan area. It is not a Utopia. There’s big money signs flashing. Regulated flows and clear pathways. On the other hand, you’ve got the cynics who think the virtual space is exactly the same as other spaces. But this isn’t the case either. Obviously, the internet re-mediates other mediums like television and radio or the postal system, but there are clear structural and cultural differences. The internet has certain affordances that are specific to the medium (in general, the fact that it can act as a television, newspaper, postal system, telephone, AND file cabinet simultaneously) The internet can change and evolve, just not in the way people might expect or predict. Epithelium seeks out those malleable spaces, not a space of total freedom, but a space that changes the way we think or imagine ourselves. It still has a structure, a certain amount of organization. But that organization is a NEW kind of organization.

Epithelium also got me thinking about cells. I mean, how else can you describe the ability to communicate while locked into little offices, homes, etc. Every user operates from his home or workplace, from a stable environment. Some cells are stable in space. Some migrate (like laptops and wireless). Ricardo Domingo talks about cells in a cultural and political context, cells of resistance. Epithelium seeks out resistant cells, migratory cells, cells that are constantly changing, dying and dividing. This is not a political undertaking… More of a philosophical experiment. But the cell, gets at a notion of political and even personal resistance.

As you can see, we didn't really have a good reason for choosing "epithelium." I still mispell it. But it seemed as good a name as any. And the real work wasn't in the name, it was in constructing the project, trying to untangle all these notions of the internet and how it should be performed...