1. Anne Sauvagnargues, ‘Deleuze: De l’animal à l’art’, in *La philosophie de Deleuze*, ed. by François Zourabichvili, Paola Marrati and Anne Sauvagnargues (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2011), as quoted in Paulo de Assis and Paolo Giudici, eds, *Machinic Assemblages of Desire: Deleuze and Artistic Research 3* (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2021), p. 14.
Further on we worked on creating the condition of function for the above mentioned elements. Anne Sauvagnargues outlines three key lines that define an assemblage: a line of differentiation, a line of organization, and a line of escape found in the gaps between content and expression, which opens possibilities for transformation within the assemblage.1
In September 2022 the team took part in an artistic residence at Schmiede Hallein where the Desire Machine took place as a public experiment. In reference to this example we will further attempt to articulate the functioning structure of this assemblage following the three lines proposition of Sauvagnargues.
The line of differentiation has been achieved through the individuated, heterogeneous presence of each component. Although reactive to each other, they are not situated within a specific dependency. The dancer is following its own structure that articulates between the tasks the score, the sound oscillates between contrasting sonic behaviors of the distinct textures and processing states, the algorithm captures the moment of switch between the flow and interruption and manifests in space through the light structure.
The line of organisation is situated within the live interplay between the elements, which exists through the simultaneous placement of these components into one space and the open nature of the metrics of time and space. The dancer is moving between the stability of the score and the instability of its execution, the components of light and sound affect the speed and direction of movement. In return, data of this temporal and spatial switch is collected, processed and used by the algorithm for generating sound and light compositions.
Finally the performance itself takes place through the line of escape where the predefined content of the dancer, the algorithm and the sound transforms through the expression of each player. The movement can affect the sound, which affects the speed and consequently affects the light. Although there is a set dependency it is free in its expression, keeping the structure live, reactive and open to transformation.
It is possible to conclude that the experiment indeed meets the five previously defined functional conditions of the assemblage - it is non-hierarchical, rhizomatic, aligned between the lines of content and expression, image and sign. Each element in space has its heterogeneous presence defined through the corresponding agency and competence of each team member. At the same time the structure remains dynamic and open for change.