abstract

This article discusses different modes of how the ominous ‘all’ can be plotted as ‘comprehension’ via narrative, calculation, and measurement. The main interest thereby regards how the apparent ‘Real Time’ induced by the logistical infrastructures established by communicational media becomes articulable once we regard ‘Light Speed’ as the tense-ness proper to spectral modes of depicting the real in its material instantaneity. The ‘real’ in such depiction features as essentially arcane, and its articulation as cryptographical. The articulation of the real thereby takes the form of contracts. We suggest to take cryptography at face value, i.e. as a ‘graphism’ and ‘script,’ whose (cipher) texts we can imagine to be signed according to a logics of public key signatures: while the alphabets that constitute such a script are strictly public, a ciphertext’s ‘graphism’ cannot be read (deciphered and discerned) without ‘signing’ it in the terms of a private key. This perspective…