Unsettled Attention

Keller Easterling’s “No You’re Not”

Designing the more than human is a little bit like playing pool. The balls on
the table are a topology, a network of sequenced relationships. There is
no single target at which to aim but rather a stretchy network of hard and
absorptive surfaces.
The game is played like a chain reaction with multiple branching
possibilities that change after every shot. And yet with every shot, the
most constructive thing that can be done is to increase the chances for
more shots—generate more branches in the network of possibilities,
more information.
Then there is also the matter of touch, which can’t easily be described,
but only understood by doing it. Pool is only a reminder of all the things
that can change when a body, with all of its sentience and force fields,
brushes against the air. It can be a matter of deliberate speed and impact,
coming from hands through the cue stick and out to the ball.
But sometimes it is a matter of English—the spin placed on the cue ball
that is later transferred to another. English is an advanced technique that
can’t be predicted, but it can be exploited. It is less about the intention of
the shooter and more about something between the moving solids
outside the human skin. The player who can continue to set up potentials
and options can play the table longer.
It is something like being too smart to be right.