The deleuzian abstract machines

To most people the concept of abstract machines is connected to the name of Alan Turing and the development of the modern computer. The Turing machine is universal, axiomatic and symbolic (E.g. operating on symbols). Inspired by Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari extended the concept of abstract machines to singular, non-axiomatic and diagrammatic machines. That is: Machines which constitute becomings. This presentation gives a survey of the development of the concept of abstract machines in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guatari and the function of these abstract machines in the creation of works of art. From Difference and Repetition to Anti-Oedipus, the machines are conceived as binary machines based on the exclusive or inclusive use respectively of the three syntheses: conexa, disjuncta and conjuncta. The machines have a twofold embedment: In the desiring-production and in the social production. In Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, Deleuze and Guatari gave the most comprehensive explanation to the abstract machine in the work of art. Like the war-machines of Virilio, the Kafka-machine operates in three gears or speeds. Furthermore, the machine is connected to spatial diagrams: The astronomical model and the earthly or underground model. In A Thousand Plateaus we find the final classification of abstract machines: 1. Abstract machines of stratification that surround the plane of consistency with another plane. 2. Axiomatic or overcoding abstract machines that perform totalizations, homogenizations and conjunctions of closure. 3. Abstract machines of consistency, singular and mutant, with multiplied connections. Where the focus of Anti-Oedipus is on the critique of the Freudian concept of Oedipus and the capitalist society, the focus of A Thousand Plateaus is on becomings. This means a shift in emphasis from the three syntheses to mappings and rhizomatic diagrams that cut across semiotics or “blow apart regimes of signs”. The aim here is the absolute deterritorialization. Deleuze has shown how abstract machines operate in the philosophy of Foucault, the literature of Proust and Kafka, and the painting of Bacon. We will finish our presentation by showing how these machines apply to architecture.