On “Co-Fi”

If hi-fi defines that which has “high-fidelity” (as in, systems that can reproduce phenomena with a high level of faithfulness to an original) then co-fi has “co-fidelity,” wherein the prefix co- comes from the Latin com-, meaning together, with, mutually. Co-fi could mean collective-fidelity or common-fidelity. It might also mean coalescent-fidelity, coevolved-fidelity, coordinated-fidelity, cooperative-fidelity, or cocreated-fidelity. A system that is co-fi is one that reproduces phenomena through togetherness, through the joining of many distinct threads.

Words themselves are inherently co-fi, since they are invested with meaning through their movement amongst many minds and mouths. The “fidelity” of a word, its degree of exactness, is increased by the degree that it is shared. Language is created by many, circumscribed by no one. It is like a city, “to the building of which every human being brought a stone,” as Emerson observed, hitting upon a happy metaphor which he had undoubtedly heard before, somewhere. “Construct” and “combine” are still more co- words that might be relevant.

An event recorded in co-fidelity is one that has been captured from many angles. It has been touched by many hands, witnessed from many perspectives, and listened to up close and faraway at the same time. A co-fi document is usually not smooth, since it requires stitching or weaving. It joyfully flaunts its seams.

A co-fi aesthetic embraces multiplicity. Other hallmarks would be simultaneity, polyphony, and complexity. Co-fi is not precise. Co-fi is foggy, distributed. Co-fi occupies a space gaseously, in which pressure and form are created by movement, by particles colliding with boundaries.

A co-fi work could appear fragmented and disjointed, though this is also its fidelity: its exactness arises from its faithfulness to the fragmentary nature of events. Though there is always an element of collage, of pulling together disparate pieces, co-fi is not necessarily incoherent or fractured. In fact, a deeply co-fi work can, in the way many angles can become a curve, have a smoothness that feels “hi-fi.” This is because co-fi is an aesthetic that arises from process, not a label applied after the fact.