Eric Kluitenberg on Tue, 3 Feb 2004 00:01:06 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> First Introduction to an Archaeology of Imaginary Media |
An Archaeology of Imaginary Media a first introduction....... ------------------ This short text was written as an introduction for the reader of the mini-festival "An Archaeology of Imaginary Media" at De Balie in Amsterdam, 5 - 8 February, 2004. The program consists of a series of lectures, an extensive film program, a theatrical performance developed by Peter Blegvad specifically for the program, and new work by 11 cartoonists and artist on the theme of imaginary media. Full info at: http://www.debalie.nl/archaeology ------------------ When the German catholic mystic Heinrich Suso published his widely read manuscript "Horologium Sapientiae" (Wisdom's Watch upon the Hours), most commonly dated to 1339, mechanical clocks had made their way in civic life throughout mayor cities in Europe. Late in the thirteenth century the mechanical clock had appeared in monasteries belonging to the Benedictine order and was used to mark the 7 canonical hours of the day, and call for prayer. The clock spread to civic life and its function changed. By the time of Suso's writing, the clock had become a central medium structuring and ordering life and communication of the late medieval city dwellers. Suso's thinking was very much informed by the juxtaposition of the erratic temporal nature of earthly human life, versus the divine order of eternal wisdom of the Christian God he revered. With the spread of the clock in religious and social life the entire world system of earthly life, the passing from day to night and from night to day, and the movements of the heavens, came to be seen as the visible signs of a divine clockwork that ruled and governed earthly existence. Suso structured his book in a series of imaginary dialogues between the eternal wisdom (his god) and himself, divided into 24 chapters following the 24 hours of the day (-the ability to register the 24 hours of the day was an important innovation brought about by the mechanical clock). It was the eternal wisdom that instilled order in this heavenly clockwork, and the mechanical clock was the medium for ordinary man to bring his life into unison with this divine order. The construction of Suso's imaginary medium is twofold: On the one hand he portrays the world-system as a clockwork as one giant communication medium set in motion and guided by the invisible hand of eternal wisdom, which thus "communicates" divine order to the human subject. The mechanical clock translates this divine order into perceptible form and becomes a medium for the lesser mortal to establish contact with the divine order, most notably by the call to prayer at regular intervals on the canonical hours -the original purpose of the mechanical clock. In Suso's mystical vision, which became highly popular throughout Europe in 14th century, the clock is a connection machine, a medium to co-ordinate not only the affairs between humans, but also between the human and the divine. In the centuries following Heinrich Suso's mystical imaginations of the divine clockwork, the idea that technology amends the deficiencies of human conduct begot a rich history. As society became more secular the emphasis shifted awayfrom an orientation towards the divine, in the direction of the mediation of more strictly human affairs. However , a certain mystical inclination never left the realm of technological invention. The most widely distributed and popular high-technologies of our own time are connection machines: digital networks -paradigmatically the internet-, mobile phones, and most recently wireless applications and G3 -the impending generation of wireless multimedia machines (inaptly called 'third generation mobile phones'). While it would be hard to deny the real-world application and significance of these technologies in contemporary social life, their introduction was accompanied with a set of presuppositions and ill-founded expectations that are hard to understand or describe as anything other than a contemporary form of techno-mysticism, or techno-mythology. The mythological dimension of the recent emanations of techno-religion is not just embodied in the inflated economic expectations of the late 90s dotcom bubble and new economy boom, and in their aftermath the great telcom crash, when the excessive apprehensions about the next generation of mobile communications imploded even before they ever reached the marketplace. The truly mythological reveals itself primarily in the belief, ushered by countless serious and un-serious theorists, thinkers, futurists, utopian visionaries, market gurus and of course techno advocates that the introduction of a new communication technologies would by the very fact of their existence introduce a dramatic qualitative change and improvement of (inter-) human communication. Not only would the obstacle of distance be transcended. Even more importantly, antiquated and backward prejudice connected to our embodied existence would finally dissipate in a new super-sphere of disembodied communication. Divisions of gender, race, geography, ethnicity, physical deformity and disability would finally be overcome in a most literal sense, as through a deus-ex-machina, in the disembodied realm of real-time electronically mediated communication. A truly impressive list. The massive financial investments, first in dotcom servicing and networked economies, and subsequently in wireless communication and the incredible destruction of capital, financial, human, knowledge capital that followed when first the dotcom and next the telcom bubble burst, cannot simply be explained out of a combination of false market expectations, financial speculation and the human vice of greed. The investment could never have achieved that scale without a more deeply rooted belief-structure that somehow underpinned these high hopes. Such a deeply rooted belief-structure must be called a mythology. Myth, Roland Barthes learns us, requires that the mythological object is first of all cleared from its original ('realistic') meaning. Once emptied the mythological object then becomes a projection surface for mythological ascriptions that often have very little, or indeed nothing, to do with the original meaning and significance of the object. The meanings ascribed to the object transcend its own existence, here and now, are often gathered from an extended historical past, and can be projected into the future. Yet, they are perceived as 'natural' qualities of the object, and thus they remain unquestioned. What was the believe structure that underpinned the contemporary mythology of the new communication technologies? And from which historical repository did it derive its seductive but highly illusionary imaginations? The archaeology of imaginary media that we intend to undertake will investigate these mythologies of the contemporary from a variety of different viewpoints, and in many different forms. Our methodology is shaped by the tradition of an archaeology of the media, an approach that was originally characterised by Siegfried Zielinski as a way "to dig out secret paths in history, which might help us to find our way into the future." Erkki Huhtamo in his media-archaeological expeditions has emphasised the eternal return of the same patterns in media history and its imaginations. Also the recent delusions of the new communications revolutions seem deeply implicated by an ever-recurring mythical belief that machines can succeed where human communication falls short. What is it that drives man (men?) to believe time and again in the supra-human superiority of his own machines? We will attempt to excavate the origins of this techno-mythological complex, and explore the remains of its utopian potential, in the hope of finding less hazardous roads into the future... Eric Kluitenberg De Balie, Amsterdam February 2004 --------------- Note: A web dossier has been complied on the website of De Balie which provides background reading on the conceptual toolbox offered by the media archaeological approach, through a selection of key-texts on the area, at: http://www.debalie.nl/dossierpagina.jsp?dossierid=10123 The mini-festival "An Archaeology of Imaginary Media" at De Balie will result in a book (spring 2004) collecting the results of our explorations: texts of all lectures, as well as a number of invited essays, accompanied by a DVD that will contain interviews with the artists and speakers, images contributed by the distinguished cartoonists and visual artists who have contributed to the project, as well as other documentary materials on the project. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net