AGAINST THE IDIOCY OF ELECTRONIC ART
(A lecture of the Free Academy Against Idiocy)

'Friederike Pezold Friederike Pezold

An idiocy of electronic arts is: If it imitates idiocies already existing instead of doing something against these.

An idiocy is the modern "zeitgeist" or the modern interpretation of time—which is: nothing but an idiotic hassle, where humans rush through time and space and when you meet them they tell you—I have to rush, I have no time!?!? And this having-no-time of modern Man is idiotic, for the working hours having become always shorter and the people always work less: they should have more and more time, too!?! Indeed it is like that: Less people work, less time they have and that is an idiocy! An idiocy, the results of which are that people rush and race around as if they were persecuted by a dragon! An idiocy that is imitated by electronic arts: by rushing the images in a way as hectic as possible through the computer or over the screen! And when Peter Weibel, the hectic professor, rushes through the landscape, for instance through America, from where he gets his ideas and brings along chaos research—nothing to be said against it—but well against the fact that he writes more or less the following in a text about chaos research: That sitting in a cinema and watching a movie from beginning to end is outdated—and that it is modern to rush from cinema to cinema just to see a few seconds of a film and then rushing on to the next—this I find idiotic! An idiocy that is not modern, but outdated, because people have been rushing around for enough time, which is too long a time like apes. All that rush comes from the idiotic "zeitgeist" of consuming "more and faster in less time" that has made the world and Man's brain an overstocked curio shop.

If the electronic arts imitate the idiotic zeitgeist of "more and faster in less time", then it rushes more and more images and words through the screen, always faster just because it can be done, although it is, in fact, idiotic: for after a few seconds, when the images and sounds just rush by, one knows no more what one has heard or seen. This idiocy of doing everything that can be done technically is—and be it as idiotic as it is—not only a mental disease of electronic arts—but a disease that has done enough mischief all through the twentieth century and that is responsible for the Ozone hole and for environment pollution! From this idiocy, the electronic arts should learn something, not doing everything that can be done technically, but asking themselves whether it makes sense to do so—rushing an enormous number of sounds and images over the screen every second is idiotic anyway: for after a short while no one remembers what he has seen or heard! What I find so idiotic is: that in exhibitions of electronic arts—the greatest attention is paid to what can be done technically, and never to the decisive question of whether the feasible is good for humanity or is it noxious? This bombing with noise and speedy images is noxious at least for the reason that the quantity of perception increases—but the depth and the intensity which is the quality of perception decreases! The decrease of the quality of perception is idiotic! This idiocy of electronic art does grieve me and hurt me deeply for the reason that I have helped one sector of electronic art to the light of day—namely video art and therefore am concerned about its further development! So my personal contribution to its development is critical and constructive: By not participating in the idiocies of the zeitgeist—like for once that thoughtless doing of everything that can be done, for the other that bombing with always more noise and rushing images—but by putting forth something against these idiocies: The electronic goddesses of Silence, Concentration, and Slowness!

THE ELECTRONIC GODDESSES OF SILENCE, CONCENTRATION, AND SLOWNESS