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Artificial Will
'Peter Weibel
Peter Weibel
AND THE WILL THEREIN LIETH, WHICH DIETH NOT.
WHO KNOWETH THE MYSTERIES OF THE WILL, WITH ITS VIGOR? FOR GOD IS BUT A GREAT WILL PERVADING ALL THINGS BY NATURE OF ITS INTENTNESS, MAN DOTH NOT YIELD HIMSELF TO THE ANGELS, NOR UNTO DEATH UTTERLY, SAVE ONLY THROUGH THE WEAKNESS OF HIS FEEBLE WILL.
Joseph Glanvill In Austria culture has a disguising function: to protect the status quo, to ease social tensions. Culture in Austria serves the government's social appeasing policy, the instrument of which are grants and subsidies. Culture in Austria could be described as anticipative subservience. By evading all conflicts it helps to build an illusion of reality in the sense of those in power. By distributing grants and subsidies, the state holds culture in its disguise role, promotes a consensus culture and paralyzes dissident art. If art and culture only serve to appease and disguise reality, then those against me are right: I am no artist.
Culture in Austria helps to suppress and hush up things. This neurotic nation simply cannot endure reality with all of its conflicts. It doesn't seek to process history, but rather to suppress and forget it. Since there is no solution to conflicts other than death in Austria, this weakness is expressed through a longing for and glorification of death. From the Secessionism at the turn of the century to today's dialect rock, we are confronted with the deplorable, puerile pathos stemming from an obsession with death-necrophilia because the present, past and future are not coped with, only supressed. Thus the forces of history are passed on. Art in Austria supports these crimes by glorifying death and forgetting history. In this respect, art also represents a form of crime and oppression.
"Fortunate is he who forgets"; what does Austria really want to forget? Metternich, the crimes in the many-people's state, the fall of the monarchy, Hitler, Austria's great son? "I am dying—everyone should die, for death is wonderful!": a personal decline becomes the order for everyone's decline. Wine-drinking sentimentality and necrophila bliss suddenly turn into a total negation of life. A class, society, nation doomed to fall wants everyone to fall, but the end of a world view doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world. Ethics is always the ethics of a dying society. The victim of an apocalypse makes itself an apocalyptical knight and spreads the seeds of violence and death. Necrophilia is the personification of an obsession with death.
Once Austria lost all of its lands, it only had the "wide land" of the psyche left. The birth of psycho-art was the result of these social and political losses. This was not a form of resistance or overcoming, but capitulation and accomodation. A destroyed nation has become a nation of self-destruction. The idea of an Austrian nationality is a lie, if one looks at its economic, intellectual and social dependence on Germany for example. Psycho-art is the devote ornament of subservience, capitulation and crime.
The neurotic inclination originating from the turn of the century is the irrational expression of a nation unable to cope with the loss of its international role. The neurotic inclination on behalf of its reduction from a powerful many-peoples' state to a powerless small mini-state lacking self-consciousness has only reinforced reductionist thinking. By always looking back at its past glory, it gives up the odds for the future. Austria keeps looking back because it is frightened of the future, or because it has the feeling that it doesn't have any future at all. The tendency to look back and the art that supports this receive wholehearted praise from the feuilletonists since this provides a childish sense of security. So Austria becomes the servant of other nations. With this infantile art, we are constantly being reverted back to the turn of the century. Promoted with billions of extorted shillings and applauded by a corrupt press, a deplorable necrophilia fattens the mummies of the past. I, myself, believe that they should be given a kick from behind, so that they finally fall down the back staircase of history. Evidently, there are other nations in which the twilight of the Gods has begun and which feel their own end nearing. Thus they stare as if under a spell at the turn of the century without knowing a thing about it. The cherished pictures we have of Vienna at the turn of the century are faked. Austria's cultural life has also known moments of mutiny, analysis, insurrection and protest. In a police state which has existed from 1846 up to the present (1984), there has been no political rebellion, yet a number of intellectual ones.
With great resolution my piece looks towards the future, gives Austria a future, contour: shapes the Austria of the future. Yet compared to Salzburg my piece has the one big disadvantage that its scope for discussion is larger than the breast size of the leading actresses in line. But 1 am courageous enough to hope that Austria's cultural judges will forgive me this. In a country where an etiquette tone rhymes with corruption, my piece will be dissonant. One must admit that in a country of subservient death pathos, of theatrical rituals of forgetting and suppressing, of a petrified power structure and hidden violence, it is difficult to be, in particular, to be a vision.
Art that reverts to atavisms, deep emotional levels, direct sensual stimuli can be understood as a reaction to technology. But doesn't art by remaining an island of reminiscences, of rudiments of past forms of being, become one-dimensional, one-sided and anachronistical itself? Doesn't it set itself outside of time, annul its utopian function, that is, the provocation in and of time? Reduced to entertainment and the sensual titillation. Ritual is the kitsch of tomorrow.
THE AIR OF THE FUTURE The video opera, ARTIFICIAL WILL does not look back at the turn of the century, but ahead at the threshold of the third millennium. With this video opera, we are taking leave from the twentieth century. A century that thought itself progressive but in reality was the most terrible period in man's history. Two world wars the last of which annihilated whole races and nations. For the first time in history, the self-destruction of man-kind has become technically possible. After whole nations have been wiped out, it would seem that a logical consequence of the twentieth century's program would be to annihilate all of mankind in the twenty-first. Thus it is necessary that we free ourselves from the twentieth century, one which is characterized by insane ideologies such as Fascism and Stalinism. Thus it is necessary that we recognize the motives underlying these ideologies and fight against them, these tendencies of man to destroy himself and human life. The offspring of such political thinking, which has devastates continents, destroyed nations, is still rampant: our social life. Although the ruins of its failure are visible, we are not fully aware of its consequences. The holocaust of the Jews was actually the holocaust of progress in the twentieth century. By annihilating the Jews, "Jewish-Bolshewist" culture, the reaction attempted to ward off the arrival of the twenty-first century.
The twentieth century was actually the century of the Jews, from Einstein to Schoenberg, until the reaction set out to gas the first sprouts of the third millennium. However, the reaction's program has not succeeded in the history of the world and will be buried with the twentieth century, together with its restorative forms of culture. The air of the future will be as unbreathable as money, if we continue to follow the clichés of culture, the conventions of behavior, the mechanism of former modes of thinking.
Only if everything begins moving in new tracks will man neither be forced to live like a machine nor with (protective) masks, but instead be able to give anthropogenesis new impulses.
AUDIOVISUAL ALPHABET (AVA) Electronic aesthetics is an anticipation of the future world. In our emancipation from the twentieth century, there will be new forms of art and language, new means of expression assisting us. As a defense of modernism, we will be returning to the futurist impulses, especially those born at the turn of the century in Russia and Central Europe. Already then there were many artists who worked in different art areas at once: poets who were also painters, poets who were also musicians, painters who were also musicians. Aiming at a total artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk), these artists sought to obtain a synaesthetic combination of the three media-music, painting and language. Today, however, technological advances enable us to go beyond this synaesthetic basis and to unite the three elements in a new way: AVA, following Peirce's triadic semiotics.
In the audiovisual alphabet, AVA, the diachronic elements of language, of image and of music complement each other. Each of these elements is dependent on the other two in its aesthetic and expressive function, because language or image or music cannot express anything by themselves. Each of these elements needs the others, since only three can constitute meaning, a new sort of meaning. This meaning is no longer only linear and one-dimensional, but multi-dimensional. Optimally combined, the information of each of the three media obtains a new meaning and creates new meaning. This new language of audiovisual alphabet is the real language of the electronic media, the language of tomorrow, the language of the future electronic world. In the electronic media, the common basis is no longer synaesthesia, but digitality. A digital image, digital sound, departing from a common numeric electronics, will allow new semantic analogies, conversions, contradictions, relationships to unfold. The information society of the future where each household will have its own computer terminals, personal computers besides video and audio-systems, will exchange information by means of the new multi-dimensional and multi-structured audiovisual alphabet. The first artwork of this new era is the electronic media opera, THE ARTIFICIAL WILL.
This new language, AVA does not impose the constraints of linearity on images and words, but rather allows for irrationality and impulses through the multi-dimensionality of the ratio's discourse. Thus AVA also symbolizes an opening up and emancipation of language from logos, from the letter of law. Not only do the images and words stand in their own right and by this create new images, words, worlds, but also the recipient obtains the right to independent, free interpretation. The means for expressing human concerns are expanded. However, a greater number of information bits also confronts the recipient with more decisions and alternatives. The multi-dimensionality of the new electronic language AVA requires from the recipient that s/he learns a new, direct depth of interpretation. By this, however, the individual acquires new free space. Because of the greater number of interpretation possibilities in AVA language, it is a medium providing more space for individuality. In this respect, it anticipates the higher level of individuality inherent in an electronic world. AVA requires an extended form of understanding, of thinking in terms of networks and multiple poles of relationships, in causal loops and nomadic signs. AVA trains a person to think and feel in terms of multi-functional correlations which will be needed for experience and survival in the 21st century. Only deaf and blind persons who stay seated in the darkness of past eras and forms of art will not be able to experience the light of a new language. A new language, for a new psychology, for new models of man, fearless!
ELECTRONIC NARRATION In the language of the electronic media, the imaginary collides with the real. Morning and evening are experienced simultaneously: one is real, the other is reel or TV. We hear different noises simultaneously: those in nature and orchestra music from the radio. Shifts in time and simultaneity are experienced daily. We are in Rome and in Vienna: once live on TV, then in reality. We are used to being in one place and everywhere at once. Consciousness is being newly coded: this results from all of the shifts in time and location brought about by the media, the introduction of new concepts of location and the present of transformations, syntheticness, the digitalization of the form and dynamics of object, of the imaginary and real, access instead of excess. This new code uses AVA. Electronic narration constructed out of the elements of AVA creates mythograms in an industrial aesthetics in which cave drawings and the TV monitor are reconciled. Characteristic of electronic narration is the semiotic dimension: due to the many possibilities of digitally manipulating image, sound and word, the sign character of things is stressed to a much greater degree than in traditional media. The nomadic and energetic character of things (as signs) is emphasized. A marked spirit of life typical for the electronic paleolithic era evolves.
Who would have imagined, thought or felt thousands of years ago that it would be possible with only 26 letters and the corresponding phones to create an enormous culture with ideas, thoughts, feelings, tools?
At the time this would have seemed impossible. However, the whole potential for expression is not just limited to the size of the alphabet even if there is a reactionary pack in all spheres of society asserting this and fighting (with all of the power instruments available to institutions) against any development in the expressive potential and means of man. The reactionary obscurantism vis à vis media art is responsible for some of the crimes of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, the heart of evolution continues to beat, further millennia lie before us in which the audiovisual language of the electronic media will unfold.
OPERA Why OPERA in connection with ELECTRONIC MEDIA? Because opera in its original, historical meaning represents an unity of image/painting, word/literature and song/music all of which we encounter in the audiovisual alphabet. However, opera as a form of art has remained behind the threshold of the twentieth century, that is to say, at the level of an infantile puppet theater: the singers clad in historical costumes performing in front of out-moded backdrops which feign a past reality. Opera still stands under the spell of a naive objectivity and illusional reality, ignorant to all advances in art since the insurrection of the abstract. The stage disguised as a grotto, the singers as artisans or counts: the machinery of a bourgeois illusion theater starts up again. But in the age of electronic media both vocal and orchestral music are no longer bound to singers and orchestra. They can be performed artificially by means of the playback from machines. Live singing on stage and the reproduction of taped music can complement each other in the same way as the scenes on stage and outside pictures projected with machines can.
Songs and singers can be separated just as images and sounds can be. It is possible to mix imagery and sound material, the stage settings and electronic imagery so that what is happening on stage and that what is being shown on the monitor screen result in new relationships. Opera in this sense is non-traditional in that it no longer naively simulates an unity of space, time and action. New technologies are used to introduce novel formal possibilities of expressing simultaneity, para-time and no-time, the ambiguity of space and to achieve new connotative acoustical effects. Whereas in a classical opera the stage setting can only be changed 6 times with a great amount of effort, an electronic screen would be able to show 100 settings, allowing for rapid associations with that which is taking place on the stage. Even if it is not always possible to interpret electronic narration right away, the formal surprises of electronic drawing, symbolic and musical techniques could eliminate the constraints of the clichés in traditional forms. The question, however, is how such an ambitious, non-traditional opera can actually be realized when the whole production budget is as high as the evening pay of an opera star in a classical opera.
Electronic warriors of emotion. Wounds out of which light surfaces. Computer programs are electrical paint brushes. Light is the medium of progress.
The universe is a gigantic TV screen, yet still no video game. Thus I wonder: who plays golf with the stars? The moving electronic image of the stars signals us an answer. Is the earth a bucket of colors in the black and white nocturnal picture of the heavens?
The stage itself is characterized by time apparently remaining the same and space constantly changing. Simultaneity and ubiquity are the properties of electronic narration. This piece neither says "s/he says" nor does it tell of Egyptian kings or galactical wars. This piece doesn't simply potter steel digitally, or in other words, simply toss worn-out patterns of narration back into the culture machine. This piece introduces a new form of narration: electronic narration. In lieu of sense there are special effects, in lieu of explication entertainment, in lieu of understanding the unexpected, in short a drama full of ideas. Electronic narration extinguishes the narrative shortcomings of the material of European tales: political treason, jealousy, passion, despotic murder have become the extended arm of the classic which Hollywood wishes to launch into interstellar eternity. The story is slaughtered. The new hunting target is experience unlimited.
THE INSURRECTION OF ELEMENTS The "legibility of the world" will become different through the audiovisual language of the electronic media. The digitalization of print will also assimilate the traditional medium, the book, to electronic narration. This new "legibility" of the world was already anticipated in an unclassical way in opera at the turn of the century: Arnold Schoenberg's drama with music, THE LUCKY HAND (1911–13). Here, the painter and musician, Schoenberg wanted to "make music with the means of the stage" and thus placed emphasis on the "color-light-play" ("it should be evident that gestures, colors and light must be dealt with here in the same way as elsewhere sounds are; that music must be made with them").
A further example is Wassily Kandinsky's stage composition, THE YELLOW SOUND (1909–1912) in which the musical part was done by Thomas von Hartmann who was related to the famous philosopher, Eduard von Hartmann (PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS). His ON ANARCHY IN MUSIC was published in "Der blaue Reiter" (Munich 1912). Later Hartmann associated with the circle around G. I. Gurdijeff with whom he created piano pieces in the twenties in which their synthesis of oriental melodious material and European phrase structure are an anticipation of minimal music. Kandinsky deliberately based his work on three elements (SOUND, COLOR, WORD): 1) the musical tone and its movements, 2) the physical-psychic sound and its movements as expressed by humans and objects and 3) colorful sounds and their movements. All three elements play an equally significant role. While remaining independent on the surface, they are all dealt with to an equal extent."
The opera consisting of 2 acts and 6 pictures, TRIUMPH OVER THE SUN (1913) by the poet Alexej Krutshonych, the painter K. S. Malevitch and the musician, M. W. Matjushin is an INSURRECTION OF COLORS AND NOISES (Krutshonych). This piece deals with the "triumph of technology over the cosmic powers and bilogism" (Krutshonych).
In addition to the numerous futurist and Dadaist spectacles, one must mention the ballet, RELACHE (1924).
The scenario was written by the poet Blaise Cendrars, the music was done by Eric Satie and the settings by Francis Picabia. The latter also filmed ENTR'ACTE with René Clair (with Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Antonin Artaud, Darius Milhaud, etc.).
ARTIFICIAL ARTIFICIAL WILL is the story of the birth of artificiality since the discovery of electricity. The electrical light bulb is man's new sun. "And there shall be light" is no longer said by God, but by man. There will be light when man wishes so and not when nature wishes so. This media opera deals with the consequences of this triumph over the sun" of the 19th century, with the deformation of Western civilization since the discovery of electricity in Europe. America and Japan are the children of this European birth. The discovery and formulation of the electro-magnetic theory of light, of the equivalence of work and heat, the theory of energy conservation and entropy formulated by J. C. Maxwell, J. R. Mayer, H. V. Helmholtz, R. J.
C. Clausius, L. Boltzmann and others at the middle of the last century allowed man for the first time to imagine the working power that nature provides us with. The conversion of energy was the first model of how man could change the world by dominating the powers of nature. It is surely no coincidence that this era began with a book that defines the "world as will and imagination" (Schopenhauer, 1819). In his "General History of Nature and Theory of Heaven" (1775), Kant had already plead for an inorganic world: "Give me matter, and I will build out of it a world." However, in general, philosophers still clung to an absolute "will in itself" (Schopenhauer) or to God as the constructor of the world. "The totality of the world appears to us as the work of a powerful, infinite will, its manifestation of force remaining constant. This mighty will is the origin of mind and matter, the laws of nature being its laws (Wilhelm Jerusalem: INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY 1899). The primacy of the will in constructing the World was recognized, but was set equal with the absolute will of God. One did not yet dare to follow Kant in recognizing the human will as artificial compared to the will of God, as responsible for the construction of the world. It wasn't until the advances in technology and science that we had access to the laws of nature, even if these were "his laws". Only then were we able to accept the laws of nature as ours with the help of which we could construct and shape the world according to our will. Thus the discovery of the concept of energy correlates with the discovery of the artificial will of man, the replacement of the sun through artificial light, the conquest of night through the discovery of electricity are the Promethic inroads of artificiality in a given order of nature. The formation of the "world as will and imagination" of man was for the first time imaginable. Artificial, man-made light rivaled with the sun and the stars, which up until then had been the only source of energy. With the light bulb we have captured the stars (the actual color of electrical light is green!). For the first time, energy—its existence, its infiniteness, its basis, was called into question. A decisive role in this piece is played by the great tragi-comedian, the second principle of thermodynamics. This piece deals with time and the loss of energy.
If the green star of electrical light is artificial and man-made, then the question arises: who made the other STARS, AREN'T THESE ALSO ARTIFICIAL?
“We are allowed the will to swing the whip over us with our own hands.“
Franz Kafka, 1916 Who is it who says "I" when I say: I will. What is it who says "I", when I say: "I will." What is "my" when I say: my will be done.
The question isn't whether there is a free will but rather the question is: is there a human will?
"a sense of responsibility is in the last analysis a bureaucratic spirit, puerility, a will broken from the father"
Kafka, 1916 Are we humans bureaucrats of the universe, is the will broken from God the father? Man, the product of upbringing and society? Man as the will of the genes, as the will of nature? As the product and will of himself? An artificial will must be created for us to be able to say "I". An artificial will must be created, its activity and result being "I". "The ego is insalvable", wrote Ernst Mach, the physicist around the turn of the century. Because he believed the ego to be something natural, I say. But the I is actually as artificial as the will and the will as artificial as the ego. If (our) will were blind, hollow, unconscious and without direction , there would be reason for Schopey's pessimism. However, will isn't just born of our instincts, but rather is something self-reflective, goal-oriented, similar to a self-correcting automaton. That what is like a missile in us. Spontaneity as a surplus of the automaton. Each ego is created, the only question is by whom: by God, by the others, by you? The ego is salvable, since it is artificial, says the electronic Messiah.
Man as the broken will of God—those eons are over. Man conquers light and time. Once God said: let there be light, today the housewife says this and switches on the light. Electricity is an artificial form of light.
Electricity is the human form of light. Electronics is the artificial will. Electronics is the will of man. The artificial will of man is conquering the universe.
By means of artificial will, man will become sovereign, man will become God. He will create the world according to his will. The end of history will be the beginning of artificial will. The human world is artificial. Everything that man encounters in the future will be made by man himself.
The planet earth is the Noah's arc of us all. It was Noah who built the arc and not God. The arc was thus man-made and artificial. One also shouldn't forget that Noah also thought in terms of ecology by taking along the plants and the animals. We are Noah and the earth is our ship. We are the helmsmen of the spaceship earth on a voyage through time. We have the responsibility and not God. The history of man has reached the point where the will of man is approaching the control of the universe.
Man can extinguish himself; this is the triumph of the will of man. He can create; this is the birth of will.
My will: let there be light.
My will become light.
My will become.
My will will.
The wanted will.
The artificial will.
What is the artificial will of heaven?
The meaning of history is the artificial will.
The meaning of history is progressive individuation.
The meaning of history is the artificial sun. The meaning of history is the artificial God. Man is the artificial God, the absolute will. The electronic Messiah says: my will be done on heaven as on earth.
WILL TO STYLE—WILL TO LIFE Artificial will is also the will to style. The will to a new style is the will to a new world. The will to style is not just an aesthetic operation, a transformation of formal elements, but an ontological strategy. A multi-dimensional style for a multi-dimensional life. Instead of uniform objects we want poly-form objects. A life in multi-directions. Multi-functional furniture and multi-lives. Today many people live part of their lives secretly and under the duress of lies. In the new world the morphology of diverse desire will not only be clad in one life but in many. Everyone will lead the life of a star. Transitory lifestyles in a world of backdrops. Life as a stage setting. Job-hopping, a new partner, new forms of relationships between the sexes no longer under the duress of fear, pressure, bad conscience, at the price of great losses. Instead freedom! In the world of the audiovisual alphabet not only does the expressive potential increase but also the spirit of life and forms of living. In a period full of constraints one might speak of a fulfilled life to a limited extent. The new will to style as a will to life represents living life to the full extent. Man can live many lives at once and after another. Not in the sense of the metaphysics of eternal return (this would only be the anticipation of possibilities ahead), but in real terms on this earth, in the world of the artificial will, a world reaching from cosmetics to cosmos. There will be more personal access to this world by way of high technology. Exercising my right, I demand that the government's monopoly on the formation and representation of reality be questioned and disqualified. Sovereign to my artificial will I assert my own representation and formation of reality. The insurrection of colors and sounds, the proclamation of the independence of forms and colors from the object that took place at the turn of the century will be followed by the insurrection and the proclamation of the independence of the individual from society at the coming turn of the century.
The tyranny of the framed painting is overcome by pictures in motion. The commercialization of all spheres of life is being countered by the destructurizing and deconditioning of man, for instance through electronic narration. Man is exploiting technology as ruthlessly as once nature, continents and nations were. Industry is the selfish usurper of technology. This usurpatory use of technology in the twentieth century will be ended by bloody upheavals. The apostles of a wholesome and healthy life: weren't they the ones that brought about total destruction in the twentieth century? Weren't the most terrible crimes done? On behalf of those who were for a natural style of life: Their primacy was the conservation of the species and to this end they beat up anything deviating from the species. They were frightened of the degenerate, yet in order to conserve the species they sought to destroy other species and in the process also became degenerate. He who knows unworthy life, doesn't love life for itself, but death. Do you all want total electronics? Capture my heart, computer! Electronics will be the heart of the 21st century! ARTIFICIAL WILL is a wild-style, video operetta about ecology, fun, politics, evolution, Europe, energy (the sacred three Es), the universe, sex, household, nature, technology, and, yes, boss, also sports.
SCENES OF MODAL WORLDS The (future) world as an artifact. Man will transform nature. The exteriorization of natural organs and functions through technology will increase tremendously, there will be extreme amplifications and distances in space and time will be surmounted with increased speed and range. Television, radio, intercoms, cars, airplanes are all exterior extensions of the human body (eyes, ears, voice, legs… ). Through Satellite TV and space stations these extensions will become exteriorizations of the earth. Even the fetal nutrient sack will be moved outside of the woman's body; with the invention of the artificial placenta. Artificial insemination and the artificial placenta will liberate women from pregnancy. The biological reduction of the woman and her social role defined in the thousand year-old myth of the woman as childbearer will be done away with once and for all. Words such as "binding" will only exist in the real nature. Exploitive biologisms in connection with man will be eliminated through technology. The woman will no longer be understood as a biological thing which will cause one axiom of our civilization to become invalid. The reality of artificially created life and artificial birth is moving closer. Intelligence and memory are being amplified and extended: artificial intelligence of computers. Computer banks as living libraries, as an expansion of memory. Calculations will no longer be done in the head—not even spatial representations of things—but in "electron brains", thinking machines" and on displays. Computer programs will be exterior nervous systems, genes, enzymes, neurotransmittors. Calculators and their algorithms are preliminary stages of "artificial thinking". The artificially moved images of computer animation as "artificial drawing". Artificial hands, artificial hearts, the artificial head…
Television, records, and movies can be seen as machines for artificially creating emotions. A video cassette is thrown into a slot to mobilize emotions artificially, such as fright, tension, laughing, etc. Pills can be swallowed for artificial hallucinations. Industrial life, life as an industry; from computer-aided design to body tissue aided with plasma. Artificial breasts can already be found on any street corner and in every newspaper. Even the seemingly most natural and immediate thing, sexuality is marked by this artificiality. Also desire, wish and eros have become artificial. Marvelous examples of the media sexuality in film and photography are evidence for the striking evolution of artificial (polymorphous-perverse) sex. We will be bringing further illustrations of this. A guitar amplifier as an amplifier of emotions. The loudness as stimulation. Electrical warriors of emotion. The electronical guitar as a symbol of the electrical society. The myth of the electro-guitar is substituting the piano as metaphor: a transformation of civilization is taking place. The synthesizer symbolizes the advent of a new democratic renaissance. The opera, born in 1600, is a child of the Renaissance. Direct access to the programs implemented in home computers (music, graphics, language) allows everyone to play with the classical forms of art as a renaissance artist through an electronic media opera.
The three dimensions of opera are already contained in one single element of the audiovisual alphabet. If music, images, language as a totality form an opera, in which the various media are autonomous, this totality pre-exists in each element of AVA. The retreat of human nutrition from plants and animals: artificial nutrition.
Social institutions and techno-economic development are dependent on one another. Society as technology, technology will replace the state. Technology liberates (from nature and state).
However, we will also have to liberate ourselves from technology. An end to consumerism.
Artificial paradises as a consequence of the will to artificiality. This is the covert goal of an infantile society, one domesticized by a party-system democracy. Actors will become politicians, morality will change like fashions, music will come in pills. The etiquette of corruption. The language of success: design instead of being. The values of truth as a show-element is falling. The mass media and show policy are determined by psycho-cosmetics and sale strategies. Headlights will form contours, colorful neon lights instead of life lines. A post-modern equality and indifference. Europe will take on the shape of a TV screen, only showing mono-culture, that is TV-culture. In this world of simulations death will appear as E. T., helpless, friendly, well-meaning and mortal himself. Death as the last thing natural that man cannot change will be exhumed from this earth as something extraterrestrial. This will become the greatest box-seller of all times. In the household setting the stranger thinks the hotel is the moon of the city. In the computer-animated evolution of the world which can be easily replayed by nature, only the best come through. The winner gets a free game. If evolution followed laws similar to those of human society there would be no evolution and no man. The sun as a legitimate source of energy must be replaced by a sun that can be controlled and regulated, by an artificial gas ball created by man. A second sun and there will be eternal light on earth. Artificial comets (gas explosions) in space will provide energy coming from outer space. Energy will no longer be shovelled out of the earth as coal, wood and electricity but also will be exteriorized. From the wounded body of the earth the source of energy will be removed and moved into outer space. Energy form beyond electricity in a cableless world.
First, all parts of the human body are exteriorized, then those of the earth's body. We have locked the sun in a light bulb. There it burns when we wish so. We switch the sun on and off. In the future, we will create our own sun, an artificial source of energy from outer space. Will the electrical household (after water and gas lines came electrical connections and cable TV) become an atomic household with its own nuclear power plant? Electrically powered continents are an extended part of the earth. Europe fever is sinking. The end of Eurocentrism will be the last Eurovision sending. Picturesque landscapes will only exist in the archives of TV stations overseas, this is the negative aspect of nuclear policy and the triumph of digital media aesthetics. Austria will only exist as a poststamp and its chancellor will speak from out of a drawer. Demon democracy, a limited liability society. Human rights extended to all parts of the body and all organisms of the earth. The earth as villa energy or an extended artificial earth. The heart of evolution continues to beat—artificially.
Translated by Camilla Nielsen
NOA NOA:
Erich Schindl ("Frisbee"): guitar
Heinz Hochrainer: altosax
Thomas Mießgang: bass
Wolfgang Poor: drums
Peter Weibel: vocal, video
Marco Polo: electric piano, synth., organ, tapes
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