 Formats of Difference
by Heimo Ranzenbacher
Formats of Difference
In this "statement" I am referring to a passage in the sketch of the
thematical spectrum by Geert Lovink: "So far there is not much experience
and expertise in the orchestrating of net-based public debates on
technology. (...) At this stage we are leaving the era of the introductions
on the nature and implications of new technologies (and the role of artists
in this process) and find ourselves in the middle of controversies around
topics like copyright, privacy, war on standards, cultural biases, public
access, censorship and other 'old patterns' in 'new media'." The subject
of this statement is the role of art.
Because of space limitations I must base my topic on some postulates. In the
first place, we are living in a culture where its general self-understanding
is determined by humanistic praxis. However, it is an essential part of the
concept of humanism that the human role is to convey meaning to things,
although this is an obsolete concept because of our cultural evolution
("Informatising".)
Humanism, culture, art and future will therefore be explained. "Evolution"
will be referred to as cultural and social development.
According to "Memesis, The Future of Evolution," there are certain features,
particularly in the information system, which determine our culture.
Another theme is the idea which a human being has about his own culture. A
further theme is also a human's idea of being a human, impressed on the
technical culture. I am talking about this dynamic in referrence to
orientation systems. By culture I mean a transformation of nature into
cultural assets through informational determinants. These cultural assets
acquire several meanings. But I also mean
a transformation of cultural assets into signs which can become independent
from the assets. In the meaning of culture also the perception of this
process is included. By perception I mean the social forms of culture, that
is the organisation of orientation in this culture. I will try to draw out
the features of a cultural, relevant art in the context of future: Art as
MEME, whenever we want.
My understanding of the term future is explained as follows: future is a
metaphor or a model and in both cases certain necessities arise: future as a
hope to have a future, and future as a factor of the process of organising
the present time.
If we speak of future as a factor, we mean uncertainty. If change is a
dominant factor in society, (society as the organisation of our relations
towards hings,) then future as uncertainty, is the dominant factor in the
organisation of hings, i.e. the matters of our culture. On the other hand,
certainty would have the meaning of ignorance of everything which is
extraneous to our present time. Certainty would then be interpreted as an
essential static. According to Karl Popper, certainty can be tempting but
this is awkward. Certainty is tempting us to encounter irreversible
decisions. When we have uncertainty at the basis of our decisions, then
reversibility is a consequence. Reversibility opens the way to effective
critique in opposition to a critique of the effect. A sensible decision
could no longer exist without giving a thought about how the world not
only is but also could be. Under humanism I understand a general term
which refers to the commitment to the organisation of life, society and
to the quality of the environment in correspondence to human dignity. The
basis for this concept of humanism is the assumption that, as already
mentioned, the role of humans is to convey meaning to things. The idea of
being a human is an anthropological model for the interpretation of
reality. The dawn of hyper-reality is in a way something new.
Previously, in the Middle Ages, hyper-reality was viewed as
something which led one's life to the afterlife. Today, these medieval
views are equivalent to artificial systems of orientation, i.e. religion,
political systems and particularly money systems. The representation of
the machine in this system of orientation is, in fact, new.
To convey meaning to things means also to convey meaning through the
creation of
things. Nothing exists by itself. A stone cannot exist without being a part
of its environment.For a long time, things have also represent an
information that we created. To convey meaning to things and to information
means to "informatise" them, and this corresponds to the self-understanding
of culture which is an essential, humanistic understanding of culture.
To give something a form means to create a design/layout, which is a way to
imprint new information on things. "Formatising" is a mediation of the new
design/layout of information. "Informatising" means to put things and
information into a format. To create things means to "infomatise" them.
Things are also forms of the perception of information. For a long time we
have created information, the meaning of which is increased through the form
in
which we force the information in. The design/layout form is a necessity
for the mediation and the perception of the information. (The formats of
information production, distribution and perception will eventually equal
each others.) For example, the newspaper is a kind of format which
determines the appearance and the perception of its information. Also
television, radio and internet are kinds of formats with a different
appearance and perception and so on. The
sense of information has been determined by the format and the form of its
mediation. The aesthetic forms and formats of information, like during the
Gulf War, are illustrating that these formats (i.e. information) are far
more important for someone's interests than the primary events of the war.
Another example: "Coca Cola" has represented for a long time a drink under
this name but it has also reresented youth, free time, America and freedom.
And for a long
time we have been talking about freedom under the terms of Coca Cola. We
have already grown a beard on this. But the detachment of an appearance from
an event, or the substitution of things with signs, is followed by gradually
fading-away abilities which allow the perception of this process. Freedom
is drinkable. Such examples are uncountable.
Is it still possible to seriously speak of controlling things through
humans? Today it is more and more difficult to make a statement about
reality which is constructed of artificial systems supported by media
machines. It seems that the relation between things and humans begins to
reverse. The "informatised" man receives meaning from things and no longer
conveys meaning to things.
The question would be whether the established rules and orientation systems
(like politics, money systems and religion) in comparison with the new
artificial systems, are no longer relevant.
At last humans should be again in a position to be able to convey meaning to
things.
However, today no sensible, or better, cultural, relevant art can be created
without giving a thought about how the world not only is but also could be.
And art, according its traditional definition in the modern age, has at best
a pedagogical value. Today art, which equals to technology (ars, techne,)
might bring its technical potential into effect in our culture.
To take flight in a data sphere with all the consequences for the authorship
of an art work and for its labour, would not be the best way for art. The
consequences would be to abandon traditional features and therefore to
establish them in a new context, i.e. art that soon peters out. As far as
art goes, when art is introduced in a data sphere it is no longer
recognizable as a peculiarity. The data sphere, however, offers a special
possibility to be used in a parasitic way. A possibility to create an effect
exists in the structure of this sphere and this structure is suitable for
projects of transformation of this structure towards artistic acts.
I am speaking about art as a cultural technique with operative features in
the data shere (operative features of cultural techniques in opposition to
art techniques, where the latter serve to create art, and the former serve
to design culture.) Every single form of electronic art could be understood
under the above terms. But we have to differentiate among these forms.
The data sphere (in the following: DS,) becomes more and more important for
the cultural structure. Cultural technique is no longer only something that
serves the understanding of and the orientation in our culture, like writing
and reading, but it also has an operative quality. Aesthetic information,
which is determined by and constructed for the DS, is implied and differs
from that which is introduced into a real public sphere. This aesthetic
information is per se an intervention in the structure as well as change and
design. Consequently, art becomes evident as a temporary difference of the
structure. This difference is a funtionanl/operative feature not merely in
the way of perception.
John Archibald Wheeler stated:" A picture without a frame is not a picture."
>From here it would follow that the principle of traditional art is perceived
in its effort to formulate an artificial frame as well as the general
conditions like the institutions. At the same time, whether these are
pictures of painting or sculpture or processes, the perception of these
pictures is dependent on its demarkation. The principle of art in a DS is
opposed to the principle of traditional art: the dissolution of any frame.
The consequence is the dissolution of art.
This feature, i.e. the breaking of traditional bonds, is the message I am
trying to convey. In a general way, the digital culture discourse is based
on the affirrmation of technological conditions. Furthermore, new
technology is mostly used according to its primary, intended function. The
consequence is that old, conceptual and visual patterns and signs would be
projected into this new context. A radicalization of the implied change of
things and matters
through art could occur only when art can change. It is necessary for art to
leave its naivety behind. In the DS music is not just music, but also an
accumulation of data. The image of an eye does not represent just an eye,
but also the data on which it is based. These data can signify not just
"eye" but also money transfer or a code to start a rocket.
Earlier I postulated a banality (followed by many more of them; mea culpa!)
by stating that the DS becomes more significant for the cultural structure.
Following here, I will state that the cultural structure equals to a text.
Susequently, if new features of conception, distribution and presentation
develop not only new pictures or new meanings of, and through pictures, then
these features develop also a new text. The formulation of the text and its
grammar, like the cultural structure, is unfinished. Hence, throug art,
there is one possibility to draw out some formulations for this text. As a
consequence of this optimistic assessment, it would be appropriate to
substitute the term art with cultural technique.
As an explanation there are traditional cultural techniques which differ
fundamentally from the new ones.
Reading and writing, as a form of communication (with books, with pen pals,
with government offices, and so on,) somehow imply a form of organizing
(Gestaltung,) thus, a fundamental, political and social undertaking. For
instance, the creation of a text (or generally of an aesthetic information)
is based on the intention to get some effects. These effects are dependent
on the institutions to make them real (the mail system, a publishing
company.) The
creation of information is private. In the DS, not only the data but also
the creation of data/information is public. Thus, reversibility is a
fundamental characteristic of this sphere. In its own capability, cultural
digital technique (as art) modifies, the structure in which creation,
presentation and perception take place. The process of reading can mutate
into a process of writing. From listening to the music from the radio, a
mutation of the music into the radio which I am listening to, happens.
Cultural technicians modify, with their aesthetical proceedings, the
structures of the manifestation/distribution of their proceedings. Composing
a radio play to be produced and sent, does not touch the structure of the
radio, at best it touches several meanings of the radio. The radio is made
into a topic (thematisiert.) Making something into a
topic (Thematisierung) looses its special quality of perception in the
information sphere.
Making something into a topic means to make a reference to something, and in
our
case this can happen through an art work. The opposit of making something
into a topic is to process something. To process something means to
transform it into that art work. The difference is in the process. After
this process is completed, the meaning of the process has no longer an
effect.
In the disappearance of the cultural relevance of art works, in the view of
the increasing significance of informatising, also the significance of the
author disappears. Yet art, which exists in the DS as the processing of the
DS (this is exactly the form of its existence,) exists per se as a temporary
difference in the well ordered circumstances of the DS. In there lies the
manifestation and meaning of art, not in the acknowledgement of the sphere,
but rather in its
transformation. When artists accept these features and process them, then
they are no longer users but they become "relevant" as intruders. The
disappearing of the author, in view of the DS, makes sense only when change
in the sphere appears. Many art projects exist in the form of a total
acknowledgement of well ordered and prescribed circumstances in the DS.
That's how they execute the order.
This tendency manifests also in the advanced media-art. We equal inter(net)
activity to interaction. But to create an electronic matrix (an artificial
system of conditions as a small) which is changed by activity, basically
refers to (the) traditional art of making something into a topic. This
creation differs from the interactive system as a whole, like Kant's
understanding of
aesthetics -- the quality of beauty (das Schoene) as the object of pleasure
without any interest (das Schoene als Gegenstand des Wohlgefallens ohne
alles
Interesse,) -- differs from Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten's understanding of
aesthetics. To him, to make the term beauty objectively verifiable to
everyone, is to refer the quality of beauty not only to objects. He
referred it to the art and ways of recognisability (something is
recognisible in a beautiful way.)
The interactive system as a whole equals to a game inside a big game (with
an effect on it.) This means processing meaning. The system of conditions as
a small equals to a toy. It is only a matter of time until interactive as
well as communication art will be established as a new artistic style. That
would be the biggest nonsense.
If cultural technique means intervention in the DS, as I believe, and if
cultural technique has the object of making a temporary difference in the
sphere, then the community of cultural technicians, as an interface, convey
a meaning. The strategy might not be only an acquisition but also a
transformation by means of acquisition. And transformation is an essential
humanistic quality which means to convey meaning to things. Transformation
in this case means to hold or to re-discover the position of one who can
convey meaning to things. To informatise the matters of human culture means
to find methods through which the communication systems and its features can
be put into formats of difference.
If art is dissolved into a cultural technique -- and only in this process we
can find the sense of the dissolution of authorship (and of the object) --
then art can become a medium for designing culture. If this dissolution
took place only in (and because of the features of) the DS, then we would
offer resistance to it because it would be only a meaningless form of
modesty.
Heimo Ranzenbacher
Glacisstr. 9/II
A-8010 Graz
Tel: +43 316 388738
FAX: +43 316 388738-4
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