[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
poolside
---------------------------------------------------------
· · · · · · A E C F O R U M - "M E M E S I S" · · · · ·
· · · · · · · (http://www.aec.at/meme/symp/) · · · · · ·
---------------------------------------------------------
Memesis: The other day I was talking with some friends about this period
we're living in. A time when things seem to be changing very quickly. We
were talking about what might happen and how we might be better prepared.
This idea of de-industrialization came up--how all the blue collar workers
were being discarded and how difficult it was for them to get back into
the economy. Living in a working class town means living in a working
class media environment. Country music is very big. These urbanized
workers are apparently still sad they're not living off the land. The
roots of country music lie in rural folk. Men and women working in
factories listen to country music. Contrary to popular opinion on the
WWW, there are still many people who work in factories.
College students today, most having never set foot in a factory, listen to
industrial music. The strangest thing about industrial (techno or ambient
or jungle or any other music that engages the listener with rhythms unique
to machines) is the way it makes you feel like you're in a factory. Under
those headphones the machines pound with massive levels of noise and the
relentless efficiency of robotic labour. College students, even those
from working class families, wouldn't be caught dead listening to country
music. [If you want to think about how seemingly inappropriate musical
memes are dominant in specific social sectors, listen to John Oswald's
Plunderphonics.]
You don't hear a lot of evolutionary analogies in factory lunch rooms or
college coffee houses these days. You hear a lot of talk about job
security and strategies for survival between jobs and after school is
over. The talk is about survival and how tough a place the world has
become. The world doesn't seem to hold out a welcome sign to anyone these
days.
When I said that everyone, including artists, were re-tooling, learning
computer skills, going back to school for digital chops, I was commenting
on what I see all around me. People are forming relationships with
machines, not necessarily because they're attracted to machines, but
because they are desperately trying to get connected and/or stay connected
with other people, particularly with those who can help them survive.
Whenever someone refers me to a Web address, I figure I'm being asked to
check out their promotional literature. The WWW reminds me of an
electronic talent database or tourist bureau full of resumes and brochures
and maps. I always manage to carry away a collection of things I have no
use for. I feel rich downloading files and coping with abundance. But
usually I end up forwarding what I've found to someone else. I've become
very good at glancing things over to decide where they'll be appreciated.
I enjoy pointing information in the right direction.
If the Web is primarily an electronic storage and distribution system for
electronic brochures and multi-media business cards, then it shouldn't be
strange that this indexical domain is so much like today's modern office.
Same software, same information handling methodologies; but no regular
paycheck, no healthcare, no social security net. The Web is The Office
for freelancers, whether they're on a contract or not. Artists, that
endangered species, when connected with/by computers, sit at a desk and
look very much like office workers, telecommuting home-office workers.
These are the new industrial labourers. Today white collar is equivalent
to blue collar. When you work at home you can wear whatever you want,
mostly without benefits.
The Web is an indexicality, as in locality, where iconic tendencies are
discouraged by conditions of low fidelity. In other words, we can find
out about things on the Web, but they're generally better in person or at
the source. Unless, of course, the index is the icon. Thus the obsession
with tools... So I wouldn't worry too much about artists migrating out of
galleries and museums into cyberspace, clogging the system with images and
sounds more appropriate for the home than the office. Storage and
bandwidth limitations will insure that things stay on the surface for
quite a few years. Without fidelity there can't be much depth. When
you're forced to communicate superficially (just touching the surface),
images, sounds, ideas lack depth (meaning, power, emotive qualities). But
with networks, and the compromises they demand, what you sacrifice in
depth you gain in range. [Vito Acconci says this when people ask him to
return to his psychological/emotional, literary performance works; they
ask that he abandon his current work in sculpture/architecture for public
spaces.]
Indexical domains are wonderful for exchanging or promoting ideas. If
this Memesis exercise is effective, Richard Dawkin's concept of the meme
may make it into the dictionaries before the end of the century.
Lexicologists and lexicographers, all signposts point to Linz for
meme-talk. I've had mixed success on the street here. For starters,
conceptual thinking is being constantly assaulted and undermined by all
manifestations of culture (culture in a pan-capitalist world is more and
more synonymous with advertising). For people to be able to grab and hold
onto a concept, we depend on repetition for clarity. Say that we consider
the image of cowboys sitting around a campfire smoking cigarets a concept
or a meme. Firelight, open sky, early evening, "cigarets taste good
outdoors" = meme.
I have had some luck with the idea of the selfish meme. In independent
video circles there have always been tapes that promote social change.
The first feminist video collectives produced some of the first tapes
critical of violence against women. Women formed collectives, founded
non-profit organizations, secured government and private funding,
purchased video equipment and made tapes about rape and battered women.
These consciousness-raising tapes eventually evolved into docu-dramas with
particular narrative structures and hybrid aesthetics. These tapes became
a kind of "look at this (injustice)" meme. As these tapes were sent from
community to community, collectives were formed to first view and then
replicate these messages. The tapes literally activated social
organization.
I can spot a "look at this (injustice)" meme just as quickly as a
"cigarets taste great outside" meme. I'm not surprised when "look at
this (injustice)" memes are missing on commercial television; and as a
former-smoker I'm grateful that "cigarets taste great outside" are banned
from television. Neither one of these memes fares very well in
cyberspace, although both have been introduced repeatedly.
So now we'll see if the Web is conducive to the spread of the "meme"
meme. I expect the "meme" meme will do quite well in this indexical domain.
And perhaps if media convergence really occurs to the degree we're told it
will (the day after tomorrow your telephone will be a movie rental store
and a ultrasonic saw for cutting yourself when you need to feel strongly),
then maybe some of these segregated memes will collide, creating a world
of depth and complexity (should I say diversity?). I'm not going to
attempt to explain why certain kinds of memes fare better in particular
technological environments here, now, other than to list a brief
chronology of the construction of the information highway and to add what
artists have been asking for since the whole digital thing has washed over
everything. The juxtaposition of this chronology with such a modest
degree of whimsy may suffice to alarm or depress.
Going back to mid-century, we saw Clark describe geosynchronous satellites
(1945), the first cable TV system (1948), the first satellite (1957), the
ARPA Net (U.S. Defense Department, 1969), the VCR (Sony's Betamax, VHS
shortly after, 1972), the first 24 hour news net (CNN, 1980), the
introduction of the first personal computer (IBM, 1981), the U.S.
government creates the internet (NSFnet, 1983), the WWW is created in
Geneva, Switzerland (1989) and Bell Core transmits full-motion video over
standard twisted pair telephone wires (1993).
During the late sixties, when object-based expressionism yielded to pop
art and conceptualism, at the end of high modernism or beginning of
post-modernism (depending on how you reflect on it), artists working with
communications technologies knew there was going to be a massive
conversion from analog to digital. A decade later (1980) the obsession
was with "real-time digital", then still a dream. We wanted digital for
its mimetic precision and its potential for ubiquity, but we wanted it to
be just as subtle and fuzzy (in the best sense of the word) as analog.
Everyone could see the potential of networking: global meme
experimentation and prototyping.
The first telematic exchanges by artists were text-based with side orders
of low-res images and sounds (slow-scan video, fax, out-of-sync satellite
improvisations). The high was connecting with others. Ham radio by any
other name is ham radio. Today our machines serve us better (or
vice-versa) and we continue to connect, to really connect, more and more
frequently and in greater numbers with far more specific communities of
interest. McLuhan said it first: the user is the content of any new
medium. Wanting badly to define ourselves at any cost (distortion, but
'our' distortion), one of the things we try to figure out is what kinds of
memes work best in particular (available) technological spaces. We'll
wear the damnedest memes, just because they flourish in a system. [The
natural environment of spiders, fish and ferns does not flourish in this
system.] Being alone together, being alone together is bliss...
Apparently we enjoy indulging in evolutionary analogies, playfully trading
strong opinions about the mind's responsibility to the body, wondering
whether our meme pool is stagnant, expanding or collapsing AND visiting
and trashing the cultural ruins of Silicon Valley.
Tom Sherman
The School of Art & Design, Syracuse University, New York, USA
twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu
----------------------------------------------------------
· · · · to subscribe to the Open Forum just mail to · · ·
· · open-memesis-request@aec.at (message text 'subscribe')
· · · · · · · send messages to open-memesis@aec.at · · · ·
----------------------------------------------------------
