with the increasing industrial dynamization of the body, freedom of themind was suggested. this freedom, in the information sense, was followed bythe evacuation of bodies into dead spaces. there were attempts at once tomanifest in artwork the mind which was already separating itself from thedynamized body. the manifestation of freedom demanded dead objects. but therepeatedly propagated death of art in industrial modernity has beenreplaced by the art of death in informational modernity. death, as a contradiction to the dynamization and aestheticization of everyday life, isthe result of the exponential acceleration in the information environment. in it, the content of art is its own disappearance, the art form isbackground noise.
the public space
the sphere of the "public space" - and thus of "public art" - is that of the "publication of traffic"; of communication, information, telephone, radio, television, transmitting, broadcasting, of car, train and satellite networks, of global and cosmic traffic. in the dynamized state, within the lines of communication, the bodies begin to dissolve in accordance with their designation and make any visibility of the bodies appear reactionary. the body as a data carrier disappears in the intersection of accelerated data, as the car disappears in traffic. the free dynamic subject is therefore no longer measured and determined by its shape or form but rather by the degree of its disintegration.
but it is only with the electrification of the dynamized subject that the
movement of subjects in space also initiates a disintegration. an eloquent
testimony for this transition from "mobile subject" to "mobile background"
is provided by the development from radio to car radio. i will even go so
far as to state that it was only with car radio that radio found its real
definition and designation. this history of radio accompanies the section
of history covering a technological society that has been set into motion.
from the stationary box to transistor and ultimately car radio, from the
stationary to the mobile and ultimately to the dynamic object. dynamic
because the "apparatus radio" becomes so "interconnected" with the "machine
car" that the dynamics of the machine and the statics of the apparatus
raise each other to a higher level of power. as the moving car sets the
radio in motion, the radio heats up the body that is now motionless - tied
down with belts. (television on the other hand has accompanied the
technically travelling body since its emergence.) car television is
replaced by collages on the car window. the tv screen is replaced by the
wind screen. driving along, wether along the highways or in urban rushhour
traffic, corresponds increasingly to the collage technique of the dadists.
concrete dirt on the window panes, mixed up with fragments of landscape,
melt together to become an inseparable unity. video clip technology with
its extremly short cuts and sounds continues the trip at highest speeds in
the mental space, beyond all visible speeds and laws of perception.
the special significance of car radio lies in its unique fusion of the
industrial and the informational communication levels. the car radio is the
transitory sign of the change from the mobile object to the mobile symbol.
for no one but the travelling subject are radio frequency tables erected
along the communication paths (highways) as visible signs of non-visible
frequencies. these signs however must be read as an expression of the
transition from industrial to informational communication and of the
society upon which it is based.
it thus becomes clear that the mobile subject, once set into motion,
dissolves increasingly into a noise of the signals. in the car radio, the
data of the channels blur with the sound of the motor and the temporal
collages of the car windshield to become a synaesthetic perception of the
world. the faster the movement, the more this background emerges. the
higher the speed, the harder it gets to filter "stationary data" from the
data background, that is to follow the program, pick out information. the
multidimensional data background becomes the actual program. in it, the
speed of moving body is proportional to the noise of the signals, until at
last it melts inaudibly into the background releasing only one piece of
information, that of the background. the interest in news programs is
heated up by the fact that the data background, which means loss of
information, is artificially supplied along with the program. in the space
age this noise does not suggest distance between the scene of the action
and the receiver, as it did at the beginning of the radio age, but rather a
compressed speed for the subject that remains in immobility (rigor mortis!).
radioman
the electric man no longer listens to the radio - he himself is radio: set
at the same time on reception and transmission. as a sign of his existence
he thus leaves his marks on the data background. the drawing of marks is
the basis of his existence (on video, banking card, telephone, fax,
personal computer and so on). as if in recognition of the electric circuits
in his own body, the "radioman" charges himself up with mobile electronic
calculators, watches, data and dictating machines, Walkmans, cellular
telephones, electronic locators, laptops, notebooks. supported by
batteries, he creates around himself the postmodern aura of an
omnipresence. his exterior is radiant like the detergent "radion", his
interior is embedded in the electronic community of the data background. he
himself is a light spot (pixel) in the space of surfaces, the "computer
planes", of foregrounds, backgrounds and image planes. into them he
plunges, to disappear and then emerge in another place as someone else. as
a light spot the "radioman" has permanently taken on the form of the
vanishing point.
and even more: "radioman" has fused with the vanishing point. "radioman"
has overcome Renaissance space, with its absolute authority of the
vanishing point and the unequivocal rules connected with it regarding
representation and contemplation. in that space the vanishing point itself
was invisible. nevertheless it was present in every single thing. one could
also say that in the space of objects and things the vanishing point
dissolved itself by concretizing space above the visible and unequivocal
order of objects. this vanishing point was not visible but it was present
in every single thing. this invisible and infinitely remote point, that
vanishes from the eye, puts the viewer into an unequivocal relation to the
world and creates control over the world. at the same time, above the
invisibility of the vanishing point that is within the finite world,
infinity interweaves with space. it is this invisible power of the
vanishing point in the finite world that, in the "technifestation" of
photography, imparts to each single photo its very splendour, that speaks
to us from infinity.
in the cameraless zooming of the computer-generated data images, the
vanishing point itself is dynamized. every pixel is its own infinity, its
own vanishing point and electronic subject - "radioman" - meet in the light
spot on the surface of the screen in order to unite indissolubly in the
noise of the signals. the vanishing of the objects in infinity, or the
dissolution in the noise of the signals, leads to the vanishing of all
differences in the finite world.
the once aural vanishing point, which as a symbol also represents social
hierarchy and referred to the infinity of space, takes shape in the
"radioman" as a light spot in the space of surfaces. in this space the
spaces and objects, which were once subjects to the vanishing point,
dissolve to become their own vanishing points, in order to shine in the
infinite data background. the vectors in the data background, or according
to communication theory in the network, then point into all directions and
times.
omnisience
if in the industrial societies it was said that "knowledge means power"
then translated into the electric society it should be said that "the sole
power is 'knowledge about knowledge'" thus "the human dream of omniscience,
which is also part of the history of fascination with information
technology, enters into a qualitatively new phase. it is probably no
coincidence that omniscience means an ability and privilege that was mostly
reserved for the gods"1. omniscience touches upon the background of all
knowledge which has its place and time in the omnipresence, which has found
its technical base in the communication network of information technology.
knowledge no longer has anything to do with information in networks and
systems, but with the noise of the signals and its systems. "whoever is
omniscient breaks through the limitations of space and time and knows what
there is to know about each time and about each place. it is exactly this
grand gesture that is becoming manageable, in a very humanly secular
fashion, due to the communication networks and computers with their almost
inexhaustible data of knowledge"2 telecommunication networks overcome all
natural obstacles like mountains, oceans, rivers, but also all historically
determined social, cultural ones and all dividing lines between private and
public (an art-in-public-space must find its legitimation here). in this
telecommunicative space of time, "city, country, mountain, river, animal,
plant, boy's name, girl's name - the object of our childhood in the old
children's game - must congeal to become data in order to enter into the
infinity horizon of omniscience, at which point the causal connection with
outer space or the universe as the basis of knowledge or data background
becomes effective.
infinity
in the context of the data background any appearing object is an arbitrary
manifestation of the infinity syndrome of vanishing points and periods of
time. the objects in the universal machine that are designed for infinity,
with their fleeting stores and screens, are designed for the infinite
place, from where they speak to us with infinite time. the machine, like
its objects, is a paraphrase of the infinity of the universe. as a
universal machine, it is the child of the same universe hypotheses in
modern science that is mentioned by, among others, the American astronomer
Frank Wilczek: "at the point of the big bang - as the theory of the
beginning of the universe accepted by all scientists - the universe was not
only infinitely dense, but also infinitely hot." this state of infinitely
high density dates back billions of years. the vanishing point in space has
dissolved in the infinity of density. the American astrophysicists David L.
Meier and Rashid A. Sunyaev allow at least in theory for the possibility of
being able to find temporal infinity, for
"if we could look at objects
which are so far away that their light takes 16.5 billion years to reach
the earth, then we would see these objects in the state they were in just
after the beginning of the universe."
vanishing
with the one vanishing point in the Renaissance making things disappear,
the objects arose in the foreground in their order. with the vanishing
points in the electronic context making things appear, the objects
disappear in the background. as the Renaissance was characterized by its
universal order of objects in their uniqueness of space and time, so the
informational design is characterized by making objects disappear. the
beginning of this process is the indistinguishability of the concrete
world, which at the same time is able to be anything and everything.
the resigned design in its postmodern arbitrariness and colourfulness
demonstrates very clearly the long lost fight against the vanishing of
objects. the actual design decision has already been made in the
microelectronic circuit, where the distinguishing criterion is unimportant,
not because it in itself provides nothing more to see but because nothing
may be seen that makes any difference. (in the next chip generation a pea
by comparison will prevent the chip from functioning in an area the size of
five soccer fields. the present technology with its microdesign has reached
the atomic limitations of the material. it gets below the dimensions of
light waves so that in absolute terms as well, seeing anything is
impossible.) thus the absolute dissolution of the vanishing point, which
points into infinity, has been carried out. once the one vanishing point
has disappeared into space the innumerable light spots of the surface come
into being. this constitutes the intoxication of signals, beyond any
acoustic or visual information values. "here space disappears in a new
sense of time," according to Julian Halliday at a communication conference
in Montreal in 1987. "the new space is semantically defined as a surface
for games and diversion, divided into fear and promise, a surface through
which existence and objects exhibit and repress their materiality..... a
space that is perceived and shown in a superficial and empty fashion does
not reveal anything but only exhibits, as all surfaces do.... the
archetypal illustration of Walt Disney's film TRON, whose space is not real
but a virtual one that is literally spread out in the computer circuit."
the vanishing of space and time in favour of a permanent mutation was
mentioned as early as 1920 by Hermann Weyl, who worked closely with
Einstein and stated the following to explain Einstein's theories: "we
totally deny the existence of matter filling space by merely being there;
if, according to the theory of relativity, it does not make sense anymore
to speak of the same point in space at different times, or of the same
point in time at the different places, then this also eliminates any
meaningful possibility of recognizing 'the same point of substance' and
following it through its history. there are no unchangeable corpuscles that
the force field only graps from the outside, pushing them back and forth."
Einstein himself even mentioned "a field of ghosts...where the waves only
had the purpose of guiding the way for the corpuscular light quanta... this
guiding field determines the probability of a light quantum, the carrier of
energy and impuls, taking a certain path." although this theory by
Einstein is no longer valid today, there is talk of fields again in the
context of the macrocosmic. they are now called "background radiation" of
outer space and "their uniformity suggests that this radiation was produced
at the beginning of the universe (big bang) and has since cooled down to
2.9 Kelvin (2.9 aboove the absolute zero point) due to the expansion of the
universe", with "the intensity of the background radiation - except for
deviations of less than one per million - creating an even distribution all
over the sky." finally, the recently discovered Roengten background makes
it necessary, according to its discoverer Bruce Margon, "that the
astronomers get used to the fact that up to now they may have ignored
ninety-nine percent of the matter in the universe. the known galaxies and
the shining objects within them would then be no more than impurities of the intergalactic medium."
all of this would not be so interesting if these did not coincide with a
new perception of the world in the social context, which, as a background
of life, appears to be carring our lives. grasping this background is
difficult to us because it cannot be communicated, because mutual
communication is based on it or takes place through it. what cosmic
background radiation is for the universe, according to astrophysics is
equivalent to "common sense" in terms of the functioning of societies. we
seem to know that it exists, however, it has not been possible so far to
describe it, as the state of artificial intelligence research shows very
clearly. " the probelm of common sense has prevented any progress
especially in the theory of artificial intelligence in the past twenty
years.... because understanding natural language depends on humans and
computers having a general communication context (common sense). it is
necessary to solve the problem of what common sense means and what it
comprises."10 without the knowledge of "common sense" as the background of knowledge there cannot be any progress in artificial intelligence research, as in the new culture nothing will happen without the "noise of the signals" as the background constitutes the signals themselves.
the dead data background
while the telegraph, radio, television, telephone, for example, were still
reporting us from far-away spaces, we are now preparing for the report from
beyond these spaces. those are dead spaces, spaces of the dead, that we
will be confronted with.
a presentiment of this is provided by the radio voice. the distance between
transmitter and receiver, which was technically overcome but also
technically cut out or eliminated, is, metaphorically speaking, a dead
space, that as we should never forget, always resonates in the technical
voice. the technical voice is the mood of the eliminated spaces and times,
and it makes absolutely no difference whether the voice comes to us live
or from storage. live is only a sentimental technological lie. it is only
the elimination, the cancellation of space and time that makes it possible
for storage technologies to make their appearance in order to realize their
own characteristic competence: vitalizing what is dead. storage
technologies are the harbingers of vitalization technologies, which require
the killing of what is alive in space and time so that they can vitalize
what is space- and timeless. if it could be imagined that Zeuxis, when he
simulated grapes in an alleged mural, so perfectly outdid this world that
even birds were fooled, then it is much easier to imagine that in radio -
immanently present technically dead spaces - "the beyond" speaking to us is
simulated. (in the "virtual reality" of computer spaces these dead spaces
have already received their first name.) now we must learn to exclude the
vitalization of what is dead in the information of the technically
transmitted messages. in the noise of the signals. so begins the
"resurrection from the dead" in a qualitatively new state. in the
beginnings there were shapes, patterns, forms, rhythms that spoke to us
from the three-dimensional space and found their input and shape in the
apparatus. now it is entire data background. the data storage of
otherworldly spaces and times, heaven and hell, speaking to us. but it does
not put our bodies into motion anymore, rather it puts us into synchronous
vibration with the noise of the data background. as "radioman" we are the
mental resonating bodies of omniscience of the dead spaces, of the universe.
this completes the circle: the accelerated radio provides us with a
presentiment from the realm of the data-dead. nothing is more alarming in
a radio transmission than an interruption in broadcasting because it makes
the dead space between the transmitter and receiver come alive in the
broadcasting interruption, the dead space, for a few moments potentially
coincides with the death of the "radioman".
"radioman" oscillates like an electric body between the "dead data
background" and the "technosphere" as the foreground. in this way, in the
after-era of postmodern times, he breaks the beaming of the technosphere
and the beaming away of the social side, as practised up to that time. as
in the "radioman", the aestheticization finds perfection in the total
beaming of the technosphere, which, as many people think, has made in its
political, social and aesthetic function a nice memory. in the place of
this "fine", socially disconnected, art-historizing material art of the
museums, there is now the futurizing pendant of an "electronic kitsch art."
in contrast to the former, which still pretends to be political, the
latter, in its ostensibly unpretentious spectacle, is the most political
art in the history of mankind - as the ejection of the data background.
it goes without saying that with the aestheticization of technology in
technological societies those very societies aestheticize themselves, and
that this leads to an aestheticization in the political sense. another
commonplace observation is that technologies reinforce trends, that they
can force freedom as well as power, death as well as life. if one considers
that information technology is a military technology, then "the
generalization of technologies - especially of information technologies -
creates a danger for the civil and inner concerns of the state of carring
the total military machinery, including projective driving controls, into
all areas of society"11 in this way the eminently political role of a
"technical media art" as kitsch art receives a new importance: it is to
transfigure the "technological death urge" of society as an "art of
beauty", using the technical means inherent in it.
vibration, oscillation, noise
the intoxication with drugs at the beginning of the sixties is followed by
the technological data intoxication of simulation. in the noise of the
signals the increasingly paralyzed body receives its frequency impulses.
this noise is not motion in a conventional space, it is the synchronization
with the vibrating body of society. from the noise of the signals
"radioman" arises. in the noise, space and time are connected as are zero
and one in the chip. in the noise of the signals death and life meet. this
noise is the oscillation between the grounds and the surfaces without depth
between which "radioman" diffuses back and forth. noise is the vibration,
the continuous massage as the only message. noise is the simulation of
mental sensorics, the informational pendant to the vibrator. in the noise,
the hitherto dead background will shine. in the noise of the signals, time
in its infinity returns. noise is the frequency of infinity.
those who will be tied up in this data background will also be the ones who
will determine the actions of all those who still make their decisions
based on the traditional times and spaces, therefore, they will decide over
dependence and independence, freedom and domination.