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Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace? Author(S): Roy Ascott Source: Art Journal, Vol

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Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace? Author(S): Roy Ascott Source: Art Journal, Vol Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace? Author(s): Roy Ascott Source: Art Journal, Vol. 49, No. 3, Computers and Art: Issues of Content (Autumn, 1990), pp. 241-247 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777114 . Accessed: 07/02/2011 20:41 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=caa. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace? By Roy Ascott he past decade has seen the two power- doubt, but the question in human terms, work but because content is embodied in ful technologies of computing and from the point of view of cultureand cre- data that is itself immaterial, it is pure telecommunications converge into one ativity,is: What is the content? electronic difference,until it has been re- field of operationsthat has drawninto its This question, which seems to be at the constitutedat the interfaceas image, text, embraceother electronicmedia, including heart of many critiques of art involving or sound. The sensory outputmay be dif- video, sound synthesis, remote sensing, computers and telecommunications,sug- ferentiatedfurther as existing on screen, as and a varietyof cyberneticsystems. These gests deep-seated fears of the machine articulatedstructure or material, as archi- phenomena are exerting enormous influ- coming to dominatethe humanwill and of tecture, as environment, or in virtual ence upon society andon individualbehav- a technological formalismerasing human space. ior; they seem increasingly to be calling contentand values. Apartfrom all the par- Such a view is in line with a more gen- into questionthe very natureof what it is to ticulars of personal histories, of dreams, eral approachto art as residing in a cul- be human, to be creative, to think and to desires, and anxieties that informthe con- tural communicationssystem ratherthan perceive, and indeed our relationship to tent of art'srich repertoire,the question, in in the art object as a fixed semantic each otherand to the planetas a whole. The essence, is asking:Is therelove in the tele- configuration-a system in which the "telematic culture" that accompanies the matic embrace? vieweractively negotiates for meaning.3In new developmentsconsists of a set of be- this sense, telematicnetworking makes ex- haviors, ideas, media, values, and objec- n the attemptto extricatehuman content plicit in its technology and protocols what tives thatare significantlyunlike those that fromtechnological form, the questionis is implicitin all aestheticexperience where have shaped society since the Enlighten- made more complicatedby our increasing that experience is seen as being as much ment. New cultural and scientific meta- tendencyas artiststo bring togetherimag- creative in the act of the viewer's percep- phors and paradigmsare being generated, ing, sound, and text systems into interac- tion as it is in the act of the artist'sproduc- new models and representationsof reality tive environmentsthat exploit state-of-the- tion.4 Classical communications theory are being invented, new expressivemeans art hypermedia and that engage the full holds, however,that communicationis a are being manufactured. sensorium, albeit by digital means. Out of one-waydispatch, from senderto receiver, Telematics is a term used to designate this technological complexity, we can in which only contingent "noise" in the computer-mediatedcommunications net- sense the emergence of a synthesis of the channelcan modifythe message (oftenfur- working involving telephone, cable, and arts. The question of content must there- ther confused as the meaning) initiatedat satellite links between geographicallydis- fore be addressedto what might be called the source of transmission.5This is the persed individualsand institutionsthat are the Gesamtdatenwerk-the integrated model that has the artist as sender and interfacedto data-processingsystems, re- data work-and to its capacity to engage thereforeoriginator of meaning, the artist mote sensing devices, and capaciousdata- the intellect, emotions, and sensibility of as creatorand owner of images and ideas, storage banks. It involves the technology the observer.2Here, however,more prob- the artistas controllerof context and con- of interaction among human beings and lems arise, since the observerin an interac- tent. It is a model that requires, for its betweenthe humanmind andartificial sys- tive telematic system is by definition a completion,the vieweras, at best, a skilled tems of intelligence and perception. The participator.In a telematic art, meaning is decoder or interpreter of the artist's individualuser of networks is always po- not somethingcreated by the artist,distrib- "meaning" or, at worst, simply a passive tentially involved in a global net, and the uted throughthe network,and receivedby receptacleof such meaning. It gives rise to world is always potentially in a state of the observer. Meaning is the product of the industry of criticism and exegesis in interaction with the individual. Thus, interactionbetween the observer and the which those who "understand"this or that across the vast spread of telematic net- system, the contentof which is in a stateof work of art explain it to those who are too worksworldwide, the quantityof datapro- flux, of endless change and transforma- stupid or uneducatedto receive its mean- cessed and the density of informationex- tion. In this condition of uncertaintyand ing unaided. In this scenario, the artwork changed is incalculable. The ubiquitous instability,not simply becauseof the criss- andits makerare viewed in the same wayas efficacy of the telematic medium is not in crossing interactionsof users of the net- the world and its creator.The beauty and Fall 1990 241 truth of both art and the world are "out In the contextof telematicsystems and the where the metaphorof verticality is em- there" in the world and in the work of art. issue of content and meaning, the parallel ployed insistently in its monuments and They are as fixed and immutable as the shift in art of the status of "observer"to architecture-emblems often as not of ag- materialuniverse appears to be. The canon that of "participator" is demonstrated gression, competition,and dominance,al- of determinism decrees prefigured har- clearly if in accountsof the quantumprin- ways of a tunnelvision. The horizontal,on mony and composition, regulated form ciple we substitute "data" for "quanta." the otherhand, is a metaphorfor the bird's- and continuity of expression, with unity Indeed, findingsuch analogiesbetween art eye view, the all-over, all-embracing,ho- and clarityassured by a culturalconsensus and physics is more than just a pleasant listic systems view of structures,relation- and a linguistic uniformityshared by artist game;the web of connectionsbetween new ships, and events-viewing that can in- and public alike. models of theory and practice in the arts clude the ironic, the fuzzy, and the andthe sciences, overa wide domain, is so ambiguous.This is precisely the condition as to a shift in of and to which telema- he problem of content and meaning pervasive suggest paradigm perception insight within a telematic culture added our world view, a redescriptionof reality tic networkingaspires. gives and a recontextualizationof ourselves. We the most of poignancy to the rubric "Issues of Con- Perhaps powerfulmetaphor begin to understand that chance and interconnectednessand the horizontalem- tent" under which this presentwriting on and artis "issue" is change, chaos and indeterminacy,tran- brace in art before the adventof telematic computers developed: scendence and transformation,the imma- media is to be foundin the workof Jackson open to a of meanings, no one of plurality terial and the numinous are terms at the Pollock.'l Here the horizontal arena, a which is satisfactory.The metaphorof a center of our and our space marked out on the surface of the semantic sea endlessly ebbing and flow- self-understanding of in of all new visions of reality. How then, could earth, is the "ground" for the action and ing, meaning constantly flux, there be a content-sets of transformationthat become the words, utterances,gestures, and images in meanings- painting a state of tossed to and fro containedwithin telematic art when every itself. Pollock created his powerfulmeta- undecidability, of in is in a of connectedness into new collusions and conjunctions aspect networking dataspace
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