[-empyre-] last few thoughts: promises

["Ollivier Dyens" <odyens@hotmail.com>]

Last few thoughts :

Some of you seem very angry at the failed promise of technology. But when
has anyone not been failed by any overwhelming promises? Religion, progress,
civilization, the list of failed promises is as long as human history.
TECHONOLOGY IS NOT A PROMISE. IT IS NOT A PROGRESS. It will not replace the
real, organic, material world. It is simply a new understanding.

In his book The Age of Access, Jeremy Rifkin explains how society is
changing from an object-oriented one to a lifestyle-oriented one. In a
society where objects are over abundant, accumulation is not only literally
impossible but does not serve any class distinction purpose anymore. The
objects are being drained of psychological, sociological and « magical »
values. According to Rifkin, what we long to « accumulate » now (if one can
still use such a word) are lifestyles, behaviors, cultures, etc. Why am I
telling you this? Because such a shift in our behavior is bound to influence
the way we do art and understand art. NetArt is the quintessential
dematerialized phenomenon : it has no shape, no boundaries, and no physical
form. It floats on our screens, like a ghost, present but immaterial. One
cannot possess NetArt works, one cannot own it, exclusively. One can only
know about it and share it with others. The actual pleasure of netart work
is not to own it while others do not, but to let others know about it, let
others experience it. Some of you have criticized the absence of any
spirituality in netart works. But our way of understanding the sacred is
mainly through objects. We do not yet know how to understand the sacred in
ephemeral objects, in ghostlike objects, in electronic « phenomenon » that
cannot be held or even geographically pointed to. We do not yet know where
the sacred lie in "things" created through technology. But think about it:
Why should technology be deprived of the "mysterious"? Is the strangeness of
the electron any less strange and mysterious that that of the cell?

When we react to the absence of the spiritual in netart (when we react to
the fail promises), we react the same way old professors do when they
condemn young people for being uneducated. We lament the failed promises of
technology and of netart because we are trying to find in them what we
found, what made sense, what seemed mystical or spiritual in our organic,
age-old, material world. We are not yet capable of understanding the new
sacred and spiritual nature of netart because we are looking for it in the
wrong places. Some have criticize netart saying that no amount of electronic
art, no amount of simulation, no amount of computing power could even come
close to reproducing the richness of the physical world (as seen though our
senses). This is true, but the argument is wrong. The richness of physical
artwork is a material, physical and organic one. But netart exists, grows
and multiplies in an different world, where richness of experience is not
measured by how the senses are being provoked, but by how the brain is being
challenged to create new connections, new associations, new understandings.
This is where the richness, the spirituality and the « sacredness » of
netart lie.

This is why I believe that words, texts, images, music and animation should
not converge towards some sort of narration (narration being the human
understanding of the organic world), but must instead aim toward an
electronic narration, one that creates new links between ideas and emotions.


It was pleasure to participate in this great discussion. Thanks for having
taken the time to read me. Thanks to Melinda for having invited me

Ollivier