Re: [-empyre-] revisiting "cycling cathexis"

[Barbara Lattanzi <threads@wildernesspuppets.net>]

Hi Henry.

At 02:04 AM 3/5/2005, you wrote:

> I see several essential differences between Live/Performance Cinema, and
> Internet based (or even traditional film) based cinema. They all centre
> around what I call the cycle of cathexis. Since I can't include graphics,
> please forgive the lower D representation of a higher D figure:
>
> artist - > art - > audience - > artist

-----snip----

> I would also distinguish the difference between interactive video and
> performance cinema, and I would tend to question much of what constitutes
> the "interactivity" of "interactive" video, as much of what I see as
> "interactive art" (much less video) is not much more than various
> elaborations on a boolean if/then decision tree, which I find to be
> completely, and too often profoundly, UNinteractive.


Hmmm.  On some level it is all going to be some variation on if/then 
decisions.  Whether we perceive it that way or not is another 
thing.  However, there is something to be said for interactivity that is 
straightforward selection because:

1. Straightforward selection is reflexive of systems themselves - i.e., how 
paths to particular outcomes occur.
2.  Straightforward selection presents a clear structure that does not call 
attention to itself, except in the case of the following point:
3.  A clear structure allows other things to come into play such as, for 
example, putting the interactor or the audience into a double-bind, i.e., 
the choices are not neutral, but serve to implicate the audience/interactor 
in a situation. (e.g., I am compelled to do something but the choices are 
all problematic.)

That 3rd point is not "UNinteractive" as you call it.

I would argue that my 3rd point defines interactivity itself,  a power 
relation.... where cathexis is disrupted and unsettled.

That is tough to do.  There are many ways in the past and present that 
media "seduce us" by producing the "cycle of cathexis".  There is work 
being done to understand how to apply this engineering of audience response 
to systems that require audience participation.  The "cycle of cathexis" 
could mean, then, refined forms of spectacle (or Spectacle), adapted to the 
new conditions....so that the participating audience is no more alert to 
relations of power than their "nonparticipatory"  forebears.

The impoverishment of interactivity would not be the lack of technical 
ambiguity (e.g., did my mouse make that happen?  how have my intentions 
become so entangled with the machine that I do not know for sure how I made 
this image appear?).   The interest of system interactivity is more about 
deconstructing systems and the way they bind us to them and permeate our 
relations to each other in a larger sense.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by your phrase "cycling cathexis"?  I 
am probably reading it wrong.

Barbara


--------------------------------
Barbara Lattanzi
www.wildernesspuppet.net

C-SPAN x 4
www.wildernesspuppets.net/yarns/annotate/cspanx4.html




> I have A LOT of problems with VJ material. Most of what I have seen of it is
> just awful. There are some brilliant exceptions.
>
> One I would recommend was the performance I saw of the Light Surgeons, who
> deconstructed the film "The Fountainhead" based on the book by Ayn Rand.
>
> You can find out about them here:
>
> http://www.thelightsurgeons.co.uk/
>
> I have only seen one of their shows, and I was deeply impressed. They were
> very much taken with their relation to DJ culture, which I found absurd, for
> as far as I know, DJ culture started with poor blacks spinning disks on the
> streets or in places like Washington Square Park in the 1970s.
>
> [I remember, because I would ditch high school and go there to buy joints
> (or acid or hash or whatever) and hang out... I remember seeing people make
> these weird multi-turntable/close-and-play mixes of funk and soul music. At
> the time, I thought it kind of sucked, *a lot*, and thought it was really
> irritating, but when scratch and scratch video got big in the 80s, it all
> made sense to me...]
>
> We, as human beings, are hard-wired to respond to other people and be
> sensitive to other s when in their presence. I'm sure we have all written
> things in email where we've said things we probably wouldn't have said if we
> were faced with the target of our ire. That presence creates cathexis - an
> evocative and psychological response and investment. People who have
> problems with cathectic responses and investment are usually classified /
> pathologised by their deficiencies in this regard:
>
> Sociopaths, autistic, or, inversely, FORM 2 Inwardly Directed ADD,  etc.
>
> Throw yourself onto a stage in front of a crowd and tell me you don't FEEL
> their presence... That sense is their investment in you: cathexis at that
> point is so intense, it becomes palpable.
>
> That kind of investment is often completely missing in internet based work.
>
> This doesn't mean that internet based has *no* investment - it is simply of
> a very different nature. How one defines the "stage" in that case becomes
> problematic, and interesting, which is one of the reasons why I had Gregor
> White from Scotland speak at the SFPCS.
>
> The text of his speech is here:
>
> http://www.kether.com/liveCinema/SFPCS/white-XLogic.html
>
> The other aspect that differs Live vs. Other Cinematic practices
> (interactive or otherwise) is a matter of synchrony vs diachrony.
>
> A movie is diachronous - it is essentially identical from one showing to the
> next. It can be shown to an empty theatre. It exists as a loop outside of
> time.
>
> A performance is synchronous - it will always differ from one performance to
> the next: even if the performance is a film and completely diachronous, the
> reaction of the audience will differ, making each performance unique. It
> exists Only in time.
>
> As the internet allows a kind of fractal dimension of time (kind of like 1.2
> D) where the arrow always goes forward, but it can stop for a while and skip
> around that which has occurred, it obviates most of the possibilities of any
> real live cathexis between the audience and performer through the vessel of
> the art and the environment of the art work itself by the very exigencies
> involved with what it is to use the internet.
>
> I really need to get some sleep.
>
> I will write more on this tomorrow.
>
> THIS CONVERSATION MATTERS.
>
> HW
>
>
>
>
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