[-empyre-] mediation & videogames / the screen as a place of activity in the battlefield

[Gabriel Menotti]

> The thick description of screens shold really look at the raw materials,
> manufacture, energy use and recycling. (…) Most screens are
> build and assembled in offshore plants: human and environmental costs rarely
> factored into the clean image of screen cultures. [Sean Cubitt]

Yes, that is maybe the most complex socio-economic aspect to consider.
But what it means in ethical and formal terms?  A case in point is the
sculpture Tantalum Memorial (Harwood/ Wright/ Yokokoji),[1] who won
the last Transmediale award. The name of the piece refers to a
particular metal used in the production mobile phones and other
electronic devices, which is subject of bloody disputes in Congo.

In a way, the whole situation reminds me (again) of Flusser, pointing
out that the logic of an image apparatus is the product of a prior,
heavier logic – that of the industrial apparatus. In that perspective,
can the most cunning and well-intended movie director be anything more
than a functionary of the mastodonic technological complex?

Again, what about the artists’ autonomy, especially when they are
engaged with new media and the latest technology? (not referring to
tantalum memorial here, but in general)


> The proposition that the
> 'process of mediation is an abstraction of the world' is surely not
> sustainable as an interrogation even of the present [sdv]

I wasn’t implying that media is an abstraction of the whole world, but
that the process of mediation always depend on different levels of
/the real/ - the image is a product of what is in front of the camera
as well as of the mechanism of the camera itself – and both things
seems equally finite, in different, material ways.

(Also, the world is doing fine, it is the humanity that is coming to
its terms, etc etc ^^)


> Moreso, conventional screens on computers are entirely concerned with output;
> they are always late. No input event /requires/ the screen display an image to
> the user. As such nothing passes into screens, yet that is what is felt.  [Julian Oliver]

Another provoking consideration. Our computer culture is build up
around graphical interfaces, when initially they were just
peripherals. The first computers had no screens at all. On the other
hand, early devices of computation were very visual - the process of
computation itself was very visual – or at least at the reach of human
perception.


> If there is any suppression by way of abstraction here, it is of the subject
> realities of puncturing, poisoning and burning people, disabling or killing them
> in process, [JO]

Après Hayles, we can think of abstraction as ‘selective ignorance’, as
well as the techniques employed in order to achieve it (normally,
allowing for a certain performativity that wouldn’t be otherwise
possible).

Anyway, I tend to agree that these more dramatic situations are very
*sincere* (even though the whole propaganda around them aren't): what
is clearly suppressed here is human (bodies) and human action (killing
etc).

Best!
Menotti

[1] http://mediashed.org/TantalumMemorial