Janos Sugar Browsing the trash in the age of cumulative selection

We live a metaphor-hungry world. New phenomenon emerge absorbing earlier metaphors is traceless. We are in a notion-vacuum searching for synonyms to put an old content before the background of a new context, with a grand gesture rendering them visible. The tools of our analogical way of thinking are word-images, rendering representation of the past to the notions of the present. We try to discover new words, finding references to reveal the mechanisms of the medialized world (the global feedback where past-less, reference-less yet very efficient media surround us.

What people are used to calling 'media art' does not really exist; it is either the popularization of the always present avant-garde attitude (provoking the limits) or social-political art, with a very useful, but ultimately didactic, tone. Or, media art is a form of design-research, which is also extremely important, but mainly actual. And it is a contradiction because art's function within the social division of work is to transcend the necessity of answering questions of topical interest and to provide access to general questions. Engaged as it is in an investigation of the mysterious empire of non-practical, art can be anything except present oriented. It satisfies a need before the need is even born and realized. Works of art may thus be considered answers to questions that the present has not even gotten around to asking. The simple fact that a work of art does not obligatorily have to be intelligible for the present and that it may only become intelligible in the future causes serious conflicts for many. A work of art has plenty of time; it is in no hurry like kitsch is. What art represents in such a finely structured system is a kind of a long-term thinking, manipulation with no definite (or known) goals.

With the new media available, this unscrupulous research center has obtained such tools for which no previous (art) historical references had been made, since none else had been able to use them before. Therefore anything that happens through them becomes history, that is anything as such can be a breakthrough. The first works of computer graphics and animation, just like previously those of photography and film, were in fact demos testing and demonstrating the existence of the medium and informing the potential consumer about the capabilities of the given 'new medium'.

Art has always explored the current notion or border of awareness, not involving itself with instant popularity, and/or not caring for the actual threshold of common-sense. Similar to the development of science and the scientific revolutions which were created on an equally unpopular beginning. The very same media which facilitate the homogenization eradicating cultural differences and forming global communication standards are actually quite suitable for independent - minority - usage as well. The mass production is necessary for development and the user friendly approachs required by the market (the quality of being clear to all) provide the opportunity for counter-cultural use - as shown by the appearance of genres of independent film and video, minority video, alternative bulletin boards, pirate radio and television, small circulation audio CDs, etc. As living beings we all live in the irreversible time dimension and that is why we can be only one place once doing one single thing once. We can have direct, non-mediated contacts with more or less the same amount of things, but in a mediated, non direct way with always more and more. The bodiless, non direct, medialized presence became accepted.

As more the dialogue mediated, as more the metacommunication limited, as more medialized form something appears in our horizon of perception the more we can deal in the same time. By acting in the complex, chance driven info space hypermedial traces come automatically into being, and only a self sacrificing researcher (alter ego software) can connect, fill up with irreversible time the hypermedial details. Reading the fragmentation back, bringing the non-linear details into a single linear unity is the hypertext. The total synchronicity is the present. The abolition of the fragmentation among the archived data masses is only possible trough irreversible time-sacrifice.

PARADIGM SHIFT INTERRUPTUS

The conscious and efficient grabbing of publicity is the order of the communicational environment following paradigm shift of the era of enlightenment . What is most known? Who has the most publicity? The market (advertisement) value gives rank. There are messages which have to find their most efficient form in order to reach their real objective, we have to be able to sell (=make comprehenensible) our content in an arena of large over-supply¹. Therefore it is essential to precisely understand our own goals and the conditions of our chosen medium. In practice, it means we have to think ahead continuously. This is the design of common sense, the medial consciousness, how to produce a broad consensual understanding.

This then is the original source of the so-called high/low conflict: publicity (= popularity of an idea) reaching for the common sense (= ground level of understanding); in contrast to the classical avant-garde attitude, which ignores and rejects feedback (success, polls, surveys), leading in a quasi-knowledge of the future, independent to the present level of understanding. Art has always explored this, the current notion or border of awareness, not involving itself with instant popularity, and/or not caring for the actual threshold of common-sense. Similar to the development of science and the scientific revolutions which were created on an equally unpopular beginning². 

THE MORAL SUPERHIGHWAY

The new 'technical media', because it is not inspired by a traditional culture, has to make itself acceptable to the present, beginning with financial considerations. We can also say that they cannot wait untill the natural context of comprehension,.the social-cultural evolution, wraps them with the slow speed of time . It has to find a role, a function, it has to be successful in order to further reinforce its own technical development. This means popularity among the buyers - the defacto voters³. The most attractive aspects for the users seems to be communication, perhaps because it's possible to step out a bit from the tormenting socio-physical bounds, from the unknown to the forum of general impersonality. What matters is that 'voting' in a general sense (and the campaign beforehand) becomes a social medium.

The 'moral superhighway': the relationships/networks that form civilization (religion, family, economy) in which certain basis' of trust (understanding, tolerance, empathy = social mores) enabled society to reach a higher level. The moral laws create the ground rules of co-operation, rules of symbiosis (= networked existence), since they give predictable behavioral standards, they make calculable the other, securing the framing of the possibilities. On the solid basis of the global symbiosis networks, the tower of babel can be built , not selfish or dysfunctional, but a memorial to the logos.

The enlightenment expelled from society the demand or the need of the according of the different realms (science, philosophy, theology), creating the secular specialization which serves as a background to progress. The beneficial specialization of the past becomes threatening today, risking isolation and atrophy by the interbreeding of knowledge. With the break from specializations, the computer enters as the essential tool of the separation, allowing the complexity of the world to be accessible and digestible. If it is not compulsory to interdisciplinarily check data, we are more focussed towards and absorbed by the micro-problems - the developmental direction of civilization then becomes marked by the solution to contextless problem-details (leading nowhere). The results of scientific, technological and cultural specialization have become elements of daily life, but due to the lack of cross references, more and more serious communication crises arise (e.g., air pollution, wars, economic depression). Since the most diverse types of information are stored in a uniform digital format, computer technology makes it possible to recreate this lacking cross-referential matrix. Due to high-speed data processing, a large amount of complex data is continuously available, becoming increasingly accessible and user friendly - the interaction of medialized thoughts which new terminology names memes or idea viruses. Plagiarism also becomes simpler, it is not by chance that one of the new synonyms of understanding is appropriation.

On the rim of the inter-woven networks (commerce, religions, money, services, communications) there then appears the layer of the excluded and the ignored, ostracized from any larger economic or moral network. Their ideology remaining tribal. Enlightenment destroying the culture of the illiterate (the gun is the type-writer of the illiterate - Barry Sanders) In poor civilizations the Kalashnikov refers more to a desperate psychological state "aggression as a status symbol" than anything else. Somalians have a familiar proverb: "I and Somalia against the world, I and my clan against Somalia, I and my family against the clan, I and my brother against the family, I against my brother."
The surplus class (Arthur Kroker) wants publicity, and having no channels or possibilities, with a Herostratic gesture tries to reach the medium of publicity (to attract media attention, i.e.. the Unabomber who blackmail for publicity). The only supporter of these pirate actions is art which sublimates the actions, helping them into the domain of culture. A fresher phenomenon is the appearance of surplus countries, and the same medial consciousness becomes a basic part of international politics⁴. 

HYPE AND DEATH

The appearance of the net realized the western myth of attainable knowledge. The net is the medium of searching, it creates the notion of the ideal spiritual work-place. The millenial Faust is a hacker in the library of Babel - the net works as an endless context slot-machine. Everything is within reach (infinite sources), we are comfortably just a finger's touch away from an endless sources of ideas⁵.  Thus complexity is simplified, the utopia of linear thinking is compelled to make way for the reality of associative thinking, direct perception (vivisection, dismantling, interrogation) opens to interactive dialogue⁶.

Global feedback takes shape, the totally self-reflective social environment permeated by the uncontrollable communication cross-references, the traces of instant decisions marked only by contra-selections⁷. The science of selection will have a vital importance, the 'who is who' search engines smuggling references in an impersonal network⁸; generating content by selection.
Global databases mean a significantly increased field of associations, where the frequency of random events are more dense. Chance is a personal experience in such a medium, characterized by impersonality, where the possibility of meta-communication is totally excluded. Since Eizenstein, we have known that two distinct or random images (or information) placed side by side can generate a third and unique associative entity, which can then connect to a fourth, etc. Since the advent of the reform Catholics, providence communicates with us through coincidence⁹. Complexity which raises the level of coincidence is a content automat, the tower of Babel reaches the logos when everyone is talking to everyone.

FROM FEEDBACK TO RECYCLING

The problem is whether there will be content rather than votes? Since the traditional content developer, artists (researchers), culture, press, marketing, politics, are the dominant suppliers, why should they make space or reserve possibilities for the unknown content provider¹⁰?

The general characteristic of the technological boom is asynchronic being the shift between synchronicity and the social reality. When using past-less tools (the medial technology), it is typical that the context comes later, lags behind, is late. The hobos of the telephone medium (the famous Phreakers) only demonstrated the existence of the possibilities, they didn't utilize it to its full potential. It was Captain Crunch's famous act, when he called the neighboring telephone booth with a call that circled the earth many times over. 

The new, unprecedented media, is a product of the combination of technical progress and a booming specialization, because of this it has no cultural references, past or history of any kind. The avant-garde has the tradition of radical use of (any) established media, and this experience (the so-called didactic message of the avant-garde) appears in the usage, testing and research of the new media. Looking for and charting the borders, finding a limitless self-expression - the avant-garde discipline of total competence, vital in the days of global symbiosis and the growing complexity. In the medialized public world, the research (browsing, surfing) becomes the symbol of existence - subversion becomes the obligatory tool of perception. 
The role of art in the net just begins to open up new ways and possibilities and culture follows; didactically tries to manifest the unused possibilities. It is didactic as the classical avant-garde was didactic: it educated the cultural perception. Culture always functions as a blueprint for an information society: context is the content (wrong: context = no contrast: new context = content) in other words to shuffle the information until it finds the biggest contrast - to be efficient. The avante-garde strategy became generalized, first used by the military industry then by the medial environment

The net is much like a stomach (the stomach and digestive tract as a brain), an omnivoric stomach of the time speed peristaltic - embodiment of the abstract spirit . We can depict the bits of the logos with hamburgers, feedback turning into recycling (shit coming back as ketchup...). Not pregnant with the new paradigm, perhaps the net has gas - only needing to fart?

DIGITAL GLASNOST¹¹

The question is how will the net-medium be general. In other words, the state of being on or off-line should be a personal decision not a financial one, similar to the right to vote. If the net will not be completed, if it is not continuous, but with gaps and holes, simply mirroring the current social and economic geography, it is good for nothing. Everything retaining the status quo. In this case the net remains an elitist medium, where only the trend setting/watching, theory and design are interwoven - plus a little web folklore. Not at the state but at the private level (WIRED magazine) and with the masses looking for some open access terminal in a museum - perhaps this is the word of our age. 

It doesn't matter if it is elitist (art and the sciences are also elitist), but because of the social firewall from underneath it could be an easy target for the excluded, be abused by politics to create the perfect foe. Although it's global, it is damageable by aggression, only a broad mass of users can make it profitable and hence secure.

A general access would require a new role of the state and economic capital, net culture can be a real business only if the access side (from hardware to provider) can be leveled, with no basic quality differences (similar to the telephone) - providing a universal service. It is necessary to invest in the user, to become aware of the simple truth: that this cannot exist without users. The non-conventional layers should be involved as well, those who might have a non-economic standing yet have content (non-students, retired, unemployed, minorities). With the (hopefully) change of state and economic attitude no one is blackmailed¹² because of their communication needs. Free access becomes a generally used, global service, the medium of the society - of course remaining the toy of the elite (the level of research). Every single participant of public life (publicity) can have their own server, can provide access. The name of the provider becoming as referential as the family name, public institutions functioning as databases. Let's make our Hard drives public!

Everyone who possesses information should think deeply about what is public and what is not. The lowest common denominator of the elite is penetrated by memes, the trail beaten by art. Everyone must immediately decide the maximum level of what can be public. Possessing information automatically invites abuse, therefore even possessing information can be seen as a crime. Every content-owner has to define maximum publicity, the off-the-record threshold. Of course, everyone is only interested in secrets. It is very human.

1 Two examples: during the Nazi occupation the King of Denmark wore the yellow star, followed by the whole country, making deportation impossible; or the red ribbon worn by famous celebrities (J.S.: Art in the Present, Poliphony catalogue text, 1995, SCCA Budapest)

2 Feyerabend, Anarchist Ontology, Kuhn

3 An interesting phenomenon is the commercial film which represents a transformation between the future-oriented art and the present-oriented profit

4 Typical is one of the last action (closing?) of the cold war when the US President during a sound check announced immanent bombardment of the soviet union. 

5 Throughout history only poor people cannot handle complexity. For the privileged class the big question of our age is "whether I am beyond the possibility of being a refugee".

6 F. Rosenzweig, M. Buber

7 After conventional wisdom, the 87'/88' stock crash was caused by the instantaneous reactions of computers to each other.

8 The black market of celebrity book marks - parents educating there kids by individually programmed V-chips bearing the family traditions, the main activity of the children then becomes the hacking of the family v-chip.

9 A miracle is the unbelievable accumulation of randomness, when the random transforms into necessity.
Karl Herbst:, Der wirkliche Jesus - Das total andere Gottesbild, Walter-Verlag,1988

10 The first memorial to the unknown soldier was erected in France following the first world war, in Imperial Rome there was an alter to the unknown god (Altar was the name of the very first personal computer).

11not to forget: Glasnost, Perestroyka, Uskarenye (c) M. Gorbatschev

12i.e. the price structure of gasoline: blackmailing through the natural need of moving