Etienne Deleflie on Art and Technology

Martin Heidegger wrote about both technology and art. He said that whilst technology and art are very different things, they are both ways of revealing.

Technology, or at least ‘modern’ technology, presents a big threat to humanity. And this threat is that when we see the world through the eyes of technology, then we are restricting our understanding of the world to whatever goals that technology is designed to satisfy. But we don’t take consciousness of it. We don’t realise it… and this is dangerous.

It is a threat that is now taking on huge dimensions because many of us engage in that most basic of human activities: socialisation, in a form which is heavily restricted, or determined, by technology. Of course, I am talking about facebook and whatever other forms of social interaction are heavily modelled by technologies (twitter, etc.).

Heidegger said that one escape from this threat is art. Just like technology, art is also about revealing, it is also a way to understand the world. By applying art to technology, the ways in which technology restricts our thinking are exposed, and then we see it for what it is. When we see how technology restricts our thinking, then its threat dissipates… and we can enter into a ‘free’ relationship with it.

And so I propose that someone adapt Shakespeare’s King Lear for Facebook. Each character in the book would have a Facebook profile. There would be Facebook ‘groups’ designed to reflect the gatherings in the text. And the entire play would be played out on Facebook.

It would not be a gimmick. It would be a way of revealing how social interaction on Facebook is restricted or ‘cast’ into the goals that Facebook aims to satisfy. But perhaps it would only work for those who are very familiar with Shakespeare’s King Lear. One would have to have sufficient knowledge of the intended meaning of the dialogue to be able to compare the restricted Facebook version to the original.

So its maybe not such a good idea. I was telling one of my classes that before Facebook, we used to invite friends to parties by sending text messages, or sending emails. Before emails and mobile phones, we used to invite people by making little flyers, photocopying them many times and giving them to friends whenever we ran into them. Either that or we would just ring them up, or drop by their house. I realise that people still do all of these things, so perhaps it would be more accurate to say that technology has introduced a tiered system of communication. What are the implications of that … I wonder. How can a work of art reveal the implications of that?

The recent reforms and revolutions in the middle east have, by some, been attributed to Facebook… or to social networking. Ofcourse, whilst the executives of social networking sites might claim responsibility for this human good, their true aim will be nothing more than ‘success’ as defined by the endeavour of business. And the tendency of these technologies to cast all communication into networks will have also very negative social impacts. Bullying is one. There must be others. Ah! … in writing this paragraph I have perhaps fallen on one way that Facebook restricts our thinking … it will restrict our thinking by forcing us to casting our communication into networks. When you post something on Facebook, are you wary that there are perhaps lots of people reading it? … and so you might slightly alter what you say? Does that change the nature, even if very discreetly, of the relationship you have with the person you are posting that message to?

[Addendum ... here's someone doing Shakespeare on Facebook to shed light on cyber bullying ... http://mashable.com/2011/04/25/shakespeare-facebook-cyber-bullying/. That's exactly what I'm talking about ... but I'm not convinced that it is a 'poetic' work of art. By that I mean that I am not convinced that it reveals some truth with such resonance that it is beautiful to behold]

This is the most refreshing thing I have read in a long time. Its actually very liberating.

I have been studying Pierre Schaeffer, his works and his words for a while now. He is the pioneer of the famous Musique Concrète, a new post-war music that begins with sound recordings and applies structural form (i.e. cuts up / re-orders / glues back together) to achieve a finished sound work. I find his work historically and conceptually interesting, but musically un-listenable, and … frankly … utterly un-inspiring. Give me Aphex Twin any day.

Pierre Schaeffer, and his early text “Traité des objets musicaux” (treatise on musical objects) and reveared in the discourse of Electro-acoustic music. Pierre Schaeffer holds status of more than pioneer. Yet in an interview  (from recommended records quarterly magazine, volume 2, number 1, 1987,) he rejects his own musical oeuvres:

TH: I have the impression that in the ’40s and ’50s you were optimistic about the outcomes of your musical project. Was there a particular moment when you underwent a general change in your relationship to this project?

Pierre Schaeffer: I must say honestly that this is the most important question you have asked me. I fought like a demon throughout all the years of discovery and exploration in Musique Concrete; I fought against electronic music, which was another approach, a systemic approach, when I preferred an experimental approach actually working directly, empirically with sound. But at the same time, as I defended the music I was working on, I was personally horrified at what I was doing. I felt extremely guilty. As my father, the violinist, used to say, indulgently, What are you up to, my little chap? When are you going to make music? And I used to say – I’m doing what I can, but I can’t do that. I was always deeply unhappy at what I was doing. I was happy at overcoming great difficulties – my first difficulties with the turntables when I was working on ‘Symphonie pour un homme seul’:: – my first difficulties with the tape-recorders when I was doing ‘Etude aux objets’ – that was good work, I did what I set out to do – my work on the ‘Solfege’ – it’s not that I disown everything I did – it was a lot of hard work. But each time I was to experience the disappointment of not arriving at music. I couldn’t get to music – what I call music. I think of myself as an explorer struggling to find a way through in the far north, but I wasn’t finding a way through.

TH: So you did discover that there was no way through.

PS: There is no way through. The way through is behind us.

TH: So it’s in that context that we should understand your relatively small output as a composer after those early years?

PS: I was very well received. I had no social problems. These
successes added to my burden of doubt. I’m the opposite of the
persecuted musician. In fact I don’t consider myself a real musician. I’m in the dictionary as a musician. It makes me laugh. A good researcher is what I am.

Thankyou, Pierre, for expressing how I feel about your music, which is that it is unlistenable.

[Addendum. Of coure, this post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Just because Pierre Schaeffer rejects his earlier theories does not mean that they are not still very relevant nor insightful. At a minimum, I think that Schaeffer's notion of 'playing' with technology is still, at least in experimental electronic music, the predominant form of musical form (as opposed to composition). That's worth a post in itself: playing (as in searching as you go, during a performance) as opposed to composing). ]

I’ve been reading and re-reading Heidegger’s ‘The Question Concerning Technology‘ now for a couple of weeks. Its a difficult read, but it is starting to sink in. Its dawned on me that his warning is particularly potent for contemporary technologies … I’m talking about the products we use from Google / Apple / Twitter / Facebook / Amazon. This post explains that position. I start by summarising Heidegger’s approach:

Heidegger begins by observing that the common conception of technology is that it is a simple means to end that is executed as a human activity. Whilst this characterisation, encapsulated in the word equipment, is correct he argues that it does not reveal the essence of what technology is. For this he turns to the notion of causality and examines the four causes long accepted by philosophical thought. By asking the question of what makes these four causes operate together, he seeks to understand what is responsible for bringing things into being (which is what equipment does). Here, he turns to Plato’s Symposium:

Plato tells us what this bringing is in a sentence from the Symposium (205b): he gar toi ek tou me ontos eis to on ionti hotoioun aitia pasa esti poiesis. “Every occasion for whatever passes beyond the nonpresent and goes forward into presencing is poiesis, bringing-forth [Her-vor-bringen].” (Heidegger, 1977)

It is the term ‘bringing-forth’ that leads to the essence of technology. Technology is a way of revealing, in other words, technology is something that operates in the realm of truth. He goes on:

This prospect strikes us as strange. Indeed, it should do so, as persistently as possible and with so much urgency that we will finally take seriously the simple question of what the name “technology” means. The word stems from the Greek. Technikon means that which belongs to techne. … Techne belongs to bringing-forth, to poiesis; it is something poetic. (Heidegger, 1977)

And so technology is poetic. The word Poïesis is typically translated from the Greek as ‘to make’ but its derivation into the commonly used word ‘poetry’ perhaps better infers the meaning that Heidegger believes was intended by the Greeks.

Technology is poetic in the sense that it is a way of revealing. It is much more than mere means. In other words, technology is not something to be mastered as in equipment or tools, rather it is something that reflects our understanding of the world, just as poetry is.

The problem arises, according to Heidegger, when our understanding of the world sees the world as not much more than as a ‘resource’. He says that modern technology does this because it allows us to do such things as mine the earth for minerals which then act as a ‘standing reserve’ waiting to be used for no specific purpose. Those who then consume that ‘standing reserve’ have no real relationship with its provenance. It is known, ofcourse, that the energy, petrol, steel, electricity or whatever came from the earth … but that is all that is known. And so the earth is then cast as a nothing more than a provider of resources for us to consume. And this is dangerous.

Of course, environmentalists have jumped on absorbed Heidegger’s ideas but, as Dreyfus argues, this danger goes far beyond environmental issues. Dreyfus states:

Heidegger’s concern is the human distress caused by the technological understanding of being, rather that the destruction caused by specific technologies themselves …. The danger … is a restriction in our way of thinking — a leveling of our understanding of being.

69/365 Technology is taking over my life by clydebentley

If Heidegger were alive today, I’d hesitate a guess that he would not just be pointing the finger at the environmental issues we face. I’d guess that he’d be pointing the finger at Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, Amazon … and all the companies who provide us with technology solutions which are so “easy to use” that we hardly notice their presence. Yet they cast our way of thinking in very specific ways. And those ways will be, by definition, ultimately designed to serve the business interests of those companies. In other words, our ‘way of thinking’ is cast into patterns which serve the profit of these companies. I’m not being cynical about these companies … their actions just reflect the nature of the order of business. But for our day-to-day thinking to be cast to suit this order, the order of business, is clearly not right.

As Heidegger explains, a symptom of this problem is that humans themselves become cast as mere resources themselves. If one were to look at the internal business models of these large companies, I’d hazard a guess that humans, or ‘customers’, just represent market resources to be collected and gathered up as ‘standing reserve’ … that is … as consumers ready to be sold to when the next new product hits the shelves.

Such thoughts are hinted at by Dave Winer, a technologist who thinks about the gap between how technology serves people’s interests and how technology serves the interests of the companies who create them.

As Dreyfus explains, however, the danger Heidegger alerts us to is not the technology in itself … it is not being aware how technology has cast our thinking. I’d extend Dreyfus’ interpretation even further: its not just technology that casts our thinking (it is culture, religion, language). Perhaps then the importance of Heidegger’s contribution is the recognition that technology is on a level par as religion/culture etc for ‘casting’ the way we think. Given the rapid pace of advancement of personal digital networked technologies, one might project that technology’s ‘casting’ of the way we think is going to get stronger and stronger and stronger.

Argghhh. Heidegger, your writings are so cryptic. When you say:

Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens

… do you mean:

1. That it is the technology by itself that reveals? For example, the lathe reveals some truth about how we can achieve greater manual accuracy if mechanical force required to cut something is taken away from the craftsman … and executed by a machine? or,
2. that the technology reveals something else? For example, the lathe reveals a wooden cup. In other words, it doesn’t reveal anything by itself, rather, it reveals other stuff.

Speaking about ‘modern’ technology, he says:

a tract of land is challenged into the putting out of coal and ore. The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district, the soil as a mineral deposit.

So modern technology has caused the earth to reveal itself in a particular light. That’s neither of the above two options! … that’s an other angle altogether. Now he is saying that technology causes other things to reveal themselves in a different light. Such frustratingly ambiguous language.

I want to know, in Heidegger’s eyes, if the loudspeaker (as a technology) is a revealing of our understanding of sound … or if loudspeakers are a revealing of other things (eg. the sounds themselves) … or if loudspeakers enable sounds to reveal themselves as something (eg, sonic artefact to be used in a composition). That’s 3 possible interpretations. Which is the right one?

When thought makes a judgement about something, if the judgment is in the positive (in other words I am moving  closer to the goal) then it ‘feels’ good. When I say that it ‘feels’ good, I mean that there is a little release of energy or something. It is the same feeling as when one achieves something that one has been trying to do for a while. It is like a release … a release from struggle. Its like when you are looking for a misplaced wallet and then you find it … there is a release of concern and that release of concern causes a positive feeling … that’s what I mean when I say that it ‘feels’ good. Its more like just a release from being concerned about something.

I am concerned that Peter respects me. I wish he respected me more. I often think about how I could become better and more respected. That is one of the goals of my thought… in other words, as I think about stuff on a day to day level, I make lots of little judgements which try and see if I am moving closer to being respected.

This is where the trap happens. I imagine painting a great painting, a beautiful painting with deep colours and I run into Peter, who sees the painting and says “wow, I didn’t know you could paint so well”. I imagine all this … it didn’t really happen … but as I imagine it KAPOW a positive feeling is released as I imagine Peter being impressed. As I imagine it, what is occurring in my thought is just lots and lots of little judgements, trying to see if I am getting closer to being respected. When my thought examines Peter saying “wow, what a great painting”, it is judging to see if that is a sign that I am becoming more respected. And it is. So it ‘feels’ good. Even though the whole scenario is imagined … it is no different to the real thing. THat’s the crucial point. Actually, it *is* the real thing.

That’s the trap, see. Because now thought thinks it has moved closer to the goal (it has to have if it made a positive judgement). But actually, no such thing has happened. It was all imagined. But that imagining wasn’t fanciful, or self indulgent, that’s actually just the way thought works. If I want to get to work on time, I have to imagine walking to the station, imagine how long it takes for the actual trip, then there’s walking to work from the other end, and a coffee to be grabbed too. That imagining is just the mechanism of thought … making little judgements all along the way… seeing in the future to make sure that everything stacks up.

So thought thinks it has taken a step towards being more respected. But it hasn’t. It was an illusion. It is no closer to it. And as it tries to think through other things, other scenarios, other goals that relate to the self, it constantly thinks it is moving, thinks it is getting there, but it is not. It is all an illusion. Its totally pointless. It will never get there.

There’s a fundamental incompatibility between thought and thinking about the self. There is no point in having goals for the self, because they will never be reached. They will never be reached because the steps made are false, and so they go in all sorts of different directions. It’s like a random walk through the bush. Every several metres you take a random turn in an other direction.

I’m not sure how I can express that in code.

See, if the goal is something concrete and physical then there is no problem because the outside *real* physical world acts like a peg in the ground. The judgements will always be relative to the (proverbial) peg in the ground. If the goal is internal, concerning the self, then there is no distinction between what is thought what is real.

Do not knock. – Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men. It expels from movements all hesitation, deliberation, civility. It subjects them to the implacable, as it were ahistorical demands of objects. Thus the ability is lost, for example, to close a door quietly and discreetly, yet firmly. Those of cars and refrigerators have to be slammed, others have the tendency to snap shut by themselves, imposing on those entering the bad manners of not looking behind them, not shielding the interior of the house which receives them. The new human type cannot be properly understood without awareness of what he is continuously exposed to from the world of things about him, even in his most secret inner- vations. What does it mean for the subject that there are no more casement windows to open, but only sliding frames to shove, no gentle latches but turnable handles, no forecourt, no doorstep before the street, no wall around the garden? And which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, ped- estrians, children and cyclists? The movement machines demand of their users already has the violent, hard-hitting, unresting jerkiness of fascist maltreatment. Not least to blame for the withering of experience is the fact that things, under the law of pure functionality, assume a form that limits contact with them to mere operation, and tolerates no surplus, either in freedom of conduct or in autonomy of things, which would survive as the core of experience, because it is not consumed by the moment of action. (Adorno 1951: 40)

Hilarious. But I understand. My home is full of cheap aluminium sliding windows whose functionality espouses a pulpable economic rationalism over and above any sense of tactile humanity. It is as though the manufacturer forgot that he was making a window, and only remembered that he needed to make a *thing* that was cheap so it could sell. That said, I do most enjoy closing the doors of my VW Caddy. The doors are heavy, and they have been sprung just enough so that a light gesture of the hand is sufficient to set the door into a decisive closing movement which, without fail, ends in a sonic event that clearly and correctly confirms that the door is properly shut.

Perhaps Adorno should have read more Heidegger who says that technology is nothing more than a reflection of human society. The people at VW obviously clearly considered and refined the closing mechanism of their doors. The dope who designed the windows in my house clearly didn’t give two hoots.

(Disclosure: I do not own shares in VW)

[EDIT: I take back everything I say about Heidegger. As I read and re-read his famous essay "The Question concerning Technology" I'm starting to realise that Heidegger is making some very opinionated points about the impact (modern) technology has on humanity. I've also been reading this thesis about Heidegger and Environmentalism]