The Language of Change

When Walter Benjamin wrote “The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction” in 1936 the world was in turmoil. Still suffering from the Great Depression and seeing the rise of a new rise of facsism. By this time, photography and film had made a significant impact on culture and the masses. In this frame, Walter Benjamin writes about the influence of all forms of mechanical reproduction on society. He asserts that the new techniques have changed more than just how artists create. They have changed the way the public perceives the world and the individual. Thus changing the political and social structure of Western Europe.

He first refers to paintings and photography. He asserts that a painting has an “aura” a sense of place and time that gives it authenticity. A reproduction lacks this element and its quality is depreciated. The importance of this aura is attached to ritual. Ritual can be attached to sacred or secular functions. For example, the work of Renaissance artists followed the “cult of beauty”. The invention of photography and “mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from it parasitical dependence on ritual… the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.” Once society is able to mechanically reproduce art, there is no point in “authenticity”. A print of a photograph is the same whether it’s the first or the fiftieth. Now art is no longer connected to ritual but to political practice.

In film, he asserts that the camera “is substituted for the public” and the “aura that envelops the actor vanishes”. It is replaced by mystique. Film is essentially based in illusion, the spectacle of production is unseen and increased by the use of editing or “cutting’. Film is an art form that is received in a “state of distraction”.

In order to achieve a “suspension of disbelief” the viewer is distracted by the film techniques themselves. The language Benjamin uses to descibe much of his theories has a violent undertone. There are metaphors to bombs and bullets and violence when describing the impact of mechanical reproduction on mass culture.

“Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison world asunder, by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go travelling.”

Benjamin specifically chooses the language of war and violence as a reaction to the turbulent times. He write that “mass movements, including war, constitute a form of human behavior which particularly favors mechanical equipment.” As art is commoditized it becomes useful to the politician. Perfectly exemplified by the film “Triumph of the Will” and the newsreels of Hollywood. The politician and the movie actor share an unlimited public that is malleable to the new media. Which “results in a new selection, a selection before the equipment (of mechanical reproduction) from which the star and the dictator emerge victoriously.”

Fifty years later Bill Nichols attempts to apply the theories developed by Benjamin about mechanical reproduction and compare them to the computer. He states that “Instead of reproducing, and altering our relation to an original work, cybernetic communication simulates, and alters our relationship to our environment and mind.” Instead of “reproduction” we now “simulate.” Films are about suspending disbelief but computer technology is about absorption. Nichols uses the “Star Wars” defense system initiated by Reagan as an example of computer simulation’s unseemly consequence, but the tone and language of his essay does not contain the violent phrasing that was in Benjamin’s. While mechanical reproduction (film) was delivered to the masses, much of computer technology affects multitudes individually. Instead he explores how technology is changing the definition of self, life and family. “The important issue here is that the power of cybernetic simulation prompts a redefinition of such fundamental terms as life and reality, just as, for Benjamin, mechanical reproduction alters the very conception of art and the standards by which we know it.” The language of war is replaced with the language of psychoanalysis.

Social networking is an excellent example of this altering of the definition of self. Online, individuals are represented with a series of 1’s and 0’s yet somehow transformed to create a personae, an individual, a profile. Working, reading, watching media on a computer are acted singularly, not as a group. Yet, there is a desire to reach out and be part of a community. Privacy is lost in order to engage. While we sit alone in our chair typing we are joined to a massive network of users.

I think this is the very reason social networking is so widespread. As we are absorbed by technology we want to establish some form of individualism. We want to communicate what “we are doing” or “update or status” to remind ourselves that we are, in fact, an original, unduplicated, individual.

Thanks for reading.

I thought this was a cool site for Walter Bejamin fans.

2 Revolutions

We are in the midst of a revolution and it is remarkably similar to one that took place 500 years ago after the invention of the Printing Press.
According to Roget's Dictionary a revolution is a radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence. While evolution is the gradual development of society and social forms, institutions, etc., usually through a series of peaceful stages. In The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe Elizabeth Eisenstein makes the claim that the printing press became an "agent of change" and brought about a cultural revolution. While historians often point out the impact of literacy on culture, Eisenstein points to the invention of the printing press, not just scribal culture, as a moment of definitive and exponential change.

In an interview, she compares it to the Agricultural revolution saying:

"Chaucer said his clerk needed twenty books to fill his shelf It took ten scribes ... to feed one clerk it's sort of a
little like the agricultural revolution it take ten farmers to feed one city folk after the agricultural revolution it's
one farmer feeds twenty city folk."

After the invention of the printing press, it no longer was an "economy of scarcity" with people "starved" for more books. Instead, books could be easily reproduced, and the number of people who had access to reading materials multiplied. Historians acknowledge that in the sixteenth century there was a huge growth in knowledge, Eisenstein argues that there must be a link between this explosion of learning and printing. How could Marlow and Rabelaise write of the intoxicating pleasure from book reading if they did not have access to books more easily than their predecessors? She explains the scholar no longer had to wander from town to town to look at rare manuscripts, but could stay in one place and consult different books. This allowed more people to take up scholarly pursuits. Access to books created an era of "intense cross referencing between one book and another". The print shop itself became a source of innovative and scholarly work rather than academic institutions alone. Printing encouraged collaborative activities as artists, scholars, practitioners, and theorists worked together and checked each others work. This does not mean that the printing press was used solely for disseminating only scholarly texts, in fact Eisenstein states:


"The new wide-angled, unfocused scholarship went together with a new single-minded, narrowly focused piety.
At the same time, practical guidebooks and manuals also became more abundant, making it easier to lay plans
for getting ahead in this world -- possibly diverting attention away from uncertain futures in this one."


This cultural shift is very similar to what we are experiencing in the digital revolution. Instead of being bound to the printed word we can digitally access limitless amounts of knowledge. Facts can be checked by going to innumerable sites. And the interlinking, and aggregating of information is the standard. Sites like Wikipedia are not unlike the print shop in early modern Europe as people from a variety of specialties are encouraged to contribute and collaborate on entries. Just as learning in that time shifted from the monasteries, academies, to a wider variety of the population, learning today is moving away from the old institutions. Broadcasting ideas is no longer limited to those few scholars, journalists, or politicians with access to old forms of media. Anyone with a computer and the desire to communicate can put their ideas up for the world to see.

I can't help but be reminded of McLuhan's "the medium is the message". Eisenstein acknowledges his book The Gutenberg Galaxy as influencing her thinking. She does not hesitate to assert printings importance to the Reformation and describes it as an "emancipatory force" for the Germans from the papal authority of Rome. Without print, Luther's ideas would not have spread as quickly and garnered the support of a population. Instead Rome not only had to deal with not just one rebel priest, but a group of disenfranchised people. Now world leaders must quell dissension that is spread in seconds across continents. From the election in Iran to our own debate on healthcare, its can't be denied that digital communication is influencing events just by its mere existence.

What informs my thinking as I read more on this subject is that new technologies do change society and culture, but its seems basic human nature stays the same. It seems every age bemoans decline of their society and the evils of (insert medium here). Yet somehow humans adapt, take the things they need and continue to create, learn, and live.

Remediated Beatlemania

Every time I see the Beatles' Ed Sullivan performance I get goosebumps. I completely empathize with the girls screaming and crying for John, (especially John) Paul, George and Ringo. My love for the Beatles is a good example of Bolter and Grusin's remediation. Remediation is a term that captures the constant “oscillation” between “transparent immediacy” and “hypermediacy”.
In Remediation, Bolter and Grusin claim that this desire for immediacy is the creative impulse that is constantly developing new media forms. Transparent immediacy occurs when the user is completely immersed in the media experience, the media attempts to be invisible. In hypermediacy a person is completely aware of the media, they are actually using the media to generate the experience.
I was born after the Beatles broke up. I had no chance to experience them with any sort of immediacy. My encounters were through technology, radio, and the cassettes I patiently taped during an all day marathon of Beatles A to Z on KZPS. I collected pictures, books and calendars, pretty much anything I could get my hands on. Best Christmas ever-I got the all the Beatles albums on vinyl. (Even in 1986 that was a bit retro as I only had a cassette player and had to get a buddy to record them for me) Just as in the wider culture of media, each thing I bought every film I went to promised to "reform its predecessors by offering a more immediate or authentic experience." Watching "A Hard Days Night" is more immediate than just listening to them on your stereo or looking at pictures. In some ways it was even better than seeing them in concert, no screaming girls, and in the dark theater a person could get to know them in a new, intimate way. When the "Beatles Museum" came to Dallas, it was a hypermediated experience. I could sit in a recreation of The Cavern Club and watch the band's performance on a screen. While I was completely aware that it was not The Cavern, but an installation in the West End, and obviously it was a screen not the band in person, it was still a fun experience. In no way was I unaware of the media being used, but I was enjoying my experience because of the media.

When looking at the history of the Beatles they seem to have a uncanny ability to impact and utilize media to its fullest ability. From their early recordings that capture the live energy of their Hamburg and Cavern gigs, history-making performances on television to innovative films that are still admired for their editing and pace, the Beatles were constantly creating new ways for their fans to connect and experience their work. Even over 30 years after their break up and the death of half their members, the Beatles are still evolving and generating new encounters. On 9.9.9 they released remastered versions of their albums and the long-awaited, much anticipated Beatles Rock Band. Seth Schiesel of the New York Times opines:

"The Beatles: Rock Band is nothing less than a cultural watershed, one that may prove only slightly less influential than the band’s famous appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. By reinterpreting an essential symbol of one generation in the medium and technology of another, The Beatles: Rock Band provides a transformative entertainment experience."

There has been much discussion in the music and gaming industries about the impact of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Both games create a strangely immersive experience. Its hard to explain why pushing buttons on a little plastic guitar while staring at a television screen can be exhilarating. But it is. Part of it is the concentration required to actually play the game and succeed, the reward for success is not only a good score but the roar of the crowd in the game. The better you play, the louder they scream. For me its zen-like, as allowing your mind to wander will surely cause you to miss a note. Conversely while you are playing, the graphics on the screen simulate your band performing at a rock show. Just as a real rock concert is a hypermediated experience, the game creates another hypermediated performance. Its complete remediation. A constant movement between total absorption and awareness of the circumstances creating the experience. The New York Times says:

"It is an imperfect analogy, but listening to a finished song is perhaps like being served a finished recipe: you know it tastes great even if you have no sense of how it was created. By contrast, playing a music game like Rock Band is a bit closer to following a recipe yourself or watching a cooking show on television. Sure, the result won’t be of professional caliber (after all, you didn’t go to cooking school, the equivalent of music lessons), but you may have a greater appreciation for the genius who created the dish than the restaurantgoer, because you have attempted it yourself. "

Of course, there are people who get angry and say "Stop wasting your time with a silly game and learn to play the guitar for real!" I kind of agree with them, but no matter how much I practice I will NEVER be able to play Stevie Ray Vaugh's Texas Flood. (But I did score 90% correct on Guitar Hero and that WAS awesome.) What they are missing is that playing the game creates a new appreciation of the original media. Just as previous released versions of Rock Band, have given new generations an appreciation of classic rock. Beatles Rock Band will create new generations of remediated Beatlemaniacs. I haven't bought my own personal version of the game, there's that whole "graduate school" and "work" thing getting in the way. But eventually it will have to happen and my heart may actually burst with satisfaction when I play the Abbey Road Suite.

Most likely lukewarm

In the early part of the century Saussure went to great lengths to structuralize language and how it is formed, he did little to separate speech from writing. In fact he says writing has "an identical state of affairs" because the symbols are arbitrary and agreed upon in a communal sense. Ong and McLuhan both regard speech or orality and literacy as two very different mediums. Ong points out that all human societies have a spoken language, yet only 106 or so have been written down to create literature. Most have never been written at all. Literacy transforms a language into something larger and changes the way humans learn. Instead of apprenticeship or discipleship, literate cultures study. Ong writes that long after the development of the alphabet and writing, even in the middle ages people still trusted oral traditions over writing. Only the invention of the printing press created widespread literacy and according to McLuhan brought about nationalism and the industrial age. Then, writing became the more trusted media. Which leads to McLuhan's core idea, the medium is the message. Its not just a tool that can be used in one way or another. Its very creation transforms us. The printing press not merely its products changed the culture from oral/tribal to literate/mechanical.

Now, electronic media because of its participatory nature is transforming the culture into what Ong calls "secondary orality". Ong says "Contrasts between electronic media and print have sensitized us to the earlier contrasts between writing and orality." McLuhan divides media into two categories, Hot and cool. A hot medium has little participation, the data is completely filled. A cool medium requires a small amount of visual data and makes a greater demand upon the audience. McLuhan categorized radio, print and photography as hot media while comics and telephone and television as cool. Television is a cool medium because we have to process the small pixels into a message made of visuals and sound. But how would he categorize the internet and social media? Research is showing that our use of the social media ties us to the printed word more than ever. To borrow from Nicholas Carr "...we are wrapped in a cocoon of text that would have boggled McLuhan’s mind." However, social media is participatory. Our "profiles" are part of a community. Blogs are created to share ideas in the "global village". But, the computer draws the user into its world. Articles are read, programs are viewed individually. Are these terms even relevant? As media converges into a mashup of sound, print, image, and motion are we mixing up a lukewarm brew?

McLuhan theorized that electric media is transforming or "retribalizing" the culture. In his Playboy interview he refers to the social upheaval and the birth of hippie cultures as examples of this retribalization. While print "demanded both personal fragmentation and social uniformity" , the use of electronic media is creating an integrated human. Electronic media itself creates a clash of cultures as the "segmented visual culture" collides with the integrated electronic culture. At other times in human history the birth of new technologies was at a slower pace. People were able to become adjusted or "numbed" by them to a point that that the changes created by the new media become invisible. It is societies way of coping with these changes. However, now the changes are coming so quickly that we are unable to enter this state and thus we are in upheaval. Society is fighting between the segmented individualistic world of mechanical/print and the integrated world of electronic media.

How is social media changing our society? It seems like everyone has an answer to that question. But in terms of McLuhan's idea of retribalization, where do we stand? He stated that print required personal fragmentation and social uniformity. "The retribalized man can lead a far richer and more fulfilling life... a participant in a seamless web of interdependence and harmony." But he also says that electric technology will trigger more discontinuity, diversity and division. Polarization and conflict as well as love and harmony are likely.

Last question, as new technologies change our culture, how do we stay sane? McLuhan says that schizoprenia and alienation may be the unavoidable result of literacy. What is the result of the electronic age?

See Philip K. Dick.