-
2008 The National Art Museum of China
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and was printed and bound in China.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Synthetic times : media art China/ edited by Fan Di"an and Zhang
Ga. p. cm .
Catalog of an exhibition held at the National Art Museum of
China, June 10-July 3, 2008.
lncludes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-262-51226-8
lpbk: alk. paper) 1. Multimedia IArt)-China-Exhibitions . 2. Art
and technology-China-Exhibitions. 3. Virtual reality in
art-Exhibitions . 4. Art, Chinese-21 st century-Exhibitions. 1.
Fan, Di"an . II. Zhang, Ga, 1963- III. Zhongguo mei shu guan .
N7345.65 .M85S96 2008 702.8' 10951-dc22
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ZHdK-MIZ (Zrich) Ar... . t~
-
N COMMITTEE
ORGANIZED BY The National Art Museum of China
CHAIR Fan Di'An
VICE-CHAIRS Qian Linxiang, Yang Bingyan, Ma Shulin
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR/CURATOR
Zhang Ga
PROJECT MANAGER/PRODUCER
LiZhenhua
ADVISORY BOARD Alex Adriaansens [V2_1nstitute for the Unstable
Media, The Netherlands] Richard Castelli [Epidemie, France] Amanda
Macdonald Crowley [eyebeam, United States] Kelli Dippte [Tate,
United Kingdom] Andree Duchaine [le Groupe Molior, Canada] Barbara
London [The Museum of Modern Art, United States] Lu Xiaobo [Academy
of Artsand Design, Tsinghua University, China] Ma Gang [Central
Academy of Fine Arts, China] Kirn Machan [Multimedia Art Asia
Pacific, Australia] Alfred Rotert [European Media Art Festival,
Germany] Annette Schindler [Plug-in, Switzerland] Gerfried Stocker
[Ars Electronica, Austria) Mike Stubbs [Foundation for Art and
Creative Technology, United Kingdom] Sven Travis [Parsons The New
School for Design, United States] Peter Weibel [ZKM Center for Art
and Media, Germany] Zhang Peili [China Academy of Fine Arts, China]
Lisa Zhou [Shanghai eART Festival, China]
Jim:m.~~fE ~1!12
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lJi 13 ~-/ l!Jfl:~fi ?t~$
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-f-;lJ)f4;f lt (Epidemie,* 00) 11iiJ f.:!A 1115l ~ m~ 5l$ {U
(eyebeam, ~ 00)
~Jl)f~ . ~ f- ($~~#:1'', * 00) 121! :f;lt (Le Groupe Molior ,
;/Jo~ *)
~~:J]:. tctk (~f\:. t;;f.tfitmt', ~00) t-lli't:~
(1fi:lfo*~~*~st, 9=100) 111 Mu ( 9=1 ~~;f. ~ st, 9=1 00) ~ lbft
(JE;k$]t1*t;;f., 7~*-{UJE) 11iiI1F1*1t1! **
O~bftt]t'f*t;;f.1$",1!00)
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(#-*-t-1-t;#:o/1\,'.ftl~{tl) ~Jl. ;lJ)f#tf;lJ)f (t;#:~-@Jhif~#:~~%.
*00) mJL #~t;lJJf (*a~m-iJu.t~st.~oo) 11.t 1~ * 1s (ZKM t; #: ~
:AAt'f* o/ 1\..', 1.~ 00) **n (o/oo~*~st,o/OO)
ffil*~ (_l~lt-1-t;;f.1$", 9=100)
-
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART PETER WEIBEL
A. PAST AND PRESENT MEDIA ART
~ 1. Anti-illu5ion: Media Art in the 19605 and 19705 In 1969 an
exhibition was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art with the
significant title "Anti-Illusion: Proce-
dures/Materials," at which works of Carl Andre, Michael Asher,
Lynda Benglis, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Steve Reich, Robert
Ryman, Richard Serra, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Richard Tuttle,
and others were shown. This exhi-bition summed up an important
tendency of the neo-avant-garde, in particular, of the media
avant-garde (photo, film, and video]. The 1960s saw a paradigm
change from illusion to anti-illusion. All the achievements of the
avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s drew on the development of
materials of the particular medium and its dispositivs respectively
apparatuses. The inner world of materials, from color to
photographic paper, and the apparatus (from brush to cam-era]
formed the directives for the development of processes. Processes
of materials-whether of Lead, felt, fat, oil colors, water, ice,
air, fire, earth, and so on-shaped the form and nonform of the
picture or the sculpture. These processes of
materials replaced the work of art as a product. From
avant-garde music, Fluxus and happenings through action art, body
art and arte povera to land art, process art and concep-
tual art, artists have been testing the possibilities and
options of materials, in order to create from these their ephemeral
works. This obsession with materials not only went along with a
refusal of illustration and representation but, more-over, was in
general characterized by the gesture of the Enlightenment and
anti-illusion. Avant-garde film and the avant-garde of electronic
arts in particular proceeded from the "apparative" conditions and
materiality of film, from the conditions of perception, of
projection, of the movie theater, celluloid, and so on-and
developed from these "structural film," "material film," and
"expanded cinema" (Hollis Framp-ton, Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits,
Steina and Woody Vasulka, Michael Snow, Peter Gidal, and myself, to
name but a few]. Avant-garde film and with it media art, formed the
vanguard, so to speak, of this avant-garde of anti-illusion; and it
sub-sequently gained entry as well into the classical art forms of
painting and sculpture in the 1960s.
The 1960s thus formed a watershed between the epoch and practice
of illusion and the epoch and practice of anti-illusion. In the
1970s, the art of anti-illusion came to an end in the public
consciousness, for in the 1980s the painting of illusion ruled the
roost. Under the pressure of the mass media, which had developed
into the central site for the generation of illusion, the
avant-garde favored all the more
1. &t:t: 20ttt~60, 70.ftlY-li*Z:~ 1969.1f-. t#J~l!J
t;Jtttt~tt~W- T -t-Jl~. f!:-i#ffi'JU~~:)(, "&. 4t'.l1t, .ttJf
l#.!f'+" . Jl~o/Jlt!JT~~~HAndre). l'"J1t$(Asher).
;f.~]!_~(Benglis). ~]!_jljf-(Morris). ~f_ (Nauman). ~Jt(ReichL
~.t(RymanL *.:bI(Serra). ~*(Snow). ~ !E,$(Sonnier). :l;t# $(Tuttle)
A {t-J 11= i o ~Jl~ ,~,~ T flr J1_ t;Jjt ~ -f-j: ~~~, Jtft~ :E.~1*-
t;Jjt(:Jl fj, tfP~1t){f.J~~o 20-l!Hc6D.1f-1~Jl!3iET
h\4f}'.JtJU&.41:f'.l1t{f.J-t-~1YHi{f.J~~o 20-l!Hc
505fP60.1f-1-t. :E. t;Jjt {t-J J'Jf tr ffe.~;/ijl~JGtlf
!Jc1*-~1*-#!f4 at~:Jlbl f!: _i_~ I!/;-{f.J ~}l o ## {t-J ~
;:-t!t-Ji!-, JA~~JU1t~~. !V-&I!Jc{f.J ~ tE-t!t-Ji!-(JAi~iiJ
!!lH0;#L)};~- ~Jl:l5fl-tifflJt T-JJ-
~ o~~~~.~~.5$. ~~. ~~~* ~~.k. ##{f.Jit;~jfl-~ T M?imi ,!llM {t-J
*~, ~~~:ltffe. T 111fJ {t-J ~~*~o ~~#t+~~J 1f:i5fl1~W- T 1f
};-1!JIJ ft=~:J!t ~t;Jtt& oR:n.~. ~bl~~t;J!tHM, ~$Tfi~t;Jtt.
1*-t;JttfPt; * ~*~t;Jtt.:Jjflt;JjtfP~~t;Jjt,
t;Jjt~fil-;fE~-~###~~~*~fP~tt
~' ~*~*~1ft!J1iJ!,f~~~~-~-~t;Jjtft=Jho~#~T##~~~~#~
fOOfP~~{f.Jtt~, ;:1*-~, ~#~~~IV-J-~MfP&.4l:t-:l1t*-=E~*~~o:E.t9
fP:E.tTt;7't~f!:~~~ft~~~ffe.~bl~~~~~~~~~Jl, ~&~~~~~ .
~~iit?!L, tfl7t~~-'f-, tlfl&Jf ~ 1rt?!L :#tfl~,,t)lt!J
u~~ti!" ( "structural film" ). "tt#tf" ( "material film" )fP
"~}llf,fj" ( "expanded cinema" ):ff]!_~ JIJ~
-f~(Hollis Frampton). :fG,% ,~d.l1:1t(Tony Conrad). %$
~;fu#(Paul Sharits). ~ff- .. $$-f-fP1li:i!l! ..$$-f-(Steina and
Woody Vasulka). ;t)t$ **(Michael Snow). :fbt1~ tJk$(Peter Gidal),
:fbt1~ *1(Peter Weibel.)o ~IV-iJt , :E.tfjfP#f!:f'=!i~~1*-t; 7't#
liil~ffe. r ~M :E.&.41:t-'.l1t~~ ~%*, *
JLffit::tE20-tJt-gc6ot-1~$U~ r :!1tAM?imi 11JiM iEflt
t;J!t*~-t!t-Jf ~ A:IW~o
-
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART PETER WEIBEL
A. PAST AND PRESENT MEDIA ART
1. Anti-illu5ion: Media Art in the 19605 and 19705 In 1969 an
exhibition was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art with the
significant title "Anti-Illusion: Proce-dures/Materials," at which
works of Carl Andre, Michael Asher, Lynda Benglis, Robert Morris,
Bruce Nauman, Steve Reich, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Michael
Snow, Keith Sonnier, Richard Tuttle, and others were shown. This
exhi-bition summed up an important tendency of the neo-avant-garde,
in particular, of the media avant-garde [photo, film, and video].
The 1960s saw a paradigm change from illusion to anti-illusion. All
the achievements of the avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s drew on
the development of materials of the particular medium and its
dispositivs respectively apparatuses. The inner world of materials,
from color to photographic paper, and the apparatus [from brush to
cam-era) formed the directives for the development of processes.
Processes of materials-whether of Lead, felt, fat, oil colors,
water, ice, air, fire, earth, and so on-shaped the form and nonform
of the picture or the sculpture. These processes of materials
replaced the work of art as a product. From avant-garde music,
Fluxus and happenings through action art, body art and arte povera
to land art, process art and concep-
112
tual art, artists have been testing the possibilities and
options of materials, in order to create from these their ephemeral
works. This obsession with materials not only went along with a
refusal of illustration and representation but, more-over, was in
general characterized by the gesture of the Enlightenment and
anti-illusion. Avant-garde film and the avant-garde of electronic
arts in particular proceeded from the "apparative" conditions and
materiality of film, from the conditions of perception, of
projection, of the movie theater, celluloid, and so on-and
developed from these "structural film," "material film," and
"expanded cinema" [Hollis Framp-ton, Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits,
Steina and Woody Vasulka, Michael Snow, Peter Gidal, and myself, to
name but a fewl. Avant-garde film and with it media art, formed the
vanguard, so to speak, of this avant-garde of anti-illusion; and it
sub-sequently gained entry as well into the classical art forms of
painting and sculpture in the 1960s.
The 1960s thus formed a watershed between the epoch and practice
of illusion and the epoch and practice of anti-illusion. In the
1970s, the art of anti-illusion came to an end in the public
consciousness, for in the 1980s the painting of illusion ruled the
roost. Under the pressure of the mass media, which had developed
into the central site for the generation of illusion, the
avant-garde favored all the more
1. &tl'.it!:: 2011t~~60, 70$ftB(Jd;f$'f;~ 1969.if. .
~#JM~.oot:#.it~tt#-1J- r-~&'.l\t. !t-~~iJYJA;tx, "ffe.
-
v e h e m e n t l y d e s t r u c t i o n , d e c o n s t r u c
t i o n , a n d a n t i - i l l u s i o n ,
t h e e x i t f r o m t h e p i c t u r e . W i t h t h e r e t
u r n o f f i g u r a t i v e a n d
e x p r e s s i v e p a i n t i n g , i l l u s i o n t o o r e
t u r n e d t o t h e r e a l m o f a r t .
T h e r e w a r d w a s m o m e n t o u s : t h e m a s s m e d
i a , b e i n g i l l u -
s i o n m e d i a a s w e l l , p a s s i o n a t e l y a p p l
a u d e d t h i s n e w p a i n t -
i n g a n d l a v i s h e d e x c e s s i v e c o v e r a g e o
n t h i s p h e n o m e n o n .
T h e t a b l o i d s a n d i l l u s t r a t e d m a g a z i n
e s t h a n k e d a r t t h a t t h e y
n o l a n g e r w e r e t h e s o l e p l a y e r s i n t h e t
h e a t e r o f i l l u s i o n ,
a n d t h a t t h e a r t i s t h a d s h o w n h i m s e l f t
o b e a f e l l o w a c t o r o n
t h e s a m e s t a g e . T h u s , t h e a r t o f t h e 2 0 t
h c e n t u r y c a n b e
s q u e e z e d n o t o n l y i n t o t h e b i n a r y o p p o
s i t i o n s o f f i g u r a t i v e
v e r s u s a b s t r a c t , m a t e r i a l v e r s u s n o n
m a t e r i a l , r e p r e s e n t a -
t i o n a l v e r s u s n o n r e p r e s e n t a t i o n a l ,
b u t a l s o i n t o t h a t o f i l l u -
s i o n a n d a n t i - i l l u s i o n , i n w h i c h t h e a
v a n t - g a r d e d e f i n e d i t s e l f
a s a n t i - i l l u s i o n a r y .
2 . A l l u s i o n : M e d i a A r t i n t h e 1 9 9 0 s
l t w a s t h e m e d i a a r t i s t s o f t h e 1 9 6 0 s a n
d 1 9 7 0 s [ a v a n t - g a r d e
f i l m a n d v i d e o a r t l w h o w e r e m a i n l y r e s
p o n s i b l e f o r t h e a n t i -
i l l u s i o n a r y m e n t a l i t y . A f t e r t h e i r b
i t t e r e x p e r i e n c e t h a t t h e
r e t u r n o f t h e a r t o f i l l u s i o n i n 1 9 8 0 s p
a i n t i n g p u s h e d t h e m t o
t h e s i d e l i n e s , m a r g i n a l i z e d t h e m , a n
d i n m a n y c a s e s e v e n
w i p e d t h e m o u t , t h e y o u n g e r g e n e r a t i o
n o f m e d i a a r t i s t s o f
t h e 1 9 9 0 s l e a r n e d t h e i r l e s s o n . T h e y p
l a c e d t h e m s e l v e s n o t
i n t h e a n t i - i l l u s i o n a r y t r a d i t i o n o f
t h e m e d i a a v a n t - g a r d e
[ b e c a u s e t h e y s a w i n t h i s t r a d i t i o n t h
e c a u s e o f t h e a v a n t -
g a r d e " s f a i l u r e l b u t , r a t h e r , d i r e c t
l y i n t h a t o f m a i n s t r e a m
i l l u s i o n - f o r e x a m p l e , o f H o l l y w o o d f
i l m s o r m u s i c v i d e o s -
w h i c h t h e s e a r t i s t s t h e n a p p r o p r i a t e
d o r d e c o n s t r u c t e d w i t h
t e c h n i q u e s t h e y t o o k f r o m t h e m e d i a a v
a n t - g a r d e o f t h e
1 9 6 0 s a n d 1 9 7 0 s [ s l o w i n g d o w n o r a c c e l
e r a t i n g s h o t s , a n d
s o o n - n a m e s l i k e P i p i l o t t i R i s t a n d D o
u g l a s G o r d o n c o m e
t o m i n d l . T h i s t e n d e n c y t o w a r d i l l u s i
o n i s t h e r e a l c a u s e o f
1 1 4
A G E N E A L O G Y O F M E D I A A R T
1 9 9 0 s m e d i a a r t " s n a r r a t i v e t r e n d - o f
t h a t t r i u m p h o f t h e
e y e w h i c h p l a c e s i t s e l f a t t h e s e r v i c e
o f t h e s t o r y t e l l e r . Y e t
i n s t a n c e s o f r e s o r t i n g t o t h e a v a n t - g
a r d e a s w e l l a s t o f o r m s
o f t h e m a s s - e n t e r t a i n m e n t i n d u s t r y a
r e s o n u m e r o u s a n d
m i x e d t h a t i t w o u l d b e w r o n g s i m p l y t o a
s s i g n t h e y o u n g e r
g e n e r a t i o n t o t h e r e a l m o f t h e d r e a m f a
c t o r y . P r e c i s e l y
t h r o u g h t h e m i x t u r e o f p r a c t i c e s o f n a
r r a t i o n a n d i l l u s i o n ,
a s w e k n o w t h e m f r o m t h e m a s s m e d i a o f f i
l m a n d t e l e v i -
s i o n f r o m p s y c h o d r a m a s t o t a l k s h o w s ,
w i t h t h e p r a c t i c e s o f
a n t i - i l l u s i o n a n d a n t i - n a r r a t i o n , a
n e w p r a c t i c e h a s a r i s e n ;
i n t h e b e s t c a s e s w e w o u l d l i k e c a l l ' " a
l l u s i o n . ' "
T h e m e d i a g e n e r a t i o n o f t h e 1 9 9 0 s a s s u
m e s t h a t e v e r y
v i e w e r a l r e a d y h a s a l i b r a r y o f v i s u a l
e x p e r i e n c e s , f e d b y t h e
m a s s m e d i a f r o m f i l m s t o b i l l b o a r d s , s
t o r e d i n h i s h e a d .
T h e i r w o r k s d r a w o n t h i s v i s u a l c o n d i t
i o n i n g d i r e c t l y o r i n d i -
r e c t l y . T h e y d o n ' t n e e d t o n a m e n a m e s ,
b e c a u s e t h e v i e w e r
k n o w s w h o i s m e a n t . T h e y n e e d o n l y b r i e
f l y t o s u g g e s t t o p -
i c s , p l a c e s , s u b j e c t s , a n d t h e v i e w e r
k n o w s w h a t i s b e i n g
s p o k e n o f . M e r e h i n t s , e x p l i c i t o r s y m
b o l i c , e l l i p t i c a l o r c o n -
c e a l e d r e f e r e n c e s , a r e s u f f i c i e n t t o
c h a r g e t h e i m a g e s w i t h
m e a n i n g a n d s i g n i f i c a n c e . L i t t l e i s m
e n t i o n e d e x p l i c i t l y , a n d
t h e s t o r y i s s t i l l c o m p r e h e n s i b l e . T h
i s u n i v e r s e o f m u l t i p l e
r e f e r e n c e s i s t h a t o f t h e f a m o u s p o s t m
o d e r n i s m , f r o m
a r c h i t e c t u r e t o m u s i c , f r o m a r t t o f i l
m . Q u e n t i n T a r a n t i n o " s
P u l p F i c t i o n [ 1 9 9 4 ) i s a c l a s s i c e x a m p
l e o f t h e s e n u m e r o u s
r e f e r e n c e s t o t h e v i s u a l e x p e r i e n c e o
f t h e f i l m - g o e r . T h e
c h a r m o f t h e s e r e f e r e n c e s i s t h a t t h e y
f o r m a c o m m o n s e t
o f a s s u m p t i o n s p o s s e s s e d b o t h b y v i e w
e r a n d a u t h o r . S u p -
p o s e i s t h e k e y w o r d o f t h e a e s t h e t i c o f
a l l u s i o n . l t i s a s s u m e d ,
i t i s p r e s u p p o s e d , t h a t t h e v i e w e r k n o
w s t h i s a n d t h a t .
A n a e s t h e t i c s o f t h e ' " g i v e n , ' " w h i c h
a s s u m e s a n d p r e -
s u p p o s e s . h a s b e c o m e t h e c e n t r a l d o g m
a o f a w h o l e v i s u a l
c u l t u r e . I n t h e p o s t m o d e r n u n i v e r s e o
f a l l u s i o n , i t i s
J A w , 2 o 1 J H c 6 o - i t - 1 t ; # , ) { i r i ! l u l t '
. f : 1 1 9 s t 1 - \ ' ) f p f f e . i * ' . f : 1 1 i u l t s t 1
t W g 7 } 7 J < . w t 0 J u r 2 o - t ! H c 7 o
- i t - 1 - \ , { E - i \ . A ; t i J Z 9 = 1 , R . j t t ; * *
J U r J ? : -~ ' l 2 S 1 ) { i : l l L \ . B O - i t - 1 - \ ) - '
1 1 i u l t i * j t Wg~ @ j t : ~ i } t
~~~o*Aw~&~A~-'.f:~ltll9~~~f. {E~lgffinT, Elgt;;ft*fil~~f
~~-~Wg-~. t:~~ffe.-'.f:. ~JAOOll9~~~-lli*o ~-A~*~~ll9~lgW
~, '.f:~t:~W~T"t;ftll9~00o~){l'.f:~lt-~lg*Aw;){i:lt-~lg~~~#~
j l t " P P~'11j' : # - : x t J t # J J \ L l k ! f : t l l : I
t o %#/Hll~!!!GfJJNOO 1 1 9 ~ ; t : x t f t ; ; f t ; f 'f~iM' ~ )
{ i
~11'1/FW~:rt~'.f:~lt~~o/119~-*M*. t;;ft*1f1~~&~AT~1f1119~~.
f f e , ) { i : f t
M-~~_llg#f&'l51'lli*o } } c l T i j ,
20~icll9"t;ft:f1:X.Pf~~J;t
-
assumed of any viewer that s/he knows all the images, and the
charm of the reaction lies in the reference to these images, in the
deliberate disappointment of expectation, in the deliberate
parallelism and conformity, or in the deliber-ate omissions and
ellipses [see, for example, Pierre Huyghe's film L'Ellipse). This
allusive technique permits the Scylla and Charybdis of illusion and
anti-illusion, of narration and anti-narration, to be
circumnavigated. The author can nar-rate, but through the allusive
techniques [not naming names, of indirect references, or of
covered-up identities] s/he can also rupture the narrative. The
author can illustrate figura-tive and concrete scenes but, through
the allusive tech-nique, also Lend them a degree of abstraction and
unreality. The methods of allusion thus allow the artist to
regulate the degree of narration and anti-narration, of figuration
and abstraction. In this way it is possible to create works
ani-mated by an incredible pleasure in storytelling, by an
exces-sive urge to jump into the thick of a narrative plot, into
the flesh of a story, and at the same time to make visible the
bones of its structure and the grid of its script. The tech-niques
of allusion permit stories about the state of the world-for
example, by Gillian Wearing, Sam Taylor-Wood, Aernout Mik-that, at
the same time, continue the anti-illu-sionary and conceptual
tendency of the media avant-garde.
3. Scripted Method: Contemporary Media Art Contemporary media
artists show the mass media as a part of the world and as a part of
the eye and of the camera with which the world is viewed. The
allusive eye tells of the media and of the world, and its artists
tell of the world in other ways than do the mass media. These are
dismayed views into, and dismayed images of, the global illusion of
neolib-eralism. These are images of an art whose visual vocabu-
116
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
lary has a high degree of complexity. This complexity is the
core of allusion. The danger of anti-illusory art was simplic-ity
and tautology. The dangers of allusory art are complexity and
mannerism, but never the flight from the world or the flight from
the viewer. The allusive technique of narration in the visual media
signifies a further development of the liter-ary plot and almost a
break with it, with the literary struc-turing of a narrative. The
visual narrative does not follow the arc and path of a verbal
narrative. Nevertheless, the allusive narrative follows a script.
lt could be said that the media art of the 1990s up to the present
follows a script-is scripted. lt does not follow the plot of a
story, though: a story is something other than a script. A script
means rules or codes. There are today not just dress codes but also
codes of behavior; not just a code of honor but, above all, codes
of articulation. In the mass media, in politics, in TV news, we
experience daily the subtleties and finesse of the code of
articulation, how something is formulated. How something is said is
more important than its content. The content is precisely how
something is said and in what words. News is scripted , behavior is
scripted: the world, especially politics, follows a script, an
allusive script, where names are not mentioned, where references
are indirect, where what is most important is not explicit, where
information is con-cealed, where a great deal is merely assumed.
This scripted world corresponds in art to the scripted method. An
aes-thetics of assumption is supposed to uncover a world of
assumption. The essence of allusive media art consists of offering
the artist the possibility of rendering the script of the world
recognizable through his own script. ldeally, the allusive eye
should make the script of the world visible. ldeally, the allusive
narrative should counter this script, or create better, truer,
profounder narratives about the world.
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117
-
4. Reenactment and Reference lnstead of Representation in Actual
Media Art Contemporary art is characterized by the fact that, after
abstraction, which had neglected reference to object worlds, it
established not a new concreteness but, rather, new ref-erences-on
aesthetic, scientific, economic, and political systems. By using
these systems as references, they become reference systems.
Reference systems thus replace reality. Art refers lately to
reference systems and is itself therefore becoming a reference
system. One can assume that 20th-century art was influenced mainly
by photography as a ref-erence system. We see that a technical
medium is the primary source of reference when we want to follow up
the old con-flict of paradigms. Warhol's or Richter's paintings
refer to photographs, in particular to photographs from art history
books or the mass media. Even sculpture refers to photog-raphy. And
contemporary video art refers [as Pop Art did in the 1960s] to
popular phenomena such as Hollywood films, newscasts, quiz shows,
reality TV, and video clips-and is quite successful with it. The
arts treat each other recipro-cally as reference systems. For this
reason all arts are becoming media. This is the greatest success of
media art. Reality is perceived in the mirror of reference systems,
mass media, and the media of arts. A special case is the segment of
acquiring reality in performing as in reenactment. This is the
latest trend in media art. We all know that the real inci-dences,
actions, or data in text or images are passed on by history. In a
critical and educational position we know that verity and
authenticity are lost by the transmission from the incident to its
description or, in other words, by the transfer from reality to
representation. History can be seen as a vast number of stories
that are conducted, as it were, by the interests of the narrators;
thus it is myth, fiction, illusion,
118
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
simulation, construction, lie. When the images of history, which
are saved and stored in photographs and films, are "retroced" into
action, the lies of representation are dis-played as the truth of
reality. Medial fiction is becoming authenticity because of
retrocession. The conciliated, with all its defects, is becoming
the truth of the immediate through performance. Contemporary media
art thinks it can escape the complex world of media by stepping
into the simple world of senses. By playing theater as if it was
real-ity-and not expose reality as theater-media art described
simulation as reality, but without fully knowing that it is still
is a prisoner of simulation and the media world. A comple-ment to
"reality TV" would be reality art. Reenactment means to get back to
an illusion that pretends to be reality.
B. PRESENT AND FUTURE MEDIA ART
1. Techne-Episteme In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle [384-322
sc]. son of a Macedonian doctor and teacher to Alexander the Great,
made his well-known distinction between techn.e [practical skills,
craft and art] and episteme [cognition, knowledgel. Knowledge in
its various forms [epistemel comprised rheto-ric, arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy, dialectics, grammar, and music theory. These
were reserved for the community of free citizens. Technical
knowledge [techne) was a matter for the unliberated, for laborers
and craftsmen [technites or banausosl. Aristotle made no attempt to
disguise his con-tempt of craftwork [techne). He regarded the
status of craftsmen as one bordering on slavery. For this reason,
it was impossible to consider craftsmen as true citizens.
Aris-totle expounded the view that the sons of "free" citizens
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A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
should refrain from taking too great a part in useful activi-
racy and oligarchy]. Hence, Aristotle produced a commen-ties that
could drag them down to the level of the banausos surability of the
aesthetic and social order. The hierarchy of because craftwork
impeded the state of mind and common sense that free citizens
required in order to exercise and apply virtue . In his opinion,
the arts and crafts [techne] had a detrimental effect on the body's
physical condition and robbed the mind of the respite it requires
for sound reasoning. Thus, useful things ought to be taught only to
the extent that they form the basis for higher things. Music is
tobe listened to for pleasure by free adults, not to be played by
them, for music-making has a hint of the lowly arts and crafts
about it and is therefore an undignified activity for a free man.
In other words, society requires people who would master a craft or
trade [techne] as laborers or slaves, but only in the service of
others-to help the latter experience pleasure, for exam-ple, or to
allow them to carry out more sublime activities .
To understand this hierarchy of different forms of knowl-edge,
it must be remembered that Aristotle was an advocate of dass rule
rather than democracy. In his opinion, the rule of an individual
[monarchy]. the rule of a few [aristocracyl, or the rule of the
many [polity] were superior organizations of government which
served the common good:
Misguided forms of government arise when tyranny replaces the
monarchy, oligarchy the aristocracy and democracy the polity. For
tyranny is an autocracy, an exclusive form of rule which is for the
benefit of the sovereign, oligarchy a form of rule for the benefit
of the rich and democracy one for the benefit of the poor. Yet
no-one thinks of the benefit of all. ...
dass society served as the foundation for the hierarchy of the
arts and sciences. The sciences [epistemel, ranging from arithmetic
to rhetoric, were for free citizens; and the arts [technel. ranging
from architecture and agriculture to painting and sculpture, were
for the unliberated.
2. Artes liberales-Artes mechanicae The Romans adopted
Aristotle's distinction but added one significant shift to it.
lnstead of distinguishing between forms of knowledge and craft,
between cognition and gen-eral knowledge or between the experts and
the banausos, they now placed the Aristotelian distinction in the
notion of the arts themselves. Episteme and techn.e became artes.
The distinction between episteme and techn.e was replaced by the
distinction between the artes Liberales and the artes mechanicae.
The forms of knowledge ranging from arithme-tic to rhetoric became
the artes liberales. The forms of craft that ranged from
architecture to agriculture became the artes mechanicae. The
commensurability of the aesthetic and social order continued to
form the foundation of a hier-archy of the arts and artistic
skills. What we know today as the sciences formed the artes
Liberales of the past.
In Roman times, the study of the artes liberales formed the
subject matter of a nonvocational higher education befitting the
free citizen. This is why we speak of the liberal arts for the free
citizen. The seven liberal arts [grammar, dialectics, rhetoric,
arithmetic, geometry, music theory, and astronomy] also formed the
curriculum of the monastic and convent schools, and, from the 13th
century, of the universi-
By proposing a mixture of polity and aristocracy, he ties. The
artes mechanicae [architecture, painting, sculpture, sought to
neutralize the dangers of the extremes [democ- and agriculture]
continued tobe derided as banausoi technai
120
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or artes vulgares et sordidae for the unliberated, laborers, and
slaves.
3. The Contest Between the Arts lt was not until the emergence
and rise of the middle classes or bourgeoisie that painting,
architecture, and sculpture were finally promoted to the ranks of
the liberal arts (artes liberales]. Around 1500, architecture,
sculpture, and paint-ing had an equal share in the emancipation of
the fine arts [or artes mechanicae as they were known at the time].
The term paragone in art history refers to the "contest between the
arts" which developed in the modern age. Soon the debate on the
order of precedence of the arts began. Above all, painting and
sculpture found themselves in direct com-petition with each other,
as we see firstly in the writings of Leonardo da Vinci, who argued
explicitly in favor of painting. While painting advanced its merits
in terms of its illusionist qualities, its inventiveness and the
possibilities it held for imitating nature through the means of
perspective and color, sculpture referred to its multiple
dimensionality, its haptic qualities and materiality. Painting, in
the latter view, dealt merely with appearance, whereas sculpture
actually embodied reality. The sculptor Turbolo expressed the
argu-ment most succinctly in a letter to Benedetto Varchi in the
16th century: "lt seems to me that sculpture is how things actually
are and that painting is a lie" ["A me mi pare La scul-tura sia La
casa proprio, La pittura sia La bugia"]. Painting, for its part,
derided sculpture as a dusty metier of the crafts-man, which did
not even come close to the intellectual achievement of painting.
Thus, painters used the old craft-work (techne) argument to
disparage sculptors.
The old artes liberals, once the sciences, today have becorne
painting, sculpture, and architecture, and in place
122
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
of the old artes mechanicae we now have applied art and media
art. Theory and science used to form the arts of the free citizens.
The "mechanical" arts of the craftsman used to be the arts of the
unliberated, the laborer, and the slave. This aesthetic division,
which corresponds to the Greek seg-regation of the classes, has
been translated into the value judgments we have of the arts" and
the "media arts" today. We devalue media artists by regarding them
as mere expo-nents of technical reproducibility limited to the
horizons of a machine and by assigning primacy to painting as an
anthro-pomorphic principle and/or form of production.
The scant regard accorded to productive crafts and trades in
ancient times is now directed at automation and the machine. The
place of the mechanical arts has been taken by the media . In
principle, the difference between the artes liberales and the artes
mechanicae resulted from the assumption that the one was regarded
as an activity of the mind and the other as an activity of the
body. The contempt felt for the work of the craftsman has been
replaced by the contempt for machine- and media-generated
production .
As a form of production generated by the human hand and guided
by artistic intuition, painting nowadays has been assigned
precedence over artworks that are produced or reproduced using
technical means. Whereas original works of painting are in the
service of the upper classes, the lower classes are fobbed oft with
photographic reproductions of the famous originals (prints,
postcards, and the likel. Even today, the ostracizing of the artes
mechanicae continues to be felt in the case of artworks produced
with the aid of elec-tronic media . A glance through contemporary
books on art history reveals that media arts continue to be held in
con-tempt. Right up to today, they have been unable to com-pletely
shake oft the stigma attached to their origins from
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123
-
being associated with the practices of the unliberated and with
the mechanical arts.
Thus, the Liberation of the so-called lower orders can be gauged
from the processes of transformation, which the arts themselves
underwent. However, the lower orders owed their emancipation less
to the arts than to the natural sci-ences and the spirit of the
Enlightenment, which wanted to release people from two forces of
violence, forces of social coercion-that is, from the chains of
disempowerment that had been forged by the nobility and the
church-and from the power of nature. The natural sciences allied
themselves with the mechanical arts in order to discover [with the
help of instruments, devices, laboratories, technical skills,
knowledge, and expertise] the laws of nature and to speed up the
development of mechanisms that could master the forces of nature.
One artistic movement such as Romanti-cism was certainly opposed to
the Enlightenment; but oth-
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
Volume 7. The cream of the French Enlightenment, Voltaire,
Rousseau, Condorcet, and Montesquieu gave the Encyclo-pedie its
anticlerical and antiabsolutist character, the cen-terpiece of the
democratic revolution.
D"Alembert [ 1717-1783] wrote the Oiscours preliminaire de
l'Encyclopedie in 1751. He did so in the wake of Bacon, Newton, and
locke . For him, mathematics and physics formed the foundation of
all knowledge, including the theory of society. Neither religion
nor biological organisms consti-tuted a basis for models of
community life; instead, the spheres of ratio-reason-and the
natural sciences served as a foil for the spheres of politics and
art. But, above all, the Encyclopedie was the great service of
Diderot, who focused his attention on the arts mecaniciens, the
crafts, and on technology as the langue des arts. The sections
Diderot wrote about the mechanical arts account for the largest
part of the Encyclopedie. In his search for a systematic under-
ers joined forces with it to improve la condition humaine.
standing of the mechanical arts he called for a debate on Today, we
are in a similar position once again. The intention is for our
fields of knowledge to be extended and driven for-ward through an
alliance of the mechanical media arts with the natural sciences,
and hence for platforms and practices of democratic processes to be
created with the aid of new technologies and methods.
4. The Doctrine of the Encyclopedie From 1751 to 1780 Denis
Diderot and his collaborator Jean le Rand D'Alembert published the
thirty-five volumes of the Encyclopedie, au dictionnaire raisonnee
des sciences, des arts et des metiers, the most significant
editorial undertaking of the French Enlightenment-the 'opening
chapter of the rev-olution," according to Robespierre-which was
officially condemned by Pope Clemens XIII after the publication
of
124
the arts and the integration of the mechanical arts into the
liberal arts and sciences. Diderot wanted to abolish the
dis-tinction between the artes liberales and artes mechanicae as a
device of class society; he wanted to change society by
emancipating the mechanical arts . By improving the mechan-ical
arts, he wanted to improve the social status of the citi-zen. In
his opinion, the distinction between the free and the mechanical
arts had degraded mankind. He was all for extending the field of
the social protagonists, for a wide dis-tribution of knowledge and
for the development of tools, machines, models, and instruments in
the interests of prog-ress. He published the findings of his
research in the Ency-clopedie in order to bring about a social
transformation. Above all, he pinned his hopes for changing and
improving society on the dissemination of knowledge about the
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-
mechanical arts. Technology, he believed, would help to
restructure society. So it was not from the arts of painting and
sculpture that he expected to see substantial contribu-tions to the
development of a free society but, rather from the mechanical arts.
Knowledge of the mechanical arts would Lead to a rational and fair
society, just as we hope to find the same kind of society today in
modern media arts and technologies such as the internet.
Experimental poli-tics and experimental media art are supposed to
support each other: in Diderot and in the agenda of the
Enlighten-ment we find an interest in integrating the separate
repre-sentational fields of science, art [the mechanical arts] and
politics. The Enlightenment and Diderot regarded the mechanical
arts, technology, and science as the foundation for enlightened
politics.
5. The Equality of Materialsand Media A culture of material"
emerged in the 1920s, especially in Russia where it revolved around
Vladimir Tatlin. Tatlin linked the application of pieces of wood
and paper in the Cubist pictures of Braque and Picasso to the
tradition of materials used in Russian icons . Kurt Schwitters and
the Bauhaus movement added both abstraction as a language of form
and new materials to the field of painting. Consequently, the
manifestos of the time called for the equality of all materi-als.
This is why the most outstanding representatives of the 1920s
avant-garde worked simultaneously as painters, sculptors,
photographers, filmmakers, designers and archi-
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
equality among each of the artistic genres. Hence the first
phase of media art centered on achieving the same artistic
recognition for the media of photography and film as was enjoyed by
the traditional media of painting and sculpture. In particular,
much of the work du ring this phase was directed at exploring the
idiosyncratic, media-specific [material-immanent] worlds of the
relevant medium. In the case of photography at least, the battle
for recognition as an artistic medium was won some 150 years after
it had been invented. The same contest between the arts has also
taken place with the newer media of video and digital art, because
media works are attracting more attention than ever before at major
international exhibitions. So, tentatively at least, we can speak
of equality among all the media and genres.
6. The Postmedia Condition: The Script of Media As in the case
of the old technical media of photography and film, the pivotal
successes of the new technical media con-sisting of video and
computer are not just that they launched new movements in art and
created new media for expres-sion but , further, that they exerted
a decisive influence on historical media such as painting and
sculpture. To this extent, the new media were not only a new branch
on the tree of art but actually transformed the tree of art itself.
Here we have to distinguish between old technological media
(photography and film] and new technological media [video and
computers]. on the one hand, and the arts of painting and
sculpture, on the other. Hitherto, the latter
tects. They developed a visual language that could be were not
considered to be media at all; however, under the applied in
universal contexts from panel paintings to archi- influence of the
media, they came to be regarded as such, tecture or from a
two-dimensional surface to a three- that is, as nontechnological
old media. With the experiences dimensional space. In doing so,
they laid the foundations for of the new media, we can afford to
take a new Look at the old an end to the contest between the arts
and to the start of media. With the practices of the new
technological media,
126
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we can also embark on a fresh evaluation of the practices of the
old, nontechnological media. In fact, we might even go so far as to
say that the intrinsic success of the new media resides less in the
fact that they have developed new forms and possibilities of art
than in the fact that they have enabled us to establish new
approaches to the old media of art-and, above all, have kept the
latter alive by forcing them to undergo a process of radical
transformation.
For example, after photography, emerged to rival the production
of paintings that faithfully depict reality in line with our
perceptions-and even had the audacity to promise [quite
legitimately, as it turned out] that its depictions were far closer
to reality, painting was eventually obliged to retreat from the
representation of the world of objects after a fifty-year long
struggle, and to concentrate on depicting its own idiosyncratic
world [surface, form, color, and the properties of materials and
technical devices from the frame to the canvasl. lts triumph in
doing so is evidenced in the abstract painting of the first half of
the 20th century. The fact that painting went back once more to
creating pictures of the world of objects in the second half of the
century (from Pop Art to photorealism] was a development that
referred directly to photography. lf, in the world prior to
photography, painting was based directly and immediately on
representing the world of objects, then object-based painting after
the invention of photography came to refer solely to the world of
objects as it was depicted by photogra-phy, that is, to
object-based and figurative photography.
However, it is not just the experiences with film and
photography that have led to an exchange with painting : digital
"painf' programs and the experience of working directly on the
computer and the screen have given an unmistakably fresh impetus to
painting. Significantly
128
A GENEALOGY QF MEDIA ART
enough, they have also kicked oft a new form of computer-derived
abstraction in painting . Yet it is not just the Western program of
visual images that has changed through the influence of the
technological media; the program of sculp-tures has obviously been
transformed as well. We can rec-ognize the dominating influence of
computer algorithms and 30 programs right down to the field of
architecture. We could therefore be tempted to ask whether the
effects of the new media on the old media have actually been more
suc-cessful than the works of the new media themselves. The central
movens and the central agendas of 20th-century art: the crisis of
representation, the dissolution of the traditional notion of
artwork, and the disappearance of the author-all these factors are
due to the emergence of the new media. The radical turn toward the
culture of reception, which occurred in the 20th century, the
explosion of the visual in art and science, the pictorial turn [as
well as the performa-tive turn], are all consequences of the new
media .
All of the artistic disciplines have been transformed by the
media. The impact of the media is universal. The media paradigm
embraces all the arts . The computer's claim tobe a universal
machine, as Alan Turing called his computer model in his 1937 paper
"On Computable Numbers, " is being fulfilled by the media. Just as
many scientists today dream of a computerized model of the
universe, of a perfect presentation of the universe based on
digital computations, artists today also dream of a computerized
model of art, of a kind of art that can be completely created
through digital computations. This computational way of thinking,
the impacts and successes of which have already captured the entire
world-for, of course, airports, factories, railway stations,
shopping centers, hospitals, and so on would be helpless without
computers or calculators-is now complemented
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1-f jt;{JL~ ffe.~ "-t!!.- ~;{JL,ff." , i~WJ kro ~ f(Alan
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:!!#*3t;f!L~fll;J~~11~&~~~*$t~'11l'*-fll;JW~~ ~ ~~ r :!! tc
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129
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by the parallel emergence of the "computational arts"
(Heidegger] whose aim it also is to capture the entire world. And,
indeed, the impacts and successes of the computa-tional arts, which
we can observe follow precisely in the tra-dition we have just
described : they, too, are transforming all the practices and forms
of art. The computer, as it were, can simulate not only all forms
and laws of the universe, not only the natural laws, but also the
laws of form, and the forms and laws of the world of art.
Creativity itself is a transfer program, an algorithm. From
literature to architec-ture, from art to music, we are beginning to
see more and more computer-aided transfer programs and
instructions, control mechanisms, and guidelines for actions. The
impact of the media is universal and for that reason all art is
already postmedia art. Moreover, the universal machine, the
com-puter, claims to be able to simulate all of the media.
There-fore all art is postmedia art.
This postmedia condition, however, does not render superfluous
the idiosyncratic worlds in the world of devices or the intrinsic
properties of the media world. On the con-trary, the specificity
and idiosyncratic worlds of the media are becoming increasingly
differentiated. Total availability of specific media or of specific
properties of the media, from painting to film, is only possible in
the postmedia condition . For example, the computer is better at
simulating and defin-ing a particular degree of granulation on a
reel of 16mm film than a real film could ever achieve itself. The
digital simulation of the notes of a flute sounds more Like a flute
than the notes a flute player could ever coax out of a real flute.
Likewise, the computer is even better at simulating the flickering
of the writing if there is a tattered perforation on the reel of
film than reality itself, and the same goes for the notes of a
prepared piano. lt is only thanks to the post-
130
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
media computer, the universal machine, that we can realize the
abundance of possibilities that resides in the specificity of the
media.
Nowadays, all art practice keeps to the script of the media and
the rules of the media . This notion of the media comprises not
only the old and new technical media, from photography to
computers, but also the old analog media such as painting and
sculpture, which have been trans-formed and influenced under the
pressure of the technical media. This explains why we can rightly
say that all art prac-tice keeps to the script of the media.
The art of the technical media- that is, art that has been
produced with the aid of a device-constitutes the core of our media
experience. This media experience has become the norm for all
aesthetic experience. Thus, in art there is no longer anything
beyond the media . No one can escape from the media. There is no
longer any painting outside and beyond the media experience. There
is no longer any sculp-ture outside and beyond the media
experience. There is no longer any photography outside and beyond
the media expe-rience. Those photographers who submit photographs
to the digital media, and manipulate or enhance images on the
computer screen which were originally taken by the cam-era, provide
the most convincing and astounding photographic portraits; they are
the most convincing and quintessential of all photographers. The
photography of model and minia-ture worlds is a kind of physical
modeling, a digital simula-tion technique .
This post-media condition is defined by two phases: [1] the
equivalence of the media, and [2] the mixing of the media. The
first phase was about achieving equivalence of the media, about
establishing the same artistic recognition for new
media-photography, film, video, digital art-as has
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131
-
been enjoyed by the traditional media, painting and sculp-ture.
During this phase, all media, including painting and photography,
made a special effort to explore the media-specific idiosyncratic
worlds of the respective medium.
Painting has demonstrated the intrinsic value of paint, of
flowing, dribbling, and trickling. Photography has dem-onstrated
its ability to portray objects realistically. Film has demonstrated
its narrative capacity. Video has demon-strated its critical
subversion of the mass medium of televi-sion. Digitalart has
demonstrated its powers of imagination in virtual worlds.
As far its epistemological and artistic value is concerned, this
phase is more or less over. Fortunately, media specific-ity and
media criticality have prevailed absolutely and com-pletely. The
equivalence of the media, meaning its artistic equivalence and
equal validity, has prevailed after success-ful attempt to chart
the media-specific idiosyncratic worlds of the relevant medium,
ranging from painting to video.
In an artistic and epistemological sense, the new sec-ond phase
is about mixing the media-specific idiosyncratic worlds of the
media.
Video, for example, triumphs with the narrative imagi-nation of
film by using multiple projections instead of a sin-gle screen, and
by telling a story from many perspectives at the same time rather
than just from a single perspective. With the availability of new,
large digital cameras and graph-ics programs, photography is
inventing unseen, virtual worlds. Sculpture can consist of a photo
or a videotape. An event captured in a photograph can be a
sculpture, a text, or a picture. The behavior of an object and of a
person cap-tured on a video or in a photograph can be a sculpture.
Lan-guage can be a sculpture. Language on LED screens can be a
painting, a book, and a sculpture. Video and computer
132
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
installations can be a piece of literature, architecture, or a
sculpture. Photography and video art, originally confined to two
dimensions, receive spatial and sculptural dimensions in
installations. Painting refers to photography or digital graphics
programs and uses both. Graphics programs are often called "paint"
programs because they refer to paint-ing. Film is proving to be
increasingly dominant in a docu-mentary realism, which takes its
critique of the mass media from video. The web supplies dialogs and
texts for all of the media in its chat rooms. The entire reservoir
of texts on the web can be used for the automatic control of texts,
for the self-generative production of language worlds. But the web
can also produce self-generative picture worlds, and texts on the
web can serve as a foil for the script of actors in films and
speakers in radio plays or for texts by poets or amateur writers.
With an iPod, everyone can make their own radio program:
"podcasting" instead of "broadcasting." With videocasting, everyone
can make their own TV pro-gram. VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol]
and IPTV (Internet Protocol Television] provide materials for
everyone to create their own textual, aural, and visual
installations using a range of media such as photography, video, or
computer. The results, in turn, can be output as film, pieces of
music, or as architecture.
This mixing of the media has led to extraordinarily major
innovations in each of the media and in art. Thus, painting has
come to life not by virtue of itself but, rather, through its
referencing of other media. Video lives from film, film lives from
literature, and sculpture lives from photog-raphy and video. They
all live from digital, technical innova-tions. The secret code
behind all these forms of art is the binary code of the computer,
and the secret aesthetics con-sist of algorithmic rules and
programs.
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tliPOD, AAi'~~{jj~~ ~ c, ~)'lt: JfJ "pod'ft" 11:..f. 1. tl ~ t~),
AA ~~ {jjlj ~ ~ Ci~ t~ 1t . ~ t ~(Voice Over Internet
Protocol)~ ~ t~(lnternet Protocol Television)~~+ Atk~tH4,
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133
-
~ ~ ~ '
'
~ Consequently, this state of current art practice is best
referred to as the postmedia condition, because no single medium
is dominant any longer; instead, all of the different media
influence and determine each other. The set of all media forms a
universal self-contained medium. This is the postmedia condition of
the world of the media in the prac-tice of the arts today.
The ultimate effect of all this is to emancipate the observer,
visitor, and user. In the postmedia condition, we experience the
equality of the lay public, of the amateur, the philistine, the
slave, and the subject. The very terms "user innovation" or
"consumer-generated content'' bear witness to the birth of a new
kind of democratic art in which every-one can participate. The
platform for this participation is the internet, where everyone can
post his or her texts, photos or videos. For the first time in
history there is an "institution," a "space," and a "place" where
the lay public can offer their works to others with the aid of
media art but without the guardians of criteria. Until now, of
course, these were all censured. There were only museums and other
state-owned or private control zones where only legitimized art was
exhibited. Now, though, the way is finally clear for illegiti-mate
art. The contest of the arts is over, but the contest returns to
its origins-to the relations between theory, sci-ence, and
practice: art.
C. USER ART
1. Object, Use, lnstructions for Use At the beginning of the
20th century, modern art redefined the reference to reality or,
rather, to representations of real-ity. Painting cut its ties with
the reality of the object world; it
134
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
became nonrepresentational and abstract [Kasimir Malevichl. On
the other hand, the object banned from the picture reen-tered art
as a real object [Marcel Duchampl. In painting, representation of
the object world was prohibited, but the reality of the object
world was welcome. Sculptors, too, ceased to represent the external
world. The real object itself became sculpture.
The issue of the depicted object's practical value never came up
as long as the object was only a picture. After all, the use of an
object that was merely painted was, in reality, not possible. The
question of use surfaced with the use of real objects in the art
system. lf a sculpture is formed from a real, everyday object, then
this can also be used as such. With his industrial readymades,
Duchamp negated the use of his objects. The reversed urinal was not
tobe used: Duch-amp presented it as an aesthetic object. The
surrealists also rejected the usability of their aesthetic objects
in order to stage their pure symbolic function . Brancusi, on the
con-trary, saw his handmade sculptures as having a triple use
function. A sculpture could also be a plinth for another sculpture
or a stool to sit on. The stool, for its part, could be the podium
for a sculpture as well as a sculpture itself, or a use object. The
productivists around Alexander Rodchenko also expanded the concept
of sculpture in 1920 by, for example, producing chairs to be used
at a Workers' Club.
Along with the use objects came also instructions for use.
Without instructions, most objects are unusable. The instructions
for use became instructions for how to act for beholders, turning
them into actors. Marcel Duchamp, for example, provided exact
instructions for how to Look at a picture. With the usability of
the aesthetic objects, the "user" also entered the picture. Later,
the use object was even replaced by the instructions for use
[instructions for how to
*F~~~~~~-~filT-#~~~*~-~.~A~~~~o/.~# ~~~~-kX~~. iEI+A~~~~~-.
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~*~~ff&.~J(%~Uif.
1. @Jf*. m'if.lftn~ iE201!HEAJJ. ~1~-t;Jt:t:~;t)( T ~-~zfii],
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~~*~ii~fth~~{-f-W *1F 19 7Hi~(Kasimir Malevich)}. iEJJ-~Uif.
tit~@~~JfiE5t~xt~i!tJi!.~~#J~~:it41t*:i!A"t;ft{.!9*1F t fiti.
(Marcel Duchamp)}. iE~@o/ . xtfxt~i!tJi!.ifJ41t3Jttit~J1:..
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~-~ili~~*k-OO@. -~#J*~~~~MA*~~~ili~. $ ~. iE~~o/.
~Jfl-#i@ili*~#Jik~~~~.W*"tJft*%o/~Jf!T~#J~ij-. Jfl
~MM;;f#JJtili*.~~-#k~B#Jflififfe.~. t~~~*~B#Jfli*~Jfl.
tl~Jf!I~ffe.i. ~~~;tT~~#Ji~Jfl~.~#tit~-~+~~#~k'1T~Jfl.~
~k*'t~'1#J**~~~--~~)(~*~-ff~#J*~~Jfl~. ~~kli J]t~~#J*ilt~
~~~:~&At. ~ z#Jffi.., ::$" AA J$'W(Brancusi)1A.)9 ~.f I ~J ~ ~
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~~J;},mtk-#Jf~. ~;it-#~Jfl#J. ~UE$w:fc ~qm$#(Alexander
Rodtschenko)~ o/ 1\. ~ F J'p )(*~iE20i!t~E.20.if.1~~ Ji T
>'li ~ :M~, # '1--IA 1J'l-Jf; ~~J~*~
#~~~~Jfl#J* ~iliJJtT~Jfl-lJI,~.~~~. :fc~~~#Ji~*~Jfl.~~
-lJl,~ffe.'1~Mxtf~~~~Jfl.*~fil~ffe.*M*~#~~*-~~. ~~xtf~M~
-ru@~-tT~~lrJ-lJI,~. ~Tf.#J1*-"'-1'f~Jfl'li, "~lfl*"
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-lJI, ~ )Jifi~ 1~. ~#-lJI, ~ 11tt llf1-iE 1!f #J
J'p~1t~JftJ'po/ . iE1968.if.. Jl;~~1! 1~Akq~ ~8'#(Franz Erhard
Walther)iE~~;f ~ ((#J i, ~Jfl}} (Objekte, benutzen)o/:itlU T ~
->Jt. iE~*-i!tJi!. o/, ~Jfl* t5" 41o/1\.
135
-
act), which had always implicitly accompanied every object and
every art object. In 1968, Franz Erhard Walther met this demand
with his book Objekte, benutzen. The user took on a central role
within the realm of art-the person who com-pletes the artwork, so
to speak. As clearly shown by Erwin Wurm's "expanded media" concept
of sculpture, the user, in dealing with the objects, brings about
the existence and development of the art work. Following the
beholders' revaluation as reflecting and creative subjects came
their acceptance as actors. As Duchamp stated in 1957, "All in all,
the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the
spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by
deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds
his contribution to the creative act." 1 The receiver is an
integral component in the creative act. The viewer becomes an
artist; the consumer becomes producer.
2. New Music: Score and Performance The culture of musician
[interpreterl has, meanwhile, achieved a special position in music.
We simply have to replace the term "spectator" with "interpreter"
and the term "artist'' with "composer" in Duchamp's formulation:
"All in all, the creative act is not performed by the composer
alone; the interpreter brings the work in contact with the external
world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and
thus adds his contribution to the creative act." The composer
writes a score for piano, for example, but it is the pianist who
first knows how to interpret and play this score and thereby
realize the work. Composers write music: they write instructions
for use for the piano, for example. The interpreter implements the
instructions for use and produces the music. In this regard, the
new music of the 1950s [Pierre Boulez, John Cage). which in
particular
1. Marcel Duchamp, "The Creative Act," in Session an the
Creative Act, Convention oftheAmerican Federation ofArts, Houston,
Texas, April 1957 http://members.aol.com/mindwebart3/marcel.htm
[accessed Novem-ber 13, 2007).
136
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
attended to the problems of the score and allowed the
inter-preter great freedom, provided further important roots for
the origins of user art.
"in 1957 New Music was the Center of all Arts Move-ments and
Germany was the Center of the New Music," wrote Nam June Paik in
1999.2 In fact, the participatory trends in art intensified in the
1950s with the freedom of the interpreter with regard to a score
that was often aleatory or consisted of direct instructions. In
1960, the composer La Monte Young wrote "Composition #7": "draw a
straight line and follow it." In 1962, Nam June Paik wrote in his
instruc-tions as music "Read-Music-Do it yourself-Answers to La
Monte Young": "See your right eye with your Left eye."
Since Cage, the interpreter's freedom within the instructions of
the score, chance, and uncertainty, have been important themes in
New Music. Paik transferred this composition technique from the
world of sounds into the world of pictures. In this transfer, the
audience stepped into the place of the musician as interpreter or
participant: '"As the next step toward more indeterminacy, 1 wanted
to Let the audience [or congregation, in this case) act and play
itself," Paik wrote in his 1962 essay "About the Exposition of
Music." His video sculpture Participation TV [1963) allowed the
audi-ence to change the pictures on a black-and-white television by
means of a microphone and a signal amplifier-a key work for the
subsequent decades of interactive media art. His work Random Access
[1963) was composed of-with-tape recorders glued to the wall.
Beholders, or users, could walk along with a mobile sound head and
thereby generate their own music. They became, so to speak, a
pianist navi-gating the soundtrack and did their own composing. The
birth of media art and its participative trends did, in fact,
result from the spirit of the music being made around 1960.3
2. Wulf Herzogenrath, ed., Nam June Paik: FluxusNideo [Bremen:
Kun-sthalle Bremen, 1999]. dedication page. 3. Wulf Herzogenrath,
oer ost-westliche Nomade," op. cit., see foot-note 1.
~ 1ft: -tl!i$t}tit, -ft}t}tffe. "t# ff Jld813~1'-Ao iO~ ~X -%
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ttfrn/fi:X.Jtwffi**~ili*, ~tl~-t?tt~11rJ~~tm. ~~1~*~ ~~~~M.
Aii'-tl!in~~tt~~-iliT~o "~~it. ~ilb*~ili--. w
-~~~~f~*#M~~i-t*WAii'~~~-~iirJJt~*~i*ffi~ilii}*.1t ffi1tn*
~~it~. %iliT~mirJ~~.A~t-~~*it. ~~#~*~*~*n )j)'.~*-tlt'f*{l{f;: ~ W
~20~fc50if.1-\.tfffi} *{lt~~ 117 llUHPierre Boulez), fH4t ~)L~ Uohn
Cage)~AirJ-t *ln~m t:?tttlt'i* 1 ~7!7 t:~ ~ 3)11~.
"1957if., ~i}*1t?JT*"t?tt:E~i;J#:1\., ii'~OOJt~i}*ifJ#:1\..', "
swP!t(Nam June Paik)f"1999if.~#~it. 2f:~_l.
~-jj)'.**iE*it~W$t1-l'f~ ~ li1' 20~fc50if.1-\."t?tto/ ~tt~~*m~.
~~~~~*ttttJt*tt~. ~Jt~*~~mit a,l'J" 1960if., ~i*tl:~#~(La Monte
Young)iUff;T ((~17%)): "@-~~. M J"l!l.'tk. " 1962if..
s)Jti:-ft~i}*it,l'J "~i}*-~ G~-t-~tl: ~# ~
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**iE*iiJl.a,l'lo/$t1.lf~m, ~~tt~/f~tt. *~**~t:. s***i~~~~A~-t-*Ioo
@~. ~~#W~o/. fJ\lidt=J!!;j)'.~~-~ 11L\.i}**-ir9~= "w-t"f-P~~
~/f-~. ---~~U~A~~~-~~-~ .s.)J;:-fti;J~X. "*-t**~~~~ ~ o/~#i)i,
i~X.~*T tlf (Decollage)~;t1962if.~3JlA. 1t~:if> (Participation
TV)(1963)U~JllAtl-t-~Jt)Xl~:}ti} ,ff.*~~,!\lil, S t:fJil._lf;J
00@-~~,JS ~
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(RandomAccess)(1963)W;Ji~ ~_r_~~f:if
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Actionart [happenings, Fluxus, performance, and eventl was also
influenced by musical problems in addition to sources from painting
and literature. lt was John Cage's
students who had the idea to transfer the score as instruc-
tions to the interpreter, to the audience. In the transfer
of
participatory principles from the acoustic to the visual
arts,
it was the audience that moved to the center, as protagonist
of the artwork.
3. Action and Audience Participation In 1959, fluxus artist
George Brecht, a student of John Cage, discovered "events," which
were made up of mainly binary instructions. The famous 18
Happenings in 6 Parts [1959) from Altan Kaprow, from which the term
happening arose, listed "lnstructions" for "a cast of
participants." In 1961,
Yoko Ono began to formulate her performances as instruc-tions to
the audience. In Cut Piece [1964). she challenged the audience to
come onto the stage and cut oft her clothes. She transformed the
art of instructions for the use of objects into the art of
instructions for people .4 Wolf Vostell's hap-
pening YOU [ 1964) is a further example of replacing the art
object by actions and instructions for how to act in Action Art.
Vostell wrote, "basic idea: to confront the participants,
the audience, with the reasonability of life in a satire in
the
form of a rehearsal of chaos / it is not important what 1
think-but instead, what the audience takes with them from processes
and my image of them."
Challenging the audience to participate in the creation
of the artwork also played a major role in nouveau realisme .
With Metamatics, Jean Tinguely's 1959 drawing machine, the audience
could make their own drawings. In the exhibi-tion Feu a volonte [
1961 l. Niki de Saint Phalle invited the audience to pick up a
weapon and shoot at her assemblages.
4. Cf. Jon Hendricks, Yoko Ono: lnstructions for Paintings by
Yoko Ono May 24. 7962 (Budapest: Galeria56, 1993].
138
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
Pierre Restany, nouveau realisme theorist, demanded in a
1971 working paper the "Actions-Spectacles," an "action
conjuncturelle: a temporary action, any kind of intervention
with the audience, that aims at initiating their participation in
several stages [passive, playful, active, co-creatingl."
Fluxus, happening, performance, and Nouveau Realisme
were not alone in discovering the participating beholder,
co-player. and co-creator. As early as the 1950s, kinetic art and
Op Art demanded the beholder's participation in the con-struction
of the artwork. "We want to stir the beholder's
interest, to free him, to loosen him . We want his
participa-
tion. We want to put him in a situation that sets him in
motion and makes him his own master. "5 The beholder has
to move to perceive the optical deceptions and phenomena of Op
Art. The beholder is able to activate and change kinetic
objects and sculptures. The works enabled early forms of
interactivity. Arte programmata [a term coined by Umberto Eco in
19621. which arose in the milieu of Op Art and kinetic art,
emphasized the role of chance within a predetermined
program. Programmed sculptures and pictures emerged. Although
these programs were not executed by computers,
they were nevertheless conceptual programs, manually and
mechanically realized; as such, they can be considered key
precursors to computer art. The term algorithm embraces the
instructions and
directions from the various genres of music and art. An
algorithm is a strictly defined procedure, directions for how
to act, with finite elements and a determined succession,
which tells a machine or a person what to do. The machine
follows a succession of digits and executes a program; a person
follows Letters and symbols, whether for a cooking
recipe, a musical score, or the rules of a game. The
intuitive
algorithms in the form of instructions for use and how to
act
5. GRAY (Groupe de Recherche d"Art Visuel: Horacio Garcia-Rossi,
Julio Le Parc, Frani;:ois Morellet, Francisco Sobrino, Joel Stein,
Yvaral), in ""Stoppt die Kunst,'" Manifesto, 1965.
~~M~~-~~m~fil~~re~~~~m~IJJl~~-~. ~~-A.~~~A~~~-~~~~*~~-9='.
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;$"3it~#(George Brecht)~3Ji\ T ":f11f-" ,
~iii-=-~#?-tf~. /liiJ~ -f-W,(AllanKaprow)~~-i~J'p
((6-}~7}9='~18-t1M~:f14- (18 Happenings in 6 Parts)(1959)~ "-f~o~"
10 tlJ T "ff~i-.#.,IJJl" , ffif1M~~*:It-t-i~ -lt JiJ ilt ffif *
1961 if, *-Jt~.:Y-(Yoko Ono)7t~~:JH& ~ff J(J ~ J'p IJJl ,reffl
1ll'11l-ktj""f )(J\l,A ~~ IJJl.
~~~-~&9='. ~~Ak~~~-~~~*-~re#t~~&~m~~*~~#t~ A.rr~ ~ ~*
ffif ffi.~A ffi.:Jtlf#~(Wolf Vostell)~fill.~-k&i ~1~~ ~*~iP
((~)} ~~lit
fo'&*f~*~n;ft*~J(Jff~ 2Htifrr~ ~~a,11 , "Jt1it-~iP
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~~)(J\l,ktf~-9='~1.\f~tWW-R~n1t1fl~~P1t" , ffi.~A
ffi.:Jtlf#~(WolfVostell)'!WiL ~ )(J\1, A ~ ~ * ~ iP ~tl ~ M # -lt ~
~ 3Ji\ ~ ;X. 9=' t7r 5Jl'. T :t ~ ~ -@. , :!! ~ "Metamatics" , 11
T-*J[(Jean Tinguely)f1959Jf~J:lt~-~~i@f}L.ff.~-Aflt~1litl~ 1t1rl
1Ei~00 iifil. ~Jl~ "fPJ 9=' :Z:Ylt "ff;!J-Abf-*jj)'." ' "-# M at
~~ff~ (action conjuncturelle), -J]Jl: ifit atff~, iff-#fi'-A~!A
~ff~, :lt~ ~~-f-~1t1fJlit1f
%#~W~~~(1iJW,~;flt~~, ~TM-~~, 3:.~~, ~il-~itl:lt~)."
~~3Jll,-~tt-A,il-~*=M~#M~~~W. #/F~~, ~~~*,ff ~ ~*~~3Ji\~
3:.Jt;t(Umberto Eco)}, $t1Itfffl)\:;~Jt~if!.Jf;9='~1M~~#",
-ff~~--~OO@~t!J3Jll,.~*~~-ff~~#A.I~f}L~*~3Jll,~-~tt~~. #/F ~ J:l:J
t !Mi #1. ff . 't: 111 iTJ llH~. t-~ ~ t Mi ~ * ~ :t ~ 71:; .00:
,
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W-:!t#Jt~filil-~R*tt. %WA.~fJL-~f~.
139
-
became accepted in the arts in parallel with the develop-ment of
computers, machine language, and their algorith-mic procedures. The
Looppool 1.2 by Bastian Bttcher is an example of a user-oriented
talking machine: a hyperpoetry duster with thirty-two interwoven
rhythm and text frag-ments ornamentally depicted on a graphic
surface. Viewers can influence the course of the text by using the
toggle but-ton and thereby put together their own rap song without
bringing the steady meter out of beat. Every user can become the
author of a rap text.
4. Media Art and Audience Emancipation Through participatory
practices, various art movements transformed the beholder into a
user actively involved in the construction of the artwork, its
design, content, and behav-ior. This change in direction toward the
receiver became even more radical through the technical recording
and broadcasting media-photography, television, video, com-puter,
and Internet. Photography, as a democratic medium that allows
everyone to photograph, sabotaged painting as an aristocratic
medium and its cult of prominence. Begin-ning in 1971, Braco
Dimitrijevic made a star of the casual passerby, whom he met by
chance at a certain time at a cer-tain place, by eternalizing him
or her on a huge banner in front of the building where they had
met. In a series of fur-ther works, he erected memorials to
average, anonymous people by naming streets after them, hanging
their portraits in front of museums, or presenting their names
prominently on building facades. In 1972, Jochen Gerz staged a
similar emancipation of the anonymous person as antidote to
pop-ular culture's and the art world's celebrity cults. He put up
posters with the names of eight average people living on Rue
Mouffetard in Paris, on the walls Lining their own street.
140
A GENEALOGY OF MEDIA ART
The audience participated in more than the production of the
artwork: the audience was also declared as the artwork, or the
star. The audience became the content. This was also the case with
the video work Der Magische Spiegel [1970] from the group
telewissen, in which normal people saw themselves for the first
time on "television" [video, actually] in a closed-circuit
installation. Video and computer technol-ogy elevated the
participatory options to interactivity in the 1980s and 1990s.
5. The Emancipated Consumer as Artist : The Visitor as User
Since 1960, the art world had anticipated and prepared for a change
in consumer behavior. Artists handed over creativity to the
beholder, giving him or her the rules of behavior. lnteractive
artworks no longer exist autonomously; rather, they exist only
through their use by the receiver, the user. The artist changed
from a hero to a service worker, and the visitor from a passive
consumer to a star. Today, millions of people exchange photos,
texts, videos, and music on a daily basis through MySpace .com,
Flickr.com, YouTube.com, and in virtual worlds such as Second Life,
and via blogs. A newly structured space is emerging for the
creative expression of millions of people. Beuys already declared
that "everyone is an artist" in 1970. Everyday, millions of people
find online platforms for communication, creativity, and art,
beyond the authority of publishers, museums, galleries, newspapers,
radio, television, and Hollywood, which traditionally decided on
the production and distribution of works. The user becomes the
producer, perhaps even the artist. The field of the actor has
expanded: with the consumer as activist comes democratization of
creativity and innovation . "User innovation" and
"consumer-generated content'' influence
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4. ltff.'f:~~J.le~B
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n o t j u s t t h e w o r l d o f t h e m a s s m e d i a b u t
a l s o t h e w o r l d o f
a r t . T h e f u t u r e ' s " c r e a t i v e i n d u s t r i
e s " w i l l b e t h e e m a n c i -
p a t e d c o n s u m e r s a n d u s e r s . A r t , t o o , w
i l l b e c o m e a " d e m o c -
r a t i z e d u s e r - c e n t e r e d i n n o v a t i o n s y
s t e m . " A n e w , e m a n c i p a t e d
g e n e r a t i o n o f p r o d u c e r - c o n s u m e r s h a
s f o r m e d o n t h e
i n t e r n e t : u s e r s w h o g e n e r a t e t h e i r o w
n c o n t e n t a n d p r o -
g r a m s , e x c h a n g e t h e m a m o n g t h e m s e l v e
s , a n d d i s t r i b u t e
t h e m f r e e l y o n l i n e .
U s e r a r t a d o p t s t h e s e s t r a t e g i e s f o r t
h e a r t s y s t e m .
V i s i t o r s a s u s e r s g e n e r a t e c o n t e n t a n
d p r o g r a m s i n t h e
m u s e u m ; t h e y e x c h a n g e t h e m a m o n g t h e m
s e l v e s a n d d i s -
t r i b u t e t h e m f r e e l y o n l i n e a n d i n t h e m
u s e u m . T h e m u s e u m
a n d t h e c l a s s i c a l a r t i s t a r e t h e p r o v i
d e r s , s o t o s p e a k : t h e y