Technoetic Arts
By Ascott, Roy. 2002.
Edited and Korean translationby YI, Won-Kon.
(Media & Art Series no. 6, Institute of Media Art, Yonsei University).
Yonsei: Yonsei University Press. 226 pages. 37 B & W illustrations.
Reviewed by Ms. Soh Yeong Roh
Director
Art Center Nabi
It is a very happy occasion for the Korean media
arts community that Roy Ascotts
book is published in Korean. This book is a collection of essays from
his early writings(1968) to the very recent(2000). Consistently throughout
his writings lies Ascotts
clear vision of media art. This is a book of an artistic vision, one
that is unique and powerful, urging the contemporary media artists into
action.
Ascotts
world view resonates influences from new sciences. (Ross Ashby, Fritjof
Capra, and Peter Russell, among others) Also Nobert Wieners
cybernetic theory seems to have opened his eyes on the immense possibilities
that computers can offer to art. The artist in him was particularly
interested in how meanings are created through interactions in cybernetic
systems. Beyond the Newtonian determinism, Ascott envisions worlds
that are created through interactions among people
minds; worlds that are inherently fluid, transitory and emergent; and
worlds where there can indeed be creative syntheses of science and art.
In networked art, or telematic
art
as he calls it, Ascott saw the possibility of constructing such new
worlds as early as in the late 1960s
when ordinary people hardly heard of cybernetics or even computers.
Ascott makes it plain that the task of 21st
century art is to construct new realities by bridging the minds and
consciousness around the planet. They are the worlds(and realities)
where diversity, artistic creativity, and democratization of meaning
are respected. In these worlds, human exchanges reach the level of consciousness,
thereby creating global, collective consciousness. In this Chardin-like
utopian vision, global communities can be formed where truth can be
pursued, not by manipulating discourses, but through free associations
of ideas, interweaving of images, and by direct experiences.
With the advances in biosciences from the
80s
onward, he adds another dimension in his creative synthesis of art and
sciences; that is, artificial life. Ascotts
dry silicon cybernetic art thus becomes moist
experiments in artificial life. He now envisions re-materialization
of art, combining telematic art with biotechnology. In his celebrated
article, Museum
of the third kind,
we can see his vision for new art has expanded and fully integrated
into his vision for new art institution. This new art institution has
a strong metaphor in artificial life, as in his description of the new
museum as garden of hypotheses,
where we plant ideas, grows forms and images, and harvest meaning.
Art for Ascott is an open-ended process that
requires active participants, not passive audiences. It is a process
that aims at transforming isolated individual consciousness into an
elevated state of collective consciousness, as is so eloquently espoused
by him in Is
There Love in Telematic Embrace?(1990).
This collective consciousness, like the spirit of Gaiia, might steer
us from the paranoia of the industrial age into the telenoia
of the pos-biological age(Ascott in "Telenoia",
1993). Fundamentally Acotts
aesthetics presupposes relentless faith in human creativity and good
will, not only on the part of the artists but on the participants as
well.
One may accuse Ascotts
view of the world of being unrelentingly utopian. However, his unique
aesthetics for media art stems from such breath of knowledge spanning
over ages and cultures, various sciences and arts. This intellectual
dynamism, along with his uncanny insight into nature/culture, man/universe,
and technology/art, is manifest in his writings throughout the book.
Ascott is an action oriented artist and theorist, who is passionate
about creating new worlds, rather than analyzing or critiquing existing
worlds.
This book, translated into Korean, will no
doubt influence young Korean media artists who are exploring new aesthetics
of media art. The role of artist for Ascott is in designing the context,
rather than the content, of the new symbiosis of art and technology.
It is indeed a daunting task of designing, rather than prescribing,
new human conditions of our times. Ascott makes it clear: media art
is not about refined techniques or filling up contents in established
channels. Rather, it is about creating new contexts in which new meanings
can occur through free and open-ended interactions, with no clear distinction
between the maker and the viewer. He warns against todays
technological art that degenerates into mere spectacles, lacking intimacy
and delicacy.
Intimacy and delicacy in technological art
will be realized when artists focus on human minds and consciousness,
rather than on the novelty of technology. As we are now facing ubiquitous
computing environment in this century, more creative energy from media
artists are required in order to make the technology serve humanity.
And by bridging the creative minds around the globe we can perhaps dream
for a better future, where more human energy is spent on constructing
rather than destroying worlds.
Indeed, Roy Ascott shows a way.