User: InfoTechnoDemo
by Peter
Lunenfeld; Mieke Gerritzen, Visuals
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005
172 pp., illus. Paper, $25.95
ISBN: 0-262-62198-3.
Reviewed by Martha Patricia Niño
M.
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
Colombia
ninom@javeriana.edu.co
Peter Lunenfeld presents a collection
of essays that were originally written
for the User column at the international
magazine Artext. Despite the nonacademic
and playful style of writing that makes
room for interesting iterative word games
such as metroretropsychometroretrophyscho,
androgynovideoandrogino, infotechnodemoinfotechnodemo
or narcosacrotheonarcoscarotheo. User
deals with fascinating topics around culture,
design, technology, and interdisciplinary
issues in a time when "actors can
be singers, singers strive to be artists,
painters become film directors, digital
artists say that they are scientists,
scientists become entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs
wake up one morning thinking they are
politicians, and politicians, they have
always been so protean (folksy at home,
regal in the state house) that they are
the poster children for the millennially
ambitious" (p. 073 ).
The essays cover a far-reaching amount
of topics, and they are very shrewd even
if it is not a lengthy book: The chapter
User Permanent Present talks about
the preeminence of the instantaneous in
which one can not see anything beyond
the current system, film or interface.
Its relation with "amateur futurism"
that is more concerned about creating
more and more freakier aliens than for
opening the doors to interesting futures.
Interfaces stop contributing by creating
phobic users that are able to sacrifice
metaphorical brilliance and elegance of
interaction for the sake of comfort.
The Solitude Enhancement Machines
is a chapter that analyses how technological
developments are fostered and financed
for big industries——as sometimes
happens with porn——and valued
for their revenues rather than for quality.
The chapter, "Teotwawki," has
some rather comical first person commentaries
that deal with techno-apocalyptic imagination
around the year 2000 that includes hysteria
and faith vampires——non-believers
obsessed with belief——that were
hoping to find nourishing psychosomatic
stigmata but found themselves starved
and disappointed while contemplating the
savior on burrito wrappers instead. By
that time, they were unable to foresee
what was in store for them on 9/11.
The "Forever" chapter deals
with the statements of the anti-death
league including the proper maintenance
rituals, the right combinations of vitamins
and antioxidants in order to never get
sick, eugenics, and descriptions of 135th
birthday parties surrounded by the kids,
grandkids, great -great grandkids and
naturally your new lover. Chapters like
"25/8" and "Master List"
highlight the complete victory of dromocracy,
the monarchy of speed. Guided by the principle
of ultra efficiency in which the straightest
path is the best and the human is constantly
trying to push past the limits of flesh
into the realm of pure performance.
Some chapters have plenty of local cultural
references, "Urine Nation" is
somewhat difficult to grasp for someone
born out of Texas, I had problems seeing
the utopist potential that could unify
all languages and sign systems based on
almost exclusively male transgressive
practices. Other topics covered in the
book are architecture, narratives, art,
nanotechnology, videogames, globalization
and the suspicion against the cosmopolitans,
films, culture obsession with pop stars,
biological and genetic metaphors in relation
to the cybernetic and mechanical ones,
and illusions of perceptions.
Having a good deal of self-critiscism
throughout the book, Lunenfeld mainly
recognizes the potential dangers of toxic
activities, like doing theory in real
time, that he compares with holding mercury
in the fingers, not only for the mercurial
liquid-solid properties of the media itself
but also for the relevant concern of being
re-absorbed by the bigger solid-liquid
puddle of media’s banality. He also
acknowledges the risk of interpretation,
as when he recognizes the possibility
of being considered an elitist, sexist,or
even homophobe for emphatically disbelieving
those who loudly profess their love for
television, not as a guilty pleasure derived
from a self referential sphere of personal
consumption built around celebrities,
but as something analogous to bibliomania
or cinemania. It does not mean that bibliophilics
are less driven by consumption when they
collect books without reading them. User
takes advantage of this fact, and it would
find its way to their bookshelves because
it is part of the Mediawork pamphlet series
for The MIT Press where designers pair
with well-known writers. Although he does
not try to replace longer and deeper academic
reflections, the resulting product is
a "theoretical fetish object"
designed to appeal. The idea is that form
should not be separated from meaning,
medium from message or seductive from
rigorous, since design can use its visual
intoxicating skills as an analytical translation
tool. Mieke Gerritzen did a good job creating
an impressive graphic design for every
page of the book. The integration of graphic
design with Lunenfeld’s concepts
is particularly remarkable in the sections
"user permanent present", "solitude
enhancement machines", "teotwawki",
"25/8", and "growing up
pulp".
Peter Lunenfeld is professor in the graduate
Media Design Program at Art Center
College of Design.
He founded mediawork: The Southern California
New Media Working Group and serves as
director of the Institute for Technology
& Aesthetics (ITA). His publications
include Snap to Grid (MIT, 2000),
and The Digital Dialectic (MIT,
1999). Recent publications include "The
Myths of Interactive Cinema" for
The New Media Book (BFI, 2002)
and "The Design Cluster" for
Design Research (MIT, 2004). Mieke
Geritzen is founder and director of NL.Design,
an Amsterdam based design company and
head of the design department at The Sandberg
Institute in Amsterdam. http://www.nldesign.net.
