New Philosophy for New Media

Thacker, Eugene.

Leonardo, Volume 39, Number 3, June 2006, pp. 266-267 (Review)

Published by The MIT Press

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/len/summary/v039/39.3thacker.html

Access Provided by Queen's University Library at 11/01/10 4:06AM GMT

 world” that is somehow related to our ogy) reflects our more private, dream- uncannily—reflects the current strug-
world . . . but, strange as it may seem, like world where imagined objects are gles of our being-in-the-world, and the
“in our world” (p. 26). directly and uncritically apprehended. Significance of our lives” (p. 104).
Consciousness2 reflects our socially This metaphysical analysis is used to
Insofar as works of art represent
mediated world, in which, for example, support the claim that when we view a
people, places or objects we would
we are able to verify that the contents work of art, we bypass the assumed
respond to in certain ways in the “real
of our dreams are fictional. The co- Cartesian split between art object and
world,” so we respond in like manner
presence of these two modes of con- viewer, such that the work and our
to the same thing in imaginative form,
sciousness reflects the totality of our experience of it become indissolubly
and it is this that accounts for the
experience in which we both believe bonded: “A currently and fully experi-
veridicality and vitality of works of art.
in and do not believe in imagined or enced Vermeer painting becomes for
To take as an example Vermeer’s Girl
fictional worlds. me an important aspect of the way I
with a Pearl Earring, Paskow argues we
This, I believe, is a significant contri- feel the world right now, and it is an
should not regard such an artwork
bution, not just to the debate about why important dimension of who I am right
as just a concept or image merely in a art matters to us but also to the wider now” (p. 196).
person’s mind . . . but as a being in its question of how we consciously inhabit I believe Paskow has told us, in philo-
own right (e.g. a particular young the world. The quest to understand sophical terms, something important
woman wearing a silver earring, out consciousness in scientific-philosophi- about the way we experience art, some-
there) as well as a being with a mean-
ing and significance that one takes im-
cal terms has generally held it to be a thing we already knew in a naïve way,
plicitly to pertain to one’s life (p. 64). unitary phenomenon in which diverse and something that for Chuck Jones
neural and cognitive activities are was a professional necessity: that the
Given this, how then do we distin- drawn together into a singular experi- work of art is experienced as being “out
guish between, say, a girl in a painting ence. Extrapolating from Paskow’s there,” and not in our heads; that what
and a girl in real life? Disregarding argument, we might be permitted to it depicts is real and yet is also artificial;
those soap fans unable to discriminate theorize about consciousness, not as a that we “read in” our own experiences
between actors and their on-screen singular whole, but as a compound of such that the work becomes an exten-
personas, Paskow asserts that we “know” contradictory and mutually incompati- sion to and an embodiment of us; and
a depiction or portrayal is not real at the ble states. that we both believe in the characters
same time as we believe it to be real. Whether or not conscious experi- we become involved in at the same time
Surely this asserts a contradiction that ence is inherently contradictory or that we are able to determine they are
violates the philosophical requirement paradoxical is a matter for further not real.
for rational analysis? Not a contradic- research and debate. The claims made The Paradoxes of Art is a complex and
tion, Paskow says, but a case of “dual in The Paradoxes of Art, however, seem to in some places technical argument,
vision” in which two separate conscious be part of an emerging tendency across much of which will be of little interest
agents (what he terms Consciousness1 a number of discrete disciplines to to those outside certain confined aca-
and Consciousness2) coexist in the regard certain longstanding metaphysi- demic cells. The general import, how-
mind of the beholder. cal and epistemological questions with ever, has much wider significance, and
Consciousness1 is “credulous and fresh insight. Rather than arguing the is of particular relevance given that the
fully engaged,” believing wholly in the toss between two equally feasible yet discourses of art, philosophy and con-
verisimilitude of the fiction. At the apparently contradictory positions— sciousness are rapidly converging, as
same time, Consciousness2 tempers its whether aesthetic experience resides in evidenced by recent books and confer-
counterpart by observing or comment- the world or the mind, for instance— ences covered in this journal.
ing upon the fictional experience, there is a growing recognition that a
drawing it back into the world of shared more productive line of inquiry may be Reference
reality. That is to say, on a personal level to accept the validity of both, even with
1. Robert Pepperell, review of Beyond the Limits
one believes characters to be real, but the contradiction (see my review of of Thought, by Graham Priest, Leonardo 38, No. 4,
on a social level one recognizes their Graham Priest’s Beyond the Limits of 351–352 (2005).
fictitiousness. Although it is a provoca- Thought [1]).
tive assertion, Paskow cites Plato in his There are several other important
defense (p. 79n). In The Republic, Plato components of The Paradoxes of Art that NEW PHILOSOPHY
observes that we often override our would require too much space to fully FOR NEW MEDIA
own impulses with “better thoughts”; unpack. It is worth mentioning briefly, by Mark Hansen. MIT Press,
we can, in effect, argue ourselves out however, the way Paskow follows and Cambridge, MA, 2004, U.S.A. 333 pp.
of a particular sentiment or course of builds on Heidegger’s treatment of the Trade. ISBN: 0-262-08321-3.
action, implying that we entertain more individual object (or work of art) not as
than one disposition of mind. a discrete and self-bounded entity but Reviewed by Eugene Thacker, School of
This move resolves (or helps to as an integrated extension or embodi- Literature, Communication, and Culture,
resolve) the dichotomy between mind ment of all other things in the world Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta,
and world, personal-subjective experi- that relate to it. Thus, the work of art GA 30332-0165, U.S.A. E-mail:
ence and shared-objective reality, which matters because in it, as in all objects, <eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu>.
has given rise to the stale ping-pong we perceive not only the isolated object
match of aesthetics, in which the bur- or person itself but the extended web of Reading through Mark Hansen’s book
den of meaning has been batted back our own existence: “The experienced New Philosophy for New Media, I was
and forth between mind and world. thing is thus a microcosm, a sort of reminded of an H.P. Lovecraft story
Consciousness1 (in Paskow’s terminol- Leibnizian monad which—darkly, entitled “From Beyond.” In it, an

266 Leonardo Reviews

obscure occultist-engineer invents a is equally interested in the viewpoints the visual. The most provocative ques-
device that enables him to glimpse of cognitive science as well as the phi- tion I draw from New Philosophy for New
other dimensions of space-time. losophy of Henri Bergson. In fact, Media, however, is not about art, or the
What he sees does not fill him with Bergson’s notion of the perceiving body image, or visual culture, but about the
wonder and awe but rather a “cosmic as a “center of indetermination” is one “problem” of sense. Is embodiment
terror.” Apparently, all sorts of poly- of Hansen’s guiding motifs in his analy- always “human,” even-––and especially
dimensional, vaguely amphibious ses of contemporary new media art- ––-if it is not simply “technological”?
and formless “things” populate other works. This is played out in his concise
dimensions. And these things look back and patient discussions of the works
at him with great menace. What terri- of Jeffrey Shaw, where the assumed EATING ARCHITECTURE
fies the narrator of the story, however, correlation between body and image edited by Jamie Horwitz and Paulette
is not the weird creatures but the fact (immobile, receptive body + external Singley. MIT Press, Cambridge,
of being shown the embodied limita- object-trigger) is shown to be much MA, 2004. 385 pp., illus. Trade.
tions of human perception and cogni- more complex. In fact, Hansen’s pro- ISBN: 0-262-08322-1.
tion. Something nonhuman and gressive analysis leads to an emphasis
radically other gnaws at the human- on “affectivity” that is, in a way, isomor- Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen,
centric world of seeing and knowing, phic with information processing. The Hogeschool Gent, Jan Delvinlaan
and we can neither see nor know it. readings of Robert Lazzarini’s piece 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium.
Of course, this is not to say that skulls, Douglas Gordon’s video projec- E-mail: <stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be>.
Hansen’s book should be read as a tions and Bill Viola’s recent “digital
supernatural horror story, but the portraits” fleshes out this notion of It is not an obvious subject, but once
questions New Philosophy for New Media affectivity: “the capacity of the body to one has come to think about it, the
raises are not dissimilar. Amid the experience itself as ‘more than itself’ combination is not surprising either:
plethora of books about new media, and thus to deploy its sensorimotor Food and shelter are as essential to the
Hansen’s book offers a unique perspec- power to create the unpredictable, the development of civilization as fiber and
tive by focusing on what is perhaps the experimental, the new” (p. 7). fuel. Cooking and building both imply
paradigmatic new media artifact–-–the I would be tempted to refer to the transformation of (raw) materials
“digital image.” For Hansen, however, Hansen’s New Philosophy for New Media applying energy while following rules
the digital image is neither an abstract as Cinema 3: The Digital Image, if such a to reach a final result: a meal or an
number (a collection of bits) nor a reference would not place an undue inhabitable space. Time scales may be
paradoxical thingless thing (a Photo- burden and anxiety of influence on different, but if there is anything like
shop file). The digital image is instead the author. It would also be inaccurate, coherence in culture, both activities
a process, a sort of processual singular- for while Hansen engages deeply with must have at least some symbolic, struc-
ity that encompasses the process of Bergson’s work on perception and tural or metaphorical relationship.
perceiving as well. Neither “number” memory, he also reads Bergson against That is exactly what the authors of this
nor “object,” the digital image “can Deleuze. In the latter, Hansen sees a collection of essays are exploring or
no longer be restricted to the level tendency to dissociate the image from proving.
of surface appearance, but must be the affectivity of embodiment and Jamie Horwitz of Iowa State Uni-
extended to encompass the entire towards an abstract “time-image,” from versity and Paulette Singley of Wood-
process by which information is made body to frame. In this sense Hansen’s bury University serve the meal in four
perceivable through embodied experi- book is actually poised between two courses. In “Place Settings,” the connec-
ence” (p. 10). This is the core of theoretical traditions––-phenomenol- tions between food and locale are
Hansen’s approach to new media. ogy and structuralism, surface and explored. Each essay looks at food from
While many studies focus on the structure, “experience” and “pattern,” a different angle: the locality or global-
technical details of digital artifacts, flesh and number, body and algorithm, ity of its production, regional culinary
Hansen suggests that such approaches etc. Often discussions about new media identities, the “consumption” of the
dissociate the perceiving body from the fall to one side or the other of this colonies and the international tourist
image––-a process that, he argues, is polarization. Hansen’s book is unique taste. In “Philosophy in the Kitchen,”
constitutive of perception itself. While in that it asks us how new media, or the
many studies obsess over the ontologi- “digital image,” challenge us to rethink the cleansing, cutting, and cooking of
food form a routine that also doubles as
cal problems raised by digital technol- embodiment in radical ways, ways that a site for aesthetic experimentation. By
ogy (in terms of simulation and so on), are uncannily “nonhuman.” At the end drawing gastronomy out of the kitchen,
Hansen focuses on the co-evolution of of the day there is still someone watch- the essays that follow shift the discussion
embodied cognition (perception as ing, even if that person watching is toward the performative space of eat-
ing––-a site that is inherently unstable,
filtering) and the ways that “informa- really actively filtering—even if that mutable, mobile and memorable (p. 16).
tion processing” always points to an person filtering is really engaged in
instance of embodiment––-even if to the co-production of body and milieu. “Table Rules,” with its striking refer-
radically transform it. This is captured in Hansen’s selection ence to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s magnum
These orientations lead Hansen to of artworks, all of which engage the opus, The Origin of Table Manners, effec-
explore the specific relation between notions of “computer vision” or tively honors the founding father of
new media and the role of embodi- “machine time” in a profoundly structuralist anthropology without
ment. Hansen’s use of the term ambivalent way. There are lingering copying his themes or imitating his
“embodiment,” however, is complex. questions for me––-the particular take approach. It is in these five contribu-
While he does acknowledge the rich on Deleuze, the role of the biological tions that the close connections
use of the term in phenomenology, he or neurobiological, the emphasis on between practical day-to-day architec-

Leonardo Reviews 267