Lanfranco Aceti
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, UK

Getting Laid on the Procrustean Bed: Art Practice in the Digital World, One Man Versus One Pixel

Keywords: art, digital media, hybridisation.

In the attempt to define the artistic forms of digital media, and the understanding of the elements of artworks, which need to be preserved, Jon Ippolito, curator of the Virtual Projects and Internet Art Commissions at the Guggenheim Museum in New York explains:

'We have to redirect our misguided focus on preserving media. Our job is not to preserve media; our job is to preserve art. For digital media, that means no more geeks in a room deciding a one-size-fits-all strategy for video, say, or Flash, but a case-by-case analysis of what is important for each work we study. In a word, we need to preserve behaviours rather than media.' ¹

The preservation of behaviours in the artists' practice seems to be the main concern in contemporary digital art practice, where the presence of 'software corporate powers' are imposing a methodology upon art practice. Marcuse in Revolution and Counterrevolution suggested that social structure and its political expression are responsible for homologation. Furthermore, he envisaged in the concept of 'Cultural Revolution', that the elements of transformation of the arts are expressed by 'an effective communication of the indictment of the established reality and of the goals of liberation.' ²

Marcuse explains further the concept of an effective communication placing the onus on the artist to find new means of expression. He writes: 'It is the effort to find forms of communication that may break the oppressive rule of the established language and images over the mind and body of man.' ³

If Marcuse is correct in his speculation, the reality of images in a digital context is that they are a reflection of the 'corporate software industry' established language.

For Paul Virilio, however, the homologation derives from the concept of kinematic energy, and forces society towards 'not only the geometrization of our vision of the world, along the lines of that of the Italian Renaissance perspectivists, but also its digitization, … in the reality principle whereby the automatic nature of representations means perception is standardized.' ⁴

Virilio extends the statements of Marcuse by declaring that the digitisation process is the mean to standardisation of perception, inferring that digital art practice produces a standardised perception of the nature of that art practice. The practice of the artist, in the context of the interplay between the 'cultural industries', appears to have the 'onus' of stressing the fact that in a totalitarian regime 'discrimination against the outsider' is discrimination against the potential of pixel diversity, therefore against society.

'Not knowing how to write software myself, I first tried a well-worn solution familiar to so many artists new to electronic media – I sought engineering collaborators who could help me to implement my visions… The final straw was an engineer who let it slip that he was helping me as a kind of charity case: Oh, you poor, little artist – I'll help you out.' ⁵

Golan's experience reflects an international generalised status conditioning artistic expression in relation to digital media. The early practitioners of computer art were usually associated with research institutions or private laboratories. Experimental filmmaker Stan Vanderbeek and artist Lillian Schwartz worked at Bell Laboratories in the US with engineer Kenneth Knowlton, 'producing what are now considered seminal works of computer art.' ⁶

The creative ability of the artist in the context of 'Cultural Revolution' necessitates creative innovation fostering interdisciplinary hybridisation. The approach to digital technology cannot therefore be just an expression of the artist's integrity inhibited by the software corporate industry; it also requires the preservation of behaviours.

In this context it is worthwhile to consider issues of craftsmanship as behaviour, discussed in the ancient writings of Vitruvius. 'Craftsmanship is continued and familiar practice, which is carried out by the hands in such material as is necessary for the purpose of a design. Technology sets forth and explains things wrought in accordance with technical skill and method.' '⁷

What seems evident from this statement of Vitruvius is the necessity for the artist to regain access and control over a technology, developed outside his familiar practice, in order to regain technical skills and methods. This perception is colourfully expressed by Leonardo da Vinci in his writing about the artists' tools.

'To make points [crayons] for colouring dry. Temper with a little wax you must dissolve with water: so that when the white lead is thus tempered, the water being distilled, may go off in vapour and the way may remain; you will thus make good crayons; but you must know that the colours must be ground with a hot stone.' ⁸

'Paper for drawing upon in black by the aid of your spittle.' Leonardo goes on explaining in this section: 'Take powdered gall nuts and vitriol, powder them and spread them on paper like a varnish, then write on it with a pen wetted with spittle and it will turn as black as ink.' ⁹

These descriptions conjure up visions of the behaviour of the artist, which are still present in the approach of the algorithmists who propose an interventionist solution. 'For the algorithmists, the engineering is inseparable from the art, in that sense extending the trajectory from Russian and Bauhaus constructivism (in which Eisenstein holds an honoured place) rather than the anti-realist avant-garde of the autonomous signifier.' ¹⁰

In the dialectic opposition between constructivism and anti-realism the introduction of a third term, 'The Technological Bauhaus', offers the opportunity to analyse the problem of behaviours in digital media. 'The Technological Bauhaus' as explained by Maeda, professor of computational aesthetic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a concept, which even though technologically based, recognizes the importance of creativity in the use and experimental approach to the digital media. Which also infers the artist's control over the technology or at the very least some intervention in the 'corporate software industry' predetermined framework.

The Technological Bauhaus is a third order of media. This is a new element in itself with its own creative input and elements, which are original and diverse from the progenitor parts. 'That is why Pasolini demonstrated that the essential thing, precisely in free indirect discourse, is to be found neither in language A, nor in language B, but 'in language X, which is none other than language A in the actual process of becoming language B.' There is a universal figure of minoritarian consciousness as the becoming of everybody, and that becoming is creation.' ¹¹

Deluze's and Guattari's concept of 'becoming' as creation is also the concept which interprets creation as creativity. This approach might result in an original practice in the field of digital art, which could reposition the conflict between 'Cultural Revolution' and 'culture industries' as defined by Adorno.

Creation through behaviours is a possible response to the homologation of the social imagination and of its expressions through digital arts. A comment on the present situation is neatly expressed in Cubitt's analysis:

'In the local press, or in those Bryced fantasy landscapes in the readers' corners of computer magazine cover discs, you can find, if you are determined to, the evidence of a banalisation of the social imagination, the common, imitative, normative art…' ¹²

These common homologated imitative and meaningless 'art' expressions are what Baudrillard also uses to dispute the optimistic media guerrilla approach of Enzensberger. The media guerrilla approach, for Cubitt likewise, does not seem to have generated examples of innovative behaviours. 'Again, you fear for the philosophical demand for universality. And the briefest acquaintance with the art world makes it clear that there is no democracy in the galleries and museums.' ¹³

Further reinforcement of Cubitt's critique is made by Willemen, who speaks of a cultural production, distant from the concept of 'Cultural Revolution' of Marcuse and more acquainted with the ways and means of the global corporate industry. 'That is what is meant by 'interactivity' by the promoters of the digital: 'we' are allowed to interact with specific, preformatted templates, and 'they' will interact further by 'restyling' and polishing the resulting cultural 'software' before putting it on the market. Increasingly, the people who used to be called artists and/or intellectuals come to be seen for what they are: employees in what Adorno called 'the culture industries' or what politicians now call 'the knowledge industries'.' ¹⁴

The shift from 'Cultural Revolution' to 'culture industries' and finally into 'knowledge industries' seems to be exemplified by the approach of the main players, who have commodified art, in order to gain managerial control. This change represents a change in aesthetic as a reflection of behaviours. Behaviours which, if discordant, do not gain access to the 'scene of the knowledge industries'. This raises doubts about the existence of artistic behaviours and therefore of art, if critical dissention within the pixel framework is excluded.

Willemen again is very incisive in identifying this new situation where the corporate conformity determines the result.

'Similarly, the BBC has taken to commissioning raw footage from 'independent' film-makers, with the BBC staff reserving to themselves exclusively the right to select and shape the harvested images and sounds into broadcastable commodities. […] the BBC is busy transforming film-makers into image peasants who, like the peasants contracted to supermarkets or to United Fruit, bring their tailor-made produce to 'the company'.' ¹⁵

This form of homologation and conformism, which seems to be at work today, might also be the key to a rejection of the 'status quo'. Conformity and homologation pushes the artist to develop new media hybrids in search for innovative techniques, stimuli and aesthetics. Benjamin's observation concerning film and the shift that film technology created in aesthetics and artistic behaviours has a resonance in our understanding of issues in the digital media – 'That which determines the rhythm of production on a conveyer belt is the basis of the rhythm of reception in the film.' ¹⁶

What applies to film also might be extended to digital media and to films presented into digital formats. But Manovich criticises Benjamin's perspective, on the basis that problematises the realisation of changing behaviours resulting from technological change.

'Indeed, as I already noted, we now use the same interfaces for work and for leisure, the condition exemplified most dramatically by web browsers. Another example is the use of the same interfaces in flight and military simulators, in computer games modelled after these simulators, and in the actual controls of planes and other vehicles (recall the popular perception of Gulf War as 'video game war'). But if Benjamin appears to regret that the subjects of an industrial age lost the pre-modern freedom of perception, now regimented by the factory, modern city and film, we may instead think of the information density of our own work spaces as a new aesthetic challenge – something to explore rather then condemn.' ¹⁷

The exploration, suggested by Manovich, has to happen in the alteration of the digital software, which represents the problem of great artist's presence into the 'corporate software industries'.

At this stage it is worth restating that there are two main currents: one that favours the use of the medium and thrives in the homologating structure of the global corporate, and the other, which based on the intent of radically innovate, is pushed to the boundaries. These are two approaches: the latter, the radicalism of innovation is one of the elements which characterises the great artist. When Duchamp participated in the panel discussion 'Where do we go from here?' at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art on March 20th 1961, he delivered a statement which included the prophetic words: 'the great artist of tomorrow will go underground'.

'Machines are agents of destruction and it follows from this that the only mechanical devices that inspire Duchamp are those that function in an unpredictable manner – the antimachines.' ¹⁸

But the 'antimachine' artistic behaviour as the interventionist approach seems to be limited to a de facto acknowledgement of a shift within reality. The existence of a technology to intervene on seems to be paramount to the artistic endeavour in order to create a disruptive or constructive event. The 'interventionist' artist becomes dependent upon the technological structure in order to exercise his artistic behaviour. This dependence, univocal and/or symbiotic, does not seem to have generated the aesthetic shift that Marcuse considered necessary for a 'Cultural Revolution'. This dependence is visible in the contemporary artists' digital practice, as Manovich aptly stressed in his writings, evidencing the use of the same interfaces in military and in computer games, at work and at home.

'Filmmaker John Whitney had developed a mechanical analogue computer which produced his Catalog (1961). A short film consisting of computer-produced abstract images, Catalog was created using outdated military computing equipment.' ¹⁹

Indeed, as Benjamin stressed his concerns against the perception in his own times regimented by the factory, the same concerns should be raised today when the perception seems to be regimented by 'a military industry' which is propagated by the 'corporate software industry'. The 'video game war' aesthetic, in the words of Manovich, represents a challenge for the artist. It is a challenge to retain the individuality of the acquired behaviours against the homogenised and pixelled digital world. The challenge consists in changing the military aesthetic of the pixel.

'I mean imagining ways that information can pass between walls in a two-way conversation that stimulates collaboration and debate, rather than in a one-way broadcast that's little more than television on a funny-shaped wall' ²⁰

The oppositional stances thus far presented are not the end game of the debate and leave much to be resolved in a Hegelian dialectic.

Cubitt, confirming the position of Ippolito, evidences the necessity of remodelling the mechanical in order to change the institutional structures and therefore the aesthetic.

'But what is important to networked art is not the simulacral fate of representation in the new media, but the retro-engineering of the machinery itself, and by implication of the institutional structures of cyberspace.' ²¹

But it could be also argued that the priority is to change the artist's aesthetic in order to change the mechanical and therefore the institutional. These two arguments are not matters of principle, but rather matters of the starting point for change. What needs to change is the screen in order to change perception. 'Screen against screen – the home computer terminal and the television monitor are squaring up to each other in a fight to dominate the global perception market, control of which will, in the near future, open up a new era both in aesthetics and in ethics.' ²²

What Virilio might be suggesting in his theory, if we pushed it at its limits, is that it is necessary to abolish the screen in order to abolish the homologation of perceptions and behaviours.

This brings us some possibilities: the first is that the digital medium, due to its corporate structure, does not allow the expression of artistic behaviours and standardises them.

The second argument is represented by the opportunity of radically intervening into the medium, creating not a simple innovation, but a scientific discovery, which is the result of experimentation and artistic behaviour.

Gombrich in Art and Illusion reports a phrase of Constable saying that painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Gombrich also explains that: 'In the Western tradition, painting has indeed been pursued as a science. All the works of this tradition that we see displayed in our great collections apply discoveries that are the result of ceaseless experimentation.' ²³

Gombrich continues in his analysis reporting an anecdote regarding Constable. 'Indeed his experiments resulted in discoveries. For instance, there was resistance at first against so much green, which was thought to upset the needed tonal gradation. There is a pathetic story about Constable's sitting on the jury of the Royal Academy, of which he was a member, when by mistake one of his own paintings was put on the easel for judgment , and one of his colleagues said rashly, 'Take that nasty green thing away.' But we also know that when his Hay Wain was shown in Paris French artists were stimulated to repeat his experiments and lightened their palettes.' ²⁴

This is what some believe to be missing in the contemporary context. The cynical analysis of Baudrillard and the guerrilla media approach of Enzensberger are insufficient to justify any artistic approach to the digital media. Baudrillard focuses on a retreat into a golden age of the past envisaging the end in the black hole of the hyperreal and Enzensberger incites a challenge which is already lost, because the global software industry has already imposed the space and rules of the combat: the pixel.

Manovich's approach does not seem to convince us either. In marginalizing Benjamin's concerns about the 'change of behaviour', he fails to transpose the principles as well as not recognizing the structural nature of digital media as an imposed aesthetic of the corporate software industries.

And if Benjamin's solution of a 'retreat' into a pre-modern era is not a suitable resolution, than nor is Manovich's stance in favour of the artist's acquiescence, inhibiting behavioural changes necessary for aesthetic evolution.

The aesthetic of the pixel cannot be swiftly embraced as an aesthetic challenge if the challenge is imposed as a Procrustean bed.

The artistic challenge, in contemporary digital art practice, has been raised to a different realm. In this new context the artist is not anymore able to express conditioning interventionist behaviours but his activity has, in the opinion of some, been translated onto a plane of mere execution. The artist has therefore the onus of re-appropriating through his practice an approach, which has been disposed of and commodified in its behaviour. The artist should regain his 'creationist' characteristics.

'As in any technology-driven medium, the most dynamic work occurs when the technology catches up with the visions of the artists, or, conversely, artists catch up with the technology. In painting or sculpture, it is the concepts and uses of materials that change in the art. With technology-based art, the medium itself radically changes when the technology changes.' ²⁵

It is possible that we are witnessing the attempt of the digital artist to play catch up with the technology. In this scenario the artist will be able to condition concepts and material in a near future. But it is also important to stress that the technological medium is subject to change radically when the technology changes, affecting the aesthetic result of the artwork. The artist should reapply in the field of digital media a 'technological creationist behaviour' in order to condition the evolution of technological changes and not to be just swept away by them.

This new 'technological creationist behaviour' could take the connotation of extreme arts or terminal arts, which Virilio defines as 'expression of an alienated confrontation between a tortured body and the camera.' ²⁶A digital actionist and interventionist behaviour in digital media could be exemplified by the rebellious activity of the hackers, which might be interpreted as a terminal destructionism in order to defend the last freedom in digital media: that of not being, the destruction of the medium and its content.

'A virus is usually considered evil, chaos. But what happens when it is a contemporary art temple to spread the chaos? Conceived and compiled for the invitation to the 49th Venice Biennale […] 'biennale.py' is both a work of art and a computer virus.' ²⁷

What has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale might only have had the potential to create a disruptive event. In reality, operating within an institutional setting, the virus was already framed and prepackaged, and the artwork desensitised in its 'innovative artistic practice'. 'The main anti-virus software companies have already been informed about the technical specifications of 'biennale.py' and the uninstallation instructions will be attached to the virus.' ²⁸

The conclusion of this argument is expressed by two suggested alternatives. Either the digital medium does not allow scientific experimentation and application of artistic behaviours, in which case there is no art in the framework of the 'corporate software industries', not being present great artist's innovative behaviours. Or there is a possibility of a creationist approach compatible with the institutionalised 'corporate software industries', which is represented by the exercise of media hybridisation, experimentation and evolution. Not being able anymore to determine the field of action represented by the pixel, at least the artist has the chance to have one last form of freedom: creating the Procrustean bed in which he wants to get laid.

November 2002

Notes

1. Ippolito, J. (October 26, 2001) Cats and Dogs, a talk given at the Museum Computer Network conference in Cincinnati.

2. Marcuse, H. (1972) Counterrevolution and Revolt, p. 79. Boston: Beacon Press.

3. Marcuse, H. (1972)Counterrevolution and Revolt, p. 79. Boston: Beacon Press.

4. Virilio, P. (2000)Open Sky, p. 45. London and New York: Verso.

5. Levin, G., Ward, A., lia & meta (2001) Generative Design: Beyond Photoshop, p. 174. Birmingham: Friends of ED Ltd.

6. Rush, M. (1999, New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, p. 177. London: Thames & Hudson.

7. Vitruvius, (2002) Granger, F. (Trans.), On Architecture, 1.1. 4-9. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.

8. Richter, J. P. (1970), The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol. I, VI, 612. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

9. Richter, J. P. (1970, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol. I, VI, 614. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

10. Cubitt, S. (1998) Digital Aesthetics, p. 82. London, Thousand Oaks and New Dehli: SAGE Publications.

11. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1988) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia, p. 106. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

12. Cubitt, S. (1998) Digital Aesthetics, p. 143. London, Thousand Oaks and New Dehli: SAGE Publications.

13. Cubitt, S. (1998) Digital Aesthetics, p. 149. London, Thousand Oaks and New Dehli: SAGE Publications.

14. Rieser, M. & Zapp, A. (2002) (Eds.) New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/ Narrative, p. 25. London: BFI Publishing.

15. Rieser, M. & Zapp, A. (2002) (Eds.) New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/ Narrative, pp. 24-5. London: BFI Publishing.

16. Benjamin, W. (1969) 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', Illuminations, Arendt, H. (1969) (Ed.) Illuminations, p. 175. New York: Schochen Books. (1st Ger. ed. 1936, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V.1).

17. Rieser, M. & Zapp, A. (2002) (Eds.) New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/ Narrative, p. 74-5. London: BFI Publishing.

18. Paz, O. (1990) Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare, p. 7. New York: Arcade Publishing.

19. Rush, M. (1999) New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, p. 177. London: Thames & Hudson.

20. Ippolito, J. (October 26, 2001) Cats and Dogs, expanded version of a talk given at the Museum Computer Network conference in Cincinnati.

21. Cubitt, S. (1998) Digital Aesthetics, p. 144. London, Thousand Oaks and New Dehli: SAGE Publications.

22. Virilio, P. (2000) The Information Bomb, p. 112. London and New York: Verso.

23. Gombrich, E. (2000) Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, p. 33f. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

24. Gombrich, E. (2000) Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, p. 33f. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

25. Rush, M. (1999) New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, p. 192. London: Thames & Hudson.

26. Virilio, P. (2000) The Information Bomb, p. 53. London and New York: Verso.

27. A Virus in the Venice Biennale, Press Release, Sat. 9th Jun. 2001, curator Aurora Fonda, Slovenian Pavilion.

28. A Virus in the Venice Biennale, Press Release, Sat. 9th Jun. 2001, curator Aurora Fonda, Slovenian Pavilion.