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This convergence
of body and medium was previously denied by the perspectival system of
organising art that constituted the conceptual basis of Western art.38
The structured separation of the medium and the body that is created by
perspective enforces a rigid distance between the two elements, and the
illusion engendered by perspective makes this structured and inflexible
relationship transparent to the viewer,39
permitting the art medium to inscribe its constituent ideals upon the ideological
construct of the viewing-body in a manner whereby the body was not ostensibly
aware of the process of inscription or, indeed active in the adoption of
the ideals.
This organisation
of art was unchallenged for some five hundred years until Cézanne,
and then later with the Cubists. The consequence of Cubism was the subversion
of the universal perspectival organisation of art, which provided a new
potential for art to appeal beyond the sense of visual representation and
become a multifaceted experience. By invoking the tactile, by disrupting
the reliance upon visual experience of the 'walk-around' view of the subject,
and by the emphasis upon the experience of the viewer in order to construct
meaning from the cryptic images, Cubism permitted a broader, less structured,
and more individual experience of art. McLuhan recognised that by doing
this Cubism '"drives home the message" by involvement.'40
The result of this instant sensory experience of the whole, claimed McLuhan,
was that 'Cubism, by seizing on instant total awareness, suddenly announced
that the medium is the message.'41
In the wake of Cubism
it was possible for the linear structure of art to give way to a more intuitive
and simultaneous experience that encouraged viewers to be more active in
their engagement with the work of art and to establish an individual experience.
However, subsequent artistic developments of the twentieth century, particularly
the nature of the theorising which became attached to art, served to insist
upon a series of binary oppositions when engaging with art. Representation
had to be perspectival or non-visual, illusionistic or Modernist, Modernist
or post-Modern or Post-Structural. This dialecticism continued to assert
the ideology of the artist within western culture, and there remained a
fixity in the nature of the inscription upon the body. This served to retain
a distance between the viewer and the media that reduced the potential
for participation with the media.
However, while Cyberart
provided a greater potential for art to replicate the multisensual manner
of the body's experience of the world,42
and by virtue of its mass media quality and interactive ability it contributed
to a withering of the aura that embraced the art object,43
it also established a transformative function44
in place of the dialectical process of negating and privileging different
categories. In so doing Cyberart was able to remove the final barrier that
intervened between human and machine with the result that mechanical speed
'extended over the CNS in a global embrace.'45
For man, the physiological operation of the body is founded upon an intricate
network of electrical communication much as the machine is. Sensory receptors
covering the surface of the body and connected to the sensory organs relay
information to the brain, which determines the appropriate response, be
it physical or chemical. Thus the physical interaction required in our
engagement with Cyberart enforces a direct connection between the electrical
currents that extend from our central nervous system to our fingertips
and directly into the electrical responses which are manifest in the Cyberart,46
constituting what McLuhan calls our 'extended nervous system'.47
As a result, Cyberart
transcends the definition of medium as an intervening substance and a communication
process to the extent that the distinction between author and public is
removed48
and there is no longer any intervention between viewer and art. The external
had become internalised, enmeshed with the global surroundings. The emphasis
is wholly upon the idea of communication. The relationship between man
and machine has become continuous.49
Cyberart emphasises that the medium is the message. With the medium now
able to mimic the bodily experience, the medium can be conceived of as
an extension of the body. As a consequence, the manner of the inscription
upon the re-sensualised body has also altered. While art was previously
a preconceived entity constructed according to the artist's ideals,50
and inscribed upon the passive and generally unaware viewer,51
there is now a demand for active participation and construction of individual
experience such that this electric implosion 'compels commitment and participation,
quite regardless of any point of view'.52
The fusion of the man to machine whereby both operate in unison facilitates
the determination of a universal experience. The body is no longer constructed
ideologically, but is able to construct itself, and this is a transformative
experience which provides a new potential for uniqueness and diversity.
By establishing a
conception of Cyberart as the examination of electronic forms of communication,
it might be argued by purists that this is not art per se. Yet while
until the 1960s it was still possible to distinguish easily between the
different forms of the arts, such as journalism, literature, and movies,53
one can identify a critical discourse where there was a concern for purity
of art, especially as was exemplified by the Modernist claim that art should
be concerned only with that which is unique to its particular medium.54
Lewis Lapham has noted this distinction has subsequently became blurred.55
Instead, with the displacement from an emphasis solely upon the physical
art-object Cyberart instead induces a contemplation of the process or operation
of medium. The unique potential of art has become the fostering of an awareness
of how the medium operates. Since this has allowed the viewer to no longer
be distanced by the construction or the aura of art, or restricted to binary
logic, the new transformative possibilities of art now permit individuals
to determine their own multisensual experience from a hyper-mediated
spectacle which constitutes an extension of their being.
The body has become
continuous with the Cyborgian body, a quintessential, genderless extension
of man in the electronic realm, and while the boundaries between the two
have gone, a delicate balance remains. Cyberart has developed the relationship
of the body to the mediated sphere to the extent that there is now the
suggestion of an eventual, absolute fusion of man and machine. However,
beyond this reappraisal of the relationship between man and machine, Cyberart
retains a continuing significance as its inherent nature crucially asserts
the essential difference between man and machine. As the fundamental basis
of any art form is the operation of creativity and imagination, which is
the one operation that mechanical forms can never replicate,56
Cyberart also proclaims the uniqueness of humans, and their transformative
experience with and through the machine.
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[bibliography]
38
Representation of visual experience is created from a fragmentation
of mathematical proportionalities which, when the mathematical principles
are adhered to, create the illusion that this is a complete image, much
as individual film frames come to be seen as complete under mechanisation.
39
The foundation of perspective was that artist selected a specific point
from which the painting was to be viewed, and constructed a linear perspective
around this 'peep-hole'. Alberti’s first principle of perspective was;
'First of all, on the surface which I am going to paint, I draw a rectangle
of whatever size I want, which I regard as an open window through which
the subject to be painted is seen' - Leon Battista Alberti De Pictura
(1435) in Leon Battista Alberti: On Painting and On Sculpture
edited and translated by Ceceil Grayson (London 1972), p.55, and Leonardo
da Vinci conceived of painting in a similar way, claiming 'Perspective
is nothing else but a seeing behind a sheet of glass, smooth and quite
transparent, on the surface of which things that may be marked that
are behind this glass.' - The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
edited by Edward MacCurdy (London 1954), Vol II, p.343. As a result
of this illusion there is the implication that there is no pictorial
surface, but instead a view which originate at the point of coincidence
of the viewing rays, the viewers eye, and extends infinitely. As a result
a controlled distance is established between the viewer and medium,
and as the viewer is not aware of the medium, they are unable to consider
their relationship to this medium.
40
McLuhan, ibid., p.13.
41ibid.
42
With the speeding up of media to an extent where the reactions have
become immediate, and synchronised with the body, and the multi-sensual
nature of Cyberart, interaction between man and machine has been encouraged,
with electronic responses occurring in direct response to cognitive
processes of man exactly as physical responses occur. This allows man
and the machine to enmesh physically.
43
Increased familiarity, approachability, less intellectual intimidation,
and in the case of Post-Object and Performance art, the rejection of
the object altogether, encouragement of participation.
44
Cyberart has become liberated from a binary logic, and is instead concerned
with its medium and the dynamic potential which exists for Cyberart
to combine different methods of communication. The concern is then the
mode in which the internet operates to communicate, and the relation
of the viewer to this medium, and how this can transform us.
45
ibid. p.3. McLuhan also suggests that man has a narcissistic
fascination with any extension of themselves in any material other than
themselves, explaining their intrigue with Cyberart. ibid. p.41.
46
Ross claims that as human participation with technology is a motor response,
and thus not a social response, as a result that this is a 'capitulation
of human agency' to technology. Andrew Ross 'Candid Cameras' in No
Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture (1989) p.117. However
motor neuron responses receive sensory input from both the periphery,
and also from the cerebral cortex, where there occurs an assimilation
of the sum of human sensory stimulation. This integrated cerebral character
which contributes to motor response is a reflection of the individuality
of each man and this is expressed in our response to technology.
47
McLuhan notes that while mechanised technologies permitted only a partial
and fragmentary extension of man, with automation this is total and
inclusive.
48
Benjamin, ibid. p.232.
49
Katherine Hayles asserts the continuing importance of the body, in light
of ideas of disembodiment within the cyber-medium. In response to the
suggestions by Hans Moravec that human subjectivity is limited to the
mind, and that the physical body which surrounding this could eventually
be jettisoned, Hayles notes the role of the body in the construction
of cyberspace, and that involvement with the mind and any reconfiguration
of subjectivity is mediated by interaction with the body. N. Katherine
Hayles. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature,
and Informatics. (Chicago, 1999.)
50
While an art work previously became finished at the moment the author
disengaged from the process of creation, and was imbued only by the
ideals only of the artist, Cyberart can evolve continuously, with each
individual viewer determining the nature of the work, and bringing their
individual ideals to bear upon the work. Rather than just being inscribed,
the viewer themselves inscribes.
51
The Film Triumph of Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935) is a good example
of this in the very careful manner in which its extremist ideologies
were edited an managed, and so that the finished product inscribed its
ideals of gender, race and class upon the viewer in a subtle manner
which was not too discomforting for the contemporary viewer.
52
McLuhan, ibid. p.5.
53
Lewis Lapham, Introduction to Understanding Media, by Marshall
McLuhan (MIT Press, 1964) p. xix.
54
For painting it was argued that there should be no attempt to convey
a narrative when literature is able to do this.
55
Subsequent to late nineteenth century anxieties about the work of art
as it confronted mechanical reproduction, it may be argued that now,
in the absence of a 'pure' medium, that the priority should instead
the pure contemplation of the work of art. While this might induce a
transcendental Kantian aesthetic experience in a way which is unique
to art, this however is a highly subjective and non communicable function
of art which is not consistent with a consideration of Cyberart as medium
of communication.
56
McLuhan recognised this, noting that as a result of automation, the
computer seems to 'think', they are lacking in the full process of interrelation
that makes for consciousness. He states that while they can simulate
consciousness, the computer will remain only an extension of man's consciousness.
McLuhan, ibid. p.3.
Leon Battista Alberti
De Pictura (1435) in Leon Battista Alberti: On Painting and On
Sculpture edited and translated by Ceceil Grayson (London, 1972).
Walter Benjamin,
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), in
Illuminations (New York, 1969).
Guy Debord, Society
of the Spectacle, (1993).
David Gerstner, Lecture
notes, FIME 301, 2000, University of Otago.
Donna Haraway, Simians,
Cyborgs and Nature, (Routledge, 1991).
N. Katherine Hayles.
How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature,
and Informatics, (Chicago, 1999).
Lewis Lapham, Introduction
to Understanding Media, by Marshall McLuhan (MIT Press, 1964).
The Notebooks
of Leonardo da Vinci, edited by Edward MacCurdy (London 1954), Vol
II.
Marshall McLuhan,
Understanding Media (MIT Press, 1964).
Andrew Ross 'Candid
Cameras' in No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture (Routledge,
1989).
Andy Warhol, The
Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B, and Back Again, (Florida, 1975).
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