Friedrich Kittler considered the emergence of media technologies to have transformed
‘the structure, placement, and function of cultural production’ (1990: 284). In Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (Kittler 1990), he outlines how ‘discourse networks’ - defined as the relations between media and the people - shaped European culture by defining the tastes, power structures and hierarchies of culture. These networks defined our understanding of cultural value. For Kittler, the arrival of media technology signified a radical shift in our historical archive, outlining who has the power in which to ‘give
culture to select, store, and process relevant data’ (369). For Kittler, ‘technology
‘determines our situation’ (Kittler 1999, xxxix), directing cultural production and demands investigation. ‘What remains of people is what media can store and communicate’ (Kittler 1999, xl).
This research problematises and, in some ways attempts to create a dialogue with, Kittler’s ideas of examining the media itself as a means for historical understanding, agency and ‘technical specificity’ (Parikka 2012, 71). It communicates the ‘process’ of using digital technology as a emancipatory tool for participatory and collective artistic practices, contextualized within relevant political and artistic activities of the 20th century, by affirming meaning and value as existing in and through the social dialogues.
Kittler moved beyond Marshall McLuhan’s ‘medium is the message’ (1964), suggesting now it is media that defines us. Whilst media’s materiality and their histories ask important questions for contemporary media scholars and artists, this thesis has attempted to shift the direction away from the technical.
Bernard Stiegler calls for ‘technologies of spirit’ in our time, devising collective and individual environments in light of our current technical and political situations. He critiques contemporary capitalism, controlling our ‘brain time’, through industrialisation and informational knowledge, rather than experiences in the social world.
Only a fight against the stupidity imposed by the control of available brain-time, which is to say by industrial populism, represents a real possibility of ‘re-enchanting the world’: of rending it desirable, and thereby of restoring to reason its primary sense as a motive of life. (Stieger translated by Athur, 2014: 5)
Stiegler defines ‘spirit’ as a human aspect for ‘imagining and concretizating alternatives’ and ‘collective intelligence’, through the use of technologies (Stiegler 2014, 69-75). I began this research from a subcultural position, without technical, theoretical knowledge or mastery. Therefore, Stieglers idea of ‘spirit’ resonates with my understanding of imperfection, comprehended through the experiences, and is difficult to concretely define in words. Using/playing with technology, instigated creative, collaborative opportunities, open up spaces and counter- environments, in which a kind
of ‘spirit’ could exist. I use the word ‘counter’ in reference to McLuhan’s ideas on the
‘COUNTERBLAST’:
The term COUNTERBLAST does not imply any attempt to erode or explode BLAST. Rather it indicates the need for a counter-environment as a means if perceiving the dominant one. Today we live invested with an electric information environment that is quite imperceptible to us as water is to a fish. At the beginning of his work, Pavlov found that the conditioning of his dogs depended on a previous conditioning. He placed one environment within another one. Such is COUNTERBLAST. (McLuhan 1969, 5).
We can perceive and probe dominant media landscapes, such as cinema, through the construction of counter-cinema-situations. These environments, however small, or micro, can facilitate alternatives sites of free expression. In doing so, we can rethink how we understand cinema as a medium. Not only through the content or the study of the media apparatuses themselves, but through the collective experiences facilitated by the making, seeing and discussion. In these environments, cinema as a culture, is inclusive and ‘ordinary’ (Williams 1958).
Raymond Williams told us ‘culture has two aspects: known meanings and directions, which its members are trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested’ (Williams 1958, 3). Whereas the gatekeepers of our cultural past determined tastes - what is visible, stored and who could participate - the democratisation of digital technology blurs these distinctions. This is not only through how we participate in culture, but also the vast amount of accessible information available. The digital can store artefacts, as opposed to the medium of film, which will eventually disintegrate.
Kittler’s post-human media materialism suggests that media dictates our communication and understanding of situations: what we create, represent and archive. In doing so, it is the technologies that have the power to form meaning and collective memories. Whilst this thesis acknowledges the democratising potential that new online media now offers, this research attempts to problematise this shifting of power, a technological resistance if you will. This, in turn, is because the fundamental understanding and knowledge
developed from the practice positions value as emerging through everyday dialogues, chance and unique moments.
These moments of unique experiences can be framed around Henri Lefèvbre’s ‘theory of moments’ (Lefèvbre 2014, 652). The everyday actions, struggles, and play – the
‘transitoriness’ of the everyday, is situated within what is lived and how it is experienced. These moments are documented in this practice as uncertain and ephemeral. The audio-visual technologies were used as a vehicle towards constituting social relationships, and ‘structures of feeling’ (Williams 1977). In doing so, imperfect praxis finds its meaning through creative, and social activity that is open, constantly in flux and dependent on people contributing to the work.
Marx defined praxis quite simply as being activity interacting in society, rather than one separating theory and action:
The problem of knowledge in the abstract is a false problem. Abstract logical consistency, theory divorced from social activity and practical verification, have no value whatsoever. The essence of man is social, and the essence of society is praxis – acts, courses of action, interaction. Separated from praxis, theory vainly comes to grips with falsely formulated or insoluble problems, bog down in mysticism and mystification. (Marx Theses on Feuerbach VIII, in Lefèvbre 1969)
Of course, Marx was writing before digital media technologies developed and changed how we interact with the world in the 20th century. Nevertheless, the project finds context for praxis and some solace in this statement, not only as a research project, but also with how we can understand the ‘essence’ of cultural and participatory practice as research activity. The processes and practices constituting these social relationships were founded upon, on the one hand a form of rationality and theory, in which the idea of imperfection negated a value system indebted to the capitalist commodification of labour, and on the other, a sense of its own emergence, developing as and when people came to be involved, participated and formed its understandings and potential.