Technoetic Arts

By Ascott, Roy. 2002.
Edited and Korean translationby YI, Won-Kon.
(Media & Art Series no. 6, Institute of Media Art, Yonsei University).
Yonsei: Yonsei University Press. 226 pages. 37 B & W illustrations.

Reviewed by Ms. Soh Yeong Roh
Director
Art Center Nabi

It is a very happy occasion for the Korean media arts community that Roy Ascott’s book is published in Korean. This book is a collection of essays from his early writings(1968) to the very recent(2000). Consistently throughout his writings lies Ascott’s clear vision of media art. This is a book of an artistic vision, one that is unique and powerful, urging the contemporary media artists into action.

Ascott’s world view resonates influences from new sciences. (Ross Ashby, Fritjof Capra, and Peter Russell, among others) Also Nobert Wiener’s cybernetic theory seems to have opened his eyes on the immense possibilities that computers can offer to art. The artist in him was particularly interested in how meanings are created through interactions in cybernetic systems. Beyond the Newtonian determinism, Ascott envisions ‘worlds’ that are created through interactions among people’ minds; worlds that are inherently fluid, transitory and emergent; and worlds where there can indeed be creative syntheses of science and art. In networked art, or ‘telematic art’ as he calls it, Ascott saw the possibility of constructing such new worlds as early as in the late 1960’s when ordinary people hardly heard of cybernetics or even computers.

Ascott makes it plain that the task of 21^st century art is to construct new realities by bridging the minds and consciousness around the planet. They are the worlds(and realities) where diversity, artistic creativity, and democratization of meaning are respected. In these worlds, human exchanges reach the level of consciousness, thereby creating global, collective consciousness. In this Chardin-like utopian vision, global communities can be formed where truth can be pursued, not by manipulating discourses, but through free associations of ideas, interweaving of images, and by direct experiences.

With the advances in biosciences from the 80’s onward, he adds another dimension in his creative synthesis of art and sciences; that is, artificial life. Ascott’s dry silicon cybernetic art thus becomes ‘moist’ experiments in artificial life. He now envisions ‘re-materialization’ of art, combining telematic art with biotechnology. In his celebrated article, ‘Museum of the third kind’, we can see his vision for new art has expanded and fully integrated into his vision for new art institution. This new art institution has a strong metaphor in artificial life, as in his description of the new museum as ‘garden of hypotheses’, where we plant ideas, grows forms and images, and harvest meaning.

Art for Ascott is an open-ended process that requires active participants, not passive audiences. It is a process that aims at transforming isolated individual consciousness into an elevated state of collective consciousness, as is so eloquently espoused by him in ‘Is There Love in Telematic Embrace?’(1990). This collective consciousness, like the spirit of Gaiia, might steer us from the paranoia of the industrial age into the ‘telenoia’ of the pos-biological age(Ascott in "Telenoia", 1993). Fundamentally Acott’s aesthetics presupposes relentless faith in human creativity and good will, not only on the part of the artists but on the participants as well.

One may accuse Ascott’s view of the world of being unrelentingly utopian. However, his unique aesthetics for media art stems from such breath of knowledge spanning over ages and cultures, various sciences and arts. This intellectual dynamism, along with his uncanny insight into nature/culture, man/universe, and technology/art, is manifest in his writings throughout the book. Ascott is an action oriented artist and theorist, who is passionate about creating new worlds, rather than analyzing or critiquing existing worlds.

This book, translated into Korean, will no doubt influence young Korean media artists who are exploring new aesthetics of media art. The role of artist for Ascott is in designing the context, rather than the content, of the new symbiosis of art and technology. It is indeed a daunting task of designing, rather than prescribing, new human conditions of our times. Ascott makes it clear: media art is not about refined techniques or filling up contents in established channels. Rather, it is about creating new contexts in which new meanings can occur through free and open-ended interactions, with no clear distinction between the maker and the viewer. He warns against today’s technological art that degenerates into mere spectacles, lacking intimacy and delicacy.

Intimacy and delicacy in technological art will be realized when artists focus on human minds and consciousness, rather than on the novelty of technology. As we are now facing ubiquitous computing environment in this century, more creative energy from media artists are required in order to make the technology serve humanity. And by bridging the creative minds around the globe we can perhaps dream for a better future, where more human energy is spent on constructing rather than destroying ‘worlds’. Indeed, Roy Ascott shows a way.