Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories
of Art, Technology, and Consciousness.
by Roy Ascott,
Edward A. Shanken, editor,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003
428 pp., illus. b/w, Trade, $44.95
ISBN: 0-520-21803-5
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be
It is surprising how little has been published
about the work and theories of artist, theorist, and pedagogue Roy
Ascott. A selection of his own writings have now been collected, selected
and edited by Edward Shanken, the executive director of the Information
Science and Information Studies program at Duke University. 28 essays
cover almost forty years of thinking, teaching and theorising, and
it is not a day too soon that they become widely available. Future
students of 'Telematic Art', the history of interactive arts, and
the work of Roy Ascott will be grateful for this book. They will thank
Edward Shanken as well for his clear, well-researched, and understandable
introductory essay on the artist and his work.
'Telematics' is the translation of the French 'télématique',
a term coined in the nineteen seventies by Simon Nora and Alain Minc
in a report on the future of society after the telecommunications
revolution. It stands for the integration of telecommunication and
information technologies, what we would more fashionably call ICT
or 'wired'. For Ascott, who started thinking about telematics even
before it was practically available, it means no less than a radical
change in the way we deal with and perceive, art, society, technology,
ourselves even. He understands art as a process in which the
roles of artist, object and audience are being dramatically redefined,
where change is inevitable and the essence of the artistic process,
and where interactivity between humans by means of technology or between
humans and technology is the place where meaning is created.
In the global telematic embrace, love is the force that unites individuals,
science, art and technology, leading to a new level of consciousness,
conceptually akin to the noosphere of Teilhard de Chardin or the cyborgian
hivemind of Peter Russell.
It is impossible to summarize the complexity and wealth of Ascott's
work in the space of 750 words, so I insist that you read the essays,
one at a time, over a period of a few weeks or months, slowly digesting
and preparing for the next bite. Ultimately, you will be able to see
for yourself if you want to be embraced, telematically or otherwise,
by Ascotts thinking. However, I must say a few thing on Edward Shankens
introductory essay, 'From Cybernetics to Telematics'. Most of this
88 pages long essay are devoted to an outline of Ascotts work
and ideas. Summarizing and sometimes clarifying the essays in the
collection, he succeeds in untying several threads and marking significant
points of advance in his evolution. It is certainly brilliantly done,
and Shanken shows his unquestionable erudition modestly and without
diverting the reader's attention away from the real subject. But,
about halfway through the essay, the smell of incense became a bit
too strong. Shanken gives the impression that Ascott has unerringly
foreseen and predicted each and every cultural shift, and even if
he has been vague or contradictory on some issues, it certainly was
not for a lack of prophetic vision. Ascott is elevated to the status
of a guru and an oracle, with supernatural powers to match. And that
is a pity because it hides 'the real Roy' from view: a mere human
who has been struggling, working and studying very hard, who has been
on a lifelong quest - for love, for understanding and for a better
world - just like most of us and who deserves to be forgiven
for not predicting the rise of Nokia and the demise of democracy.
(Don't get me wrong, I don't blame Ascott for not doing so). Shanken
could just have refrained from interpretations informed with the benefit
of hindsight and maintained a bit more distance.
In the final pages of the essay, Shanken takes the first steps 'towards
a critique of telematic art'. In his view, telematic art transcends
the dichotomies between art and science, between form and content,
between conceptual and objective and between modern and postmodern.
"Telematic art offers an artistic meta-perspective capable of embodying
paradox, dismantling convention, and constructing new visual forms
that employ emerging technologies in ways that redefine knowledge
and being." (p.88) If these were the words of the artist, I would
not flinch. But they come from an art critic - and a very respected
one at that - and I doubt whether they bring me a better understanding
of the real impact of Acott's work.