Telematic
Embrace. Visionary Theories of Art, Technology,
and Consciousness
by Roy Ascott. Edited and with an essay
by Edward A. Shanken
California University Press, Berkeley,
2003
439 pp., illus. 41 b/w. Trade, $44.95
ISBN: 0-520-21803-5.
Reviewed by Jan Baetens
Instituut voor Culturele Studies
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
jan.Baetensarts.kuleuven.ac.be
If the definition of a good book is that
one feels intellectually provoked during
its reading and leaves the volume with
the certitude of being more intelligent
than at the start, then Telematic Embrace
is the book one might be looking for.
And if one is not hesitant about the old
seductions of style and, most of all,
that impossible thing called the personality
of its author, this book provides even
more than one could ask from a vast collection
of essays in the problematic, because
too overtly fashionable and therefore
too easily outfashioned, field of theory
on art and electronic culture. In the
case of Ascotts writings, those
two elementsthe visionary
force of his thinking on the one hand
and the personal qualities of his style
on the othermay seem a little
contradictory, since few authors have
made such strong pleas in favour of "distributed
authorship" and against the mirages of
the traditional (romantic, ego-centered)
art world, yet the very example of Telematic
Embrace, which presents an extremely
useful, highly representative and carefully
edited anthology of Ascotts scholarly
work, proves one of the basic theses of
the author, i.e. that the leap towards
global connectiveness through cybernetics
and telematics does not exclude the human
factor or prevent man from liberating
himself when abandoning the traditional
domains of the humanities.
Most books and essays on the relationship
between art, science, and technology represent
either a synthesis or a snapshot
of what their authors have been thinking
or are thinking on the subject. In both
cases, their writings are homogeneous:
in the case of a book, the previous phases
of reflection are integrated in a kind
of global survey that camouflages internal
contradictions and transforms previous
hesitations and errors into stepping-stones
on the long path leading to final insights;
in the case of an essay, which normally
gives just a cross-section of the authors
thinking on that specific point of time
and place, the lack of a global framework
is not always considered a flaw, and contradictions
with later texts are part of the game
("This was what I was thinking in 1984,
and this is what I am thinking now, and
tomorrow I may appear to think something
else . . ."). The exceptional merit of
Roy Ascotts work as a theoretician
of the relationships between art, science,
and technology is that it in spite of
their often shattered and overtly visionary
character, they are not just a succession
of speculations in which new links replace
or destroy the previous ones. Although
they have not been rewritten for this
publication, the texts gathered in Telematic
Embrace span a period of more than
three decades (1964-1993) and reveal indeed
an exceptional coherence (and maybe even
a kind of master narrative, yet this word
may be too negatively connoted).
This coherence is not the result of the
mere application of a pre-established,
teleological programme or of a single,
all-explaining and stubbornly adhered
to theoretical paradigm. The coherence
of Ascotts thinking and writing
develops almost spontaneously along some
basic lines, which the author never renounces
but which he always adopts following his
own principles of feed-back and interactivity.
If one had to summarize Ascotts
evolution, one might say that he gradually
moved from cybernetics to telematics,
and from telematics to an overall view
of connectedness at both an electronic
and at a biological level. In the late
50s and during the 60s, Ascott pioneered
the interaction of art and the emerging
science of cybernetics, defined as "the
study of control and communication in
living and artificial systems" (p.331).
He then realized with the cyberneticians
themselves that such a study missed an
essential point, namely the fact that
the observer had to be considered part
of the system studied. This brought him
to second-order cybernetics, which recognized
the blurring of boundaries between object
and observer, while emphasizing even more
the importance of feedback and interactivity.
With the revolution of telematics (the
integration of computers and telecommunications),
Ascotts ideas evolved towards a
what he calls "connectivism", a paradigm
in which the ancient spheres of mind,
body, and world, or those of nature and
culture, are no longer separable and in
which universal interaction is celebrated
as a new step in evolution (not only of
mans evolution, since there is no
longer a clear-cut separation of man and
non-man in the universe).
All of this sounds familiar and the name
of McLuhan comes quickly to mind. The
philosophical underpinnings of Ascotts
telematic embrace and McLuhans global
village are not without analogy: the East
and the West will meet, human conflicts
will be overcome by communication,
ancient hierarchies will be replaced by
freedom and democracy, even love will
be in the air. Ascott likes quoting (and
connecting!), for instance, more or less
like-minded people such as the 19-th French
socialist thinker Fourier, the apologist
of "universal attraction"; the Jesuit
Teilhard de Chardin, the inventor of the
"noosphere"; or J.E.Lovelock, the advocate
of Gaia; not to speak of McLuhan himself,
regularly mentioned with great sympathy.
Yet there are also considerable differences,
which undoubtedly play in favour of Ascott.
Ascotts visionary thinking is always
deeply rooted in concrete, professional
contexts: his many appointments (academic,
advisory, and editorial) all over the
world have insured that he has always
been in very close contact with the wishes
and the needs of students, artists, researchers,
and the interested audience. This field
experience is crucial: It is the perfect
counterweight to intellectual freewheeling
and gratuitous speculation. What Ascott
is discussing is always both visionary
and down to earth. In the same essay,
for instance, he can demonstrate the necessity
to establish post-institutional
ways of working and giving all possible
details on the equipment of each single
room of the Ars Electronica Center
in Linz. It is also the warrant of a real
interdisciplinary approach. Ascotts
understanding of contemporary science,
for instance, is a real understanding,
and not that of a dilettante. Moreover,
Ascotts work has always been at
the service of the intellectual needs
of the field. The selection of his essays
in Telematic Embrace gives full
and clear evidence of this attitude of
deep concern with the didactics of contemporary
art. Of course, since everything
is connected, these didactics are
never bookish. Almost all important issues
that are at stake in the twentieth-century
reflection on art are represented here:
the role and place of a museum, the relationship
between art object and audience, the integration
of art and society, etc.
Ascotts place in the philosophy
of art (I know this label is erroneous,
but nevertheless it helps to stress the
importance of this work) is paradoxical.
Ascott is antimodern since he rejects
absolutely the ideology of the purity
of art and the celebration of its objects,
and in this respect his visionary thinking
can be linked with post-structuralism.
One is not surprised to see that in the
recent texts by Ascott the name of Deleuze
starts appearing. Yet at the same time,
his clear belief in some Grand Narrative
makes him an antipostmodernist. Many essays,
even in the years when postmodernism was
still a positive value, are very critical
of its incapacity to tackle the new and
to exceed the parodying relationship with
the past. The very long introductory essay
by Edward A. Shanken, who did a wonderful
job as an editor (the very fact that the
editing goes almost unseen is the best
compliment one can address to an editor!)
provides the reader with a very profitable
historical survey of the major tendencies
in 20th century art one has to know in
order to fully understand what is at stake
in Ascotts work. It is at the same
time a perfect introduction to this work
itself, which it helps to interpret while
giving readers a strong impulse to deepen
their own interpretations. Often collected
and introduced essays are broken up into
two non-communicating parts: the new introduction
and the older essays. In Telematic
Embrace, the editor and the author
manage to make love.
(This review appears by kind permission
of Image and Narrative;
http://www.imageandnarrative.be/)