This paper was delivered at the Consciousness Reframed '98 Conference which
was held at Roy Ascott's Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts
(CAiiA), University of Wales College, Newport, Wales, U. K.
(http://caiia-star.newport.plymouth.ac.uk)
Spanning the Immersive Field
by
Joseph Nechvatal
1998
I have observed that when my dog Ryder is presented with new stimulus he
pricks up his ears, cocks his head on an angle, and looks longingly in the
direction of the stimulus even while steeling himself to respond quickly to
any eventuality. It is basically the response which the Post-Pavlovian
Russian physiologists and psychologists of the 1960s called the "orientation
reaction" (Lynn) and I think it is permissible to say that this state of
cautious longing has become emblematic of consciousness in cyberpace. In
this sense we are living in what might be called the "orientational age", as
we attempt daily to orient ourselves in the span of the expanded immersive
electronic field.
Certainly it is true that hidden in us and in connected computer-space there
is something so abstract, so large, so astounding, and so pregnant with the
darkness of infinite space that it excites and frightens us and thus returns
us to the experimental and to a state of stimulating abstract desire and
restlessness. In one sense we artists are prepared for this state better
than most in that the history of abstract art has shown us that
consciousness may refuse to recognize all thought as existing in the space
of compressed representation, and by scanning the space of representation it
may formulate the knowledge of the laws that provide its de-compressed
organization. (Rosenthal)
With an abstract comprehension of the orientational age, art theory itself
needs to take on a new sense of de-compressed spirit and redefine itself
from the omni-perspective view found in immersive cyberspace. It is neither
surprising nor coincidental that an epistemological change in art theory
would follow connectionist developments inherent in hyper-media as the
immense perspective of connected computer-space requires us to question the
legitimacy of commonly held beliefs and the forgone conclusions established
concerning the theoretical issues of sexual politics, multiculturalism,
gender studies, and the far-reaching heterogeneous philosophical critique of
the cultural mechanisms of representation which have preceded it. The desire
to theorizes this sense of the infinite and the spectacular has lead me to a
field of theoretical interests that I am amassing under the rubric of
"orientational span theory": a connectionist theory which is everywhere, all
the time, all at once.
It is a well worn cliché by now that we live in the era of information
overload - hence a connectionist theory which purports to attempt a span of
the extended virtual-field presupposes we have reached an orientational
level of symbol density and we are now able to combine many individual
symbols into complex relationships, or chunks, of information which can then
be treated as single megasymbols. (Nechvatal) However, since it is
impossible to make sense of today's swirling phantasmagorical stimulus, the
general proposition behind a theory which spans may best be to look for an
omnijective summation of this uncertainty and to take advantage of today's
knowledge saturation and its overall sense of ripe delirium, as theories of
all kinds pulse with higher and higher flows of data to the point of near
hysteria. (Kroker) Omnijectivity is the metaphysical concept introduced by
David Bohm in The Undivided Universe: an Ontological Interpretation of
Quantum Theory which stems from the discoveries of quantum physics. Bohm
points out that quantum physics teaches us that mind (previously considered
the subjective realm) and matter (previously considered as the objective
realm) are inextricably linked in omnipresence, thus they should be merged
into the single term of omnijectivity. In my view, it is orientational span
theory's job to find out what unconventional connectionist sense, in terms
of omnijectivity, this uncertainty might make to us, and to see how blocks
of the chaos of information might start to sympathetically vibrate with each
other based on a decadent reading of our electronic media environment.
(Kuspit)
In this sense orientational span theory is compatible with and comparable to
chaos theory, the contemporary theory which stems from physics, biology and
mathematics which is closely associated with poststructuralist theory.
(Harland) While classical sciences isolated physical systems from their
surrounding, chaos theory is founded on the realization that all systems in
nature are connected and subject to flows of matter and energy which move
constantly through them. (Waldrop)
An orientational spanning theory cognizant of the same principles of
connectivity would begin with the presumption that the theory bomb has
exploded, showering us with bits of theory shrapnel, drastically changing
the way in which we perceive and act, even in our private dream worlds. This
realization may lead us back to Michel Foucault's analysis of Raymond
Roussel's Fin-de-Siècle invention of dreamy language machines that produced
texts through the use of repetitions and combination-permutations, as a
dream-like and machine-like logic provided Roussel's writing with a
seemingly endless variety of textual combinations flowing in circular form.
(Foucault, 1986)
As described in Foucault's book Raymond Roussel: Death and the Labyrinth,
Roussel's technique and its process of endless development lends itself well
to the creation of unforeseen, automatic and spontaneously inventive
theories which give the reader a feeling of being pulled into the span of
eternity through the ceaseless constructions of theory itself, transmitting
an altered and exalted state of mind to the reader as it systematically
imposes a formless anxiety through its labyrinthine extensions, doublings,
disguises and duplications.
Most salient to an orientational span theory would be Foucault's analysis of
Roussel's final book, How I Wrote Certain of My Books, which contains and
repeats within its mechanism all the mental-machines he had formerly
described and put into motion, and by doing so making evident the
master-machine which produced all of his previous text-machines. Hence
Roussel presents to us a model of theoretical perfection: a theory machine
which functions independently of time and space, pulling theory into a
developmental logic of the infinite. Hoist by it's own petard.
It is this internal logic of the infinite and its tragic drama which I find
potentially interesting for an orientational spanning theory for it must be
remembered that electronic theory itself resides in a field of virtual
immersive perceptions at once seamless and fragmented which is made up of
electronic energies corresponding to the new combination of space and time,
a spherical, omnijective, and immersive perspective without horizon.
Thus orientational span theory functions best as an osmotic membrane, a
blotter of ubiquity resulting in the atomization and disintegration of
normal information and data. And in this sense it is reasonable for an
orientational span theory to make use of the holonogic schematic model of
Arthur Koestler in that no set or frame of perceptions may be viewed in
isolation or as a single part of a finite perceptual collection within
synthetic holonogic models. According to Koestler's holon concept
(established in Beyond Reductionism (Koestler, 1971, pp. 192-232) and in
The Ghost in the Machine (Koestler, 1967, pp. 45-58)) instead of cutting up
immersive perceptual wholes into discrete focal parts, theory should be
conducted using synthetic sub-whole sets found within the ambient
atmospheric spectrum of theory's entirety. Tim McFadden in his text "Notes
on the Structure of Cyberspace and the Ballistic Actors Model" in Michael
Benedikt's Cyberspace: The First Steps (Benedikt, 1991, pp. 335-362) adapted
the concept of the holon's ambiguous relationships in the early-1990s as a
model for understanding the configuration of cyberspace in that holons, like
cyberspace, have both cohesion and separateness as their structural
elements. (McFadden) This merges theory into its proper network of
circulation, demystifying the ideology of its reproduction and intervening
in its system of cultural interpretations.
Whereas pre-orientational span theory is made up of conventional, rigid,
social representations, orientational span theory makes use of the abstract
potential of the connected, all-encompassing sign-field, thus it is
unconventional, and therefore demonstrative of the real arbitrary nature of
all representations, as we learned from Michel Foucault's The Order of
Things. Hence orientational span theory may offer us the opportunity for the
creation of relevant and applicable anti-social theories (abstract,
ecstatic, and/or antiseptic) which may continue to move and multiply.
Orientational span theory then opens thought up to new spaces of malleable
and combinatory sites (hence a perpetual multiplication of significance). It
does so by creating a hybrid of meaning and personal inference, thereby
opening up an omnijective territory of signification in which we connect and
create a chain of decoded and deterritorialized meanings into new
megasymbols. Meaning in art and in life then advances by seeing more clearly
into its own underlying assumptions of superfluity, by facing up to the
radical implications of those assumptions, and by purging itself from
conventional ways of thinking by making no recourse to imagined exterior
principles or a priori assumptions.
May I just say that this escape from representational theory has the most
urgent political/social ramifications in our media society. Thus span
theory's, I think, well founded but ambiguous urge for epistemological
reconfiguration based on the capacity of connected electronic media's
immeasurable (and ultimately homogenous) intermixtures, provides the
definition of the links that abet communications while also expressing the
laws of composition and decomposition that administer it. Hence
orientational span theory can be, in a sense, the abstract theory of all
representations when it attempts to orient itself in the unlimited field of
representation, which utilitarian ideology attempts to scrutinize in
accordance with a step-by-step, discursive method but which now appears as
an abstract digital metaphysics, but a metaphysics which abstraction helps
to step outside of itself. Thus perhaps its unconscious intention is to
achieve an ultimate integration of consciousness by the dissolving of theory
into its original unmanifested ground (symbolic of stark unconsciousness)
and of infinite complexity in unity. This dynamic interdependence of
electronic forms of thought in contemplative vision represents the ultimate
in re-configuration, one that subsumes our world of
simulation/representation into a nexus of over-lapping unity of mind which
equals an understanding of the unity which ties the whole universe into a
single entity, linking observations of the outer world with precise
extractions of human essence. This imploded view of theory, brought to a
certain sense of pliability, offers us a double prospect: first, the
solipsistic images of theoretical excess, and then, as in a psychedelic
glamour, in the reverberant structure of the unfolding total-theory-work.
(Bruner)
Undoubtedly, totaling analogies often in the past have been unequivocal in
their urge towards perfectification; embellished, as they seem to must be,
with a sort of self-significance and, often, fallacious universalism. This
question is at the hub of this quest and it beckons forth the question of
what models do we make for ourselves, which do we prefer aesthetically, and
why? As we daily self-model our own consciousness (and being) into a
totalized unit, as Churchland has established, when occupied with questions
of assiduous artistic and philosophical theorizing, it must be remembered
that our abstract and ideal concepts adhere to our neurological unified
configuration. Consciousness models itself as a whole. (Churchland) All
explanations which function in terms of some united principle or explanatory
device exhibit this knowledge.
This assertion on my part concerning theoretical consciousness as possibly
being multiple and unified simultaneously has received some external support
from Michio Kaku and Jennifer Thompson in their recently revised edition of
Beyond Einstein in which they purport to have attained the (or an) elusive
unified field theory which explains the universe as a totality, a problem
which escaped Einstein after all his best efforts and those that followed
him. Their theory is labeled "the theory of superstrings" and it, similar to
the way I proposed the degrees of multiple/unified frequencies interact
towards unified ends (Kaku & Thompson) in orientational span theory,
combines into an all-inclusive private picture the segregated forces and
particles through sympathetic vibration, just as the strings of a piano do,
especially when tuned to the system called "just intonation".
If what I have said sounds metaphysical, it is metaphysical only in so far
as it is memory, intensity, and stratosphere all working together in making
up an internal model of the self. If in cyberspace our epistemologies are
adrift via how objectivity was once understood, orientational span theory's
central mission is in addressing information now as a personalized
omnijective megasymbol. Hence orientational span theory is non-linear, yet
it displays long-term tendencies and organizational patterns and principle
of becoming in and through constant mutation. It is a principle of
intermingling micro-relations in an ongoing processes of macro-relations.
Therefore it theorizes principles of transversality and of contaminations
within the personal obsessions of the individual, as we saw with Roussel. It
theorizes principles of linkages, of connectivity, and of the intersection
of all preceding theories, giving rise to theoretical production and
creativity.
References:
Bohm, D. 1993. The Undivided Universe: an Ontological Interpretation of
Quantum Theory. London: Routledge
Bruner, J. 1973. Beyond the Information Given: Studies in the Psychology of
Knowing. New York: Norto
Churchland, P. 1986. Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the
Mind/Brain. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
Foucault, M. 1970. The Order of Things. London: Tavistock
Foucault, M. 1986. Raymond Roussel: Death and the Labyrinth. New York:
Double Day
Harland, R. 1987. Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and
Post-Structuralism. London: Methuen
Kaku, M. and Thompson, J. 1997. Beyond Einstein. New York: Oxford University
Press
Koestler, A. 1971. "Beyond Atomism and Holism: The Concept of the Holon" In
Koestler, A. and Smythies, J. R. eds. 1971. Beyond Reductionism. pp. 192-232
Koestler, A. 1967. The Ghost in the Machine. New York: Hutchinson, London
and Macmillan
Kroker, A. 1993. The Possessed Individual. New York: Simon and Schuster
Kuspit, D. 1993. The Dialectic of Decadence. New York: Stux Press
Lynn, R. 1966. Attention, Arousal and the Orientation Reaction. Oxford:
Pergamon Press
McFadden, T. "Notes on the Structure of Cyberspace and the Ballistic Actors
Model" in Benedikt, M. ed. 1991. Cyberspace: The First Steps. Boston: MIT
Press, pp. 335-362
Nechvatal, Joseph. "The Art of Excess in the Techno-Mediacratic Society" in
New Observations No. 94. Guest edited by Nechvatal, Joseph. 1993.
Rosenthal, M. 1996. Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Total Risk,
Freedom, Discipline. New York: Guggenheim Museum
Waldrop, M. 1992. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and
Chaos. New York: Simon and Schuster
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