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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 cyberspace.
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 theorize 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
that stems from physics, biology and mathematics, which
is closely associated with post-structuralist 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 process 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.
Copyright
© 1999 Joseph Nechvatal
Dr. Nechvatal has worked with ubiquitous electronic visual
information and computer-robotics since 1986. His computer-robotic
assisted paintings and computer animations are shown regularly
in galleries and museums throughout the world. He has recently
worked as artist in-resident at the Louis Pasteur studio
and the Ledoux Foundation's computer lab in Arbois, France
on 'The Computer Virus Project': an experiment with computer
viruses as a creative stratagem. He is collected by the
Los Angeles County Museum, the Moderna Musset in Stockholm,
Sweden and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Nechvatal's work
was included in Documenta 8.
Dr.
Nechvatal earned his Ph.D. in the philosophy of art and
new technology as a Ph.D. doctoral on-line fellow researcher
with The Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive
Arts (CAiiA) under Roy Ascott. He has served as Parisian
editor for "RHIZOME INTERNET" (http://www.rhizome.com)
and Parisian correspondent for "Intelligent Agent" (http://www.intelligent-agent.com)
Dr. Nechvatal presently teaches theories of Virtual Reality
at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
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
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)
Dr. Joseph Nechvatal www.dom.de/groebel/jnech/
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