By Ted Hiebert.
Behind the screen, there is nothing. Not darkness, not fantasy, not
even the flickering lights of consciousness aroused. And yet, within
the screen, the case is quite the opposite -- here, within the
delirium of technological living we encounter an intensified
imaginary, new worlds of interactive possibility, in short, new
opportunities for the falsification of being.
This provocation has strategic purpose, for the question of screen
culture is less about the technological possibilities initiated by
invention, and much more about the delirious seduction of a life
screened-in. Here, amidst the growing participatory potential of
interactivity, the icy prophecy of Marshall McLuhan's "cool
technology" is brought to the cold light of the Lacanian mirror. For,
as Lacan knew well, behind the mirror there is also nothing, which is
why it becomes so urgent to invent a fantastic something to which
technological effect can be attributed. The mirror, one might posit,
is the first screen, the first "cool technology" -- the instance
where the participatory performance of living first takes on its
split dynamic between the "hot" social and cultural self and its "cool" other.
The screen, however, also does something that the mirror never could
-- namely, it allows for its fantasy to be realized, and not only in
potential. The very condition of screen-culture rests on a
will-to-delirium implicit in the amplification of imaginative possibilities.
What follows is a series of three meditations on aspects of the
screen as it relates to knowledge and technological living, three
variations on a theme, or three delusions of technological grandeur.
Respectively, these contemplations will proceed from paradox, to
illusion and, finally, to hallucination as representative elements of
a culture screened-in. [...]
<http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=592>Link
--
Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/01/delirious-screens-flesh-shadows-cool.htm>monochrom
at 1/28/2009 04:54:00 PM
