Two Ideas

Thinking About Public Space

This Friday Diana and I attended a symposium at MIT and listened to a panel speak about various issues within the art world pertaining to personal and public space. Of particular interest to me were topics discussed by the first two panelists. The first speaker took the audience through a brief history of the philosophical thought pertaining to the art medium of television, emphasizing feedback looping and the effect that inanimate television has on biological life. Originally, William Irwin Thompson theorized that the advent of television spelled the destruction of the past and the dissolution of the future by way of the eternal-present temporal setting of television programs and advertisements. Thompson's theory was heavily critiqued because it did not take into account the essential biology and participatory capabilities of human beings, instead treating watchers of television as simply passive relays. Growing out of this critique, video came to be seen as an ecological operator that merged the biological, the mental, and the social in a medium of shared consciousness. The speaker emphasized that video could not be seen either as something wholly different from, nor wholly the same as, the object of the video, and that the presence of television in society must necessarily increase aesthetic perceptions that make up vast, intuitive communities. I responded to these statements made by historical commentators on television with some reservation, particularly to the emphasis on the presence of a feedback loop that inculcates both the television medium itself and viewers of the television. I am more inclined to air on the side of Thompson's analysis in this regard, though admittedly not as extremely as to allow for the logical conclusion that this theory treats humans as essentially non-biological and passive. While I agree that some form of feedback loop must be present, a la advertising and programming catering to an extent to the desires of the viewer, I am highly critical of some of the later critic's thoughts about the positive impacts that television can have, particularly the idea that television creates a shared consciousness. I call to attention the fact that this notion overemphasizes the participatory nature of television in a way similar to how Thompson deemphasized it. Television viewing is most certainly a predominantly passive experience: viewers have little say in what programming is presented, how shows' plotlines develop, what commercials they see, etc. These decisions rest solely in the hands of the networks. True, programs are aired to attract advertisement and thus money into the system, but it must be pointed out that the ubiquity of television today means that even the most seemingly pointless channels may be propped up by advertising. The idea that television necessarily increases aesthetic perception is problematic too, because it does not specify enough what "increase aesthetic perception" details. Maybe watching television gives viewers a new lens to look at television programs critically, but it is important to make note of the fact that the television medium is unlike most other mediums. While television, photography, and cinematography are somewhat interrelated, a well framed photographic shot might not be conducive to a television program, in the same way that some of the camera tricks used in movies might not be. In the end, television is, in my opinion, the most consumer-oriented and least artful of the three mediums, in the sense that there is an overriding conformist aesthetic present in television that is not necessarily present in photography or cinematography; indeed, even sometimes consciously avoided in the latter two. I would even go so far as to say that television offers the least room for innovation of the three, because it is oriented primarily towards entertainment and not necessarily at being the most aesthetically profound art piece as possible, though there are most definitely exceptions to this. I would draw attention to the idea raised by the speaker that "belief" is necessarily a collective phenomenon, and extend this to the statement that television is driven by belief in what is entertaining. In this sense, there is some feedback looping present, but on the whole it is a more one-sided feedback loop than the continuous flow model proposed by some early critics and thinkers about television.
In this sense, then, I am more inclined to agree with claims raised by the second speaker about the destruction of public space in the face of privatized industry. Particularly distressing to me was the presentation of a concept that I had never heard about before, the Alphaville model of communal living. To briefly describe this phenomenon, private development industries have in recent years purchased land in Brazil and Portugal and developed it into highly secured compounds where people can rent or buy condominiums or houses. Alphavilles are surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire, covered with security cameras, and protected by special Alphaville police forces. To me, this privatization of security is extremely frightening - it is the antithesis of the freedom and peace that the builders of Alphaville say are secured by these measures. It rings of the first steps toward a future like that depicted in the Disney cartoon Wal-E, where global corporate megaliths control the entire planet. In a way, the Alphaville concept is a destruction of public space, since the development company ultimately owns all the property therein and writes rules as it sees fit, but in the process this paradoxically destroys private space, or rather makes private space public. I imagine that like in gated communities, Alphavilles have stringent codes for housing ornamentation, lawn care, and other such expressions of individuality. Carried to its logical conclusion given pragmatic evidence, the Alphaville concept will ultimately spell the doom of individuality and the total homogenization of thought, aesthetics, and action under a dubious, profit-oriented hegemony.
"He who would give a little liberty, to gain a little security, deserves neither and loses both."
-Benjamin Franklin