<nettime> re: Wolfgang Schirmacher: Media Aesthetics in Europe

["nettime's_disintermediation_system" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

re: Wolfgang Schirmacher: Media Aesthetics in Europe
          Frank Hartmann <frank.hartmann@chello.at>
          Florian Cramer <paragram@gmx.net>

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From: "Frank Hartmann" <frank.hartmann@chello.at>
Subject: RE: Wolfgang Schirmacher: Media Aesthetics in Europe
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 10:21:36 +0100

Ahh, finally. The continental media discussion
has just seen a revival of heavily speculative
media philosophy (Peter Sloterdijk's
indigestable "Sphaerologie", three volumes) and
while some academics, including Martin
Burckhardt, Manfred Fassler or more
conservative, Martin Seel actually are
addressing media aesthetics issues for serveral
years now, the theory community is just waiting
for another dinosaur of the Gutenberg-Galaxy to
hop on the train. Sigrid Schade and Georg Tholen
recently published the reader "Konfigurationen"
(plus CDrom) on the arts and media, including an
essay by Hans Dieter Bahr on philosophy and the
media. The whole Kittler-camarilla is dealing
with media aesthetics. There are aesthetic
experiments beyond the text, for example the
interesting Deleuze-Project by Marc Ries and
others (http://thing.at/immedia/indexxli.htm),
etc.

The problem we can observe is "canonisation",
since nothing counts as "Philosophy" unless an
academic departement honours it to be so (this
is why non of the above quotes Flusser). There
is the indispensable condition of relating to
one of the classical authors. The guild
principle is what counts. Further, are
philosophers still searching for a "worthwhile
topic"? Even farts proved to be one
(Deleuze/Guattari, and Sloterdijk again). And
now "THINK MEDIA", hey, are they going for funds
here or what. Let us skip criticism, let's go
aesthetics?

Yes Geert, it is an odd text, and you know why:
traditional philosophy not only denied its own
social sources, but also its own mediality as
embedded in a book-culture. This is why it is so
hard to apply traditional philosophy on the new
media situation - or when someone does, why it
is so boring within a discourse which becomes
more and more intertwined.

Frank Hartmann


Some philosophy resources from my new book
("Medienphilosophie", published at UTB,
Jan.2000)
are added below:

As we may think --
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/comp
uter/bushf.htm
Benjamin, Passagenwerk--
http://art.derby.ac.uk/~g.peaker/arcades/passage
nwerk.html
Boole, George --
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Math
ematicians/Boole.html
Californian Ideology --
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/media/HRC/ci/calif1.html
Cassirer, Ernst -- http://www.cassirer.org/
Cyberculture Studies --
http://vos.ucsb.edu/shuttle/cyber.html
Debord, Guy --
http://www.nothingness.org/si/debord/index.html
Deleuze, Gilles --
http://www.imaginet.fr/deleuze/
Deleuze, Gilles / Guattari, Félix --
http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/d&g/d&gweb..html
Descartes, René --
http://www.epistemelinks.com/Pers/DescPers.htm
Flusser, Vilém --
http://www.equivalence.com/labor/flusser.htm
Frege, Gottlob --
http://home.t-online.de/home/wstelzner/
Giesecke, Michael --
http://www.ifgb.uni-hannover.de/extern/kommunika
tionslehre/giesecke/index.htm
Hamann, Johann Georg --
http://www.weltkreis.com/mauthner/hist/hama2.htm
l
Herder, J.G.: Abhandlung --
http://www.gutenberg.aol.de/herder/sprache/sprac
he.htm
Heidegger, Martin --
http://people.delphi.com/gkemerling/ph/heid.htm
Humboldt, Wilhelm von --
http://www.weltkreis.com/mauthner/humb.html
Husserl, Edmund --
http://sac.uky.edu/~rsand1/husserl.html
Husserl, Krisisschrift --
http://www.jyu.fi/~rakahu/kirjat/krisis_kleine.h
tml
Innis, Harold --
http://kali.murdoch.edu.au/~hopehume/innis.html
Kant, Immanuel --
http://www.gutenberg.aol.de/autoren/kant.htm
Kittler, Friedrich --
http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/inside/aesthetics/lo
s49/index.htm
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von --
http://www.gutenberg.aol.de/autoren/leibniz.htm
Manovich, Lev --
http://jupiter.ucsd.edu/~manovich/
Mauthner, Fritz --
http://www.weltkreis.com/mauth_99.html
McLuhan, H. Marshall --
http://www.mcluhanmedia.com/
Media Studies --
http://vos.ucsb.edu/shuttle/media.html
Nelson, Ted -- http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/
Peirce, Charles S. -- http://www.peirce.org
Philosophy pages --
http://people.delphi.com/gkemerling/index.htm
Turing, Alan -- http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/
Weltrevolution nach Flusser --
http://www.snafu.de/~klinger/flusser/
Winkler, Hartmut --
http://www.uni-paderborn.de/~winkler/index.html
Wittgenstein, Ludwig --
http://www.phil.uni-passau.de/dlwg/

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Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 17:23:18 +0100
From: Florian Cramer <paragram@gmx.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Wolfgang Schirmacher: Media Aesthetics in Europe

Am Wed, 05.Jan.2000 um 10:43:05 -0800 schrieb geert lovink:
> Wolfgang Schirmacher, a prominent German philosopher, based in New York,

You think he is so prominent? (I haven't heard of him yet. You didn't happen
to confuse him with the literary critic Frank Schirrmacher?)

> Day and night, as private persons and as citizens we are surrounded by
> media. It has become increasingly rare to communicate without the help of
> media-generated forms, role models and channels. 

What does Schirmacher define as 'media' here? I.e., to be more precise:
_When_ in the history of literacy has it _ever_ been possible to
communicate without the help of media-generated forms, role modles and
channels? If you compare the impact of the Christian Bible on communication
in the Western middle ages and renaissance with the impact of the mass
media on communication today, one could even argue that the influence has
become much more diversified.

But after all, I can see nothing in Schirmacher's observation that would add
anything new to the observations of mass media-triggered communication made,
for example, in Cervantes' Don Quixote and Goethe's Werther (whose
protagonists say "Klopstock" - the name of a 18th century poet whose odes on
nature were crucial prototypes for the sentimental style in German
literature - when they see a thunderstorm).

> examples: The telephone answering machine has changed our style of
> personal communication as lastingly as the computer changed the flow of
> writing. 

I think he grossly underestimates the impact of the computer on writing.

> the Zen masters put it. And the ease with which we can alter and expand
> the text already written into the computer eliminates the "voice of
> authority" in us and allows us to play with thoughts. 

No new insights; Michael Heim described all this in the late 1980s. 

> Of course, one could describe both events very differently, call the
> answering machine a pest and the end of meaningful communication and word
> processors the source of text pollution as they tempt even the serious
> person to babble on like a child.

You find a very similar critique in Plato's remarks about writing _as
such_ (i.e. as a technique that corrupts memory and fosters falsification).
It's astonishing that a philosopher wouldn't reflect upon the history of
philosophical media critique in order to flesh out what _new_ questions
electronic/digital media _actually_ pose.

> Few people feel excited about the prospects of an age shaped by
> media, most feel threatened. 

If Schirmacher would cling to basic semiotics or linguistics, it would
be clear that there is no such thing as communication without a medium. It's
a pity that even academics who should be precise in their language do not
differentiate between 'media' in general and 'electronic mass media' in
particular.

> other way around. But the harsh critique of media, fashionable in Europe,
> can rarely boast a foundation in an experience of the media itself since
> it resists their authenticity. Instead, all experiences with media have
> been held up to a value system not found in media itself. This biased view
> of media stems from a want of media aesthetics, creating the odd situation
> where, in terms of media, the blind and deaf are those whose criticism is
> most outspoken and widely received. The less they watch television, the
> better they know it will destroy critical thinking! 

Is it possible that is has been a _very_ long time since Schirmacher saw a
European (or German) university? This and the following paragraphs strike me
as an echo of third-hand banalizations of 1960/1970s Frankfurt School
scholarship. Everyone who is familiar with 'Kulturwissenschaft' as the major
trend in German humanities of the 1990s knows that Schirmacher's description
is without any reality today, although German 'Kulturwissenschaft' remains,
in its large indeptedness to Aby Warburg, Ernst Cassirer and cultural
anthropology, quite different from Anglo-American 'Cultural Studies'. German
Ph.D. candidates will most certainly get funding if they work on leading
topics like performance/'performativity', anthropology, the body, gender
studies, mass media/media history or theories of cultural memory. Both the
research projects ('Graduiertenkollege' and 'Sonderforschungsbereiche')
funded by the state reseaarch foundation DFG and the publications of the
leading academics like Aleida Assmann - on 'trash' in cultural memory - and
Elisabeth Bronfen - on Hollywood movies - may serve as clear evidence. Just
as in Schirmacher's paper, much consideration is given to film, television
and performing arts with frequent, but short general references to the
Internet, while there rarely is informed scholarship in the humanities about
computers and computer networks.

His critique of alleged media-phobia in German/European humanities doesn't
seem much better to me than the third-hand banalizations of Frankfurt school
media critique because it just negatively affirms it. To mix television and
computers in the same bag is a mistake many media theorists (like, in
Germany, Dietmar Kamper at the second "Softmoderne" conference) made in the
early 1990s because their views and vocabulary had been shaped by
Baudrillard and Virilio. Schirmacher is fighting battles that are over in my
opinion. I guess many Nettime subscribers share my view of TV as an
old-fashioned mass medium which, since the mass availability of computer
networks, has hardly developed any interesting visual/symbolic forms lately.
Television may be on a crossroad between (a) a smart medium integrated into
the Internet as a view-on-demand service embedded into
(database-retrievable) text information and (b) a dumb, linear medium,
formatted to death with sitcoms, talk shows and commercials, a medium for
which the old Frankfurt School critique might be of striking new relevance
even to those who don't share Adorno's views on movies and jazz music.

> media go uninterrupted by our smart interpretations. What is missing is an
> unbiased sensual experience with media, a ten-thousand hour treat with
> film and video, sound studio and computer graphics, multiple television
> channels and a working remote control. Missing is living with fax and
> laser printer, with notebook computers and High Definition Television
> Screen, being at home in computer conferencing, missing are legal hackers
> riding the waves of cyberspace. Hyperreality and Virtual Reality are
> concepts which only pretend to have experienced what they describe, but
> they are no more convincing than the Pope advocating gay couples.

Again, his keywords/buzzwords ("remote control", "hyperreality", "HDTV"
etc.) sound _very_ old-fashioned early-90s to me. Quite on the contrary, I
have the impression that there is an exaggerated attention for Hollywood
blockbusters and TV sitcoms in the contemporary European humanities. I am
sure, younger scholars will have noticed the decline of Hollywood
blockbusters in the 90s - from a quite sophisticated period with films like
"Pulp Fiction" and "Total Recall" to the boredom and irrelevance of today's
movie theater programs - and adjust their papers accordingly.

[... Schirrmacher continues with a summary of aesthetics which I find
impressive - and very recommendable as a brief general-purpose introduction
into the term 'aesthetics'! Yet he concludes:]

> Concerning language, Western philosophy of the 19th and 20th century has
> explored its communicative potential but at times missed a crucial point. 
> There is communication beyond written or spoken language which is as
> powerful as it is silent. And it can be increasingly observed that in
> communication a language based on words is a part, and not the whole. 
> Pictures and sounds, silence and performances, an art-filled space, and
> body language speak their own mind. 

Two remarks:

[1] At least the structuralist tradition of modern language thinking begins
with Saussure who, in his 'Cours de la linguistique générale', clearly
states that (a) linguistics is only a part of a more general science called
semiotics, (b) the linguistic rules he observed are only valid in written
language ('langue'), not in spoken language ('parole') and that they
wouldn't be applicable to the larger science of semiotics. Later
structuralists like Roland Barthes have disregarded these warnings,
nevertheless the awareness of semiotics as a larger discipline than
linguistics has always existed.

[2] Again it seems that Schirmacher is out of touch with the European
humanities. In contrast to Anglo-American cultural studies with their mix of
poststructuralist and postmarxist theory, the German 1990s discourse of
'Kulturwissenschaften' has been characterized by attempts to replace the
'linguistic turn' with an 'anthropological turn' and, at least in the case
of some scholars, do without analyzing language and without referring to
structuralist concepts at all!

> that perception and media become interchangeable. Such an observation is
> bound to be misunderstood as long as media is defined as a sender for
> which we are the receiver.

What a strange definition. I thought a 'medium' is a 'medium' because it is
in the middle between sender and receiver.

> Media aesthetics in Europe is preaching in the desert. Teachers and
> students are used to a talking head, the professor, and an audience taking
> notes. A discussion after the master's long talk gives future masters the
> opportunity to deliver their own talk, mimicking the professor's attitude.

Should only be the case at very conservative departments or in the French
educational system -- or, oddly enough, in the classes and lectures of somea
professors who are cutting edge in the humanities and hence have very eager,
sometimes epigonal students. Unfortunately, the same is frequently true for
'star' scholars and their students at ivy league universities in the U.S..

> There is a disregard for the form of the delivery - as long as the
> sentences pour out of a significant mouth - because the pre-media
> academics believe strongly in the traditional dichotomy of form and
> content and the dominance of content over form.

At least in literary studies this would be seen as an unreflected,
pre-critical position, but it's true that academics frequently fall back
behind their own premises when they speak about mass media.

> define playfully the mood of the times, will be forever incomprehensible
> to intellectuals who were never "In Bed with Madonna". 

In my opinion, Madonna has gained _way_ too much attention in 1990s cultural
studies everywhere in the world. I rather find it a problem that almost no
academic in the humanities has ever heard of - or could tell anything
intelligent about -, say, Luciano Berio, John Coltrane, Olga Neuwirth or,
speaking of films, Stan Brakhage or Lars von Trier.

> by dubbing them? The mostly state run or state influenced European media
> is boringly serious: in movies the actors talk for the talk of it, on TV
> celebrities chat for hours on end, and even the weather people are dead
> serious - with a few exceptions. Answering machines are not an opportunity
> for a re-defined communication but a technological and social problem, and
> computers are still considered a different kind of typewriter. The gap
> between philosophy and media has consequences for the media, too. Without

Again, this reminds me of the type of polemics people like Norbert Bolz or,
in journalism, Gundolf S. Freyermuth, made in the early and mid-1990s; two
people who started as die-hard Frankfurt School academics at Freie
Universität Berlin and then switched sides without revising their patterns
of thought: "old media" vs. "new media", "high culture" vs. "mass culture",
"Europe" vs. "America", etc. They tend to remind me of fierce atheists from
jesuit schools (who remain faithful catholics for the rest of their life
without being aware of it).

As Bolz and Freyermuth, Schirmacher fails to ask whether networked cultures
(be it in net art or, for example, Free Software) tend to dynamically
displace the borders; whether one has to think today of cultures as migrant
entities.

> leading edge of media. Not enough experience has been made with the new
> media of information technology such as computer conferencing and
> electronic libraries, and the computer itself is completely misunderstood.

One might refer to the geographical origins of the World Wide Web in Geneva
and Linux in Finland as counter-examples; at the same time, they signify how
irrelevant their origin has become and their superstructures are continually
shifting.

...

I am tired to comment upon the rest - generally, it strikes me that
Schirmacher's attempt to criticize European thinking is so old-fashioned
European itself - maybe somebody else on the list will continue?

Florian


Postscript:

Before sending this off, I checked the web and hit upon this book title:

   The Frankfurt School
   Edited by Wolfgang Schirmacher                
   Horkheimer: On the Concept of Philosophy; essays on Adorno; Ben-jamin:
  Theses on the Philosophy of History; Marcuse: On
   Hedonism, Solidarity, and The Catastrophe of Liberation; Habermas: essays
on Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse; and other
   works by Norbert Elias and Leo Löwenthal.
   324 pages0-8264-0966-0 hardcover $39.50
   0-8264-0967-9 paperback $19.95

This explains a lot! 
-- 
Florian Cramer, PGP public key ID 6440BA05
<http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/index.cgi>
Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
Freie Universität Berlin, Hüttenweg 9, D-14195 Berlin


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