(Re-)Imagining New Media

The Introduction contextualizes the main argument of the book within the context of media theoretical discussions at the end of the twentieth century and provides an overview over the contributions of the book.

When researching the often-exuberant promises that accompany new technologies and new forms of computational media, we navigate the seas between the Scylla of pure description (or worse: naïve celebration), and the Charybdis of all too easy deconstruction or critiques of others’ ideology. For a successful voyage, we need theoretical tools and approaches that allow fine-grained analysis of prospective practices. In my analysis of fieldwork among a very specific group of engineers in the San Francisco Bay Area—a research collective working towards a radically new idea of computational media—I employ the notion of the promise, as it was developed in the sociology of expectations, as well as in some newer contributions in Science and Technology Studies. The results are terminological suggestions, some of which are newly developed by drawing on the differences in meaning of three possible translations of the term promise in the German language: “Versprechen”, “Versprechung” and “Verheißung”. The paper concludes with a plea to extend the analysis of the promise to the ways that we as ethnographers, authors and readers are dragged into in the social constellations of promises. After all, we are part of these constellations, as promisees, as potential witnesses, and as fellow-promisers. As much as the analysis of promises implies us to be “reluctant to judge too quickly” (Fortun 2005, p. 170), a reflective approach also allows for more than only detached analysis.

Following the assumption that imagination consists of social practices of ‘imagining,’ the text sketches the theoretical premises for such an idea by claiming that an STS-based approach towards the performativity of technology demonstrations can give valuable insights for the discussion of media art. In the third part we will discuss the problem how temporality, imagination and performativity are intertwined in technology demonstrations. The text concludes with an argument regarding the relation between media art and the problem of the ‘future’ of new media.

This text unfolds three arguments about the relation between television and imagination. Every argument has a different focus: The first systematic argument claims that television is based on a deep ambiguity: it constantly moves between artistic imagination on the one hand, and, on the other, the notion of a domestic medium that only represents the ordinary reality of everyday life. The second historical argument follows the assumption that this ambiguity, or difference, ended in the middle of the 1980s and was replaced by a new thinking about television as an opening of new layers of the imaginary. The third epistemological argument will give a proposal about what this new way of thinking about television may implicate regarding the concept of virtuality. The discussion develops along the four concepts in the title of this paper, which serve to describe different expectations for television.

Science-Fiction is not only a resource for potentialities of possible futures, but also serves as an archive of past futures and their contemporary reflections on social changes. Within the estranged worlds of the narrations, the authors present the contemporary imaginaries of how society should (or should not) develop in the future. William Gibson’s Neuromancer is an important example of this archive. In a dizzyingly detailed description, Gibson depicts a dystopian future dominated by the prevailing irritations and common uncertainties about the future caused by the all-encompassing changes of the 1980s, a decade in which western societies were entering an era of late capitalism with new global market structures and the embedding of new technologies in the everyday life on a unprecedented scale. Within his world Gibson extrapolates the technological potentialities of new and emerging digital technologies like virtual reality, artificial intelligence and a digital Cyberspace, which is similar to what is today known as the internet, and lays out the implicit sociotechnical imaginaries of his generation. Reciprocally, his novel fostered and distributed the structure of feeling of the ‘80s on a larger scale, as it became one of the pioneer works of the emerging Cyberpunk movement—an influential vision of the future of outgoing twentieth century. This essay is exploring the sociotechnical imaginaries by analyzing the role of new technologies within the power structures of Neuromancers storyworld.

The artist collective Van Gogh TV developed an interactive television show that was broadcast live for a hundred days during documenta IX in 1992, testing the boundaries of communication systems in the virtual space from early on. When they named it Piazza virtuale they directly linked it to the town square, the Italian piazza, through the use of a topographical term which implies that there is a resemblance between the square’s function in society and the function of the program on television. This essay will focus first on this idea that the town square is an ideal site for the manifestation of the public sphere by outlining social practices associated with it throughout history. Secondly, it will highlight how Piazza virtuale also provided a space for such social activities. When re-imagining them now, it becomes apparent that the program anticipated the essential role of the virtual space as a social platform today. With Piazza virtuale, the public sphere was expanded beyond the physical, and certain techniques were employed to encourage this expansion. The essay will search for visual representations of architecture within the television program which have been used throughout art history to provide authenticity to artificial spaces. Furthermore, linguistic techniques will be noted, such as the use of the name Piazza virtuale, as references to concepts that are known from our traditional environment.

In this interview, the members of the media artist group Van Gogh-TV provide insight into the production of their interactive television project Piazza virtuale at the documenta IX art exhibition in Kassel/Germany 1992. The original idea, the conceptual and technical challenges, the reactions at the time and the follow-up project Service area a.i. (1994) are discussed. The interview also addresses the legacy of the project and its relevance in the current media landscape.