Understanding the normative, understanding technology Media and Performance Culture Samuel Zwaan 3031608

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1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 3 2. Debord, Cybersituations, and the Interactive Spectacle .......................................... 5 3. The normative and the device paradigm...................................................................... 8 3.1 The Device Paradigm ................................................................................................. 8 3.2 Not understanding as normative ........................................................................... 10 4. Bibliography...................................................................................................................... 12

1. Introduction Increased mediatization and the development of new technologies not only impacts how we stage our behavior in public space, but also interferes with how we navigate through public space, listening to our iPods, looking at information screens, letting ourselves be directed by GPS, and distracted by commercials and other messages addressing us from countless screens. In recent academic works, for instance the book Alone Together by Sherry Turkle, we can see similar statements being made. Turkle discusses the impact of new technologies on the way we perform ourselves and on how we behave. In this recent publication she tends to position herself critically towards these new technologies and tries to zoom in on possible negative aspects resulting from the use of these new technologies next to the possible positive ones (interestingly enough Turkle used to focus more on the positive).1 More than performance and/or behavior, media technology transforms public space itself, expanding it into cyberspace and allowing for fluid crossings between the actual and the virtual. More and more the idea that the online and offline are two separate realms becomes a contested idea. In 2009 Richard Rogers for instance argues in his inaugural speech for the Chair of New Media & Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam that there is a new era of Internet research, which no longer concerns itself with the divide between the real and the virtual.2 These developments necessitate a rethinking between several relationships such as the private and the public, between performance and reality, between the authentic and the staged. Within this short paper I will focus on (rethinking) the relationship between performance and reality. It is true that the developments in media and new technologies can result in a shift between the relation of performance and reality. One such a shift can be read in the article Debord, Cybersituations, and the Interactive Spectacle by Steven Best and Douglas Kellner. The article focuses on the idea of The Spectacle by Debord and tries to update this idea because there is an advent of a new stage of the spectacle, requiring new technologies and forms of oppositional practice.3 In the first part of this paper I will explain Debords spectacle and the update of Best and Kellner. Although the focus will be on the article by Best and Kellner, other
Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2011) 2 Richard Rogers, The End of the Virtual Digital Methods, 3. http://www.govcom.org/rogers_paris_medialab.pdf 3 Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Debord, Cybersituations and the Interactive Spectacle Substance # 90 (1999), p. 129-156: 129.
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publications will be discussed to strengthen the explaining of the spectacle and relations with new technologies. One of the concluding remarks by Best and Kellner is that one can oppose the tie of the spectacle by constructing cybersituations using new technologies. This makes it possible to deconstruct the images of bourgeois society by exposing the hidden manipulation or repressive logic.4 However, In the second part of this paper I will show that it is not merely about the hidden manipulations and repressive logic of society but also about the new technologies themselves. It is foolish to state that new technologies automatically lead to western utopias of empowered people, a more democratic society and/or increased participation. Something which seems to be inclined often.5 Although best and Kellner do acknowledge this thought and are nuanced, they do not discuss the technologies themselves, something Albert Borgmann does extensively with his idea of the device paradigm. Using Borgmann, I will argue that it is important to also focus on the technology, to make it visible and to understand it. I will conclude by stating, in line with Best and Kellner (and Debord), that we indeed live in a(n) (increasingly) mediatized world, in a society of spectacle. I will restate the possible problems concerning this kind of society and will extend the solution posed by Best and Kellner on how to oppose a society of spectacle.

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Best and Kellner, 149. Mirko Tobias Schfer, Bastard Culture (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011)

2. Debord, Cybersituations, and the Interactive Spectacle Debords idea of the spectacle in part can be seen as an attempt to update Marxian theory, similar to what academics associated with the Frankfurt School such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Benjamin have done. The latter described how the culture industry defused critical consciousness, providing a key means of distraction and stupefaction, and developed the first neo-Marxist theories of the media and consumer society.6 In short, the distraction and stupefaction lead to exploitation of specific social groups. The authors of the article Debord, Cybersituations, and the Interactive Spectacle state that again there is a need to update, but this time an update of Debords spectacle because there is an advent of a new stage of the spectacle, requiring new technologies and forms of oppositional practice.7 Debord and the Situationists, an internationalist European revolutionary group, tried to revision classical Marxism focused on production by highlighting the importance of social reproduction and the emergence of a consumer and media society.8 Debord argued we live in a society of the spectacle, a society were individuals consume a world fabricated by others rather than producing one of their own.9 It is a society rooted in a capitalist mode of production, producing commodities, reorganized as a consumer and entertainment society relegating subjects to passivity.10 In a sense the spectacle is a pacifier. In line with the concept of the culture industry Debord states that the spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life.11 It is problematic because the spectacle does not serve the subject or plainly written, the citizen. It serves and expands the power of the capitalist class who are exploiting other social groups. The advanced abstraction of the spectacle even brings with it, according to Debord, that the appearance of the commodity is more decisive than its actual use value and the symbolic packaging of commodities generates an image industry and new commodity aesthetics. The spectacle escalates abstraction to the point where one no longer lives in the world per se but in an abstract image of the world.12 What is produced is a philosophization of reality, separating thought from action as it idealizes

Best and Kellner, 130. Ibid., 129. 8 Ibid., 131. 9 Ibid., 132. 10 Ibid. 11 Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black and Red, 1967): 42. 12 Best and Kellner, 134, 142.
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and hypostatizes the world of the spectacle.13 Debord saw the authentication of the illusion becoming more real than real itself. Best and Kellner rethink this concept of the spectacle stating that media and technology are not simply control mechanisms but also arent simply ways of empowering people and a means to resist. Especially with new media and new technologies the spectacle has evolved into an interactive spectacle in which the authors contrast the possibilities of active participation against controlling mechanisms. Nuances are being made between the extremes of being controlled or enabling participation regarding the spectacle, media and technology. Even in Debords idea on the spectacle these extremes were not as clear.14 However, the authors do see the possibility of constructing cybersituations involving the appropriation, use, and reconstruction of technologies against the spectacle.15 Aesthetic strategies such as dtournement, the drive and the constructed situation could lead to exposing and oppressing the repressive logic and hidden manipulations vis--vis the society of spectacle.16 These strategies resemble de Certeaus notion of tactics. For de Certeau, tactics consist in momentary disruptions to the coercive power of strategic structures. Tactics have no goal beyond the sometimes playful, always critical exposure of the workings of the normative.17 This notion of the normative is crucial because what Debord argues, but also Best and Kellner, is that the spectacle has become normative. Best and Kellner argue, in line with de Certeau, that there needs to be a disruption of the normative to make it visible. New media and new technologies offer people the possibility to this disruption. However, this drastically undermines the position of technology, and seems

Debord, 19. Best and Kellner, 143. 14 Various examples are given by Best and Kellner on why it was never a clear picture. In Debords description on the spectacle, media and technology spectators were not merely dupes or conduits of manipulation. At the same time, many of the forms of cyberculture do not advance genuine interaction and/or participation. Voicing in your vote on an MTV videoclip should not be exaggerated as some high form of participation. 15 Best and Kellner, 149. 16 Dtournement: a means of deconstructing the images of bourgeois society by exposing the hidden maniplulations or repressive logic; Drive: an imaginative, hallucinatory drift through the urban environment; Constructed situation: Designed to unfetter, create, and experiment with desires. Best and Kellner 149-150. 17 Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984): 45-60. Susan Leigh Foster, Walking and other Choreographic Tactics: Danced Interventions of Theatricality and Performativity. SubStance # 98/99, Vol. 31, nos. 2 & 3, 2002, 125-146: 131.
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to just take the technology being used for granted. Perhaps a valid question is the relation between technology and the workings of the normative?

3. The normative and the device paradigm In the discussion on the spectacle, media and technology it became clear that there are possibilities to being controlled or to active participation (and thus oppressing the spectacle). As Best and Kellner explained, there are strategies to oppose the spectacle such as deconstructing the images of bourgeois society by exposing the hidden manipulation or repressive logic. However, I would like to add that it is not only important to make visible the hidden manipulation and/or repressive logic of society but also of technology (that which seems to make it possible to expose the repressive logic). Technology often, also in the case of Best and Kellner, is discussed only from a perspective of uses. What is left aside is the understanding of the technology itself, something which is important as made clear by Albert Borgmann in his idea of the device paradigm. After this explanation I will conclude this paper by extending the argument made by Best and Kellner on how to oppose the society of the spectacle. 3.1 The Device Paradigm Let us take a closer look at how Borgmann explains the device paradigm especially to grasp concepts to understand why it is important to understand the technology: The presence of things is replaced with the availability of commodities and availability is procured through devices. Devices dissolve the coherent and engaging character of the pretechnological world of things. In a device the relatedness of the world is replaced by a machinery, but the machinery is concealed, and the commodities, which are made available by a device, are enjoyed without the encumbrance of or the engagement with a context. In sum, the machinery of devices, unlike the context of things, is either entirely occluded or only cerebrally and anonymously present. It is in this sense necessarily unfamiliar. The function of the device, on the other hand, and the commodity it provides are available and enjoyed in consumption.18

Albert Borgmann, Technology and Character of Contemporary Life (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984): 47.
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A thing,[ such as a woodstove], in Borgmann's use of the term, brings with it bodily and/or social engagement with the things in the world (which can be burdensome).19 In this sense a thing necessarily brings with it more than any single commodity it may make available.20 Commodities are highly reduced entities and abstract in the sense that within the overall framework of technology they are free of local and historical ties. Thus they are sharply defined and easily measured.21 We move away from things toward devices. These devices (such as a furnace) serve to make a single commodity highly available while concealing the characteristic way its commodity (such as warmth) is procured. Devices are disposable, discontinuous with their larger context, and glamorous in their appeal.22 Thus a furnace ordinarily provides mere warmth, preferably in an instantaneous, ubiquitous, safe, and easy way.23 The device, then, disburdens us of both social and bodily engagement of the thing, leaving only the commodity (warmth) in evidence.24 What happens in this disburdening is that the means and the ends of a technological device get separated. We use technological devices to cater to our needs and desires. As devices have evolved through the decades, their mechanisms and rationales have become more and more complicated. At the same time, the user interface with the device is getting more intuitive and easier to use.25

A woodstove is used to furnish more than mere warmth. It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and leisure of a family and gave the house a center. Its coldness marked the morning and the spreading of its warmth the beginning of the day. It assigned to the different family members tasks that defined their place in the household. The mother built the fire, the children kept the firebox filled, and the father cut the firewood. It provided for the entire family a regular and bodily engagement with the rhythm of the seasons that was woven together of the threat of cold and the solace of warmth, the smell of wood smoke, the exertion of sawing and of carrying, the teaching of skills, and the fidelity to daily tasks. These features of physical engagement and of family relations are only first indications of the full dimensions of a thing's world. Borgmann, 41-42. 20 Jesse S. Tatum, Technology and Values: Getting beyond the "Device Paradigm" Impasse in Science, Technology & Human Values vol. 19.1 (1994): 70-87, 72. Borgmann 41. 21 Ibid., 81. 22 Strong and Higgs, 22. 23 A device such as a central heating plant procures mere warmth and disburdens us of all other elements. These are taken over by the machinery of the device. The machinery makes no demands on our skill, strength, or attention, and it is less demanding the less it makes its presence felt. In the progress of technology, the machinery of a device has therefore a tendency to become concealed or to shrink. Of all the physical properties of a device, those alone are crucial and prominent which constitute the commodity that the device procures. Borgmann, 42. 24 Ibid., 72-73. 25 Mau and Park.
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The trend of devices being easier to use but harder to figure out can be observed in all areas where technology is present. Consequently, people have stopped trying to understand the details of how they are getting the ends from the means and just blindly use the devices. Because of this, technology has separated means from end, whereas in meaningful human activities that perhaps our grandfather or grandmother participated in, the means and end is not disjoint or neatly distinguished.26 3.2 Not understanding as normative What has become clear now is that the means and the ends have become separated, there is a focus on the means (on the uses) as stated at the beginning of this chapter. The move towards devices and the resulting commodification should be seen as a part of the spectacle. When talking about living in a mediatized world or as Debord argued living in a society of the spectacle, a society were individuals consume a world fabricated by others rather than producing one of their own, technology is fundamental constitutive element in the mediatization.27 And what has become clear is that technology increases the mediatization and sustains the society of the spectacle due to the move towards devices which we dont fully comprehend. Similar to the problems Best and Kellner state on the normative experience of the society of the spectacle, not fully comprehending or not understanding technology also seems to be the norm. It is not expected of most people that they understand how their computer works or how a car works. This becomes all the more clear when realizing that we have specialists for this. For something to be special it cannot be the norm, if everybody knows how to do it or would understand it, it would not be special anymore. So a way to approach the current situation would be again, in line with de Certeau, to disrupt the normative situation using tactics, as discussed in section 2. Not only disrupting the normative situation of the society of the spectacle but also of the media and technologies that make possible this society. A couple of days ago I visited Festival aan de Werf in The Netherlands and bought a ticket for the show LIBRARY. Within this show or performance the medium of the book was approached from several perspectives, the medium was questioned and as a result I had to rethink the medium book. I was confronted with the possibilities of the medium, on how it came to be and that it matters how I approach a medium. Other examples of disrupting the normative

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Ibid. Ibid., 132.

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can be found all around, several examples are given in the article Trespassing Relevance.28 It should be mentioned that it seems here an important role for the arts becomes clear. To disrupt the normative, to make visible the structures hiding behind everyday life, we can turn to the possibilities that art offers us. Art can provoke, question and make us rethink that which is seemingly normative and/or everyday life such as the repressive logic and hidden manipulation of the spectacle but also make us understand more the technologies we use perhaps rethinking these devices and seeing once more the things that were.

Trespassing Relevance in: Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette The Interventionists. Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life . Mass MoCa publications, (2004).
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4. Bibliography Borgmann, Albert. Technology and Character of Contemporary Life. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984. Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner Debord, Cybersituations and the Interactive Spectacle Substance # 90 (1999), p. 129-156. Certeau, Michel de, The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: California University Press, 1984. Groys, Boris, Going Public. New York: Sternberg Press, 2010. Jen Harvie. Theatre & The City. Palgrave McMillan, 2008. Foster, Susan Walking and other Choreographic Tactics: Danced Interventions of Theatricality and Performativity. SubStance # 98/99, Vol. 31, nos. 2 & 3, 2002, 125-146. Morgan Mau and James Park, The Device Paradigm, http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/spring04/projects/5.pdf Richard Rogers, The End of the Virtual Digital Methods. http://www.govcom.org/rogers_paris_medialab.pdf Schfer, Mirko Tobias. Bastard Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011. Strong, David and Higgs, Higgs. Borgmanns Philosophy of Technology in Technology and the Good Life? Red. Eric Higgs, Andrew Light and David Strong. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000. Tatum, Jesse S. Technology and Values: Getting beyond the "Device Paradigm" Impasse in Science, Technology & Human Values vol. 19.1 (1994): 70-87.

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Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Trespassing Relevance in: Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette The Interventionists. Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. Mass MoCa publications, (2004). Verhoeff, Nanna Mobile Screens: The Visual Regime of Navigation. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012.

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