Closing the Text

Violence and Its Influence on the Media Arts

by Jason A. Harrington


Introduction
The familiar polarity between representation and abstraction plays a vital roll in an attempt to understand trends within contemporary media arts. Perhaps the stronger polar element stems out of the art historical tradition wherein the representation serves as a direct pathway to the subject depicted; the subject matter, or narrative, is served better by an unambiguous, iconic mode of presentation. This traditional mode has undergone infinite variations, ranging from medieval, religious iconography, to photorealist painting, to virtual reality experiments.

In contrast to this movement we find a parallel history of artists who emphasize the disjuncture between subject and depiction, artists concerned with process, qualities of the medium and perceptual modalities. Perhaps this tendency is most often tied to movements challenging traditional modes of representation. This tendency can be traced back to the Judaic denunciation of icons and images subject to idolization.(Note:1) One of the purest expressions of this tendency is found in the avant-garde and the modernist constituency which challenged orthodox representational modes.

The media arts have inherited both traditions, with a profound resonance occurring where the two parts meet. While it is clear that the media arts are a continuation of the impulse toward representational, realist, and illusory art, the young histories of media such as film and video are deeply tided to the avant-garde and formalist movements. While the capacity for illusory representation was increasing, the conventions of this tradition were being destroyed. A new mode brought irrevocably into play the connection between medium and content. In such work the role of the viewer in relation to the work becomes far more complex. Indeed this relation between viewer and work has become central to the value and meaning of contemporary art. For example, categories such as ‘concept art’ changed the role of the art object and redefined the relationship between viewer, artwork and subject. Today, serious art criticism can not be undergone without considering the medium in relation not only to the artwork, but also to the audience.

Although the media arts have embraced both tendencies (2), violence and what I will later refer to as the ‘force of illusion’ play a fundamental role in determining which mode is chosen. I will try and avoid the argument that one direction is more “artistic” than another (although some of the quotes I use reflect a bias). The emphasis it seems should be not on what is or is not art, but what approaches are more appropriate to our times and why.

It will be argued that the postmodern period has neutralized the modernist anti-hero while maintaining the romantic, post-enlightenment attitudes toward technological development. This trend has created a kind of anti-anti-hero which denies the regenerative possibilities of violence and creates an esthetic of violence aimed at filling an ever-growing sensation void. The modernist anti-hero has lost its counter-cultural role, and been superceded by a nilist agenda aimed not at any specific negation, but rather attacking in a general, almost chaotic pattern of negation.

The title of this essay is based on a book by Umberto Eco, entitled The Open Work (Opera aperta). “The [open] text presents the reader with a “field” of possibilities and leaves it in large part to him or her to decide what approach to take.” (3) Closing the Text explores the challenge to openness in the media arts.
This discussion of violence and its relation to the media arts is founded on the premise that there is a possibility for the overall development of a greater level of human awareness. (4) If human consciousness is understood as static and inflexible, if the historical process is not seen in light of shifts in human perception, then the discussion of art and its relation to violence is at best an intellectual exercise. This is my bias and the basis of my point of view.

Media -Information
The terms violence and “the media” have become familial. It is interesting that media, from the word medium, refers in one sense to the substances which allow for the disbursement of information. Recently we have created the singular, collective noun, “the media,” which has become a thing, an independent entity. The boundary between media and the things they serve to convey has become blurred to the point were medium is often mistaken for subject. In this new sense we could say, “the media is violent.” In any normal conversation the distortion in such a statement would easily be overlooked. It is clear what it means. But why is it clear? How can a radio wave or a TV set be violent? A CD sitting on the shelf is no more violent then the dust collecting on it. In the original sense medium is synonymous with vehicle. The latter meaning however, is a metonymic substitution similar to saying, “the car will be arriving at 10pm,” and meaning, “I will be arriving at 10pm.” The vehicle has replaced the human content.

In order to make the statement, ‘the media is violent’ (which I here make only by way of example) we must have in mind not simply a technological vehicle, but rather qualities which these media share. This is to say that media carry qualitative attributes. Media are not neutral. Furthermore if media are not neutral then there can be no such thing as pure information. All information is contained within a medium. Information and stimuli cannot be separated from the media which carry and/or filter them. While on the one hand we name the information by its media (“Lets listen to that CD”), we fail to see the real interrelationship. By way of abstract example, imagine the air as medium and light as information. Certain types of air carry different types of light. While we may not notice the ultraviolet rays on a clear summer’ day, we do detect the color variation as the sun nears the horizon.

The American standard for television monitors is called NTSC, and is nicknamed Never Twice the Same Color. Professional studios have equipment for balancing these colors, but essentially, color variation on a consumer level is quite large. For a video artist who specializes in color this is analogous to a painter painting on a chemically treated canvas which once out of the studio and into the gallery will look utterly different then when painted. While we may claim to hear the difference between a CD and a vinyl record, we are typically unaware of the shifts which took place when the music industry began using compact discs to market music. When the qualitative attributes of a medium are unnoticed or hidden their influence on the meaning of the expression they serve to convey is also denied.

The qualities of a medium are its linguistic characteristics. This is to say that in every artistic expression there are two components generating meaning. The primary component is the represented material. The secondary component is the medium. Poetry is the fundamental example of this, for the discipline of poetry acknowledges that there are two voices speaking, one the voice originating in the mind of the artist and the other the voice of the words and forms of the language itself. Sculpture is a physical medium whose defining characteristics are those of three-dimensional space. Film is a complex technical medium whose essential attributes are time, light, and sound. In terms of television, film and video, which deal primarily with the sound/image illusion of reality, the balance between awareness of “language” (fundamental characteristics of the medium) and content is especially difficult. Typically the medium used is intended to go unnoticed and this according to Juri Lotman destroys artistic communication.

“… [A] participant in an act of artistic communication obtains information, not only from the message, but also from the language in which art converses with him. He resembles a person who simultaneously studies the language in which a book has been written and the content of that book. Therefore in the act of artistic communication language is never an unnoticeable, automatized, predictable system.”
Jurij Lotman, Semiotics of Cinema

According to Lotman, artistic communication demands a conscious relationship between the mode of expression and the meaning being expressed. In other words art demands a unique connection between medium and information.

Perception -Sensation
Perception is work. Sensation is automatic. Perception requires reaching out. People often think that the percept flows into us through our eyes, ears, and skin. They do not realize that we reach out to the world with our minds.

“In Western art, the picture is generally conceived as seen in a frame or through a window, and so brought towards the spectator; but the Oriental image really exists only in our mind and heart and thence is projected or reflected into space.” (5)
-A.K. Coomaraswamy

One mind perceives differently then the next. How is it then, that we all look at a tree and say that its leaves are green? Green, the term, the idea, the concept is a generalization that our culture has developed as a category within our language. Different languages distinguish different concepts in various ways. For example, in German, history and story are the same word. The “green” leaves are in fact far more complex in color then the term allows. Sometimes we call things according to what we have learned and not what we see. As a child my father would point to different things and ask me what color they were. “What color is that seagull?” “White,” I said. “No, it is blue.” It wasn’t until I began painting from nature that I learned what he was talking about.

Recently in an attempt to understand color balancing for film and video I e-mailed a friend who teaches color theory. Why do we perceive a white page as white in sunlight or artificial light when film and video will look blue and orange respectively? (6) Are these media more sensitive then the human eye? The answer she suggested (7) was that we adjust the relationship according to a learned mode of perception. White only exists in relation to other colors. White is relative. Film stocks cannot adjust and must be balanced to simulate different color relationships. People do not appear bluer in daylight unless we think they do. What we see is directly connected to how we think. Seeing and thinking are in fact one act, conscious or unconscious.

Bill Viola, in his book Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House makes the excellent analogy between our senses and filters.

“[T]he twentieth-century philosopher Henri Bergson suggested […] that the senses should be regarded as limiters to the total amount of energy that bombards our beings, preventing the individual from being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that exists at each and every instant. A glance at the chart showing the spectrum of electromagnetic energy vibration that makes up the universe, and the narrow slit, or bandwidth, in that scale corresponding to the small range of these vibrations to which our sensory receptors are sensitive and it would seem that this is indeed the case.” (8)

It must follow then that if the senses are limiters and the stimuli confronting us in our daily existence begins to overwhelm our senses, like the pupil of the eye in too much light, we will begin to shut down, not physically of course, but mentally. Is not the human inclination and spirit quite different from this? Has not our emancipation always proceeded out of new ways of seeing the world?

The famous video artist, Nam June Paik distinguishes between and artists’ “input-time” and his or her “output-time.” Although he was not using these terms to refer to thinking as a kind of output mode of perception, the concept is closely related. Paik used the terms to reference time spent absorbing or capturing material and time playing back or exporting material. However, Paik does call for categories with which we might evaluate levels of input.

“Much confusion about today’s video art comes from the lack of categories to distinguish ‘good and boring art’ from ‘bad and boring art.’” (9)

The distinction Paik is calling for here is one involving the difference between perception and sensation. Work that is slow yet sensual enough to invite perception must be distinguishes from work which inspires no active relationship. In fact this is the reverse side of the problem of violence. One could even argue that there is a violence of non-stimulus. A poignant example of this comes at the end of the film Dancer in the Dark, when the blind women, confined in a silent prison, begins to go insane.

Art -Violence
Violence, evil and destruction are, like any other natural category, the rightful territory of any artist. Indeed it seems that the artist in particular, is the one who seeks most fervently to unveil the human and natural tendencies toward these forces. What then are the modes of examining and exploring these forces? What effects do these modes have on their audience?

Stimulus, as we have seen, is not simply a matter of sensory input. It involves the perceptual strengths and filtering abilities of the individual. Furthermore, perception is also influenced by environmental factors such as surrounding audience, social environment, and physical space. In my experience, the reaction to a violent piece of artwork greatly depends on the context in which the work is framed. Violence in this sense is closely related to the negation of perceptual freedom.

One form of violence, as related to the media arts, can be said to deny perception (using the above definition of perception as a conscious engagement reaching outward from the individual as opposed to sensation). Violence belonging to this category functions by circumventing conscious interaction and relying on predefined codes, norms of visual communication and social stereotypes. Violence of this kind appeals to emotional triggers. It is not only the depiction of extreme force or vehemence, but also a more subtle type of violence. It includes the violence of propaganda, manipulation, and theft. These types of violence are outwardly passive, or invisible, their aggression operates on the unconscious or semi-conscious level of perception.

Standard filmmaking and advertising rely on established conventions to manipulate emotion response. The typical notion of the violent image is one that depicts excessive force or evokes disgust or fear. However, there are many images which are violent in this way, but do not in the end negate perceptual freedom. In a time based medium openness can happen after a violent image, creating a space for interpretation within the following sequences. In fact most images evoke emotional responses and in the end perhaps the definition of a violent image must depend on questions of intention and complexity of meaning.

If the entire media work operates in a violent, manipulative mode then perceptual freedom can exist only after the work is finished. Unfortunately this opportunity is often prevented as well. In fact it has become less and less common that media experiences are discussed or processed in any social form after these events. Stimulation has become the sole purpose of many media experiences; a necessity for perception is not expected. The media artist confronts this especially when creating work which is particularly lacking in traditionally stimulating tactics.

It is important to establish that the above-mentioned opportunity to process violent work must also be considered in relationship with the level of familiarity with the language of the media. Artists who work in film or video are perhaps more able to consciously process violent work in their own field. There is also a language base with which the work can be discussed. The problem of violence can be compared to a greater problem in the art world. The tendency of the art world to seem élitist has to do with the availability of a mediums’ language-base to non-artists.

Much of Bill Viola’s work provides an example of violent subject matter presented in a form which demands a conscious act of perception. Viola is difficult to place on any scale of aggressiveness. Some of his pieces are extremely intense and clearly designed for emotional impact. Other pieces by Viola are formal and delicate. Perhaps in evaluating violent work we should return to the question of filters. Does the work open up possibilities for meaning, does it create a living pathway between itself and the viewer, or does it enhance our tendency to filter and decrease our sensitivity? (10)

In his piece Angels Gate, Viola offers a series of brief moments, spaces and events. Meaning exists in this piece only in so far as we are willing to read these sequences and connect them through association and imagination: A building collapses, black, old photographs on a mantle piece, black, candles in an echoing space-one goes out, black, a family portrait is taken, black, an apple falls off a tree, black, a bloody carcass on a conveyor and a women knelling on a blood covered floor, black, a TV set and coffee maker sitting on the foot of the bed where Viola is dozing, black, a Red Tail hawk tied to a stand trying to fly, black, a child underwater, black, a newborn taken from the womb and passed to the mother, black, passage through a gate into full light, black.

Birth imagery, death imagery, the struggle for freedom, I will not smother such a piece in a wordy interpretation. Suffice it to say that meaning lies in the viewer’s willingness and ability to place what is separated in information together in the mind. As with language, a meaning develops out of the pattern of individual signs.

Reality-Virtual Reality
“Reflecting on this trend of the recording media becoming more and more realistic, one can easily say that their ultimate goal is perhaps to become invisible, to become completely transparent, to become indistinguishable from what they record (i.e. to achieve the highest “fidelity”). Looking to the future, most people in the field would say that film and television are steering themselves towards some kind of life-size, three-dimensional, holographic, audio-visual projection, almost indistinguishable from a real scene. Farther far-out futurists speak of a medium-less medium, electrical stimulation directly to the brain to evoke sequences of mental sensations virtually identical with perceived external reality.” (11)

It is clear that we are caught in a driving force toward this thing we call realism. But what does this movement reflect in us, as a society, as a culture? Is not this need for greater realism really at its core a desire for illusion? We know that an experience in the movie theatre is greatly defined by the degree to which we are able to “suspend our disbelief.” What prompts this suspension of disbelief? A child needs very little; indeed at first the block of wood is everything. (12) Adults find it harder and harder to sink into this suspended state and require greater “realism.” In truth what is required is greater force of illusion (emotional impact). Contemporary virtual reality machines are nothing but video games targeting as many sensory sites as possible. Illusion does not belong to the image alone, but exists in relation to the mind.

What can it possibly mean that we refer to images which operate purely at a semiotic level as realistic? Surely a move toward greater realism is then an attempt to lesson the perceptibility of the sign as sign. This is to create the illusion of unmediated perception. Not only have we lost sight of the connection between object and percept, (13) but we are also seeking to deny the influence of the media on the pathway between representation and mind. Realism in reference to media is the deception that the medium does not exist and therefore, does not influence the percept. It is this denial of mediation that lies at the heart of a singularly Western neurosis. We have indeed created a mythological system of representation to the great advantage of those who control “the media.” Nothing is therefore further from real then “realism.”

Violence sustains the force of illusion. This can be easily observed if one looks at the progression of programs and films for children over the last few decades. There is not only a clear increase in general qualities which stimulate (noise, color, movement), but also the subject of the programs has become more violent.

It is difficult to identify what it is about our culture, or our time period that creates this drive toward a greater force of illusion. Where does it come from and what sustains it? The trend seems to be that realism, as presented through advancing media technologies depends on an illusory mode. This illusory mode appeals directly to the senses and some part of our consciousness which is pre-structured. This can be contrasted with conscious, direct observation. These two pathways indicate a clear polarity: one appeals directly to the emotional body and sensational experience, the other to the perceptual, active and conscious mind. One must look to economic, political and social factors for a justification of a mode which so favors the emotions and forgoes an active engagement with the mind.

Open - Closed
Meaning exists in the mediated space, the place between the dialectic. Unfortunately, we are never taught to see in the way we are taught to read, and seeing, like reading, soon becomes an automatic thing, learned, static and unconscious. It is forgotten that seeing is “mediated” in the same way that reading is. Language has the potential to expand infinitely.

“The act of encoding information is the act of arranging elements into a pattern, putting intelligence, purpose, or intent into something. The act of decoding (retrieval) is to extract that organization out of the pattern, sensing the intent or intelligence behind the organization of that pattern.” (14)

The Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky shares with Viola a similar understanding for the importance of an active mind on the part of the viewer. The problem exists in the form in which these images are laid before the audience. One is an accepted form, known and quickly recognized, which allows for immediate recognition of meaning. Repetition of the mode of presentation easily allows that mode to sink to the unconscious level of human experience.

Marx called this realm the “substratum.” For Marx the important thing to know about it was the character of the regime of production that inexorably conditioned human life: for the great social thinkers of the next generation the crucial concern was the irrational, virtually unchanging nature of human sentiments-what Freud usually referred to as “drives” and what Pareto rather awkwardly termed “residues.” However radically these thinkers differed from Marx, they at least agreed with him that what was “deepest” in human conduct for the most part fell into a pattern of mere repetition.” (15)

Here we are beginning to codify the two approaches expressed in the media arts. A producer relies on a pre-established form and uses repetition to insure the maximum potential for automatic decoding. Viola compares this process in the media arts to the toy industry. A block of wood he argues has more creative potential, then all the highly defined and complex products of the plastics industry. Furthermore, without the effort which the wooden block demands on the part of the child, the capacity for imaginative involvement is not engaged. This he directly relates to the inability of an audience to engage an open text. Visual “illiteracy” it seems leads to the dependence on set formats of presentation.

“Complexities of thought and poetic visions of the world do not have to be thrust into the framework of the patently obvious. The usual logic, that of linear sequentially, is uncomfortably like the proof of a geometry theorem. As a method it is incomparably less fruitful artistically than the possibilities opened up by associative linking, which allows for an affective as well as a rational appraisal.” (16)
-Andrey Tarkovsky

The relation of these two approaches seems to balance on the question of violence and force of illusion. However, one missing link is an economic relationship. As we have seen any repetitious form of communication sinks to the “substratum.” But the message still has to hold force or it will render advertising and entertainment ineffective. Because sensation is automatic, few on either side of the media flow wish to use a perceptual approach. Producers and advertisers do not want to create an open text and most of us don’t want to come home after a long day and have to work to figure out just what this TV program might mean.

This relationship creates a positive feedback loop. Eventually the input that easily stimulates me is no longer entertaining. The producers up the sensory output without risking any major deviation in the mode of presentation and temporarily satisfy the consumer. Once the consumer finds this level familiar the input level is not enough. Has anyone not experience such a shift within his or her lifetime? What we were sensitive to at one point in our lives we are no longer gripped by. Part of this is a natural process of human development. However, to assume that every mature adult is already desensitized, and thereby justify a militaristic iconoclasm seems like a Stalinistic approach to restructuring culture.

The artist, whether driven by economic concerns or not, is forced to contend with our social relationship to aggressive media. In the arts we recognize an array of approaches to this problem.

We need to rethink the current ideal of the artist as aggressive anti-hero. It would be interesting to trace the progression of this tradition of artist as anti-hero, although it seems that this trend is particularly postmodern. The Greeks clearly concerned themselves with expressions of the ideal and heroic. The reemergence of the classical in the Renaissance finds a more subversive side to the artist. Leonardo is typically held out as the archetypal example of the artist who seeks to expand the boundaries of knowledge. He would illegally seek out cadavers and probe within them to discover the truth about the physical workings of the body. His carefully rendered, anatomical cross section of a couple in intercourse must have carried radical force. We live in a different world today, a world saturated with violent images. Shocking performance and media art simply exist within a similar, yet less meaningful, violent media context. Sensational art is practically cliché.

I once had the opportunity of working with an emergency medical doctor. He once explained the process of training toward his medical degree. Part of this training consisted of a period of several months where he worked alone in a long basement room. The room consisted of nothing but rows of cadavers. It seemed that this part of his training had the twofold purpose of teaching him anatomy and desensitizing him to the reality of the medical practice. It was hard to read whether he was telling this for reasons of pride at the strength he had found or out of a sense of something lost through that process.

If we are to accept the notion of the artist as someone who pushes against the walls of ideology, then the artist of today cannot continue to feed the pool of extreme stimulus as a way of vying for attention.

“There is another advantage in our approach. The method whereby the artist obliges the audience to build the separate parts into a whole, and to think on, further than has been stated, is the only one that puts the audience on a par with the artist in their perception of the film. And indeed from the point of view of mutual respect only that kind of reciprocity is worthy of artistic practice.” (17)

The challenge the artist faces is to avoid the trap of struggling for attention. The human tendency is still one that reaches for knowledge and can be inspired by mystery. An artist’s struggle is one of separation, an introspective tendency that separates one from ideological and social structures in so far as they are unconscious impulses. Media technologies are perhaps the greatest challenge in this respect. They seem to naturally belong to the realm of artistic expression yet their very nature is illusive and addictive. It is this very nature which has drawn me to the media arts, for not to confront them is not to know them and not to know them is to blindly participate in the forms they utilize.


Endnotes:
1. See Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1965)
2. As I have describe this is in part due to such historical factors such as the relation early video had with the avant-garde. On the other side, video art belongs very much to the category we call ‘new media’ and as such is subject to the tendencies such technological media seem to evoke. ‘New media,’ like ‘memory technology, belong to that category which seems driven by impulses to re-present, record, and create illusions of reality.
3.Umberto Eco, The Open Work (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989) from the introduction by David Robey, p.x
4. Perhaps it is important to note that violence as I use the word belongs not simply to the human category of destruction, but to a simpler understanding as well. Violence is undeniably connected to natural events and is therefore not necessarily connected to issues of morality. One can easily see violence in the production of food, in birth, death and many natural, transitional moments in life. I have consciously avoided redefining the word as Viola does, separating violence from brutality. While such a distinction is useful the boundaries for this redefinition would require a careful and extensive elaboration.
5. A.K. Cooraraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art (new York: Dover Publications, 1956) from Bill Viola, Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press in association with the Anthony d’Offay Gallery London, 1998) p.104
6. Video cameras need to be “white balanced” as a way of setting the relative sensitivity to the color temperature. An image balanced for indoors and shot outdoors will look blue. Balanced for outdoors and shot indoors the image will look orange.
7. “Bei Farben und sehen kommt es immer auf die Bezuge an. Die Verhaltnisse zwischen zweu Farben, die Kontraste, die die Farben anders erscheinen lassen. Einen absoluten Farbton gibt es nicht, es hangt immer von der Zusammenstellung und der Beleuchtung ab. Ich glaube nicht, dass das Auge trager oder unsensibler ist, als der Film, aber bei uns ist meisst schon eine Interpretation der Wahrnehmung mit im Spiel auch wenn wir das oft nicht merken.” Nora Lobe
8. Viola, p.59
9. Nam June Paik, Input-time and Output-time, 1976, p. 98
10. Again this depends so much on context. When I first watched the piece Anthem by Viola I saw it on my own in a small room. The piece has some disturbing images in it, but nothing seemed to jump out at me as aggressive. I later saw the piece presented in a class. The piece was played at a high volume level and I became aware of the reactions of those around me. Suddenly the piece seemed incredibly violent and aggressive in parts. However, this piece, like the one I discuss above, is filled with open spaces. Associations within the piece inspire the audience to make connections in their minds. Once that process begins the piece opens up a world of evocative meanings.
11. Viola, p. 64-65
12. Violas’ block of wood analogy is explained further on page
I am referring here to relationship between thinking and perception which is discussed in the section Perception-Sensation.
14. Viola, p. 68
15. H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society, 1976, p.4
16. Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press) 1986. p.20
17. Tarkovsky, p.21

Bibliography
Barfield, Owen. Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1965)
Viola, Bill. Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press in association with the Anthony d’Offay Gallery London, 1998)
Cooraraswamy, A.K. The Transformation of Nature in Art (New York: Dover Publications, 1956)
Eco, Umberto. The Open Work (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989) from the introduction by David Robey
Hughes, Stuart H. Consciousness and Society, 1976
Paik, Nam June. Input-time and Output-time, 1976
Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting in Time (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986)