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Timeless Representations

Nebojsa Kujundzic

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Table of Contents

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………… 3

Immediacy and Knowledge ……………………………………………………………… 47

Performativity and Description …………………………………………………………. 73

Interactivity and Immersion .…………………………………………………………… 105

Is Truth in the Horse’s Mouth? ………………………………………………………… 136

The Phenomenology of Photography……………………………………………………. 163

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………. 186

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………. 200

Index………………………………………………………………………………………. 213

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This book is mostly about two intricately intertwined yet readily distinguishable desires which

are deeply rooted in Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind and many other

similar disciplines: the desire to accurately represent the objective world and the desire to

effectively share one=s subjective experiences. In the course of my inquiry, I expect to contribute,

at least to a small degree, to several specialized disciplines which are rarely brought together:

aesthetics of film and photography, semiotics, computer science, and philosophy of technology,

to name just a few. Because I am attempting, metaphorically speaking, to cast my conceptual

and methodological net as wide as possible, my discussions will often appear rather cursory. I

apologize if I disturb the reader by creating an impression that I have sacrificed detailed analysis

and argumentation at the altar of grand attempts at interdisciplinarity.

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A human being, seen in light of the desire to accurately represent the objective world, is a

powerful representational engine, devised and perfected by evolution, an engine which is

perpetually engaged in collecting, collating, and evaluating the wealth of information afforded by

the surrounding world. Alternatively, a human being, seen in light of the desire to share the

quality and intensity of its experiences, is the grand theater of consciousness, seeking to project

its stage lights as far as possible. Traditionally, the former desire roughly corresponds to the

scientific mode of expression and the latter desire to the aesthetic mode of expression. It goes

without saying that both scientific and aesthetic modes of expression have left a rich legacy in

Western civilization.

The scientific mode of expression, ever since Galileo wrested its intellectual authority from the

Christian Church, has come to symbolize rigor, insight, and rational impartiality. Even the lay

reader, reflecting on the legacy of modern science, will recognize the prominence of scientists

like Kepler, Newton, Darwin, Einstein or Crick and Watson and their deep and abiding impact on

society. The current power and prominence of science undoubtedly possesses a long and

distinguished history. Even though scientific textbooks are not a great source of historical

perspective, one ought to remember that Newton coined the famous slogan: AIf I have seen

further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.@

Probably the easiest and the most effective way to contrast the aesthetic mode of expression with

the scientific mode of expression is to think of an appropriate example. Many examples come to

mind but perhaps opera is the best, and the most intriguing since it succeeds in magically

blending music and theater. Joseph Wechsberg writes the following about opera, an art which is

admittedly controversial yet magnificent:

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Opera should be approached intellectually and emotionally... The drama appeals to the mind, but

the music touches the soul and the heart... A symphony concert depends on the quality of the

ensemble and the art of the conductor. Ideally, the music should be performed as the living

expression of the composer=s score. In opera, however, there are divergent elements. Music is

one, action is another. There are things to be seen and to be heard, emotions to be sensed and

felt. Aesthetically, it may be a mishmash but in the hands of a genius opera becomes a glorious

experience, deeply satisfying (Wechsberg 1972 23).

However, it is not my intention for the project of Timeless Representations to focus on the

dichotomy between aesthetic and scientific modes of expression. For one thing, I believe that the

artist has the potential and the ability to dream up a world in which both desires -- to represent

the world and to express oneself -- appear equally absurd. Consider the following short excerpt

from Samuel Beckett=s AWaiting for Godot:@

VLADIMIR: (without turning). I=ve nothing to say to you.

ESTRAGON: (step forward). You=re angry? (Silence. Step forward). Forgive me. (Silence.

Step forward. Estragon lays his hand on Vladimir=s shoulder). Come, Didi. (Silence.) Give me

your hand. (Vladimir half turns.) Embrace me! (Vladimir stiffens.) Don=t be stubborn!

(Vladimir softens. They embrace. Estragon recoils.) You stink of garlic!

VLADIMIR: It=s for the kidneys. (Silence. Estragon looks attentively at the tree.) What do we

do now?

ESTRAGON: Wait.

VLADIMIR: Yes, but while waiting.

ESTRAGON: What about hanging ourselves?

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VLADIMIR: Hmm. It=d give us an erection.

ESTRAGON: (highly excited). An erection!

VLADIMIR: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That=s why they shriek when

you pull them up. Did you not know that?

ESTRAGON: Let=s hang ourselves immediately (Beckett 1970 12)!

I can only compare the sense of absurdity, ever-present in the frail construction of rationality and

so skillfully unveiled by Beckett, to one=s amazement at the absurdity of meaning which can be

discovered by rapidly repeating the same word over and over for a long time. This exercise is

useful as a reminder that the best metaphor of rationality may be imagining it as a tenuous

tightrope over the abyss of chaos and absurdity.

The previous distinction between the desire to represent the world and to express oneself can be

rephrased as a fundamental question that arises in regard to the primary purpose of language.

This question is: do people represent events and phenomena as a part of the natural course of

communication or did communication arise as an outcome of the primary human desire to

represent the world?

One may object, with perfectly good reason, that perhaps this question is yet another example of

the philosophical Achicken and egg@ puzzle. After all, it is necessary to represent objects and

events in order to communicate and representations depend on one=s ability to communicate.

Regardless of the quite possibly intractable nature of this puzzle, I believe the question of the

primacy of either communication or representation brings to the fore a broad, and very intriguing,

cluster of issues. Prima facie, these issues concern the role of interactivity in language. By this,

I mean specifically whether linguistic interactions have the primary purpose of attaining objective

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knowledge of the world (context of representation) or if their primary purpose is attaining the

social skills necessary for the individual=s well being by sharing the intensity, quality, and

complexity of one=s own, as well as partaking in the other=s, experiences (context of

communication). I hope it will become clear, through the more thorough analysis I promise to

offer in this book, that the source of the two different modes of interactivity (representational and

communicative) ultimately lies in their respective, and distinct, temporalities.

In order to aid the reader=s appreciation and understanding of the issues at hand, I propose to

grossly oversimplify the nature of representation and communication at this stage. Needless to

say, I am aware of possible objections and counter-arguments but I ask that we put them aside

and assume that representation is characterized by its desire to distance the subject from its

object and communication is characterized by its desire to achieve proximity. What do I mean by

this? I mean at least two things: both spatial and temporal aspects of distance and proximity. My

thesis is that the nature of communication is best described by noting that it strives to achieve

spatial and temporal proximity while the nature of representation depends to some degree,

however minute, on spatial and temporal distance. Put succinctly, it appears that representation

and communication have opposing directionality.

If I were to place my thesis that representation and communication have opposing directionality

in the context of Philosophy of Language, perhaps the most obvious choice, in terms of

methodology and terminology, would be to refer to speech act theory or, more specifically, to the

legacy of a revolutionary contribution to the study of Philosophy of Language, originated by J.L.

Austin and John Searle. As it is widely known, J.L. Austin‘s ―How to do Things with Words‖

offered novel and exciting possibilities for the analysis of language and meaning. In essence,

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Austin proposed to supplement the study of sentences as truth-bearing vehicles with a much

broader study of sentences as conventional vehicles of action. Thus, the primary purpose of

certain kinds of sentences, ―I bet you $ 10 it is going to rain in 15 minutes,‖ is not to refer to a

state of affairs but to constitute an action (it this case, the act of betting).

John Searle, in his ―Speech Acts‖ streamlined some of the key features of Austin‘s theory and

incorporated Austin‘s extremely insightful but often incomplete ideas in the context of proper

analytic method. In my essay ―Staging the Life World‖ (cf. Kujundzic 1993) I discuss some of

the rarely noticed dissimilarities between Austin‘s and Searle‘s position and I attempt to salvage

what I see as Austin‘s valuable early insights into performativity.

At any rate, speech act theory has continued to evolve since Austin and Searle and today the

theory features several influential proponents. One such author is Francois Recanati, who

defends the view labeled ―anti-inferentialism‖ in modern speech act theory. This view is

obviously opposed to inferentialism. The latter holds that, in contrast to perceptual content,

communicational content is accessed indirectly, by means of an inference. In the context of the

inferentialism debate, my view that the ideal context of communication assumes absolute

proximity would fit the anti-inferentialist view of Francois Recanati.

This is how Recanati characterizes his position:

According to (this view of) anti-inferentialism, semantic interpretation automatically delivers an

interpretation of the speech act, without any need for representing the speaker=s beliefs and

intentions. To be sure, the output of the interpretation process is a representation of the speech

act qua intentional action: the speaker is construed as (intentionally) communicating that p. But

to reach that representation only semantic interpretation is necessary, in normal cases.

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Representations of the speaker=s beliefs and intentions play no causal role at arriving at the

interpretation of the speech act (Recanati 2002 108-109).

Recanati argues that the constitution of speech acts is best captured as invoking a direct access to

the variety of semantic and pragmatic elements within the very broadly construed speech

environment, elements which may determine the meaning of what is being communicated. The

overall thrust of his argument, especially in light of my own distinction between the context of

communication and the context of representation, is that the process of communication need not

involve any inference and that communication is as direct as perception.

It is worth noting that the desire to bridge spatial and temporal distance exists independently of

the level and sophistication of technology. Thus, both smoke signals and Internet Areal time@

communication achieve the goal of bridging the distance among communicators. As well, both

inscriptions on parchment and a computer generated document bridge the temporal divide

between the author and her readership.

I will discuss the context of representation in some detail, but before I do so, allow me to indulge

in a few rather speculative remarks about the ideal context of communication. The pure context

of communication, a highly utopian concept, promises the interlocutors direct access to one

another as well as direct participation to communicators, where symbols and the other customary

means of linguistic communication no longer mediate the mental contents. This ideal of direct

communication stems from an ancient ideal, first formulated by Aristotle in De Interpretatione

(cf. Aristotle 1984 16a5-8). According to Aristotle, mental experiences are the same for all

people even though the speech sounds and the writing styles may vary from person to person.

The ideal mode of communication, which Acuts through@ the symbolic and linguistic conventions,

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would provide direct access to mental experiences. This mode of communication may be termed

Apostsymbolic@ or Apostlinguistic.@ I characterize this kind of communication as utopian since I

believe it can never be fully instantiated, primarily because the context of representation and the

context of communication exist in the form of dialectical inter-dependence. In other words, I

believe the context of representation and the context of communication to be separable only in

abstraction, or as a matter of principle. Yet, I believe I can use the notion of postsymbolic

communication to better illustrate the context of communication. I will revisit the topic of

postsymbolic communication, and especially its possible role in future technological trends, in

the Conclusion.

I have already emphasized the desire to achieve proximity in the context of communication. As

well, I classified the context of communication as illustrative of the aesthetic mode of expression.

It is not a coincidence that I chose opera, a performative art, to illustrate the aesthetic mode of

expression. Performance, and especially the phenomena of presentness and acting which occur

in its wake, will continue to inform my discussion of the context of communication. The context

of communication, at least in my present understanding, is strongly marked by immediacy and

the presentness of concrete situations, objects, and actions. I believe the defining feature of the

context of communication to be its desire to enable its participants to partake in that presentness

and immediacy.

In contrast, representation is necessarily premised on the fact that its intended object does not,

and cannot, exist Ahere@ and Anow.@ The moment an object, event, or phenomenon is represented

it becomes something other than a stream of mental events. It takes only the most cursory look

at the history of philosophy to understand that there is a long tradition that questions the value of

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fleeting and deceptive phenomena that flood the gates of our sense receptors. The latter appear

especially suspect in light of philosophy as the pursuit of deeper, more permanent truths.

Perhaps these truths are meant to be timeless B that is, not affected by the passage of time. John

Shotter speculates that the whole Platonic-Cartesian scheme makes an assumption that the

universe can be captured as a static picture or a sequence of static pictures. Consequently, time

becomes simply a fourth spatial dimension:

Indeed, to the extent that we seek eternal truths, claims true for all time, the Platonic-Cartesian

world is essentially a timeless place, in which the temporal Adirectionality@ of a momentary event

B from a particular past toward a limited range of possible futures B cannot be represented as a

real aspect of its nature (Shotter 2004 452).

Time as a discrete philosophical concept is an elusive quarry usually mischaracterized in spatial

metaphor and often only accessible through recourse to the many paradoxes and problems that

envelop it. In Newton‘s Principia he distinguished between absolute time, which he

characterized as a fundamental mathematical quantity existing in and of itself, and relative time

which is the apparent duration marked by external observations of rhythm and change. The

differences between these two concepts, of absolute time and relative time, may be refocused as a

duality between viewing time, together with space, as an objective property of the structure of the

universe and the subjective perception of time belonging to an observer of change. When

contextualized from either viewpoint, the concept and essence of time is vastly different. If

within this project a particular notion of time is to be held, then a process of discrimination of the

essence of time and a disambiguation of my usage of the term ‗time‘ must immediately follow.

A short, but sufficient, amount of textual space and reader time will be taken to provide a basic

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understanding of different aspects of time and concepts of spacetime.

Within our daily lives we are aware of the passage of time, but what if anything is time

actually passing? It is often said that ―we have left our past behind,‖ or that ―time has carried

away our past recollections.‖ That our verbal references to events include past, present and

future tenses only emphasizes our awareness of the continuous passage of time. Language by

itself is not a tool that can make the passage of time intelligible; it only underlines the problems

inherent in our concepts. The conception of passage gives us the sense that time is somehow

moving; yet movement requires both spatial extension and time. The passage of time itself

cannot take time to pass and it does not require space to move; rather, as a fundamental quantity

time carries all points in space through itself (Harris 1988 19-22).

Time, as a discrete philosophical concept, is indeed an elusive quarry usually mischaracterized in

spatial metaphor and often only accessible through recourse to the many paradoxes and problems

that envelop it. In Newton‘s Principia he distinguished between absolute time, which he

characterized as a fundamental mathematical quantity existing in and of itself, and relative time

which is the apparent duration marked by external observations of rhythm and change. The

differences between these two concepts, of absolute time and relative time, may be refocused as a

duality between viewing time, together with space, as an objective property of the structure of the

universe and the subjective perception of time belonging to an observer of change. When

contextualized from either viewpoint, the concept and essence of time is vastly different. If

within this project a particular notion of time is to be held, then a process of discrimination of the

essence of time and a disambiguation of my usage of the term ‗time‘ must immediately follow.

A short, but sufficient, amount of textual space and reader time will be taken to provide a basic

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understanding of different aspects of time and concepts of spacetime.

Within our daily lives we are aware of the passage of time, but what if anything is time actually

passing? It is often said that ―we have left our past behind,‖ or that ―time has carried away our

past recollections.‖ That our verbal references to events include past, present and future tenses

only emphasizes our awareness of the continuous passage of time. Language by itself is not a tool

that can make the passage of time intelligible; it only underlines the problems inherent in our

concepts. The conception of passage gives us the sense that time is somehow moving; yet

movement requires both spatial extension and time. The passage of time itself cannot take time

to pass and it does not require space to move; rather, as a fundamental quantity time carries all

points in space through itself (Harris 1988 19-22).

How do we measure time? The past is unavailable for measurement, the future does not yet exist

and the present has no duration because of time‘s continuous passage. To avoid this problem,

time is measured by counting the passing moments of the current flux of a uniform and

consistent sequence of events (Harris, 22). Two different meanings are attached to the

measurement of time: duration, an interval of time, and a specified instant in time, a point in

time. To build an appropriate measuring device requires that a correct model for the phenomena

is chosen. The image of time as an ever-flowing uniform stream is well suited to this task since

it combines both the properties of an infinite flow and the sense of a constant direction. The best

physical fit with this image would be the hourglass, wherein sand trickles at a steady rate from

the upper to the lower reservoir. This rudimentary and short-term timepiece would only be able

to measure one hour intervals of time and the inconsistency of the rate of flow would not allow

for consistent time points to be fixed. To be truly reliable a timepiece must require no calibration

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to offset differences in the flow of change, or rhythmic duration that s. Since 1967 the duration

of the transition between the two energy levels of the caesium-133 atom at a resting temperature

of 0 Kelvin has been the international standard definition of the second.

(http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-1/second.html). These atomic clocks are

accurate to the order of plus or minus one second over many thousands of years. This reliable

measure of a second is in turn the basis for the modern definitions of other units of measurement

such as the volt and metre.

The metre is defined by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures as the distance

traveled by light in absolute vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. These spacetime definitions

allowed for the replacement of standard object referents such as the platinum-iridium bar in the

case of the metre and the standard battery cell for voltage

(http://www.bipm.org/en/si/base_units/).

Time is not only necessary for scientific measurements but also for the constitution of language

and meaning. It is not a coincidence that W.V.O. Quine, the leading 20th

century analytic

philosopher, complains in his Word and Object (cf. Quine 1960 170), that our ordinary language

is heavily biased in its emphasis on temporality. I should note that while Quine is not exactly

engaged in the pursuit of Adeeper truths@ he believes that the temporality of language is a matter

of Ainelegance,@ which has always irked philosophers and mathematicians.

One could add that the context of communication appears unsuitable for the pursuit of truth since

its very nature is temporal. This temporality is most obvious in verbal communication where, for

example, the duration of the pauses in speech may greatly influence the meaning of what is said.

This is true even in written communication where a prompt reply, as opposed to a delayed reply,

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may be of significance. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the passage of time may greatly

distort the meaning of what is being communicated.

In the context of representation, the representing strives to attain the measure of objectivity and

realism that seem to be inherent in spatial, as opposed to temporal, representation. Several

influential Greek philosophers have contributed to the view that the pursuit of truth must remain

unaffected by the passage of time. The Pythagoreans and Parmenides were especially influential

in this regard. Kirk and Raven, in their examination of the Presocratic philosophers, note that the

Pythagoreans reserved the left-side column of their Table of Opposites (limited, one, right, good,

etc.) Afor those concepts which could be apprehended by reason alone (Kirk and Raven 1971

279).@ It appears Parmenides chose to ignore the Pythagorean right-hand column (unlimited,

many, left, evil etc.) when he decided to follow his Way of Truth. The universe of objects he

chose to abandon in his pursuit of truth is typified by their chaotic and ever-changing nature, a

nature that seems devoid of virtue. Why did Parmenides seek the truth in the simplicity of one,

limited and unchanging, Being? We can only speculate that he was probably motivated by his

desire to deduce truths about Being using pure reason, unaided by the senses.

To give another, relatively recent example, consider the key movements in philosophy at the turn

of the 20th

century. At that time, both Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl (forefathers of the two

major currents of the 20th

century philosophy -- so called Aanalytic@ and Acontinental@ philosophy)

strongly urged the rejection of psychologism, the temptation to reduce the objects of

representation to mere mental processes. One of the main tenets of the anti-psychologist doctrine

is to maintain that objects, their properties, events, and propositions have the capacity to exist

independently of the mind that entertains them. To use Frege=s famous simile from On Sense and

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Reference, it does not follow that the real image of the moon is not objective because the retinal

image of the moon varies from person from person. To use an analogy, this amounts to saying

that the real temperature cannot be measured because the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales offer

different readings of the same temperature. There is no doubt that the anti-psychologism of

Husserl and Frege has created a significant legacy in contemporary philosophy. This legacy,

primarily because of its emphasis on objectivity and immutability of propositions, can be loosely

associated with the legacy of the Pythagoreans and Parmenides.

Of course, one quickly recognizes, in the discussion of communication and representation, the

well-known historical themes of oral culture and subsequent manuscript/print culture. It is

possible to argue that every human intellectual endeavor, including what I have termed scientific

and aesthetic modes of expression, underwent a gradual transition in Western civilization from a

communicational mode to a representational mode. This transition, as I hope will emerge in my

analysis of the temporality of representation, has been marked by the presence of the delay; that

is, the methodological act of the distancing of the agent from the object of representation. It is

not my intent to trace and document this transition. Instead, I wish to suggest that the

availability, and in many cases quite ample availability, of time during the process of

representing played an important role in the transition from the mode of communication to the

mode of representation. In fact, I believe the 20th

century has witnessed a beginning of the

transition back to the mode of communication because of the emergence of new technologies of

representing which have offered the promise of erasing the delay inherent in the process of

representing. These new means of seemingly instantaneous representing are probably best

illustrated by photography and film, even though they may include various other computer-

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mediated means of representation.

The traditional (delayed) means of representing have of course managed to incorporate the new

and emerging technologies of instantaneous representing. The most intriguing example of this

process of incorporation can be found in the case of film. I will briefly discuss that case in what

follows in this chapter. In the Conclusion, I will suggest that the greatest challenge to the

traditional (delayed) means of representing is yet to arise in the computer technology of the

future.

Let me proceed by examining the role of philosophy in the course of the overall cultural

transition from a communicational mode to a representational mode. Western philosophy clearly

has its roots in the communicational mode. It comes as no surprise that the earliest philosophical

writings are dialogues and that Socrates perfected and performed his argumentative feats at the

open market. However, very soon, thereafter notably with Plato, philosophy became a model of

the representational mode. The adoption of this model, however, came with the inevitable cost:

the philosopher always encountered some measure of the metaphysical distance between the

knower and the object of knowing or some kind of metaphysical Alag@ so characteristic of the

delay inherent in representation. I suggest the lag refers to the temporal nature of transformation

that every object of representation undergoes in the process of representation. There are many

dual terms in the history of philosophy, like the dualism of word and object, phenomenon and

noumenon, and type and token, that reflect the need to somehow capture the delay in

representation.

Let me sketch two examples of the effects of delay in representation taken from intellectual

history. The first example will feature Locke and Hume, key representatives of the tradition of

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empiricist philosophy, and the second example will feature structuralism, an intellectual

movement especially influential in Europe by the mid-twentieth century.

It became increasingly clear, in the course of the early empirically-minded representational

theories of the mind, that there was a growing distance between the objects of representation and

the mind that does the representing. John Locke attempted, perhaps even unwittingly, to bridge

this distance by referring both to the contents of the mental processes and the objects of these

processes as Aideas.@ This usage of the term Aidea@ resulted in a serious ambiguity, which is not

lost on many of Locke=s critics and commentators. In the literature on Locke, it is sometimes

suggested that this ambiguity between cognition and the objects of cognition was the result of

Locke=s attempt to maintain the continuity of perceptions, images, and abstractions. As well, I

should note that an ambiguity, similar to that of Locke=s, between the objects and contents of

cognition turned out to be fairly typical of empirically-minded epistemologies and theories of

cognition, and it continued to arise in the centuries to come. To take a much more recent

example, around the turn of the 20th

century, the Polish philosopher Kasimir Twardowski

discovered a similar ambiguity in the work of Franz Brentano. I should add that the importance

of Twardowski=s seminal work, On the Content and Object of Presentations, has been

increasingly recognized in the history of 20th

century analytic philosophy. Twardowski argued

that Brentano routinely conflated the object at which our idea aims (so to speak) and the

imminent content of our presentations.

The great empiricist David Hume has dealt with the gap between the objects of representation

and the representing mind by showing that the true empiricist is incapable of providing a theory

of empiricism since that theory was at best a matter of the inductive method or, in plain words, a

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matter of chance and guesswork. Thus one can argue that Hume ultimately reduced the distance

between the objects of representation and the mind that does the representing to absurdity,

offering the skeptical position as the only remedy.

Throughout the 20th

century, the focus of intellectual discussions has shifted towards inquiries

into the growing distance between the world of represented phenomena and events and their

supposed counterpart, the increasingly phantom-like, Araw@ and un-represented reality. In the

structuralist movement, this distinction is sometimes captured by the signifier/signified

distinction, stemming from the work of the 19th

century Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. It

became apparent, not only to a coterie of French post-structuralists, but to a growing number of

intellectuals, that the Araw@ and pre-conceptual domain of the signified stubbornly evaded the

reach of the structuralist. The represented world had become a world unto itself, and perhaps the

only world there is.

In the context of literary theory, Paul de Man has famously explored the rhetoric of temporality

that manifests itself, in the romantic tradition at least, in the dialectics of the symbol and the

allegory. De Man argues that the symbol can coincide with the substance since the two belong to

the same set of categories and their relationship is one of simultaneity. In the case of allegory,

the allegorical sign always refers to another sign that precedes it. This is why the allegory, in de

Man=s words, Aestablishes its language in the void of this temporal difference (De Man 1983

207).@

Roland Barthes has suggested that realism, not only in aesthetics but also in the entire realm of

structuralist codes, can be construed as an outcome of double delay:

Thus realism (badly named, at any rate often badly interpreted) consists not in copying the real

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but in copying a (depicted) copy of the real: this famous reality, as though suffering from a

fearfulness which keeps it from being touched directly, is set further away, postponed, or at least

captured through the pictorial matrix in which it has been steeped before being put into words:

code upon code, known as realism (Barthes 1974 55).

While this provides clear evidence of attempts to grapple with the problems of the rhetoric of

temporality and structuralist dimensions of the delay in literary theory, in philosophy it remained

largely unnoticed that the process of representing creates a special dimension of distance since

this process is itself temporal. In simple words, within the traditional paradigm of representing,

it takes time to produce representations and this passage of time has a significant impact on the

process of representing.

My intent is to show that the temporality of the process of representing, albeit the main source of

its other characteristics, is ultimately only one of its several important features. I wish to suggest

as well that the delay caused by the process of representing may be a necessary condition of

scientific objectivity and artistic creativity.

My approach to temporality, understood as the defining feature of representation, will reveal that

the time necessary to complete the process of representation transforms the very nature of that

process. One might ask: what does time have to do with representation? I believe time and

representation are deeply intertwined: moreover, the activity of representing can be

metaphorically defined as a process of delay. Note that the delay can sometimes be a matter of a

minuscule amount of time; this, however, does not change its nature.

I have touched on the role of the delay in the context of representation within the pursuit of truth

and knowledge, traditionally the domain of philosophy and the sciences. The significance of the

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delay also lies in the opportunity it creates for the writer, director, interpreter, painter, etc. to

creatively intervene in the phenomena during the process of representation. In other words, the

processes of writing/editing/directing/producing are artistic conventions that essentially capture

the creative possibilities of the delay. Therefore, delay lies at the root of the traditional Western

understanding of authorship and creativity. In some traditional arts media, delay is a matter of an

elaborate and sometimes massive passage of time. Thus, a painter may spend the whole summer

painting a particular landscape and attempting to capture the elusive beauty of a sunset. It is

nothing unusual for novelists to spend years, if not decades, revising the drafts of their work.

Similarly, a historian may require several years to produce a narrative that captures a historical

period, a life of a person, or a set of changes within a society. In fact, it has become a cliche to

say that historians require an appropriate distance from the current events in order to attain the

requisite level of insight and objectivity.

Things are not that simple in the case of a photographer and film director. In fact, the latter two

cases, and especially the case of a film director, provide a fruitful ground for speculations about

the artistic possibilities of delay in media that boast the ability to either instantaneously represent

reality (photography) or to immerse the viewer in the on-going present (film). On the one hand,

several film theorists have argued that the most salient feature of film is its Apresentness.@ For

example, George Bluestone has famously remarked that the medium of film has only one tense

(the present tense) while the novel has three tenses (past, present, future). On the other hand,

Mary Ann Doane presents Paolo Pasolini=s view of the montage, or the cut, as providing film

with the ability to move from the present to the past (cf. Doane 2002 105). The cut does the

latter by coordinating two separate presences: AFor Pasolini, what makes a filmic discourse past

22

tense is not its repeatability but something interior to the discourse itself B the cut that

coordinates two separate presences and reconfigures them as a historic, that is meaningful,

present (Doane 2002 105). This is how film distinguished itself from early cinema, which simply

recorded the moment the way it appeared. Film, by virtue of the director=s cut, possesses the

means of the meaningful narrative and the means to develop its own authentic sense of

historicity.

Sarah Cardwell, in her discussion of contemporary theories of media adaptation, argues that

media theorists frequently conflate cinematic tense with real time when they write about the

Apresentness@ of the cinematic image (cf. Cardwell 2003 82). This is what motivates Cardwell to

maintain that it is more useful to refer to film as Atenseless@ rather than Aperpetually present.@

She uses an analogy from linguistics to support her claim:

ASitting,@ after all, can be a verb or participle in the present tense; however, it can also be a

gerund (verbal noun); a word that describes the action itself. The gerund, like the infinitive,

cannot be understood in terms of tense; the distinctions of tense simply do not apply to it. Only

through the tense of the main verb can a gerund be integrated into the particular temporality of

the sentence that contains it. Think of that word B Asitting@ B and think of the action it refers

to.... you will find that, although your thought took place in the present, the Acontent@ of the

thought did not have its own tense B tense was irrelevant to your imagined image. In this way, if

a film image shows someone Asitting,@ we cannot determine the tense at all B our perception of

the shot is in the present, but then so is our perception of the words we read in a novel. It is my

contention, then, that the image is not Apresent@ but tenseless (Cardwell 2003 87).

Gregory Currie offers a strikingly similar view to Cardwell=s. Currie argues that film is a

23

temporal yet untensed medium. He invokes McTaggard=s division between tensed and untensed

series in order to show that film is untensed:

McTaggard suggested that there are two ways we can think about the temporality of events. We

can think of events as past, present, or future. McTaggard calls the series of events as ordered in

that way the A-series, and the relations that order it are tensed. Alternatively, we can think of

events as earlier than, contemporaneous with, or later than other events. These relations are

themselves unchanging; the Battle of Hastings always is, and will be earlier than the Battle of

Waterloo. In the schema, no event is privileged as present, and so no event can be called past or

future (Currie 1999 351-352).

Currie then proceeds to argue that anachrony in film, i.e. the reordering of the story-time

narrative by the means of flashbacks and other devices, cannot be explained in terms of the A-

series.

In light of Doane=s, Carwell=s, and Currie=s discussion of film=s complex temporality, I hope it is

clear that film is a medium capable of incorporating the delay. This is the case not only because

of the director=s cut but also of film=s capability to attain the level of abstraction necessary to

break through the sway which real time presence, or Apresentness@ may hold over the viewer.

Of course, it would be a mistake to forget about film=s unique temporality and equate it with the

forms of narrative found in novels, history or poetry. Currie emphasizes that film is

fundamentally a temporal art and suggests that Ait cannot but represent time by means of time

(Currie 1995 103).@ Currie contrasts painting, an art form clearly not capable of representing

temporal properties of events by temporal properties of representation, and film, an art form that

has the capacity to represent time by means of time. In the latter sense, film is capable of an

24

automorphic representation of time. According to Currie, automorphic representation is defined

as: Athe representation having property P represents the thing represented having property P

(Currie 1995 97).@ For example, film can represent the passage of ten seconds (the time until the

fuse detonates the bomb) by representing a course of action which unfolds within these ten

seconds. In fact, one episode of the popular TV show Seinfeld explored this very feature of film

(and television). The actors in that episode used up the entire duration of the episode in a

restaurant lobby, waiting, in Areal time@ to be seated at a restaurant.

I should add that I disagree with Currie that film represents time. It is obvious that my contrast

between the context of representation and the context of communication necessitates my doing

so. Even more importantly, I believe time is intrinsically non-representable because the very act

of representation cannot extricate itself from temporality or, to put it metaphorically, Apull itself

out of temporality by its bootstraps.@ Perhaps it could be said that film represents the visible

effects of the passage of time.

Currie makes a further point that performance arts, including film, theater, and music, are

characterized by their unfolding over time. While it is true that painting, architecture, and

sculptures are affected by time, since they undergo a slow process of aging, they do not unfold

over time in the sense in which performance arts do. Fiction, and writing in general, constitutes a

less clear case since it appears to combine certain elements of performance arts and non-

performance arts.

The Address of the Eye by Vivian Sobchack explores the complex issues of film‘s temporality

through the prism of Merleau-Ponty‘s brand of phenomenology. The latter, as it is well known in

the history of phenomenology, puts particular weight on the special aspect of perception, the so-

25

called embodied perception. According to Merleau-Ponty, especially the way Sobchack

interprets his position, the reversibility of perception and expression is given with existence, in

the simultaneity of subjective embodiment and objective ―enwolderness.‖

The cinema then uses various modes of embodied existence as the vehicle, the ―stuff,‖ the

substance of its language:

Watching a film is both a direct and mediated experience of direct experience of mediation. We

both perceive a world within the immediate experience of an ―other‖ and without it, as immediate

experience mediated by an ―other.‖ Watching a film, we can see the seeing as well as the seen,

hear the hearing as well as the heard, and feel the movement as well as see the moved (Sobchak

1992 10).

I must add that time and temporality in aesthetics has generated a lot of interest among art

theorists. Pamela Lee writes in her recent book Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s

about a marked anxiety about time traceable not only in the writing of art critics in the 1960s but

also in the entire project of modernism. Lee argues that certain modernist works of art seek to

convey an experience of time which ought to be independent from the beholder=s presence.

Furthermore, prominent art critics of the 1960s, such as Michael Fried, believed that modernist

art should not even communicate a Asense of duration@, but rather should convey a sense of

Apresentness@(Lee 2003 45). Fried viewed Atheatricality@ (the preoccupation with duration which

surrounds and entraps the beholder) as banal. This is why he characterized the objects of

minimalist sculpture, which he viewed as dumb and repetitive, as Atheatrical.@ Rather than

imparting a sense of presentness or constant renewal, minimalist art draws the viewer into an

experience with Aa peculiar air of endlessness@(Lee 2003 44).

26

Through an analysis of Stanley Cavell=s theories, Lee describes film as a medium that satisfies

modernist conventions of time (Lee 2003 56). The audience viewing a film is unacknowledged

by the medium itself, yet remains involved by constantly renewing itself/its image. Moreover,

Lee also explains that film had a strong appeal to modernist artists because Aits self-reproductive

mechanism is not unlike what modernist painting attempts to do in a series; and through that very

mechanism automatically keeps at bay the sense of the viewer=s presence. Each new state, then,

offers the potential state of presentness; each new work attempts to sustain that sense of

conviction. (Lee 2003 60).@

Stephen Kern explores the tension between what he terms Apublic@ and Aprivate@ time in light of

the clash between authoritarianism and individualism at the turn of the 20th

century. According

to Kern, contemporary art drew heavily on this tension which, in turn, arose out of the great

technological and scientific revolutions at the end of the 19th

century.

Specifically, these are some of the scientific and technological innovations which, according to

Kern, prompted a growing tension between the Apublic@ and Aprivate@ domains:

As the economy in every country centralized, people clustered in cities, and political

bureaucracies and governmental power grew, the wireless, telephone, and railroad timetables

necessitated a universal time system to coordinate life in the modern world. And as the railroads

destroyed some of the quaintness and isolation of rural areas, so did the imposition of universal

public time intrude upon the uniqueness of private experience in private time. It was a subtle

intrusion that appears sharper in historical perspective than it did around the turn of the century

(Kern 1983 34).

27

The introduction of universal public time was compounded by the technology of communication

and transportation as well as the expansion of literacy which made it possible for human

consciousness to expand across space. Public time intruded upon the private mind not only

through global and radical lifestyle changes, but also through scientific experiments:

AExperimental psychologists attempted to determine the precise intervals of human responses and

the shortest duration one can detect. In the laboratories of Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt

metronomes and watches were used to study human life as a construction of measurable bits of

time (Kern 1983 20).@

The following quotes are perhaps the best example of Kern=s discussion of the artistic reaction to

the abovementioned tension between the public and private domains:

When the cinema was improved to permit the first public showing in 1896, it also [like

chronophotography] broke up motion into discrete parts. The Futurist photographer Anton

Bragaglia proposed a technique he called photo-dynamism, which involved leaving the shutter

open long enough to record the blurred image of an object in motion. This, he believed, offered

the only true art of motion in contrast to both chronophotography and cinematography, which

broke up action and missed its >intermovemental fractions‘ (Kern 1983 21).

It appears the impressionist painters had a very similar concern with rendering the movement of

an object in time:

Artists had often attempted to imply a past, present and future by painting a moment that pointed

beyond the present. The Impressionists attempted to render time more directly with a sequence of

paintings of the same motif at different times of the day, seasons, and climatic conditions... The

Impressionists also tried to portray their impression of motion, but no matter how well they

28

suggested the luminous shifting caused by a passing cloud or the ripple of the wind on water,

everything was fixed in a single moment (Kern 1983 21).

This limitation of painting, as a spatial art, has been well recognized in aesthetics, which has long

maintained a sharp contrast between poetry (which, in classical literature, used to be the model

for fiction and writing in general) and painting. The latter contrast was introduced by Lessing,

one of the most influential writers in the field of aesthetics. Lessing has argued in his seminal

work on aesthetics, Laokoon, that the poet and the painter inhabit two incompatible realms of

expression. To put it negatively, the painter is always confined to a single instant of time and the

poet is not able to display creations in space. To put it positively, the poet explores the

succession of time while the painter explores the realm of space. Of course, Lessing provides

examples whereby the poet and the painter may take certain liberties with each other=s realm of

expression. For example, the simple moment is sometimes extended in paintings and the poet

sometimes uses words in rapid succession so that it appears we hear them all at once (cf. Lessing

1901 Chapter XVIII).

This classical distinction, of course, is made in light of the poet=s and the painter=s products. My

understanding of the impact of the delay on the work of art hinges on the process of artistic

creation. Thus, in contrast to Lessing, I propose to place the poet and the painter in the same

category. The reason for this is the essentially delayed character of both the painter=s and the

poet=s means of representing. This is why I also believe that painting and fiction, which also

happen to be non-performance arts, offer a clear insight into the temporality of their production.

It goes without saying that delay is quite prominent, and often a cause of admiration, in the

classical history of art. For example, sketches of paintings are sometimes exhibited alongside

29

finished paintings. As well, earlier drafts of both fiction and non-fiction, including revisions,

additions, and deletions, may sometimes be printed, especially in the case of critical editions.

Thus, the extent and nature of the delay has been well documented in the case of many works of

art. It goes without saying that this kind of material is very helpful in better understanding the

process of artistic creation as well as artists= intentions and preparation.

Please note that delay has historically been imputed to the author but the author did not and does

not create the delay. In fact, the delay is a necessary condition for the author, or the Agenius@ as

certain epochs of aesthetics would prefer to have it. The late 20th

century adage AThe author is

dead@ may well be true; writing, however, will go on.

Marshall McLuhan famously talked about two kinds of media: hot and cool. AA hot medium is

one that extends one single sense in >high definition=. High definition is the state of being well

filled with data. A photograph is, visually, >high definition=. A cartoon is >low definition=, simply

because very little visual information is provided (McLuhan 1994 22).@ Another key feature of

hot media that is especially important for my purposes, is that they do not allow for a high degree

of participation while cool media require a great deal of participation from the audience since the

latter is required to complete the process of disseminating information. McLuhan lists radio, the

movie, and the photograph as hot media. In contrast, cartoons, the telephone, and speech are

cool media.

When it comes to writing, hieroglyphic characters are cool while the phonetic alphabet is hot,

according to McLuhan. Note that print can be both hot and cool. Print technology is by its

essence cool since it serves to Aunify the ages.@ Paper, on the other hand, is a hot medium since

it unifies the print space, that is, provides the unity of space for the printed word. I believe

30

McLuhan uses the idea of Aunification@ in two senses. In the first sense, unity refers to the ability

of a certain era to complete the process of interpretation or to something akin to my context of

representation. In the second sense, it refers to providing a sense of presence (the page is, in this

sense, the environment necessary for the existence of a sentence) or to something I characterized

as the context of communication. I hope this will become more clear in my discussion of

textuality and performance.

I believe the terms Ahot@ and Acool@ can be borrowed from McLuhan and utilized to further

develop my distinction between the modes of communication and representation. While

McLuhan=s distinction is concerned with the intensity of communication and the way that

intensity determines the nature of communication, I wish to mobilize Ahotness@ and Acoolness@

into capturing the role of time in representation and communication. Even more importantly, I

wish to talk about the hot and cool nature of interactivity. However, before I proceed to examine

this dual nature of interactivity let me sketch my motive for taking interactivity so seriously.

The concept of interactivity gained its prominence, especially in the last couple of decades, in the

process of understanding and developing computer software. It was extremely important for

software developers, and especially for those working in the computer game business as well as

in the military, to be able to simulate the propensity of the objects and living things in the world

to respond to the agent=s action. This response is, of course, a rather dynamic process since the

agents adjust their actions to accommodate the changed environment and to further respond to it.

In fact the concept of interactivity is so complex and elusive that computer specialists and

psychologists still continue to argue over its nature. Brenda Laurel writes about two approaches

she took to interactivity: AI posited that interactivity exists on a continuum that could be

31

characterized by three variables: frequency (how often you could interact), range (how many

choices were available), and significance (how much the choices really affected matters (Laurel

1993 20).@ She later realized that these variables do not exhaust all the properties of interactivity;

furthermore, these variables do not even capture the most rudimentary measure of interactivity:

AYou either feel yourself to be participating in the ongoing action of the representation or you

don=t (Laurel 1993 21).@ Laurel touches on the inextricable dependence of interactivity and yet

another elusive concept that belongs to art, psychology, and technology -- immersion. I hope to

further elucidate these two concepts, and also to sketch their importance from a philosophical

point of view, in my chapter devoted entirely to interactivity and immersion.

Let me come back to interactivity and explain why I hope it will further my examination of the

way in which time transforms communication and representation. The study of interactivity, in

its standard and sometimes technical characterization, has been developed in the context of

improving the capability of computers to better simulate reality. I believe David Saltz offers an

informative and detailed discussion of computer interactivity, and features some excellent

examples:

Very generally, for a work to be interactive, the following events must occur in real- time: 1. A

sensing or input device translates certain aspects of a person=s behaviour into digital form that a

computer can understand. 2. The computer outputs data that are systematically related to the

input (i.e., the input affects the output). 3. The output data are translated back into real world

phenomena that people can perceive.

For example, the computer might instruct a synthesizer to produce musical notes in

32

response to input from a keyboard; it might start a motor when someone moves in front of an

ultrasound sensor; it might change a light=s intensity in proportion to the volume of sound picked

up by a microphone, and the light=s colour in proportion to the sound=s pitch. The computer

might use any kind of real-world input to produce any kind of real world out-put, since in any

case all that the computer is manipulating is digital information (Saltz 1997 118-119).

I propose to reverse this standard model of computer interactivity and to apply the special case of

computer interactivity back to the general case of reality. I believe we can learn a great deal by

doing this, much like researchers in cognitive science learn about the mind by applying the

lessons learned by studying the computer.

In a nutshell, I wish to show that cool interactivity emerges as an outcome of the delay; i.e., the

time embedded in the process of representing. In contrast, hot interactivity strives to eliminate

the delay. Furthermore, I wish to show how the gradual elimination of the delay in modern

technologies of representation increasingly forces Western civilization to redefine its

understanding of the nature and limits of cool interactivity. The latter kind of interactivity

emerged in what I characterize as the context of representation. I will argue, in the subsequent

chapters, that the context of representation depends on these assumptions: a particular

understanding of time and a particular understanding of the interaction between the producer of

representation and the objects of representation.

The examination of the nature and limits of cool interactivity naturally leads to the recognition of

the complex and dynamic manner in which cool interactivity continues to be intertwined with

another kind of interactivity, hot interactivity. The latter kind of interactivity assumes a rich

33

understanding of presence and duration, implicit in the context of immediacy, as well as

performativity as its driving force.

The following sections serve to illustrate a variety of manifestations of the delay and its impact

on the two kinds of interactivity. As well, they provide a glimpse of the manuscript chapters.

Immediacy and Knowledge

Reading the Introduction so far conveys an impression that the main thrust of my inquiry is

limited to the fields of media theory, aesthetics, and literary theory. I believe, however, that the

questions I have been asking are deeply philosophical in nature. Indeed, I see an easy way to

extract the contrast between instantaneous representation and description from the context of

media theory, aesthetics, and literary theory and apply it to the context of philosophy. In order to

do so, one has to recognize that several 20th

century philosophers have repeatedly and overtly

made a fundamental distinction between direct sources of knowledge (instantaneous

representation) and delayed sources of knowledge (description). I wish to especially emphasize

that the presence or absence of time in the process of representation is a key to establishing this

distinction. I suggest Russell and Wittgenstein have made this distinction explicitly while many

other philosophers, including Descartes and Hume, have made the distinction between the two

sources of knowledge implicitly. Above all, I believe that my discussion of these philosophical

reflections on temporality may serve as a rigorous foundation for the further discussions of

temporality in the subsequent chapters.

34

I am aware that the contemporary French philosopher Jacques Derrida has pursued, in numerous

works well-received in several academic disciplines, what can be understood as the distinction

between direct and delayed sources of knowledge. Derrida explores the latter distinction in the

context of the contrast between speech and writing, which he then traces back to the origins of

Western philosophy. I have chosen not to appropriate Derrida=s legacy since deconstruction, a

technique of textual analysis pioneered by Derrida, does not strike me as an especially useful tool

for the study of representation and technology. In fact, I will suggest in this chapter, following

Sandra Rosenthal, that Peirce=s doctrine of signs and their temporality is much superior to

Derrida=s account of the temporality of signs. I know that as a philosopher trained in the analytic

tradition I show a bias in my approach. Consequently, I ask my readers, and especially those

with backgrounds in literary and performance theory, to accept the customs and limitations of my

own discipline.

I hope my attention to the contrast between direct and delayed sources of knowledge will prove

to be useful in developing a new approach to several classical philosophical topics: indexicality,

continuum, and Russell=s distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by

description. I believe my approach to these topics, one informed by the role of time in the

process of representing, will cast an illuminating perspective on the aforementioned well-known

problems in philosophy.

Performativity and Description

35

In order to illustrate what I mean by Ahot@ and Acool@ interactivity and immersion, I invite the

reader to think of the famous tragedy Antigone by Sophocles. The question I wish to ask is:

What are the means of interacting with this work of art? The tragedy, most commonly, exists in

the form of a printed text; the text can be read and that form of enjoyment of Sophocles= art

constitutes the most customary means of interacting with the tragedy. A similar form of

interactivity is illustrated by renting or buying an audio or video tape of a performance of

Antigone. In the latter case, one would be interacting with a performance of the tragedy in an

audiovisual manner. What do these two forms of interacting with Sophocles= tragedy have in

common? I term them Acool@ interactivity primarily because of the delay that permeates the

interactivity and thereby characterizes their mode of existence.

What kind of delay am I talking about? In fact, there are many possible techniques and methods

of creatively utilizing the delay in modern technology. The written copy of the tragedy has been

translated, edited, word-processed, etc. The tape has been similarly recorded, directed, and its

sound or video features edited, etc. In today=s technology, we associate this kind of delay with

the general term Aproduction.@

I wish to contrast this type of interactivity with another type that I term Ahot@ interactivity. In the

case of Antigone, Ahot@ interactivity is illustrated by experiencing a live performance of the

tragedy. This latter type of interactivity is characterized by its presence (that it is happening now

and here) as well as the relative absence of delay.

Note that I do not maintain that the live performance of the tragedy is not produced. Of course, it

is not only produced but also directed, rehearsed, engineered, etc. However, these potentially

Adelaying@ production activities only lead up to the performance; the performance exists on a

36

level that makes the delay invisible. The performance is happening here and now; the actress on

the scene is Antigone herself, embodying the narrative written by Sophocles. There is a vivid

sense that the narrative is unfolding in reality, right in front of the viewers= eyes and ears. Such

is the appeal of the theater.

A point similar to that made in the previous paragraph can in be made in the case of dancing. In

his essay on digital dancing and web-based dancing, Johannes Birringer makes the following

point:

Douglas Rosenberg, video artist and director of the American Dance Festival=s Video Archival

Program, has pointed out in numerous internet discussions that dance for the camera occupies a

wholly different space than dance for the theatre. On the one hand, it is true that video dance, as

the precursor of digital dancing and web-based dance, is a hybrid form, existing in a virtual space

contextualized by the medium and method of recording. As Rosenberg emphasizes >it is not a

substitute for, or in conflict with, the live theatrical performance of a dance, but rather a wholly

separate yet equally powerful way of creating dance-works...= (Birringer 1999 362).

It is important to add that hot and cool interactivity have their corresponding types of immersion.

Cool immersion gives the viewers/readers plenty of opportunity to control the interactivity -- in

this case, to control the way they participate in the process of reading/viewing Sophocles. For

example, they can control the volume of the reproduction or they can choose to interrupt their

reading whenever they please. Finally, cool immersion makes possible the recent phenomenon

of multitasking: one can watch a TV show while ironing a shirt, listening to a CD playing in

another room, and talking on the phone at the same time.

Hot immersion, in contrast, assumes low levels of interaction from the viewers of the tragedy.

37

Notice that hot immersion is, in general, Adeeper@ than cool immersion, meaning that it is more

intense, and it almost succeeds in transfixing its collective audience. I believe Aristotle based his

theory of catharsis on this kind of immersion. I will further address these differences when I

discuss interactivity and immersion in high technology.

Interactivity and Immersion

I understand Ainteractivity@ in a very broad sense. Every living creature is capable of some sort of

interaction. Notice that the Aobjects@ or Apersons@ of our interaction can range from very static

(we can interact with a large stone by walking around it) to very dynamic (imagine trying to

interact with a person uttering an ambiguous expression). As well, notice that the nature of the

objects of our interaction does not necessarily determine the range and dynamics of our own

interacting. For example, the Australian aboriginals interact with their sacred boulders in a very

deep and complex way while we can imagine an almost total absence of interacting with certain

people, including those from our own culture.

In terms of computer technology, interactivity is of the utmost importance. For example, one can

think about the Turing test of intelligence as an exercise in discursive, one-on-one interactivity.

Virtual reality, in contrast, prides itself on being a computer-generated environment that can

simulate the entire interactive experience, including its visual, audio, and tactile dimensions.

Currently, there are two general technological means of achieving VR interactivity: head-

mounted displays (HMD) and projection room systems (CAVE). The difference between the two

approaches boils down to the proximity of VR displays to our sense receptors. If the displays are

38

very close to our eyes and ears, as it happens when we put on the head-mounted display, then we

get immersed in the virtual world by means of computer simulations and we get shut off from the

real world. If the displays are more distant from our eyes and ears then we get surrounded by the

virtual world and we remain aware of our real world environment.

These two technological approaches to interactivity are in fact very useful in illustrating two

general types of interactivity, hot and cool. Much like in the previous cases of performance vs.

textuality and instantaneous representation vs. description, I am going to tie these two types of

interactivity to the delay in representation. It turns out that, in this case, the delay has a special

function of determining the level of control available to the participant of the VR experience. It

is especially evident that the greater levels of delay result in a great, and perhaps overwhelming,

increase of the individual=s control of the technological experience. I hope my discussion of the

concrete examples will make this somewhat abstract correlation more clear.

I wish to apply my dichotomy between hot and cool interactivity to the history of Western

civilization and especially to the emergence and development of modern technology. My thesis

is the following: there has been a gradual shift from hot to cool interactivity since the first great

technological discoveries, and, by the end of the 21st century, cool interactivity will have become

a greatly dominant form of interactivity.

Let me, however, present a few caveats before I proceed. I do not wish to suggest that this

gradual shift is indicative of some grandiose metaphysical principle nor do I wish to maintain

that there is something especially cool-like in modern technology. My thesis simply reflects my

belief that scientific and technological developments, by their very nature, impose certain

limitations and a certain range of possibilities on humanity. One of these limitations and

39

possibilities has to do with the nature of interactivity. Finally, it is quite possible that both hot

and cool interactivity are present, at least potentially, in every technology.

I will use three examples to illustrate this thesis. It goes without saying that many more

examples of a similar sort can be drawn from virtually every aspect of modern life.

In the past, narrative used to be highly dependent on hot interactivity. For

example, the great epics, including Homer=s epics, were primarily intended as performances. The

importance of these performances cannot be underestimated C they constituted the basis of an

entire culture:

The Milesians shared with other Greeks the Greek language, a social structure, and a cultural

heritage that can loosely be called Homeric, in the sense that they accepted the oral epics which

we know as the Iliad and Odyssey as their own tradition and recognized the Olympic gods

(McKirahan 1994 p. 3).

The epics were recounted at homes or at various public arenas. The listeners= physical presence

and attention was a necessary condition of the performance. Please note the communal aura of

these events where the participant is, metaphorically speaking, bound by his or her presence to

the weight of the narrative. With the spread of writing, especially with the invention of

standardized writing in the wake of Gutenberg, the narrative was no longer a matter of

performance and community presence. The act of reading became a silent and solitary act,

entirely controlled by the individual.

Most traditional forms of music have a highly holistic nature. For example, music was originally

used by most primitive societies as a background for various forms of tribal dancing. As a matter

of fact, most surviving contemporary brands of ethnic music are still hardly imaginable without

40

dancing. I invite you to consider the use of the walkman as the ultimate example of how cool

interactivity can become dominant in music. Walkmans, much like books and computers, stand

for solitude and individual control: the sound of a walkman is entirely private and purged of its

holistic origins.

In addition, there is a possibility offered by technology to use music as an anti-social weapon.

For example, cars and home stereos can be turned up so loud as to dominate attention in a

comparatively large area, thus encroaching aggressively on other forms of social or private

activity.

Finally, consider wars. Aside from their obvious social and political significance C and perhaps

their intrinsic moral and aesthetic repugnance as well C wars and battlegrounds can also be seen

as a great source of friendship and a test of moral character. The community of soldiers, standing

shoulder to shoulder in victory and in loss, epitomized a sense of obligation and responsibility

from time immemorial. For example, Socrates= role as a soldier in the community of soldiers is

arguably inseparable from his character as a philosopher. Modern wars, especially the wars

fought in the last decade of the twentieth century, illustrate the age of technological cool

interactivity. A pilot flying a bombing mission, in his high-tech and private (almost virtual)

space, is extremely distanced from his target. The pilot releases a Asmart@ bomb, maintaining his

contact with the enemy exclusively through the solitude of his computer.

Note that the delay creates a significantly altered context of responsibility that comes with the

agents= removal from the effects of their actions. Modern technology allows people to readily

interact with other people, sometimes at a great distance, and with little or no regard for the

outcome of their actions:

41

Not only does the Net allow one to move between sites, it also allows one to move without

moving (a version of royal omnipotence past) and it does so by concealing the various global

economic and labour-driven systems required for all this liberation of the dominant subject to

manifest itself. These authors perch behind their glowing screens and hurl their missives into the

cybervoid without considering the consequences of their behaviour and language practices.

Writing itself becomes one more in a series of actions whose consequences and effects occur

conveniently and tidily elsewhere (Bishop and Robinson 2002 21).

It so happens that Bishop and Robinson=s essay addresses the growing problems of transnational

prostitution, a phenomenon that is obviously not independent of changes in technology.

Is Truth in The Horse's Mouth?

Recent developments in communications technology have created the growing illusion that it is

possible to eliminate the delay in representation. I should add, from a philosophical point of

view, that delay in representation can never be totally eliminated. There is no such thing as an

absolute instantaneous representation since every means of representation, however

technologically advanced, implies at least a minuscule amount of delay. Even if there was a

perfectly instantaneous means of representation, the passage of light would, as a matter of

principle, still provide the final, and irreducible, source of delay. The latter dimension of the

process of representing is not the only source of delay; the cognitive acts of representing, by their

own nature, stretch throughout time. Charles Saunders Peirce was very much aware of this:

AThere can be no consciousness in an instant but an idea occupies time. We experience or pass

42

through thoughts as we do the events of a day or a year, without in any moment having one

present (Peirce 1982 Volume 3 104).@

On a somewhat broader socio-political level, it appears that the modern news media implicitly

harbor an illusion that the speed of representation somehow fosters verisimilitude. The latter

philosophical term means, in plain language, that the modern media has increased its capability

of truthfulness. There seems to be an implicit inference that since modern news media

approximate instantaneous representation, and (seemingly) eliminate delay, then modern news

media also eliminate bias and ideology. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the

recent phenomenon of the Aembedded journalist@ in the US news media, in the context of the

second Gulf war, speaks volumes about the growing ideological and military control of the

media.

From a historical point of view, the early 20th

century features the most exciting developments in

an effort to accelerate the process of representation. Of course, the final goal of this acceleration

process is to create a simulation of representation without delay. When it comes to the illusion of

eliminating the delay in representation, humanity has been especially taken by the invention of

photography and cinematography. This latter invention in particular seems to hold the promise

of recreating not just frozen images (like photography) but also of recreating the passage of time

and thereby keeping the viewer captivated in what appears to be the perpetual illusion of the

present.

Mary Ann Doane writes in The Emergence of Cinematic Time:

Although the rupture here is not technologically determined, new technologies of representation,

such as photography, phonography, and the cinema, are crucial to modernity=s

43

reconceptualization of time and its representability. A sea change in thinking about contingency,

indexicality, temporality, and chance marked the epistemologies of time at the turn of the last

century (Doane 2002 4).

The greater attention paid to time and its representability has surely been the most pertinent

outcome of the growing implementation of new technologies of representation in the 20th

century. However, the implicit promise of the new technologies to minimize or eliminate the

time necessary for representation has received much less scrutiny. I wish to examine that

implicit promise and to argue that the more instantaneous representation becomes the more it

depends on the narrative or some form of descriptive context in order to assert its verisimilitude.

The Phenomenology of Photography

This chapter applies the problem of verisimilitude, discussed in the previous chapter, more

specifically to the domain of photography, with a special emphasis on the phenomenological

inquiry into photography.

When a phenomenologist talks about time, there emerges a number of complex problems. To

begin with, how is it possible for a phenomenologist to reflect on the nature of time? It is well

known that the first necessary step in the process of phenomenological description is the so-

called phenomenological reduction. The process of reduction in essence shuts off the real world

and this leaves the phenomenologist examining her own pure stream of consciousness.

However, the phenomenologist realizes that every experience exists within some kind of

temporal dimension. This temporal dimension, or this Akind@ of time, is what the

44

phenomenologist is interested in. It is no easy task to describe this temporal dimension since it

exists without any external measure. This kind of temporality exists on the primordial level of

consciousness and it takes pure consciousness to examine it.

Thus Husserl writes in The Phenomenology of Internal Time- Consciousness:

What we accept, however, is not the existence of a world-time, the existence of a concrete

duration, and the like, but time and duration appearing as such. These, however, are absolute

data which it would be senseless to call into question. To be sure, we also assume an existing

time; this, however, is not the time of the world of experience but the immanent time of the flow

of consciousness (Husserl 1966 23).

What a phenomenologist does not address is that the very act of phenomenological description

itself occurs in time. Thus, the very sentence Husserl wrote about time not only unfolds in time,

as the reader comprehends it, but also took time to formulate and write on the page. This does

not even include further dimensions of the delay: for example, Husserl=s work was edited, copy-

edited, printed, translated, etc.

Does photography appear more promising in the context of phenomenological description? A

similar question may be asked, perhaps a bit more ambitiously: Is a phenomenology of

photography possible? Is photography a means of instantaneous representation capable of

capturing phenomenological descriptions? Hubert Damisch thinks it is:

We know of prints obtained from film directly exposed to a light source. The prime value of this

type of endeavor is to induce a reflection on the nature and function of the photographic image.

And insofar as it successfully eliminates one of the basic elements of the very idea of

>photography= (the camera obscura, the camera), it produced an experimental equivalent of a

45

phenomenological analysis which purports to grasp the essence of the phenomenon under

consideration by submitting that phenomenon to a series of imaginary variations (Damisch 2003

87).

I believe this analogy between photography and the activity of imaginary variations in

phenomenology is weak because photography is not an activity itself but rather an outcome of the

photographer=s activity. Even if there was a potential of imaginary variation in photography, it

takes both the photographer and the viewer to make that variation possible. Therefore, the source

of imaginary variation could not possibly lie in photography.

Damisch further writes that the photographic image does not belong to the natural world.

Photography lacks substance, which is why it is not Anatural.@ Even more importantly, the

notions of space and objectivity (whose development preceded the invention of photography) are

by nature determining -- there is no such sense of a Anaturally given@ object of photography. It

seems the entire context of photography is laden with cultural, technological, and methodological

characteristics, according to Damisch.

The following questions then must be addressed in this chapter. Is the job of the

phenomenologist to describe the cultural and technological Aframings@ of photography? Has

truly instantaneous representation proven, from the phenomenological point of view, to be an

impossibility?

Conclusion

46

I attempt to paint the ―big philosophical and technological picture,‖ metaphorically speaking, in

the Conclusion. As well, I offer some general, and perhaps somewhat contentious, speculations

about the future of technology. I hope the reader will have the patience to indulge in this type of

speculation. If there is one thing we have learned from the past, it is that guessing the course of

the future is a rather thankless and inaccurate endeavor. Be it as it may, I promise to engage

exactly in that type of guessing, fully aware of the risks involved.

47

Immediacy and Knowledge

By the turn of the 20th century, there began to emerge sophisticated discussions of the role time

plays in representation, and especially in linguistic representation. More specifically, the results

of the growing efforts in analyzing the passage of time within the process of representation

slowly and gradually began to emerge in several academic disciplines: philosophy, linguistics,

and physics. It became more and more apparent that language not only represents time but also

occurs in time. This seems so obvious as to beg the question of why it remained hidden from

48

view for so long. One can only speculate that perhaps philosophers, linguists, and physicists had

been so wrapped up in speaking and writing about time they forgot speaking and writing itself is

temporal.

There are sources, however, that suggest deeper historical causes of the problem. In the Bias of

Communication, Harold Innis argues that the tenuous balance between space and time has been

lost in Western civilization. According to Innis, time and duration have been neglected and

space has gained primacy in the Western world. The reason for this was an increase in interest in

the enlargement of territories, prevalent in the expanding West, as well as the imposition of

cultural uniformity. Finally, the demise of the temporal dimension became more acute because

of engagement in wars to carry out immediate objectives. Innis writes about this change in the

following manner:

[t]he change in attitudes toward time preceding the modern obsession with present-mindedness,

which suggests that the balance between time and space has been seriously disturbed with

disastrous consequences to Western civilization. Lack of interest in problems of duration in

Western civilization suggests that the bias of paper and printing has persisted in a concern with

space (Innis 1951 76).

Fortunately, throughout the second part of the 20th century, time and duration in language and

cognition have increasingly been the subject of study by several academic disciplines, including

linguistics. The latter examines three temporal levels on which language is realized: contextual,

articulatory, and neural (cf. Wilcox 2002). First, the contextual level is probably the most

apparent feature of language: the speaker or writer needs to be situated, both in terms of the time

in which the author happens to reside and the time about which the author chooses to speak or

49

write, during the act of speaking or writing. Second, the very act of speaking or writing requires

time to be articulated. (This level, of course, is of central importance for Timeless

Representations.) Third, neural activity, which is the necessary condition of speaking or writing,

occurs in time.

It appears the second level of temporality is itself no accident -- the duration of "articulating"

time provides the context for a manner of conceptualization that is unavailable to the means of

communication which do not require time to be articulated. This phenomenon is revealed

especially by the adjustments which have to be made for sign language to match the concepts of

duration, tense, and sequence that seem to be embedded in natural languages.

Sherman Wilcox, in his essay "The Iconic Mapping of Space and Time in Signed Languages"

suggests the iconic-based, sign languages must capture not only tenses of verbs but also aspects

of verbs, which are found in every language. According to basic linguistic principles, aspect

differs from tense in that it refers to situation-internal temporal features such as the inception,

duration, or completion of an event. Peter Wollen remarks that, while linguists do not

completely agree about the definition of "aspect," the following can be reasonably said about

aspects:

Aspect, on one level, is concerned with duration but this, in itself, is inadequate to explain its

functioning. We need semantic categories which distinguish different types of situation, in

relation to change (or potential for change) and perspective as well as duration.... It is the

interlocking of these underlying semantic categories which determines the various aspectual

forms taken by verbs in different languages (grosso modo) (Wollen 2003 77).

It is necessary for sign languages to capture aspects in an iconic manner. This necessity to

50

capture various subtle aspectual dimensions of temporality in language reveals the way in which

written and spoken languages appear to generate aspectual temporality by their own (temporal)

means of articulation. For example, Wilcox presents at least six possible aspects, expressible by

sign language, of the verb "look at:" protractive, incessant, durational, habitual, continuative, and

iterative (Wilcox 2002 277).

At this point, I can only touch on another intriguing phenomenon which can also be related to the

study of sign language -- the phenomenon of gesture. The theoretical interest in gesture emerged

mainly out of the more general interest in the semantic conjunction of body and language.

Martin Puchner, in his essay "Theater, Philosophy, and the Limits of Performance" (Krasner and

Saltz 2006 41), examines Kenneth Burke's contribution to the correlation between corporeality

and lingustic articulation. Puchner shows how Burke developed an intricate theory of gesture,

based on Richard Paget's theory of linguistic gestures "which presents a much more literal

understanding of gestual language as based on the selection of clusters of phonemes (Krasner and

Saltz 2006 41)." Burke has ventured, according to Puchner, a quite ambitious project to

demonstrate how the theory of gestural, symbolic action can be used to understand all forms of

human interaction.

I believe at least some of this sense of temporality, embedded in natural languages in the form of

sign language and gesture, has been captured by Wittgenstein's famous example of the difference

between speaking about things and showing things, or more simply, between saying and

showing. As well, I believe there are additional philosophical issues implicit in Russell's

distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description which can be

reinstated as the distinction between instantaneous and non-instantaneous means of

51

representation. The latter distinction is best illustrated by the difference between presenting

objects directly (instantaneous representing) and describing objects (non-instantaneous

representing).

However, let me begin by exploring the context of the philosophical discussions, especially in

the 20th century, centered around the problems of time, meaning, and continuity before I turn my

attention to Russell's distinction mentioned above.

In the philosophy of language and linguistics, one of the most important ways in which time

entered discussions of language and meaning was the discovery of indexicality. The term

"indexical" was introduced by Peirce to refer to expressions that, in the past, have been called

"demonstratives." It is well known, in the literature inquiring into Peirce's theory of signs, that

Peirce's division of signs into icon, index, and symbol is the most important element of his

classification of signs. Of course, Peirce tied this division to his metaphysical categories of

Firstness (possibility), Secondness (actuality) and Thirdness (necessity). It is obvious that

indexicals are intrinsically bound, by their metaphysical status, to the realm of actuality and to

the present.

Mary Ann Doane rightly prefaces her analysis of Peirce's indexicality with a few cautionary

remarks. She stresses that Peirce would not permit the conceptualizations of the present as

composed of unconnected and fleeting instants. The reason for this is Peirce's essential

understanding of time as a continuum. I will explore this understanding in some more detail in

this chapter and it will become clear that Peirce's emphasis on the continuum as well as the

temporality of cognition situates his understanding of time closer to the thought of Henri Bergson

than that of certain 20th century empiricists, whose position is illustrated by Bertrand Russell in

52

my chapter. Nevertheless, it is important to pay some attention to Peirce's view of the index,

which is the form of sign which comes closest to the present and the instant. This is what Doane

writes about the index:

According to Peirce, most signs are mixed in character; it is difficult, for instance, to find

examples of a "pure index." However, signs do have a dominant dimension, and he proceeds to

elaborate these dimensions in great detail. Indices are characterized by a certain singularity and

uniqueness; they always refer to individuals, single units, single collections of units, or single

continua. They are dependent upon certain unique contingences: the wind blowing at the

moment in a certain direction, a foot having landed in the mud at precisely this place, the

camera's shutter opening at a given time. Unlike icons, indices have no resemblance to their

objects, which, nevertheless, directly cause them. This phenomenon reflects the fact that the

index is evacuated of content; it is a hollowed-out sign (Doane 2002 92).

Indexicals can be illustrated by sentences of often vague nature, such as: "I am here." They are

obviously dependent, by their nature, on the context in which they are used. I need to determine

who "I" am and where "here" is in order to properly understand the sentence and to appraise its

truth value. Typically, immediacy and presence do the job of securing the proper context for

indexicals. Yet another example of the usage of indexicals is the act of pointing as well as

distinguishing between left and right. In the history of philosophy, one of the best examples of

such a discussion is Kant's treatment of the use of indexicals. Kant argued that indexicals are

necessary to accomplish the act of distinguishing between the perfect pair of gloves, left and

right. According to Kant, such an act cannot be accomplished purely descriptively. In

mathematics, this problem has developed into a long standing controversy under the rubric of

53

"incogruent counterparts."

When it comes to more recent discussions of indexicality in the Philosophy of Language,

American philosopher David Kaplan would appear to figure most prominently in the literature.

Kaplan has offered a comprehensive theory of indexicals, which strives to synthesize earlier 20th

century insights into indexicals offered by Saul Kripke, arguably the most imporant of Kaplan's

influences. Kaplan's critics, who offer their own competing theories of indexicals, include John

Perry and David Lewis.

However, the role of indexicals does not limit itself to debates in the philosophy of language.

Discussions centered around indexicality can be found in the domains of semiotics, semantics,

inference, abduction, deduction and many other related, and often more technical, disciplines of

linguistics and mathematical logic. Here is an example in which the renowned semiotics scholar

Thomas Sebeok discusses several pertinent uses of indexicality which range from entertainment

to legal or criminal identification:

Some forms of entertainment, such as stage conjury and circus animal acts, rely crucially on the

manipulation of indexical signs. So do certain crafts, such as handwriting authentication (a la

Benjamin and Charles Peirce); and, of course, indentification, criminal or otherwise, by

fingerprinting, mentioned no fewer than seven times by Sherlock Holmes, according to a

phenotypic system devised by Galton in the 1890s (Sebeok 1995 235).

When philosophers and logicians talk about definitions, sometimes they explain the nature of the

so-called ostensive definition (i.e., holding a piece of chalk in order to define "chalk"). They note

this method of definition is considered the simplest and most direct means of definition. In

general, when the speaker has the luxury of immediacy and presence, it becomes easy to pick the

54

right words -- even the hopelessly vague "this" or "lo" can assist the speaker in referring to the

chosen object. Yet immediacy and presence can be granted at all times only to an omniscient

deity, and not to humankind.

Many philosophers have grappled with the difficulties implicit in understanding the epistemic

role of immediacy and presence. Some have cast serious doubt on the very possibility of

attaining direct and immediate knowledge. A good example of the latter approach would be

Wilfrid Sellars' critique of "the myth of the given." Some other philosophers have sought to

distinguish between language and knowledge based on immediacy and presence and language

and knowledge based on abstraction. I will provide only two brief examples of the latter effort:

Edmund Husserl's distinction between subjective and objective expressions and Bertrand

Russell's distinction between particulars and universals.

In his discussion of Husserl's theories of indexicals, Karl Schumman emphasizes Husserl's long-

standing interest in the logical structure and function of the term "this." As well, Schumman

mentions two other notable topics relevant for Hussrel's theories of indexicals:

There is also much more to be said on the term "I" which in Husserl quickly turned from being an

indexical (and therefore in some sense an expression depending on something else, namely on a

given bodily situation) into a substance-like "transcendental" something or even a Leibnizian

monad. Moreover one could mention Husserl's treatment of speech acts like commanding,

asking, etc., which according to him have indexicals among their component parts (Schumman

1993 122).

Schumman further characterizes Husserl's distinction between subjective and objective

knowledge in the following manner:

55

In the second volume of his Logical Investigations, published in 1901, Husserl distinguishes

between two sorts of expressions: objective expressions, which can be fully understood by simply

attending to the meaning of the terms they contain, and subjective expressions, where one needs

in addition to be aware of the actual speaker and his factual situation in order to see what his

words are about (Schuhman 1993 111).

While Husserl centers his discussion of subjective and objective expressions around the problem

of language and meaning, Russell situates his discussion of particulars and universals in the

context of knowledge. In Mysticism and Logic, when he writes about knowledge by

acquaintance and knowledge by description, Russell makes the following remarks about

particulars and universals:

There are thus at least two sorts of objects of which we are aware, namely particulars and

universals. Among particulars I include all existents, and all complexes of which one or more

constituents are existents, such as this-before-that, this-above-that, the yellowness-of-this.

Among universals I include all objects of which no particular is a constituent (Russell 1918 213-

214).

Once the linguistic expressions, their referents, and our beliefs regarding them loosen the direct

ties to each other which they seem to enjoy in the wake of their immediacy and presence, there

arise many possible difficulties and complications. It is well known in the Philosophy of

Language literature that this loss of immediacy and presence, which occurs because of the

passage of time, creates a set of difficult problems for the correspondence theory of truth. The

latter theory, often characterized as the commonsense view of the conditions of truth and

meaning, holds that a sentence is true when it corresponds with its states of affairs. However,

56

one and the same linguistic expression, and this is especially true of pronouns, is not only

capable of referring, at different times, to more than one object or person but is also capable of

generating either true or false beliefs. Thus, a sentence "I have a meeting at 5 o'clock today" may

happen to be true in referring to myself. Yet I may happen to believe it is false since, at a certain

point of time, I may forget about the meeting. Furthermore, one and the same object can be

referred to by more than one expression at different times. The latter problem, by now well

known in logic and philosophy of language, has resulted in the refinement of beliefs and their

division into de re and de dicto beliefs. For example, Oedipus famously believed that he was not

killing his father and marrying his mother and this belief was true de dicto yet, alas, it was not

true de re. The former distinction was introduced by W.V.O. Quine and it has generated, as it

often happens in philosophy, numerous subsequent distinctions and qualifications.

Daniel Dennett, in his influential book The Intentional Stance, provides a few examples of the

many possible confusions in the discussions of de re and de dicto:

Just consider the infamous case of believing that the shortest spy is a spy. It is commonly

presumed that we all know what state of mind is being alluded to in this example, but in fact

there are many quite different possibilities undistinguished in the literature. Does Tom believe

that the shortest spy is a spy in virtue of nothing more than a normal share of logical acumen, or

does he also have to have a certain sort of idleness and a penchant for reflecting on tautologies?

(Should we say we all believe this, and also that the tallest tree is a tree and so forth ad

infinitum?) Does Tom believe that the shortest dugong is a dugong? Or, to pursue a different

tack, what is the relation between believing that man is a spy and thinking that man is a spy?

Sincere denial is often invoked as a telling sign of disbelief. What is it best viewed as showing?

57

And so forth (Dennett 1987 202).

Please note that my brief discussion of the possible problems with the temporality of the

correspondence theory of truth is far from exhaustive. The problems I just sketched belong to a

much wider cluster of often convoluted problems still debated in the field of meaning, reference,

and belief. Any student of contemporary philosophy, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world,

would recognize the early efforts Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein made in the field of meaning

and reference.

However, it is not my intention to discuss the subtleties of this rich field of study. I wish to

elaborate only on one possible lesson one can glean from these early 20th century discussions of

the role of time and indexicality in language: if the dynamic and all-transforming effects of time

are taken seriously then any project of formalizing natural language encounters great difficulties.

By far the greatest challenge, when it comes to formalizing natural languages, is to gain an

understanding of continuity both in thought and in states of affairs. Under the interpretation of

the universe that dominated the first half of the 20th century, based on the principles of logical

atomism, the reality of every moment is preceded by another past reality and it anticipates, or

prefigures, yet another reality in the future. Of course, there are several sources of this

interpretation of the universe. In his book The Culture of Time and Space, Stephen Kern

suggests that Newtonian calculus provided the most important source of the atomistic

understanding of time:

The argument on behalf of the atomistic nature of time had a variety of sources. Perhaps most

influential was Newton's calculus, which conceived of time as a sum of infinitesimally small but

discrete units. Clocks produced audible reminders of the atomistic nature of time with each tick

58

and visible representations of it with their calibrations (Kern 1983 20).

The problem with this atomistic understanding of change is the loss of understanding of

continuity. By continuity, I mean the sense of spatio-temporal persistence which is necessary for

the constitution of so-called continuant objects. The latter objects need to exist not only at a

unique place and time but also to persist throughout a continuous non-interrupted series of

spatio-temporal points. Can there be a philosophical account of this kind of continuity?

Furthermore, should there be such an account?

A much broader thesis, in regard to the abovementioned problem of continuity, is possible: it

seems the metaphysics of naturalist and empiricist philosophy, a broader philosophical outlook

that seems to have gradually replaced logical atomism in the 20th century as the dominating

doctrine of analytic philosophy, has inherited the loss of understanding of continuity as its blind

spot. Is it really the case that any naturalist and empiricist philosopher, and not just a logical

atomist, is forced to abandon any hope of discovering the nature of the nexus between two or

more discrete moments in time? This becomes even more problematic when one assumes that

every thought takes a certain amount of time, however minuscule. However, the standard view

of 20th

century analytic philosophy was to suppose that present tenses ought to be read timelessly

(cf. Quine 1960 170). Many analytic philosophers seem outright irked by the troublesome

tendency of temporality to invade otherwise elegant formal systems. W.V.O. Quine writes in his

Word and Object:

Our ordinary language shows a tiresome bias in its treatment of time. Relations of date are

exalted grammatically as relations of position, weight, and color are not. This bias is itself an

inelegance, or breach of theoretical simplicity (Quine 1960 170).

59

I suggest at this point, as a thought-provoking historical case study, to reflect on Milic Capek's

insightful discussion of the two radically opposed understandings of continuity that were

articulated in the early 20th century. The first understanding is held by Bertrand Russell and the

second by Henri Bergson. It is interesting to note that there have been broader historical

conceptions of similar historical disputes on the nature of time, change and continuity. For

example, the term "independent instantaneous flashes" has been used by Keynes and illustrates

the lack of continuity in our current Western understanding of time that evolved from the Roman

and Western Christian understanding of time. In contrast, the view of time as requiring

continuity and duration can be attributed to the Greeks and their sense of community (cf. Innis

1951 89).

Because of his logical atomism, Russell is often at pains to minimize or even eliminate the

process of becoming. His view of the future is to transform it into a concealed present (cf. Capek

1991, 90). Thus the flow of time for Russell, if it exists at all, must not be reified, and especially

not postulated as yet another metaphysical entity. The flow of time should be reduced to the

replacement of one temporal frame by another. Bergson, on the other hand, believed not only in

the organic and imminent ties between the past, present, and future but also in the process of

change that is uniquely characterized by its own direction and duration. Moreover, he even

understands the whole project of metaphysics as an immediate grasping of the self in its passage

through time.

Capek presents the disagreements between Russell's and Bergson's views of the universe as

centering around their respective understanding of the nature of the universe as

"cinematographic:"

60

For Bergson the successive projection of the static picture on the screen symbolizes "the

cinematographic mechanism of thought," which tries to reconstruct change out of changeless

entities; for Russell, it is a correct and adequate analysis of the physical process. For Bergson the

experienced continuity of change, succession and motion is real, while the successive static

"moments" are illusory; for Russell the opposite is true,"the cinema is a better metaphysician

than common sense, physics, or philosophy" (Russell, Mysticism and Logic 1929, quoted in

Capek 1991 97).

Thus for Bergson the frames of the movies are the effects of a technological illusion, which can

be understood, metaphorically speaking, as being based on the principles of logical atomism.

The frames are the necessary means to achieve the experience of continuity. For Russell, the

opposite is the case since he believes movie frames are the correct model of the ultimate reality

while the experience of continuity is itself an optical illusion.

I have indulged in this discussion of Russell and Bergson because I find it effectively illustrates

some of the key features of the difficult metaphysical problem of continuity. However, the key

contributions to these topics were made by Charles Sanders Peirce, one of the pioneers of

American Pragmatism, by the turn of the 20th century. One could argue that continuity

represents the most salient element of Peirce's entire philosophy. Indeed, he sometimes

summarized his own philosophical position as "synechism," using the Greek term for the process

of binding or "making continuous."

I should remind the reader that Peirce worked some decades before the debate, which I

mentioned above, began to arise concerning the project of formalizing natural languages.

However, he did more than simply anticipate the possible problems that the passage of time may

61

cause to any future projects of constructing formalized languages. He also proposed an account

of language and meaning that captures the plasticity and dynamism of language and thought in

actual time. Of course, Peirce's recognition of the centrality of time in his theory of signs is a

natural outcome of his understanding of time as the basic paradigm for all other kinds of

continua:

Time, for Peirce, is the prime continuum. As a continuum, it welds the world into a greater

unity. Objectively outside of us, time also appears in human experience and welds us to the

world. It is important for our knowledge of the continua within the material world, especially as

in physics. Indeed, time is the most excellent kind of continuum. It provides paradigms for all

other kinds of continua (Helm 1980 377).

Kant may be the first philosopher to show that no human experience is possible without the

transcendental paradigm of time. Peirce is the first philosopher to firmly establish that thought

and consciousness cannot exist as atemporal and abstract entities bereft of time. In his early

remarks on time and thought, written in 1873, Perice asserts the following: "Every mind which

passes from doubt to belief must have ideas which follow after one another in time (Peirce 1986

68)."

However, this is not the only factor that needs to be taken into account regarding the ways in

which the mind shapes, and is shaped, by time. Perhaps even more importantly to Peirce, the

thinking and understanding of language are processes that occur in time: "There can be no

consciousness in an instant but an idea occupies time (Peirce 1986 104)." He immediately

recognizes that this phenomenon belongs to the more abstract rubric of continuum and

continuity. Why? To use a mathematical analogy, every real number is only the limit of a series

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since it can be infinitely approximated. Similarly, the color of any surface or the velocity of an

object during an infinitesimal instant are themselves nothing but limits of a vast collection of

colored points or duration of time. As Peirce points out, the nature of the phenomena of color

and velocity is to connect "vicariously" with the surrounding colors and the past and future in

movement. Sandra Rosenthal emphasizes Peirce's continuous efforts to show that a point of time

is never a knife-edged slice of time (cf. Rosenthal 1997 410). Instead, points of time should be

understood as always incorporating a beginning, middle and end. Rosenthal writes about the

dilemmas, present in pragmatism as much as in Husserl's and Derrida's philosophy, involving the

present in a strict and in a broad sense:

The dilemmas as stated above are perhaps encapsulated in Peirce's insistence that we must be

directly aware of the past as it recedes. If there were no such process of recession, then there

would be a gap between past and present, and thus awareness of the past, and hence untimately

the present, would be impossible. As Peirce states of the past, "it can only be going

infinitesimally past, less past than any assignable date." According to this view we are not aware

of the present in a finite interval of time. Immediate awareness in the present is not awareness in

a point instant. Rather, "the present is connected with the past by a series of real infinitesimal

steps" which cannot in any way be understood in terms of an indefinite succession of discretes,

but rather as a continuous flow (Rosenthal 1997 409).

This is how Peirce shows the centrality of the continuum for the discussion of color boundaries

and time in consciousness:

Now, as the parts of the surface of the immediate neighbourhood of any ordinary point upon a

curved boundary are half of them red and half blue, it follows that the boundary is half red and

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half blue. In like manner, we find it necessary to hold that consciousness occupies time; and

what is present to the mind at any ordinary instant is what is present during a moment in which

that instant occurs. Thus, the present is half past and half to come (Peirce 1965 99).

Not only is present half past and half future, according to Peirce, but also the mind does not have

the power of distancing itself from the succession of ideas in order to represent it. Instead, the

mind is perpetually immersed in the passing moment:

Therefore, the fact that one idea succeeds another is not a thing which in itself can be present to

the mind, any more than the experience of a whole day or of a year can be said to be present to

the mind. It is something which can be lived through; but not be present in any one instant; and

therefore, which can not be present to the mind at all; for nothing is present but the passing

moment, and what it contains (Peirce 1986 72).

Sandra Rosenthal argues that Peirce's doctrine of signs and their temporality is superior to most

modern accounts of the temporality of signs. As an example, she takes Derrida's doctrine of

trace, in which the sign is constituted by a peculiar manner of "bending back" of other signs, or

by the trace of other signs. In a nutshell, Rosenthal suggests that Derrida's doctrine of trace and

differance creates a false dichotomy between pure identity and pure alterity, and presents the

reader with a forced choice between either "presence without signs" or "signs without presence"

(Rosenthal 1997 27). Peirce's account of the temporality of signs, in contrast to Derrida's, allows

"the living present to be understood from a richer account which genuinely includes the vital

functioning of traces of past and future within the passing present" (Rosenthal 1997 27).

This may not be a very charitable reading of Derrida yet I believe Peirce's theory of signs to be, at

least from a philosopher's point of view, clearly superior to Derrida's. If nothing else, Peirce's

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understanding of time and continuity better suits the scientific and philosophical paradigms of the

20th century. This is especially true of Peirce's doctrine of chance and probability.

Perhaps one of the most momentous and lasting of Peirce's insights is his insight into the nature

of an instant. For Peirce, an ordinary instant is not an instantaneous point but an infinitely small

duration of time as unit. For example, Peirce refers to the velocity of any particle at any instant

of time as its mean velocity during that instant of time (cf. Peirce 1965 99). Robin Le Poidevin

makes a strikingly similar point in the context of the temporality of photographs, paintings, rigid

sculptures, and other static images (cf. Le Poidevin 1997). Le Poidevin shows that classical

accounts of still images and movement force a philosopher to maintain that static images depict

neither movements nor instants. In order to escape from this seemingly paradoxical choice, Le

Poidevin suggests a refined notion of an instant:

There is no objection, however, to defining an instant as an arbitrarily small part of an interval.

Or, to make it less arbitrary, we could define an instant as the smallest perceivable part of an

interval. This we might call the 'specious instant'......This, then, is what static images are capable

of depicting: specious instants which are parts of a larger movement represented by the image.

Images can thus represent a movement by depicting perceptually minimum parts of it (Le

Poidevin 1997 186).

This definition of an instant is akin to Peirce's "vicarious" nature of colour and velocity, which I

briefly discussed above. I will further discuss Le Poidevin's notion of specious instants in the

Phenomenology of Photogpraphy chapter, and situate it in the context of the debate over the

ability of photography, as a static medium, to represent temporality.

Peirce did not address the problem of time and continuity in language and cognition exclusively

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from a metaphysical but also from a historical point of view. He recognizes the vast, and

heretofore largely unrecognized, legacy of time and continuity in the process and methods of

reasoning and inference in ancient and medieval discourse. He discusses a number of examples

from the history of philosophy. The most important context in which these examples work is

that of causality. Time is, of course, always implicit in causality and time (a sense of sequence)

permeates the scholastic ordination (or hierarchy) of implication. Thus, sense is prior to reason,

matter to form, simple to complex, potency to energy, etc. It goes without saying that the former

instances of temporality in implication are drawn from Aristotle's writings. Let me present only

one such example from Aristotle, where he writes about sense as prior to reason:

Things are prior and more familiar in two ways; for it is not the same to be prior by nature and

prior in relation to us, nor to be more familiar and more familiar to us. I call prior and more

familiar in relation to us what is nearer to perception, prior and more familiar simpliciter what is

further away. What is most universal is furthest away, and the particulars are nearest; and these

are opposite to each other (Aristotle Posterior Analytics Book I, 2, 72a1).

For Aristotle, sense comes prior to reason for humans since sense objects are closest to us and

this order appears natural. Yet we have to learn to reject what appears to be the natural sense of

priority and to understand that universal objects, which are the furthest from us, are prior and

more familiar. I believe the only ground for this reversal of the natural sense of priority is the

temporality of human cognition. Since the human mind is temporal, it builds its epistemic

edifice on building blocks that can only be laid in a temporal sequence. Thus, the mind needs

sense to be able to reason as well as matter to be able to discern forms. However, it does not

follow that the human mind is trapped in temporality because its nature is temporal -- humans

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can use reason to grasp, in abstraction, the continuity in things and events. For example, this

meaning of continuity is grasped by reflecting on a potential that exists in a seed that is later

found, fully developed, in a grown tree. Conversely, a grown tree always possesses certain

attributes that can be detected as already present in a young tree or even in a seed.

Furthermore, Peirce discusses the continuity present in the act of supposing, often a topic of great

importance in medieval philosophy and logic. In Peirce's terminology, there is a sense of priority

in consecution (cf. Peirce 1965 274). Thus, when two are supposed, one is supposed as well but

if one is supposed then two is not thereby supposed. The sense of priority in consecution, even

though it can be defined in purely formal terms, depends on the temporal model of sequence.

Marshall McLuhan has suggested that the Western concept of logical inference, or the idea that

something "follows" from something else, depends on the concept of sequence:

Only alphabetic cultures have ever mastered connected linear sequences as pervasive forms of

psychic and social organization. The breaking up of every kind of experience into uniform units

in order to produce faster action and change of form (applied knowledge) has been the secret of

Western power over man and nature alike (McLuhan 1994 85).

Helmut Pape, in his essay "The Emergence of Time and Singularity in Peirce's Philosophy,"

writes about a similar phenomenon, this time in the context of Kant's philosophy. In his Critique

of Pure Reason, Kant developed the antinomies which arise within every reasoning about the

beginning of time. Pape stresses the following feature of every natural language:

Kant's argument about the antinomic nature of all reasoning about the beginning of time is rooted

in the fact that our natural language has an implicit temporal structure. Not only the tensed verb-

forms, but many nouns, propositions and adjectives imply that some minimal temporal ordering

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of the objects talked about is already feasible. So we cannot use the concepts, demonstratives,

prepositions and verbs of such an explicitly or implicitly temporally structured language to talk

about the emergence of time, using the vocabulary and syntax in their literal, straightforward

sense (Pape 2001 185-186).

Continuity is doubtless a crucial topic in discussions of the temporal nexus of change in nature.

Yet the topic of this chapter is a key contrast between the two kinds of representation: one that

requires time for its execution and one that is instantaneous, i.e. that does not require time for its

execution. Wittgenstein's "showing" would apply to the latter and his "saying" would apply to

the former. Russell had a different label for this distinction: he famously contrasted knowledge

by acquaintance with knowledge by description.

Russell defines acquaintance as "a direct cognitive relation to the object (cf. Russell 1918 209)."

By direct cognitive relation he means direct awareness of the object. In his essay, "On the Nature

of Acquaintance" Russell discusses the nature of the "present experience" and the way in which

that experience enables acquaintance with objects:

When an object is in my present experience, then I am acquainted with it; it is not necessary for

me to reflect upon my experience, or to observe that the object has the property of belonging to

my experience, in order to be acquainted with it, but, on the contrary, the object itself is known to

me without the need of any reflection on my part as to its properties or relations (Russell 1971

167).

In Mysticism and Logic, Russell suggests that we may be directly aware of particulars and

universals. He offers some examples of how we get acquainted with particulars ("the yellowness

of this"). When it comes to universals that we are directly acquainted with, Russell hints that

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they are "abstract" and perhaps identifiable with concepts (cf. Russell 1918 214) but he offers no

examples. When it comes to descriptions, one can describe an object using either a definite

description or an ambiguous description. An object is known by a definite description, according

to Russell, when we know that there is one object, and no more, having a certain property.

Ambiguous descriptions, in contrast to definite descriptions, are capable of referring to one or

more objects.

Russell is concerned, when it comes to the distinction between knowledge by description and

knowledge by acquaintance, mostly with matters of logic and epistemology. He sums up the

fundamental logical and epistemological features of the distinction as follows:

Whenever a relation of supposing or judging occurs, the terms to which the supposing or judging

mind is related by the relation of supposing or judging must be terms with which the mind in

question is acquainted (Russell 1918 221).

My reading of the distinction differs from Russell's since it is motivated by the passage of time in

representing. Direct cognitive relation to the object, or direct awareness of the object, is

equivalent to the instantaneous means of representing in my terminology. The strong emphasis

that Russell puts on the absence of reflection provides the ground for my reading. Description of

the object implies delay, i.e. the temporal process of representing that applies to both logical and

linguistic means of relating to the object. With the delay, there also comes a distancing of the

objects of description from the describer. This process of distancing is necessary for reflection.

One can see the rich philosophical tradition at work, which has always aimed at securing the

objective grounds of knowledge by removing knowledge from the thinking processes of the

knower.

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Russell has always strived to reduce description (delayed means of representation) to the original,

or primary, instantaneous awareness. This a true hallmark of empiricism; yet this reductionist

project has been doomed to failure throughout the 20th century. Perhaps Quine's suggestion, in

his Two Dogmas, that the true empiricist has to abandon every hope in attaining this reduction

ought to be taken seriously.

When he writes about the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by

description in On Denoting, Russell seems to be distinguishing between perception and thought.

According to that distinction, we have direct acquaintance with the objects of perception while

we do not have direct acquaintance with the objects of thought. Russell gives the examples of

"the center of the solar system" and "the existence of other people's minds" to illustrate the kinds

of objects we can only know by description. The latter are defined negatively, by the absence of

their capability to be perceived directly. Russell writes, in a passage that appears to invoke

Hume's distinction between relations of impressions and relations of ideas:

In perception we have acquaintance with the objects of perception, and in thought we have

acquaintance with objects of a more abstract logical character; but we do not necessarily have

acquaintance with the objects denoted by phrases composed of words with whose meanings we

are acquainted (Russell 1971 42).

Although this distinction seems influenced by Hume, I believe this distinction can be also

brought to bear on the Cartesian dualism between thinking and extended substance. Perception

thus requires direct acquaintance with its sources in "outward" experience, where the perceiver

hopes to attain a direct and immediate bridge to reality. Description, in turn, depends on

thoughts which have their own source in introspection and are based on outward perceptual

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sources only indirectly.

This may be yet another historical, and admittedly broad-brush, reading of the delay: in essence,

an empiricist and a rationalist reading. For empiricists, the nature of introspection is always and

necessarily a secondary (and therefore delayed) activity that has to be ultimately based on

perception, which is always and necessarily a primary (immediate/instantaneous) activity. This is

why, for Hume, ideas can never be as vivid and real as impressions. He presents his belief that

perceptions necessarily fade within the process of thinking and reasoning in the very first

paragraph of his Treatise:

All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall

call IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS. The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force

and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought and

consciousness. These perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name

impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as

they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking

and reasoning; such as, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present discourse,

excepting only, those which arise from the sight and touch, and excepting the immediate pleasure

or uneasiness it may occasion (Hume 1965 1).

For rationalists, the ultimate lesson of Descartes' systematic doubt is that every cognitive activity,

including seemingly immediate perception and sensation, is potentially delayed. The task of

systematic doubt, according to Descartes, is precisely to debunk the myth of the immediacy and

instantaneousness of perception. It is not surprising, therefore, to see Descartes, in his first

Meditation, casting doubt on the immediacy and trustworthiness of our senses:

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Reason now leads me to think that I should hold back my assent from opinions which are not

completely certain and indubitable just as carefully as I do from those which are patently false....

Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or

through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent

never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once (Descartes 1988 76).

The greatest lesson of the Meditations is that the only safe haven for a rationalist-minded

philosopher is the recognition that the activity of introspection provides the only indubitable

ground of metaphysics. Thus the philosopher embraces the essentially delayed introspection not

as creating "a faint replica of perception," even though the empiricists may believe so, but as

providing the true foundation of all knowledge.

Perhaps the key to the two radically opposed attitudes regarding the delay in representation,

intrinsic to empiricist and rationalist philosophy, is to be found in the tendency of rationalism to

internalize all experience while empiricism has the tendency to externalize all experience. The

latter two tendencies can then be further justified in light of the temporal character of "inner"

experiences as opposed to the spatial character of "outer" experiences.

To prolong Russell's "cinema" metaphor from Mysticism and Logic, the reality of the discrete

slices of time, which produce the optical illusion of continuity, is indeed a spatial matter for

empiricists. For rationalists, the meaning of the metaphor is necessarily reversed: the

aforementioned slices of time are a mere abstraction, derived from the reality of inner temporal

experiences.

I hope I have offered a new perspective on Russell's distinction between knowledge by

acquaintance and knowledge by description and indirectly a potentially new perspective on the

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legacy of Descartes and Hume. This new perspective depends on the temporality of the process

of representing. If the process of representing is direct and instantaneous then the nature of the

process is fundamentally different from the process of representing that involves the delay.

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Performativity and Description

Performative and Descriptive Levels of Discourse

In this chapter, I will examine the performative level of discourse by contrasting it with another,

more standard and widely accepted level of discourse, namely the descriptive level. In light of

the contrast between performative and descriptive levels of discourse, the latter level is based on

a representational model, where the observers find it necessary to distance themselves from the

observed phenomena. The representational theory of the mind, which is arguably the standard

model of the mind, has dominated philosophy of mind and epistemology since Descartes and

Locke. In the 20th century, perhaps the best known effort at validating the representational

theory can be found in the work of Rudolf Carnap, one of the most prominent logical positivists.

Carnap argued, throughout his career, that matters of mental phenomena ought to be translatable

into physical language, which is objective and universal by nature.

As it is widely known, representational theory has worked in unison with twentieth century

philosophy of science. The latter has maintained a widely accepted methodological approach

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which postulates an observer-based stance both in the context of discovery and the context of

justification. The observer-based stance presupposes the third-person descriptive and

representational context, which has come to typify the method and style of contemporary science.

It is not difficult to find a wide range of books and essays that feature a version of the

representational theory of mind. As an example, I have selected a book, by Kim Sterelny, titled

"The Representational Theory of Mind." In a chapter introducing representation and

computation, Sterelny writes that the scientific and "folk" picture (folk psychology is the

common sense understanding of mental processes which postulates the existence of desires,

memories, emotions, and so forth) converge on the idea that representation is central to the

human mind.

This is how Sterelny characterizes the function of our mental states:

According to the representational theory of the mind, while mental states differ, one from

another, mental states are representational states, and mental activity is the acquisition,

transformation, and use of information and misinformation (Sterelny 1990 19).

The emphasis on the role of the acquisition and organization of information in the mind, evident

in this short quote, illustrates the growing affinity between the contemporary domains of

neuroscience, computer science, and the philosophy of mind. Sterelny sums up the

representational theory of the mind in the following manner:

I have now introduced the mainline contemporary positions in current thought on the mind, the

representational theory of the mind. Thoughts are inner representations, thinking is the

processing of inner, mental representations. These representations have a double aspect. They

are representations in virtue of relations with the world. Mental states represent in virtue of

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causal relations with what they represent. But their role within the mind depends on their

individualist, perhaps their syntactic, properties. The syntactic properties of representations --

thier overall organization and the interconnections between their primitive elements -- are

properties that can play a direct role in cognitive processing. As a consequence, the

representational theory of the mind is linked to the computational theory of the mind. A

computational theory of the mind has the promise, we might reasonably hope, of explaining one

aspect of natural minds; of explaining how an entirely natural, physical system can use and

manipulate representations (Sterelny 1990 39).

I see the nature of the representational model as profoundly affected by the delay inherent in the

process of representing. The latter delay arises because of the constant activity of distancing the

objects of representation from the agents of representation. The agents of representation are

thereby intrinsically external to the process of representation -- they "opt out," so to speak.

The performative level of discourse, in contrast to the descriptive or representative level, is

probably best illustrated as a matter of an actor, or actors, participating in a concrete and

immediate action. The action happens "here" and "now" and, as such, can only be a matter of

experiencing or partaking in, and not of describing or representing.

There is a growing body of literature around the intersection of theater, performance and

philosophy. One recent example is a book "Staging Philosophy," edited by David Krasner and

David Saltz. One of the essays in "Staging Philosophy," titled "Presence," written by Jon

Erickson, examines difficult metaphysical arguments which attempt to address the elusive cluster

of phenomena involving presence, emphaty, and charisma:

That human beings can develop character over time and emanate experience or thoughtfulness

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may be a physical truth about what we call "presence" in a social setting. There is thus a

recognizable material side to presence. It has to do with a certain kind of saturation of feeling or

thought in the individual; it accrues according to age and to sensitivity (some can accrue presence

at a very young age, others grow into it) (Krasner and Saltz 2006 146).

Erickson suggests, often using metaphors, that personal charisma (sometimes one of the most

crucial aspects of presence) is a matter of a certain kind of "saturation" of feeling as well as a

"condesation" of experience. Personal charisma is ultimately a matter of sensibility that, in the

right circumstances, emanates from the performer (cf. Krasner and Saltz 2006 147).

Another essay in the same collection, ―The Text/Performance Split‖ written by Julia A. Walker,

endows the theatrical presence with the gift of understanding which goes beyond ―mere‖

knowledge:

Theater, perhaps more than any other art form, has the power to appeal to all of these ways of

knowing in its very form. Combining visual, auditory, and often olfactory (if not gustatory) and

tactile effects cannot be understood from an ―outside‖ perspective that flattens its multiple

sensory appeals into a text to be read. Insofar as we see, hear, smell or feel ourselves in relation

to the event that takes place on stage (and often in the aisles and all around us) we are

participating in an experience of understanding, not just registering the knowledge of something

that stands in objective relation to our own subjectivity (Krasner and Saltz 2006 36).

Because I refer to actors and action, it is natural to turn our attention to theater, the oldest and the

best model of performativity known to humanity. It is well known that the western idea of

theater has its roots in ancient Greece, with Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, and Sophocles

as the best known dramatic writers and with Aristotle as the first theorist of the theater. It is also

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well known that theater became popularized in the English speaking world primarily through

Shakespeare's plays. Much later, in the nineteenth century, Lessing emerged as the first modern

dramaturge by writing a comprehensive treatise in aesthetics, the Laokoon. Finally, in the

twentieth century several theater theorists, such as Brecht and Stanislavski, laid the foundations

of a modern understanding of theater. In his inquiry into modern theories of performance, The

Theater Event, Timothy Wiles reflects on the following features of theater as performance:

Of course, art possesses an aspect as a tangible and unalterable object, like a statue, just as it

possesses an aspect as a changing and change-making interaction. Perhaps theater exists to

illuminate this second aspect of art; for more than any other, theatrical art depends upon living

and present mediators, actors and audience, for both its meaning and its existence (Wiles 1980

2).

If we take for granted the (controversial, at least in my opinion) thesis that arts represents things,

persons, or events, then the former aspect of art stands for description while the latter aspect

stands for performativity.

Theater and Philosophy

There are many metaphoric expressions that illustrate the long and historic ties between

philosophy and theater. For example, a philosopher may "set the stage for further inquiry" or

give a "dazzling performance." Sometimes, the history of philosophy is even portrayed

metaphorically as the stage of ideas where the grand philosophers/actors engage in their

metaphysical duels. It is interesting to note that while there are examples of novels which

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incorporate the history of philosophy (Sophie's World, for example) there are no examples of

plays (at least to my knowledge) which do something of the sort. Of course, this is not to say that

there are no plays which are, by their nature, deeply philosophical.

In the Introduction to "Staging Philosophy," David Krasner and David Saltz reflect on some key

common features of theater and philosophy:

Like philosophy, theater often sheds light on a reality obfuscated by appearances. Moreover,

theater, like philosophy, exposes that reality by representing and analyzing human action and

demonstrating causal relationships..... Both theater and philosophy represent humans actively

engaging with and in the world, and a basic technique both employ to that end is dialogue.

Dialogue is one of the most important tools of Plato's famous Socratic method, and remains a

common format for presenting philosophical arguments through the Enlightement (Krasner and

Saltz 2006 2-3).

Within the discipline of philosophy, there are examples of books that attempt to revive the

interest in this kind of affinity between philosophy and drama. A relatively recent example

would be "Thinker on Stage" by Peter Sloterdijk, a book that features a "dramaturgical approach

to Nietzsche," according to a reviewer of Southern Humanities Review, featured on the

Amazon.com web site (accessed May 2004).

Indeed, Sloterdijk's book abounds with literary flourish and sometimes profound metaphoric

insight but it comes short in terms of clarity and substance. I should add that his lack of clarity is

perhaps not an accident given his views on lucidity, which can be illustrated in the following

passage concerning drama and enlightenment:

In the drama of conscious existence, it is not theory and practice that encounter each other, but

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enigma and transparency, phenomenon and insight. If enlightenment does occur, it does so not

through the establishment of a dictatorship of lucidity but as the dramatic self-illumination of

existence (Sloterdijk 1989 xxvi).

Sloterdijk seems to view lucidity and clarity as oppresive, in contrast to what appears to be a

spontaneous means of dramatic self-expression. Therefore, acting may be the only means for the

thinker to attain liberation. In other words, the thinker, according to Sloterdijk, must step on the

stage and become the actor in order to express himself:

Certainly, the actor does not yet know how his compulsion will express itself, and he is certain

that the last word cannot be spoken for a long time yet.... The drama begins as if the actor wants

to say 'I am here, but I am not yet myself, I must therefore become myself. I would therefore

wager that what I really have to say will be revealed as the drama runs its course'. This might

possibly be the fundamental formulation of that thought that is marked by the dynamic between

the search for self and the attempt to release oneself from it (Sloterdijk 1989 22).

I detect a definite existentialist flair in this paradox of searching for self while, at the same time,

seeking to escape the limitations of selfhood.

Despite these rare and largely marginalized intellectual efforts, such as Sloterdijk's, most

intellectuals know that, in the Western tradition, philosophy and theater have not been happy

bedfellows. As is widely known, this animosity began in ancient Greece where Aristophanes

heaped insults and mockery on Socrates, and Plato returned the favor to past and future writers of

comedy and tragedy alike.

Aristotle, the forefather of the aesthetics and theory of theater, attempted to salvage the

relationship but succeeded only in restoring theater's respectability by virtue of its capability to

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arouse emotions. In what follows, I do not wish to pursue the history of the rivalry between

philosophy and theater. Instead, I wish to reflect on fundamental tensions between performance

and description, and eventually to connect these tensions to the temporality of representation and

computer interactivity.

When Aristotle considers whether dramatic poetry (comedy and tragedy) is closer to philosophy

or history is closer to philosophy, he clearly favors the former (cf. Tassi 1998, 44). The reason

Aristotle sees a greater affinity between philosophy and dramatic poetry is theater's capability to

produce universal statements about humanity. History, in comparison, is concerned only with

particulars (cf. Aristotle Poetics 1451b). Theater, for Aristotle, is not only distinguished by its

capacity to make universal statements about humanity, it also possesses its own unique form:

dramatic as opposed to narrative. The epic is "merely" narrated while the tragedy has to be

performed. This performative nature of theater probably stems from its origins in the ritual, as is

well known in philosophy since Nietzsche's famous work The Birth of Tragedy.

Aldo Tassi, in his discussion of philosophy and theater, is right to point out that Aristotle should

be credited not only with providing the theoretical foundations for understanding performativity

in theater but also with obscuring the basic distinction between performance and narration.

Indeed, Aristotle brought the essence of tragedy closer to writing and reading and away from

performance in his Poetics:

The Poetics, perhaps more than any other work, established the canonical view that drama was

one of the three great literary genres (the other two being epic and lyric poetry). If we recall that

the word "theater" comes from the Greek theatron, "a place for seeing," then what begins to

emerge is the fact that, by removing spectacle from the essence of drama, Aristotle has shifted

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the discussion from theater to dramatic literature (Tassi 1998 45).

This suspicion is readily confirmed by reading Aristotle's discussion of the dramatic arts in his

Poetics: there is much talk there of what constitutes good dramatic literature but very little of

what constitutes good theatrical performance. For example, Aristotle provides the rules for

contructing tragedy, improving the plot, and ensuring that the plot best produces the emotional

effect of tragedy. Even at places where Aristotle addresses issues related to theater as

performance -- the role of the stage-artifice, for example (Aristotle, Poetics 1454b) -- his

comments pertain to matters of dramatic literature rather than performance.

The legacy of Aristotle's preference for dramatic literature over dramatic performance has

persisted throughout the history of Western theater. For example, accomplished actors and

directors who wanted to be immortalized in the history of dramatic arts found it necessary to

transform themselves into writers of plays.

Theater and Spectacle

Before I return to my discussion of Aristotle's appraisal of the affinities between philosophy,

theater, and history, I will briefly explore some possible affinities between theater and spectacle,

as well as the manner in which those affinities changed throughout history.

When it comes to theater and spectacle, it is possible to reconstruct a detailed history of their

similarities as well as their differences, especially in light of the changing nature of interactivity

in spectacle. Marie-Laure Ryan writes about the latter in her recent book Narrative as Virtual

reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. She notes that that

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there is a strong affinity between spectacle and theater in their tendency to discourage the active

participation of spectators: "For all its ritual power, though, tragedy is a spectacle and not a

participatory event. The play acts upon the spectators, but the spectators do not act upon the

play, nor do they receive an active role in the script (Ryan 2001 297)." However, I should add

that I believe that precisely because theater may be understood as a form of spectacle, one can

trace the ways in which other forms of spectacle, based on sports events, musical performances,

or sheer curiosity, superseded theater as performance. In some cases, sports or musical

spectacles sometimes even managed to incorporate certain features of theater. Thus spectacles,

characterized this broadly, never lost their appeal to humanity and have continued to amuse and

attract people, in most cases independently of theater. It suffices to mention today's mass media

wrestling, boxing, or musical spectacles to illustrate my previous remark.

Alice Rayner, in her essay ―Presenting Objects, Presenting Things‖ (cf. Krasner and Saltz 2006

180), offers a further, much more sweeping and philosophical comment on the role of spectacle

in theater:

Spectacle is the element that has been discounted, if not discarded, since Aristotle decided to list

it and then ignore it in The Poetics. That theater seems to be all surface, all spectacle, whose

substance, if there is any, lies in dramatic action and character, is a longtime idea for devaluing

theater practice. From this view, spectacle – visible surface – is quite specifically something that

is thrown out, expelled from the numinous core of essence, meaningful context, or invisible

substrate. The degradation of theatrical spectacle to mere appearance follows an assumption that

truth is located in an unseen, absent substance that ghosts the material presence: the Edenic realm

of origins from which the object is thrown. It had taken a long period of modernism,

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postmodernism, phenomenology, and a certain amount of deconstruction to bring about an

inkling that the seen and the unseen coincide, that there is nothing hiding inside or beyond

appearances, and that the spectacle is the substance whose unseen is simply, as Heidegger

formulated it, another surface, further back (Krasner and Saltz 2006 196).

Even a cursory look at the legacy of the Greek civilization reveals an enduring power and

popularity of this model of spectacle, that is, the popular but largely superficial means of

entertaining the masses. However, it was the Romans who understood and embraced the appeal

of spectacle on a much deeper level, and especially seemed to enjoy the gory aspect of spectacles

with highly visible manifestations of pain and cruelty, and a good deal of blood letting.

It is probably the legacy of the Roman civilization, which built colloseums and other types of

arenas, to use architecture to allow more interactivity between the spectators and the

athletes/gladiators:

Whereas the designs that promote immersion keep the audience hidden from itself, the

quintessential interactive architecture is a circular arena, such as a sports stadium, that allows

spectators to see each other as well as the action on the field. During a sports event, fans yell at

the players, comment loudly on the quality of play, and engage in cheering duels with the

partisans of the other team. It a truly interactive feedback loop, the game elicits cheering, and the

cheering influences the outcome of the game. But this model of immersive interactivity is

obviously not applicable to the theater (Ryan 2001 298).

Spectacle had to depend on the vagabond lifestyle and the meager means of survival in the

Middle Ages when troubadours, magicians, and other traveling groups of entertainers made their

living by exploring the lasting appeal of spectacle. On some occasions, throughout the history of

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Western civilization, public executions revived the Roman approach to spectacle. The last

couple of centuries brought a renewed interest in spectacle based on the display of human

deformities and peculiarities (giants and dwarfs, bearded women, etc.) which, once again, piqued

human curiosity. Finally, the development of modern visual media, and especially cinema and

television, can be seen as the movement of synthesizing the many historical aspects of spectacle.

Many contemporary discussions of the spectacle draw on the short but very influential book The

Society of the Spectacle by a French media theorist Guy Debord. The Cinematic Imaginary after

Film offers the following, and not exactly flattering, note on Debord:

The political element of his work followed to some extent from his encounter with a very small

but influential group of neo-Trotzkyists founded in 1949 by Castoriadis (Lyotard and Baudrillard

were also members). Debord, published very little, once remarked that he "drank too much and

wrote too little," but his slim critique of the alienation and commodification of consumer

capitalism "Society of the Spectacle" became the main text of the worldwide student-led cultural

revolts in May 1968 (Shaw and Weibel 2003 616).

Debord, who was the first intellectual to interpret spectacle as a crucial political and ideological

category, detects a special and powerful role of the spectacle:

Here we have the principle of commodity fetishism, the domination of society by things whose

qualities are "at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses." This principle is

absolutely fulfilled in the spectacle, where the perceptible world is replaced by a set of images

that are superior to that world yet at the same time impose themselves as eminently perceptible

(Debord 1994 36).

Debord understands spectacle as the latest stage of the evolution of the commodity, a key

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element of the capitalist economy. This process of the commodity evolution, whereby the

commodity becomes a universal, global, and abstract category, has made possible the continued

success of capitalism.

Some cultural and media theorists have interpreted the 20th century shift toward the realm of the

visual in a much similar vein. For example, Jonathan Beller has used Marxist discourse to

amplify some of Debord's claims. Beller suggests that the so-called "cinematic mode of

production" has become the new means of converting labourers into spectators, using advanced

visual technologies:

Althought it first appeared in the late nineteenth century as the built-in response to a

technological oddity, cinematic spectatorship (emerging in conjunction with the clumsily

cobbled- together image production mechanisms necessary to that situation) surreptitiously

became the formal paradigm and structural template for social, that is, becoming global,

organization generally. By some technological sleight of hand, machine-mediated perception is

now inextricable from your psychological, economic, visceral, and ideological dispensations.

Spectatorship, as the fusion and development of the cultural, industrial, economic and

psychological, quickly gained a handhold on human fate and then became decisive (Beller 1998

60-61).

To bring things back to the popular culture level, it goes without saying that television has, from

its very inception, based much of its popularity on exploring various aspects of spectacle, which

can range from bland to offensive. The former can be illustrated by airing reality TV shows

while the latter can be illustrated by airing graphic acts of public mayhem and execution in the

wake of CNN and Al-Jazeera. Computer technology of the future has yet to explore the strong

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and long lasting hold that spectacle seems to have on humanity.

Theater and Psychology

As I have noted above, Aristotle reflected on the affinities and differences between history and

philosophy. While history can be seen as the narrative about past actions, personal or collective,

the 20th century witnessed the birth and development of a much more powerful and intellectually

dominating narrative -- that of psychology. Psychology may still be searching for its proper

identity but it can be, at least provisionally, characterized as a narrative that seeks to explain

individual and collective human behaviour.

Aristotle taught us that philosophy and theater share the capacity to make universal judgments

about humanity. Brentano, Aristotle's disciple and the forefather of psychology, taught us that

humanity has the capability to interact with the world in a unique fashion, by creating

representations of the phenomena it perceives, remembers, and imagines. These phenomena, of

course, include the behaviour of other human beings. The activity of studying representations of

these phenomena would surely constitute a common ground, among many others possible

common grounds, between philosophy and psychology. But what is the common ground

between psychology and theater?

As Brenda Laurel shows in Computers and Theater, both psychology and theater concern

themselves with how agents relate to one another in the process of communicating. As well,

both interpret human behavior in terms of goals, obstacles, and conflicts. In general, both

disciplines attempt to observe and understand human behavior (cf. Laurel 1993 6). There is,

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however, a key methodological difference that in effect shapes psychology and theater as two

distinct disciplines pursing radically different ends. As Laurel puts it, "Psychology attempts to

describe what goes on in the real world, with all its fuzziness and loose ends, while theater

attempts to represent something that might go on, simplified for the purposes of logical and

affective clarity (Laurel 1993 6)." Aristotle would probably characterize psychology, much like

history, as concerned with particulars. The ground for that assessment would be psychology's

inability to transcend the plane of the particular and chance.

Performativity Versus Representation and Interpretation

We should note, I believe, the crucial difference between describing and staging behaviour in

Laurel's distinction between psychology and theater. In my opinion the latter, but not the former

activity, can capture performativity. This crucial difference between performance and

description is also a very subtle one. Marie-Laure Ryan suggests that language has the power,

hidden within itself, which can transform its use into performance:

By arguing that the key to immersive interactivity resides in the participation of the body in an

art-world, I do not wish to suggest that interaction should be reduced to physical gestures but

rather that language itself should become a gesture, a corporeal mode of being-in-the-world. As

is the case in dramatic performance, the participant's verbal contribution will count as the actions

and speech acts of an embodied member of the fictional world. Rather than performing a

creation through a diegetic (i.e., descriptive) use of language, these contributions will create the

fictional world from within in a dialogic and live interaction with its objects and its other

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members (Ryan 2001 286).

However, before I proceed I must briefly characterize performativity in general. The term

"performativity" has established itself, with distinctly different usages, in philosophy and gender

studies. In philosophy, it is usually noted that a performative promise constitutes an act of

making a promise, not stating that one is making it. In gender studies, performativity is probably

best illustrated by referring to the work of Judith Butler. Butler conceptualizes performativity as

the means of constructing gender. To paraphrase Butler, performativity of gender is a stylized

repetition of acts, an imitation or miming of the dominant conventions of gender.

Personally, I find the philosophical approach much more useful and clear. However, there is no

need to choose methodological approaches at this point. For my purposes, I invoke Butler simply

to contrast performative and descriptive levels of discourse. In general, the performative level of

discourse is made possible by the agent's participation in the action. The descriptive level of

discourse, in contrast, seeks to distance the participant and the action and to transform the

participant into an observer.

One of the ways to capture a particular kind of behavior is in fact to cross over from what I have

termed the descriptive level of discourse to the performative level and to "act it out." For

example, shaking one's fist might be a simple way of capturing anger. Of course, behaviorists

ever since Skinner have argued that linguistic behavior should be classified as a paradigmatic

case of "acting it out."

Describing behavior, on the other hand, does not imply performativity. In fact, descriptions of

behavior prevent performativity: to describe a performance can mean a broad range of things (for

example, descriptions of performances can design or evaluate performances) but it cannot mean

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to actually perform it. Description implies disengagement; that is one imporant reason why

psychologists assume the role of observers of behaviour and not the role of actors. A similar

claim can be made in regard to philosophers' approach to the world. Socrates, for example, was

not interested in the skills and the modus operandi of the craftsmen. Instead, he provoked them

into talking about other important pursuits and then proved them unwise:

Finally I went to the craftsmen, for I was conscious of knowing practically nothing, and I knew

that I would find that they had knowledge in many fine things. In this I was not mistaken; they

knew things I did not know, and to that extent they were wiser than I. But, gentlemen of the jury,

the good craftsmen seemed to me to have the same fault as the poets: each of them, because of

his success at his craft, thought himself to be very wise in other most important pursuits, and this

error of theirs overshadowed the wisdom they had... (Plato 1981, Apology 22d).

A good craftsperson is rarely good at contemplating other wise matters. This is hardly surprising

since contemplation entails detachment from practical matters. There is a much more recent

critique of this traditional philosophical attitude in the writing of Karl Marx. He has famously

complained that philosophers have only interpreted the world but have neglected the task of

changing it.

I believe Andrew Pickering's work on what he terms "post-representational science studies in the

performative idiom" can be seen as an attempt to recuperate the forgotten role and significance of

an active subject, and agency in general, since Marx. Pickering sets out building a basic

dichotomy between the representational and performative idiom in the philosophy of science. In

the introduction to The Mangle of Practice, he writes: "These remarks, then, sketch out a basis

for a performative image of science, in which science is regarded a field of powers, capacities,

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and performancies, situated in machinic captures of material agency (Pickering 1995 7)." He

argues that the overwhelming majority of the means of characterizing science and technology has

belonged to the representational idiom. The problem with the representational idiom, according

to Pickering, is its inability to capture what he terms "the mangle of practice." The mangle refers

metaphorically to the pressures created by science and technology in an evolving field of human

and material agencies. Pickering envisions the future performative picture of science and

technology in the following manner:

A performative big picture of the history of science would be one in which Karl Marx, Boris

Hessen, and John Desmond Bernal basically got it right. Science should not be approached as an

object sui generis that from time to time interacts with some extrascientifc 'context.' Instead we

should look to fields of agency -- in social production, consumption, reproduction and

destruction; from the factory to the battlefield -- as surfaces of emergence and return for science.

The steam engine and thermodynamics; the electrical telegraph industry and electromagnetic

theory; brewing and microbiology, etc. (Pickering 1994 418)

The new picture of science and technology would require a performative historiography of

science and technology. This historiography ought to be written, according to Pickering, in the

performative and not representational idiom, which emphasizes heterogeneous agency and

cultural multiplicity.

The dualism of performativity and representation, however, is not the only theoretically

interesting feature of performativity. There is a current and still on-going debate in aesthetics,

the debate over whether or not performativity is best accounted for as a matter of interpretation.

If fact, this debate could be construed as an outcome of the dualism between performativity and

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representation since the activity of interpreting assumes the performance as a matter of the right

or wrong interpretation which, in turn, assumes the performance is based on some kind of

objective representation. The latter affirmation of representation over performativity is probably

the standard view, especially among the philosophers of theater. I have already suggested that

philosophy, much like the sciences, is steeped in the context of representation. I wish to offer a

recent example of this approach, found in the work of John Dilworth. Dilworth argues that

performativity is essentially dependent on interpretation. In the Introduction, I have drawn a

distinction between two kinds of interactivity: "hot" and "cool." I believe this distinction pertains

to theater in the following fashion. The former manner of interaction (hot) requires immediate

action and presence from viewers and performers as well as the unfolding of theatrical events

here and now, without the delay. The latter manner of interaction (cool) gives the viewer, reader,

producer, etc. ample opportunities to control and manipulate the performance because of the

delay inherent in the process of representing the performance. One should note that, in his

discussion of performativity and representation, Dilworth invokes precisely the delayed aspects

of performance:

Thus the initial picture coming out of this preliminary investigation is one in which a

performance of a play is (one kind of) representation of that play. This view also allows a

unified account to be given of entities associated with the play, such as the author's original

manuscript of the play, printed copies of it, a stage director's enhanced or marked-up version of

the script as used in rehearsals of her specific interpretation or production of the play, video or

movie versions of a performance of such a production, and so on: all of them are, on this

account, differing kinds of representations of one and the same play, whose differences can be

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explained as differences in the specific mode of representation of that play by each such kind of

representation (Dilworth 2002 198-199).

It is hardly surprising to see Dilworth argue that performance of a play is a form of representation

when his examples epitomize the mode of interactivity I term "cool interactivity."

David Saltz and James Hamilton argue against Noel Carrol, in a special "symposium" section of

the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (cf. Saltz and Hamilton 2001), that performativity

should not be reduced to interpretation and, furthermore, that interpretation is neither sufficient

nor necessary for performativity (cf. Saltz 2001 300). I agree with Saltz's approach since it fits

my desire to portray performativity and description as two modes of discourse which are

essentialy not reducible to one another. Indeed, Saltz's analysys reveals that it is not sufficient to

interpret Hamlet in order to perform it -- if the latter were true then every academic paper

delivered or published on Hamlet would be a performance of Hamlet. As well, it is not necessary

to interpret Hamlet in order to perform it since, as Saltz points out, performances of one play

sometimes take the liberty of interpreting something else. This "something else" can range from

interpreting another, sometimes unrelated, play to interpreting a certain social problem or an

individual moral dilemma chosen by the director. Saltz suggests the elements a performance adds

to a play often imply no propositions about the play at all (cf. Saltz 2001 301). Indeed, an actor's

improvisation draws on his or her individual strengths which may be enhanced by the script but

do not depend on the script. I cannot resist quoting Saltz's excellent example illustrating the

latter point:

During a production of Hamlet at the Public Theater, Hamlet, played by Kevin Kline, sits against

a column with a book on his lap while Polonius stands beside him. Polonius has tried to engage

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Hamlet in a discussion, and Hamlet has brushed him off. Polonius bids Hamlet "Fare you well,

my Lord," and exits behind the column. Hamlet mutters bitterly to himself, "These tedious old

fools!" Instantly, Polonius's head pops back around the column, Hamlet looks up, gives a forced

smile, and points to an open page in his book, as if to say: "I was just reading the book aloud to

myself." Polonius smiles and disappears again (Saltz 2001 301).

Needless to say, the subtle play of double meaning is nowhere to be found in Shakespeare's text.

It seems to me there is something, even beyond performativity, persisting in the affinity between

philosophy and theater. The affinity lies, most probably, in the common ability, shared by

philosophy and theater, to express certain universal features of humanity. Yet philosophical

discourse has continued to lose the credibility of its universal claims regarding the human

condition, especially in the wake of the great scientific progress since Newton. As well, the

theatrical notion of performativity has not been able to inform the wider intellectual discourse. Is

it that the traditional means of expressing, and thereby dealing with, universal features of

humanity have reached their limits? Is the answer perhaps in the computer technology of the

future, and especially in the elusive idea of computer interactivity, which may help recuperate the

forgotten legacy of theater as performance?

Theories of Performativity

While it is true that performativity has not informed the dominant intellectual discourse,

performativity continues to figure as a prominent topic of discussion in contemporary feminism,

philosophy, and sociology. I wish, very briefly, to give an overview of these discussions of

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performativity and to close the chapter with some remarks about the future role of theater and

performativity in technology.

I believe performativity suits feminist theory very well because performativity possesses an

ability to universalize special kinds of personal experiences that otherwise may remain too

marginalized or may be silenced. I have already mentioned Judith Butler as a primary source

when it comes to feminist discussions of performativity. In her essay, "Remembering and

Forgetting: Feminist Autobiography in Performance," Charlotte Canning reflects on the nature of

the gendered experience of identity in autobiography. For Canning, autobiography as

performance is an especially effective way to emphasize the physicality of memory, i.e., the fact

that memory is always conditioned by one's gendered and racially classified body. According to

Canning, there is a potential for this physical memory to be revoked in a performance:

"Autobiographical performance is a way to embody history -- actually to take it on one's body and

repeat it for physically present spectators (Canning 1999 112)." There is a certain level of

authenticity existing in the physical presence of the person that is necessary for the history and

narrative of embodiment. Some feminists and minority activists even argue that certain

developments in the technology of education may have detrimental effects when it comes to

promoting equality in the classroom. For example, the development of on-line education hinders

the positive aspects of teaching (performed by a feminist or a minority activist) as role-modelling

that depend on the embodiment championed by Canning.

Geraldine Harris, in her recent book Staging Femininities, draws on Judith Butler's work in order

to emphasize the uncanny ambiguity of theater, which may also be termed its double-layered

nature. The theater, according to Harris, can be seen, metaphorically speaking, as both a

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quotation and a disquotation of reality. Harris's discussion of the essential ambiguity of theatrical

presence deserves to be quoted at length:

The reason theater as an institution is so attractive and yet so problematic to theorists of

performativity is because it has traditionally been perceived as both quoting the 'reality effects'

they describe as being performatively produced and as simultaneously differing from those

'reality effects' -- which is, of course, exactly the effect they seek to achieve as a strategy for

subverting identity in the realm of the social. However, in order to be intelligible as such, a

theatrical performance depends on the legible presence of the quotation marks, which, as

described by Butler, the process of performativity as citation operates to conceal in 'everyday

life.' In short, to state the obvious, any sort of act or 'movement' within the theatrical frame or

otherwise is already marked as double, already in quotation marks. The marking places a

performance as belonging to a particular realm of discourse, which is governed by laws and

conventions that may be similar to, but are not exactly the same as, those that govern other

spheres. The difference between the theatrical and the social may then only be a matter of the

legibility or otherwise of quotation marks, but these quotation marks make all the difference

(Harris 1999 76-77).

This seems to echo Derrida's claim that the metaphysical for absolute disquotation, or the

"bottom rock reality," is necessarily futile.

In philosophy, performativity emerged as a topic of discussion in Speech Act theory, and

especially in the work of its originator, John L. Austin. Austin's approach to the philosophy of

language is best understood as a reaction to verificationism -- a method that provided the basis

for logical positivism. In a nutshell, verificationism can be characterized as a move to define all

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"cognitively meaningful" disourse in terms of the conceptual space carved out by empirically

verifiable sentences. Thus, the meaning of the sentence "Berlin became the capital of Germany

after the fall of the Berlin Wall" hinges on the empirical verification, and thus on the truth-value,

of the states of affairs afforded by the sentence itself.

Austin's development of Speech Act theory was motivated largely by his insight into a special

feature of language that might have remained unnoticed, especially in the wake of

verificationism. This feature is the use of language not only to represent, and to communicate

representations, but also as the means of carrying out certain types of actions. In the latter sense,

the purpose of an utterance is not constative; rather it is performative, according to Austin. This

is how Austin defines performatives in How to do Things with Words:

The term 'performative' will be used in a variety of cognitive ways and constructions, much as

the term 'imperative' is. The name is derived, of course, from 'perform', the usual verb with the

noun 'action': it indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action -- it is not

normally thought of as just saying something (Austin 1965 6-7).

The best known example of this usage is uttering "I do" at a wedding ceremony, or "I bet you

sixpence it will rain tomorrow" (to use another example of Austin's). As is widely known in the

philosophy of language, Austin's inquiry into the performative dimension of language provides

the reader with some special insights.

In my opinion, the most important thing we have learned from Austin is that real life is often akin

to the stage where certain (linguistic) actions are performed. Of course, the stage of life has to be

"produced" and "directed" in the proper manner for the actions to be fulfilled or "felicitous," in

Austin's terminology (cf. Austin 1965 25 and passim). Austin's insights brought performativity

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back in the philosophical discourse, and thus offered the possibility for a philosopher to once

again take drama seriously. In fact, Austin tied the idea of a performative utterance not only to

the phenomenon of acting but also, and probably more importantly, to the unique moment of

presence:

Actions can only be performed by persons, and obviously in our case the utterer must be the

performer: hence our justifiable feeling -- which we wrongly cast into purely grammatical mould

-- in favour of the 'first person', who must come in, being mentioned or referred to; moreover, if

in uttering one is acting, one must be doing something -- hence our perhaps ill-expressed

favouring of the grammatical present and grammatical active of the verb. There is something

which is at the moment of uttering being done by the person uttering (Austin 1965 60, italics in

the original).

Notice Austin's heavy use of the theater paradigm. Throughout his work, Austin writes about the

performer, the acting, and the moment of utterance and its magic-like powers. It is not a

coincidence that Austin's examples of incomplete and void speech acts often resort to theater

analogies (for example, the wedding may not be legally binding because it is only a part of a play

or a rehearsal).

In sociology, the study of performativity in many respects complements and extends Austin's

philosophical insights. Erving Goffman, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, offers a

multifaceted discussion of the social aspects and effects of performativity. Goffman begins with

a crucial distinction between the expression the individual gives in social interactions and the

expression the individual gives off (cf. Goffman 1973 2). The former expression involves the

conventional use of linguistic symbols to achieve communication in the traditional sense. The

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latter expression involves a much wider range of actions and can be treated, both by the actor and

the audience, as the expression that may or may not coincide with the conventional means of

expression.

Goffman then goes into great detail to present the complexities that arise in the latter sense of

social interaction, where the individual "gives off" certain expressions. This is what Goffman

says of the individual attempting to impress others:

Sometimes the individual will be calculating in his activity but be relatively unaware that this is

the case. Sometimes he will intentionally and consciously express himself in a certain way, but

chiefly because the tradition of his group or social status requires this kind of expression and not

because of any particular response (other than vague acceptance or approval) that is likely to be

evoked from those impressed by the expression (Goffman 1973 6).

This is what he says of those who may or may not be impressed by the individual's giving off

certain expressions:

Knowing that the individual is likely to present himself in a light that is favorable to him, the

others may divide what they witness into two parts; a part that is relatively easy for the individual

to manipulate at will, being chiefly his verbal assertions, and a part in regard to which he seems

to have little concern or control, being chiefly derived from the expression he gives off. The

others may then use what are considered to be ungovernable aspects of his expressive behavior as

a check upon the validity of what is conveyed by the governable aspects (Goffman 1973 7).

Goffman argues that these broadly defined performative aspects, and not Austin's "constative"

aspects, of the individual's expression provide a deeper, and often much more reliable, basis for

judging the individual's sincerity. This implicit belief has been noted, to a much greater extent

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especially by the end of the 20th century, by the electronic media. I believe the modern media

have nearly completely removed the necessity to adhere to the content of the expressions that

politicians, or any other significant media personalities, "give." Media programs, and this

includes the news, now turn the vast proportion of their attention to what the expressions "give

off."

In this process, the viewers do not become aware that they have been manipulated by, among

other technological factors, the subtle difference between cool and hot interactivity and

immersion. The latter context equips the viewer with an ample supply of opportunities to catch

an unexpected, and sometimes unflattering, glimpse of the speaker. The speaker, who is

functioning within the context of hot interactivity and immersion, does not have the delay at her

disposal in order to produce the manner in which she "gives off" expressions. The speaker who

operates within the context of cool interactivity is typically privileged since she has the

sophisticated technological means of production, enabled by the delay, at her disposal. These

means of production may involve subtle editing modifications commonly used in media

production, including the choice of the most favorable angle of presentation, double takes to

eliminate various speech errors and difficulties, etc. This is why the media persona, and this

applies not only to politicians but to many other media personalities, is highly produced and does

not necessarily correspond to the real person. But this invites a much more difficult question:

Who or what is the "real" person? Unfortunately, the emphasis on performativity not only makes

the answer to this question more intractable but also casts doubt on the legitimacy of the

question.

Sometimes, the proper dramatic realization of the individual's activity is a matter of timing,

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according to Goffman:

Thus, if a baseball umpire is to give the impression that he is sure of his judgment, he must forgo

the moment of thought which might make him sure of his judgment; he must give an

instantaneous decision so that the audience will be sure of his judgment (Goffman 1973 30).

If the umpire takes time to form his decision, then he gives off the impression that he is insecure

of his judgment. The delay, in this context, brings forth the dimensions of human interpretation

that are clearly inappropriate for the umpire. In fact, this example brings to bear the dynamic of

the complex interdependence between hot and cool interactivity in modern broadcast technology.

On the one hand, the umpire must project an air of absolute hot immersion in the game in order

to be credible. On the other hand, the technological possibility of replay has brought the

advantages of the delay to his disposal. The modern umpire can view the frame-by-frame digital

version of the controversial play and can thereby make sure his decision was correct. Yet I

believe this capacity of utilizing the delay (the technologically manipulated and enhanced

representation of the play) only serves the purpose of further bolstering the umpire's confidence

in his decision. Now he can afford to reverse his decision in light of the video evidence if he

needs to. He can therefore be more confident in his immediate decision since he knows he has

the technological means to back it up. However, the availibility of technological means of cool,

or delayed, interactivity by no means interferes with the umpire's full presence at the game.

I should add that the umpire example illustrates a common propensity of modern technology: its

propensity to create the necessity for itself. In words of Patrick Maynard: "Successful

technologies are therefore ones that create 'needs' for them, and that, clearly, is more than a

question of successful science and engineering-that is, of 'full intellectualization' (Maynard 1997

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97)." This propensity of modern technology is well recognized and it falls, in the Philosophy of

Technology, under the rubric of "means and ends." Sometimes it is argued that technology is

itself a matter of means to ends. Gordon Graham criticizes this argument in his book Internet: A

Philosophical Inquiry:

A more fundamental error is the implicit supposition that the distinction between 'end' and

'means' is categorical rather than relative. The difference between the categorical and the relative

is most easily illustrated by judgments of size. 'Large' and 'small' can be thought of as contraries.

A thing cannot be both large and small, it is easily assumed. But this is false. A large mouse

can be a small animal, a large raspberry can be a small fruit. 'Large' and 'small' are essentially

relative judgements, which is to say, they are judgements relative to the sorts of things they

qualify. So, too, with ends and means. These are relative judgements. Something can be a

means relative to one thing and an end relative to another (Graham 1999 48).

I agree with Graham that means and ends in technology are highly interdependent, and ultimately

a matter of judgments relative to some other values. This interdependency and relativity does not

mean, however, that it is not possible, or even desirable, to study the complex and ever evolving

means-to-end dialectic in its own right.

Let me come back to the increased confidence of the umpire, now based on newly invented

technological gadgets. These gadgets may not only affect his performativity; they may also

become "required" for his job.

The Future: Performativity and Computers

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I have touched on a small sample of theoretical approaches to performativity. However, it seems

there is something still missing in the nature of performativity, something that can perhaps be

discovered by inquiring into the relationship between performativity and computer technology.

Brenda Laurel suggests that the classical model of the interface between a person and a computer

involves a simplified, two-way interaction, which I propose to label the "tit-for-tat" model.

According to this model, a person inputs a bit of information; a computer processes the

information and displays the output; and then a person enters another bit of information and so

forth.

Laurel believes that theater can provide a much better model for the human-computer interface.

She is convinced that the future of learning, work, and entertainment will be computer mediated

and will furthermore be based on some sort of theater interface. Here are some reasons why this

interface should work so well in the future:

Since all action is confined to the world of the representation, all agents are situated in the same

context, have access to the same objects, and speak the same language. Participants learn what

language to speak by noticing what is understood; they learn what objects are and what they do

by playing around with them (Laurel 1993 18).

It is no coincidence that the school space, the work space, the market space, the courtroom, and

the playground have traditionally been conceptualized as theatrical spaces. One can think of

these spaces as the stage for learning, work and entertainment. This stage also serves the purpose

of regulating society through the process of setting the patterns of normal behaviour. This

behaviour is, of course, a matter of collective behaviour as well as a matter of the dual process of

learning the roles of the speaker and the audience.

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These aforementioned theatrical spaces may become the source of a new kind of computer

mediated, and even computer generated, theatrical space. There may eventually be even novel

combinations of the traditional elements of theatrical spaces that lead to spaces that can only

exist in computer generated environments. There are early, and rather technologically and

conceptually crude, indications of the possibilities of these virtual theatrical spaces that can be

found in the existence of MUDs and chat rooms. It goes without saying that these new virtual

spaces will necessitate the process of reconceptualization or modification of the traditional

patterns of behavour to fit the demands and changing nature of these spaces.

One of the factors which may be key for the future of this kind of computer theatrical space is

"telepresence." The latter is usually defined as the experience of presence in an environment by

means of a technological medium. A good example of research which is going in that direction

is the tele-immersion project, led by VR pioneer Jaron Lanier. The project of tele-immersion

strives to attain the ultimate synthesis of innovative technologies with the goal of enhancing

collaborative environments. This is the brief description of tele-immersion on the Advanced

Network & Services, Inc. web site:

In the tele-immersive environment, computers recognize the presence and movements of

individuals and objects, track those images, and then permit them to be projected in realistic,

multiple, geographically distributed immersive environments where individuals can interact with

each other and with computer generated models (http://www.advanced.org/teleimmersion.html,

accessed June 2005).

Lanier suggests that tele-immersion might provide opportunities for artists and performers of the

future to revive the role of direct interaction between the artist and the audience. This kind of

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interaction has been lost because of the communication technologies of the 20th century (cf.

Lenier 2001). The future role of tele-immersion may be, once again, to put the emphasis on

immediacy and a sense of personal connection which are so important for the performing artist.

Notice how well Lanier's diagnosis of the problem, i.e. the loss of direct interaction between the

artist and the audience and his solution, i.e. providing the sense of immediacy by means of tele-

immersion, illustrates the dialectics of the duality between hot and cool interactivity and

immersion.

At the moment, one can only speculate as to whether or not the technology of the future will

expand the limits of our current understanding of shared presence, yet I have no doubt that the

time will soon come for performativity and theater to radically transform computer technology.

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Interactivity and Immersion

It may seem surprising that I open the chapter on interactivity and immersion by writing about

dreams, yet I believe the work of dreams relates the two in rather profound and instructive ways.

Before I preceed, however, allow me to briefly characterize interactivity and immersion,

especially in the context of Timeless Representations. As I pointed out in the Introduction,

interactivity is a term currently used in computer technology to capture the complex and dynamic

two-way flow of information between the computer and the user. My approach to interactivity is

to extend the narrrow and technical usage of interactivity to include not only the computer and its

user but also the wider possible range of inter-acting among two or more people as well as

among people and their environment.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing and controversial cases which emerged in the study of

interactivity defined in this broad manner, is the case of humans interacting with robots. A

Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori, measured human-robot interactivity in the late 1970s (cf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley, accessed May 2005). He developed a principle

which stipulates that as a robot is rendered more human-like, the response from a human being,

who is interacting with the robot, will become more and more positive until a point is reached

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where the response becomes repulsive. If the robot's appearance and behaviour is made

indistinguishable from that of a human being, then the emotional response becomes positive once

again. Mori labeled this gap of negative human response "the Uncanny Valley." It seems that a

robot which is "almost human," but not quite human, will invoke repulsive feelings from a

human being interacting with it. As well, it seems that the non-human characterization of an

"almost human" robot tends to somehow stand out, invoking a feeling of strangeness. I have no

doubt that this type of study of interactivity will be of growing relevance, in the wake of

developments in robotics and Virtual Reality.

Immersion is usually defined as a greater or lesser degree of mental absorbtion, typically

illustrated by readers forgetting about themselves and their environments in the act of reading or

movie watchers experiencing a similar kind of forgetting while watching a movie. Of course, the

individual can also be immersed in one's own thoughts (perhaps meditations succeed in attaining

a high-level immersion of this type). As well, it is not difficult to produce a list of wide range of

potentially immersive activities: watching a live performance or a colourful sunset, listening to

music, playing a computer game, and the like.

Dreams offer a wide range of immersive experience. On the one hand, dreams provide the

showcase of deep immersion best known to humanity: immersion that not only feels like reality

but sometimes carries with itself more intensity and more vivid emotions than what reality can

possibly offer. It is no coincidence that Rene Descartes chose the medium of dreams as the

fitting playground for his evil demon. On the other hand, dreams can lead to relatively shallow

immersion that sometimes results in a peculiar experience of "double consciousness." The latter

experience makes it apparent to the dreamer, to a lesser or greater degree, that she is in fact

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dreaming and not experiencing reality. Some dreamers even develop an ability to choose to

prolong or direct their dreams in the midst of dreaming.

Dreams also play strange tricks on our ordinary ideas of interactivity. It appears dreams often

transform interactions with other people in rather unpredictable ways. For example, we may

interact with dead people in our dreams even though we know, i.e. our "dream persona" is fully

aware of the fact during the interaction, that they are dead. We may even experience a feeling of

being surprised, in the midst of dreaming, by our newly acquired "capability" to talk to the dead.

As well, dreams often modify the ordinary means of interaction with objects in sometimes

grotesque ways. For example, a hand gun that we need to fire in our dreams may begin to emit

rabbit dung pellets instead of bullets. Or the fast car that we desperately need as the means of

escape from the evil pursuers may turn out, to our dismay, to be nothing but a large cardboard

box.

I think the former, superficial and far from exhaustive, discussion of interactivity and immersion

in dreams illustrates their deep roots in humanity. This is why there is much to be learned about

the future of immersive and interactive technology by inquiring into the distant past of humanity.

I believe the anthropological study of that distant past can inform our current discussions of the

future role of interactivity and immersion in computer technology and virtual reality.

I wish to add one more cultural aspect that, especially in ancient history, was important in

shaping interactivity and immersion: the ritual. First, the ritual developed the means necessary to

achieve the requisite levels of immersion. These props vary among cultures but may include

visual, audio, olfactory, and tactile background sources and equipment necessary for the ritual.

More specifically, these sources and equipment may include more or less elaborate dresses,

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ambiance, music, alcohol, drugs, dance, and so forth. Second, the ritual is especially relevant to

understanding interactivity since it has defined and developed a set of special rules that prescribe

a special, and transformed, kind of interactivity. In fact, the ritual can be studied as a historical

showcase of activities aimed at transforming the ordinary social networks of interactivity. For

example, the ritual may elevate certain persons or specially designated spaces to a higher or

altogether different social status. Or conversely, the ritual may forbid interaction with certain

people or occupying certain spaces while it is taking place. Finally, it may be necessary to relate

to people who perform certain ritual-based roles with an unusual degree of respect, fear or

affection. This, of course, is already a case of transformed interactivity.

The ritual has always been extremely important in the religious context and, as Marie-Laure

Ryan aptly recognizes, institutional religion has drawn heavily on the power of the ritual to

immerse the believers in the spiritual context and to help alter the common and customary means

of social interactivity:

In its religious form, ritual is a technique of immersion in a sacred reality that uses gestures,

performative speech, and the manipulation of symbolic objects -- symbolic at least until the

algorithm succeeds in establishing communication between the human and its Other... As they

reenter primordial time, the participants in the ritual experience the live presence of the gods as

an infusion of creative power (Ryan 2001 293).

Ryan especially emphasizes the importance of transubstantiation in the Christian church which,

in her opinion, represents the ritual in its purest form since transubstantiation succeeds in

metamorphosing symbols into what they represent:

Through this transubstantiation the performing bodies of the participants become the incarnation,

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not just the image, of mythological beings, and the commemorative language of absence is

replaced by the jubilation of live presence. In the Catholic mass, the passage from symbolic re-

presentation to literal enactment occurs during the moment known as consecration, when the

bread and wine of the communion are miraculously transformed into the flesh and blood of

Christ. The participation of the community in the sacred, reward for the exact performance of the

prescribed actions, thus prefigures the "postsymbolic" communication that forms the lofty ideal

of the most exalted prophets of VR technology (Ryan 2001 293-294).

The ideal of post-symbolic communication, as I will suggest in the Conclusion, hinges on the

possibility of unmediated, direct communicative interactivity.

It can be easily verified, by checking electronic indices, that the topic "interactivity" did not

figure very prominently in the general literature, with the exception of computer science

literature, before the year 2000. The last couple of years have witnessed a growing number of

papers published on the topic of interactivity in various academic disciplines and non-academic

domains of society. For example, there is some attention paid to the role of interactivity and

immersion from a business point of view. In "Bringing Virtual Reality for Commercial Web

Sites," G. Bhatt offers the following conclusion:

In the present study, we showed that in order to attract customers, a Web site is required to create

a balance between interactivity, immersion, and connectivity. For example, a dot-com competing

in the fashion industry may need to develop quite a different kind of Web site than a dot-com

competing in the financial industry. In the fashion industry, immersion is more crucial, while in

the financial industry, interactivity is far more important (Bhatt 2003 12).

Bhatt's study provides an example of an early, and still relatively exploratory, effort to build a

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theoretical framework in order to highlight the relative importance of interactivity, immersion,

and connectivity for attracting customers through a Web site.

As well, there has been a growing number of publications concerning interactivity in Social

Sciences and Humanities journals. It seems that the main impetus for the study of immersion and

interactivity stems from the recent discussions centered around the discipline of Literary Theory.

I have in mind especially the work of Marie-Laure Ryan, a well-known literary and media

theorist, who has published extensively in the field of interactivity, immersion, narrative, and

computer technology. In fact, my approach to interactivity and immersion will be informed by

Ryan's analysis. Before I turn my attention to Ryan, I will briefly summarize two recent papers

in order to give the reader a flavour of some other current discussions of interactivity.

Michelle Kendrick reflects on the impact interactive technologies, and especially hypertext

technologies, may have on writing. Kendrick puts a special emphasis on the failure of the

theorists of hypertext to escape the modern consumerist model, entrenched by the idea of the

"liberal humanist subject (cf. Kendrick 2001 232)." The latter theorists, according to Kendrick,

have valorized the consumerist "click" choice over critiques of systems of choice:

In suggesting that the death of the author somehow liberates the interactive reader, hypertext

theorists have offered internally incoherent explanations of the role of the subject within new

media technologies, and such theorizing may already be having negative impacts on the teaching

of reading and writing -- in promoting a view of "choice" that is more indebted to consumerist

models than to critical thinking, and in severing theories of "writing" from the contextualist

arguments that define the cultural studies of science and technology (Kendrick 2001 232).

Kendrick seems to take a relatively negative view regarding the future of the new "interactive"

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reader. In particular, she doubts new readers' ability to genuinely read since the World Wide

Web is largely a visual technology, ruled and virtually enslaved by the power of e-commerce.

Patrick Crogan uses the movie Blade Runner as well as the popular computer game based on the

movie to speculate on the relationship between narrative and interactivity. Crogan presents the

inherent tensions between the interactive and narrative elements he claims to have discovered in

the game-playing community:

Interactivity is generally presumed to offer greater freedom to the media user, who is no longer a

passive recipient of broadcast transmissions -- no longer constrained by an inability to respond,

alter, or otherwise interact with the media text. Conventional narrative, with its closed, linear,

and predetermined form, is seen as the model instance of constraint against which the new media

struggle (Crogan 2002 640).

This account of the tension between the interactive and narrative modes is strikingly similar to

the views presented by Marie-Laure Ryan, a well known technology and media theorist. In her

essay "Immersion vs. Interactivity: Virtual Reality and Literary Theory," Ryan offers a thorough

overview of immersion and interactivity (cf. Ryan 1999 115-120). I will refer to this view as the

"standard" view. Ryan also touches on several key factors necessary for better understanding

immersion and interactivity. I will briefly present these factors, combining Ryan's views with a

communications perspective outlined by Jonathan Steuer, and then proceed to offer my critique

of the standard view of immersion and interactivity.

Jonathan Steuer presents a communication perspective on interactivity and immersion in

"Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence (Steuer 1992)." Steuer

discusses two aspects of immersion (or "vividness," as he refers to it): breadth and depth. As

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well, he presents three aspects of interactivity: speed, range, and mapping.

Steuer defines the difference between the breadth and depth of immersion in the following

manner:

Two generalized but important variables are discussed here: sensory breath, which refers to the

number of sensory dimensions simultaneously presented, and sensory depth, which refers to the

resolution within each of these perceptual channels. Breadth is a function of the ability of a

communication medium to present information accross the senses (Steuer 1992 81).

It turns out that the medium which is capable of utilizing the most senses, including touch,

vision, hearing, and taste, possesses the greatest breadth of immersion. Of course, immersion

does not necessarily require the utilization of all senses at once. In fact, it may be the case that

immersion requires only temporary and partial substitution of one's senses to succeed. In most

cases of immersion, there is a dynamic process of give and take between the virtual environment

and one's corporeal body. Virtual Reality environments provide especially fruitful ground for

exploring that process of give and take. As Craig Murray and Judith Sixsmith point out:

In VR, part of the sensorial architecture of the body remains in the physical world, while another

is projected into the virtual one. The corporeal body in the physical environment remains ever

present to mind, while an electronic body image weakly echoes and competes with it. When only

parts of the body are absorbed by VR technology, phantom phenomena occur. The degree to

which our visual corporeality dominates our embodied experience influences the tangibility of

our remaining body outside the VR experience (Murray 1999 334).

Murray and Sixsmith further discuss the complexities of immersion in the context of VR and the

variety of its impacts on the corporeal body:

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While we are not arguing that immersion in VR constitutes sensory deprivation, we are arguing

that the condition in VR is a (partial) substitution of sensory information, and that deprivation of

physical reality...is an integral part of a "compelling" VR experience. The procedures associated

with sensory deprivation and virtual immersion may function to destabilize the experiential

boundaries of a person‘s body...thus partially freeing the phenomenal body from the physical

constraints of a person‘s physical presence in the real world...All this is not to say that the mind

is free from the body, but that the experience of VR brings its embodiment with it. It does this

through sensations that are linked almost inescapably to the virtual environment. Not only are

bodies bounded with the sensations they receive, but they are also located in time and space.

Early human development includes a process of becoming embodied. We have a corporeal

history, an evolutionary and ontological development...[O]ur evolutionary history includes the

development of an upright posture. We encounter the world from the height at which our eyes are

located in our bodies. By drawing on our evolutionary history, VR has allowed our embodied

reality to map our embodied experiences in cyberspace...The perspective offered to viewers

mimics their experience in the world, and viewers measure objects in the virtual environment as

they do in reality—that is, against their own bodies (Murray 1999 319-320).

I agree with Murray and Sixsmith that VR is not capable of generating bodily habits and routines

out of thin air. The former habits and routines are necessarily premised on the model derived

from the kinetics of the real body. This further supports the previous assumption that even the

deepest immersion requires only partial and temporary release of one's regular sensory functions.

In his discussion of immersion and interactivity, Steuer proceeds to define interactivity as "the

extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated

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environment in real time (Steuer 1992 84)."

It goes without saying that speed is an important factor of interactivity. Of course, real-time

interactivity represents the ideal speed of interactivity, at least from a human point of view. In

the course of most, though not necessarily all, interactions, the immediacy of response is of great

importance both in real life and in technology. The range of interactivity, according to Steuer, is

determined by "the number of attributes of the mediated environment that can be manipulated,

and the amount of variation possible within each attribute (Steuer 1992 86)." Finally, mapping

has to do with the manner in which human actions are connected to the mediated environment.

This manner is, of course, often quite arbitrary. Steuer gives an example of wiggling one's left

toe in order to increase the loudness of sound from the TV speaker.

Marie-Laure Ryan further discusses several important conditions and features of interactivity and

immersion. In her more recent discussion of interactivity and immersion, she contrasts the

textual environment with the Virtual Reality (VR) and real life (RL) environments:

The main difference between VR and RL, on the one hand, and textual environments, on the

other is the semiotic nature of the interactivity. In a textual environment the user deals with signs,

both as tools... and as the target of the action..., but in RL and VR all action passes through the

body. This is not to deny that it takes a hand to click or write in textual environments, or that

entities in VR are ultimately digital signs, but if realized, the ideal of the disappearance of the

medium means that the VR user experiences at least the direct encounter with reality. The hand

that turns the pages of a book or that clicks on hypertext links does not belong to the textual

world, but the body that moves around in a VR installation writes, or rather acts out, the

―history‖ of the virtual world... VR and RL thus offer a mode of action in which the body can be

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much more directly and more fully involved with the surrounding world than through conscious

symbolic manipulation (Ryan 2001 284-285).

According to Ryan's 1999 essay on immersion and interactivity, perhaps the most fundamental

condition of immersion is transparency. I should add that this condition applies both to high

technology (VR and advanced computer technology) and to the traditional literary context. The

condition of transparency requires that the participant in VR, or the reader of a novel, not be

distracted by the mechanics of computer technology or the mechanics of writing. For example, a

poor screen resolution would make it difficult for a participant in VR to become totally immersed

in the action because the participant would be constantly distracted by the inefficiencies of the

technology. Similarly, a poor translation of a novel prevents the reader from becoming immersed

in the narrative because the reader is too aware of the translator's "presence" in the text. Let me

add, as an interesting side point, that technological transparency is not a constant category -- it

changes over time. For example, the old technology of "rear projection" was transparent to the

viewer watching movies in the first half of the 20th century (that is, the viewer was convinced

that the actor was sitting in a moving car) while the modern viewer cannot fail to be distracted by

the obsolete technological mechanics behind the rear projection. Let me mention another

interesting case. The introduction of colour technology which was intended to provide much

improved transparency lead, at least initially, to less transparency since people were used to

watching black and white movies and television.

Immersion is also a matter of degree and it appears directly proportional to the depth of

information or to the amount of detail and finesse offered by VR or a written text. It is obvious

that the use of obsolete technology, and an insufficient amount of processing power, or a simple

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and sketchy narrative, would result in a lower intensity immersion. Of course, this manner of

presenting the dependence between technology, narrative and immersion is guilty of

oversimplification since it ignores human agency. It goes without saying that the reader's or the

technology user's attitude can determine the level of her emotional and psychic investment.

In the case of reading, a more sketchy narrative can sometimes provide a better ground for

immersion. This is especially true of children's literature. An imaginatively written children's

book (and books by Dr. Seuss come to mind as one of the best examples) provide only a pretext

for children to make forays into the rich realms of their own imagination. In computer

technology, one can be highly immersed in an extremely simple computer game such as tetris.

As well, one can resist deep immersion even while playing highly advanced computer games

with a lot of visual detail.

Finally, the standard view of immersion and interactivity contrasts the relative passivity of

immersion with the relative activity of interactivity. For example, the viewer of the movie Top

Gun is passively immersed in the movie while the participant in the (interactive) video game,

perhaps titled the same and designed on the basis of the movie, is actually flying the fighter

plane. One could also argue that a theater spectator is a passive observer.

Bertold Brecht has famously based his distinction between the dramatic (Aristotelian) and the

epic (Brecht's) theater on the degrees of their relative passivity. It turned out, in Brecht's

analysis, that dramatic theater, as opposed to the newly introduced epic theater, was

overwhelmingly passive in nature. This trait, according to Brecht, lead to the propensity of

dramatic theater to maintain the status quo in society. It is interesting to note that Brecht

assumed his epic theater would require some measure of distance between the spectators and the

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actors (much akin to the distance between the actors and the observers which exists in cabaret

shows and boxing matches) in order to reduce the passivity inherent in dramatic theater. Brecht

believed that if the audience was allowed to drink and smoke, this smoke-filled alcoholic

environment would provide the detachment necessary for his epic theater.

Bruce Nanay, in his essay ―Perception, Action and Identification in the Theater,‖ adds one

significant aspect to the traditional Brechtian view of theater perception as passive and detached.

Nanay suggests that it is important to take into account one crucial feature of the observers‘

involvement -- which characters we are identifying with as observers:

The most significant difference in comparison with everyday perception is not that theater

perception is detached from action, but that my perception is connected to someone else‘s action.

I see the objects (and sometimes the other characters as well) on stage as affording actions for

someone else…. But an important question remains: who or what decides who this character

(this focal point) will be (Krasner and Saltz 2006 252)?

In a manner somewhat similar to Nanay‘s, I wish to challenge the standard view and to suggest

that immersion is not passive, nor is interactivity active, per se. I believe the whole picture is

much more complex since, as I hope to show, activity and passivity can cut across interactivity

and immersion.

Marie-Laure Ryan, in her more recent approach to interactivity and immersion, emphasizes a

more active engagement of immersion, especially in the textual environment:

[F]ar from promoting passivity, as its opponents have argued, immersion requires an active

engagement with the text and a demanding act of imagining. Whether textual worlds function as

imaginary counterparts or as models of the real world, they are mentally constructed by the reader

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as environments that stretch in space, exist in time, and serve as a habitat for a population of

animate agents. These three dimensions correspond to what have long been recognized as three

basic components of narrative grammar: setting, plot, and characters (Ryan 2001 15).

In the Introduction, I sketched Marshall McLuhan's distinction between hot and cool media. I

stressed the importance of the degree of intensity of information, or the degree of resolution,

which defines the nature of the medium for McLuhan. Accordingly, the more a medium

intensifies (or "heats") one sense to the point of high resolution it is called a hot medium; the

more a medium subdues (or "cools") that sense to the point of low resolution it is called a cool

medium. McLuhan uses Francis Bacon to illustrate the latter's contrast between complete

packages of writing (which are filled with information, and therefore hot) and incomplete writing

and aphorisms (which are open to interpretation, and therefore cool):

Francis Bacon never tired of contrasting hot and cool prose. Writing in "methods" or complete

packages, he contrasted with writing in aphorisms, or single observations such as "Revenge is a

kind of wild justice." The passive consumer wants packages, but those, he suggested, who are

concerned in pursuing knowledge and in seeking causes will resort to aphorisms, just because

they are incomplete and require participation in depth (McLuhan 1994 31).

Without specifically referring to McLuhan, Marie-Laure Ryan further explores what appears to

be his legacy. For example, she touches on the ambiguous role textuality plays in the context of

interactivity, especially when it come to recent developments in the construction of the narrative:

In a figural sense, interactivity describes the collaboration between the reader and the text in the

production of meaning. Even with the traditional types of narrative and expository writing–texts

that strive toward global coherence and a smooth sequential development–reading is never a

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passive experience... But the inherently interactive nature of the reading experience has been

obscured by the reader‘s proficiency in performing the necessary world-building operations. We

are so used to reading classic narrative texts–this with a well-formed plot, a setting we can

visualize, and characters who act out of a familiar logic–that we do not notice the mental

processes that enable us to convert the temporal flow of language into a global image that exists

all at once in the mind. Postmodern narrative deepens the reader‘s involvement with the text by

proposing new reading strategies, or by drawing attention to the construction of meaning (Ryan

2001 17).

Another key feature of McLuhan's distinction between the two media is that hot media are

subject to little or no control by their users while users may exert greater control over cool media.

My usage of hot and cool diverges from McLuhan's since it hinges on the delay in

representation. The delay in representation is the amount of time necessary to execute the

process of representing. I have used the example of the live theater performance, where there is

no delay since the actor representing Hamlet on the stage does so by virtue of his own

appearance. I believe the moment that performance is taped, broadcast or photographed the

process of the recording necessarily creates the phenomenon of delay. That recording illustrates

the process of representing, which usually involves at least some degree of human agency or

interpretation.

So, if the process of representing coincides with the flow of represented events and the latter are

therefore not affected by the delay, then I term interactivity and immersion, which may exist in

its wake, "hot." If the process of representing results in a delay, however minuscule the delay

may be, I term the ensuing interactivity and immersion "cool." As well, I follow McLuhan in

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postulating the correlation between hot immersion and interactivity and low degree of control by

the participant and between cool immersion and interactivity and high degree of control by the

participant.

Hot Interactivity and Immersion

What is hot interactivity and immersion? In my opinion, one of the key characteristics of hot

interactivity and hot immersion is the absence of the delay and consequently the absence of

control. This is when a person is literally sucked into the moment of the ritual or the

performance. A dancer who dances the waltz is not active in the sense of choosing the steps or

modifying the music. The dancer is simply dancing -- any activity of representing, interpreting or

deliberating in this situation, and especially the activity of controlling the performance, would

interrupt the flow and consequently would spoil the magic of dancing. Finally, the dancer needs

to be fully immersed in the music and its rhythm in order to dance well: humming a different

tune or listening to the walkman with a different kind of music playing while dancing would

interfere with the dance.

In the Performativity and Description chapter, I refer to the phenomenon of ―presence,‖ often

experienced by stage performers. Suzanne Jaeger, in her essay ―Embodiment and Presence‖

writes about certain moments which occur in performance, moments which bear a strong mark of

what I refer to as hot interactivity and immersion:

Performers, especially dancers, sometimes talk about ―being in the moment‖ or having an ―on

performance,‖ in the sense of being really on top of it or in good form. Sometimes this sense

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involves both for the performer and for the audience an awareness of things uniquely coming

together. One sees brilliance, a special communication between the artist(s) and the audience, a

sensuously and perhaps emotionally heightened, lively awareness that unfolds within what is

unique to a specific performance. The ―on moment‖ occurs when the performer not only

correctly repeats everything she rehearsed, but also has a keen awareness of herself, the other

performers and the audience in the immediacy of a live performance. It is reported by performers

as a feeling of supreme control and power, but also paradoxically an openness to the

contingencies of a live audience (Krasner and Saltz 2006 123).

A much more intriguing and mystical example of hot interactivity and immersion, especially in

North America, involves Zen Buddhism and meditation. An entire generation of intellectuals

and artists in the early and mid-twentieth century fell under the spell of Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, a

professor of Buddhism. Suzuki has emphasized Zen techniques and principles not only as the

means of meditation but also as a way of life. Perhaps one of the most enduring aspects of

Suzuki‘s interpretation of Zen is his exploration of presentness, a fundamental aspect of every

Zen experience. Presentness is an elusive space in one‘s consciousness, attained through Zen

meditation and lifestyle. One small illustration of Suzuki‘s influence is a recent exhibition (July

2007) at the Neuberger Museum of Art titled ―Presentness is Grace: Abstract Art and Buddhism

in America.‖ Yet presentness is not of interest just for abstract artists. In the context of my

discussion of hot interactivity and immersion, the legacy of Suzuki‘s presentness is especially

crucial for martial artists. Once martial artists lose a tenuous balance of presentness, or a feeling

of peace and presence with pervades their mind, it is clear that their demise inevitably follows.

Anyone who has played sports can attest to a distinct feeling of a loss of presentness. Once a

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player no longer feels ―one with the game,‖ that game is usually lost.

Yet another example of hot interactivity, which is simultaneously (and perhaps paradoxically) the

most exotic and the most common of all examples I have been invoking, can be found reading

Orhan Pamuk‘s book Istanbul. In this book, Pamuk explores the city of Istanbul through a

complex personal narrative infused by a wealth of historical, artistic, literary, and political

references. In a chapter titled Hüzün, Pamuk strives to convey an ambiance of hüzün (which can

be roughly translated as ―melancholy‖), so typical of Istanbul. Probably the most important

aspect of hüzün is that it is not a subjective feeling but rather an all-pervasive, atmospheric

phenomenon, which can be compared metaphorically to a fog descending on a city or to a mist

obscuring its street windows. In Istanbul, hüzün is felt by all of its denizens. To put it even

stronger, to live in Istanbul is to see, hear, touch, and breathe hüzün:

The hüzün of Istanbul is not just the mood evoked by its music and its poetry, it is a way of

looking at life that implicates us all, not only a spiritual state but a state of mind that is ultimately

as life-affirming as it is negating…. My starting point was the emotion that a child might feel

while looking through a steamy window. Now we begin to understand hüzün not as the

melancholy of a solitary person but the black mood shared by millions of people together. What

I am trying to explain is the hüzün of the entire city: of Istanbul…The hüzün of Istanbul suggests

nothing of an individual standing against society; on the contrary, it suggests an erosion of the

will to stand against the values and mores of the community and encourages us to be content with

little, honoring the virtues of harmony, uniformity, humility. (Pamuk 2006 91-104).

Finally, improvisation in music is an excellent example of an activity which involves hot

interactivity and immersion. It goes without saying that a group of musicians who happen to

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improvise develop, as a matter of necessity, a special and deep connection. More specifically,

and perhaps most importantly, they build a collective and extremely temporal understanding of

the flow of music in the process of improvisation. In fact, the activity of improvisation relies on

the possibility of exploring a fascinating and creative tension between what may be termed,

following Leonard Meyer's terminology, "expectation" and "deviation:"

According to Meyer's work, the rapport between antecedent and consequent, between expectation

and deviation of completion is essential to the understanding of a piece of music. Music can

have meaning only as a whole of redundant sound-patterns constituting a discourse based on a set

of conventional but assimilated norms (Gaboury 1970 347).

I believe this rapport between expectation and deviation is probably most pronounced in jazz

improvisations.

Cool Interactivity and Immersion

Cool interactivity and immersion, on the other hand, are an outcome of the delay and their raison

d' etre is to be controlled. Notice that this control can occur on several levels and in various

fashions since it can exist both on the producing and the receiving end of the medium. It can be a

matter of the producer choosing the content of the performance at a very preliminary stage of

(potentially) representing the performance. It can also be a matter of the director choosing an

appropriate camera angle. Finally, it can be a matter of the listener choosing various aspects

(volume, length) of the reproduction.

A person immersed in a recorded performance of a ballet therefore experiences a mediated

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immersion, the limitations and advantages of which are the limitations and advantages of the

recording technology. To give only one illustration of the limitations, the eye of the viewer is

guided by the camera that is, in turn, guided by the director/producer. The viewer/listener of the

recorded event, therefore, has to relinquish the freedom of choosing the aspects of the events she

wants to watch/listen. However, cool interactivity provides the viewer/listener with

opportunities to actively control the viewing/listening experience. For example, the

viewer/listener is capable of modifying many features of the performance (for example, making it

louder or making it shorter by interrupting it). The viewer/listener has the power to be immersed

only in certain (favorite) parts of the ballet. In fact, the viewer of the ballet may decide not to be

the listener at all, by pressing the "mute" button, and to immerse herself only in the visual aspects

of the ballet. As well, the viewer of the ballet can be transformed into a listener of the musical

aspect of that same ballet performance by turning off its video aspect. I think this example

clearly demonstrates this kind immersion and interactivity is shaped by the role of control, both

on the production and consumption level.

The development of electronic technology in the 20th

century has been of great significance for

the transformation of popular music. Because of the invention of the transistor, much of the

popular music throughout the second part of 20th

century has been thoroughly transformed by

cool interactivity. The reason for that is, above all, the fact that the original sound of the

instrument has been delayed, and subsequently modified, by the amplifier. The nature of the

delay and modification, of course, may range from ―clean‖ amplification of an instrument or

voice to much more transforming modifications which have become a common place in rock

music, such as distortion or overdrive.

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A fascinating example of a novel technological means of capturing cool, or delayed, interactivity

includes Suguru Goto, a composer and performer, who designed the SuperPolm. The SuperPolm

is a virtual violin which captures the idea that the gestures of playing a real violin can be

modelled and translated into parameters of position, pressure, and distance. One should keep in

mind that the gestures themselves do not produce any sound; instead, they are received by

sensors in the form of the above mentioned parameters and then fed into a computer (Goto 1999

115). The computer can then control, manipulate, or generate the sounds in real time. Goto

points out, following Alex Mulder, a virtual musical instrument designer, that virtual musical

instruments have a capacity to provide enhanced freedom when it comes to the mapping of

movements to sounds.

Goto elaborates on the possibilities of the new generation of virtual instruments, including the

SuperPolm:

The SuperPolm offers far more possibilities than traditional musical instruments augmented by

sensors. The latter can produce acoustic sounds and control a computer at the same time, but,

since virtual musical instruments merely trigger sounds, their capabilities can be modified by

programming, which is an essential factor in my compositions. One of my gestures at one

moment might produce a sound similar to a traditional instrument, but in the following section

the same gesture may trigger a very different sound (Goto 1999 116-117).

Goto captures yet another intriguing aspect of the difference between hot and cool interactivity.

Hot interactivity enables the audience to enjoy the totality of the performance and certain aspects

of that performance may be lost in the process of manipulating, transferring, and filtering the

information implicit in cool interactivity. In Goto's example, hot interactivity enables the

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audience to discover the dynamics of the relationship between the sound and the musician's

gestures:

What is the difference between listening to a recording with headphones and listening to live

music? In a concert hall, acoustic instruments can be heard without a loss of quality. Moreover,

audience members experience a kind of space that differs from their living and working

environments and -- even more importantly -- they can observe the relationship between the

performer's gestures and the sound being produced (Goto 1999 119).

The Dialectics of Hot and Cool Interactivity and Immersion

Johannes Birringer, in his discussion of the nature of digital dancing and web-based dance,

addresses the following intricacies of technology causing a delay in representation. Birringer

writes that:

for the performer working with a motion capture body suit (wired to the computer during the

capture), there is the additional problem of severely limited motion- range and a general sense of

diminished expression. Digital dancing on the web faces similar limitations: small bandwidth,

tiny size of the video clips, slow modems, delays and frame drop-outs. For dance, seemingly

predicated on the visceral physicality, fluidity, and kinetic-emotional impact of the body in space,

the implications of motion capture and digital editing are tantalizing: the dancing will be

diminished or altered altogether (Birringer 1999 363).

Birringer offers yet another excellent example of the artistic usage of cool interactivity to

creatively mediate the immediacy and presentness of the performer. Here, Birringer uses the

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work of Laurie Anderson, an American experimental performer:

It will then become necessary to ask whether self-exposure and self-manipulation in performance

are subsumed by the spectacle, or whether there is a degree or quality of difference in the control

and manipulation of image entertained by Madonna and, say, Laurie Anderson. The narrative,

acoustic, and visual management of Anderson's image as performer is a fascinating case of

simulation having superseded the idea of a literal, "real" presence or identity altogether.

Anderson's identity is forever displaced and delayed. Like the vocal "delays" and electronic

distortions of her voice, her own body and gender identity are set afloat in the multitrack

audiovisual "choreography" to which she (ironically) refers as the "Language of the Future"....

(Birringer 1991 221-222).

The multifaceted inter-dependence, illustrated above by Birringer, between the delayed and

immediate or hot and cool (in my terminology) interactivity is also discussed by Philip Auslander

in his book "Liveness." Auslander uses a key term, "mediatized" to convey that a cultural object

becomes a product of the mass media or of media technology (cf. Auslander 1999 5). He then

emphasizes the dynamic and complex relationship between liveness and mediatization:

On this basis, the historical relationship of liveness and mediatization must be seen as a relation

of dependence and imbrication rather than opposition. That the mediated is engrained in the live

is apparent in the structure of the English word immediate. The root form is the word mediate of

which immediate is, of course, the negation. Mediation is thus embedded within the im-mediate,

the relation of mediation and the im-mediate is one of mutual dependence, not precession. Far

from being encroached upon, contaminated, or threatened by mediation, live performance is

always inscribed with traces of the possibility of technical mediation (i.e., mediatization) that

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defines it as live (Auslander 1999 53).

I do not wish my discussion to lead to a suspicion that cool interactivity is a second-rate

interactivity, derived from the "original" and "authentic" hot interactivity. I will explore this

topic in more detail towards the end of this chapter. At the moment, I wish to suggest, following

Douglas Rosenberg, that the two kinds of interactivity should not be seen as competing with each

other. Instead, the two kinds of interactivity open entirely novel artistic possibilities:

Douglas Rosenberg, video artist and director of the American Dance Festival's Video Archival

Program, has pointed out in numerous internet discussions that dance for the camera occupies a

wholly different space than dance for the theatre. On the one hand, it is true that video dance, as

the precursor of digital dancing and web-based dance, is a hybrid form, existing in a virtual space

contextualized by the medium and method of recording. As Rosenberg emphasizes 'it is not a

substitute for, or in conflict with, the live theatrical performance of a dance, but rather a wholly

separate yet equally powerful way of creating dance-works...' (Birringer 1999 362).

In fact, there are creative ways in which the cool mode of interactivity can be incorporated in the

choreography and can function as a part of the performance itself : "Even more hauntingly, the

apparent symmetry of the dance of course was not precise; tiny delays in the transmission became

part of the choreography and entered into the dialogue between present physical body and

technologically mediated body (Birringer 1999 368)."

The point of difference between cool and hot interactivity and immersion that I have been

illustrating by the examples above, is a matter of growing importance in the philosophy of

technology. Thus, when Michael Heim, in his recent book Virtual Realism, introduces the

concept of "interactivity" he finds it necessary to refer to the context of the distinction between

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real environments and virtual environments. I believe this short passage from Heim strongly

affirms the close correlation between interactivity and the absence or presence of control:

Real environments in the primary world do not present themselves for our amusement nor can

they be switched on and off like the situations in movies or television shows. Real environments

are unpredictable and messy. They have no pause, no fast forward, and -- most important -- no

rewind. Our actions can affect what happens next. So anything that simulates a real

environment must have something of that spontaneous, improvised feel of real environments.

The word used to describe this aspect of VR is "interactivity," meaning that the displays react to

our actions just as we react to the displays (Heim 1998 11).

This simple and necessary distinction between real and virtual environments also suggests a tacit

value judgment where the real world emerges as an authentic and primary playground of human

behaviour and decision making. By the same token, the virtual world becomes the world of

ghosts, a technologically produced collective illusion. One of the purposes of my distinction

between hot and cool interactivity is to suggest that the distinction between the real and virtual

worlds is not that simple since those two worlds have become deeply interrelated in the wake of

modern technology. To illustrate some of the possible ways in which seemingly identical

situations, involving either hot or cool interactivity, can lead to different outcomes in reality, let

me offer the following thought experiments.

On the one hand, imagine a pilot who flies a high-tech combat mission and a boy who plays a

high-tech computer war game. The major difference between the two is the real life mayhem

which results from the actions of the former and not, in the usual and direct sense, from the latter.

Yet both of them have been engaged in activities the nature of which I have termed cool

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interactivity.

On the other hand, imagine a spectator witnessing a violent murder on the street and then yet

another spectator watching a murder staged as part of a play. Both spectators have been engaged,

by means of hot interactivity, in activities which have quite different outcomes in reality.

It goes without saying that the reverse is the case. One and the same outcome may quite likely be

a result of an interaction which is either hot or cool in nature. For example, a couple may break

up over the phone, thereby interacting in a cool manner. Of course, the nature of this type of

interaction, because it is "low intensity" according to McLuhan, naturally allows for a higer

degree of interpretation, and misintrerpretation by the other interlocutor. Because there is no

opportunity to see the facial expressions or various other types of body language during a phone

conversation, a chuckle can, for instance, be misunderstood as a sob or vice versa. To use a

computer analogy, it is as if the couple digitized their lives, and especially their relationship, and

began reshuffling the bits at their own will. The potential for control in this "digital-like"

manipulation of the bits of one's life is quite significant -- one can, at any point of the

conversation, hang up, put the other person on hold, take the receiver away while the other

person is yelling, and so forth. In the worst case scenario, a pre-programmed machine

"consultant" might be utilized to deal with the unpleasant break up situation. If the couple

decided to break up in person, interacting in a hot manner, the outcome of their interaction

would be the same yet it would be achieved by means of a different type of interactivity.

Philosophers’ Fascination With Hot Interactivity

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I think the previous hypothetical scenarios reveal a tacit value judgment that keeps beckoning in

the distinction between hot and cool interactivity and immersion, and which I wish to explore.

I will resist the urge to slide towards this subtle value judgment despite the existence of rich

philosophical traditions that gained special prominence in continental Europe between the two

world wars and soon after the second world war, which made an implicit distinction between

what I term hot and cool interactivity and immersion and then sharply criticized cool

interactivity.

Cool interactivity has usually been portrayed, in these philosophical traditions, as the

technological means of relating to nature, other people, or the environment. This kind of

interactivity, or this way or relating to the other and to one's environment, has been viewed as

intrusive and one-dimensional. One of the most important motives of this view was the belief

that the technological approach to nature and society is, by its essence, goal driven and must

therefore be exploitative and manipulative. Specifically, the technological way of interacting

with nature is not capable of respecting nature's complexity and autonomy. Finally, this way of

interacting with nature, or dominating nature by technological means, leads to a widespread

alienation of humanity. One can easily recognize the legacy of Karl Marx, which recognizes the

fast alliance of a capitalist means of production with post-Enlightenment sentiments toward

nature, in these themes.

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno famously wrote in The Dialectic of Enlightenment about

the desire of the capitalist ideology of the West, created and fostered by the Enlightenment, to

behave toward nature the way a dictator behaves toward his slaves:

A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself. It is the coercive nature of society

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alienated from itself. Automobiles, bombs, and movies keep the whole thing together until their

leveling element shows its strength in the very wrong which it furthered (Horkheimer and

Adorno 1973 121).

Herbert Marcuse writes, in a much simlar vein, about the demise of real freedom in the West,

hidden under the "technological veil:"

Domination is transfigured into administration. The capitalist bosses and owners are losing their

identity as responsible agents; they are assuming the function of bureaucrats in a corporate

machine. Within the vast hierarchy of executive and managerial boards extending far beyond the

individual establishment into the scientific laboratory and research institute, the national

government and national purpose, the tangible source of exploitation disappears behind the

facade of objective rationality. Hatred and frustration are deprived of their specific target, and

the technological veil conceals the reproduction of inequality and enslavement. With

technological progress as its instrument, unfreedom -- in the sense of man's subjection to his

productive apparatus -- is perpetuated and intensified in the form of many liberties and comforts

(Marcuse 1968 32).

Hot interactivity, on the other hand, has been viewed in a much more positive light as a more

traditional, or more low-tech, way of relating to nature that does not control and manipulate

nature the way modern Western technology does. The latter kind of interactivity is often

characterized by a respect for tradition and a strong sense of community.

The philosophy of Martin Heigegger, and especially his famous essay The Question Concerning

Technology, is probably the best example of the attitude sketched above. Heidegger's examples,

chosen to illustrate the kind of intrusion into nature characteristic of modern technology, often

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juxtapose technological (cool) and traditional (hot) ways of interacting with nature. Thus,

Heidegger contrasts the peasant, who works with nature, with the agricultural industry, which

sets upon nature. Or he contrasts the forester, who is made subordinate by the cellulose industry,

with his grandfather, who presumably walks the forest path without his grandson's

technologically distorting approach to nature.

This is a key difference in the ways of relating to nature, according to Heidegger:

The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the

unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such. But does

this not hold true for the old windmill as well? No. Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they are

left entirely to the wind's blowing. But the windmill does not unlock energy from the air currents

in order to store it (Heidegger 1977 296).

My approach posits the difference between the windmill and the coal plant or a hydroelectric

plant not as a matter of storage but rather as a matter of representation. The latter two energy

producing plants depend on an interaction with nature that measures and calculates the energy

potential existing in the water and the coal. Nature is thereby objectivized in this delayed and

distancing activity of representing. This kind of representing is the interaction which then leads

to manipulation and control of recorded nature, much like the viewer manipulates and controls a

recorded ballet performance in my previous example of cool interactivity. A windmill cannot

interact with nature in the previous manner since the global weather patterns are too complex and

dynamic to be represented. Thus, a windmill operates as a part of nature -- it lets the winds turn

it the way they please. The windmill thus becomes part of nature by opening itself to the whims

of the wind. The windmill is capable of spontaneous performativity that flows with, and depends

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on, the currents of nature. This kind of interactivity I have described as hot interactivity.

However, I wish to stop short of viewing hot and cool interactivity in light of the implicit value

judgment illustrated above. I think such value judgements commit the fallacy of romanticizing

the tradition, a fallacy common to many philosophers, especially in the wake of Rousseau and

Heidegger. Probably because of this romanticizing tradition, too many mythical subjects, akin to

Heidegger's "forest respecting grandfather," have long roamed the narrative of philosophy. I

believe it is an error to impute a higher sense of connectedness with nature to those in the past

who, because of their way of working with the land and the forest, had to work outdoors and to

experience nature more richly and more intimately than most people do today. It is a distortion

to postulate their experience of nature as a measure of the proper and authentic way of relating to

nature. To paraphrase Hume, this move in reasoning does not replace "is" with "ought;" instead,

it replaces "was" with "ought."

William and Harriet Lovitt write in their book "Modern Technology in the Heideggerian

Perspective" about the abuse technology inflicts on nature:

Rather, the determining power of technology now rules everywhere in the modern world. A river

is not only a supplier of pleasurable experiences for tourists characteristically bent on enjoying

their vacation to the fullest and seeing all they can in the shortest possible time. Here again the

River Rhine is lost to us in what was once the completeness of its relational self-presenting as an

entity of unique integrity and intrinsic power. Again it is but one element in a process. Its

importance lies only in its being on hand to serve an end beyond itself (William and Harriet

Lovitt 1995 232).

I believe the Heideggerian observer, who is engaged in the project of "liberating" the river Rhine

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from "being on hand to serve an end beyond itself," hardly suspects that the liberating project

itself burdens the river with the myth of "the completeness of its relational self-presenting."

Even when philosophers and environmentalists praise ancient cultures (Greek and Native

American, for example) for their sense of community and belonging to nature, one has to ask

how much of the praise relies on idealized portrayals and wishful thinking.

I believe it is much more reasonable to assert that the two kinds of interactivity and immersion,

which I have termed hot and cool, have always been inseparably intertwined in Western

civilization. Thus, the difference between the nature of current technology and the technology of

the past is a difference of degree, not of kind. Modern technology is certainly capable of

diversifying the relationship between hot and cool interactivity and immersion by creating new

and ever more intricate webs of dependencies between them. There is even a sense in which one

can talk about cool interactivity being the primary and dominant means of interactivity,

especially in the 20th century. However, I am suspicious of projects of "discovering" grand

metaphysical designs behind the perceived shift in the nature of interactivity.

My approach to hot and cool interactivity focuses on their distinct natures which depend on their

different temporalities. I have conceptualized these two kinds of interactivity as the outcome of

the presence or absence of the delay. I believe these two modes of interacting, immediate and

delayed, have become easier to discern because of the 20th century's advanced technological

means of representation. Yet these two modes of interaction have always been a part of a

dialectic that reaches back to ancient philosophers.

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Is Truth in The Horse's Mouth?

There is something uncanny about the force of proximity and its utmost credibility as the source

of evidence. Is there better evidence than actually being there and seeing the things and events

for yourself? It has long been empirically established, by psychology and forensic science among

other disciplines, that the traditional sources of evidence, written or oral, have a tendency to

mutate with each and every group and generation of witnesses. As well, there is no foolproof

way of finding out if the latter sources have been forged or tampered with. This is why the

invention of photography was so fascinating: it seemed to provide a new and unique window of

proximity and credibility.

Sherlock Holmes, in A Scandal in Bohemia, received a mysterious guest one evening. The guest,

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who turned out to be the King of Bohemia, was in great distress since a certain adventuress

threatened to blackmail him. At first, Holmes did not quite understand the source of power

which the infamous lady seemed to wield over the king:

"Then I fail to follow your Majesty. If this young person should produce her letters for

blackmailing or other purposes, how is she to prove their authenticity?"

"There is the writing."

"Pooh, pooh! Forgery."

"My private note-paper."

"Stolen."

"My own seal."

"Imitated."

"My photograph."

"Bought."

"We were both in the photograph."

"Oh, dear! That is very bad! Your Majesty has indeed committed an indiscretion (Doyle 1930

10)."

Holmes trusts photography because it provides the direct source of evidence which, unlike

writing and the seal imprinting, cannot be tampered with. Patrick Maynard provides a novel and

insightful discussion of the various roles which a photographic image might play, and the various

aspects of this image, rarely examined by historians of photography. He emphasizes several key

factors implicit in the development and production of photography. Probably the most important

of these factors are photo detection and photo depiction. It turns out, for example, that

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photography need not produce what we conceptualize as classical images at all in order to detect

certain important phenomena:

None of the several excellent histories of photography available today gives much attention to

scientific detection by means of photographic plates. Yet consider, for example, just that period

of aesthetic or "pictorial photography" around the turn of the century when (as these histories

usually show us) photographers were struggling to have their activity accepted as an art of

depiction. During that period Roentgen, Henri Becquerel, Rutherford, and the Curries were

using photographic plates to detect new kinds of radiations not directly visible (Maynard 1989

267).

This kind of evidence, image-like yet not depictive, has become a common item in today's

courtrooms. Probably the best example of such a means of detection would be the analysis of

DNA.

One could also argue that Sherlock Holmes' attitude towards photography reflects some much

broader social and technological transformations of his time. John Tagg ties the invention of

cheap and unlimited photomechanical reproduction to a much wider process of adopting a new

style of advanced industrial organization. Upon its invention, photography quickly established

itself as a source of evidence in a range of medical, legal and municipal institutions:

Understanding the role of photography in the documentary practices of theses institutions means

retracing the history of a far from self-evident set of beliefs and assertions about the nature and

status of the photograph, and of signification generally, which were articulated into a wider range

of techniques and procedures for extracting 'truth' in discourse. Such techniques were themselves

evolved and embodied in institutional practices central to the governmental strategy of capitalist

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states whose consolidation demanded the establishment of a new 'regime of truth' and a new

'regime of sense' (Tagg 2003 257).

The development of photography as a direct, and thereby accurate, source of evidence is

emblematic of the tendency of modern technology, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, to

minimize, and to seemingly eliminate, the delay in representation. In goes without saying that

the invention of photography was the first important step in this direction. Walter Benjamin, in

his influential essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," sketches the

development of what he calls "pictorial reproduction" in the following manner:

Lithography enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep pace with

printing. But only a few decades after its invention, lithography was surpassed by photography.

For the first time in the process of pictorial reproduction, photography freed the hand of the most

important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens.

Since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial

reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace with speech (Benjamin 2003

43).

Notice that, as a matter of historical interest, one can clearly observe that Benjamin still fully

belongs to the age of writing, as he uses speech as a measure of the speed of pictorial

representation.

James Sey, in his article "The Laboring Body and the Posthuman," argues that the desire to fully

develop the means of instantaneous representation grew out of early 20th century scientific

attempts to understand human fatigue. The latter attempts need to be understood in light of the

growing interest in the nature of labour, and especially machine assisted labour. Thus, a

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technique of chronophotography, which anticipated cinematography, was developed by the

French scientist Etienne-Jules Marey. Marey's interest lay in movement, that is, in the complex

correlation of space and time discernible in a body's change of position. In order to better

understand the mechanics of movement, he generated detailed series of images of bodies in

movement. Among other things, Marey's research suggested that human consciousness relies on

"erroneous" perception to grasp seemingly simple phenomena like shape and movement. This

insight added plausibility to the project of critiquing and dismantling realism, one undertaken by

many philosophers and artists of the time. In Sey's words: "Institutional science and the aesthetic

avant-garde were thus united by a fascination with the ways in which new technologies could

revise the relation of the body to the constituent conditions of its consciousness - extension and

duration, space and time (Sey 1999, 32)."

As Mary Ann Doane suggests, the new techniques of representation indeed prompted massive yet

subtle conceptual and technological changes, which necessitated the re-examination of the

understanding of duration, space, and time. According to Doane, the roots of the pressures to

rethink space, time, and duration are to be found above all in the demands of the late nineteenth

century capitalist economy:

The pressure to rethink temporality in the nineteenth century is a function of the development of

capitalist modernity and its emphases upon distribution, circulation, energy, displacement,

quantification, and rationalization. These developments require new conceptualizations of space

and time and the situatedness of the subject. How does the subject inhabit this new space and

time? What are the pressures of contingency and the pleasures of its representability (Doane

2002 20)?

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In her excellent discussion of the development of Marey‘s chronophotography, Doane traces

Marey‘s process of experimentation in which he sought to find the means of directly connecting

the recording instruments and the recorded moving objects. In the end, Marey was convinced

that the best link between the body and the recording instrument, i.e. the link which would be the

most self-effacing and transparent, was to be found in the medium of light waves:

Photography was, in this respect, ideal, since its means of connecting object and representation –

light waves -- were literally intangible and greatly reduced the potentially corrupting effects of

mediation….. Marey consistently contrasted the graphic method favorably to phonetic language

and statistics, heavily mediated forms of representation that were potentially obscure and

unappealing (Doane 2002 48).

Marey believed photography should be a privileged mode of scientific representation because of

the instantaneous and transparent manner in which it represented its objects. However, the most

important application of Marey‘s research was not in the field of scientific representation, even

though there is no doubt his research significantly influenced many scientists throughout the 20th

century. Chronophotography led to the development of a brand new aesthetic medium:

cinematography.

Once the optical illusion of the moving figure was successfully broken down into a series of

positions occupying frames arranged in a temporal sequence, it became tempting to reverse the

direction of the process of representing. In other words, instead of breaking a moving body into a

series of photographic frames, one could run the sequence of frames in order to create the illusion

of movement. Humanity did not have to wait long for the full-fledged development of

cinematography. "Cinema was the first technology to convincingly erase the time of

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representation (it seemed to be in real time) and the distance between technology and its object

(since it comprised light, and later sound waves) (Sey 1999, 35)." This erasure, however, created

a whole set of challenges for the nascent medium of cinematography. For example, because

television and the cinema are unable to "stop" or "speed up" time in order to explain particular

events to the extent to which writing is capable, they must employ techniques of condensing or

extending time in order to achieve the context needed. These techniques are most often

cinematographic cliches of some sort (for example: a five second shot of a car traveling down a

highway represents an entire day of driving, or the transition from a summer scene to a winter

scene represents the passing of several months).

Note that the inability of the visual media (in sharp contrast to writing) to "warp" time stems

from its very nature. Visual media create an illusion of the absence of the delay, an absence that

characterizes the way in which they relate to the viewer. In the Introduction, I refer to the

purported "presentness" of the visual media and the role of the cut and the director in creating

their own means to produce the narrative. One should keep in mind that the viewer, too, had to

adjust to the new visual media and gradually accept their new conventions. For example, the

first viewers of movies demanded their "stolen" time back whenever the director made a cut from

one sequence of events to another.

In fact some techniques of time compression that are customarily found in video media, like the

voice-over narrator or an on-screen text indicating "three years later" are taken, essentially

without alteration, from writing. While writing is by no means exempt from the use of these

types of cliches, it is not as tied to them as television and the cinema are because of the time

constraints placed upon them. Visual media have been forced, from the moment of their

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creation, to cope with their viewers being perpetually immersed in the present. Of course, the

imaginative use of any medium, be it television, writing, etc., can escape many such conventions,

but the immediacy of representation simply allows less freedom. These matters of convention in

visual media and writing represent an interesting case of both dissimilarities and

interdependences between visual media and the narrative.

Stephen Kern presents several cases in which, especially in the early 20th century, writers

borrowed the technological developments in cinematography ("jump in time" and "time

reversal," among other techniques) to enhance their own artistic expression:

In Ulysses Joyce created a dramatic interruption in the forward movement of narrative time. As

Bloom approaches a brothel he steps back to avoid a street cleaner and resumes his course forty

pages and a few seconds later. In those few seconds of his time the reader is led through a long

digression that involves dozens of characters and covers a period of time far exceeding the few

seconds that elapsed public time would have allowed. Virginia Woolf believed that it was the

writer's obligation to go beyond "the formal railway line of a sentence (Kern 1983 31)."

Another pertinent tension between visual media as the means of instantaneous representation and

the narrative as delayed representation has to do not with their conceptualization of time but with

the degree of their respective verisimilitudes. By verisimilitude I mean, above all, their capacity

to serve as the warrant of truth. It is a matter of common sense to assert that the capability of

speech implies the capability to lie and deceive. Perhaps the hope behind the implicit

endorsement of an instantaneous visual means of representation lies in the belief that these means

provide a superior warrant of truth since they appear to offer direct visual evidence and eliminate

the lag in representation that may be used to manipulate that evidence. Many cultures, in fact,

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have traditional proverbs that praise the value of direct evidence and cast doubt upon the

truthfulness of speech: "A thief may lie about his innocence; yet the stolen things found in his

pocket do not lie." As well, I have already mentioned Marey‘s hope that chronophotography

would become the means of scientific representation since it provides a direct, unmediated link

between the means of representation and the objects of representation.

In Holding on to Reality Albert Borgmann points out, "J. L. Austin used to mock the

philosophers who punctiliously insisted that 'evidence' is needed to support the claim that we are

in the presence of tangible reality (Borgmann 1999: 15)." Austin, in his discussion of tangible

realities, holds that no matter how much evidence for a particular state of reality is provided (he

uses the example of a particular animal being a pig), there is no evidence more compelling than

being presented with the pig itself (Austin 1962: 115).

In traditional forms of writing, evidence and context must be provided for the reader to "believe"

what is being presented to her. It is not enough for the author to simply state "a person is here."

For the text to be believable the person must be given individuating characteristics, a reason for

being "here," and so on. It is generally understood that these rules apply to television and cinema

in cases where actors, or dramatized events are involved. It is when presented with "real time"

coverage of an event that the tendency to believe that instantaneous representation is presenting

us with "the pig itself" emerges.

Live coverage of events appears to be differentiated from writing or acting because, after all, it is

reality. Nonetheless the same context and evidence are required to make televised events real as

are required to make written works believable. Take, for example, the moon landing. Were the

live footage of the moon landing simply shown, few people would believe that the images they

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were seeing in any way corresponded to reality. It takes the context of the Cold War, the

credibility of the news program broadcasting the landing, the coverage leading up to and

following the event, and any number of other evidential factors for the moon landing to become a

reality based occurrence. Of course, this does not exclude the possibility that what is widely

accepted as a "reality based occurence" turns out to be a carefully produced hoax. Yet the

discovery of that hoax and its eventual debunking depends, once again, on the development of a

proper basis of credibility which can never be a matter of showing "the pig itself."

In the context of "real time" visual representation it is useful, once again, to recall the work of

Walter Benjamin. In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Benjamin

compared the cameraman with the surgeon because the cameraman penetrates deeply into the

web of reality, much like the surgeon penetrates into the body:

How does the cameraman compare with the painter? To answer this we take recourse to an

analogy with a surgical operation. The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician.

The magician heals a sick person by the laying of hands; the surgeon cuts into the patient's body.

The magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself; though he reduces

it very slightly by the laying on of his hands, he greatly increases it by virtue of authority. The

surgeon does exactly the reverse; he greatly diminishes the distance between himself and the

patient by penetrating into the patient's body, and increases it but little by the caution with which

his hand moves among the organs. In short, in contrast to the magician -- who is still hidden in

the medial practitioner -- the surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing the patient

man to man; rather it is through the operation that he penetrates into him. Magician and surgeon

compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from

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reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web (Benjamin 2003 49).

This analogy focuses on an attitude shared by both the surgeon and the cameraman: they are not

mere spectators, nor do they respect the autonomy of their objects; instead, they intervene into

their objects. It is because of this intervention that supplying some kind of context becomes

necessary to convince viewers that they are in fact witnessing reality. As will become more

obvious in my discussion of the phenomenology of photography, digital photography differs

from traditional photography by providing even more opportunities for intervening into the

objects it depicts. To use Benjamin's terminology, digital photography makes it increasingly

possible to abstain from facing the depicted objects.

Philosophers long ago noticed the disturbing tendency of modern technology to present

electronically represented experience as "first hand,""empirical," or "direct" experience. George

Vick writes, more than 30 years ago in a 1972 issue of Personalist, of what he perceives as the

loss of a direct, empirical basis for human experience. His paper is entitled "A Decline of

Empiricism," and he makes several excellent and quite perceptive observations about the modern

electronic media from a critical, if somewhat anti-technological, philosophical point of view.

Vick warns of the seemingly authoritarian nature of the electronic media: "The selection, editing

and formulating of electronically represented experience is itself much more subject to relatively

immediate centralized control than were previous, non-electronically, represented experiences

(Vick 1972 350)."

As well, Vick is concerned that the incompleteness, or partiality of represented experience is

necessarily more systematic and much more subject to deliberate control than first-hand

experience. Finally, Vick worries about the future of interpersonal relations: "Interpersonal

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relations, too, are lost. For to the extent that they, in their concrete forms, are replaced by their

electronic representations, we cease, in fact, to enter into interpersonal relations (Vick 1972

354)." One wonders how much of Vick's purism can still be maintained in the wake of wireless

communication and the Internet. For that matter, entire generations of young people who rely on

the instant messaging technology challenge Vick's assumption that electronically mediated

interactions are not interpersonal interactions.

As Merrill Ring, Vick's critic and commentator in the same issue of Personalist, points out quite

rightly, Vick has condemned himself to defending the indefensible: his critique of the electronic

depends on defending some version of "the first hand experience," "the given," "the sense

datum," "the raw sense experience" and so forth. Ring's point is so clear that it deserves to be

reiterated: "Vick is too well versed a philosopher not to know that there are, minimally, severe

difficulties in trying to give content to the notion of direct experience. This comes out when just

after introducing the twins, direct and represented, he quickly leaps to the objection that culture

blankets us through so many devices that the given is never given (Ring 1972 359)."

Ring closes her commentary with a suggestion that it may be more appropriate to inquire into the

validity and authority implicit in modern technologies of representation.

Let me rephrase a few of Ring's concluding remarks by including them in the context of

instantaneous representation. According to Ring, one of the most defining characteristics of

instantaneous representation is that it purports to be a direct account of how things are.

However, it is clear that every example of instantaneous representation has been put together by

someone who has shaped his or her representation of reality in accordance with his or her

attitudes and principles of selection.

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What then should be the lesson drawn from this question of authority asked in the context of

instantaneous representation as regards truth and reality? In my opinion, the lesson concerns the

need to oppose the increasingly popular false contention that the live coverage of world events,

taken as an illustration of the most powerful manifestations of instantaneous representation,

somehow eliminates ideology and thereby no longer involves an act of biased and idiosyncratic

story telling. In fact, the necessity to recover the storytelling behind instantaneous representation

has never been more important than today. The responsible citizen of the future will, however

paradoxical this may sound, increasingly resist the "facts," as evidenced in the images in a

presumably objective fashion, and insist on the identification of stories and storytellers.

Even proponents of realism in photography, most notably Kendal Walton, still argue that it takes

interpretation to get the facts in photography:

The essential accuracy of photographs obviously does not prevent them from being misleading. It

affects instead how we describe how describe our mistakes and how we think of them. To think

of photographs as necessarily accurate is to think them as especially close to the facts. It is not to

think of them as intermediaries between us and the facts, as things that have their own meanings

which may or may not correspond to the facts and which we have to decided whether or not to

trust. To interpret a photograph properly is to get the facts (Walton 1984 266).

In this context, I wish to reiterate Nigel Warburton's criticism of Susan Sontag's and Neil

Postman's belief that photographies neither impart moral knowledge nor present us with an idea

or concept about the world (cf. Warburton 1988 173-174). Sontag and Postman defend the view

that photographs only reveal facts about appearances and that they speak only in particulars since

they are limited to concrete representations. As such, photographs can never move into the realm

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of value judgments about the facts they reveal. Postman writes the following about the

photograph: "Unlike words and sentences, the photograph does not present to us an idea or

concept about the world except as we use language itself to convert the image to idea (Postman

1986 76)."

I believe Warburton's rejection of Sontag's and Postman's views in his essay "Photographic

Communication" is still relevant and his arguments can be applied not only to photography but

also to instantaneous visual representation in general.

Warburton insists photographs are neither surrogates of the represented objects nor the means of

direct and straightforward reference:

However, the meaning of documentary photographs is not simply their reference: like other types

of pictures, they can be used to mean things. Just as the meaning of the word is not equivalent to

a dictionary definition, nor to an object, but needs to be interpreted on the basis of how it was

used, its meaning as utterance, so a documentary photograph requires an interpretation which

includes the context of representation as a relevant factor (Warburton 1988 180).

Warburton uses a Robert Doisneau photograph of a scene in a small cafe on the rue de Seine in

Paris in order to illustrate this point. The circumstances surrounding that particular photograph

were soon forgotten and the persons in the photography have come to repeatedly symbolize

entirely different things:

Consider Robert Doisneau's experience of a photograph of a scene in a small cafe on the rue de

Seine in Paris: it depicted a young woman at the bar drinking a glass of wine seated next to a

middle-aged man who was looking at her with a somewhat lascivious smile.

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The photograph was initially used to illustrate a magazine article about cafes. However,

Doisneau passed it on to an agency, and it subsequently appeared (completely inappropriately) in

a temperance league pamphlet against the evils of alcohol; it was then reproduced illegally from

the original magazine article with the title 'Prostitution on the Champs-Elysees' -- a context

which completely misrepresents the original scene photographed (Warburton 1988 179).

I find documentary photos, especially those taken for political purposes, even more to the point.

Take, for example, a photograph of a group of Communist officials taken during Stalin's regime.

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In the days in which it was taken, the photograph was a showcase of the power hierarchy. This

hierarchy is probably best studied by noting the relative proximity of the military and Party

officials to Stalin. The photographer, in this case, was an important agent in the process of

constituting, representing, and disseminating the key symbols of the power structure of the Soviet

Union under Stalin's regime.

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Yet another look at the same photo, some years or decades afterwards, may show that certain

comrades, who have fallen from grace, may have been airbrushed. Now the same photograph

can be studied as an example of the Communist power struggle. As a side note, even a cursory

glance at the airbrushed photograph reveals the crudeness of the technology used to modify it.

For example, it is evident that the tops of the boots and the bottoms of the pants belonging to the

people who remain in the picture do not quite align. This is probably because the bottom of the

picture had been cut off and then imperfectly slid into place in the process of doctoring the

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image. In the eyes of the contemporary observer, the latter technology appears to belong to the

"stone age" of photo manipulation. How much more difficult, if not entirely impossible, it must

be to detect errors in today's advanced methods of image and video manipulation and

enhancement.

Finally, a contemporary look at this same photograph, airbrushed or not, may not be political or

ideological at all. It may simply involve a historian's study of posture, fashion, or facial hair of

the time period.

It is not by chance I have used an example which implies a diachronic perspective on the

photograph. The theorist of photography cannot issue a demand that the photograph not be

retouched, superimposed, and manipulated in various other manners. Indeed, photography may

be capable of capturing an instant of time but it does not follow that photography is itself

immutable and undistorted, a specless mirror image of "objective reality."

I wish to further emphasize Warburton's criticism of Postman's and Sontag's understanding of the

photographic image. In my chapter The Phenomenology of Photography, I write about the term

"transparency" in photography, introduced by Kendall Walton. Walton argues that photography

is a medium through which we see the world, more or less the way it appears in reality. I find

this kind of realism in photography reasonable but only when placed in a proper interpretative

context. The view that photography is, metaphorically speaking, a perfectly transparent window

on reality is only a part of the entire, and much more complex, story. To extend the analogy, the

image in the window can not be independent from the activities of the window maker. For

example, the context of understanding the image may well depend on when and where and by

whom the window is placed, for how long it was open, how large it is, how tinted and distorted it

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is, and so forth.

Scott Kirsch, commenting on Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (Kirsch 1997 242), writes

that photographic images should be characterized in light of highly social and ideological

conventions. Exposing the latter conventions would lead to better understanding of the

photographs' political and economic bacground. Kirsch warns that the removal of the observer or

the producer from photography has far-reaching implications:

Moreover, by erasing the observer/producer from the landscape, photography is, of necessity,

guided by invisible hands. As photographs were channeled through means of mass

communications, the realities represented became increasingly malleable -- and, thus, potentially

increasingly political (Kirsch 1997 243).

Of course, there are many who believe that the window of consciousness can never be truly

transparent. Freud's work on "screen memories" suggests that, in general, there can be no

guarantee of the data which our memory produces. According to Freud, a screen memory is "one

which owes its value as a memory not to its own content but to the relation existing between that

content and some other, that has been suppressed (Freud 1950 320)." The best evidence of the

latter claim is the unreliability of childhood memories: ―out of a number of childhood memories

of significant experiences, all of them of similar distinctness and clarity, there will be some

scenes which, when they are tested (for instance by the recollections of adults), turn out to have

been falsified (Freud 1950 322)."

Mary Ann Doane stresses the structuralist overtones of Freud's dualism between structure and

event. In the context of Freud's screen memories, the latter dualism is probably best illustrated

by the duality of the powerful network of forces implicit in the process of suppressing (structure)

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and the actuality of memories (event). In fact, Duane characterizes Freud's entire project as a

"battle against contingency:"

But it is the theory of the screen memory which condenses most strikingly Freud's confrontation

with the concept of the contingent. For the screen memory is a detail, a contingency, which is

nevertheless richly vivid and sensuous in its cognitive opacity. It stands out in a scene and

constitutes itself as the marker of specificity itself. Screen memories are characterized by their

intensity; they are, in Freud's words, recollected "too clearly." What is lost in meaning is gained

in affective force. For theses memories fasten on the trivial, the indifferent, and ultimately strike

us as hollow or empty. In this respect the screen memory is deceptive, for it is above all a

displacement -- both temporally and semantically (Doane 2002 166).

Therefore, it is possible to argue that memories lack credibility in accounting for past events just

as pictures do in accounting for the instants they depict. It is probably the least controversial

claim from Freud's entire legacy to maintain that our memories richly prove their capability to

deceive us. Analogously, photographers may use the forceful clarity of the medium of

photography, coupled with their unconscious or conscious biases and projections, to create and

foster deception.

Of course, the concerns regarding time and memories, in the wake of photographic production,

may be traced on a much larger scale than that of the individual. Pamela M. Lee places the

modern desire for instantaneous representation in the context of the overbearing technological

rationality of the 1960s. Lee describes technological rationality as ―obscuring‖ or ―suppressing‖

history/time in order to protect its necessary ideal of ―progress‖ from being dismantled. That is to

say, time would introduce an element of the dialectical or irrational to a process of progress that

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intends to be ―seamless‖.

This is what she writes on technological rationality, time, and memory:

History, in other words, is obscured by the language of technological rationality as is the

subversive potential of memory along with it. And memory has an especially important role to

play in this scenario. For memory– and perhaps more critically, its larger relationship to time–

might well counter the ideological force embedded in notions of progress, technological reason,

the fallout of which is the culture of technocracy... Time, to follow both Marcuse and Adorno, is

a disturbing "irrational rest." It disturbs the seamless image of things. Its liquidation reveals

dialectically, something of its critical potential, its historical charge; and so it follows that a

provisional "recovery" of time -- and the analysis of how it models our understanding of history -

- grants insight into advanced industrial society and the character of its technological reason (Lee

2003 33-34).

Lee's analysis may provide some explanation why, in the case of many powerful nations, the

development of historical sentiment tends to lag far behind the pursuit of technological progress.

There is another, and completely different, reason to be cautious when it comes to transparency

in photography: the change from chemically based to digital technology. The negative, in the

case of traditional photography, had been a reliable source in the process of authenticating the

photograph. In the case of digital photography and digital video, such means of authentication

are no longer available. In the following quote, Oravec seems to invoke the horrors of the much

favoured Communist technique of aibrushing, this time using more advanced technological

means:

The nature of this "transcription" is indeed changing. For example, an increasing number of

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choices are being presented to those who wish to create group portraits, including enhancements,

alterations and color embellishments. Facial images can be "morphed" together into a video

sequence, one smoothly blending into the next. Given the role that group portraits have in

preserving history as well as congealing modern-day groups, archivists should be worried about

prospects for the retouching of photographs in the effort to reconstruct the history of interaction

of individuals. Control over which features to enhance, or even which individuals to remove

from a portrait is available; individuals who make these choices have a great degree of control

over how the group is constructed. With the erosion of the sense of permanence in construction

of group portraits may also come a diminishing of the sense of group solidarity and continuity

(Oravec 1995 435).

Similarly, Rudolf Arnheim expresses his worries about the consequences of the control that

digital photography seems to afford:

In any case, the digitalization of the photographic image will increase the distrust of the

information offered by still photography and film. The initial belief that the new medium

guaranteed the reliability of images had to be checked by increasing skepticism. The more the

photochemical material of photography and film becomes subject to surreptitious modification

the more its consumers will learn to be on their guard. How much this caution will be

strengthened by the digital technique only the future will tell (Arnheim 1993 540).

Perhaps the best means to contextualize photographic and video evidence is to engulf it by the

narrative. Indeed, it seems the importance of both stories and storytellers, even in the wake of

our contemporary image-dominated culture, has been becoming more and more evident. Let me

provide three examples of the latter phenomenon, i.e., the growing importance of stories and

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storytellers, drawn from literary theory, communication studies, and value inquiry.

Marie-Laure Ryan, a prominent media technology commentator, points out that writing, and

especially fiction, allows a degree of intimacy between the reader and the textual world that is

very difficult to achieve in nonfiction: "Paradoxically, the reality of which we are native is the

least amenable to immersive narration, and reports of real events are the least likely to produce a

feeling of being on the scene. New Journalism, to the scandal of many, tried to overcome this

textual alienation from non-virtual reality by describing real-world events through fictional

techniques (Ryan 1999 119)." The fictional narrative then, has the advantage of "humanizing" its

objects of representation, as opposed to the "mere" depiction, or recording, of events. It may be

true that "an image is worth a thousand words" yet the image itself can be nothing but a vehicle

for invoking these words. In short, it takes a story to make one's representation of reality "close

to home" -- every journalist is keenly aware of that.

This phenomenon - the tension between narrative (delayed representation) and reality

(immediacy) - has even more radical manifestations in the contemporary media. The best current

example we can think of is blurring the line between the two distinct senses of acting: acting as

taking part in some kind of fictional narrative and acting as leading one's personal life. The latter

can be witnessed on the popular TV series Survivor. One of the main motives of this series is

precisely to dissolve the distinction between these two senses of acting. In yet another possible

scenario, it is not hard to imagine the case in which a real life politician portrays himself/herself

on the screen depicting a fictional version of his/her earlier life.

Blu Tirohl, in an article entitled "The Photo Journalist and the Changing News Image" points out

that "despite the many arguments which imply a fallibility inherent in the information contained

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within a photograph there is a tendency for audiences to treat the photographic still as a witness

and the reputation of the press image is dependent on this (Tirohl 2000 335)." Under the

heading, "Can an Audience Trust the Press Image," Tirohl argues that the need for compelling

and dramatic views in the place of more accurate and realistic reporting often outweighs other

audience demands. On many occasions, it is not mere sensationalism behind the motives for

photo reporting; instead, photo reporting can be either influenced or even directed by an

ideology. In his essay, ―Watching the Bombs Go Off‖, Scott Kirsch describes the persuasive

power of press photographs upon the audience‘s reception of nuclear tests performed by the US

Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in the 1950s.

Among the greatest illusions produced by the image-bombs, then, may be that they were

victimless and seemingly unconnected to the hundreds of ―real‖ atmospheric and underwater

bombs...By celebrating the sublime, visual qualities of the mushroom clouds, the glossy images...

could be seen as innocuous, when in fact, they functioned as part of the discourse which made

the singular devastation of the landscape possible (Kirsch 1997 245).

More than simply interpreting the decontextualised image as being alluring to the audience,

Kirsch believes that in certain cases the very phenomenon of decontextualisation can be an

integral measure in the successful transmission of a message from one party to another:

―Disconnecting the images of nuclear weapons testing from the geographical place of the

explosions was thus an important means through which the consent for the atomic program was

maintained for so many years (Kirsch 1997 245)."

Many commentators argue that, in the wake of digital photography and a growing necessity to

label press images as either manipulated or enhanced, realistic images will have to be labeled as

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either fiction or non-fiction in the future. Consequently, we will increasingly rely on the story

(the context) provided by the image maker, and not the image itself, to tell us into which category

certain images fall. Thus the image maker of the future, in a paradoxical fashion, becomes a

story teller.

A similar account of the growing importance of the need to supplement the new video sources of

information and evidence with a narrative is suggested by Jo Ann Oravec in her essay "The

Camera Never Lies." Oravec situates her discussion of the use of new visual media in the

context of group decision making in the courtroom as well in the context of general group

behaviour that may be assisted and enhanced by certain forms of visual media (video-assisted

group therapy and videoconferencing, for example).

Oravec argues that a new set of skills needs to be developed to improve the "visual critical skills"

that will become more and more necessary in the future:

Few sets of skills have been developed for critical thinking in the realm of sound and images,

however. Until such skills are available, group members are likely to be divided on many

important matters concerning the interpretation of the photographs, videos and films they are

called upon to deal with (Oravec 1995 444).

These new critical skills will increasingly rely on the accompanying interpretive narrative. It

may even become necessary to consider photographs, films, and videos as incomplete without an

attempt to situate them in their contexts. For example, the viewer may expect to know what

angle was taken in shooting the video or photography materials, especially in light of what was

left out of the picture. As well, certain other production details may have to be specified. In the

case of videotape based evidence, for example, the following factors may have to be specified:

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has the speed of the video been increased or decreased, the tone enhanced or filtered or subdued,

etc. In general, it could be argued that the traditional perspective on the visual media (WYSIWIS

-- "What you see is what I see") is gradually replaced by the more authoritative perspective based

on the narrative (WYSIWIN -- "What you see is what I narrate").

In the context of legal decision making, the long standing need to translate scientific formulae

and specialist notation as well as scientific imagery into a common sense narrative has been well

recognized. What is becoming more apparent in the courtroom is the growing need to treat

seemingly transparent and self-sufficient images or videos with puzzlement and suspicion similar

to that aroused by the presentation of an arcane string of symbols representing DNA. At least

one can argue, following Maynard, that the context of both photo depiction and photo detection

be subjected to the same measure of caution.

I believe this illustrates at least some of the ways in which modern technologies of instantaneous

representing find it increasingly necessary, in the 21st century, to contextualize our visual

experiences, most frequently by using narrative. The means of contextualization will continue to

depend on what I have termed delayed or cool interactivity. In other words, the proper

understanding of the visual forms of instantaneous representing will continue to depend on

writing, a quintessential delayed form of interactivity.

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The Phenomenology of Photography

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Phenomenologists have always been fascinated by the passage of time. One could perhaps argue

that the entire project of phenomenology can be seen as a desire to preserve, enhance, and

archive the instants of reality that appear as phenomena. However, time is so elusive and

multifaceted that there can be more than one way of conceptualizing it. One tension that

phenomenologists inherited, from the history of philosophy, when it comes to their

understanding of time, is the tension between the Aristotelian and Augustinian concepts of time.

As Bernhard Waldenfels puts it, Aristotle deals with physical time and he derives this time from

"cosmic kinesis." Augustine, on the other hand, develops a psychic version of time "from the

lived time of the soul" (cf. Waldenfels 2000).

Of course, it is not difficult to find, especially in 20th century literature, many slightly variant

conceptualizations of this two-fold classical understanding of the nature of time. For example,

John Gunnell, in his book on political philosophy and time, writes about the contrast between

"formal" (or "metric") time and "experienced" time. The latter kind of time manifests itself in the

intuition of flow and in the sense of human finitude as well as in the movement of historical

events: "Formal time is an abstraction from 'lived experience of time', and when we attempt to

communicate lived or experienced time, formal or clock time seems inadequate (Gunnell 1968

18)." I believe the contrast between these two kinds of time becomes apparent in the glaring

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incogruencies between formal and experienced time which arise in scientific discussions of

events (especially in astronomy and geology) that may have occurred many billions of years ago.

I should add that it might be a gross oversimplification for Gunnell, especially in light of the

phenomenological understanding of time which I will try to briefly explicate in what follows, to

reduce formal time to nothing else but an abstraction of experienced time.

Yet another example of the two-fold understanding of time can be found in the work of Stephen

Kern, who writes about the clash between the "public" and "private" conceptions of time at the

turn of the 20th century:

The traditional view of a uniform public time as the one and only was not challenged, but many

thinkers argued for a plurality of private times, and some, like Bergson, came to question whether

the fixed and spatially represented public time was really time at all or some metaphysical

interloper from the realm of space. The introduction of World Standard Time created greater

uniformity of shared public time and in so doing triggered theorizing about a multiplicity of

private times that may vary from moment to moment in the individual, from one individual to

another according to personality, and among different groups as a function of social organization.

Similarly, thinkers about the texture of time were divided between those who focused on its

public or its private manifestations. The popular idea that time is made up of discrete parts as

sharply separated as the boxed days on a calendar continued to dominate popular thinking about

public time, whereas the most innovative speculation was that private time was the real time and

that its texture was fluid (Kern 1983 33-34).

This tension between public and private time, according to Kern, provided a major influence on

the development of 20th century art.

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A phenomenologist is, no doubt, keenly aware of the importance of both Aristotle's and

Augustine's understandings of time. Let me offer a well-known example: when a

phenomenologist performs an act of "reduction," or "eidetic bracketing," that activity can be seen

as an effort to peel off (metaphorically speaking) the rich layers of psychic time and reach the

level of "pure" physical time. This time, phenomenologists believe, ticks away below the surface

of the visible change evident in human experience and in nature.

In his essay "Time Lag: Motifs for a Phenomenology of the Experience of Time," Waldenfels

explores the phenomenon of time lag, which can be understood in two senses: as a shift in time

itself and as a corresponding shift in signification. I will turn my attention to the latter since it is

this sense of the lag that fits my current purposes. Waldenfels writes about three different levels

of temporality that exist in speech: (1) time as spoken about, (2) time of speech, and (3) time lag

in speech.

The first level refers to contexts that are typically fixed by adverbs of time: today, this year, later,

etc. The second level often involves time as spoken referring to itself (being self-referential).

For example, "I promise you (now) that I will come tomorrow (the next day)." Notice how the

second level carries within itself the reference to the fixed referential order of temporality. In

order to ascertain whether or not the promise has been fulfilled, one has to know what time does

"now" refer to. In contrast, when a historian or a journalist writes about "now" or "today" in the

first sense, there is much less reluctance to let that "now" or "today" sink into the generic

"yesterday" that belongs to the past.

Finally, the third level of temporality involves the time lag that arises when speech does not

exactly coincide with itself. In my opinion, this is the most interesting level from a philosophical

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point of view. This is how Waldenfels characterizes the third level: "We are never entirely at the

top of time; rather we arrive upon the scene a little late, and our speech reverberates against us

like an echo of ourselves (Waldenfels 2000 111)." This time lag refers to the very temporality of

speech and thought, not only to the temporality of phenomena to which speech and thought refer.

Indeed, when it comes to reflecting about this level of temporality the phenomenologist is drawn

into the mysterious and deep realm of metaphysical speculation. Waldenfels wonders if this

level of temporality of speech has to originate from outside of discourse. In other words, what is

our speech catching up to? Is there some kind of "primordial impression," that Husserl used to

posit, the impression that exists outside of discourse and that causes the lag in speech? This kind

of impression would either also have to be experienced instantaneously (since it evades the lag)

or to be the kind of abstraction which is independent from experience. Finally, would not this

impression, Waldenfels asks, be the limiting case for all experience?

I believe Waldenfels asks some deep and pertinent questions regarding a possible

phenomenology of the experience of time. In what follows, I wish to explore a somewhat more

narrow and mundane problem -- my focus will be solely on the time required to describe the

phenomena. What would happen if that time were minimized or eliminated? How would the

possibility of instantaneous representing affect the project of phenomenological description?

It is also widely known that description is the phenomenologist's method of choice. These two

features of phenomenology, fascination with time and desire to describe phenomena, are already

sufficient to place the very project of phenomenology in a paradoxical situation -- the moment a

phenomenon is described it ceases to be itself and becomes something else. In light of the

famous phenomenologist's adage: "Back to the things themselves," how can the method of

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description ever hope to "leap over" the process of description in order to capture

things/phenomena?

Is the process of description a problem? What would happen if a phenomenologist had the

means of seizing the phenomena, in the very instant they appear, and preserving them for further

analysis? Since visual phenomena account for the majority of all phenomena under description,

would not photography be the ideal tool for the instantaneous "capturing" of phenomena? After

all, technology may be useful in providing new means of understanding the world. As Kendal

Walton put it, "the invention of the camera gave us not just a new method of making pictures and

not just pictures of a new kind: it gave us a new way of seeing (Walton 1984 237)."

Let me preface my discussion of photography by stating that I do not wish to pretend that the

image in phenomenology is itself a simple and self-evident phenomenon. There are many

accounts of the phenomenological theory of the image. I will briefly present a relatively recent

essay on time and the visual arts by John Brough, which features an excellent discussion of

Husserl's theory of the image. Brough writes that image-consciousness sometimes may include

three distinct objects for Husserl. First, image-consciousness may be a "physical image," second,

an "image object," and third, an "image subject" (cf. Brough 2000 224). The physical image

consists of the actual pigments of paint, pieces of marble, etc. which exist in real space and time.

The image object does not exist in the real world. Brough characterizes Husserl's image object

in this manner:

I can touch the printer's ink that supports the image I see in the newspaper and the ink can smear

off the page onto my fingers because it exists in the world of physical things, as does my hand. I

cannot touch the image, however, and it cannot smear off onto my fingers, for it does not exist in

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the world of physical things. And yet the fact that I can experience the image-object that does

not exist in the world I owe to its physical support that does exist in the world (Brough 2000

224).

Brough adds that we should not fall into the trap of believing that the image object is a mere

object of hallucination. The image object cannot be an object of hallucination since the observer

is fully aware that the image object is not an actual object existing in the real world as well as

that the image object exists on the basis of its "physical support." Finally, the image subject is

the person or an object which served as the model for the image. It is evident, I hope even based

on this very abreviated discussion, that Husserl's phenomenology has left a rich legacy of multi-

layered analysis of the image.

To believe that the image provides an adequate source for the analysis of represented phenomena,

one would have to be what I will call a "photographic realist" in this chapter. In what follows, I

will examine two photographic realists, Roland Barthes and Kendall Walton, and I will critically

appraise their respective brands of realism. I wish to add that my choice of Barthes and Wlaton

is meant to be illustrative, rather than exhaustive, when it comes to the literature on photographic

realism. The study of photography has evolved into an enormous, and still expanding,

interdisciplinary research project which includes many aspects of photography -- social,

technological, cultural, to name just a few.

Barthes, in his famous last work Camera Lucida, writes poignantly about the elusive phenomena

of time, contingency, and memory. He also writes about the public and private realms and how

the two are reflected in the media of film and photography: "I am uncomfortable during the

private projection of a film (not enough of a public, not enough anonymity), but I need to be

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alone with the photograph I am looking at (Barthes 2000 97)." It is especially in photography

that we experience the complex and dynamic interaction between the public and the private,

according to Barthes.

He explains that the medium of photography ensures the viewing of photographs, in themselves

frozen public images of reality, is essentially a private viewing. Because the act of viewing

photography is so private, it should be interpreted as a version of reading itself. Barthes reminds

the reader that the collective reading of the Scripture, or collective prayer, was substituted by a

silent, interiorized, and meditative prayer (devotio moderna) by the end of the Middle Ages. Our

current and familiar Western understanding of the nature of reading is therefore an outcome of

devotio moderna. Indeed, reading out loud happens only in special circumstances and even then

it can have an overwhelmingly private character (for example, when a parent reads to a child or

an infant). As well, sharing the experience of viewing one's private collection of photos with

someone often means accepting that person as an intimate partner.

By the same token, photography creates a paradox whereby the private becomes a matter of

public consumption. The manner in which photography invades the privacy of those

photographed is somehow more direct and revealing than the manner in which paintings invade

the privacy of their models. Walton writes the following about photographs and paintings:

Published photographs of disaster victims or the private lives of public figures understandably

provoke charges of invasion of privacy; similar complaints against the publication of drawings or

paintings have less credibility. I suspect that most of us will acknowledge that, in general,

photographs and paintings (and comparable nonphotographic pictures) affect us very differently

(Walton 1984 247).

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To give only one example, photographers are usually not allowed in the court room, especially

during high profile trials, because the act of photographing is considered too intrusive. It turns

out that artistic renderings of those involved in the trial are the only means of visual

representation suitable for the court room.

However, there is no shortage of curiosity when it comes to the most private details of others' life

– the ample supply of paparazzis and pornographers attests to the intensity of that curiosity. The

current phenomenon of "reality television" further complicates the already complex distinction

between the public and the private.

Barthes' reflections on photography, and especially his efforts to use photography to invoke the

presence of his late mother, are often deeply personal and emotional. On a more abstract and

philosophical level, he adopts what might be termed a "direct realist" position. Barthes takes a

curious approach to photography when he attempts to preserve the view of photography as

magic, more than an art:

The realists, of whom I am one and of whom I was already one when I assert that the Photograph

was an image without code -- even if, obviously, certain codes do inflect our reading of it -- the

realists do not take the photograph for a "copy" of reality, but for an emanation of past reality: a

magic, not an art. To ask whether a photograph is analogical or coded is not a good means of

analysis. The important thing is that the photograph possesses an evidential force, and that its

testimony bears not on the object but on time. From a phenomenological viewpoint, in the

Photograph, the power of authentication exceeds the power of representation (Barthes 2000 88-

89).

Barthes seems to believe that it is possible for the past reality to be contained in the photography

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through an act of technological wizardry. The weakness of his approach, in my opinion, is that

he does not make the necessary distinction between the image of the past reality and the past

reality itself. The image is only a trace of the past or perhaps a special window that enables the

viewer to have a glimpse of the recorded past. However, the image can neither embody nor re-

create that reality. To use an analogy, a visitor of an ancient druid site may feel a similar sense of

awe and magic by witnessing the very stones carved by druids. I do not dispute the possibility of

discovering magic either in photography or in stone carvings; however, I do object to attempts to

attribute realism to the magic of a past reality.

It may be another question of how photography, basically a static means of representation, can

capture, in a reasonably realistic manner, phenomena that essentially exist in time. In this regard,

Robin Le Poidevin presents a compelling argument that the aesthetic concerns regarding the

verisimilitude of static images are not independent of broader metaphysical concerns. In the case

of photographs, the metaphysical understanding of the nature of time shapes the aesthetic view of

the nature of photography (cf. Le Poidevin 1997).

Le Poidevin shows that the classical metaphysical notion of an instant and movement permits

static images to depict neither movements nor instants. The reason for this is an ancient concern,

first anticipated by Zeno, that changeless media cannot represent change and that an instant (an

infinitely small unit of time) of time is not possible. Le Poidevin argues that although static

images obviously represent time, they succeed in doing so with the help of certain conventions:

Depiction is just one form of representation. Essentially, depiction is representation by means of

resemblance...But pictures represent more than they depict. In particular, they may represent

aspects of time that they are unable to depict. Consider the strip cartoon. A sequence of relatively

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similar...pictures in a linear sequence may represent the passage of time by the virtue of the

convention that pictures on the right represent events which are later than those represented by

pictures on the left. Film, in contrast, typically depicts temporal order: the temporal order of the

images resembles the temporal order of events represented (Le Poidevin 1997 182-183).

After recognizing that static images can use conventions to represent the passage of time, he goes

on to state that, ―To be worth fighting over, the thesis in contention must surely be that static

images depict instants. Since they are static, they cannot resemble changes in the world (Le

Poidevin 1997 183)." The problem of depicting time through static images, for Le Poidevin, is

that: ―if static images depict instants, then they trigger the same recognitional capacities as are

triggered by instants. But instants do not, by themselves, trigger recognitional capacities, for if

they did we would be able to perceive them, and clearly we do not. So static images do not depict

instants (Le Poidevin 185)."

So, Le Poidevin introduces a third notion of an instant -- an arbitrarily small part of an interval.

He terms this type of an instant a "specious instant" (Le Poidevin 1997 186). The specious

instant is the smallest perceivable part of an interval. For example, the moment a long distance

runner crosses the finish line is a specious instant. In this manner, photography can realistically

sum up a relevant glimpse of the past, present, and future in what appears as a specious instant to

the observer. In other words, it may require implicit understanding of temporality in order to

view a photographic image which appears "frozen" in time.

Le Poidevin's view seems at odds with the standard view of photography. The latter view

maintains that a photograph, while deciding an ―instant‖ in time as present, lacks in itself

(without reference to other related photographs) the ability to demonstrate consequences of the

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situation depicted that will occur over time even if a moment later. It is important to note that

this feature can be used by the propagator of visual media to deceive the audience into

seeing/believing the static image as a portrayal of present reality. Scott Kirsch descibes one such

example by contrasting the real geography of nuclear explosions with their media-simulated

geography:

[T]he original mushroom clouds and their fallout rarely remained at the locale of the test site (at

least, they did not remain only there). Yet the trajectories that these explosions would take after

the mushroom cloud had dissipated...were not frozen along with the atomic fireballs which were

popularized through photo journalism. The ―neutral observations‖ of the camera, presented as

centerpieces for the larger story of nuclear testing, served to put the spectacle of explosion at the

heart of the story (Kirsch 1997 245)....

Kirsch seems to suggest that observers of political photography may have to cultivate their

impressions to attain a sense of what may be termed a "politicaly specious instant," following Le

Poidevin.

Writing in a vein similar to Kirsch and Le Poidevin, Peter Wollen suggests that documentary

photographs ought to be seen as elements of narrative:

Different types of still photographs correspond to different types of narrative element. If this

conjecture is right, then a documentary photograph would imply the question: 'Is anything going

to happen to end or to interrupt this?' A news photograph would imply: 'What was it like just

before and what's the result going to be?' An art photograph would imply: 'How did it come to

be like this or has it always been the same?' These different genres of photography imply

different perspectives within durative situations and sequences of situations (Wollen 2003 78).

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Even though the role of temporality in the process of recuperating realism in photography is

fascinating, I need to continue my discussion of photographic realism. At this point, I will

briefly examine the work of another photographic realist -- Kendall Walton. I believe Walton's

brand of realism is far more nuanced and convincing that Barthes'. Walton is an American

philosopher who works mostly in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, and who is best known for

developing an influential theory of fiction as make-believe in his book Mimesis as Make-Believe.

In his essay "Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism" Walton maintains

that photographic realism comes naturally to the photographer, probably as an essential feature of

the medium. It just turns out, according to Walton, that photographic realism is much easier to

achieve with the camera than with the brush. I think most readers would readily agree with this

aspect of photographic realism.

Walton cautions the reader against the naive view that photographic images are themselves the

objects they represent (cf. Walton 1984 249). They clearly are not. For Walton, photographs

possess their own special (he calls it "supreme") brand of realism. Walton argues that

photography is transparent while painting is essentially not transparent. To use my terminology,

Walton is referring, in this context, to the special nature of the delay in the process of

photographic depiction. It turns out that the photographic delay is a matter of a mechanical

chemical process. This process boils down to a relatively straightforward or direct process of

light imprinting that has very little to do with human agency. The human agent can, of course,

prepare the conditions for the delay by setting the length of the exposure, sensitivity of the film.

etc. However, once the process of light imprinting begins, it is, for its entire and minuscule

duration, direct and mechanical.

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In his discussion of the political repercussions of photographing a nuclear landscape, Scott

Kirsch sketches the reasons why photography came to not only symbolize objective truth and

neutral observation but also to create a visual ideology:

Innovations in photography during the mid-nineteenth century, which made the camera

geographically mobile and the photograph easily reproducible, reinforced this visual ideology,

and contributed to the heightened importance of spectacle in modern society. And with

photography, the observer/producer was so detached from the object-world as to be seemingly

erased from its landscape. Through a vocabulary of images, people and places could be

portrayed through representations which apparently carried with them the objective truth of

neutral observation (Kirsch 1997 241).

In the process of painting, the delay is not only much greater but also a matter of (human)

interpretation. That is why photography, according to Walton, can be defined as analogous to

glasses, the telescope, etc. The latter devices perhaps distort their objects while they aid the

human eye in better seeing them but in the end they only provide a see-through medium,

metaphorically speaking. In order for this analogy to work, one has to assume, of course, that

glasses provide the means for looking through space while the photograph provides the means

for looking through time.

Walton is quite explicit when it comes to imparting his position on what it means to simply see

through photographs:

Photographs are transparent. We see the world through them. I must warn against watering

down this suggestion, against taking it to be a colorful or exaggerated, or not quite literal way of

making a relatively mundane point. I am not saying that the person looking at the dusty

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photographs has the impression of seeing his ancestors– in fact, he doesn‘t have the impression

of seeing the ―in the flesh,‖ with the unaided eye... Nor is my point that what we see–

photographs– are duplicates or doubles or reproductions of objects, or substitutes or surrogates

for them. My claim is that we see, quite literally, our dead relatives themselves when we look at

photographs of them (Walton 1984 250).

Walton notes a further point that the "truth" factor of a photograph, or the "see through" factor,

may be unrelated to the realism of a photograph or a movie. For example, if the viewers of a

movie about Loch Ness monster were to "see" the monster in a movie, then they:

[m]ay speak of seeing the monster, even if they don‘t believe for a moment that there is such a

beast. It is fictional that they see it; they actually see, with photographic assistance, the model

used in the making of the film. It is fictional also that they see Loch Ness, the lake. And since the

movie was made on location at Loch Ness, they really do see it as well (Walton 1984 254).

Gregory Currie makes a similar point, concerning the levels of transparency in photography and

painting, using somewhat more technical language:

The argument for the transparency of photographs is this: what makes ordinary seeing a way of

perceiving objects is its natural dependence. Since seeing photographs exhibits natural

dependence also, it too is a way of perceiving objects. But seeing paintings exhibits intentional

dependence, and so is not a way of perceiving objects. Thus photography is transparent and

painting is not (Currie 1995 55).

This view, that photographic realism is not defined by the intentions of the photographer, is

similar to Walton's view:

They [dissenters of photo-realism] point to ―distortions‖ engendered by the photographic process

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and to the control which the photographer exercises over the finished product, the opportunities

he enjoys for interpretation and falsification... Whether any of these various considerations really

does collide with photography‘s claim of extraordinary realism depends, of course, on how that

claim is to be understood‖ (Walton 1984 247).

The transparency argument has some plausibility, especially when it comes to traditional

chemically-based photography. However, even in the latter case, there have been critics of

Walton's view that photographs are more realistic than paintings. Take, for example, a quite

plausible critique of Walton and Currie offered by Patrick Maynard and Dominique Lopes.

Maynard suggests that, in terms of depiction and evidence, the difference between photo

processes and the more traditional means of production of images may be difference of degree,

not kind:

Considered only in terms of depiction, photo processes so far appear indeed as revolutionary

technologies, but as technologies of generally the same type: as producing in great volume,

content and accuracy, with economy and speed, images by which we imagine seeing: far too

many for the needs of any sensible society. Something similar may now be said of detection and

evidence. That the evidence due to photo-family images is incomparably greater than that in the

traditional kinds might appear a matter of degree, not kind. For doesn't the depictive content of

handmade images also figure importantly in "detection" and evidence gathering (Maynard 1989

270)?

Lopes, in his book "Understanding Pictures," puts painting and photography in the same category

by emphasizing recognition as the necessary condition of their existence:

First, what a picture represents is its source, the object or the scene that played the required role

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in its production. A hand-made picture‘s subject is no more determined by the artist‘s intentions

or beliefs than is a photograph‘s...Neither a drawing nor a photograph whose subject is

unrecognizable depicts it. So in this respect there is no disanalogy between drawings and

photographs: if they represent their sources, they do so independently of the beliefs of their

makers. Second, drawing a picture, like understanding one, depends on the exercise of a

psychological skill– namely recognition– and, as I have argued at length, we can recognize

objects without the benefits of beliefs about their properties. Drawings is simply applied

recognition. In order to draw, you are required only to make marks that are recognizably of the

object whose appearance is guiding your drawing movements. A belief that one is drawing

Piccadilly Circus is not required in order to make an object that can be recognized as of

Piccadilly Circus; nor is a belief that one is drawing something with such-and-such features

required to make a picture recognizable as of something with such features (Lopes 1996 184).

As well, Lopes argues that a person looking at a painting and a photograph of irises would find

both of them transparent:

And were the picture made by a human who reliably followed a computer's paint-by-number

instructions, my experience would shift from one of actually seeing irises to make-believedly

seeing irises. It does not seem to me that my experience of these pictures differs in the way

Walton describes-I believe I see irises in photograph and painting alike. To complicate matters,

many photographs are made with some human intervention, so that viewers do not always know

whether or to what degree a picture is the product of purely mechanical processes (Lopes 1996

182).

I believe Lopes does not even need to include human agency in order to illustrate the process of

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moving from actually seeing irises to make-believedly seeing irises. He only needs to replace his

paint-by number instructions by the process of digitizing traditional photographs. This is where

it becomes clear that the transparency argument loses its ground in the wake of digital

photography.

As is well known, digital photography breaks its image down into a large number of pixels (a

collection of digital information that defines the numerous properties of color, intensity, hue, etc.

that constitute the image). The initial moment of depiction is perhaps the only stage at which

digital photography resembles traditional photography (i.e. its transparency or its see-through

nature). From that moment on, the digital image may undergo a number of significant processes

of enhancement or modification. Furthermore, the nature of the digital image challenges even

the basic traditional difference between the painter and the photographer.

The difference, as presented by Walton, characterizes the photograph as a photograph of

something which actually exists. The condition of the existence of objects is no longer necessary

for digital images where the blending of the incoming light rays and other forms of pixel-like

information can occur at any stage of the photographic process. Sarah Kember elaborates on the

creative ways in which digital images can be fabricated ex-nihilo:

But the most striking facility of new imaging technologies is their ability to generate a realistic

image out of nothing—to simulate it from scratch using only numerical codes as the object or

referent…The techniques which enable ‗photographs‘ to be simulated also form the basis of

other modes of image simulation including virtual reality. Here, the object world is not regarded

as being simply mutable but totally malleable. It no longer exists as something exterior, but

marks the realization of the subject‘s desire and imagination. From a technologically

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deterministic viewpoint this malleability signals a revolution in image-making and the final

demise of photography…But photography is clearly much more than a particular technology of

image-making. It is also a social and cultural practice embedded in history and human agency.

Like other forms of technology it has neither determined nor been wholly determined by wider

cultural forces, it has had its part to play in the history of how societies and individuals represent

and understand themselves and others.‖ (Kember 2003 205-206)

Finally, in the case of traditional photography, one can argue that the original negative

guarantees the authenticity of the photograph. Thus, for example, one can ascertain whether or

not the original negative has been tampered with. This feature, too, becomes obsolete in the

wake of digital photography.

Rudolph Arnheim writes of the figurative arts, but he refers especially to photography and film,

when he addresses the essential ambiguity in the term "authenticity." The latter term has two

distinct meanings: (1) arts are authentic to the extent they do justice to the facts of reality and (2)

arts are authentic insofar as they express the qualities of human experience. Arnheim argues that

photography, and especially film, has always been capable of being authentic in the second sense

without being authentic in the first sense. He gives a couple of examples that involve some

photographers' (possible) techniques, including a combination of printing and fusing positive and

negative material (cf. Arnheim 1993 539). These techniques make it possible for photographers

to superimpose several photographs or elements of photographs on one another and to thereby

create the appearance of fantastic or mysterious scenes. Retouching (photography) provides yet

another example of the authenticity existing only in Arnheim's second sense. It is clear that these

photographic techniques challenge Walton's view of photography as a "transparent" medium.

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In his essay, Arnheim turns his attention to digital photography and its capacity to emphasize the

second sense of authenticity to the point of exclusion of the first sense. It is this feature of digital

photography, according to Arnheim, that makes it very close to a pictorial technique like drawing

and painting. I have already touched on this phenomenon in my earlier discussion of the delay

and "realism" in photography. Let me consider some more controversial and far reaching

consequences of this phenomenon.

In order to generalize, and perhaps even radicalize, this loss of "authenticity as the fact of reality"

in photography, one can maintain that the human eye will increasingly use technological means

to see not what is out there but what it chooses to see out there. This tendency can range from an

entire industry to an individual.

On the institutional level, let me take the well-known case of the fashion industry, which refuses

to see an ordinary person's face and instead sees only the enhanced and produced face of the

model that conforms to the changing dictates of cosmetics and fashion, as an example. The

interdisciplinary study of the tensions between the "natural" and "socially coded" and "gendered"

body has already informed, to a significant degee, women's studies, history, sociology, structural

anthropology, and many other academic disciplines. Furthermore, as Johannes Birringer points

out, our contemporary (global) culture, heavily influenced by its consumerist nature, not only

refuses to see the ordinary person but often refuses to provide a concrete environment for the

phantom person it presents:

The image for "Obsession for the Body" seems both more obscure and less transgressive than

Klein's earlier sleepwear ads or the extravagant video commercials that introduced the perfume

and its name. At the same time it is particularly noticeable that the shadowy image not only

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abandons the look of the model althogether but also diffuses the distinctions between the body

and space (place, location). In this sense, the model appears to float in a kind of phantom space,

everywhere and nowhere, thus increasing the obsessional search for multiple meanings that may

not take us anywhere. Or does it increase our indifference (Birringer 1991 213)?

On the individual level, let me take Steve Mann as an example. Steve Mann is the first fully

functioning, or full-time, cyborg, who refuses to take visual input that is not mediated by the

camera mounted on his glasses. A visit to Mann's website (http://wearcam.org/index.html,

accessed October 2005) provides a wealth of information regarding the technological, research,

and social aspects of his cyborg project. Perhaps the most noticeable is the visual history of the

evolution of his gear, which ranges from large, heavy and clumsy gadgets he used to wear on his

head to a pair of high-tech glasses.

Once Steve has received the video input from his camera, he has the ability to manipulate that

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visual input and/or combine it with several other streams of input from his computer or from the

Internet. In fact, because of the enormous emphasis our brain puts on the functioning of the

visual cortex, human eyes have no problem observing several visual "screens" simultaneously.

During an academic conference in Toronto in May 2002, Steve remarked that he routinely runs

four simultaneous video sequences embedded in his high-tech glasses. This wealth of visual

information enables him to make some interesting choices. For example, he may decide, as a

part of his anti-corporate agenda, to exclude all billboards from his visual field and replace them

with some other (more useful for his purposes) sources of information.

This is how Steve Mann describes his everyday existence, which he thinks will one day become

paradigmatic for the age he labels the "post human:"

In my everyday experience, I live in a videographic world: I see the entire world, even my hands

and feet, through a camera lens. A simple way to describe it would be to say that it's as if I am

watching my entire life as a television show. However, unlike the passive television watcher, my

goal is not to tune out reality. In fact, the device I wear -- which I have called WearComp since I

began to make wearable computers as a teenager -- has quite the opposite effect: equipped with

WearComp, it is up to me how and what I see, how and what I choose to focus on or exclude;

this freedom heightens my sensitivity to the flow of information that exists in a perpetual swirl

around us (Mann 2001 3).

Mann's cyborg lifestyle is probably the best illustration of my thesis that cool interactivity, or

delayed interactivity, empowers the individual to exert a much greater deal of control over the

"perpetual swirl of information." The WearComp equipment is the most vivid affirmation of the

visual and technologically mediated delay engineered by humanity. In contrast, the human visual

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apparatus provides the "natural" means of the delay, regulated and engineered by the process of

evolution.

Please note that I do not wish to maintain that the tendency of technology to limit or eliminate the

first condition of authenticity leads to some kind of social constructivism where the objects

existing out there appear, ontologically speaking, as figments of the collective imagination of the

society that constructed them. In fact, I agree with Dominic Lopes who, in his book

Understanding Pictures, offers a sophisticated account of our ability to understand pictures. This

ability, according to Lopes, constitutes the basis of our ability to notice resemblances:

Pictorial experience, therefore, is twofold. We see pictures in part because they are comprised of

properties that number among the proper qualities of vision. And we see through pictures in part

because they represent their subjects as having properties constitutive of vision.... In sum, we see

things through pictures because the conditions under which they represent parallel the conditions

under which we experience the objects of visual perception (Lopes 1996 192).

This confirms my view that the qualities of human experience, of which Arnheim speaks as

constituting the second sense of authenticity, are not formed out of thin air. They ultimately

depend on real visual experiences. However, the realm of real visual experiences is so vast that

it enables technologically sophisticated viewers to choose, to a much greater degree, the aspects

of reality they want to see. I am not disputing the dependence of the second sense of authenticity

on the first sense; I am disputing the tendency of classical realists to attribute some kind of direct

determinism to that dependence. This is not to say that one cannot continue to be a realist and

embrace the new trends in technology. I believe new technologies will gradually achieve a more

complex balance between the two senses of authenticity. The task of a new realist would be to

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understand that balance.

My discussion of the phenomenology of photographic representation uncovers a fundamental

ambiguity in the project of photographic realism: on the one hand, photographs are capable of

capturing the objective aspects of reality which may appear distorting to the human eye. On the

other hand, photographs can be produced in order to stay faithful to the idiosyncracies of the

human eye, sometimes to the detriment of objectivity.

The hope of a direct and instantaneous means of phenomenological description through

photography, which I outlined early on, therefore faces a dilemma: which of the two senses of

realism should be the proper ground of phenomenological description? Should the

phenomenologist of photography deconstruct appearances with the help of technology and

perhaps continue, in Steve Mann fashion, to enhance and further manipulate the visual data? Or

should the phenomenologist of photography endorse the natural characteristics of the human eye

including its laziness, limitations, and habits which arise largely as the outcome of evolution, and

resist the challenge of technology?

These two senses of realism seem to be analogous to the psychic time - physical time dualism in

phenomenology I mentioned earlier. Is Augustine's "time of the soul" the fundamental measure

of time for humanity or is Aristotle's "cosmic kinesis" the true vehicle of change in nature?

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Conclusion

In the previous chapters, I have explored the multifaceted interdependences of time,

representation, and communication. In this context, I must especially emphasize the challenge

posed to the traditional means of representation by the 20th century promise of delivering the

means of seemingly instantaneous representation of image and sound. The latter promise has

forced humanity to embark on the process of revisiting and questioning its conceptualizations of

time, perception, movement, and recorded event, among many others. Most importantly, the

promise of instantaneous representation has eroded temporal distance, which wedges itself

between the objects of representation and the process of representation. This distance, as I

suggest, has been a key condition of human objectivity and creativity.

I have been drawing, throughout the chapters, on several accomplished scholarly inquiries into

the dynamics of temporality. Let me mention, as an illustration, Kern's The Culture of Time and

Space, Doane's The Emergence of Cinematic Time, and Lee's Chropohobia.

The project of Timeless Representations, however, has been especially motivated by an essential

dualism in the process of human interaction with the world that has been revealed in the wake of

the technological promise of instantaneous representing.

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On the one hand, the new technologies of instantaneous representing prompted a great deal of

interest in what it is like not only to immerse oneself in one's sense of belonging to the world but

also to metaphorically "feed off" that sense of belonging. The latter activity requires immersion

in the flow of time and it requires "opening oneself up," speaking in a rather loose holistic sense,

to the events in the present moment as they unfold. I think the growing popularity of meditation

techniques and philosophies of the Far East, such as Tai Chi and Zen, attests to the importance of

this kind of interactivity. I have termed this manner of interacting with the world "hot

interactivity." The effects of hot interactivity, and especially the unique energy it is capable of

summoning, are still not well understood.

John Shotter ventures to capture what he calls "the realm of expressive-responsive bodily

activities" occuring spontaneously in the course of human interactions. This is the realm,

according to Shotter, in which direct and immediate forms of understanding can occur. He writes

the following about the possibility of "invisible but felt presences:"

[They] have neither a fully orderly nor a fully disorderly structure, neither a completely

subjective nor fully objective character; nor need they be wholly made up of living processes,

dead entities may come to play a participatory role within them as well. They are also non-

locatable: they are "spread out" among all the entities participating in them. They are neither

"inside" people, but nor are they "outside" them; they are located in that space where inside and

outside are one... Indeed, it is precisely their lack of any pre-determined order, and thus their

openness to being specified or determined by those involved in them, in practice -- while usually

remaining quite unaware of having done so -- that is their central defining feature (Shotter 2004

454).

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It is obvious, even from this short quote, that it would be extremely difficult to utilize traditional

scientific methods to study these "felt presences." It is then hardly surprising that, in the past, the

phenomena bearing the stamp of hot interactivity have remained on the margins of the key

disciplines of "main stream" science. For example, classical physics and classical probalility

have invariably rejected phenomena sometimes termed as "passions at a distance" or "actions at a

distance." Yet the very end of the 20th century witnessed a growing number of discussions of

hitherto little understood phenomena, such as "entanglement" and "teleportation" in physics.

"Entanglement" is typically defined as a quantum mechanical phenomenon, in which the

quantum states of two or more objects have to be described with reference to each other even

though the individual objects may be physically separated. "Teleportation" is a hypothetical

mode of instantaneous transportation whereby matter is dematerialized at one place and recreated

at another.

For example, Rob Clifton, a late philosopher of physics from the University of Pittsburgh, notes

the ways in which scientists no longer puzzle over entanglement but have begun to do things

with it:

What entanglement is now known to do (among other things) is increase the capacity of classical

communication channels—so-called ‗entanglement-assisted communication‘. No longer is

entanglement the deus ex machina philosophers‘ metaphors would lead us to believe. Indeed,

physicists have now developed a rich theory of entanglement storage and retrieval with deep

analogies to the behaviour of heat as a physical resource in classical thermodynamics (Clifton

2001 2-3).

Peter Weibel offers a bold and far-reaching vision of the future of the cinema in a recent

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collection of essays The Cinematic Imaginary after Film, published by MIT press. Weibel

connects the theory of entanglement, where particles tend to exhibit identical behaviour in

measurements which are physically separate yet correlated, with the possibility of new and

exciting technologies of the future (cf. Weibel 2003 601). He predicts the development of

massive parallel virtual worlds, or multi-user virtual environments which promise to eventually

liberate humanity from the natural confines of space and time.

Yet most traditional disciplines, including philosophy, seem to be resisting this new and growing

quantum paradigm. One could perhaps make an analogy between the way consciousness seems

to elude contemporary (by and large reductionist) attempts of the Philosophy of Mind to explain

it away and the way hot interactivity still eludes traditional scientific explanation.

On the other hand, the technological promise of instantaneous representing has made it

increasingly clear that the process of representing requires, by its own nature, that the instant

under representation be delayed, using various traditional and modern means of delay. The delay

then creates opportunities for the agent to control, i.e. to describe, interpret, analyze, etc., the

represented content. I should add that delay characterizes not only activities of the

reader/viewer/consumer but also activities of the author/director/producer. I have already

suggested that delay is of the utmost importance for the Western understanding of not only

artistic creative agency but also of the process of scientific observation and description in

general. I have chosen the term "cool interactivity" to describe this manner of interacting with

the world.

There is a growing sense of recognition of the importance of understanding these two kinds of

interactivity, and a growing necessity of understanding the dynamic relationship between the two

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kinds of interactivity, and of successfully combining them, especially in modern technology. I

believe the case of performativity to be especially intriguing in the latter context.

David Saltz writes the following in an essay on interactivity, performativity, and computers:

Recognizing that interactive computer art is a close cousin of the traditional performing arts

clears up some ontological quandaries about the art form. Moreover, it will put is in a position to

see that the fetishization of interactive technology among many contemporary artists and critics

relates closely to the role live theater and music themselves will have to play in a technological

age (Saltz 1997 118).

Saltz compares a playwright and a director, who only provide a blueprint for a theatrical or

musical performance in order to enable the performance to ultimately assume a life of its own,

and an interactive computer performer. The latter often combines the roles of the playwright,

the director, and even the performer. What this suggests, in my opinion, is that computer

technology has an essentially performative character. The reason for this, however, is often

overlooked. I believe the performative character of computer technology lies, above all, in its

temporality.

It is often argued, by commentators of computer technology and its impact on society, that

computers belong purely to the present. The desire to overcome and minimize the delay is a

foregone conclusion in the computer industry. This is true of computers even when they are used

for writing, a quintessential delaying activity. For example, all computer documents always

belong to the present; the editing process that leads to the finished document, unless saved for

specific purposes, disappears into the void. In fact, computers should not be characterized as the

means of representation at all since they are far better defined as process rather than product. In

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other words, computers do not represent life but possess a life of their own. This life is, of

course, a matter of constant change and response to external stimuli. As well, this life is

terminated only when their source of power is turned off.

I have argued elsewhere (cf. Kujundzic 2004) that we should speak of the "life" of computers

only in a metaphoric sense. This is so since computers, and other current versions of artificial

automata, differ, in kind, from the life of a conscious human being. In using the term "artificial

automata" I follow John Von Neumann who has made a distinction between natural and artificial

automata. According to Von Neumann, human beings and certain other living creatures should

be considered natural automata, while computers, robots, and other artifacts designed by humans,

should be considered artificial automata. I make a principled distinction between these two kinds

of automata since I believe that present artificial automata are still generated from the blueprint,

or intelligent design, of their creators. To use Sartre's terminology, the essence of artificial

automate precedes their existence. With human beings, creatures which may be considered

natural automata, the opposite is the case -- their existence precedes their essence.

The current usage of computers is still largely characterized by the legacy of traditional, delayed,

artistic production: writing, painting, sculpting, etc. The modus operandi of computers, however,

will continue to bring them closer to the performing arts. Future computer technology will

increasingly demand a means of expression whose nature can be best characterized as process.

The product will not longer exist as an objective entity; instead the "product" will exhaust itself

in the moment or in the happening.

If the suggestion that computers are better characterized as process rather than product is taken

seriously, then the notion of interactivity must become central to every discussion of computer

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performativity. Saltz offers the following reflections on the future of interactive computer art:

Interactive computer art, however, can never exist only as software. The work must reach out

into the world in some way to capture the human interactor's input; the interactor must either

make physical contact with a physical object or make movements within an articulated region of

real space. And the work must project some sort of stimulus-sound, image, kinetic movement-

back into the world for the audience to perceive (Saltz 1997 117-118).

I ask the reader to forgive my indulgence in some rather far-fetched speculations about the future

of technology, and especially computer technology. I believe I can anticipate some future global

interactivity trends, based on the nature of computers and computer interaction and its growing

invasion of the hitherto autonomous nature of human creativity, competence, and knowledge.

I predict modern computer mediated technology will increasingly cultivate its performative roots.

Moreover, one of the most important things it will have to cultivate in the future are its

participants. I claim this because I suspect there will be a gradual increase of the relative

importance of hot interactivity in computers, and in technology in general, and there will be a

point where, in the technology of the future, hot interactivity will dominate cool interactivity. As

a consequence, the concept of the participant will gradually replace in importance the classical

concept of the reader/viewer. This would happen if we take seriously the possibility of the

"internal" observer; that is, the observer who becomes a part of the observed environment, as

suggested by Peter Weibel. This new participant will thus have the capability and the

opportunity to be an observer and a performing actor at the same time. In order to do so, the new

audience will have to redefine itself by developing its own sense of community and its skills for

participating in the performance. At the moment, the power of presence is explored by means of

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mostly visual, cool interactivity. This is especially true of live television and its coverage of

great sports and media spectacles. As Peter Weibel points out (cf. Weibel 2003 594-595),

television has been based on the classical cinema model, where one or more external observers

face one and the same image. The difference between cinema and television, of course, is

television's essential non-locality. In simple words, television, unlike cinema, engages in remote

distribution of its images because each and every observer can operate a television set at home.

As a side note, I believe that, precisely because of the possibility to operate one's own TV set at

home, television has been developed according to the model of cool interactivity. Consequently,

I believe that it was not a coincidence that the early attempts to enhance interactivity in television

(by using the remote) failed.

Future technology will develop things one giant step further -- it will provide a possibility of an

interface technology between the observer and the image. Eventually, observers will become

part of the system they observe. This kind of observer, the "internal" observer, will explore the

power of tele-presence by means of hot interactivity. The traditional concept of the

viewer/observer may in fact become obsolete.

As a somewhat historical side note, it is ironic that theater has often been mixed up with the

representational model of the mind. In fact, the metaphor "theater of the mind" figures

prominently in many discussions of the representational theory of the mind. Ian Hacking, in his

Representing and Intervening, uses the former metaphor to better illustrate what Dewey has

termed the "spectator theory of knowledge:"

Indeed much recent philosophy of science parallels seventeenth-century epistemology. By

attending only to knowledge as representation of nature, we wonder how we can ever escape

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from representations and hook-up with the world. That way lies an idealism of which Berkeley

is the spokesman. In our century John Dewey has spoken sardonically of a spectator theory of

knowledge that has obsessed Western philosophy. If we are mere spectators at the theater of life,

how shall we ever know, on grounds internal to the passing show, what is mere representation by

the actors, and what is the real thing (Hacking 1983 130)?

The motivation for understanding theater as the model of representation is found in the empiricist

tradition, and especially in Locke and Berkeley, who implicitly or explicitly utilized the metaphor

"theater of the mind." One has to keep in mind that the emipiricist tradition built this model to

illustrate perception, which is based on the purported activity of "inner projection" constantly

occuring in the mind. I have been emphasizing the long-forgotten nature of theater as the place

of happening, where spectators are not only the organic part of the performance but also help

constitute the performance.

This is how Peter Weibel remarks on why VR systems, by their very nature, tend to require that

the observer become part of the the observed system:

In some degree, the creation of an interface technology between observer and image was made

necessary by the virtuality and the variability of the image; it enabled the observer to control with

his own behaviour that of the image. The picture field became an image system that reacted to

the observer's movement. The observer became part of the system he observed. He became an

internal observer -- for the first time in history. In the real world, the observer is always part of

the world he observes, always an internal observer. The external observer exists only in an

idealized, non-existent world. Otto E. Rossier's work on "Endophysics" opened up a new view

of the universe and develops the physics of the internal observer. Classical cinema imitates this

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idealized world (of philosophy, mathematics, and classical physics). With their internal

observers, Virtual Reality systems therefore simulate an aspect of reality, bringing interactive

images one step closer to the imitation of life (Weibel 2003 594-595).

An important aspect of the future internal observer, of course, is that internal observers are not

entering the purely "imaginary" world, which exists as a figment of their imagination. They will

find that their world is constituted partly by their own actions and choices, partly by the actions

and choices of other internal observers, and partly by the future virtual reality technology.

Perhaps an appropriate manner to conceptualize this type of environment is to think of the

Holodeck, as envisioned in the Star Trek series.

Matthew Casey, in his discussion of interactivity in relation to theater, hints at the possibilites of

becoming an actor instead of a spectator in the theater of the future: "The promise of interactivity

in virtual environments is the breakdown of the isolation of the viewer and actor that can define

the theater. In what Jaron Lanier has called 'postsymbolic communication' there is no need to

watch Hamlet, since you can be Hamlet (Casey 1999 190)."

The developments in tele immersion, spearheaded by Jaron Lanier's Advanced Network and

Services Inc., promise to enable users in different locations to work, and perform, together in a

shared simulated environment as if they were present in the same room. Furthermore, as I have

hinted in the Introduction, the utopia of the "postsymbolic communication" or "postlinguistic

communication" provides an excellent illustration of the developments I have been predicting. In

his book, The Phenomenon of Man, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin coined the term "noosphere."

The noosphere is the sphere of interaction among thinking organisms -- a sphere beyond the

biological world, or the "biosphere." One could argue that the evolution of the noosphere has

196

reached the point where it is becoming actualized by the technological means of immersion.

This latest stage of the noosphere may lead to exciting new possibilities in interaction and

communication. David Gunkel writes, commenting on McLuhan's vision of a new

communicative interaction:

McLuhan's formulation of a "general cosmic consciousness" is informed by the Scholastic

tradition, which traces its roots to Aristotelian philosophy. The concept is directly associated

with the "collective unconscious' of Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution and approximates the

noosphere proposed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in Phenomenon of Man (Gunkel 1999 76).

Gunkel also traces the roots of a universal and simultaneously translated communication through

religious imagery:

The universal translator would do more than mitigate the disparity between two (or even

multiple) languages: it would overcome the confusion instituted at Babel by translating any

language into and out of every other language, automatically and simultaneously. The universal

translator, then, aspires to nothing less than a technologically enabled Pentecost...Pentecost

marks the overcoming of Babelian confusion through real-time, interlingual translations. The

Apostles, while speaking in their own native language, are immediately understood by everyone

in whatever language constitutes their native tongue. In this way, Pentecost reestablishes

universal understanding between human agents despite differences in their means of

communication (Gunkel 1999 66).

One should not be lead to believe that the idea of simultaneous and immediate communication

pertains exclusively to historical and religious matters. On the contrary, there are strikingly

similar, and very thought-provoking, proposals in current philosophy. Perhaps the most

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intriguing of such proposals is that of Paul Churchland, an influential contemporary philosopher.

Churchland suggests the possibility of direct communication between two or more human brains

based on the analogous, and already existing, protocol of communication between two cerebral

hemispheres of the sole human brain :

We know that there is considerable lateralization of function between the two cerebral

hemispheres, and that the two hemispheres make use of the information they get from each other

by way of the great cerebral commissure -- the corpus callosum -- a giant cable of neurons

connecting them. Patients whose commissure has been surgically severed display a variety of

behavioral deficits that indicate a loss of access by one hemisphere to information it used to get

from the other.... What we have, then, in the case of a normal human, is two physically distinct

cognitive systems (both capable of independent function) responding in a systematic and learned

fashion to exchanged information. And what is especially interesting about this case is the sheer

amount of information exchanged.... Now, if two distinct hemispheres can learn to communicate

on so impressive a scale, why shouldn't two distinct brains learn to do it also? This would

require an artificial "commissure" of some kind, but let us suppose that we can fashion a

workable translation for implantation at some site in the brain that research reveals to be suitable,

a transducer to convert a symphony of neural activity into (say) microwaves radiated from an

aerial in the forehead, and to produce the reverse function of converting received microwaves

back into neural activation.... Once the channel is opened between two or more people, they can

learn (learn) to exchange information and coordinate their behavior with the same intimacy and

virtuosity displayed by your own cerebral hemispheres. Think what this might do for hockey

teams, and ballet companies, and research teams (Churchland 1981 87-88)!

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Even though the possibility of information exchange and behaviour coordination certainly sounds

exciting and intriguing, I believe it is the model of theater where the possibility of future

developments in interaction and communication, including the possibility of post-symbolic

communication, will find its greatest means of expression. These new technological

developments will enable new performing actors to continue to utilize the rich means of cool

interactivity to set the technological stage for the performance. However, once the stage has been

set, the delay, and with it the technological means of cool interactivity, will become transparent.

What will matter and what will remain will be the presence and the moment, which are driven

not only by the performer but also by the audience. This is true not only because of the novel

role of the audience but also because of the novel role of the performer. The performer will

likely use only her inspiration and her sense of improvisation to develop the performance. The

necessary blueprints, musical and theatrical for example, will have been already mastered by the

computer-aided technology of the future. This new mode of performativity will create

performances, or perhaps what may be termed "hybrid performances," directly in the virtual

environment.

I should note that I talk about the "stage" only in a metaphorical sense; the stage will become a

part of reality in the future. This will apply not only to arts and entertainment but also to the

world of business, science, and the military. There are many indications that this transformation

is happening already. The domains of the virtual and the real have already started to blur at the

seams. William Gibson has hinted, fictionally, that the future stage of action will be found by

breaking through to the other side of the computer screen. The reality of that other side is

becoming stronger and stronger every day of the 21st century.

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Peter Weibel writes about the possibility of wireless communication in a shared cyberspace of

the future. One essential feature of this virtual realm of possibilities is that there will be multiple

and reversible relationships between the real and the virtual world. The "internal" observer will

automatically become a performer or a narrator by entering the virtual world:

This entry into the image-world will trigger reactions in the sense of the co-variant model not

only in multiple parallel image-worlds but also in the real world. The relation between image-

world and reality will be multiple and reversible, and the observer himself will be the interface

between an artificial world and the real world.....A cause in the real world will have an effect in

the virtual world and, conversely, a cause in the virtual world will have an effect in another

parallel virtual world or in the real world. Observer-controlled interactions between real and

virtual worlds and between different parallel virtual worlds in computer or Net-based

installations enable the spectator to be the new author, the new cameraman or camera-woman,

the new cutter, the new narrator: In the multimedia installations of the future, the observer will be

the narrator, either locally or, via the Net, by remote control (Weibel 2003 601).

I am convinced I am not painting a bleak picture for the future of humanity where all human

knowledge and competence has been entrusted to computers and where advanced and evolved

computer systems control and enslave humanity. This kind of future has been portrayed in

several movies produced at the end of the 20th century, perhaps the best illustration being the

popular movie The Matrix. On the contrary, I believe the future will in fact open up much more

space for human spontaneity, creativity, and improvisation.

200

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