hiper_Arte_memo2k1

HEAD

The 21st century will be the century of globalization, ubiquitous computing, artificial life, soft porn, online culture, and games.

BODY

../of globalization
What we now see unfolding before our eyes as the possibility of realizing one of humanity’s distant dreams lies close in origin to the turmoil that characterized the last century. A century of wars and revolutions. A century of science and technology. A century that saw the triumph of capitalism, the democratic institution, and mediatic transparency. A moralistic century (despite all the immorality). An ideologically and culturally deconstructive century. Locally awful, touching, macabre, hilarious, diabolic, and innocent. Just forget it... but not completely!

The most deep-seated sexual taboos have been broken down. Politics and nations, as we know them, hurriedly regrouped into regional blocs, have almost had their day, while the economic, social, and cultural dislocation of societies and individuals is speeding up. Planet earth is an ecosystem with a mind increasingly smarter and more aware of local and global interdependencies. At the end of the day, the intelligent democracy, for which we ought to struggle, is really about uprooting the old power systems in favor of a detached self-discipline, whose, increasingly more complex, controls will be handed over to a digital superstructure, accountable to the law and opinion.

The dominant evolution of the world contaminates more, historically, backward social systems. Even when we deem it politically correct to preserve some anthropological sanctuaries still to be found on the planet. Amazonian Indians; various African peoples, such as the Congo’s Pygmies and the Kalahari Desert’s Bushmen; the Sahara Desert’s nomads; certain Eskimo villages, or the Australian Aborigines. A matter that is surely one of the most delicate when it comes to contemporary ethics. We ought to trust anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists, who dedicate their lives to this problem, and be supportive when they come to us with their findings and their causes.

But, if these sanctuaries of humanity can be cared for surgically, in the name of a less ethnocentric philosophy, we cannot, however, say the same of broad, historically backward, expanses of the planet, nonetheless obviously interested in the spiraling drive bent on developing democratic, technological, and mediatic capitalism. Brazil in South America, Angola, Mozambique, and South Africa in Africa, China, Asia. Those three continents will eventually be transformed by the leverage of modernization throughout this century. In the wake of that "upgrade" the world will never be quite the same again. What will it be like? For those of us living at this the dawn of the millennium, there’s no way of our knowing right now.

The problem of globalization boils down to this. Pre-technological power systems are bursting at the seams, running the risk of having to survive while bearing the burden of irrational humanity for the next 50 years. Current policy is costly and inefficient. And globalization conducted by the current power systems (and forces) tends to generate incurable conflicts between global and local perspectives on the distribution of work and wealth.

The globalization program will have to be based on the limitation of regional, national, and continental emission pollutant levels. On redistributing wealth worldwide, and on decentralizing technology. On making permanent education systems widespread, and on abolishing the death penalty worldwide. On bolstering the powers of the human-rights courts. On bolstering societal and individual powers of freedom, democratic rights and obligations. In a nutshell, in the writing up of a Universal Constitution of Human Rights, capable of beneficially overriding national constitutions in key matters, such as the right to life and freedom to travel the digital highway.

../of ubiquitous computing

Despite efforts constantly aimed at simplifying democratic and end-user accessibility to technological tools, the technical evolution and, in particular, the evolution of our computing tools and devices indisputably points to the exponential complexity of the technosphere and to a more than certain unequal sharing of work and wealth. This trend entails, among other things, the dramatic updating of concepts regarding minimal, basic and permanent education, and a new type of political discussion – based on entirely new methodological premises and parameters for argumentative skills.
The marriage of computers to telecommunications systems is changing the economy and politics, as well as our social and cultural habits. It is enhancing, much faster than originally thought, the evolution of devices enabling remote interactivity (telepresence), whose historic progression unites the primitive Tom-Tom to UMTS technology, including the phone and Internet.

But the hottest innovation introduced by the World Wide Web, especially through 3rd generation mobiles, is the possibility to design, produce, and access at least four states of interactivity.

That of:

- live interactivity: i.e., when humans interact in real time; or when they interact in real time with intelligent computing devices;

- passive interactivity: i.e., when we surf the Web, just for fun, or searching for specific information/images;

- deferred passive interactivity: i.e., when we define our preferences with regard to database servers, e-mail, etc., responsible for periodically updating messages and the content of our favorites;

- and, finally, that of alienigenic interactivity: i.e., whenever we configure the ubiquitous computer system that leads to artificial ecology of the type: my car’s GPS communicates with my house, which in turn communicates with my UMTS, which in its turn decides to communicate with me, or with certain intelligent devices, to put my professional, emotional, logistical, financial, or legal affairs in order...

We have, as you can see, come a long way from the Renaissance blueprint, based on the ideology of the authorized "point of view". We have also distanced ourselves from the inexorability of cubist expression deflagrations, the phenomenology of abstraction and expression, and didactic conceptualisms, as well as from more recent anti-technological autisms, and even from that conventionally called the "acceptance esthetic". If any esthetic arises out of the technosphere’s ubiquity, it will surely be a dynamic one, or, if you will, an interactive (likewise agonistic...) esthetic. A hyper-human esthetic too, insofar as it will have to rely increasingly on the sense of humor and tastes of the new intelligent cyberspace actors.

The atomization of artificial intelligence will shape, in a way we are as yet unable to foresee, the future of humanity and its images. So, where are the new artistic avant-gardes? Don’t look for them in the corrupt corridors of the 20th century’s cultural bureaucracy, which understands as much of what we are currently talking about, as did the 19th century academics about Impressionism.

../of artificial life

Advances in science, technology, and medicine have led to transgenics, cloning, the partial cybernetic reconstruction of a human body, and to the design and artificial culture of human tissues and organs. In other words, to genetic modification, asexual reproduction and artificial life. The functional success of these scientific and technological innovations is so mind-boggling that nothing will ever be quite as it was before within the coming 50 years. The vision of a eugenic vanguard commanding a planet of reproductive sex-slaves, victims of the most pessimistic Malthusian predictions, is surely the wet dream of some diehard Puritan and a defensibly theoretical excuse for over-productive transgenic cycles!

It will not be easy for us to avoid radical eugenics from forging ahead, in the coming 5 or 10 years, to news of a human clone. Perhaps already full grown, healthy, and socially integrated. With the amorality of it, and even the virtue of the procedure, having been proven, the world will inevitably be polarized into committed heterogenicists and eugenicists. But that debate has already begun between the somewhat defenseless Nature partisans and the new selfish philosophers of transformation and immortality. On one point, both agree. If it is possible to nurture and prolong life, then doing so should be legitimate. Plus, all of us would be interested in that kind of possibility, even though it might mean going down a painful avenue at first. Up to that point, more than one of us will be ready to subject their body to a total or partial cryogenic procedure while still alive, in light of later being brought back to life, as soon as scientific and technological conditions are ripe for it.

Another offshoot of the evolution in artificial-life sciences and technologies, is the possibility of creating new genetically-aided foodstuffs (in particular meats, leading us to the end of the era of rearing animals for slaughter and extending a drastic moratoria on fishing. Cheese and yogurt will then figure in the history of the human diet as the great precursors of a new artificial food chain of animal origin. Cloned (and, obviously, transgenic) meat will arrive at food markets under a “completely safe” food label. When will that come about? Maybe after BSE has spun out of control, leading then to the application of alternative solutions already tested under controlled conditions, or that are at the techno-scientific incubation stage. Vegetarian food is, and will continue to be, a major alternative to meat and neo-meat strategies.

But one of the most controversial and stimulating themes of artificial life is that of the theoretical possibility of copying data from human memories. The prospect, even though remote, of transplanting and implanting data to and from human brains would certainly give a strategic advantage to the radical eugenicists.

Science fiction scenarios are likely, disturbing, and attractive. And, they will have a profound and lasting impact on current and future artistic creation.

../of soft porn

If we look at the populational and moral evolution of industrial and post-industrial societies, we can see a relentless march toward a lowering birthrate, the ageing of the population, and a decline in strict heterosexuality. Reproduction of the species has slowly ceased to be a priority of the species itself. The principal causes of this philogenetic modification are the drastic reduction in the economy of subsistence farming, the progressive end of the family economy in cities, of women working, and the higher compulsory school-leaving age. The traditional, matrimonial, and reproductive family is in crisis and nothing appears to be able to prevent its getting worse. The family is increasingly seen as a temporary contract, out of which successive reconstitutions can be made. That perception gives rise to a whole range of judicial, meta-parental and emotional firsts, originating, on the other hand, a progressive revision of the sexual taboos on which ideologies and human conduct have been based during the course of the preceding millennia, while also culturally redefining the sexual function and eroticism. Also on this point, the century, whose portal we have just entered, promises to radicalize some behavioral innovations already heralded, to a certain extent, in the latter decades of the 20th century.

The growth and progressive social acceptance of male and female homosexuality has led directly to the notion, commonly shared today, that sexual freedom is a reasonable conquest, and, as such, the right to an alternative sexuality must be part of a citizen’s constitutional rights. The question as to the limits of that freedom, nobody, for the moment, seems ready to answer. But we’ll get there, sooner than expected.

The first methodological dissection to operate on this debate is the difference between consent, exploitation, and coercion. The latter two terms, relating to the universe of democratic morality and legality, should be addressed on the same political and judicial plane as all causes concerning the physical, economic, social, and moral integrity of individuals. In the universe of consent, on the contrary, resides an interesting and fertile discussion that we can have on the new sexuality. The first idea on its way to becoming a fairly acceptable one, is that sex, or better yet, practicing sex, which besides having to be a freely consented to and gratuitous activity, can at the same time be, although on a distinctly subjective and emotional level, the subject of various professional and economic activities. The argument here boils down to the debate on the need for the decriminalization, regulation, and legalization of prostitution.

In an era in which non-reproductive sexuality has become all-pervading, nobody can explain why we consider it perfectly normal for someone to smash an adversary’s neurons in a boxing match, or slaughter bulls at a public spectacle, while at the same time condemning the marketing of sexual services. The objection to AIDS is not valid, insofar as it touches on all nature of sexual activity without exception.

With male and female homosexuality legalized, like bi-sexuality, consensus and mental reservations regarding the so-called sexual perversions, such as anal and oral sex, whether heterosexual or homosexual, have yet to be clarified. What answer, for example, do we offer vis-à-vis the taboos of incest, pedophilia, zoophilia, coprophilia, and sado-masochism, among others?

Before post-modern societies are even ready to discuss these issues, pornography has burst like a veritable mediatic bomb before all our very eyes (adults and children). In Portugal, for instance, a channel belonging to a commercial TV station, in which the state has a stake, daily transmits hard-core pornographic films. As in other countries where this phenomenon has also cropped up, and as with the Internet, pornographic sites and channels are responsible for the "invisible" commercial success of many an "innocent" entrepreneurial initiative.

In fact, what we are seeing here is the birth of enumerable professional activities dedicated to eliminating sexual taboos and in the declared defense of erotic creativity. The gyms of sexual liberation have been taken over by the trend for erotic consulting rooms, already disseminated by most of the media. But, in line with what happened in the world of drug trafficking, the great "trustees" of sexual exploitation will attempt to hang on to their share of the spoils, lobbying on in the opportunistic labyrinths of power in favor of sexual prohibition.

The current over-exposure of erotica, of which the leaning toward a progressive social acceptance of pornography is the best reflection, throws down some interesting challenges at the feet of contemporary art. Eroticism always was a prerogative of the arts. They had, so to speak, a special permit to handle the exposure of bodies and the depiction of the libido. However, with the predominance of Informalism, Abstraction and, in general, of iconoclast Puritanism in modern art, avant-garde artists distanced themselves from that privileged territory of poetic imagery and eroticism, leaving it to photography, the cinema and TV – the new shrines of imagery. Places where the formerly well-defined limits of the linguistic domains of a more or less imaginary imitation of the world, its apparent copy, information, and peculiar productions... gather.

The rejection of libido practiced by the first Puritans, for what it’s worth, in the end denotes a brief and superficial trend in Western estheticism. The century we have just entered will see some of the most implosive trends of Abstraction and Conceptualism utterly swept away, educationally reviving the healthy eroticism and healthy anarchism of Dadaism, of which Guy Débord’s Situationism was the last great manifestation. That art will revive a radical and subjective critique of the world, once more picking up the initially corrosive logic of Pop Art, exhibited, among others, by Richard Hamilton and Öyvind Fahlström - artists almost always underestimated by the pseudo-historians of 20th century art.

Pornography has therapeutic effects, and can even be seen as a branch of radical philosophy focused on the flesh, perception, and the ghosts of imagination. How could we not but consider it a serious art subject?

../of online culture

Throughout the past century, the arts managed to anticipate the globalization logic (learning to handle technologies and mass information). Those that, on the contrary, found themselves confined to phenomenological entropy (I am speaking of course of the suicide of some "avant-gardes") are faced with the one and only path to salvation. The path of digital interactivity.
So, and however insipid "net art" may appear today, one thing is certain. All the new stuff this century brought to contemporary art will find its vortex within digital networks, organically developing as one of the many dynamic characteristics of the technosphere. Around 1993, this new world, a hub of analogical and digital happenings and reality images, set off on its rootlike path. It seemed, way back then, that it would merely become a digital replica of the old order. Now we are beginning to see it as an authentic "extension" of reality. Or, as a hyper-reality.

../and of the games

Free time in affluent societies will be occupied, to a great extent, by agonistic activities. Computer games, especially when shared on the Internet, generate chains of very strong agonistic solidarity. While television viewers just watch games or motor racing, Playstation players, and Internauts who battle out Quake sessions on the Internet, do actually take part in the game. Simulators, evermore sophisticated and realistic, lead players to live experiences of total phenomenological immersion. On the other hand, in strategy games like Summons to Surrender, players can live a double life for months or years. As models, animation, and the intelligence of digital players become more sophisticated, greater empathy is established between the player and those actors. The degree of complexity at which the worlds, operational scenarios and virtual actors is growing, makes the game experience progressively more interactive. Not just its physical performance, but also the growing importance of the psychological and biographical characterization of digital players contributes to their progressive social integration into the individual human players’ universe. Modifying the texture of these games, dressing and undressing their respective heroes and heroines, altering available weapons systems, etc., are just a few of the hacking practices (authorized or not by the games producers) currently very much in vogue with these groups of players.

This intense techno-cultural dynamism, thrust on the world by the creators and cybernetic generators of these new landscapes and virtual narratives, has aroused the curiosity of a growing number of artists, who see in this feeding-frenzy an excellent window of opportunity for their own unusual incursions.

António Cerveira Pinto