La Langue e(s)t la Parole
Some Remarks on Mark Amerika's Theory Composition PHON:E:ME
+Prelude+
The latest work of Mark Amerika, PHON:E:ME
(http://phoneme.walkerart.org/), bears a heavy load: It wants to be
art and manifesto at once. At the present, PHON:E:ME consists of two
parts: 're:mixes', eleven electronic voice-, rhythm- and
sound-compositions, and 'hyper:liner:notes', a sequence of shorter
texts. A third part is planned: 'film:texts' will add a video to this
multimedia project.
At first sight the structure of PHON:E:ME is quite simple and clear: the
'title-page' leads to the intro-site with a link to 're:mixes' where the
eleven titles are listed and can be played by real-player or downloaded
as mp3-files. The 'hyper:liner:notes' are displayed on the intro-page,
but there is no causality between the audio- and the textpart. The
reader can choose an audio file and listen to it while jumping into the
textual flood of 'hyper:liner:notes' - but the combination between text
and audio remains purely arbitrary.
Reading the 'hyper:liner:notes' reveals the ambiguity of PHON:E:ME which
is indicated by its title: Does it mean 'Phon-e-me', 'Phone me', or
rather 'Phony me', as Steven Shaviro remarks in his lucid article "Ten
Reflections on Mark Amerika's PHON:E:ME"
(http://phoneme.walkerart.org/shaviro_amerika01.html)? A closer look at
structure and content of PHON:E:ME suggests that all three meanings can
be applied to the project.
+Phon:e:me+
The phonemes revolt against the constraint of meaning - this could be
seen as the first message of both, 're:mixes' and 'hyper:liner:notes'.
Although the latter seem to be purely theoretical reflections on
networked art, some of the text-sequences reveal a pleasure for phonemic
constructed words - the spoken 'parole' transferred into the written
'langue'. These parts build the bridge between text and audio:
<begin example>
re:mixes: 'The hearing earman': A dada-funk-piece accompanied by
percussion-rhythms which lead the words to develop their own dynamics:
"remediation the old new media the old old media the new old media the
old new media the old old media re re media in medias res…"
"art as art is not art this is not art this is the end of art this is
endless art of artlessness of god…"
This rhythmic composition has its parallel in the visual word-rhythm of
'hyper:liner:notes':
"ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching,
ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching,
ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching (…)" [eye-ching]
which could be a selfreflexive mantra of data-streams…
<end example>
With the revival of the phonemes and their reconstruction in the written
word, Mark Amerika makes a double movement: He goes back behind and
forth beyond poststructuralistic theory at that. Referring to Saussure
he takes the language to sound-pieces ('re:mixes') and rebuilds them to
meaningful theory-compositions ('hyper:liner:notes'):
<begin example>
re:mixes: 'aeiou' and 'phonemeter' The electronically blurred, rhythmic
vowel-mantra 'aeiou' and its consonantal psychedelic equivalent
'phonemeter', both celebrating pure sound, face the hypertheoretic
litany of the written word-pleasure:
"Streaming hypermedia consciousness crunching numbers sampling
data-manipulating syntax spurting volumes. Disseminating viral memes
into mainstream host accelerating the degenerative process of the
corrupt and corrupting organism causing collective self-reflection and
metafictional musing on the artist (…)." [psychoacoustical analysis]
Those pieces in 'hyper:liner:notes' seem to be a word-rhythmic version
of Hypertextual Consciousness (http://www.grammatron.com/htc1.0/).
<end example>
In emphasizing the value of the spoken word Amerika seems to revive the
logocentrism which was so intensely criticized by Derrida. But as he
executes this reconstitution within the networked and multimedia
environment, he tries to establish a new, genuine 'network
resonance'-language oscillating between written and spoken word, between
'langue' and 'parole'. As this language consists of the flux of
immaterial electronic impulses, it gains a new volatile and performative
character. Thus, Amerika proposes a new type of artist: the genuine
electronic 'avant-pop-artist' who already played a crucial role in
'Grammatron':
"Creating a work of art will depend more and more on the ability of the
artist to surf sample and manipulate the bits of raw data we have at our
disposal. We all know originality is dead and that our contaminated
virtual realities are always already readymade and ready for
consumption!"
[Hypertextual Consciousness]
PHON:E:ME personalizes the avant-pop-artist in ten 'sonolumniscent
conceptual characters' whose statements seem to outline the contours of
the new electronic and networked artist: "surf, sample, manipulate" is
one of the crucial and often repeated mantras. This is followed
consequently by an attack to the copyrightist position - of course the
activity of compilating and manipulating existent data can't accept any
constraints made by narrow-minded copyright protectors. These are driven
into the anachronistic corner by the omnipresence of electronic data - a
fact that supports the copyleftist position of sampling, collecting, de-
and reconstructing everything available - pla(y)giarism is the slogan.
Consequently as well, it is not the completed work anymore which is the
core of art, it is the work with the medium itself which becomes
artistic:
"…if one is looking for meaning in network-distributed art, one need
only see, how the artist is using the Internet as a medium to further
their art practice. Using the net as a field of energy conduction
becomes the art-work (…)" [creative exhibitionism]
But - ay, there's the rub - Amerika provides us with many of those
descriptive declarations which in the end leave us behind with the
question, whether they are sufficient to constitute an aesthetics of
networked art. In his manifesto there seems to be a significant
deficiency: the question of communication is completely ignored. Amerika
stops at the point of destruction - of the artwork and the creative
genius - and does not come to the constructive part of art theory. One
reason for that might lie in his neglect of the past decades' art
tradition - especially installation and multimedia art - with their
attempts to involve the recipient in the work of art, and thus to
overcome the border between art-sphere and social environment. For an
inherent networked medium like the internet this tradition is crucial
for finding its own genuine aesthetics. As Mark Amerika defines
networking solely as distribution of data, he loses the chance of
introducing the communicational - and thus ethical - factor into
netart-aesthetics, and remains on a level of 'les dates pour les dates'.
+Phone me+
Reflection on networking always means rethinking the conditions of
communication: But Mark Amerika's programmatic slogan "I link therefore
I am" is reduced to pure interactivity between the human being and the
machine, as it does not procede to communication between human beings
through the machine. Thus, the characters who appear in
'hyper:liner:notes' are purely conceptual, they have no individual
names, only typological namings: Network Conductor, The Hearing Earman,
Web Jockey, No Mo Pomo, The Conceptual Artist, The Applied
Grammatologist, The New Media Economist, etc. They appear and disappear
randomly, they state their thoughts or write them down, but they don't
communicate with each other. In short introducing sequences they
sometimes are provided with individual discriptions: We learn that the
Web Jockey and the Applied Grammatologist are women, some of them meet
from time to time to have a drink together, and - thank God - some of
them sleep with each other. But these human relations - lapidarily and
shortly mentioned - remain as conceptual as the characters.
<begin example>
re:mixes: 'sexbomb'
"This is your body talking…
it's time to drop the day's sex bomb"
.. a monotonous recitative of the body, accompanied by data-transmitting
noise, resonance- and feedback-sounds. The body indifferently requires
the satisfaction of his basic needs without considering any feelings
("please destroy all destiny").
Correspondingly, in 'hyper:liner:notes' the Applied Grammatologist -
after sleeping with the Web Jockey - can express her feelings only in
word-excesses which resonate the pure physical ecstasy - without
mentioning any emotional consequences:
"A burning strip of Heavy Metal punctures the scull and ruptures. (…)
Crank the cranum. Molest the medulla. Circumscribe the cortex. Release
the body to its own punding bass groove. The metafictionalized
cerebellum has come back to town and is taking all hostages." [oto-matic
writing]
This is the body talking… There is still an opposition between
physical needs and the immateriality of the net, but the disobliging
manner of the pure sexual act corresponds to what cybersex and internet
pornography can provide - simple satisfaction of animal instincts.
Mentioning the body here means to reduce it at the same time: the
physical needs must be satisfied, but they do not touch the
self-refexive auto-poiesis of the data-flow.
<end example>
The texts of the 'hyper:liner:notes are not concerned with the
individuality of the characters who rather seem to be incarnations of
the theoretical statements. The New Media Economist states his thoughts
concerning the possibilities of marketing and distributing networked
art, the Web Jockey (aka No Mo Pomo) reflects upon data-compilation as
artform, the Network Conductor formulates theses on conceptual art etc.
The human personalities are seamlessly mixed with non-personal
characters: 'Quicktime Marketmail', 'Spiritual Consciousness' which from
time to time takes possession of one of the human characters,
'Groupthink Psyche', 'Dreamtime Marketmail'… Human beings, machines
and spiritual concepts move on the same level, only separated by their
different namings. After all, in their lonely intellectual activities
where they produce thoughts and phrases like fireworks, they rather
resemble memes than characters - they are nothing more than spiritual
viruses which distribute invisibly and invade the networked people's
minds.
These conceptual characters underline Amerika's comprehension of
networking as data-distribution and not as communication. So why does he
need those characters (who - as Amerika said in an interview
[http://www.phoneme.walkerart.org/interview.html] - stand for the
multiple facets of one personality - a kind of 'passe-part tout' of the
network-activist)? The oscillation between human and non-human figures,
the blurring interchangeable identities seem to represent the postmodern
statement of the individual's death. The subject dissolves in the
immaterial, flowing thoughtstreams of the network.
+Phony me+
The 'phony me' is the logic result of this thesis. The unmistakable
genuine subject is denied both by the conceptuality of the characters
and their statements. Any maintainance of an individual and original
creativity is pure hypocrisy in the age of intertextuality and networked
thinking. This is also valid for PHON:E:ME which is a collaboration
between various artists (Erik Belgum and DJ Brendan are responsible for
the compositions, Anne Burdick and Cam Merton for design and
programming). Mark Amerika sees himself rather as director than as
'author'. This deniance of authorship can be found in some texts of the
'hyper:liner:notes' as well:
"The ongoing ungoing network congestion full of selfreflexive
fictitiousness, amalgamates in a temporary folder called 'The
Reconfigured Author: Media Landscape With Brand-Name Identity'. In the
folder resides an mp3 file, whose contents consist of one sonolumniscent
concept-character named Mark Amerika prophesizing a potential climax in
words (…). This prophetic file is downloaded by a remote cyborg known
as The Receiving Body." [radical interiority]
The networked human being as cyborg who uses his body only as
perceptional machine, and dissolves spiritually in a collective
hypertextual and hyperrhetorical consciousness: is this the answer to
the lost individual? Amerika tries to constitute the networked
immaterial data-sphere as alternative to the dead subject, but there he
must fail, as for him there is nothing but impersonal data distribution.
Without the integration of an ethic, communicational element, these
ideas remain flat and inanimate. The theory-composition lacks a solution
in the utopian - without this perspective it remains in the state of an
associative collage.
Mark Amerika still seems to work _with_ the medium - that means, he
experiments with the technical possibilities it provides. But art gets
most interesting and fascinating when it starts to work _against_ the
medium it uses. This subversion then can overcome the comprehension of
aesthetics as something separated from the social environment, and can
try to reveal changes and problems resulting from the medium. Mark
Amerika bars his way to this subversional potential of netart with his
one-dimensional definition of networking as data-distribution. He misses
the chance to create a real 'net-work' which plays with all three levels
of the internet: the technical, the aesthetical and the social
dimension. Especially the internet, where social and artistic spaces are
so closely related, offers multiple opportunities to expose and
deconstruct the social and intellectual gaps, conflicts and
contradictions of the media-society's existence.
+Final chord+
The selfreflexivity of PHON:E:ME does too much of a good thing. The word
'metafiction' describes it best: the declarations of what netart is or
has to be remain fictional as the work doesn't practice these rules. The
audio- and the textpart don't interact with each other, their
performance unfolds independently. A closer connection between
're:mixes' and 'hyper:liner:notes' would have freed PHON:E:ME from its
theoretical weight, and maybe then new possibilities of multimedia art
would have been opened. At the current state of the project, the texts
accompany the audio files (or vice versa), but they don't need each
other.
The 'hyper:liner:notes' fail to meet their demand of redefining
narrative practice: Emphasizing the rhythm of language by using word-
and sentence-compositions is nothing really new and was already
practiced by the onomatopoetic movement. The recourse to narrative
elements when describing the 'scenes' where the characters speak, is
conventional and bears nothing revolutionary. After all, the
selfreferential circulation of the texts on netart gets rather tiring
than inspiring.
're:mixes' is a different case: the audio-pieces produce a strange
fascination and are a successful combination of language and
electronic-rhythmic and/or meditative composition. They don't deal with
harmonies or music but practice the "surf, sample, manipulate" of
data-transmitting noise, human sounds, and the alienation of the voice
in electronic highways: A real network-audio-sphere is created.
As a whole, PHON:E:ME has not much of a network-character in the
copyleft-sense. We experience it as a completed work that leaves the
recipient in a rather passive position - partly they can decide when to
read a new text, but they can't influence their sequence which is
randomly generated. The audiofiles are free to download, but the release
of a separate CD with a 47-minute long composition of the same title
reveals markting- and copyright-intentions and emphasizes again the
independence of text and audio. There, Mark Amerika offends against his
own theses and exposes himself as 'phony me'. He clings to the completed
and separated work of art and - despite of the project's collaborative
character - to his status as the author.
Thus, PHON:E:ME is not networked art, neither in the technical nor in
the social sense of interactivity and communication. The multimedia
deconstruction of language is the only one of the declared intentions
which was successfully realized - as networked 'Gesamtdatenwerk'
PHON:E:ME lacks the necessary innovative, revolutionary and
communicational power; there it remains on the level of a rather
harmless theory-collage.
