Literature Review

The contemporary fascination with virtual technology and the propensity for interaction via the ‘machine’ is in its very nature schizophrenic as material reality and virtual reality collide in a mass of fragmented experiences. In this literature review I am interested in exploring the notion of schizophrenia as a tangible visual/ aesthetic structure that corresponds to a postmodern sensibility: a way of seeing and being in the world. This theme will be closely tied to how perceptions of reality have evolved with new technologies.

Through the analysis of a Postmodern condition I seek to evaluate a cultural aesthetic that resembles the condition of schizophrenia made manifest. As a fundamental starting point I will be exploring the evolution of what Paul Virilio coins the ‘logistics of perception’ maintained by mass media/ culture.

I have included reviews and interviews with Virilio, and have located a range of sources that explore how new technologies, accelerated information systems and virtual reality perpetuate a schizophrenic sensibility. Though some readings are not directly related to the topic of cultural aesthetics or schizophrenia per-se, all reviewed materials explore how interaction and consumption of mass media and new technologies alter how we perceive reality and experience the world.

Paul Virilio’s theories establish a cultural mode of perception based on a model of war. In The Art of the Motor and Art and Fear Virilio’s investigation into complex relationships between technology and culture, war and cinema, speed and politics (Derian 1) gives form to the fundamental condition of the fragmented, lived experience of individual in contemporary society. Not only does Virilio explore how the acceleration of the ‘vision machine’ (Art and Fear 36) impacts visual culture, he also maps the logistics of perception as they have evolved in tandem with military technologies and the art of filmmaking.

In order to contextualize Virilio’s I think it is important to start with a brief analysis of Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility. Pledging allegiance to a Marxist perspective, Benjamin aligns the developmental tendencies of artistic production in unison with the politics of aesthetics. Benjamin traces significant changes in perception as a result of technical reproducibility of images and its consequent effect on artistic functions within a cultural context. By deconstructing the superstructure of meaning in relation to cinema Benjamin identifies film as a cultural product with the capacity to transform our understanding and relationship to traditional art values. Benjamin’s argument is that by using technological means of reproduction we are creating a new means of production which alters our traditional relationship to art.

In The Art of the Motor, Paul Virilio takes Benjamin’s claim further mapping the ‘shift of appearances’ that occurs through the evolution of the communications industry in conjunction with the advent of the motor (23). Through the development of advanced communication networks (the press) coupled with the accelerated information systems Virilio argues that mass media contributes to ‘a shrinking effect of the world’ (41) by perpetuating illusion through immediacy, affecting temporal experiences of time and duration. Virilio explores how identity and identification, truth and collective truth are tied to the ‘domain of the visible’ (29). The idea that media and war are intertwined, self-perpetuating entities, promoting synthetic vision are the basis of much of Virilio’s argument. It is my claim that this synthetic vision displays the characteristics of a cultural schizophrenic aesthetic.

Virilio looks at how contemporary modes of perception have changed as the vision machine, favoring speed (but resulting in blindness) creates a mode of representation that results in visual disinformation (68). Based on the premise that abuse of pictorial representation/ language leads to deteriorations in the reception of audio-visual signs, Virilio equates the cinematic experience with that of the dyslexic viewer unable to perceive and discern the influx of imagery all at once (63-72). By deconstructing the relationship between cinema and war and investigating ‘televisual pathology’ (62) in conjunction with the commercialization of television Virlio raises important questions about where technology occurs (99). Virilio perceives the body as the new frontier for quasi artistic/ scientific interrogation that permits technology a new artistic expression.

In his interview with James der Derain, Virilio explores the nature of virtualization as the new reality. Through the investigation of Dromology; a self made term referring to the study between speed and semilogy, Virilio explores how the artifice of television and the preference for real time over real space actively changes the temporality of representation and our experience in the physical world. Drawing from Baudrillard’s theory of simulation Virilio speaks of how representations of war through mass media are analogous to contemporary fields of perception. Virilio is concerned with the repercussions of the ‘technologically colonized body’ in a culture where the virtual is favored over the real thing.

The notion of simulation is crucial to Virilio’s argument. In The Precession of Simulacra Jean Baudrillard outlines the psychosomatic implications of a distorted reality resulting from the detachment of the sign from its original meaning. Baudrillard explores the notion of simulation and simulacra in relation to ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’, ‘true’ and ‘false’ (168). He goes on to break down the process of abstraction of the image into successive stages beginning with the reflection of a basic reality and moving towards a state of pure simulacrum (170). Baudrillard refers to simulation as a system that moves towards its own self -serving ideal by capitalizing on the slippage of meaning and the excess of language. Positioning his argument from a political standpoint, Baudrillard investigates the propensity for propaganda and the manipulation of sign systems by a capitalist structure in order to fulfill a political agenda.

For Virilio the underlying political agenda is that modern vision is dominated by military power and the desire for speed. In Beyond Postmodernism – Paul Virlio’s Hypermodern Cultural Theory, John Armitage gives a comprehensive biography of Virlio’s theoretical influences and situates his allegiance with a theory of perception based on Gestalt psychology (Armitage 3). Simulation, reality and substitution are key concepts as Virilio considers how cinematic technologies of disappearance, coupled with the appearance of the over exposed city has lead to a crisis of dimensions as the delineation between reality and fantasy become harder to discern (Armitage 5-6).

In order to assign imagery to Virilio’s theoretical concepts, I have chosen to review a recent exhibition by Susanna Coffey at the New York Studio School as her works embody a schizophrenic aesthetic. A contemporary painter, Coffey obsessively paints her self portrait - eyes closed in a dreamlike state with images over war and destruction hovering in the background. The imagery makes visual the symptoms of the psychiatric disorder schizophrenia as the protagonist is completely withdrawn into self. Coffey is essentially dreaming war. With references to war bordering on the sublime, the use of color emulates war per media representation and embodies a photographic quality that resembles camouflage. The repeated motif of the disembodied head is reminiscent of a cyborg and calls into question notions of identity and cultural identity and how mediated landscapes are internalized.

For Virilio the mediated landscape is characterized by an aesthetic of ‘Total War’. In Art and Fear, Virilio explores this ‘balance of terror’ and the inclination of 20th Century Artist anticipating humanities own destruction (16). Virilio deems that the popularization of terrorism (Total War) through the mass media and new technologies results in the ‘pitiless’ artist or author adopting a mode of assimilation and regurgitation of academicism that ultimately seeks to attack symbols, signs and the very essence of meaning (17). In the second essay ‘Silence on Trial’ Virlio tracks the evolution of conceptual art amidst the backdrop of a ‘noisy mass media’ and how the manipulation of media into propaganda seeks to silence the masses.

In an attempt to understand what constitutes media I will briefly cite Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan. In this essay McLuhan seeks to differentiate between hot and cold media and states that hot media (film, radio) is characterized as being high definition and filled with data/ information and requires low participation from the consumer. Cold media on the other hand is allows the subject to participate as the communication schema is not as full and allows the consumer to fill in the blanks. McLuhan is essentially interested in how media tries to ‘get at’ human experience and how speeding up of exchange leads to fragmentation of the individual (24).

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer have a similar line of enquiry regarding the influence of media In The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. In the essay Adorno explores the symbiotic relationship between the consumer and the culture industry that gives rise to and consequently dictates consumer needs. Adorno addresses questions surrounding technology, power, economic means of distribution and how the schema of communication is used to manipulate the masses. Dominating individuality, Ardorno states that the culture industry leaves no scope for the imagination. Meaning is homogenized to the point that he consumer/ audience/ viewer no longer needs to react as the world is already fixed for us in the culture industry. Although the media perpetuates difference, in reality what is being presented to the consumer is a constant reproduction of the same thing. Adorno claims that cinema and reality are no longer distinguishable and ‘To walk from the street into the movie theater is no longer to enter a world of dream… (11)’

In Schizophrenia and Postmodernism: raising Arizona, Barton Fink, and “The Coen Brothers” Andrew Moss states that the Coen brothers ‘simulate symptoms of schizophrenia’ by penetrating the ‘unassuming domain of “real life” (2). Interested in how the Coen Brothers play with ideas surrounding rational reality, sanity, delusion and paranoia, Moss is investigates how forms of disruption abruptly ‘shuttle viewers between reality and unreality’ (3). Moss deconstructs the Coen Brothers film/ editing techniques and the use of dream sequences (retrospective dream effect) to explore the notion of time/ space unity. Moss draws on the theories of Lacan, and Gilles Delueze/ Felix Guattari and explores ‘schizophrenia as a modality of the postmodern” (2).

The text Negations – Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Jonah Peretti is also founded on the interpretation and juxtapositions of theories such as Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory (how identification functions in the media), Fredric Jameson – ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’ and the critique of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s book ‘Anti- Oedipus’.

Peretti investigates how media, internet commerce and accelerated information systems contribute to identity formation and begins by critically exploring the difference between the schizophrenic subject as advocated in the theories of Jameson and Deleuze/ Guattari. Jameson’s claim is that late capitalism and postmodern culture (characterized by the rapidity with which images are circulated and consumed) has extended the symptoms of schizophrenia to the masses - that visual/ media culture seeks to simulate a schizoid experience in order to reinforce capitalist ideals. For Jameson the schizophrenic subject is the product of postmodern capitalist society. Deleuze/ Guattari rebel against a Frudian/ Lacanian cannon of thought and believe that the schizophrenic can teach us to resist the psychoanalytic association of desire and lack perpetuated by capitalism and the media. Peretti is interested in how the acceleration of visual culture aims to produce a subject that approaches but does not reach a truly schizophrenic state. Steven Shaviro agrees that “We can never actually inhabit the punctual, schizophrenic present of commodity time.” (1) In Commodity Time Shaviro also explores how explores how commodity and identity function together – and how accelerated capitalist modes of production affect our relationship with time beckoning us from an eternal now to a perpetual present. (1)

Katherine Hayles draws heavily on Lacanian theories of mirroring and identity formation in her essay Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers. Beginning with a basis in information theory, Hayles tracks how electronic media and ‘technologies of inscription’ affect corporal experience. “Cyberspace represents a quantum leap forward into the technological construction of vision.” (38)

Hayles states that electronic media elevates the word to image which can be subsequently manipulated and abstracted and that there is no direct correlation between signifier and signified (26). Interested in notions of pattern/ randomness and absence/ presence Hayles systematically investigates how advances in information systems challenge traditional modes of perception (25). Hayles extends Lacan’s theory on ‘floating signifiers’ to encompass the idea of ‘flickering signification’ (31). ‘Flickering signification brings together language with psychodynamics based on the symbolic moment when the human confronts the post human” (33). The tenuous relationship between the physical body, information interfaces and how meaning is derived is called into question as the body assimilates into the machine.

Like Katherine Hayles, Luis Mumford submits to view of technological dystopia – that the machine uses humans as working parts. In Technics and Civilization, Mumford explores the polytechnic ways technologies exist in the world. The concept of the clock is essential to Mumford’s argument and his claim is that the clock is the key machine of the digital age. As we go digital everything depends on clocking – Modern technology controls the clock. As the notion of space and time (the foundation on which all experience is based) is effectively sped up with the advent of new technologies and the possibility for instantaneous information exchange, our sense of reality has been drastically altered.

I would like to finish with Marshal McLuhan as his appeal to a media ideal sees a synthesis of ideas surrounding the conception of media as it shapes the contemporary subject. In The Medium is the Message, McLuhan explores how technology becomes ‘an extension of ourselves.’ (107) McLuhan considers the consequences of acceleration and the transforming powers of new media in regards to the social/ political consequences of innovation “For the “message” of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs” (108).

Though this literature review did not specifically focus on an aesthetic of schizophrenia (as a psychosomatic condition), my aim is to further investigate how language, identity and the acceleration of information and information systems contribute to new modes of being in the world. As society is increasingly characterized by extreme dislocation and uncertainty, the habitation of media spaces provides the perfect training ground for the precariousness of life. Interaction and consumption with the mass media and new technologies actively constitute and contribute to a new social reality – one that is based on fragmentation and is no longer confined to temporal experience.


Note: Many of my sources were secondary which cited and reviewed primary theories (Lacan, Deleuze, Jameson etc). Although this theorists have been seminal in the dialogue surrounding my topic, it was beyond my scope to incorporate this information into this review.


Works Cited:

Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer, Max. ‘The Culture Industry; Enlightenment as Mass
Deception.’ The Theodor Adorno Internet Archive. Ed. Andy Blunden. Feb 2005. 5 Sep 2008, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm


Armitage, John. ‘Beyond Postmodernisim? Paul Virilio’s Hypermodern Cultural
Theory.’ Science, Culture and Integral Yoga. Ed. Rich Carlson. 21 Sep 2008,
http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2008/9/21/3894868.html


Baudrillard, Jean. The Precession of Simulacra: The Implosion of the Masses into the Media. Selected Writings. Ed. Mark Poster. Standford: Stanford University Press, 1988.

Der Derian, James. ‘future war: a discussion with Paul Virilio.’ //.Dialogues/. Watson Institute. 26 Nov 2008. http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/vy2k/futurewar.cfm


Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.


McLuhan, Marshall. ‘Media Hot and Cold’ in Understanding Media: The Extensions of
Man. New York: McGraw Hill, 1964; London: Routledge, 1964.

---. ‘The Medium is the Message’. Media and Cultural Studies:
Keyworks. Ed Durham, Meenakshi and Kellnew, Douglas. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.


Moss, Andrew. ‘Schizophrenia and Postmodernsim: Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, and
“The Coen Brothers” (Critical Essay)’. B Net. Winter-Spring 2008. 26 Nov 2008.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go1931/is_/ai_n28566774


Peretti. Jonah. ‘Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Contemporary Visual Culture and the acceleration of Identity Formation/ Dissolution.’ Negations. 20 Nov 2008
http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_peretti.html

Shaviro, Steven. ‘Age of Aesthetics: Commodity Time.’ The Pinocchio Theory. 20 June 2006. 26 Nov 2008. http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=502


Virilio, Paul. Art and Fear / Paul Virilio Translated by Julie Rose. London: Continuum, 2003.

---. [Art du Moteur. English] The Art of the Motor/ Paul Virilio Translated by Julie Rose. Minneaplois: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.



Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer, Max. ‘The Culture Industry; Enlightenment as Mass
Deception.’ The Theodor Adorno Internet Archive. Ed. Andy Blunden. Feb 2005. 5 Sep 2008, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm


Armitage, John. ‘Beyond Postmodernisim? Paul Virilio’s Hypermodern Cultural
Theory.’ Science, Culture and Integral Yoga. Ed. Rich Carlson. 21 Sep 2008,
http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2008/9/21/3894868.html


Baudrillard, Jean. The Precession of Simulacra: The Implosion of the Masses into the Media. Selected Writings. Ed. Mark Poster. Standford: Stanford University Press, 1988.

Benjamin, Walter. ‘The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’,
Illuminations, Ed. H. Arendt. H. Zohn, New York: Schoken Books, 1968

Coffey, Susanna. “Susanna Coffey Since 2001.” Exhibition catalogue, Studley Press:
New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, 2008.

Der Derian, James. ‘future war: a discussion with Paul Virilio.’ //.Dialogues/. Watson Institute. 26 Nov 2008. http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/vy2k/futurewar.cfm


Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.


McLuhan, Marshall. ‘Media Hot and Cold’ in Understanding Media: The Extensions of
Man. New York: McGraw Hill, 1964; London: Routledge, 1964.

---. ‘The Medium is the Message’. Media and Cultural Studies:
Keyworks. Ed Durham, Meenakshi and Kellnew, Douglas. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.

Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization, Vol. I, Technics and Human Development.
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967.

Moss, Andrew. ‘Schizophrenia and Postmodernsim: Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, and
“The Coen Brothers” (Critical Essay)’. B Net. Winter-Spring 2008. 26 Nov 2008.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go1931/is_/ai_n28566774


Peretti. Jonah. ‘Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Contemporary Visual Culture and the acceleration of Identity Formation/ Dissolution.’ Negations. 20 Nov 2008
http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_peretti.html

Shaviro, Steven. ‘Age of Aesthetics: Commodity Time.’ The Pinocchio Theory. 20 June 2006. 26 Nov 2008. http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=502


Virilio, Paul. Art and Fear / Paul Virilio Translated by Julie Rose. London: Continuum, 2003.

---. [Art du Moteur. English] The Art of the Motor/ Paul Virilio Translated by Julie Rose. Minneaplois: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.