Dear all,
Back to automatic and automation one cannot forget about the Surrealist and
Dadaist attempts to achieve automatic writing. Nevertheless the silly fact
that some of them wanted to reach the true unconscious manifestations of
human thoughts, ideations (?) and whatever the mind is capable of
automatically produce.
This is, naturally, a dimension that seems out of this discussion. Another
dimension out seems to be the hyper-contemporary nature of this discussion.
Before I go any further, let me tell you what I think to be the
hyper-contemporary human condition.
We must go back to the nineteen-century when History as a Science was
invented. To make such science possible human time was divided in ages like
life organisms were divided in realms: Pre-Historical Ages and Historical
Ages. Well, in the historical ones, one could find the Ancient and the
Modern and, in the middle: the Middle Ages (in fact corresponding mostly to
one book: Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).
Gibbon gave account of the degradation of the notion of Humanity presented
by the Greeks, made Republican and "Universal" by the Romans and recovered,
precisely after the fall of Constantinople (when the modern age starts).
Modern was seen as the continuation of the Ancient.
Every Modern has its Ancient. The Modern Ford Mustang enhances the qualities
of the Ancient Ford Mustang (the Classical Ford Mustang).
For the builders of History as science something had changed after the
French Revolution, a fact so Catastrophic as the fall of Constantinople.
Their time could not be considered Modern anymore (part of it was even
Neo-Classic). The name of the raising age had to be contemporary (of our
Time - at the same time of us). For our, Design Theorists or whatever, sakes
I must say that the ultimate expression of the Modern Age was Rococo and all
the Moral degradation associated with it. Curious enough, Rococo was a good
time for automatons (and Swiss), musical ones specially. If, on the
beginning of the Modern Age (the Renaissance) a blind trust in machines and
mechanisms was born, at its very end, a mechanical, idle, gay and brilliant
clockwork (oranges?) devices proliferated throughout the decadent courts of
Europe. Also, if the Court as defined by Castiglione and the Sovereign as
defined by Machiavelli had been the messengers of the Modern Age, like the
machines, they had reach the lowest level of senseless formal expression at
the "night before" the Revolution. No wonder that in the capital of the once
called Penn's Forest a Neo Classic Republic was born, some years before.
As I have wrote, a few days ago, Pigmalion was the closest Myth of something
human-like being created by man that the Ancients had made. Naturally, the
solution was Venus intervention that produced the miracle of life upon the
sculpture. But it was Dedalus who immortalized the Myth of mechanical and
automatic things. His wings worked all right for him although poorly for his
son Icarus. His Labyrinth kept the Minotaurus well imprisoned. Icarus rise
and fall is only part of the wonderful Dedalus story. Like in many other
Myths, the origin of knowledge is out of Europe, Egypt, to be more precise.
It looks as if the Greeks were seeing Europe as a void wilderness that had
to be filled with Morals and Knowledge originated in Asia and Africa. Even
Europa's origin Myth tells this story.
By inventing History as Science, the Contemporary Age finds also the "true"
origins of the Europeans. The Celtic, Viking, whatever mythologies are
re-invented, re-possessed.
Although presented as a Modern Prometheus, Frankenstein makes a contemporary
monster that came to life due to Electricity (Thor's more than Jove's
energy). Like Icarus the poor Frankenstein gets to close to the sun. We tend
to imagine the count and his monster at the same time as Poe's dark stories,
but it is more in kin with Pride and Prejudice. Two women wrote both stories
at a very young age. Frankenstein was published in 1818 when Mary Shelley
was 22 and P&P was written when Jane Austen was also 22, in 1797 but
published only in 1813. Victor could have been Darcy, that's what I mean.
But Victor Frankenstein's monster (nor Darcy) is not an automaton (although
Darcy looks very much like one) Not even Pinocchio, nor the Gollem.
Technically produced and magically or electrically made alive, these
monsters become, human fleshy, messy incomprehensible and eventually made
their creators too close to the sun or near the rage of the Gods like
Prometheus. They are unable to perform automatically. They become
unpredictable. Wait, automatisms deal with predictability. Later, I must get
back to this. Now, it occurs to me that maybe the Midle Ages were
disconnected from Time in the sense that weren't concerned with Historical
Past or Historical Future. I always wondered about the spirit of someone
copying and illuminating a book that most likely no one would ever came to
read, just to go straight to a Library shelf.
Why am I getting back to non-automatons if we have discussing automatic
design? - Because they seem to symbolize the human intriguing whish to
create artificial humanity and being autonomous as humans are is a
characteristic of real automation.
If I would describe my automobile to Giotto he would think of it as an
almost human being. If I would describe my television to Dante, he would
think of it as an almost human head. If I would describe my computer to
Bacon, he would think of it as if it was almost a human soul.
The extraordinary lessons of the almost-automatons are that the automatic
behaviour as automatic is only performed by humans and not by any human
creation. They tend to be inert or erratic (the monsters). When we create
successful automatons they behave automatically according to our whish of
"automaticity". If you ever watched the Olympics 1500m swimming finals you
will know what I mean.
As you probably imagine I've been listening George Friedric Handel Complete
Violin Sonatas just to escape Mozart's frenzy. The most incredible feature
about the epoch instruments and a virtuoso's performance is that nothing
more than the music emerges resulting from mechanical actions of object and
human combined but. but designed by chubby German guy that used to work for
the king of England. At the utmost pique of modern automatisms we can find,
also working for the British public, a Venetian Gentleman Antonio Canaletto
using the king of the magical "mechanismatic" objects: a camera obscura.
Back to the Contemporary age we find Hegel and the notion the end of time
that was nothing more than the end of History. If we would describe our
world to Hegel, he would confirm that we have synthetically surpassed the
end of history, being the end of history a few weeks ago when we discussed
the importance of learning Mandarin.
You see, History was a German invention to assure a conceptual domination of
the Roman Empire forever and ever. The Contemporaries were resuming the
Ancient/Modern tradition.
A few years ago, some guys felt very unease inside their skins and invented
the post-modern condition.
Neo-Classicists and Romanticists of the early nineteen-century were already
post-modern and they knew it very well. In the early thirties, as a logical
result of 400 years of life like drawings, the greatest of the automatic
devices was invented: Photography.
Photography will, in the end, originate the Hyper-Contemporary Age.
Photography made visible the less important fragment of Time: The Instant.
Architronics has all to do with it.
I'll be back to this .
My best regards to all,
Eduardo
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