Golem of Consciousness
Symposium:
- ISEA94: Fifth International Symposium on Electronic Art
- More presentations from ISEA94:
Session Title:
- East & West (High & Low)
Presentation Title:
- Golem of Consciousness
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
Abstract
Controller and controlled are the transitional notions, their interchange ability can be discovered in diachronic as well as in the synchronic systems. However, if before it was possible to juxtapose the positions of controller and controlled, in the mass-media society the face-to-face opposition is vanishing in the network of cables and wires. As two different examples of the interactivity between controller and controlled, TV and computers might be considered.
Who gives birth to a controller? The answer (the question) is the one to the question (answer) of who is a controlled? Power gives birth to the separation of controller and controlled. And power is coming into the light through the possession of knowledge. Knowledge is always appearing at the expense of time (and on account of time). The result of the expense-of-time operation is epistemological profit. Which might be considered as morphogenetic field of epistemology, as capture-mechanisms working at the expense of the time lag (Nachträglichkeit) between future and present. The high speed of the process creates a situation of: from one side (Ego side), the illusion of overcoming of psychic trauma of the meeting with a fake reality (and any meeting with any kind of reality is trauma); and, from the other side (Inter-Ego, or Super-Ego side), the interweaving of human extensions into the common nervous network (M.McLuhan), or noosphere (V. Vernadsky). This process might be considered at the same time as technological Aufhebung, as well as Selbst-Aufhebung. This situation on the level of controller-controlled leads to an inside scandal between Ego and Super-Ego, to the hypertrophy of conscience, and then to the possibility of dissociation of a human being, to the mechanisms of the syndrome of psychic automatism. The example of an exploitation of the ‘high-jacking’ of time and the syndrome of psychic automatism is virtual reality, a next religious Golem of consciousness, constructing ‘future gadget’ at the account of taking a being from the present to the ‘reality’ programmed and controlled by the past.