Ontology: The Structure of the Medium

One of the main problems both in theory and in aesthetic practice is evidently the structure of the medium itself, whether we are dealing with individual personal computers or computer networks. In determining what qualities of the new media are really important and could be decisive for a digital aesthetics, it turned out that approaches based on the history of ideas and technology—that is, diachronic approaches—collided with synchronic, phenomenological ones. The essential quality of a computer proved to be its processuality; but what material bases make this possible and how does this effect aesthetic production? If, in keeping with Hanjo Berressem, energy or electricity is viewed as the basis of processuality and of activities left up to the user in analog media, especially books, then the problem gets shifted away from the computer medium to another medium. Simon Biggs and Florian Cramer put forward the argument that computers are not necessarily electronic but are—in terms of technological history—first of all mechanical models (from Babbage’s calculating engines of the early nineteenth century to Alan Turing’s computer model, the Turing Machine). The fact nevertheless remains that the basic structure of a computer, comprised of hard- and software, is decisive for the present treatment of the phenomena of computers and the Internet. Simon Biggs’s remarks with respect to materiality were also derived from a diachronic perspective: computers and the Internet are constructions, according to Biggs, that follow from cultural and social, and possibly econopolitical, developments, and are therefore based on time-dependent conventions.

An ontology, however, is concerned with the qualities of an existing medium; to that extent—at least regarding the new media—it results from a synchronic view on the basis of the present status quo. This is why we cannot ignore the computer’s symbol structure, which for one thing, creates a specific aesthetics and, for another, is also the subject and material of many computer- and net-based artistic projects.[3] This symbol structure—from 0 and 1 (on/off) to compiler languages to programming languages—makes up the complexity of the medium. It becomes a problem for the average user when it lacks transparency, because users can no longer perceive it at the level they can access. Not without reason could a shift in emphasis be observed in recent years in the evolution of computer and net art from text and multimedia experiments to code and software projects that attempt to make these levels visible. Florian Cramer was consistent in insisting on the significance of the codes and the software developed from them as the essential characteristic of the computer and as an aesthetic foundation. The term “codework,” (Sondheim 2001, 1, 4) which Alan Sondheim coined for such artistic projects, does not seem to be very useful, however, as Ursula Hentschläger critically remarked, because “everything is codework.” This also applies, of course, for classical literary work that uses the code of language, which is transmedial in principle.

Although Sondheim stresses in his article that in his view “code” refers to the specific computer symbolism or the programming language, on this point it becomes clear that confusing terminology presents a basic problem, since “code” and “medium” are not precisely distinguished from one another. When Florian Cramer speaks of literature as being fundamentally independent from media and appearing in various media in both spoken and written forms, he is actually speaking of language as a transmedial code and not of literature as a term that was and still is tied to the printed word in the perception of literary studies. It appears to be indispensable from an ontological perspective to distinguish between the definition of medium and that of code. If this distinction is made—if only with respect to whatever one is currently discussing—then it becomes easier to answer the other question that also brought heated debate: whether computers and the Internet truly bring forth anything “new.”

Florian Cramer and Friedrich W. Block[4] supported the notion that, precisely in reference to literature, there is much in computer and net art that could be traced back to historical ideas, so that from an aesthetic point of view nothing really innovative results. Giselle Beiguelman, however, countered with the opinion that it is precisely the materiality of the computer that is able, fundamentally, to transform language and thus literature as well—links and programming can be used to transform a text into an “intelligent object.”

In my view, a fundamental distinction that is discernable in these two positions must be made here. From the perspective of the history of ideas, some doubt in the innovation is certainly justified. Ideas of interactivity, multi- and intermediality, synaesthesia, etc., have their histories, but they are also altered through the media used to implement them. If language is understood as a transmedial code that can use various media without any significant loss of meaning, then it becomes apparent when looking at the history of the media that the code can never be rendered in another medium without any structural changes. Even if the essential messages remain intact, the respective medium imprints its signature into the code; consequently, every medium creates something new, even if it works with preexistent codes.

With reference to the essential characteristics of computers and the Internet, a kind of dualism surfaced in the course of the discussions. On the one hand were the code-based symbol levels of a computer that can hardly be perceived by the user; on the other hand the “screen aesthetics,” or whatever is displayed to the user on the screen. This presented more of a problem for theorists, whereas the artists, especially Simon Biggs, Ursula Hentschläger, Zelko Wiener, and Giselle Beiguelman, were largely in agreement that the two could hardly be separated. They viewed the process, that is, the “behavior”—as Simon Biggs called it—of the computer as defined by the symbol levels, as becoming visible on the screen for the user. That which is perceivable reflects the underlying structures and to that extent is not a surface; instead it emerges from the interaction of the individual levels.