About Siegfried Zielinski’s lecture Inst: Gerar Edizel, Elizabeth Dobie by Moyi Zhang 03/29/11
From what I can understand, his method of research and dimension of study in media are still very impressive. The lecture didn’t solve the questions I have but raised up even more questions to me afterward. I start to think the relationship between art and media. Zielinski was talking about the issuesas below, Art before the media, Art with the media, Art through the media, Art after the media
I am not quite sure what’s that mean exactly even he explained a lot in his lecture. Are they separated subjects that could come one after the other? Or do they attach to each other or living in each other? Is art pushing the movement of media or is media inspiring the art? I am wondering how could he bring the idea of art into “Deep time in media”. Another question is why his research of media only refers to electronic media? I understand what he said: electricity is the soul of new media. It is definitely true, and it is fascinating to think electricity as God’s present in the world. I am sort of thinking what if there is a stronger power being used rather than electricity in the future? Will it make the meaning of media essentially different? Isn’t become fetishistic if we believe something can do everything? Also, I’m asking myself what is the diving force of the development of media. Is it art? Magical thinking? Problem solving? Capital? Every single step people took, every decision people made in the history of media, such as the moment while Kircher places the transparent strips of glass with the images in front of the lens instead of between the light source and the lens, the form of cinema was being created! Even through he never think of making a type of cinema at all. Still he became a key figure without being aware of what he has contributed to the media. Maybe he just doing it for fun, but history recognizes him and places him in a certain point in its complicated constellation. He didn’t choose his own position. So from my point of view, people are not making history, history made the people. However, is it still important to know the individual purpose of making things? When Zielinski did the research around the people who contributed to the
development of new media, he didn’t mention much about that. He just put the fact that what they have done. I’m not questing this kind of way of research. I thought it is just an interesting thing to reflect on, especially when the social value of capitalism is generally taking over the whole other values in the modern age. Value is counted by price. People are pursuing an easier life, a faster movement or how to hunt more information. Media signifies the progress of the society. It is not considered simply as tool but the power. A person who owns the strongest media has the strongest power. Media has to be eliminated extremely fast to meet our endless demands. It creates an electrical ecosystem and came into a self-natural selection. Media are being improved on top of other media. Newer generation kills the older generation. No one is doubling that. We just allow it happen and we believe that is what should happen. People lost the right to choose media. Media comes to the people. People have to use the newer ones passively. Otherwise, they couldn’t catch up the pace of the changing. Consequently, many kinds of older media became junks and being forgotten right away. There’s even no graveyard to bury them. I’m very glad to see Zielinski made the cartography for the anarchaeology of the media. There is definitely no center. It is a parallel movement among the geographical regions correspondly. It structured exactly the same way as the “deep time”. Deep time is not organized in a liner way from bottom to top, but a time sphere spinning around, shifting and expanding all the time. It has no plan, no goal, no director and no leader. It’s also amazing to see the researches upon different media from different countries and ages. It reminds me the word in the bible “There is nothing new under the sun”.