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THEORY ON DEMAND
borders between theory and practice have been blurred at best, the resituated modalities must still be grounded not only in extant texts, both media and print, but by considering the audience’s experience as well. Rethinking methodologies (theoretical, practical, etc.) can also include resituated ideology. There is a paradox that at the end of the second millennium, the prevailing theoretical ideology in Western art and performance centers on French Poststructuralism. As an ideology, postmodernism breaks down master narratives, suggesting discursive heterogeneity, yet has become a canon in its own right and is in many ways considered a priori in many cases. Through its own principles of de-privileging master narratives, we must realize that postmodernism is only one set of ideas in contrast with paradigms like Process Philosophy, Object-Oriented Ontology, and so on. Resituating theory and practice within a larger experiential framework suggests that works can embody any ideology within a given frame of reference. In order to do so, we must also be aware of the ideology at play (postmodernism, (trans/re/hyper)modernism,3 humanism, Neo-Platonism, etc.) to compellingly deliver a message in a given setting. But how is that message delivered? In examining practices that utilize theoretical and experiential strategies, we will look at two ‘events’ in which different configurations create their own critique. In my work ‘Grasping at Bits’ (included in this collection),4 a text about intellectual control and art on the Internet, is broken apart from the linear textual model into modular paragraph-statements. It is grouped by topical association through the use of a dynamically-linked mind map interface in its online version.5 This interface allows the ‘reader’ to navigate through the discursive space of the essay in a spatial fashion as I expand on in Art in the Age of Dataflow, leaving it up to individuals to create their own narrative structures. The paragraph-statements in the online version are linked via four redundant interface structures as well as pop-up annotations and color coding to denote affinity to certain conceptual themes. Grasping at Bits is not only a nonlinear critical essay in its online version, but also incorporates elements of interactivity, design, information architecture, and aesthetics to allude to more lyrical and structural forms than the traditional essay. It plays upon the discontinuities that hypertextual narratives present by virtue of their nonlinearity, as well as mixing media forms for performative theoretical spaces through which the reader can explore and experience. Grasping at Bits reflects a self-awareness of the heterogenous nature of the media environment it represents. Under the framework of spatial narrative and hyper-browsing, the practitioner can incorporate other experiential tactics to (re)present a theory of the eclectic, including multimedia, performance, and personal engagement with the audience. The rather rarefied intellectual frame of reference that contemporary, and not just electronic, art practice occupies often creates
3. Marcos Novak, From the Invencao (Sao Paulo, 1999) and Living Architectures (Banff, 2000) conferences. Novak posits that additional layers of society are developing in addition to those previously theorized, creating a ‘trans’ modernity, the prefix trans- suggesting a parallel existence of several modes of existence at once. 4. Patrick Lichty, Grasping at Bits, Interactive Hyperessay, http://www.voyd.com/gab. 5. See screen capture in this article for reference.