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Visions, utopias and politics in the emerging digital world — Marie Lechner

An essay written by Marie Lechner for Welcome to the Future! presents a historical selection of art and culture CD-ROMs and electronic artworks published on floppy disks, mostly produced in the 1990s. It showcases early pioneering works in new media and digital arts, conveying many visions and utopias surrounding the emerging digital world.

This article offers a historical overview of early 1990s cyberculture, closely linked to Billy Idol's fifth studio album, Cyberpunk. Super interesting, highly recommended reading!

In 1992 the science fiction novelist William Gibson and the artist Dennis Ashbaugh presented Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) - an unusual work of art, printed in an extremely limited edition, consisting of a large, printed volume containing a 3.5" floppy disk embedded in a hollowed-out cavity cut into the back pages of the book. The program that it contained, an electronic poem written by Gibson on the ephemeral nature of memory, had the unusual distinction of being able to be read just once before it self-destructed. Once launched on a Mac computer of that era, the disk scrolled down through the 300 lines, then applied an encryption software to make them disappear. In the same way, the pages of the artist’s book were covered in lines of DNA code, printed in photo-sensitive ink which gradually fades on exposure to light.

A metaphor for the rapid deterioration of memory, death and obsolescence are built into the work itself through the choice of the floppy disk as its transmission medium - a technology which, in 1992, was already in the process of disappearing. The technology of the future at that time was the CD-ROM and the World Wide Web: This was the same year that Mosaic was created, the first web browser that would make the information highways accessible to all. Floppy disks are the perfect example of the rapid obsolescence of data storage systems. And, irrespective of the fact that Gibson’s original intention was for the reader to be able to read the work only once, even if the poem was still in circulation in its original format today, most of us would be unable to read it.

This is true for a many of the works shown in Welcome to the Future ! The floppy CD-ROM Revolution presented at iMAL, a historic collection of electronic works on diskettes, CD-ROMS on art and culture, produced mainly in the 90s and presented on the original vintage machines or emulated ones.

The title was inspired by the enthusiastic female voice which welcomes the user to Beyond Cyberpunk, one of the oldest relics featured in the exhibition, which reflects the frenzy of the time. Published in 1990, Beyond Cyberpunk, ‘A Do-it-Yourself Guide to the Future’, touches on everything relating to the nascent cyberculture and its roots in science fiction. A sort of instant snapshot of the technoculture of the early 90s, the user was able, directly from his or her computer desktop, to explore an ‘impressive’ (for that time) interactive database: 5.5 megabytes (a CD-ROM, by comparison, has a capacity of 100 times that) of manifestos, essays, science fiction literature, references to books, films, comics, fanzines as well as a glossary to help them become familiar with this new jargon. Made with HyperCard, one of the first hypermedia systems to be marketed by Apple in 1987, this canonical example of hypertext, liberally sprinkled with multimedia surprises, comprised no less than five disks. The New York Times wrote at the time: "Beyond Cyberpunk is a book made for the computer, not the printed page, and is a premonition of the direction we might be going in." It also bears witness to that moment when cyberpunk, the underground subculture born in the 80s, began to infuse into the broth of mainstream pop.

The prefix ‘cyber’ (from the Greek ‘kubernan’, to steer or govern), gave rise to cybernetics, which was formally defined by Norbert Wiener around 1945 as "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine." 2 By extension, this prefix is used to give a futuristic slant to the most diverse of objects. In popular culture, ‘cyber’ has hence been applied to everything that has a vague connection with robotics, microcomputers, networks or automation. Cyberpunk originally meant a kind of dark and cynical science fiction describing a globalized world saturated with technology, an ultra-capitalistic, decadent society at the mercy of cartels. Wrapped in portable computers, its outsider (anti)heroes, half-punk, half-nerd, solitary hackers consuming a panoply of drugs, roam the network wearing virtual reality helmets and sensory consoles. Individuals are ‘improved’ by technology and dependent on it (bone grafts exoskeletons etc.) when they are not its organic links.

This literary movement, born in 1982 under the auspices of a group of writers including Bruce Sterling, Paul Di Filippo, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley etc. counts amongst its authors William Gibson, the most influential of them and author of the seminal novel Neuromancer, published in 1984. In it the author, who originates from the punk rock milieu, invented the word ‘cyberspace’, this monstrous data space, this global electronic matrix he described as "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...”. This vision was to have a powerful influence on scientists and engineers working on the development of the internet and virtual environments, as well as on Hollywood movies (from Johnny Mnemonic to The Matrix by the Wachowskis, which Gibson described as "the ultimate artifact of cyberpunk").

In his strangely clairvoyant manifesto, Is There A Cyberpunk Movement ? (1992), Gareth Branwyn, one of the authors of Beyond Cyberpunk, writes: "The future has imploded into the present. With no nuclear war, a new battlefield is on people’s minds and souls. Mega-corporations are the new governments. Computer-generated info domains are the new frontiers. And though there is better living through science and chemistry, We are all becoming cyborgs. The computer is the new cool tool. And though they say all information should be free, It is not. Information is power and currency in the virtual world we inhabit, So mistrust authority. Cyberpunks are the true rebels (...)”.*

The influence of this group of writers, who were followed particularly by the generation that grew up in the world of computers, networks and cable TV, expanded as the use of the microcomputer became increasingly widespread in the 90s, to the extent that the interfaces were becoming increasingly graphic with advanced multimedia functionality, that the web extended its net, giving birth to cyberculture. This ‘cyberdelic’ culture reached its fullest development in California, crucible of the hippy counterculture, in the form of an explosive cocktail of ‘new ageism’, libertarianism and technological utopia, fuel for psychotropic substances, which are supposed to be responsible for reprogramming the brain.

In his book ’From Counterculture to Cyberculture’ published in 2006, Fred Turner unraveled the complex web of links that united hippies from the US West Coast and the digital revolution of the 90s, LSD and the microcomputer, neopastoral communities and net tribes. The author provided an in-depth analysis of how cyberculture and fantasy were related to the information technologies that grew in the compost the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC), a catalog of tools and visionary ideas designed to help aspirants to return to the land which, in its turn, went on to irrigate the Silicon Valley ‘garage innovation’ culture.

The dystopian, techno-entropic future of the cyberpunks was slowly being eroded to make way for a more enthusiastic rhetoric, extolling the potential transformative and emancipative virtues of the new technologies, the promise of greater democracy, new types of virtual communities, and the liberation of the creative capacities of individuals. These tools gave rise to a new language, a new visual aesthetics, new worlds to explore, but more particularly, to new business. There was considerable enthusiasm for virtual realities: immersion interfaces such as the Head Mounted Display and ‘data gloves’. It was a time of cyber euphoria, as described by Jaime Levy, who was aged 26 at the time, and a pioneer of electronic magazines published in the early 1990s on DIY disks, baptized Cyber Rag and Electronic Hollywood, and enhanced with sound, graphics, quizzes and rudimentary games that she programmed herself. "Computer technology has revolutionized the production of independent art”, she wrote in a press release enthusing about the potential of electronic publishing, which allows us to use personal computers “not just to create words and pictures, but to disseminate them in formats that keep them alive and dynamic... as opposed to the frozen quality of ink on paper”.** This did not, however, prevent the ‘cyber-journalist’ from delivering sarcastic reviews of computer fairs and high- tech art events on the West Coast such as Cyberthon or CyberArts, a sort of techno-Woodstock held in 1990, 1991 and 1992. "CyberArts is the new frontier in creativity, where the worlds of science and art meet. Where computer technologies, visual design, music and sound, education and entertainment merge to form a new artistic territory called interactive multimedia" wrote Miller Freeman in CyberArts: Exploring Art & Technology."*** This is where the idea of ‘new media’, as represented by the contents of the CD-ROM, kiosks and interactive installations, were first commercially defined.

1991 was also the year in which MacroMind, a company founded in 1984 by Marc Canter, one of the pioneers of ‘multimedia’, became Macromedia (absorbed by Adobe in 2005). It is within the framework of Macromind that Canter, formerly an opera singer, developed the ‘Director’ multimedia creation tool (used in the great majority of CD-ROMs) that would allow ordinary people to create art with computer programs, borrowing, in his words "the ideals of his father (a leftist politician) and his grandfather (a well-known American communist), and applying them to software." Although he was fired from Macromedia, the visionary remained convinced that software could change the world. The ambitious CD-ROM ”Meet MediaBand’, published in 1994, gave a demo of what the future of the interactive musical experience might look like. He gives an optimistic definition of what Multimedia might look like as "the blending of several modes of communication to more fully stimulate the sensory glance of the viewer, to more fully say what needs to be said. Moving pictures combined with text and graphics, and animations, and interactivity. Less like media and more like real life".****

From Billy Idol Cyberpunk to Techno-Capitalism

A sign of the times, the abrasive cyber-reporter Jaime Levy also became the designer and developer of the disk accompanying Billy Idol’s 1993 concept album Cyberpunk, which takes on board the aesthetics of this counterculture of the late 80s and early 90s in order to better dig his own grave. A punk rocker on stage, newly converted to the computer and the internet which, according to him, perpetuate the DIY ethic, presented his album as "a futuristic response to the grunge movement" that engulfed the United States. For the others, he endorsed the definitive disappearance of cyberpunk and its subversive nature, which was swallowed up by ‘technotainment’, cleaned of its dark and destructive elements: "The future gets fun again," announced the headline of the cover page from Wired (Wired 8.01) in 2000.

This ‘interactive wave’ that swept the United States ended up crossing the Atlantic even if, ‘cyber’ was associated more with CD-ROM than with cyberpunk in the eyes of the general public in Europe. The first French multimedia magazine published on CD-ROM, the ‘Interactive Wave’ was created in late 1992. The user was welcomed by crys of seagulls, and the promise of something exotic, a new horizon at a time when the stock of CD-ROM drives was less than 50,000 units. Although in 1994 less than 14% of all households were equipped with PCs, and the internet was not yet in competition with Minitel, "the multimedia era has arrived" according to a Livres Hebdo supplement, published on the occasion of Milia, a trade fair held in Cannes in January 1994 dealing in illustrated books and new media.

"The gold rush will be in 1994", affirmed the magazine (a prophecy that was to be carried forward from year to year), which gave an inventory of the 350 French-language digital discs due for publication in 1994 which included cultural CD-ROMs, user manuals, encyclopedia, dictionaries, ‘edutainment’ as well as some artistic CD-ROMs. "At the end of 1995, France should have been caught up in the whirlwind of diskettes, interactive CD-ROMs, CDIs and other multimedia products connected to the television or the computer, awaiting online access, via networks: video on demand, online shops, educational programs, games etc.”. The journalist, however, saw fit to temper this statement, observing that "these predictions involve some media ravings about the all-screen civilization of tomorrow which may sometimes make us smile.”

A major international conference, entitled Doors of Perception, was held in Amsterdam in the autumn of the same year, organized by the Netherlands Design Institute and Mediamatic, a leading reference magazine for lovers of new media (which, since 1993, has been accompanied by a CD-ROM). This event, which was inspired by the TED conferences, brought together the cream of the experts, not only of design, information technologies and computer science, but also artists, the media and major high-tech companies, in order to reflect on the “economic and cultural challenges posed by interactivity ". The discussions resulted in a strange CD-ROM featuring experimental navigation, which went on to become the winner of numerous awards.

Simultaneously, the use of the internet was spreading at an incredible speed, and its transformation into a commercial space was becoming increasingly apparent. In 1995 Universe > Interactive, an ephemeral French monthly, dedicated to this emerging culture, appeared. In the cover headline of the tenth and penultimate issue, published in June 1996,***** entitled Post-Cyber, the disenchantment is already palpable in the writings of Ariel Wizman. "We will never really know what ‘cyber’ was. Or even if it ever existed. Some will remember it as a movement of great optimism, of reconciliation between man and the machine, of faith in the renaissance on screen of such endangered values as communication, employment, democratic participation... " wrote the columnist. Others will never forget the words “The sky … the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” with which William Gibson initiated a new type of literary genre. They will certainly remember the naked torsos of the ravers, the dreadlocks of the inventor of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, the blinking glasses and the promise made by Timothy Leary to commit suicide live on CU-SeeMe, the hackers etc."

The journalist observed that no two forces could ever have worked better together than that of the cyber-libertarians and capitalism. The romantic counter-cultural vision of technology fits perfectly with the laissez-faire approach of the new economy. And it still persists today, as much in the slogan "Don’t Be Evil" of the giant Google as in the communities of open-source software, or of the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia. "The cyber explosion of the different cultures on the Net will only have served to offer them a media tool via which they will soon have to compete with the giants of entertainment and ‘content’”. An intuition that the Net confirmed with the internet bubble that began to swell in 1995 and to explode in 2000. Focusing retrospectively on pre-www cybercultures pioneered by Mondo2000, the magazine on acid, before being standardized by Wired, the media theorist Geert Lovink observed that, at the end of the 90s, "the bizarre, Luddite, apocalyptic aspect had to be replaced and turned into a productive, optimistic cultural machinery with only one goal: to make money as fast as possible."******

NOTES

*Opening Manifesto edited with additions by Billy Idol used under license, from "Is There A Cyberpunk Movement?" by Gareth Branwyn © 1992 Published in Billy Idol Cyberpunk floppy joint to the corresponding cd audio album http://userpages.bright.net/~gfabasic/html/cybrpunk.htm. **Press release of Electronic Hollywood (1993). ***CyberArts: Exploring Art & Technology (Miller Freeman, 1992). ****Meet Mediaband https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-K3ibFm-Do. *****http://fr.1001mags.com/parution/univers-interactif/numero-10-juin-1996. ******"The Luddite, apocalyptic aspect had to be replaced and turned into a productive, optimistic cultural machinery with only one goal: to make money as fast as possible". Geert Lovink in Recent Futures - TAZ, Wired and the Internet - An Early History of 90s Cyberculture. http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9912/msg00202.html.

SOURCE

Text written by Marie Lechner, journalist specialised in digital cultures, and researcher at Pamal (Preservation-Archeology-Media art Lab) at the École Supérieure d'Art in Avignon (pamal.org).

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