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diff --git a/discourse_teleconferencing.otx b/discourse_teleconferencing.otx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..66ed882 --- /dev/null +++ b/discourse_teleconferencing.otx @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +\chap The Discourse of Teleconferencing +{\leftskip=0.25in\rightskip=0.25in\it\noindent +Preface to PLANET and EIES texts by John G. Hanhardt +also published in {\rm All Area} \#2, Spring 1983, p.71.} + +\rulebreak + +\Q{By saying everything as one would write it one no longer does anything but read by speaking.} +\Qs{Jean-Jacques Rousseau, \booktitle{Essays on the Origin of Language}} + +\Q{You are the one who writes and the one who is written.} +\Qs{Edmond Jabès, \booktitle{The Book of Questions}} + +\Q{The deeper one probes into its elements, the more unexplored the language seems.} +\Qs{F.D.E. Schliermacher, \booktitle{Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts}} + +Computer teleconferencing is a recent technological development which establishes both a new form and means of producing and distributing a written text. In this system, keyboard terminals are joined by telephone to computers, creating teleconferencing networks. The terminal, rather than operating within the mechanical technology of the traditional typewriter or oral dimension of the telephone, embodies a post-industrial, electronic technology that generates both real time communication, and texts which can be stored in the computer, edited, retrieved, and transmitted. Teleconferencing, when operating at full potential, is a conceptual tool that may significally alter our habits of communication. The intellectual and social \dq{working through} of capabilities first developed within the military and scientific sectors is only now beginning. The museum is one traditionally determined place for selection, display storage, and analysis of objects. Writing is a complex cognitive process creating a material discourse of infinite possibilities. Joining the museum context to the production of writing through teleconferencing affords radically new means of cultural exchange and documentation. + +The Film and Video Department of the Whitney Museum of American Art turned to teleconferencing in order to engage these possibilities in planning for a future project that addresses the impact of the new technologies on art making and distribution. Rather than only initiating a symposium, with presentation of formal papers, we wanted to develop a preliminary telecommunications procedure for on-going work that would combine familiar and more novel elements in the production, interpretation, and display of art. This model would begin by inviting participants to explore the design of a teleconference for a specified period of time. Their experience and the information gathered would only then be incorporated into formal presentations. A third stage would have the conferees develop their exchanges further by re-engaging the teleconference network. + +In discussions on how the implications of a post-industrial culture and an emerging epistemology of information might be explored by the Film and Video Department, Frank Gillette suggested we conduct an initial teleconference as a conceptual workshop. Arranged by Brendan O'Regan, a specific conference \dq{New Technologies and the Arts} was set up on the EIES system, and O'Regan, also provided a position paper \dq{On the Responsive Environment} to which we could respond. James Harithas and Steven Poser joined us later on. The plan was to communicate among ourselves and also possibly contact others within the total EIES system. + +The capabilities of teleconferencing as a communications tool became immediately apparent in its daily operation. It is a lightweight and portable system with the terminal's access to the network as simple as dialing an access number on the phone and attaching a receiver to the terminal. The first step was to check in to see if there were any messages waiting sent by fellow conferees and then to check if anyone was currently on line using the system. After overcoming the practical problems of learning to use the terminal and the proper procedure for access codes, and coping with \dq{down time} when the entire system was not operational, the most immediate and profoundly engaging issue was the role time played in one's perception of teleconferencing. The teleconference was always available; it never turned off. + +Its presence, therefore, began to manifest tangible temporal qualities. One could always send a message; there was always someone on line no matter what time of day, since participants were working within all time zones. Whenever one wanted to work on a text, one was accessible to others, to new messages, new dialogue, new questions. Thus time became material, shaping the discussion, however subtly, as the roll of the paper provided a potentially infinite text. One changed in relation to individuals as questions went unanswered, or answered, and the linear sequence of reasoning became enmeshed in three dimensional coordinates of space and time as the printed text fused present and past (stored) times. + +The body of text we have here takes more the form of a monologue than a whole multi-layered discourse. It is an expressive performance, with critical asides, within the teleconferencing system. My first hope was realized, for although we did not approach the completeness teleconferencing promises, it was an engaging learning experience. What is needed is to establish more interactive discourse that seeks in its growth a harmony of purpose, a desire to make the presence of the layered text a factor in dialogic exchange that would not only be the means for contact, but for the construction of discourse. In teleconferencing, time materializes in a series of feed-back relationships, mediated by the terminal and the total system. The dynamic of exchange in time offers the possibility of creating whole communities that may contribute a rich new layer in the archeology and history of knowledge. + +I foresee as the next step in this project the establishment of a number of conferences that would be, to use a biologic metaphor, cultures of individuals linked by common interests, allowing time for small groups to understand the teleconferencing process and to realize together the potential for the development of thought. In order to create such a community of discourse, the teleconferencing text must become a multi-dimensional semiotic of communication and information processing. The infinite teleconferencing text becomes like Freud's 'mystic writing pad,' a cultural and archeological site of a future individual, and collective, memory. As in Freud's semiotic question to a patient speaking in fragmentary phrases, \dq{who is speaking to whom?}\foots{Dean MacConnell and Janet Flower MacConnell, \booktitle{The Time of the Sign} (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1982) p. 11.} the full potential of the semiotics of teleconferencing demands not the Levi-Straussian bricoleur, or a one-dimensional session of monologues, but a dialogic intercourse of narratives postulating the ground for a new community of texts.
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