The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 31

Significantly better answers to ontological, gnoseological, epistemological, and even historic questions have to reflect such and other cognitively relevant perspectives of knowledge.

Philosophy undergoes a process of mathematization in order to gain access to science and improve its own efficiency. It has become logic oriented, more computational. It has adopted genetic schemes for explaining variation and selection, extending to the current memetic conversations and methods. It is not unusual for philosophers to abandon the pattern of rehas.h.i.+ng older theories and views, and to attempt to understand pragmatic exigencies and their reason. The scientification of philosophy could not have happened under the scrutiny of language and the domination of literacy. Neither could we expect, within the literate framework, anything comparable to Plato's Dialogues, to the great philosophical systems of Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, to the literary seduction of Heidegger, Sartre, or Martin Buber.

In scientific disguise

Developing, parallel to common language (which philosophers frequently call natural language), different types of sign systems, humans utilize the latter's mediating force in order to increase the efficiency of their action. "Give me a fixed point and I'll move the world" is the equivalent philosophical statement characteristic of the civilization of the lever and pulley. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty says in a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less." "The question is," says Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." Reading the dialogue from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Gla.s.s, with the magnificent works of great philosophers (from Plato to Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel, Peirce and many more) in mind, one understands Alice's trouble. With the exception of Wittgenstein, n.o.body really seems to have been bothered by the ability people have to make words mean many things.

Today, we could be directed to a philosophical paraphrase in which, instead of a fixed point, the need for a sign system (a language) is spelled out. Adapted to the scope of the conceived practical experience, such a sign system, when put into practice, will change the world, will "move" it. Diagrammatic thinking, the powerful cognitive model Peirce advanced, exemplifies the idea. Cybernetics, biogenetics, computers, and research in artificial intelligence and artificial life, as well as political, social, aesthetic, or religious concepts are examples of domains where such sign systems have been devised.

They have facilitated forms of human self-const.i.tution that contribute to the contradictory image of today's world. Such languages reflect the fundamental process of progressive mediation, partic.i.p.ate in the diversification of the languages used, and affect the status and value system of the ideal of literacy. They serve as the scientific disguise of philosophy.

Clarity (difficult to achieve in natural language), evidence, and certainty seem guaranteed in the language of science. In addition, objectivity and the ever seductive truth, for which philosophy was never known, are also apparently within reach.

There is to philosophic discourse an internal reason for its continuous unfolding: People const.i.tuting themselves as philosophers change as the world they live in changes. Human reasoning is part of the world; the ability and, moreover, the desire to think of new questions, attempt answers, and doubt our own ability to reach the right answer are part of what defines the human being. The consequences of mediation in philosophy should not be ignored. Mediation implies, on one hand, a high degree of integration of human praxis (to the extent of making individual contribution anonymous), and on the other, a no less high degree of the subject's independence in respect to the object of work or reasoning, or the object represented by the other partic.i.p.ants in human praxis. While it seems appropriate for science to know more and more about a narrower range of subjects, it contradicts the image of philosophy as it is formed in language and embodied in the ideal of literacy. Due to this metaphorically defined deepening of knowledge, each philosopher is more independent of the other, but more intensely integrated than ever before due to the necessary interconnection of this knowledge. The meaning of this paradoxical situation is not easy to clarify. The overall process has followed two qualitatively contrary directions: 1) concentration on a precisely delineated aspect of knowledge or action in order to understand and control it; 2) abandoning interest in the whole as a consequence of the a.s.sumption that the parts will finally be reunited in the social integrating mechanism of the market, whether we want it or not.

We now have particular philosophies-of law, ethics, science, sport, recreation, feminism, Afro-Centrism-but no longer a comprehensive philosophy of existence.

The scientific disguise of philosophy contributes to its renewed struggle for legitimacy. It adopts concepts and methods pertinent to rationality. In order to deal with reason, or to do away altogether with questions of reasoning, it unfolds in science and technology. Durkheim tried to apply Darwin's natural selection model to explain labor division. At present, philosophers have become memeticians, and examine computational simulations of Darwinian principles in order to see how ideas survive and advance. Spencer believed that the increase of the productive power of work increases happiness. Present-day philosophers are eager to diagram the relation between work satisfaction and personality. Some even try to revive Compte's positivist philosophy, to improve upon past Utopian schemes, or to invent a calculus of intellectual well-being. Short of a philosophic inquiry, everything becomes a subject waiting for a philosopher who does not want to stay within the boundaries of the history of philosophy.

Once new movements, some better justified than others, and all reflecting the s.h.i.+ft from the authority-based civilization of literacy to the endless freedom of choice of the illiterate context, needed a powerful instrument to further their programs, they chose, or were chosen by, philosophy. Secularism and pluralism meet within philosophic concerns with the gay movement, feminism, multi-culturalism, integration of new technology, implications of aging, the new holisms, popular philosophy, s.e.xual emanc.i.p.ation, virtuality, and more along this line. In a way, this reflects the new awareness of efficiency that permeates philosophic activity, but also its struggle to maintain its relations to literacy. Legitimate doubt is generated by the choice of subjects that seem to attract philosophers, and by the apparent lack of philosophic matter. When the language is not obscure, the philosopher seems to discuss matters, not really question reasons, and even less advance ideas or explanatory models. Wholesale generalizations do not help, but one can really not escape the feeling that the process through which philosophy liberates itself from literacy has been less productive than the similar process of science's emanc.i.p.ation from language.

A journey through the many philosophically oriented Web sites reveals very quickly that even when philosophy opts out of the print medium, it carries over many of the limitations of literacy. The ability to open philosophic discourse, to adopt non- linearity, and to encourage dialogue free of the pressure of tradition is often signaled, but rarely accomplished. The medium is resisted, not enjoyed as an alternative to cla.s.sic philosophical discourse. Such observations have prompted the opinion that scientists are becoming the most appropriate philosophers of their own contributions.

Who needs philosophy? And what for?

At this point, one question naturally arises: Is philosophy relevant after all? Moreover, is it even possible without the partic.i.p.ation of natural language, or at least without this intermediary between philosophers and their public? In blunter terms, can we live without it? In the context in which efficiency expectations translate into a practical experience of an unprecedented degree of specialization, will philosophy turn into another mediating activity among people? Or will it be, as it was considered in the culture of a Romantic ideal, humanity's self-consciousness, as expressed in Hegel's philosophy? If indeed philosophy is absorbed into science, what can its purpose be?

As with literacy, the inclination is to suggest that, regardless of the new condition of language, philosophy remains possible and is indeed relevant. As far as its functions are concerned-mediating activity, humanity's self-consciousness, corpus of interpretive discourse about humanity and nature-they remain to be defined in the pragmatic context. It is needless to reiterate that within each scale of humankind, philosophy pursued different interests as these proved pertinent to efficiency expectations. Philosophers never contributed bread to the table nor artifacts. Their skill was to formulate questions, especially the very probing questions-"What is what?" and "Why?"-in their attempt to address the origins of things.

Deciphering the reason of things and actions-in other words, understanding the world and its apparent order (what the Greeks called eunomia)-made them simultaneously philosophers and interpreters of science. "How can we know?" and "How can we explain?" are subsequent questions, pursued more stringently by people in search of scientific rationality than by philosophers per se.

No historic account, no matter how detailed, can do justice to the definition of philosophy. Its subject changes as human beings change in the process of their practical self-const.i.tution. From philosophy, science and all the humanities (ethics, aesthetics, politics, sociology, law) evolved. Even our concern with language is of a philosophic nature. It seems that philosophy is, in the final a.n.a.lysis, the only authentic domain of abstraction. Its interest is not the individual, the concrete, the immediate, not even the idea, but the abstraction of these. Where other domains, such as mathematics, logic, linguistics, and physics are intent on understanding the abstract notions around which their domains are built, on giving them life in the context of practical experiences, philosophy seems driven by the quest for reaching the next level of abstraction, the abstraction of abstractions, and so on. Science uses abstraction as an instrument for reaching concreteness; philosophy follows the inverse path. There is always to the philosophic attempt a call for the next step, into the infinite. Each accomplishment is provisional. To experiment philosophically means not so much to search systematically for causes as to never end the inquiry. There are no right or wrong philosophic theories. Philosophy is c.u.mulative and self-devouring.

That people will never stop wondering what is what, the more their own activity will multiply the domain of existing ent.i.ties, goes almost without saying. That they will ask again and again how they can know, how they can be sure that what they know is true, or at least relevant, is also evident. The species is characterized by its ability to think, produce and master tools, acknowledge value, and const.i.tute itself as a community of shared concern and resources, through its playfulness and other characteristics (alluded to in terms such as h.o.m.o economicus, Zoon semiotikon, Zoon politikon, h.o.m.o ludens).

Probably more than all these partial qualifiers, the species is the only one known to question everything. As language experience marked the genetic condition of the human being, questioning marked it too, probably through language mechanisms in the first place. When the child articulates the first question, the entire genetic endowment is at work.

We are who and what we are in our inquisitive interaction with others. Our minds exist only through this interaction. This statement says in effect that to philosophize became part of the process of human self-const.i.tution and identification. The only referent of philosophy is the human being const.i.tuted in practical experiences. Together with other surviving literacies, philosophic literacy will be one of many. The philosophy of the civilization of illiteracy will reflect the circ.u.mstances of work and life characteristic of the pragmatic framework. It will also be subjected to the severe test of market exigencies as these reflect efficiency expectations characteristic of the new scale of humankind. Science can justify itself by the return in investment in new explanatory models. It also leads to new technologies and to higher levels of efficiency in human practical experiences. Philosophy certainly has a different justification. Philosophic necessity is evasive. Short of living off the past, as literacy, religion, and art do, it needs to refocus on reason as the compa.s.s of human activity. Focusing on alternative practical experiences, philosophy can practically help people to free themselves from the obsession with progress-seen as a sequence of ever-escalating records (of production, distribution, expectation)-and moreover, from the fear of all its consequences. It can also focus people's attention on alternatives to everything that affects the integrity of the species and its sense of quality, including the relation to their environment. When past, present, and future collapse into the illiterate frenzy of the instant, philosophy owes to those who question its articulations an honest approach to the question, "Is there a future?" But as this future takes shape in the presence of humans partaking in the open world of networked interactions, ba.n.a.lities will not do.

Art(ifacts) and Aesthetic Processes

Confusing as it is, a snapshot of everything that today goes under the names art and literature conveys at least a sense of variety. Forget the never-ending discussions of what qualifies as art and what does not. And forget the irreconcilable disputes over taste. What counts are practical experiences of self-identification as artist or writer, as well as involvement with artifacts eventually acknowledged within the experience as art or as literature, i.e., experiences through which the art public and readers.h.i.+p are const.i.tuted.

What comes to mind when we think about the art and literature of the civilization of illiteracy are not illiterate writers-although they exist-and not illiterate painters, composers, pianists, dancers, sculptors, or computer artists of all kinds. Rather, disparate examples of works, each remarkable in its own way (or altogether unremarkable), but above all marked by characteristics that distinctly disconnect them from the literate experience of art and literature capture our memory. Cautionary note ended. Here are the examples: surviving Auschwitz translated into a comic book parable populated by cats (depicting the n.a.z.is) and mice (depicting their victims); a Grammy Award returned by a famous singing group because someone else was doing the singing for them; the tear-jerkers from Disney Studios (a company whose audience is the world), cla.s.sic stories or history turned into feminist or politically correct musicals; paintings by a controversial artist (self-made or made by the market?), fetching prices as high as overvalued shares of a new Internet company, after he died of AIDS at an early age; the never-ending parade of computer animation miracles; the Web sites of uninterrupted aesthetic frenzy that would have delighted Andy Warhol, one of the authentic founders of art in the civilization of illiteracy, if anyone could pinpoint the beginning of this civilization.

These are examples. Period. Originality, aesthetic integrity, h.o.m.ogeneity, and artfulness are the exception. The process through which these examples were produced begs qualifiers different from art produced under the aegis of literate expectations. Today, art is produced much faster, embodied-or disembodied-in and disseminated through more media, and exhausted in a shorter time-sometimes even before it comes into being! Cycles of artistic style are abridged to the extreme of being impossible to define. Artistic standards are leveled as the democracy of unlimited access to art and literature expands their public, without effecting a deep rapport, a long-lasting relation, or a heightened aesthetic expectation. Never before has more kitsch been produced and more money spent to satisfy the obsession with celebrity that is the hallmark of this time.

Museums became the new palaces and the new shopping malls, opening branches all over the world, not unlike MacDonalds and fas.h.i.+on retail stores. And never before were more technological and scientific means involved in the practical experience of art, always on the cutting edge, not only because art is traditionally a.s.sociated with innovation. These new experiences make possible the transition from an individual, private, almost mystical, experience to a very public activity. Open a virtual studio on the Web, and chances are that many people will exercise their calling (or curiosity) on the digital canvas. Not infrequently, this activity is carried on at the scale of the integrated world: major concerts viewed on several continents, attempts to integrate art from all nations into a super-work, the melange of literatures fused into new writing workshops, distributed, interactive installations united in the experience of digital networks. Good taste and bad co-exist; p.o.r.nography resides as bits and bytes in formats not different from those of the most suave examples from art history. The Internet is the one and only uncensored place left on the earth. All these phenomena deserve to be understood as testimony to the change of the condition of human experience, and in the context of change from a literacy-dominated art to an art of many partial literacies, of mediations, and of relatively vague notions of value and significance.

Making and perceiving

Nature and culture meet in artistic practical experiences of human self- const.i.tution, as they meet in any other human experience. What makes their meeting extraordinary is the fact that what we see, or hear, or listen to is the expression of their intersecting. Through art, humans project sensorial, as well as cognitive, characteristics. The experience of structuring a category of artifacts, defined through their aesthetic condition, and the complementary experience of self-definition through aesthetically relevant actions const.i.tute the realm of the artistic. In their interaction with objects and actions resulting from such experiences, individuals conjure meaning as they define themselves in respect to the experiences in a given context. Like any other practical experience, the production of art belongs to the pragmatic framework. We are what we do: hunting, running, singing, drawing, telling stories, creating rhymes, performing a play. In their respective doings, artists identify themselves through particular apt.i.tudes and skills: rhythm, movement, voice, sense of color, harmony, synchronism, contrast. The emergence of language and the consecutive experience of recording led to the a.s.sociation of skills with the writing of the language, that is, drawing and reading it to others, performing it in rituals.

The domain of art seems to be characteristic only of the human species. Since the practical experience of art is so close to our biogenetic structural reality, while at the same time const.i.tutive of a non-existential domain, the making of art and the cultural appropriation of art are perceived as similar experiences. Nevertheless, language exercised coordination for the simple reason that successive motivations of the art experience-such as the mytho-magical, practical, ritual, s.e.xual, gnoseologic, political, or economic-and the underlying structure of art belong to different domains. The underlying structure of art defines its aesthetics. The underlying structure of magic, ritual, or the s.e.xual defines their respective condition, as it expresses human understanding of the unknown, or the many aspects of s.e.xuality.

The interaction between artist and society, once markets emerged and art was acknowledged as a product with its own ident.i.ty, resulted in specific forms of recurrence: recognition of the uniqueness of the work, of the artist, and of interpretive patterns. Once the framework for recognizing artworks as merchandise was established, transactions in artworks became transactions in the artist-society relation, with a lot of give-and-take that was difficult, if not impossible, to encode.

The nature of the relations can be partially understood by examining behaviors of artists, who are almost always seen as eccentric, a little off the middle of the road, and behaviors of the public. There is much instinctive interaction, and even more learned behavior, mediated through an experience const.i.tuted in and communicated through language.

Looking at a painting-once painting is acknowledged as artifact-is more than acknowledging its physical reality: the optical, and sometimes the textual, appearance, or the context of contemplation. The action of painting, sculpting, dancing, performing, or writing poetry or a novel is simultaneously an action of const.i.tuting oneself as artist or writer and projecting this self, as it results from the practical experience characteristic of such an endeavor, into the social s.p.a.ce of interactions. This is why art is in the first place expression, and only secondly communication. This is also why looking at a work is to const.i.tute the individual experience of context, in the first place, and only secondly to conjure and a.s.sign meaning. In both the action of painting and looking at a painting, biologically inherited characteristics, together with learned elements (skills), partic.i.p.ate in the process of const.i.tuting the being (the painter and the onlooker, for instance) as both individual and member of the community.

The natural and the acquired, or learned, interact. And in the course of time, the natural is educated, made aware of characteristics connected to culture rather than nature. Two simultaneous processes take place: 1) the recurrent interaction of those making art and those acknowledging it in their practical life; 2) establishment of patterns of interpretation as patterns of interaction mediated by the artwork. Language experiences take place in both processes. Consequently, artistic knowledge is acc.u.mulated, and art-related communication becomes a well defined practical experience, leading to self-identification such as art historian, art theoretician, art critic, and the like. The nature and characteristics of the practical experience of art-related language ought to be examined so that we can reach an understanding of the circ.u.mstances under which they might change.

Art and language

Language is a multi-dimensional practical experience. In the interaction between individuals who produce something (in this case, works of art) and those who consume them, self-const.i.tution through language makes coordination possible.

Production and consumption are other instances of human self-const.i.tution. Frequently, integration takes place in the process of exchanging goods or, at a more general level, values.

Drawing something, real or imaginary, and looking at the drawing, i.e., trying to recognize the drawn object, are structurally different experiences. These two practical experiences can be related in many ways: display the drawing and the object drawn side-by-side; explain the drawing to the onlookers; attach a description. Here is where difficulties start to acc.u.mulate. The artifact and the experience leading to it appear as different ent.i.ties. Descriptions (what is on paper or on canvas) lead to identification, but not to interaction, the only reason behind the artistic experience. Language subst.i.tutes its own condition for the entire physical-biogenetic level of interaction. It overplays the cultural, which is consequently made to represent the entire experience.

People speak about works of art, write about art, and read writings about art as though art had no phylogenetic dimension, only a phylocultural reality. Language's coordinative function is relied upon because of the dissimilarity between the practical experiences of making art and of appropriating it in the cultural environment. Through cultural experiences, the coordinating function of language extends to facilitating new forms of practical experiences a.s.sociated with making art: instruction, use of technology, and cooperation peculiar to artmaking. It also facilitates experiences of appropriation in the art market, the const.i.tution of inst.i.tutions dedicated to supporting education in art, the politics of art, and forms of public evaluation. Art implicitly expresses awareness, on the part of artists and public, of how persons interacting through artistic expression are changed through the interactions.

Language, especially in forms a.s.sociated with literacy, makes this awareness of reciprocal influence explicit. In the civilization of illiteracy, all non-literate means of information, communication, and marketing (e.g., songs, film, video, interactive multimedia) take it upon themselves to reposition art as yet another practical experience of the pragmatics of high efficiency peculiar to a humankind that reached yet another critical ma.s.s. It was not unusual for an artist in the literacy-dominated past to go through very long cycles in preparing for the work, and for the work itself to unfold after years of effort. It is quite the contrary in the case of the instantaneous gratification of a video work, of an installation, or of gestural art. Within the pragmatics of an underlying structure reflected in literacy, art was as confined as the experience of language, which represented its underpinning. The pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy makes the experience of art part of the global experience.

Many people wonder whether the basic, though changing, relation between art and language, in particular art and literacy, is unavoidable-furthermore, whether coordination can be a.s.sumed by a sign system other than literate language. In prelude to answering this question, I would like to point out that the influence of language on the arts, and even on the language arts (poetry, drama, fiction), was hailed by as many as deplored it.

To account for att.i.tudes in favor of or against an art connected to, or resulting from, high levels of literacy, i.e., of favoring an art emanc.i.p.ated from the domination of language, means to account for the change of art and its perceived meaning. The entire artistic effort to transcend the figurative and the narrative, to explore the abstract and the gestural, to explore its own reality, and to establish new languages testifies to this striving towards emanc.i.p.ation. Ascertaining that the art- language relation is not inescapable does not purport the invention of a new relation as an alternative to what culture acknowledges as the relatively necessary dependence of the two. As with the case of other forms of practical experiences discussed against the background of literacy, examination of directions of change and the attempt to conjure their meaning is required.

Human beings are agents of change and, at the same time, outside observers of the process of change. An observer can distinguish between the recurrent influence of the human biogenetic structure and the interactions based on this structure. An observer can also account for the role of the phylocultural, in particular the interactions this triggers. Restricted to the literate means of communication that I chose for presenting my arguments, I want to show that art and its interpretation are no longer the exclusive domain of literate language. Alternative domains of creation and interpretation are continuously structured as we project ourselves in new practical experiences.

Moreover, the eternal conflict inherent in art experiences, between what is and what unfolds, best expressed in the quest for innovation, integrates aspects of the conflict between literacy-dominated pragmatics and pragmatics dominated by illiteracy. Were I an artist, and were we all visually attuned, this topic could have been explained through one or several artworks, or through the process leading to an artwork. The role of processing current practical experiences of art needs to be properly highlighted. Exacerbated in the self-consciousness of art in the age of illiteracy, artistic processes take precedence over artifacts; the making of art becomes more important than the result. Artists would say that we exist not only in the environment of our language projections, but probably just as much (if not more) in the environment of our art projections.

Impatience and autarchy

The prophets of the end of the arts (Hegel was their most convincing, but most misunderstood, representative) were so confused by changes in the arts that, instead of approaching the dynamics of the process, they concentrated on the logical possibility that artistic practice is self-devouring and self-destructive. The initial end-of-the-arts prophecies were delivered during a time of relatively mild change in the status of the aesthetic appropriation of reality. Recent prophecies occurred in a very different context. It was only after World War I that aesthetic experiences really difficult to connect and integrate in an accepted explanation changed our notion and expectations of art. With the experience of disposable language, which the Dadaist movement submitted to a community already skeptical of language, came the experience of disposable art.

While literacy supplied a framework for (almost) consistent representations of values and norms, human practice at the border between literacy and a-literacy introduced and fostered inconsistency, believed to be the last resort of individual freedom. Eclecticism and consumption joined in this experience, since mixing without system or justification of any kind is like stating that everything is worth whatever people make of it, and therefore they want to have it. Re-evaluation of available art, good or bad, aesthetically relevant or kitsch, significant or insignificant, is part of this change. Once re-evaluation started, the processes of artmaking and aesthetic appropriation grew relatively disconnected. Where language, through literacy as a generalized medium of interaction, maintained cultural distinctions, such as the ones embodied in our notions of perspective, resemblance, and narration, the new art experience introduced distinctions at the natural level, such as instinct, energy, choice, and change. For as long as literacy maintained control and integration, viewers, irritated by conventions foreign to them, physically attacked works (such as Impressionist paintings) resulting from artistic practices different from those congruent to the practice of language and to the a.s.sociated expectations of seeing.

Art under the scrutiny of literacy is always model driven. Once the necessity of literacy as the only integrating mechanism was challenged by the need to maintain levels of efficiency for which language is not well equipped, new forms of artistic appropriation of reality and a new notion of reality itself became possible. Model was replaced by iconoclasm. Walter Benjamin captured some of these changes in the formula of "art in the age of its mechanical reproduction." The end of the aura, as Benjamin has it, is actually the aura's s.h.i.+ft from the artifact to the process and the artist. It corresponds not to the end of art's uniqueness, but to the artist's determination to get rid of all restrictions (of subject matter, material, technique) and to ascertain artistic freedom as the goal of artistic experience. But there are yet more possibilities for the emanc.i.p.ation of artists and their work.

As we enter the age of electronic reproduction, ma.s.sive communication that supports interactive multimedia, and information integration through networks (adapted for pipelining data and all kinds of images), we encounter such possibilities.

We are also subjected to new experiences-for instance, simultaneous transmission of art and interpretation, moreover the possibility to contribute our own interpretation, to become co-makers of whatever is presented to us through the very malleable digital media. Technology and change of aesthetic goals affect the scale of artistic experience, as well as the relation between artists and the world. Projects such as Walter de Maria's Lightening Field and Christo's Umbrella project (extended over California and j.a.pan) are examples of both the change of scale and of new interpretation processes. They are also vivid proof that globality permeates art at each level. So does the sense of rapid change, the acknowledgment and fear of perishability, and the open-endedness of the practical experience of making art. I doubt that anyone could have captured this sense as well as the Web site on which millions of viewers could experience the wrapping and unwrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin. Christo and Jeanne-Claude might remain the authors of record, but the event grew beyond the notion of authors.h.i.+p.

The artistic experience of the civilization of illiteracy is also characterized by impatience and autarchy. Things happen fast and relatively independent from one another. Artistic experiment always embodied characteristics of the practical experience of human self-const.i.tution. From petroglyphic expression to the art of our age, this happens again and again, obviously in context-dependent forms. The Dutch and Flemish Baroque artists celebrated results of industriousness through mythological themes. Before that, religion dominated up to and through the Renaissance. In the context of African, Asian, and South American art, the forms were different, but the pragmatic stamp is faultlessly evident. No wonder that in the settled age of literacy, art had a structure similar to that of the practical experience of literate language, regardless of the richness of its forms. It even called for experimental settings reminiscent of industry, or of the university context, as we know from art history. And it was sanctioned on the same pragmatic criteria as any other literate experiment: success (it was useful), or failure (it was discarded). Accordingly, it implied sequential development and a rather settled succession of operations. As artistic experimentation took place in line with all other experiments characteristic of the pragmatic context of literacy, it even resulted in an industrial model based on modularity, which the Bauhaus enthusiastically promoted. A number of shops produced thousands of ready-made artistic objects with a clear goal in mind: value through usefulness, function over form, functionality as aesthetics at work. Artistic practice and appropriation were coordinated through the still literate language of the market.

Art in the civilization of illiteracy is less a matter of invention and discovery, as it was in the civilization of literacy, and more one of selection, framing, and endless variation. Since the end of the last century, artists started breaking away from some of the characteristics implicit in the literate experience, such as hierarchy, centralism, and nationalism. This is not a time for rules and laws, unless they are taken from the books of the past, relativized and integrated in the tools needed in artistic practice, made into underlying principles. Appropriation is not of the object, but of the method, process, and context. The tools of this civilization are endowed with the literacy required for certain partial experiences. Artists, instead of acquiring skills, are trained to master such tools. In his series of ready-mades, Marcel Duchamp antic.i.p.ated much more than a style. He antic.i.p.ated a new kind of artistic practice and a different interrelation among the individuals involved in producing-literally selecting from the infinite repertory of ready- mades and framing-and the individuals who appropriate the artifact for whatever reason (aesthetic satisfaction, status, investment, irrational drive to collect).

Today, artists are more dependent on others involved in the pragmatic framework of the time. This dependency is the result of the more integrated nature of human effort. Everything that is eventually built into the work, regardless of whether this work is an object, an action, or a process, results from other human practical experiences. The time of the artist's inventing his own pigments, making his own canva.s.ses and frames, that is, the time of the artist's integral owners.h.i.+p and quasi- independence, was already over with the advent of industrial production. In the context of mediation and task distribution, new levels of dependencies are established and reflected in the work. Video art, photography, film, computer-based installations, and much of the computer music, interactive multimedia, and virtual art experiences are examples of such dependencies.

Simultaneously they are examples of the new forms of conflict and tension that mark the artistic experience. Artistic freedom and self- determination are only apparent. The limits of the many elements involved in an artistic experience affect choice and artistic integrity. Free choice, a romantic notion, is a delusion under these new circ.u.mstances. There is no censors.h.i.+p on the Internet, but that does not make the medium totally free.

The forms of integration in the guise of new science and technology are probably less troublesome than integration through language. They are, however, much more constricting and restrictive because they derive from elements over which the artist has little, if any, control. The growth of non-verbal modes of human expression, communication, and interaction introduces elements of mediation. These can be seen as intermediaries, such as images to be integrated, sounds, political actions (a sit-in is the best known example) that are involved in the practical experience of art in all its phases.

Formulation of aesthetic goals, in the form of video improvisations, diagrams, multimedia installations, computer-generated simulations, interpretation of an artwork (animation of a painting or sculpture, for example), and processes of meaning realization and valuation (represented by market transactions, insurance estimates, political relevance, ideological tendency, cultural significance) use mediating elements. None of Christo's elaborate and very comprehensive projects could have been carried through without such means.

Keijo Yamamoto's widely celebrated virtual performance could not come into being without an understanding of all that it takes to establish a Worldwide Network Art.

Art, as a human experience, emphasizes its own transitory nature and becomes less permanent than in previous stages of artistic practice, but far more pervasive. Still, to qualify this process as mere democratization of the arts would be misleading. That supermarkets are full of meat, oranges, cheese, and all kinds of graphic signs should not be interpreted as the democratization of meat, oranges, cheese, or graphic signs. The majority of artists still strive for recognition. To the extent that their own recognition as different means that there are people who do not qualify for the same recognition and reward, there is no equality in the realm of art. On the other hand, the pressures of leveling and the iconoclastic component of artistic experience reduce the pa.s.sion that drove artists in the past, or at least changes the focus of this pa.s.sion. Although the artistic process has changed in line with other changes in the systematic domain of human experience in general, it still resists doing away with the terms for artistic recognition. The uncertainty (including that of recognition, but not limited to it) projected in the work qualifies it as an expression of individualism. The heuristic attempt to establish new patterns of human interaction through art reflects the uncertainty. To own art that is stored in units of information and in invisible processing instructions means something totally different from being in possession of unique artifacts embodied in matter, regardless of how much they are affected by the pa.s.sing of time.

The recurrent phylogenetic and phylocultural structure, on which the artist-public interaction was built in the pragmatic framework fostering literacy, is questioned from within artistic practice. Art is only indirectly affected by the new scale of humankind, as it tries to acknowledge this scale. But the efficiency that this scale requires is reflected in the means available to support experiences of human self-const.i.tution as artist. Related to scale are the notions of survival and well being. People do not need art to survive, and the majority of people on Earth are living proof of this a.s.sertion. But in a broader sense, life that does not have an artistic dimension is not human. That is what we have learned or what we want to believe.