Digital-Realizations (Ma Contemporary Art Practise) Corie Denby McGowan

Digital-Realizations Corie Denby McGowan

Ma Contemporary Art Practice 2018 Word Count: 8,778 Tutor: Daniel C. Blight

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!

Consider, this essay as a realm of thoughts, perhaps an allegory, an ode to the screen, a monument to the dystopian future of which it prevails.

“Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things.”

Walter Benjamin ‘The Origin of German Tragic Drama’

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Table of Contents: "1.0: Introduction-pg. 5-7 #2.0: The Sacredness of the Screen-pg. 8-14 $3.0: Visual Architectures Infiltrate the Real: All that is Left is Capital, the Ruins, and Relics -pg. 15-33 % 4.0: The Screen is a Mirror of Algorithms-pg. 34-42 &5.0: Globalization, Xenofeminism; Welcome to Techno-utopia-pg. 43-52 '6.0: A Manifesto of the Screen-pg. 53-55 (8.0: Bibliography-pg. 56-62

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Appendix: Cover Image: Designed by Corie Denby McGowan Figure 1: Egyptian Relief Print. Source: http://www.crystalinks.com/egyptart.html Figure 2: Upper Paleolithic Cave Art. Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2159197/Cave-artwork-Spain-confirmedoldest-Europe-40-800-years-old-painted-Neanderthals.html Figure 3: Artworks selected for the Techne Space x The Wrong Biennale (2017), curated by Corie Denby McGowan. Source: http://newhive.com/techne/techne-x-the-wrong ‘Glass’ (2016) Joslyn Willauer ‘Browser’ (2015) Trystan Williams Figure 4: ‘Let Be Friends’ Bob Bicknell-Knight displayed at The Sacred Screen curated by Corie Denby McGowan Figure 5: Amazon Dash. Source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Listerine-DashButton/dp/B01I29BJTQ Figure 6: ‘Liquid Left Everywhere It Crawled’ Xindi Zhou (2018) Figure 7: Facebook screenshot with graph ‘Our Attention is Massively Profitable’ Source: http://humanetech.com/problem/ Figure 8: iPhone This Changes Everything. Again (2010) Source: https://www.apple.com/ca/channel/iphone/iphone-4/tour/ Figure 9: Venus figurines. Source: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/477170523000791022/

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Figure 10: Death & Digital, Stefan Schäfer. Source: http://stefanschafer.net/ Figure 11: ‘Algorithmic training’ Film still (2018) Corie Denby McGowan Figure 12: The Clitoris is a direct line to the matrix (1991) Vns Matrix. Source: https://vnsmatrix.net/ Figure 13: Cyberfeminist manifesto for the 21st century (1991) Vns Matrix.

Source: https://vnsmatrix.net/ Figure 14: Text taken from Xenofeminsim: A Politics for Alienation. Source: http://laboriacuboniks.net/qx8bq.txt Image by Corie Denby McGowan Figure 15: ‘Constructing a cyber magick deity’ (2018) Corie Denby McGowan

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" 1.0: Introduction The Screen expresses the visual regime of a society.1 Highly rendered; high quality; hyper-real images detract from the actual world. Throughout human history, we have valued the illusion higher than that of physical reality. Once, we drew out images on cave walls; today we are operating through an accumulative pyramid of stimuli and images within cyberspace.

The exact notion of using images stretches back in time, and the desire to represent a society through the visual has ultimately, and perhaps unconsciously been considered to be highly sought after and superior.2 Fundamentally, we are perceptible by nature; and the brain is programmed to process things visually.3 We prefer the reproduced image on the screen to the actual. The sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence, the truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred.4 The highest degree of sacredness in society to this day is still the illusion; because the digital is more desirable than the actual version. Consider the Paleolithic cave drawings or perhaps the drawings within the pyramids of ancient Egypt. Through the process of becoming an image the objects that are reimagined obtain a divine status that is more valuable and desirable. The significance of this notion within the contemporary epoch is unequivocal with that of the online paradigm and the sublimity of the internet.5 Today, we utilize the digital, and we consider

1Bernadette

Wegenstein, The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty (Cambridge; Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2012), Page 1.

2Upper Paleolithic Cave Art, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article2159197/Cave-artwork-Spain-confirmed-oldest-Europe-40-800-years-old-paintedNeanderthals.html (accessed 19th January 2018) 3Humans process visual data better, http://www.t-sciences.com/news/humans-process-visual-data-better (accessed 11th June 2018) 4Ludwig Feuerbach, ‘Preface to the Second Edition of The Essence of Christianity’, 1841, quoted in Guy Debord, The Society of The Spectacle (France: Buchet-Chastel, 1967), Page 42.

5In the context of this essay the term contemporary refers to Georgios Agamben’s idea of contemporaneity. “Contemporariness is, then, a singular relationship with one’s own time, which adheres to it and, at the same time, keeps a distance from it.”

Giorgio Agamben, What is An Apparatus? And Other Essays (California: Stanford University Press, 2009), Page 41.

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the online to be the utmost degree of sacredness. The purpose of this thesis is to embark on an exploration of what it means to live within a post-internet culture of which fetishizes with the act of appearing online. Appearing or appearance, within the context of this essay, refers to the process of something being perceptible. Taking on a perspective of contemporary culture from a point outside it will allow us to perceive our surrounding world (digital or real) as it really is. Our society casts its own image at the forefront of technology and highly values the shadow image that it casts on the screen.

The online gaze and the digitalization of oneself have now become commodities. The screen is a site that society looks at to find itself represented.

It is the place that the gaze is destined to look at and to be made for.6 This thesis will analyze these concepts through a series of written text, journals, and academic research. Questioning what is becoming of our digital-reality through subject areas such as the sacredness of the screen, the post-gaze, the internet-consumer; and connectivity. The online paradigm is a way of seeing and being seen. Cyberspace is a consensual hallucination forging a distraction from the real world.7 Things that were once experienced, touched; and felt have become merely a collection of moving images on a screen. Things that were once lived have become a representation; a representation that is solely appearing and thus, fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be looked at.8 The image on the screen produces itself with an everincreasing technical perfection (well said to be a “hologram�)9

Bernadette Wegenstein, The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty (Cambridge; Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2012), Page 1.

7 William Gibson, Neuromancer (London: Gollancz,1984), Page 5.

8 Guy Debord, The Society of The Spectacle (France: Buchet-Chastel, 1967), Page 52.

9 Jean-Luc Marion, The Crossing of the Visible (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), Page 82.

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#2.0: The Sacredness of the Screen “In societies where, modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”10 The screen then begins to embed itself into reality; we become encrypted with micro technologies; it weaves itself into our biological fabric. We live in a society mediated by a pandemic of images. The screen is depicted as a sacred object in our contemporary epoch; it has become a total archetype of seeing and being seen. Everything that passes through the screen intervenes all that is to understand and to communicate. Sacred in the context of the image, is the process whereby mundane objects are transcribed into art, or perhaps an image of themselves. It accomplishes a transfiguration from the everyday into something sacred. This notion is best investigated in Norman Bryson’s ‘Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting’11. Through the process of becoming an image of itself, the still life objects are given new meaning and enhanced value as they become a commodity through the force of labor of which is invested in them. For Jean-Luc Nancy, “image is always sacred.” and the sacred “signifies the separate, what is set aside, removed, cut off.”12 Imagery causes an estrangement for the viewer but also an estrangement from the object itself.

When the object becomes an image, it is separated from itself, but when the image is on a screen; it is freed from the constraints of being an object.

The image on the screen then reproduces and multiplies, even expanding outwards into the earth’s atmosphere. The liberation of the image has no original; the image is valued in itself and for itself, because it is valued by

Guy Debord, The Society of The Spectacle (France: Buchet-Chastel, 1967), Page 42.

11 Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting (London: Reaktion Books, 1990) 12 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Ground of The Image: Perspectives in Continental Philosophy (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), Page 22.

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itself 13 The image is freed from the original when it transcends to the screen. The image becomes simulacra when it is freed; a copy without the original. The screen is the support to the image “The screen, this anti-world in the world, produces images without ever referring them to some original: form without matter; the image maintains only a ghostly reality, completely spiritualized.” We experience the images on the screen estranged from their form; a world reproduced without meaning or origins. A body without organs.14 It is a hyperreal, produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models of hyperspace without atmosphere.15 When the image is liberated and freed to reproduce and multiply itself; it expands without restriction or reference to the original.

Jean-Luc Marion, The Crossing of the Visible (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), Page 47.

14 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic Sense (Columbia University Press: English Edition, 1990), Page 129.

This phrase refers to Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense (1969) and proposes that there is an ‘virtual’ dimension to the body. The term can be extended into where it refers the virtual dimension of reality or perhaps a ‘virtual’ world without the actual-a simulacra. “the glorious body without organs: “formed in one piece,” without limbs, with neither voice nor sex.”

15 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1994), Page 2.

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Dense Clusters of radio waves leave our planet every second. Our letters and snapshots, intimate and official communications, TV broadcasts and text messages drift away from the earth in rings, a tectonic architecture of the desires and fear of our times.16 Illusions break-off from the ordinary universe; billions of images radiate into the atmosphere on a daily basis. The world itself deliberately becoming an accumulation of the visual; only to be looked at and seen. Reality will soon cease to be the standard by which to judge the imperfect image; Instead, the virtual image will become the standard by which to measure the imperfections of reality.17 A simulation of images that move, unraveling themselves at uncontrollable speeds. When all is gone, we will be left with just the never-ending image; an embodiment of all that was once here on earth, the eternal image at the end of the world. The deathless infrastructure that will go on infinitely expanding into outer space without borders. In everyday circumstances, the screen is continuously present. The image on the screen is in our pockets, on our wrists, on the tube station billboards, and it dominates over many territories from the private to public. The image on the screen is an extension of our human bodies and has become a mass power structure which holds an enchanting sway over our civilization. The Screen inserts itself into the very fabric of everyday life; whether it be cinema screen or the smartphone. The image on a screen is unavoidable. Cross-embedded with every element of daily life, creating an ongoing series of special effects wired into every aspect of experience via the multitude of devices of which surround us on a daily basis. 18 We live in a world of moving images evinced by the omnipresence of video-sharing interfaces.19 We are a product of the age advocating the individual. The intimacy of personalized devices right through to the

Douglas Philips, ‘The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture’, 2009, quoted in Hito Steyerl, The Wretched of the Screen (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012), Page 161.

17 Harun Farocki, Parallele I—IV, (2012-14), https://frieze.com/article/harun-farocki1 (accessed 21st March 2018) 18 Norman M. Klein, Cross-embedded Media: An Introduction in Vision, Memory and Media (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,2010), Page 83.

19 Lev Manovich, Andreas Kratky, Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database (Cambridge; Massachusetts: MITT Press), 2005.

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homogeneous, globalized public spaces which breathe a falsified reality; an invitation to share even our most profound, darkest reflections and secrets. Through the adoption and personalization of user-friendly interfaces, devices, and content; the internet has managed to captivate and generate cultural material. The hyper-real disenchantment with capitalist culture...now become part of our everyday fabric20 Capital is unescapable as it has become so embedded into culture and daily life. ”The hypermarket is already, beyond the factory and traditional institutions of capital, the model of all future forms of controlled socialization: retotalization in a homogenous space-time of all the disperse functions of the body, and of social life (work, leisure, food, hygiene, transportation, media, culture); retranscription of the contradictory fluxes in terms of integrated circuits; space-time of a whole operational simulation of social life, of a whole structure of living and traffic.”21 “The image produces itself on the screen because, being a screen to its original, it produces itself only by becoming identical to its support, the screen.”22 A pseudo-paradise emerges from the screen, the world 2.0, a realm without touch. This is a malleable ensample that has become incredibly intriguing to our minds. A smooth surface made up of tiny pixels on a screen and shrinking hardware of which almost inevitably gets smaller and smaller with time. We become captivated and our attention spans are satisfied with the internet’s soothing nature; it radiates an assemblage of vivid colors and luminosity. “The interplay of light with the physical world creates a spectacle where the world becomes a hologram of itself.”23 When using our devices; they emit a comforting warmth into our brains and bodies. We give up on the physical for an all-encompassing blue light emitting screen.

Omar Kholeif, You Are Here: Art After the Internet (London: SPACE:2014), Page 11.

Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1994), Page 76.

22 Jean-Luc Marion, The Crossing of the Visible (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), Page 49.

23 Omar Kholeif, Moving Image, Documents of Contemporary Art (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2015), Page 13.

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Today, we enjoy and experience nature from the comfort of our own homes, via a multitude of sensory experiences and YouTube videos. Here exists a paradoxical need for total media saturation and the engagement of all senses.24 The fragile representation of the real on a screen seduces us into an alternative universe. This universe is becoming our reality. The screen produces an image of the real. The image is withdrawn from the real, and it is that which distinguishes it from everything else.25 There is a force of energy invested into the image, therefore, it is set aside or removed; it is unavailable for use. The highest degree of illusion comes to be seen as the highest degree of sacredness26 As the image on a screen cannot be touched, this is something which mediates its desire. The idea of touching a keyboard or a touchscreen interface only stimulates and teases that fantasy. The tease of possibly being able to encounter the image, is only something which accounts for making us want to navigate the screen more and more. We are striving toward the hyper-real yet driving further away from nature in the process. “When the real world is transformed into mere images, mere images become real beings-figments that provide the direct motivations for a hypnotic behavior.”27 A universe that has become a pure spectacle without questioning. We are caught in an array of social media images; we are more absent than ever. The world at once present and absent which the spectacle makes visible is the world of the commodity dominating all that is lived. 28

Hans Van Obrist quoted in Terry Smith, Talking Contemporary Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2012), Page 127 25 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Image-The Distinct, https://www.brown.edu/conference/dance-theory/sites/brown.edu.conference.dance-theory/files/uploads/Nancy%20from%20Ground%20of%20the%20Image.pdf (accessed 18th June 2018) 26Ludwig Feuerbach, ‘Preface to the Second Edition of The Essence of Christianity’, 1841, quoted in Guy Debord, The Society of The Spectacle (France: Buchet-Chastel, 1967), Page 42.

27 Guy Debord, The Society of The Spectacle (France: Buchet-Chastel, 1967), Page 120.

28 Guy Debord, The Society of The Spectacle, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm (accessed 20th June 2018).

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$3.0: Visual Architectures Infiltrate the Real: All that is Left is Capital, the Ruins, and Relics.

Connectivity enabled by the internet and its encompassing technologies have resulted in a vacuous blurring between the real and the virtual. Digital formations infiltrate our real world and design mimics the virtual realms.

“Visual architecture starts to resemble the visual material found on desktop computers.”29 Shopping malls, cinemas, parks; and other public spaces operate to encompass a new aesthetic language; a language that echoes and dictates the digital. Aesthetic is a term which originates from the Greek aesthesis, this relates to the notion of studying perception. An iridescent multitude of glass screens begin to escalate and colonize cities. Multiple screens emerge in these areas, alongside glowing neon lights and the glowing colors which epitomize the digital. Through the appearance of digital formations in the real world, a new visual language is revealed.30 In front of us a new language is unraveled, one that is made up of cold, capital and concrete. A language that encompasses a corporate, and globalized aesthetic of which is convoluting designed culture. The New Aesthetic is not superficial, it is not concerned with beauty or surface texture. It is deeply engaged with the politics and politicization of networked technology, and seeks to explore, catalogue, categorize, connect and interrogate these things.31

Norman M. Klein, Cross-embedded Media: An Introduction in Vision, Memory and Media (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,2010), Page 83.

30 James Bridle, ‘The New Aesthetic’ quoted in O. Kholeif, You are here: Art After the Internet (London: Space ,2014), Page 21.

31 http://booktwo.org/notebook/new-aesthetic-politics/ (accessed 23rd June 2018) 29

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Visual architecture and design mimics the digital via the variety of gadgets of which are now readily available. Gadgets such as Amazon Echo, Kindle, Google Glass; and Apple Watches. However, a new atmosphere emerges; that of the wireless, contactless, voice-controlled and connected. “The internet will disappear. There will be so many IP addresses…so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room. A highly personalized, highly interactive and very, very interesting world emerges.”32 The internet will become so many everyday objects and things; it will become inescapable. We will be connected all the time and always sharing data without even sensing the internet surrounding us. Imagine if there was a Siri of which is continuously present and interacting. Eventually, we will become so engrossed in this idea of a techno-utopian world that there will be no boundaries. At present, technology is an extension of ourselves, but soon it is to become ourselves. Companies want to ‘Smart-ify'33 all things that were once felt, touched and experienced; a movement that seems ironic. Eventually, the internet will disappear as we become deeply embedded into it. Everything will become A.I (artificial intelligence) driven and ‘smart’ in return. Smart glasses, smart shoes; smart food; smart clothes; smart house; smart doorbell; the list goes on. One can only imagine how close we are to becoming this.

Eric Schmidt Executive Chairman Google, at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf49T45GNd0. (accessed 12th January 2018) 33 This is a word that I have used to describe companies incorporating smartphone technology into everyday objects. Objects become artificial intelligence driven or perhaps digitalized. Take for example the Amazon Dash button; this is a smart button that you can press to order more household supplies when you run out. You can reorder your daily essentials using Amazon Dash. Amazon Dash Advertisement, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cRPwDYXG_k (accessed 13th June 2018).

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Public stratospheres become unconsciously inhibited, owned and colonized by corporation and advertising34 Thinking back to this new visual language, mentioned in the previous paragraph, highlighting the apparent intrusion of the online into the real, the image on the screen has manifested itself as something that is of capital propaganda; the incorporation of media advertising forces itself into everyday scenarios. Capital is a generation or accumulation of money. It is escalated through various billboards, signs, and advertisements. We are presented with a stupendous amount of spam and media saturation. Everything is unknowingly entering into our minds; we are subconsciously in support of the capital; we are the internet-consumer. Today, capitalism appears everywhere. Capitalism is an economic, and highly politicized system, it is a platform of private ownership; where everything that prevails is entirely for profit; unfortunately, for as much profit as possible, whatever the cost.35 Everything becomes spitefully controlled in the capitalistic environment. The internet has become the stomping ground for capital to breed and accomplish more than ever imagined.

Advertising is everywhere, everything has become market research, and the consumer is bait to the socio-economic systems in power. “The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity. “36 In the post-capital world that we inhabit, we are dehumanized, we are now known as consumers. According to Karl Marx (1818-1883), a commodity is something that is bought and sold or exchanged in a market. The value of the commodity is determined by the human labor of which is invested in it. There are two kinds of value that a commodity may obtain; one is use-value, and the other is exchange value.

34Mark

Fisher, Capitalist-Realism: Is there No Alternative? (England: Zero Books:2009), Page 82.

35Capitalism: The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular, private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labor.. https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm (accessed 13th June 2018) 36 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume 1(Moscow; USSR: Progress Publishers,1887), Page 27.

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“A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.”37 The commodity has no existence outside of being a commodity. The screen is fetishized because it has become a product of capitalism. It is commodified for a variety of reasons; one of the main reasons would be the force of labor which is invested in it. The other being the malevolent techniques that technology companies use to entice us in with. This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the foregoing analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labor that produces them. 38 “The conception of “consumer” is an illusion possible only once production and consumption have been alienated as apparently separate and independent processes. Every act of consumption is equally an act of production, so the alienation of one from the other is a social construction.

Since wage-workers produce only to earn a living and are alienated from their own labor, the illusion is created that their only real life is as a consumer. But nothing could be more powerless than a consumer.”39 Exploitation is one way of describing what is currently happening, being veiled by a mass array of illusions could be another. The real consumer has become a consumer of illusions. The commodity is this materialized illusion.40 Online and Offline, our new visual language is one which advocates capital. This is presented to us as a spectator-consumer dictatorship of corporations; governing entities and significant markets. Capital gains are built and

37Karl

Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume 1(Moscow; USSR: Progress Publishers,1887), Page 27.

38Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume 1(Moscow; USSR: Progress Publishers,1887), Page 47.

39 https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm Definition of Consumerism (accessed 13th June 2018) 40Guy Debord, The Society of The Spectacle (France: Buchet-Chastel, 1967), Page 298.

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accessed via databases feeding us with large chunks of information on a daily basis and appearing almost everywhere and in everything. An appearance of which mostly goes unnoticed by the general public. “Image spam is our message to the future.�41 Mindless content and media spam are continuously subsuming us and winning. No relief, no perspective, no vanishing point where the gaze might risk losing itself, but a total screen where, in their uninterpreted display, the billboards and the products themselves act as equivalent and successive signs.42 The image is eternal, but if the image is of that of capitalism and the consumer product detritus, in the end, all that could be left is capitalism. Capitalism stays when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration; all that remains is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and relics.43

41Hito

Steyerl, The Wretched of the Screen (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012), Page 161.

Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1994), Page 75.

43 Mark Fisher, Capitalist-Realism: Is there No Alternative? (England: Zero Books:2009), Page 4.

42Jean

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“An individual experience personalized, consistent stimulation with low attention spans and multiple screens. An escape into a virtual space that leaves the physical space useless”44 Our history with the internet has spanned almost 28 years,45 eventually, it became the capital powerhouse of which exists today. It is a way of data recording, marketing and controlling society. “The virtual became domesticated: filled with advertisements, controlled by big brands, and rendered harmless. In short, to use the expression of Norman Klein, it became an “electronic suburb.”46 The image on the screen is spam and advertising; our new world is an image dense and illiterate world brimming with emojis, GIFs and loss of language. An overstimulated, and media-saturated place resulting in a lack of literacy. Today people are too wired to concentrate.47 We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning.48 All at once; contradictory coagulations of data flickering from one window to another. We have become creatures of multi-tasking with low attention spans and over stimulation of media. A society mediated by images. An affirmation of appearances and an

44Lev

Manovich, ‘The Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada’, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/18f0/9a29bb89934284fbabde7e9f39e306900a5b.pdf (accessed 21st March 2018) 45 The first message sent via ARPANET between two distant computers in 1969, in 1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP Protocol, 1989 the World Wide Web emerges, 1993 First web browser ‘Mosaic’. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6125925/Internet-celebrates-40th-birthday-but-what-date-should-we-be-marking.html (accessed 24th March 2018) 46Lev Manovich, ‘The Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada’, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/18f0/9a29bb89934284fbabde7e9f39e306900a5b.pdf (accessed 21st March 2018) 47 Mark Fisher, Capitalist-Realism: Is there No Alternative? (England:Zero Books, 2009) Page 24.

48 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1994), Page 79.

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identification of all human social life with appearances.49 An anxiety-inducing, multi-sensory screen-based society of which is quite ironically becoming more and more health conscious. In reality, Capitalism feeds off unconscious anxieties. A system of which feeds off health anxiety where neo-liberals create capital by purchasing the right health products. The significant increase in mental health problems is contributing to the economic capitalist system; helping to nourish the pharmaceutical industry itself. The health industry is a business of which benefits from this structure. “Mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (You are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals.”50 Fueled on pharmaceuticals and endorsed with prosthetics, we are expected to achieve more, work harder; faster and smarter. However, when we fail to fulfill these expectations of this we become unwell. “This is the contemporary family of men and women: a bunch of people on knockoff antidepressants fitted with enchanted body parts. They are the dream team of hyper-capitalism”51 This is astonishingly ironic at a time where there is an emphasis on vitality, good health, joining gyms and wellbeing. This circle is part of the dysfunctional capitalistic regime which is dictated to us. We look to the mediums of the internet for self-reflection, healing, and calm. Technology companies such as Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook all benefit financially from people using them and vie for our infinite attention. The race for attention is eroding the pillars of our society.52 This is a desperate race to keep us all entrapped by our screens; this race uses psychological techniques to keep us online for as long as possible; which in return ludicrously increases rising rates of stress, anxiety, and depression. We are reducing physical needs such as exercise, sleep and eating for more screen time. Meanwhile, tech platforms are gaining profit from our perils. We live in a world of which is now simultaneously absent and present. The fact that there is a correlation

Guy Debord, The Society of The Spectacle, (France: Buchet-Chastel, 1967), Page 87.

50Mark Fisher, Capitalist-Realism: Is there No Alternative? (England:Zero Books, 2009), Page 37.

51 Hito Steyerl, The Wretched of the Screen (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012), Page 163.

52http://humanetech.com/problem/ Humane Tech, (accessed 13th June 2018) 49

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between rising rates of mental health problems and capitalism in western culture is indicative of how this materialist society is actually ‘helping’.

The people who are in power are using technology for their profit, benefit, and clout. These kinds of people are using technology alongside a mass induced psychosis to manipulate and hijack the mind; regardless of the consequences. Tech companies control billions of people every day by essentially hacking the mind to make us use their products for longer so that they can excel financially. What began as a race to monetize our attention is now eroding the pillars of our society: mental health, democracy, social relationships, and our children.53 We are becoming addicted to technology because it is programmed to induce these kinds of behaviors. Our brains are programmed to participate in reward processing systems. Positive social feedback is associated with the activation of these reward systems (e.g. amygdala). Our behavior is generally guided by the anticipation of potential outcomes that are considered to be rewarding.54 Social media companies have explicitly set out to stimulate and exploit these neurological systems. The former president of Facebook, Sean Parker, recently spoke out concerning exactly how Facebook was specifically designed to exploit human “vulnerability”. The president goes on to say that one of the major objectives of the company was to determine "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible? That means that we needed to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever ... It's a social validation feedback loop ... You're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology ... [The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway." Through deeply rooted psychological techniques Facebook has managed to successfully captivate and control many. This activation of the amygdala has been found to be motivated by technology such as Facebook. This can lead to implications with addiction; similar to the symptoms

53http://humanetech.com/problem/

Humane Tech, (accessed 13th June 2018) Lena Rademacher, Sören Krach, Gregor Kohls, Arda Irmak, Gerhard Gründer, Katja N. Spreckelmeyer ‘Dissociation of neural networks for anticipation and consumption of monetary and social rewards’ NeuroImage, Volume 49 (2010) 54

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of gambling and substance abuse. These addictions can lead to sleep deprivation, social isolation, health issues and many other impairments.55 It is undeniable that spending a lot of time online will inevitably cause major effects to our health; these effects could well be anxiety, depression, and stress. These are all caused by replacing everyday routines as well as basic self-care with spending more time online. Children, who are most vulnerable to the manipulative techniques employed my technology; are programmed to replace self-worth with Facebook ‘likes’ via the reward systems that social media technologies trigger. These ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ embody and replace physical interactions. In 2012 Facebook published details of a vast social experiment in which actively manipulated the information on 689,000 users' homepages. They then used the information to control user’s emotions through the process of "emotional contagion”.56

55

Ofir Turel, Qinghua He, Gui Xue, Antoine Bechara, Lin Xiao ‘Examination of Neural Systems Sub-Serving Facebook “Addiction” Psychological Reports: Disability and Trauma (2014) 56 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds (accessed 24th June 2018)

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This is an invisible problem; if we do not address and recognize these issues now. The consequences could be irreversible, as generations of young children are programmed to adhere to the online power structures.

Persuasive, psychological techniques used in gambling are used to captivate our minds. The desperate race for our attention is the ultimate goal of all tech companies. While we allow YouTube to auto play its next video, we are subsequently allowing them to gain more profit. Newsfeeds are no longer in chronological order, but they are scheduled to grab more of our attention and keep us online for longer. “What we don't talk about is how the handful of people working at a handful of technology companies through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking today. Because when you pull out your phone and they design how this works or what's on the feed, it's scheduling little blocks of time in our minds. If you see a notification, it schedules you to have thoughts that maybe you didn't intend to have. If you swipe over that notification, it schedules you into spending a little bit of time getting sucked into something that maybe you didn't intend to get sucked into.”57 The problem with the technology is that it is the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism.”58

57How

a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day- Tristan Harris at Ted. https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention/transcript#t-520607 (accessed 17th June 2018) 58Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto:Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, (New York; Routledge, 1991) Page 8.

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“The economic system founded on isolation is a circular production of isolation. The technology is based on isolation, and the technical process isolates in turn. From the automobile to television, all the goods selected by the spectacular system are also its weapons for a constant reinforcement of the conditions of isolation of lonely crowds.”59 The internet is, categorically, a mass cluster of simultaneous time zones and places which exhibits global access to everything all at once; a single place where everything can exist. We are all being connected via the online, yet ironically at the same time we are moving further apart and becoming further isolated. The screen is based on isolation while attempting to falsify this idea of ‘connecting.’ Facebook is a social media platform which was first launched in February 2014; as of January 2018, Facebook has over 2.2 billion active users 60 The Facebook slogan is in fact, “Bringing the world closer together,”61 and their mission is helping people to connect with each other by getting people to use individual interfaces and screens by oneself.

Alone at a computer screen; becoming further excluded from society is exceedingly dangerous for the mental health of our population. A social networking program that is based on getting likes from posts in order to feel more validated by society. This idea of hyper-connectivity in such an isolated environment is almost an intense dismay. It is paradoxical how we are so intrinsically linked yet at the same time we are also becoming fundamentally less connected to reality, ourselves and surrounding nature. “The flow and flush of waters sustain our own bodies, but also connect them to other bodies, to other worlds beyond our human selves.”62 The screen is a liquid vortex which connects and disconnects bodies, as it leeks and seethes, its borders are always vulnerable to rupture and renegotiation.63

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm, (accessed 7th June 2018) 60https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook (accessed 13th June 2018) 61https://www.facebook.com/pg/facebook/about/ (accessed 13th June 2018) 62 Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) Page 2.

63 Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) Page 2.

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We become unable to distinguish the boundaries between the real and the online, as the digitalization of our world becomes ever more increased.

Bodies and our encompassing natural environments have the ability to connect regardless of an internet connection. We know little in regard to the unconscious mind and its capacity to synthesize with nature. Plants, for example, can communicate using fungal colonies of mycelium; an information superhighway that speeds up interactions between a large, diverse population of individuals. 64Through the unconscious collective, we may have obtained our own natural superhighway information network.65 Numerous disciplines have investigated the conscious/unconscious paradigm.66 There are two distinct cognitive systems within the brain; these can be distinguished between two systems. The first, is known as phenomenal awareness, this is shared predominantly with humans and other animals.

This system is old in evolutionary terms. Phenomenal awareness consists of sensory aspects, feelings, or qualia. The second system is our conscious thought; this is evolutionarily recent and distinctive to the human species.

This is self-awareness, inner reflections, and deliberations.67Ironically, psychological research has found that conscious thought has inhibited access to the mind’s inner workings. The unconscious mind is capable of more than we realize, and though we are more connected, we are also more unaware than we truly understand. The unconscious mind is responsible for most common behavioral patterns.68 In 1976, Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) put forward the significant notion that the subjective consciousness had perhaps only evolved in the last 2,000-3,000 years. Prior to this, human

http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden-internet (accessed 3rd March 2018) 65 Carl Jung, The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, http://www.cgjungpage.org/learn/articles/analytical-psychology/527-the-conceptof-the-collective-unconscious (accessed 25th June 2018) 66Roy Baumeister, E.J Masicampo ’Conscious thought does not guide moment-tomoment actions-it serves social and cultural functions,’ Frontiers in Psychology, Vo.4 (2013) 67Jonathan Evans, ‘In two minds: dual-process accounts of reasoning,’ Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol.7 (2003) 68 Sigmund Freud, The Unconscious (London: Penguin Classics, 2005) 64

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behavior was controlled by voices emanating from the right cerebral hemisphere.69 Jaynes’ research could explain the magnificence of artworks such as the Venus of Willendorf. The Venus figurines are from prehistoric times; when multiple figures of strikingly similar features appeared across the world and during similar time periods. This is rather symbolic because during the time these primitive people could not communicate with each other.

Jayne’s theory explains how in ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia the primitive mind was that of the unconsciousness. Carl Jung coined the term ‘Collective unconscious’ which refers to the structures of the unconscious mind, and how this can be shared among other beings of the same species. Rather the outer world was used to make sense of the inner. The collective unconscious is an inherited part of the human psyche which is not developed from our own personal experiences. This is a universal layer of consciousness, it is the collective unconscious of which connects us with our surrounding nature. Jung argues that a newborn baby is not born as a blank slate but wired and ready to perceive certain archetypal patterns.70 Perhaps Jung’s research could imply that memories are biologically inherited. The Collective unconscious is our natural internet; only some are more perceptible to it. “A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the personal unconscious.

But this personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the collective unconscious. I have chosen the term “collective” because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.

It is, in other words, identical in all men and thus constitutes a common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal nature which is present in every one of us.”71

69Henry

Roediger ‘Memory metaphors in cognitive psychology,’ Memory and Cognition, Vol.8 (1980) 70 Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Psychology Classics: Who We Are, How We Think, What We Do Insight and Inspiration from 50 key books (London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007) Page 170.

71 Carl Gustav Jung, Four Archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster (London: Routledge Classics, 1972) Page 2.

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of the same species. Rather, the outer world was used to make sense of the

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% 4.0: The Screen is a Mirror of Algorithms In this essay, the term post-gaze will refer to the type of gaze of which has occurred after the internet. Technology has had a substantial impact on the spectatorship, gaze, and voyeurism. The screen has ultimately become a way of seeing and being seen; it is the foreground for a new kind of gaze.

The term gaze originates in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. It is a term that is used to describe the anxious state that occurs alongside the awareness that one can be viewed. Lacan refers to the induced psychological effect where the subject loses a certain degree of autonomy upon realizing that they are a visible object.72 Michel Foucault explored power in the gaze of surveillance, the function of related disciplinary mechanisms, and self-regulation in a prison or school as an apparatus of power. “The gaze is integral to systems of power and ideas about knowledge.”73 This notion is significant today because the power structures are tech companies who use the online gaze as an integral part of their system of control. In cyberspace sometimes, the viewer sees without being in turn seen, this induces the act of voyeurism. On the surface the post-gaze is a voyeuristic gaze; when watching on the screen, one becomes inclined to the act of watching other people. The voyeur does not interact directly with the subject on the screen. The essence of voyeurism is observing. “The gaze is a social construction that brings forth our codependent needs to see and to be seen.”74 It is also important to highlight that in a world of ‘appearances’ on the screen there lies this uncontrollable desire to be on the screen, the fetishization of oneself appearing on the screen, is a way of confirming one’s existence. Bodies become a screen on which culture can see or fail to see itself reflected75 When one appears on the screen, we embody that eternal

Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (France: Éditions du Seuil, 1972) Page 72-73.

73 Marita Strurken and Lisa Cartwirght, Practises of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2009), Page 96.

74 Bernadette Wegenstein, The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty (Cambridge; Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2012), Page 1.

75 Bernadette Wegenstein, The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty (Cambridge; Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2012), Page 2.

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existence. Here lies an eternity in conjunction with appearing on the screen; our digital selves have the ability to continue living online even when our bodies have ceased. Infinitely expanding digital ecosystems flourish when all is gone. The desire to become the digital self, spirals from the promises of eternity, as well as the psychological validations of which social media sites are based on. Putting oneself online and having a social media profile gives us the confirmation of identity. An affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life76

76Guy

Debord, The Society of The Spectacle (France: Buchet-Chastel, 1967), Page 85.

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“The latter looks at you, you look at yourself in it, mixed with the others, it is the mirror without silvering.”77 Our obsession with appearing online helps to establish the notion that the screen is a mirror, however, it is a mirror which secretly watches us back and returns the gaze. The information architecture of our society is incredibly complex; it is hard to grasp and navigate around. Gaining information in today’s society is a structure of power and control. Thinking to the notion of the post gaze; perhaps this is an ever-constant gaze of data accumulation.

Prohibiting our everyday lives and strategically collecting and manipulating data. We see ourselves through this new kind of gaze- it could be described as a technological mirror. A mirror without the boundaries, and one which watches us back. This mirror is so intelligently wired that it can predict what decisions we are about to make through specific sets of mathematical calculations called algorithms. The carnival, the Boston shuffler, the knife, and twilight are just some of the names given to specific algorithms on wall street that make up 70% of the operating system of stocks.78 These algorithms rely on complex psychoanalytical and mathematical approaches to make worldwide decisions; we may not fully understand exactly how these algorithms work.

The post gaze has the ability to watch us through the screen. It records our geographical locations, our voice and many pieces of unnoticed information. An omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent mirror that observes and collects geopolitical information. A new relationship with the screen has again emerged from this. We are not just taking information in from the screen, but it is the screen that also takes in from us too. Copious amounts of endless, un-prohibited, uncensored data are collected unknowingly on a daily basis. The internet is consistently recording and analyzing our speech and very thoughts, providing to the algorithms and attending to the consumer product itinerary. If we live in a world where most of our doing is done via the screen, then the screen will reveal a lot; more than we can even imagine about ourselves. This relationship is one which gives and

77Jean

Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1994), Page 76.

78 Kevin Slavin on How algorithms shape our world. https://www.ted.com/playlists/323/the_influence_of_algorithms (accessed 21st June 2018)

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receives data. The screen creates a raw portrait of the self-the opposite to what we project of ourselves on social media. Technology led decisions and problem-solving are taking control of our environment. Oscillating algorithms are echoing through our universe and calculating beyond our knowledge or capacity to understand. To the point at which we no longer have a sense of what is actually happening. Our future is designed by machines, using a machine dialect. The mode of thinking that these algorithms are programmed to accomplish lie within the nodes of capitalism, and potentially right-wing politics. The people who are in power have more control than ever, and ironically this is a phenomenon hiding in plain sight.

Due to the internet’s ‘mindless content’ for example YouTube auto play features, we are so caught up in a world of unimportance that these movements are going unnoticed. This is an attempt to maliciously accumulate as much money as possible, as quickly as possible; with no regards to the serious consequences. “We're building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time,” says Techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci.

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Even our offline data is maliciously collected. The status’s that you begin to type and do not post; indeed, every single thing that you have uploaded and typed including your private conversations; things that you search for on the internet; and the websites you visit even when you “are not using our products,” stated in the Facebook data policy for example. “We use the information we have (including your activity off our Products, such as the websites you visit and ads you see) to help advertisers and other partners measure the effectiveness and distribution of their ads and services and understand the types of people who use their services and how people interact with their websites, apps, and services.”79 These are all recorded and meticulously analyzed. Facebook’s market capitalization is a persuasive architecture using as much information as possible including GPS tracking, “We use location-related information-such as your current location, where you live, the places you like to go, and the businesses and people you're near-to provide, personalize and improve our products, including ads, for you and others. Location-related information can be based on things like precise device location (if you've allowed us to collect it), IP addresses, and information from your and others' use of Facebook products (such as checkins or events you attend).”80 If we live in an era where the online paradigm is at the forefront of our society, then perhaps we should think more about the densities of information that Facebook can retrieve and sell to brokers in exchange for capital.81 The individual (Political views, interests, what they may purchase, what they may watch) àcomparing this with similar individualsà The algorithms analyze this data and have the ability to put people into categorical boxes or collectives à ability to predict what that individual needs/wants based on a group of people.

Facebook data policy, revised April 19, 2018. https://www.facebook.com/policy.php, (accessed 8th June 2018) 80 Facebook data policy, revised April 19, 2018. https://www.facebook.com/policy.php, (accessed 8th June 2018) 81 How Facebook Learns About Your Offline Life, Micheal Reilly, December 28, 2016, MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603283/howfacebook-learns-about-your-offline-life/ (accessed 8th June 2018) 79

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The same brainwashing technology that is used to invite us to click on ads, is used to access political and social information. Exploitative technology produces more capital and induces more extreme categories of people.

These technologies are pushing people further so that their own views become more enhanced. SCL Group (formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories) is a British behavioral research and strategic communication company. “SCL tends to describe its capabilities in grandiose and somewhat unsettling language — the company has touted its expertise at” psychological warfare” and “influence operations.” It’s long claimed that its sophisticated understanding of human psychology helps it target and persuade people of its clients’ preferred message.” 82 “What we need to fear most is not what artificial intelligence will do to us on its own, but how the people in power will use artificial intelligence to control us and to manipulate us in novel, sometimes hidden, subtle and unexpected ways.”83 On a more serious note, these algorithms can be used to determine an individual’s political preference and personal weaknesses. Moreover, this can encourage a more extreme version of what the person may already believe. Donald Trump’s social media manager disclosed that they used Facebook dark posts to demobilize people, not to persuade them, but to convince them not to vote at all.84 Algorithms seriously affect political behaviors and promote the capitalistic regime.

SCL group quoted in The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-diagram. (accessed 8th June 2018) 83We’re building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a timeZaeynep Tufekci. https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads?referrer=playlist-the_influence_of_algorithms&language=en, (accessed 8th June 2018) 84 We’re building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a timeZaeynep Tufekci. https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads?referrer=playlist-the_influence_of_algorithms&language=en, (accessed 8th June 2018) 82

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&4.0: Globalization, Xenofeminism; Welcome to techno-utopia

“Our world is in vertigo. It is a world that swarms with technological mediation, interlacing our daily lives with abstraction, virtuality, and complexity.”85 Today it is ever more apparent that we abode to the instant; an immediate society that is globalized and corporate at the touch of a button. Perhaps, this is something of which accounts for the sacralization of the screen and the ever-enticing immediacy of things. The globalization of a milieu is homogenizing and accumulating to an exceedingly inward perspective. Take into consideration, the unapparent simplifying of bio-categories into boxes using technology via globalization; as well as the governed application of putting things into heteronormative boxes. If the internet and the screen are encrypted by that of capitalism, then the screen is that of patriarchal conditioning. We need to articulate a feminism that is fit for a new technological era. Xenofeminism constructs a feminism adapted to these realities.86 ‘Xeno’ originates from the Greek word ‘xenos’ it is used to indicate something strange, different, or foreign. It could represent the ‘alienation’ of bodies in this new kind of feminism. A feminism that is formed for the future, Xenofeminism is a futuristic theory deploying the end of capitalism and aiming to consolidate on a globalized level. “Global complexity opens us to urgent cognitive and ethical demands.”87

Xenofeminism: A Politics For Alienation, Laboria Cuboniks, http://www.laboriacuboniks.net/qx8bq.txt. (accessed 8th June 2018) 8686 Xenofeminism: A Politics For Alienation, Laboria Cuboniks, http://www.laboriacuboniks.net/qx8bq.txt. (accessed 8th June 2018) 87 Xenofeminsim: A Politics for Alienation; http://laboriacuboniks.net/qx8bq.txt, (accessed 19th June 2018) 85

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The World Wide Web was first established in 1989, by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee.88 Today it has managed to forge multiple engagements and relationships into our everyday lives. Unfortunately, the internet still has its roots in the patriarchal conditions of which it started from; the early stages of the internet was a misogynic space dominated by men. “the reality of the internet was a sexist and misogynist space dominated by boys and their toys.”89Technology encompasses a silent discrimination against minority bodies, from the binary male and female cable parts to facial recognition and facial filters. These tools of an advanced technological era are satirically not intersectional. Snapchat filters are not accessible for all and the apparent lack of Snapchat filters of which are racially aware and able to coincide with ethnic minorities is unacceptable in a millennial era. The obnoxious white-washed and militarized internet, is becoming an increasingly homogeneous space; where exists discrimination, and underrepresentation in the ‘instagramisation’90 of our culture. “Gender, race or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism”91 Here a global dialogue exists, and this is contradictory to the internet’s colonized space. We need to seek to the rejection of these factors and ‘alienation’ as an essential way of moving forward. There is a critical need for an update, and to re-address these issues. As technologies begin to revolutionize at an exponential pace, we are left behind; stuck in the

The first message sent via ARPANET between two distant computers in 1969, in 1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP Protocol, 1989 the World Wide Web emerges, 1993 First web browser ‘Mosaic’. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6125925/Internet-celebrates-40th-birthday-but-what-date-should-we-be-marking.html. (accessed 8th June 2018) 89 Cyberfeminism-its history and its relevance today, Hall 1995 cited by Renata Bialkowska. https://renatabialkowska.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/cyberfeminism-itshistory-and-its-relevance-today/.(accessed 18th June 2018) 90 Lev Manovich, Instagram and Contemporary Image (Self-published, 2017), Page 71.

91 Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (New York: Routledge,1991), Page 17.

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patriarchal, capitalized regime of the past. The internet, therefore culture, is changing faster than society can keep up with.

On November 15-19th 2017 the Post-cyber Feminist International took place at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London; the press release handed out on the launch evening read, “A particularly gendered set of obstacles emerges from the contemporary ubiquity and commodification of the digital sphere,”92 there is a crucial need for radical change, but this change will need to accommodate for our new technologies. This is a calling to seek back to the 1990’s sisters of the cyberfeminist revolution. We can move forward by using technology as an advantage point; to help move away from the natural ideologies which are perhaps, holding us back. “Communications technologies and biotechnologies are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies. These tools embody and enforce new social relations for women worldwide.”93 Historically, cyberfeminism was first established in the early 1990’s with the VNS Matrix94 ‘Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century’ (1991), and later in 1997, the first international cyberfeminist conference took place in Germany, where an established list of ‘100 Anti-Theses of Cyberfeminism’ was collectively authorized and initiated. Cyberfeminists are techno-utopian thinkers who see technology as a way of freeing gender inequality and dissolving divisions, but at the same time recognizing that gendered powered dynamics of the real world also exist online. “Cyberfeminism is a philosophy that acknowledges, firstly, that there are differences in power between women and men specifically in the digital discourse; and secondly, that Cyberfeminists want to change that situation.”95

The Post-Cyber Feminist International, 15-19th November 2017, The Institute of Contemporary Art, London.

93 Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (New York: Routledge,1991), Page 40.

94 Politically active media art group, entitled VNS Matrix an Australian. The Adelaide born collective of four people formed in 1991 and were regarded as the main pursuers of cyberfeminist Art. The group consists of Virginia Barratt, Julianne Pierce, Francesca da Rimini and Joseophine Starrs. https://vnsmatrix.net/ (accessed 20th June 2018) 95 Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein, Cyber-feminism: connectivity, critique and creativity (Chicago: Spinifex Press,1999), Page 2.

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These are a previous generation of feminist thinkers who paved the way for us today. This is a form of activism which can be effectively repurposed for the 21st century. The term ‘Cyberfeminism’ was coined by Sadie Plant, the director of Cybernetic Culture Research at the University of Warwick. It was used to describe this utopian take on cyberspace and the internet as a means of freedom from social constructs such as gender and sex difference. The term ‘Cyber’ derives from the prefix started in the 1960’s with cybernetics and William Gibson’s (1984) term ‘Cyberspace’. Technology was seen as a way of dissolving the sexes and gender divisions, of course, today we are far from these ideologies, and the cyberfeminist way of thinking will need to be reprogrammed for a new era. Haraway rewires a gender-free techno-utopian universe; a place where we become, ‘alienated’ from our physical bodies and more aligned with technology, bodies re-incorporate the digital and become “hybrids of machines and organisms.”96 “In the historical era of advanced post-modernity, the very notion of ‘the human’ is not only destabilized by technologically mediated social relations in a globally connected world, but it is also thrown open to contradictory redefinitions of what exactly counts as human.“97 However, the cyberfeminist movement could be classified as problematic because it only addressed first world countries and those which had internet access. This excluded women in other countries who had no internet access or were not able to use technology. According to Radhika Gajjala the cyberfeminists’ intention “to resolve what they see as ‘Third World’ women’s oppression “98 did not address or impact any of the issues women faced in third world countries.

Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (New York: Routledge,1991), Page 3.

97 Rosi Bradotti, ‘Posthuman-All Too Human, Towards a New Process Ontology’, Theory and Culture Society, Volume 23, Issue 7-8 (2006), Page 1.

98 Radhika Gajjala, Cyberfeminism 2.0 (Digital Formations) (Oxford: Peter Lang Publishing, 2012), Page 161.

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“If nature is unjust, change nature.”99 Xenofeminsm attempts to radically redefine a feminism that is fit for the technological era and our contemporary political conditions. It encapsulates the notions of cyberfeminism, posthumanism, accelerationism, neorationalism; and materialist feminism. “XF is a technomaterialist, anti-naturalist, and gender abolitionist form of feminism. It is an attempt to articulate a radical gender politics fit for an era of globality, complexity, and technology,”100 Laboria Cuboniks is a collective who developed the acclaimed manifesto 'Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation.’ According to this manifesto, we need to free ourselves from any natural or bodily constraints. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. “Ours is a world in vertigo. It is a world that swarms with technological mediation, interlacing our daily lives with abstraction, virtuality, and complexity. XF constructs a feminism adapted to these realities: a feminism of unprecedented cunning, scale, and vision; a future in which the realization of gender justice and feminist emancipation contribute to a universalist politics assembled from the needs of every human, cutting across race, ability, economic standing, and geographical position. No more futureless repetition on the treadmill of capital, no more submission to the drudgery of labor, productive and reproductive alike, no more reification of the given masked as critique”101 The manifesto seeks to the alienation of the body to free ourselves; a rejection of the ‘natural’. The construction of freedom involves not less but more alienation; alienation is the labor of freedom's construction. Nothing should be accepted as fixed, permanent, or 'given' -neither material conditions nor social forms. the glorification of 'nature' has nothing to offer us -- the queer and trans among us, the differently-abled, as well as those who have suffered discrimination due to pregnancy or duties connected to child-rearing.102

https://twitter.com/xenofeminism. Retrieved June 20th 2018.

Helen Hester, Xenofeminism (Cambridge:Polity Press, 2018) Page 6 and 7 101 Xenofeminsim: A Politics for Alienation; http://laboriacuboniks.net/qx8bq.txt, (accessed 19th June 2018) 102 Xenofeminsim: A Politics for Alienation; http://laboriacuboniks.net/qx8bq.txt, (accessed 19th June 2018) 99

100

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Xenofeminism seeks to deploy technology as a way to re-engineer the world. The excess of modesty in feminist agendas of recent decades is not proportionate to the monstrous complexity of our reality. A reality crosshatched with fiber-optic cables, radio and microwaves, oil and gas pipelines, aerial and shipping routes; and the unrelenting, simultaneous execution of millions of communication protocols with every passing millisecond.

Systematic thinking and structural analysis have largely fallen by the wayside in favor of admirable, but insufficient struggles; bound to fixed localities and fragmented insurrections. Whilst capitalism is understood as a complex and ever-expanding totality, many would-be emancipatory anticapitalist projects remain profoundly fearful of transitioning to the universal, resisting big-picture speculative politics by condemning them as necessarily oppressive vectors. Such a false guarantee treats universals as absolute, generating a debilitating disjuncture between the thing we seek to depose and the strategies we advance to depose it.103 Rather than the dystopia revealed in the previous chapters, perhaps a techno-utopian future, if power is controlled by the right kinds of people, can move forward in the right directions. In order to save ourselves, our future, children and the environment; we need to be more aware of the psychological underpinnings of technology and remember to be more conscious of our online lives because our digital selves are inevitably the real selves.

Xenofeminsim: A Politics for Alienation; http://laboriacuboniks.net/qx8bq.txt, (accessed 19th June 2018) 103

Fig.15

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'6.0: A Manifesto of the Screen-Conclusion The term ‘screen’ would have various meanings if one were to look this up in the Oxford dictionary. Through this manifesto below one wishes to explain what the screen means concerning this thesis. This is a concluding statement encapsulating the essence of the screen which was explored in depth in this essay. Þ The screen is the object of which acts as a portal between the digital world and the real world it could be in the form of a laptop, mobile, monitor or tablet. In using the term screen, one refers to the gateway into the online paradigm. Þ The screen goes beyond the minimalistic appearance of the black square and its hardware; it is more a permeable world of seductive luminosity. A comforting glow and warmth of which materializes from a shiny, hard surface. Þ The screen is an immense accumulation of multiple words, signs, and images. Merely copies, representations, and illusions in a malleable, and infinite space. Þ A hallow, indefinite space with no determined edges, size or walls. Þ The screen is a mirror to our reality. An anti-world to the world. A pseudo-paradise, the world 2.0. Þ

The screen is embedded into reality.

Þ The screen is global access to everything all at once; a single place where everything can exist. Þ The screen is a liquid vortex which connects and disconnects bodies, as it leeks and seethes, its borders are always vulnerable to rupture and renegotiation.104

Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) Page 2.

104

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Þ The screen reduces a real world to simple images and illusions. The screen creates a vacuum of continuous simulacrum. Þ Images on the screen are estranged from their form; a world reproduced without meaning or origins Þ I believe that it is a human need to reproduce and generate images for the screen. Þ We value these illusions higher than that of actual reality; this is something that has occurred throughout our time. Þ The strive to present a society through images is highly anticipated. Þ The image is sacred due it being a copy of the original. Þ Through the process of something being projected onto a screen, it becomes a copy and obtains a certain degree of sacredness. Þ I believe that the highest degree of sacredness is always an illusion and it is a human need to create these illusions. Þ I believe that in contemporary society the digital version is more desirable than that of the actual version. Þ I believe that the rendered human, the avatar, the cyborg is more desirable than that of the real human. Þ I believe that we fetishize with the act of appearing on the screen Þ One desires to see oneself represented on the screen, and thus the digitalization of the self is fetishized. Þ I believe that the idea of digitalizing oneself creates the feeling of being eternal. In the way that writing and creating images produces a sense of immortality. Þ One visualizes oneself through the screen; one will use the image of oneself represented on the screen to prove one’s existence in the real world.

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Þ Everything objectifies itself in the process of becoming on the screen. Þ Through the notion of the screen the copy is still valued higher than that of the original, the highest degree of sacredness is always an illusion. Þ The screen is a commodity of contemporary culture. Where highly rendered images of which detract from the real world. Þ The screen is where a society watches itself and looks to see itself represented. It expresses the visual regime of a society.105 Þ The screen is an advocate of the post-gaze. Þ The screen is encrypted by that of capitalism, therefore the screen is that of patriarchal conditioning. Þ The screen is feminized; via the likes of Amazon Alexa, Siri and ASMR. (Autonomous sensory meridian response)

THE END. )

105Bernadette

Wegenstein, The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty (Cambridge; Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2012), Page 1.

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