Manovich, Section Three (Feeling a bit uninspired with titles atm)

Ah… Manovich. I honestly thought this most recent chapter was entirely too understandable, and I get the sense that it may be a bit of a lull before things go nuts in “the Illusions.” I guess I’ll see. In any case, I was particularly interested in his discussion of teleaction. According to Manovich, telecommunication/teleaction poses a challenge to aesthetic theory, which has traditionally been concerned with representation rather than communication (is the difference really that clear?). As he points out, “Umberto Eco once defined a sign as something that can be used to tell a lie. This definition correctly describes one function of visual representation—to deceive. But in the age of electronic telecommunication we need a new definition: A sign is something which be used to teleact” (170). The implications of this shift really struck me.

We’ve talked a bit about the “non-transparency of code,” about the idea that semiotic systems always altar the message which they seek to convey. In our day to day life, the imagery surrounding us—objective reality—enters our consciousness through language. This causes a subtle distortion in our knowledge of a thing and what a thing actually is. But it seems like the distortion between an object and our perception of it is more pronounced once one begins talking about teleaction: imagery is mediated not only through our standard language, but through the codes of signification embedded in the computer. Reality becomes twice removed, yet we’re still able to manipulate it.

Now why did this distinction just blow my freakin’ mind? Well, because I used to work on surveillance aircraft while I was in the Navy. On occasion I'd see some footage, some of which was disturbingly violent. The video below isn’t quite a direct translation of this, but it nicely captures the jingoistic atmosphere and technological fetishism of the American (perhaps all) militaries:

Wow. I really don’t miss that shit at all. In any case, I was always struck by how many of the people around me seemed to so-enjoy their jobs. As in, they would play footage similar to this—drone strikes set to rock music—to amp up my squadron prior to a deployment. This worked. Yet I could never quite get past the fact that on the other end of these video screens were actual living, I guess dying, human beings. But it seems like the dual layer of signification underlying teleaction has enabled a lot of people to forget about this. They were showing drone strikes on CNN during the First Gulf War and the American public just loved it. War became a video game. Death, cinema. It’s really sort of creepy.