Do You Like To Watch?
By Gene Goldstein-Plesser, Alice Hines and Ben Hyman
HBO certainly hopes you do. The HBOVoyeur Project, a cross-platform media experiment, is HBO’s attempt to join the “convergence culture” of theorist Henry Jenkins. According to Jenkins, convergence is “the flow of content across multiple media platforms” (2). HBOVoyeur, in attempting to market classic television content within a new media framework, converges fantasy and reality, narrative time and real time, and voyeuristic pleasure and interactivity in a synthesis of old and new media. This convergence demonstrates how different media forms can work together both in synergies and in paradoxes.
HBOVoyeur propagates a TV or cinematic-like narrative under the guise of “real” voyeurism. Its voyeurism draws in part from Mulvey’s cinematic model in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." In this model, the viewer derives voyeuristic pleasure from both objectifying and identifying with the film’s characters, respectively arresting and developing the narrative. He is absorbed in the linear-narrative temporality of the film’s sealed world. HBOVoyeur adheres in some ways to this model. One character, a housewife, prostitutes herself and dresses up as a cheerleader and a cowgirl in the midst of a larger plot to kill her husband. These individual stories create a film-or-TV-like fantasy world that draws the viewer into both the narrative and the spectacle of the project.
However, there is another form of viewer-identification at play in HBOVoyeur. While in cinema and television, viewer identification comes from filming and editing techniques that create a fantasy world in a fantasy time, in HBOVoyeur these are absent. Whole stories are filmed from one immobile point of view, imitating the position of a real-life voyeur. The viewer identifies with the project not through Mulvey’s narrative-driven ego identification, but through the project’s imitation of real life and real-time. Its tag line is, “See what people do when they think no one is watching.” Though HBOVoyeur is entertainment and is sanctioned as such, it posits itself as real, forbidden voyeurism.
In this sense, HBOVoyeur draws from a Web-cam model of voyeurism. This model’s voyeuristic pleasure is created through an experience of real-time and reality. Virilio writes that real-time is characterized by the “twin phenomena of immediacy and instantaneity,” which create a universal present replacing all local times and making information immediately available (“Speed and Information” 1). JenniCam, for example, is constantly updating and can be accessed at any time. Burgin writes, “JenniCam opens a window in the computer screen that remains open whatever other activity the computer is engaged in” (87). The temporality of the JenniCam world is part of a universal time, coexisting in perpetual simultaneity with everything in “reality.” JenniCam is also completely unconcerned with creating a story, simply representing the real events of Jenni’s life. Similarly, as a whole, HBOVoyeur’s stories have no order or plot, but supposedly occur simultaneously. Stories also intertwine with the “real” artifacts that HBO has planted around the internet—-personal Flickr, Travelerspoint, and MySpace pages for its characters. Stories are given specific times and places (East 84th st at 7:34 AM). All this, of course, is immediately accessible on command. HBOVoyeur goes beyond being a simple film-or-TV like fantasy world in sealed-off narrative time, but gives an impression of “real” voyeurism coexisting in real time with our real lives.
The project occupies a seductive intermediate space between Mulvey’s and JenniCam’s models of voyeurism, converging the appeal of narrative time with real time, and muddling the cinema’s sealed fantasy world with a deliberate impression of reality. This successfully creates a synergy of narrative and realistic appeal—-the “voyeur” identifies with HBOVoyeur’s realism, leading him to believe that he himself could be subject to other’s gazes in real life, while the project’s narrative convinces him that goings-on behind his own walls, and the walls of others, are actually interesting.
HBOVoyeur also converges old and new conceptions of private and public space. In both the web-cam and the cinematic models of voyeurism, the voyeur gazes upon what Mulvey calls “a hermetically sealed world” (201). This is comparable to the “humanist” window in Thomas Keenan’s “Windows of Vulnerability.” The screen is a strict barrier that enables voyeurism by preserving the subject’s sense of privacy. “The subject’s variable status as public or private individual,” he writes, “is defined by its position relative to this window… The window is this possibility of [the subject’s] permeability – into the public” (132). In other words, both Keenan’s humanist window and the cinematic window of voyeurism are sites of one-way transfer. HBOVoyeur seems to position the viewer behind a window where those he watches can not look back. The voyeur interacts with the public from the safety of his private space that cannot be infiltrated.
But Keenan goes on to deconstruct the public/private binary, pointing out that the public is necessarily in us in the form of a language and culture that we have no choice but to be born into. Keenan writes, “For if the window is constitutive of the distinction between public and private it is also the breaching of that distinction itself.” (132). The computer screen is a post-humanist window in that communication is a two-way—-as we interact and communicate with the HBO website, or any website, we allow an exchange of information (for example, via the cookies that HBOVoyeur installs on our browsers when we use its interface). HBOVoyeur uses this information exchange to create interactive pleasure by allowing the Voyeur to freely choose between many different stories, numerous “episodes” within those stories, even a selection of background music. However, what the Voyeur doesn’t know is that as a user of interactive media, he engages in data transfer that, by its very nature, makes him vulnerable and violates his seemingly inviolable subjectivity. (See Footnote 1)
In one sense, HBOVoyeur offers a voyeuristic pleasure where we can enter the public without the public entering us, positioning us as private viewers. However, it also seeks to capitalize on “lean-forward” interactivity and to position us as users. Because interactive digital media inevitably open up two-way windows, allowing an exchange of information, the privacy that makes voyeurism possible ceases to exist, a fact of which the viewer/user is blissfully unaware. In attempting to combine pleasures of old and new media, the project subtly contradicts itself.
Though HBOVoyeur succeeds in converging old and new models of voyeurism, it fails at harmoniously combining old and new models of privacy. Jenkins warns, “Don’t expect the uncertainties surrounding convergences to be resolved anytime soon” (24). HBO wants us to believe that HBOVoyeur pushes the boundaries of old and new media, in effect driving this process of convergence. But how much does HBOVoyeur actually challenge tradition? In many ways, it seems to cling onto aspects of the old media world. Although the stakes are high, perhaps both the successes and the confusions of the Project are inherent to the age of convergence.
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(1)This paradox of digital voyeurism would also exist to an extent for a web cam like JenniCam, simply because of its digital form. However, unlike HBOVoyeur, JenniCam doesn’t posit interactive pleasure as one of its appeals.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Another interesting example of a computer's mapping ability is here. (You can do any artist you want). This site represents the information-saturated microgroups of today's music world in a visual map. It is also a good way to find other artists you might like!
Totalizing Fragmentation: Navigable Space and Cognitive Mapping
Totalizing Fragmentation: Navigable Space and Cognitive Mapping
According to Jameson, postmodern space is discontinuous. The postmodern subject is separated from the larger realities that constitute his world, inserted “into a multidimensional set of radically discontinuous realities…” (“Cognitive Mapping” 351) Cognitive mapping aims to solve this postmodern problem by representing overall forms or “totalities” to a disconnected subject. For Jameson, totality is a real force—for example, he testifies to the continuing influence of capitalism—but is inaccessible to the postmodern subject. An individual cannot conceptualize totalities because he experiences a “disorientation of saturated space.” ("CM" 351) The postmodern “schizophrenic” subject needs a cognitive map to represent totalities that are muddled by the saturation, complexity, and formlessness of space that constitute his individual experience. As Jameson acknowledges, creating a form for a formless world is paradoxical. Since the experience of fragmentation that Jameson describes is itself a global reality, “a new and historically original dilemma,” ("CM" 351) for cognitive mapping to represent this reality it must “totalize” fragmentation. Cognitive mapping links the individual to society, fragmentation to totality, and formlessness to form.
This problem of mapping an increasingly formless world has a solution in computers. As characterized by Manovich, computer space (footnote: see comment 1) is both aggregate and haptic, and can comprehensively map larger totalities while remaining true to the multiplexities of postmodern society. Computer space, which is oversaturated and discontinuous, resembles Jameson’s postmodern space. Yet computer space is also given form by a user’s trajectories—it is unified through an individual agent’s navigation. Manovich’s navigable space is not only a fundamental form of new media, but the form that Jameson predicts when he writes that “achieved cognitive mapping will be a matter of form” ("CM" 356). Navigation through computer and internet space is the solution to the problem of cognitive mapping in a postmodern world.
Internet space also resembles postmodern space in its immediacy. The experience of postmodern space, Jameson writes, is one of “suppression of depth…a bewildering immersion…” (Postmodernism 43) This saturation is present in Virilio’s idea of real-time, which enables a plethora of immediate information and the elimination of the interval between sending and receiving of data. As Manovich characterizes it, “In Virilio’s reading, technologies collapse physical distances.” (172) The experience of browsing the web is one of the suppression of gaps and voids, as all data is seemingly connected through hyperlinks. The computer user, immersed in a constant flow of immediate, random information, is subject to a disorientation similar to that of the postmodern subject.
Manovich’s computer space also recalls postmodern space in its discrete nature. Jameson characterizes postmodern space as segmented, subject disconnected from his surroundings. “Postmodern hyperspace…has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself….an alarming disjunction point between the body and its built environment” (Postmodernism 44). This “disjunction” of postmodern space, Jameson argues, manifests itself in art, architecture, literature, and capitalism, among other things. Similarly, Manovich points out that computer space is haptic, each object independent from its enviornment. Computer data is discrete, andmust be digitized to be represented, “turn[ing] continuous data into discrete data…occurring in distinct units” (Manovich 28). Internet space also reflects postmodern fragmentation: “The space of a web, in principle, cannot be though of as a coherent totality: it is a collection of numerous files, hyperlinked without any overall perspective to unite them.” (Manovich 257) Curiously, both computer and postmodern spaces factor into larger systems and organizations despite their discrete nature. In computers, haptic elements interact in a system to efficiently execute tasks. In turn, postmodernism is part of the “late capitalist” system. “The advanced capitalist countries today are now a field of stylistic and discursive heterogeneity without a norm.” (Postmodernism, 17) Both types of space participate in the subtle efficiency of complex, multifaceted, commodity and information saturated systems.
Despite its discrete, haptic nature, computer space is unified through navigation and individual trajectories. For Manovich, navigation is the most important element of new media space. Navigable space is defined by individual users: “space functions in computer culture as something traversed by a subject, as a trajectory rather than an area.” (Manovich 279) This concept of navigation alters the notion of a discrete and disjointed computer space. Trajectories through fragmented space give it form—the user joins discrete objects through movement and agency. Manovich also explains the unifying capability of trajectories through historical continuity: “I have chosen to emphasize the continuities between the new media and the old…I wanted to create trajectories through the space of cultural history…” (284) Navigation and its trajectories can unite the fragmented objects of computer space, giving form to the complex, hyper-saturated reality of data and information.
The agency of navigation is key to linking it with cognitive mapping. The computer user navigates the chaotic jungle of information, creating a map from his own path. For example, the History feature in web browsers records user actions to form a personalized map based on his own trajectories. Navigation is dependent on individual agency and decentralization, and the user is “comforted by the variety of data manipulation operations at her control.” (Manovich 274) Similarly, in postmodern space, individuals are no longer cohered by a central authority: “Faceless masters continue to inflect the economic strategies which constrain our existences, but they no longer need to impose their speech..” (Postmodernism 17) Cognitive mapping must totalize this “random and undecidable world of microgroups” ("CM" 356) in an individual, decentralized manner, in order remain true to the fragmented reality of postmodernism. Another way to look at agency in cognitive mapping is through Jameson’s political activism. He argues that individual activism is inhibited by postmodern fragmentation. In linking an individual’s project to the global systems it aims to alter, cognitive mapping enables individual agency. This relationship is also present (but reversed) in computer spaces, where individual agency enables the navigation through haptic, discrete objects.
Navigable space solves the paradox of giving form to formlessness—it maps the vast complex of immediate information through an individual agent, remaining true to disunited nature of the subject in postmodernity as well as the goal of totality. Whether Jameson himself would accept this solution to cognitive mapping is unclear. In postmodernism, he dismisses computers as a “degraded attempt…to think the impossible totality of the contemporary world system.” (37) Jameson is too faithful to “totality” to accept the fragmentation of computers as a valid map, seeing them as mere reflections, or “distorted figuration[s] of…the whole world system of a present-day multinational capitalism.” (Postmodernism 37) As I have argued, however, the new media form of navigable space, perfected in computers and the internet, is the key to enabling us to cognitively map our world. Despite Jameson’s qualms about computer technology, navigable spaces achieves his final goal of individual activism within a multifaceted system. Quoting Kabakvov, Manovich expresses this perfectly: “trajectories trace out the rules of other interests and desires that are neither determined, nor captured by, the system in which they develop.” (Manovich 268)
According to Jameson, postmodern space is discontinuous. The postmodern subject is separated from the larger realities that constitute his world, inserted “into a multidimensional set of radically discontinuous realities…” (“Cognitive Mapping” 351) Cognitive mapping aims to solve this postmodern problem by representing overall forms or “totalities” to a disconnected subject. For Jameson, totality is a real force—for example, he testifies to the continuing influence of capitalism—but is inaccessible to the postmodern subject. An individual cannot conceptualize totalities because he experiences a “disorientation of saturated space.” ("CM" 351) The postmodern “schizophrenic” subject needs a cognitive map to represent totalities that are muddled by the saturation, complexity, and formlessness of space that constitute his individual experience. As Jameson acknowledges, creating a form for a formless world is paradoxical. Since the experience of fragmentation that Jameson describes is itself a global reality, “a new and historically original dilemma,” ("CM" 351) for cognitive mapping to represent this reality it must “totalize” fragmentation. Cognitive mapping links the individual to society, fragmentation to totality, and formlessness to form.
This problem of mapping an increasingly formless world has a solution in computers. As characterized by Manovich, computer space (footnote: see comment 1) is both aggregate and haptic, and can comprehensively map larger totalities while remaining true to the multiplexities of postmodern society. Computer space, which is oversaturated and discontinuous, resembles Jameson’s postmodern space. Yet computer space is also given form by a user’s trajectories—it is unified through an individual agent’s navigation. Manovich’s navigable space is not only a fundamental form of new media, but the form that Jameson predicts when he writes that “achieved cognitive mapping will be a matter of form” ("CM" 356). Navigation through computer and internet space is the solution to the problem of cognitive mapping in a postmodern world.
Internet space also resembles postmodern space in its immediacy. The experience of postmodern space, Jameson writes, is one of “suppression of depth…a bewildering immersion…” (Postmodernism 43) This saturation is present in Virilio’s idea of real-time, which enables a plethora of immediate information and the elimination of the interval between sending and receiving of data. As Manovich characterizes it, “In Virilio’s reading, technologies collapse physical distances.” (172) The experience of browsing the web is one of the suppression of gaps and voids, as all data is seemingly connected through hyperlinks. The computer user, immersed in a constant flow of immediate, random information, is subject to a disorientation similar to that of the postmodern subject.
Manovich’s computer space also recalls postmodern space in its discrete nature. Jameson characterizes postmodern space as segmented, subject disconnected from his surroundings. “Postmodern hyperspace…has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself….an alarming disjunction point between the body and its built environment” (Postmodernism 44). This “disjunction” of postmodern space, Jameson argues, manifests itself in art, architecture, literature, and capitalism, among other things. Similarly, Manovich points out that computer space is haptic, each object independent from its enviornment. Computer data is discrete, andmust be digitized to be represented, “turn[ing] continuous data into discrete data…occurring in distinct units” (Manovich 28). Internet space also reflects postmodern fragmentation: “The space of a web, in principle, cannot be though of as a coherent totality: it is a collection of numerous files, hyperlinked without any overall perspective to unite them.” (Manovich 257) Curiously, both computer and postmodern spaces factor into larger systems and organizations despite their discrete nature. In computers, haptic elements interact in a system to efficiently execute tasks. In turn, postmodernism is part of the “late capitalist” system. “The advanced capitalist countries today are now a field of stylistic and discursive heterogeneity without a norm.” (Postmodernism, 17) Both types of space participate in the subtle efficiency of complex, multifaceted, commodity and information saturated systems.
Despite its discrete, haptic nature, computer space is unified through navigation and individual trajectories. For Manovich, navigation is the most important element of new media space. Navigable space is defined by individual users: “space functions in computer culture as something traversed by a subject, as a trajectory rather than an area.” (Manovich 279) This concept of navigation alters the notion of a discrete and disjointed computer space. Trajectories through fragmented space give it form—the user joins discrete objects through movement and agency. Manovich also explains the unifying capability of trajectories through historical continuity: “I have chosen to emphasize the continuities between the new media and the old…I wanted to create trajectories through the space of cultural history…” (284) Navigation and its trajectories can unite the fragmented objects of computer space, giving form to the complex, hyper-saturated reality of data and information.
The agency of navigation is key to linking it with cognitive mapping. The computer user navigates the chaotic jungle of information, creating a map from his own path. For example, the History feature in web browsers records user actions to form a personalized map based on his own trajectories. Navigation is dependent on individual agency and decentralization, and the user is “comforted by the variety of data manipulation operations at her control.” (Manovich 274) Similarly, in postmodern space, individuals are no longer cohered by a central authority: “Faceless masters continue to inflect the economic strategies which constrain our existences, but they no longer need to impose their speech..” (Postmodernism 17) Cognitive mapping must totalize this “random and undecidable world of microgroups” ("CM" 356) in an individual, decentralized manner, in order remain true to the fragmented reality of postmodernism. Another way to look at agency in cognitive mapping is through Jameson’s political activism. He argues that individual activism is inhibited by postmodern fragmentation. In linking an individual’s project to the global systems it aims to alter, cognitive mapping enables individual agency. This relationship is also present (but reversed) in computer spaces, where individual agency enables the navigation through haptic, discrete objects.
Navigable space solves the paradox of giving form to formlessness—it maps the vast complex of immediate information through an individual agent, remaining true to disunited nature of the subject in postmodernity as well as the goal of totality. Whether Jameson himself would accept this solution to cognitive mapping is unclear. In postmodernism, he dismisses computers as a “degraded attempt…to think the impossible totality of the contemporary world system.” (37) Jameson is too faithful to “totality” to accept the fragmentation of computers as a valid map, seeing them as mere reflections, or “distorted figuration[s] of…the whole world system of a present-day multinational capitalism.” (Postmodernism 37) As I have argued, however, the new media form of navigable space, perfected in computers and the internet, is the key to enabling us to cognitively map our world. Despite Jameson’s qualms about computer technology, navigable spaces achieves his final goal of individual activism within a multifaceted system. Quoting Kabakvov, Manovich expresses this perfectly: “trajectories trace out the rules of other interests and desires that are neither determined, nor captured by, the system in which they develop.” (Manovich 268)
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