McLuhan MACH - Blätterfolge 15

MACH\MACH06.WP * 31.7.91

Kontext: P.Druckers Bericht über McLuhan als Visionär ohne Vision:

Nachdem McLuhan 10 Jahre lang die Scholastiker als "Goths and Huns of learning" verfolgt hatte, muß er in den 50igern eines Tages gesehen haben "daß ein Licht vom Himmer heller denn der Sinne Glanz, mich und die mit mir reiseten, umleuchete" (Acta Ap. XXVI,13, Luther) - vidi, rex, de coelo supra splendorem solis circumfulsisse me lumen et eos, qui mecum simul erant". Und eine Stimme sprach zu ihm: "Saule, Saule! quit ~dem persequeris? durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitrare."(XXVI 14) - "es wird dir schwer sein wider den Stachel zu löcken". Der Stimulus/ the pricks/ der Stachel war die Dialektik und die von ihr erzeugte moderne Wissenschaft und Technologie. Die Stimme war die des heiligen Thomas von Aquin. Das Licht "heller als der Glanz der Sonne" war das der Fernsehröhre (->Atomblitz), die Stimme war die des heiligen Thomas von Aquin. Sie sprach nicht im Fernsehen, sondern durch es.

Da mag ihm einer gesagt haben, er sei rasend, denn "multa te litterae ad insaniam convertunt" (XXVI 24) - "ta polla ~se GRAMMATA eis manían peritrépei"- "die GROSSE KUNST machet dich rasend" - "much LEARNING doth make thee mad".

Seit 1962 schrieb McLuhan "never wrote on literature again" (Int Lscp, VI) und wurde "Pop Philosopher" und "Media Prophet".(ebd) Sammlung seiner literaturkritischen Essays, so der Herausgeber McNamara, soll diese Verzerrung korrigieren und den "formidable literary critic, displaying AWESAME ERUDITION and wide scope" herausstellen. (ebd)

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TOUCH IS THE SPACE OF THE I N T E R V A L, not of visual connection. (McLuhan, Vorwort zu IL, XIV)

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Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage. An Inventory of Effects. New York 1967. "...the results are startling and effective. The perennial quest for involvement, FILL-in, takes many forms." Lacan, Mangel, Lücke. Photo zu diesem Lücken-Text: Frau mit "LOVE", senkrecht aufm Kleid. Loch im "O", darin der Bauchnabel. Füll es aus, das Loch in "LOVE" der Frau. Kittler: Muttermund.

Daß offizielles Fortschrittsdenken die neuen Media die Arbeit der alten zu tun zwingt, zeigt ein Photo von einer Atombombenexplosion. NB Bernhards Regel: die, die innerlich Murren.

We are ENVELOPED by sound. It forms a seamless web around us. Dazu ein Comic-Symbol: Explosionsstern, darin "BANG". Fill in "LOVE", bei enveloped by "BIG BANG". Sound kann man nicht abschalten (s. KITTLER): "We can't shut out sound automaticall. We simply are not equipped with earlids. Where a visual space is an organized CONTINUUM of a uniformed [RE?]CONNECTED kind, the ear word is a world so fimultaneous relationships."

Nun visualisiere: "ours is a brand-new world of ALLATONCENESS" "The youth of tody are not permitted to to approach the traditional heritage of mankind through the door of TECHNOLOGICAL AWARENESS. This only possible door for them is slammed in their faces by a rear-view-mirror society. The young tody live mythically and in depth...Many of our institutions suppress all the natural direct experience of youth, who respond with untaught delight to the POETRY AND THE BEAUTY OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGICAL E N V I R O N M N E N T, the environment of popular culture ..... (--> Thoman von Aquin über die "Freuung", S.T. II, qu 31, Anm. v. Joseph Bernhard, S. 213 (II Band) "Alle Dinge, sind so heißt es, zu einer naturgemäßen Vollkommenheit bestimmt. Thomas S 212 (Respondeo) "Denn wie der Philosoph 1. Rhetric. ( II n I ) sagt, ist 'die Freuung [delectatio?] eine Art Bewegung und allzugleich- volle und fühlbare Einsetzung der Seele in die vorhandene Natur'. Das "Seelwesen" empfindet , wenn es versetzt ist in da, was der Natur gemäß es ankommt.

"The young tody reject goals. They wand roles - R-O-L-E-S. That is, total involvement." Also Ausbuchstabieren und die Lücken zwischen den Buchstaben füllen.

"The dropout represents a rejection of mineteenth-century technology as manifested in our educational establishments. The tech-in ..from package to discovery. As the audience becomse a participant [PARTICIPATION] in the total electric drama, the classroom can become a scene in which the audience performs an enormous amount of work."

Photo: Kinderarbeit an Spinnmaschine. Zit (Joyce?) "History as she is harped. Rite words in rote order."

Abbildung von VOICEPRINTS. "'Speak that I may see you" DANEBEN "you you you you you etc., vertikal. Und "Electrically-recorded voiceprints, like fingerprints, are now being accepted as evidence by some courts".

Joyce und das Book of Kells. - the simultaneous message of Dublin - . Joyce: "The prouts who will invent a writing there ultimately is the poeta, still more learned, whi discovered the raiding there originally. That's the point of eschatology ouv book of kills reaches for now in soandso many counterpoint words. What can't be ceded can be decorded if an ear aye sieze what so eye ere grieved for. New, the doctrine obtains, we have occasioning cuase causing effects and affects occasionally recausing altereffects"

NB POINT OF ESCHATOLOGY OUR BOOK OF KILLS REACHES FOR NOW --- es wird Sound-Print.

Xerography - every man's brain-picker-heralds the times off INSTANT publishing. Anybody can now become both autor and publisher.

ERHABENE GEDÄCHTNISLANDSCHAFT. "We have now become aware of the possibility of arranging the entire homan environment as a work of art, as a TEACHING MACHINE designed to maximize PERCEPTION and to make EVERYDAY learning [s. divina lectio - memory] a process of discovery." ---> Brandt, MIT, learning-cyberspace. <--- "Application of this knowledge would be the equivalent of a thermostat controlling room temeperature. It woud seem only reasonable to extend such controls to all the sensory thresholds of our being. We have no reason to be grateful to those who juggle (jonglieren) these thresholds in the name of haphazard (willkürlich plansos) innovations. ... Envirionments are not passive wrappings (Verpackung), but are, rather, active processes which are invisible. The groundrules, PERVASIVE structure, and over-all patterns of envirionments elude easy perception. Anit-environments, or countersituations made by artists, ... to see and understand more clearly.... suspendet judgement.

"A cell for citters to cit in." Is wohl Joyce, Finnegans Wake. Kommentar: "The idea of detention in a closed space as a form of human punitive corrective action seems to have come in very much the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries - at the time perspective an pictorial space wase developing in our Western world. Teh sole concept of ENCLOSURE ... doesn't work as well in our electrnic world. The new feeling that people have about GUILT is not something that can be privately assigned to some individual, but is, rather, something shared by everybody, in some mysterious say....new mass culture we are moving into - a world of total involvement in which everybody is so profoundly involved with everybody else an in which nobody can really imagine what private guilt can be anymore." Also Mythos.. - oder ERBSÜNDE, und das Schauspiel der Verdammten für die Erwählten?

Art is anything, illustriert von jener Riesenfrau, in deren Vagina zeitungslesende Männer einzutreten Schlange stehen. Nach McLuhans Theorie: Envolvement durch FILL-IN. Alles ist Kunst der Intervalls, inter-vallum. Dazu Derridas Spekulatiusse zum Hymen, dazwischen, Tal zwischen dne "croupes" des Dichterberges - wie heißt er nochmal?

Formerly the problem was to invent new forms of labor-saving. Today, the reverse is the problem. Now we have to ADJUST, not to invent. We have to find the environments in which it will be possible to live with our new inventions.

Televison COMPLETES THE CYCLE OF THE HUMAN SENSORIUM. With the omnipresent ear and the moving eye, we have abolished writing, the specialized acoustic-visual metaphor that established the dynamics of Western civilization. ...television...extension of the sense of active, exploratory touch which involves allethe senes simultaneously, rather than that of sight alosne. ... This CHARGE OF THE LIGTH BRIGADE (Joyce?, Engel-Legionen?) has heightened our general awareness of the shape and meaning of lives and events to al level of EXTREME SENSITIVITY.

Und danach Kantorowicz, The Kings two bodies im Hinterkopf: "It was the funeral of President Kennedy that most strongly proved the pover of televison to invest an occation with the charakter of CORPORATE participation. It involves an entive population in a rutual process. (...) In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point. This creates a sort of INWARDNESS, a sort of reverse perspective which has much in common with Oriental art.

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Zu obiger Environment-Envelope: Otto K. Werckmeister. Zitadellenkultur. Dann Ashbys Vorstellung von der kybernetischen Schutzhülle. Dann mittelalterliche Kosmosvorstellung. In Manuskripten als von der Schrift ausgehend und alles in sie einrahmendes Gedächtnis-Environment, wo alles, über Rückkopplung, zu seinem Platz hinstrebt. Und das Zentrum , Christus, ist kein Zentrum, sondenr umfaßt und umgreift alles - ganz bildlich. Dann noch Lina Bolzoni, die ganze Stadt Siena als Gedächtnis-Raum. BARTELS: Seele - Gedächtnis. Exteriorisierung, das heißt aber nach McLuhan: intellectus agens kosmisch-individuell.

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Ein gutes Zitat: Sukarno: "The motion picture industry has provided a window on the world, and the colonized nations have looked through that window and have seen the things of which they have been deprived. It is perhaps not generallyrealized that a refigerator can be a revolutionary symbol - to a people who have no refigerators. A motor car owned by a worker in one country can be a symbol of revolt to a people deprived of even the necessities of life ..[Hollywood] helped to build up the sense of deprivation of man's birthright, and that sense of deprivation has played a large part in the national revolutions of postwar Asia."

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McL: "Real, total war has become information war. It is being fought by suble electric informational media - under cold conditions, and constantly. The cold war is the real war front - a SURROUND - INVOLVING everybody - all the time - everywhere. Whenever hot wars are necessary these days, we conduct them in the backyards of the world with the old technologies. These wars are happenings, tragic games. It is no longer convenient, or suitable, to use the latest technologies for fighting OUR Wars, because the latest technologies have rendered war meaningless. The hydrogen bomb is hisory's exclamations point. It ends an age-long sentence of manifest violence. --- und die specialized acoustic-viual metaphor - nämlich writing - that established the dynamics of Western civilization - soll hier nicht am werk sein?

Poes Maelstrom. Poe's mariner .. staved off disaster by understanding the action of the whirlpool. His insight offers a possible stratagem for understanding our predicament, our electrically-configured whirl.

"It is the business of the future to be dangerous". A.N.Whitehead. Auf der letzen Seite vers.

Auf Cover, Rückseite: What is McLuhanism? Reviewing this book in Books Week, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr answered: 'It is a chatoic combination of bland assertion, astute guesswork, fake analogy, dazzling insight, hopeless nonsense, shockmanship, showmanship, wisecracks, and oracular mystification, all mingling cockily and indiscriminately in an endless and random monologue. It also, in my judgement, contains a deeply serious argument.'

'The essence of this compelling argument is that society has always been 'shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication'. With the aid of the typographical and design ingenuity of Quentin Fiore, this book has been made an inventory of effects, an exposition of McLuhan's prophecies of the electronic age which may shatter one's sense of what a book is for ever. This is not a treatise but a happening, not a message but a massage.