The Arts of Contingency
The Arts of Contingency
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偶然事件的艺术
作者：
E. Esposito
如果我们像弗朗西斯·培根使用的短语那样，从广义上考虑传播艺术的现状--即作为传播、记录和组织知识的整个过程--我们不得不承认，对于理论思考来说，这是一个相当令人沮丧的条件。虽然在技术、机器和工具方面存在许多技术，但培根所使用的古老的艺术意义已经丧失。从这个意义上说，艺术--例如木工艺术，或者导航或说服的艺术--是受可以教授的规则支配的东西。这些规则指明了要做什么、如何做以及为了什么目的。在概念层面上，目前似乎没有太多可教的东西，尽管不断地对媒体进行思考，关于媒体的理论也在不断增加。技术发展和媒体实践进展迅速，但也独立于理论反思而进行。理论似乎更关注于整合大多无法解释的新发展：聊天室而不是虚拟现实(虚拟现实在很大程度上是理论化的，但很快就从普遍兴趣中消失了)，互联网爆炸而不是互动电视(失败是因为缺乏兴趣，而不是因为技术困难)，非常智能的视频游戏，而不是(往往相当愚蠢的)人工智能。我们缺乏能够应对这些发展的自主理论范畴。理论似乎不断地对技术的发展感到惊讶，而不是惊讶和告知技术的发展。媒体理论似乎正在遭受一种解释不足的困扰。例如，在媒体分析中，理论倾向于假设
If we consider the present situation of the arts of transmission in the broad sense of the phrase as Francis Bacon used it—namely, as the whole of the procedures that circulate, record, and organize knowledge—wehave to admit to quite a discouraging condition for theoretical reflection.While there exist many techniques in the sense of technologies, machineries, and instruments, the ancient sense of art, as used by Bacon, has been lost. In this sense, art—the art of carpentry, for instance, or the art of navigation or persuasion—is something governed by rules that can be taught. These rules indicate what to do, how to do it, and for what purpose. On a conceptual level, there does not presently seem to be much to teach, in spite of incessant reflection on media and of the multiplication of theories about media. Technological development andmedia practice proceed quickly but also proceed independently of theoretical reflection. Theory seems rather to be concerned with integrating mostly uninterpreted new developments: chat rooms rather than virtual reality (which was much theorized but quickly faded from general interest), the internet explosion instead of interactive television (which failed because of a lack of interest rather than because of technological difficulties), very intelligent video games rather than (often quite stupid) artificial intelligence. We lack autonomous theoretical categories that can deal with these developments. Instead of surprising and informing the development of technology, theory seems to be continuously surprised by the evolution of technology. Media theory seems to be suffering from a kind of interpretive inadequacy. Inmedia analysis, for instance, theory tends topresuppose adubious