Gian Pablo @ ITP

Crary seeks to supplement Debord’s concept of the spectacle with historical precedents. Citing Baudrillard and Benjamin, he traces the origins of the spectacle to the maturity of parallel processes of industrialization and Western political expansion.

However, Debord himself states his belief that the spectacle originated much later, in the 1920s and hence Crary identifies it with the development of television, sound cinema and political/ideological movements that could make the most of them.

I feel that this is a somewhat limited view: as a medieval historian myself, I think it is possible to find the origins of the spectacle even earlier, and this perspective gives a better basis for understanding what has changed. As I understand it, “spectacle” in Debord’s usage is a system of social and political control that works by creating overwhelming emotional engagement of the population in things and events that are completely controlled by those in power.

This is not new: medieval European churches were designed as places of intense sensory richness, designed to induce powerful emotional experiences in spectators that could then be used to shape behavior. Hindu temples, among others, for the past 4,000 years or more have similarly benefited from similar emotional techniques. As Elias Canetti points out in “Crowds and Power”, parades and marches have a similar emotional resonance, encouraging the participant and the viewer to submerge themselves into the collective and pursue their goals.

Today’s organized sports for the benefit primarily of the spectators, not players, also trace their origins to the 1860s, and represent an excellent early example of the spectacle. Spectator sports fulfill practically all of Debord’s criteria for a concentrated spectacle, particularly the relationship with violence. (Here I simplify – spectator sports are considerably older than that, but the ones which have survived to the present day have their roots in the 1860s or thereabouts.)

Where things have changed, with respect to the historical use of spectacle, is the mechanism by which resistance becomes subverted and incorporated into the ongoing spectacle. Whereas medieval religion was inflexible, treating resistance as heresy and attacking it directly, and 19th century public opinion was “scandalized” by innovation, by the 1920’s the system of the spectacle was becoming capable of converting innovation into popular culture with increasing efficiency, at least in some cultures. Crary cites surrealism, but jazz music is another example of a marginal, and subversive, subculture rapidly becoming mainstream. It is no coincidence that the movie cited by Crary as an example of a technological landmark is “The Jazz Singer”!

The other key aspect of the modern spectacle is how its consumption has become central to everyday life. Whereas historical spectacle was reserved for special occasions, the emergence of mass media has made it possible for spectacle to be an everyday event – in fact, for many people, consumption of spectacle (via television) is the single most time-consuming and emotionally engaging part of their lives.

These developments, the conversion of spectacle into an everyday event, and the subversion of resistance by making it into a part of the spectacle, represent the key difference from the spectacle of the past, and are made possible by the emergence of modern mass media.

That takes care of the past, now, how about the future?

Lev Manovich argues that an overlay of digital information on physical space is creating an “augmented space” which forms a fertile terrain for artistic intervention, distinct from the virtual spaces popular in the 90s.

However, I suspect that he is missing something. In the early 90s, I pointed out an increasing convergence between complexity of the physical world, and the completeness of its representation in the “virtual” world (cyberspace, dataspace, etc.) Whereas in the 1970s databases tended to represent very narrow information spaces, by the 1980s there was an attempt to model entire enterprises (ERP systems such as SAP), and by the 1990s the possibility of a representation of the entire world was grasped, as the Internet took off. The Internet further allowed the pervasive interconnection of previously separate collections of data. This trend of increasing convergence between the physical world and its representation in dataspace is extremely important, since it enables the bulk of modern economic activity to take place entirely in a virtual world.

What Manovich refers to as augmented space is this increasingly elaborate data model of the world showing through, coincident with the physical spaces it attempts to describe. What he refers to as surveillance is the process by which the dataspace updates itself to reflect changes in the physical. This requires an important distinction: previous definitions of “surveillance” refer to the process of observation by a human, looking for specific events. It has become confused with the current process of surveillance, which is a continuous updating of a representation of the real world, which can then be searched and managed as required.

This is an important concept: rather than attempting to do things in physical space, you do things in a simulation and then translate changes back into the real world at limited points of interface. (The financial industry has operated like this for at least 200 years.)

So where does this take us in terms of the future of the spectacle?

One of the most interesting cultural and social developments of the early 21st century is the extent to which people have become emotionally engaged in spectacles that take place entirely in the virtual world. At first, multi-player online games engaged people in missions with limited time & scope. However, the intensity of social interactions soon led to the creation of systems/environments such as “The Sims” and “Second Life”, where what is being modeled is just… everyday life. Large companies open a presence in Second Life, people have real jobs and make real money, and major newsgathering organizations set up bureaus there (http://secondlife.reuters.com/). In a recent survey, 50% of Americans who participate in such electronic communities claimed that their vitual life was as important as their real life (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/01/rise_of_virtual_world/)

In this sense, this is the apotheosis of Debord’s spectacle – everyday life as a game, in an environment totally controlled by the those that stand to benefit economically, and eventually politically.

The risk that this poses for society at large and creators specifically, is how difficult it is to be subversive in an environment where everything is controlled. In order to draw attention to these situations and invite reflection, it is now necessary to understand the technology sufficiently well that it can be “hacked” and modified from within. (This is happening already in Second Life.) It is almost impossible to reach the people within these virtual spectacles without being there yourself, and being there makes you subject to the omnipotent rules of these spaces.