technical images and linear text

One of the most mysterious and wonderful things about physics for me is the ‘electromagnetic spectrum.’ I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that this huge spectrum of divergent phenomena — the light we see, the radio we hear, the TV we watch, the magnetism we feel, the microwaves that cook our food, et cetera — are all manifestations of the same physical process. What would it be like if we could ’see’ all of these waves in the same way that we can see visible light? After all, particularly in Western society, the air which surrounds us is literally humming (well, maybe not literally, but doing something) with electromagnetic radiation, both naturally-occurring and artificially-created. The wireless internet on our laptop computers, our cellular phones, the satellites which transmit news across continents, the navigation systems that guide us through unfamiliar territory – all of these technologies communicate by the invisible oscillations of subatomic particles.

And yet, as Virilio’s ‘Indirect Light’ shows, these vibrations are less ‘invisible’ than they might once have been. The ‘essential characteristic’ of video technology is that it transforms visibility into a process which takes place over much more of the electromagnetic spectrum than the particular swath commonly termed ‘visible light.’ As Virilio observes: “How can one fail to see here the essential characteristic of video technology: not a more or less up-to-the-minute `representation’ of an event, but live presentation of a place or an electro-optical environment — the result, it would seem, of putting reality on waves by means of electro-magnetic physics” (1). Television is, by its original nature, ‘on waves,’ even though we might no longer often receive it over-the-air in that fashion. Digital video ‘webcams’ are frequently connected to the internet wirelessly over 2.4ghz radio signal, thereby allowing them to be placed in any convenient location without the restrictions of connectivity: the ‘closed circuit’ of CCTV is no longer ‘closed.’ We occupy a society which has transcended visible light. In Virilio’s words, we occupy “a domestic environment for which electronic light, a direct form analogous to daylight, is no longer sufficient” (1). Rather, contemporary surveillance observes the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and its observations are often transmitted over another band of that same spectrum.

The most obvious consequence of this colonization of the electromagnetic spectrum is a proliferation of broadcasting. Communications technologies are ubiquitous and interoperable because reality has been transformed into ‘waves.’ Virilio writes that the crisis of the cinema as entertainment venue will soon be repeated with the living-room: “the emancipation of the screen will involve not only its sudden expansion into the giant open-air Jumbotron or Olympic stadium screen, but also its compression into a scattered array of ordinary objects unconnected with televisual performance or information” (2). This is less a prediction than an actual fact. Already television is viewed as often on a laptop via youTube or on an iPod via iTunes as it is in a living room. In Southeast Asia, live television is broadcast in high-definition digital quality via DMB to the screens of cellular phones. And, as if to exemplify the ‘emancipation of the screen’ taken to its absurd dénouement, there is always this ridiculous offering from LG. The promotional copy says it all: “Why integrate a TV into a refrigerator? Why not?” As Virilio explains, the real-time spectacle which constitutes popular culture in the 21st century is made possible by this (occasionally comic) ubiquity of videography: the immanence of video technology “in the very body of the various pieces of equipment in which it began to be incorporated nearly twenty years ago” (3).

We cannot comprehend this proliferation of screens, however, in the simple terms of human visibility and reflected sunlight. Direct light is the fundamental instrument by which we experience the world. As sensory beings in a predominantly visual culture, the majority of our cognitive input comes from light reflected off objects and focused on our retinas. By transforming direct light into indirect light with videoscopy, we fundamentally alter the spatiality whichs determine the subjective human experience. With the development of videoscopy, every surface “has an objective existence only in and through the interface of an observation which, instead of just being the visible result of direct solar or electric lighting, is due to indirect lighting by the radio-electrical field of a Hertzian system or an optical fibre cable” (Virilio 4). When the reality we perceive is mediated by an omnipresent assemblage of screens, it is a fundamentally different type of reality from that viewed by the unaided human gaze. We can see around corners, into dark spaces, even beyond the spectrum of the light we can actually ’see.’ Surveillance does not so much ‘extend the gaze’ as it does extend the concept of what it is to ‘gaze,’ and what sorts of things one is physically able to gaze upon.

As Virilio says, “As the electro-optical faux jour of indirect public lighting dawns, as the real is put on air as the figurative, a new artificial light now complements electric lighting in much the same way that electric lighting once filled in for daylight” (7). It is worth noting here as an aside that Virilio’s terms are sometimes cumbersome and imprecise, as exemplified by his often clumsy distinction between ‘artificial,’ ‘natural,’ ‘direct,’ and ‘indirect’ forms of light: he seems here to be equating ‘artificial’ and ‘indirect’ light while in other places he uses ‘artificial light’ to refer to electrical light and ‘indirect light’ to refer to other forms of electronic visibility (unrelated to actual lighting). Nevertheless, the above statement is useful because it outlines what Virilio takes the role of ‘indirect light’ to be. By extending the gaze into regions formerly impenetrable to visibility, the indirect light of electronic surveillance supplements the actual ‘lighting’ of public spaces. Thus, the sorts of indirect-light surveillance Virilio describes when talking about ‘Stealth’ technology (5) — RADAR and similar non-visual detection mechanisms — are part of the same surveillant assemblage as those forms of surveillance which rely on ‘light’ in the conventional sense.

And as the surveillant gaze is extended into these new realms, one’s characteristics of visibility become the central defining characteristics of one’s subjectivity. The political sphere in contemporary society is wholly mediated by electronic visibility; this is true to such an extent that not only can we say that the demands of electronic visibility shape conduct in the political sphere, but that the contemporary political sphere would simply cease to be without the indirect lighting of modern visibility. As Virilio proclaims, “public image is on the way to replacing public space, and the political stage will not be able to do without indirect lighting, any more than it has been able to do without direct artificial lighting” (9).

I have more or less picked and chosen from Virilio’s paper here, for as I alluded to earlier, he is sometimes far less than clear in his reasoning. While at times he seems to acknowledge that direct and indirect light are fundamentally interconnected phenomena, at other times he seems to be suggesting the more spurious thesis that ‘indirect light’ is on its way to completely supplanting actual illumination. Consider, for instance, Virilio’s assertion that car travel will “develop from a means of absolute physical transport to a means of ‘relative transport’ associated with instantaneous transmission, the kinematic energy of the video-computer image advantageously replacing the kinetic energy of engine capacity” (13). Either he is making the ridiculous assertion that physical locomotion by automobile is somehow going to be wholly displaced by some sort of video-image manipulation, or he shrouding whatever substantive claim he is making in so much metaphor and hyperbole that it has become indecipherable. Neither alternative casts a favourable light on the intellectual tendencies of the author. Notwithstanding these flaws, “Indirect Light” is one of the first readings thus far to tackle some of what I feel are the substantive philosophical issues underlying the phenomenological experience of the human subject in a culture of surveillance. I feel that the central concern of Virilio’s paper is what it means to live in a society wherein the limits of human physicality have been so dramatically modified through video technology; that is to say, how is it that the ‘indirect light’ of ubiquitous videography reworks the basic experience of being human? While Virilio’s answers are not always entirely satisfying, the questions are of sufficient importance and difficulty that he deserves a good deal of credit for even having asked them.