In this article I contextualize the idea of “Zombie Media” and its application of media archaeology as art methodology.
In the past decade, “media archaeology” has become ubiquitous in media studies. As a research method/field, it explores how the “dig” of historical media can be applied in cultural study to discover hidden narratives in linear histories. Media archaeology reveals the cultural and technological layers of previous media – its impossible desires, alternative past, representation, expansion and unrealized dreams. In recent years, it is further taken as an aesthetic of practicing media criticism. It’s approach acknowledges the embodiment of knowledge in the artefacts of the past and seeks to study it through analysis and also through practice. In 2012, Jussi Parikka and Garnet hertz illustrates how media archaeology can be extended as a methodology for contemporary art practice. In thesis “Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method (2012)”, they concern media that is out of use but resurrected to new uses, contexts and adaptations. They suggest that media never dies: it decays, rots, reforms, remixes, and gets historicized, reinterpreted and collected. By the artistic practice of circuit bending and hardware hacking, media archaeology can become not only a method for excavation of forgotten media discourses, but extends itself into an artistic method that are closely related to the political economy of new media technology. This concept engages with the critic of temporality, materiality and planned-obsolescence of new media culture.
As media archaeology is becoming ubiquitous in media studies, scholars still have troubles to comprehend the precise sense and scope of this approach. In an interview published in 2006, Friedrich A. Kittler admitted that as an approach to the social history of technical media, media archaeology can be applied by varied scholars in varied means (Armitage, 2006, p. 32). In Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications (2001), a collection of essays published by University of California Press, seems to provide some order in a field that is strongly influential but often vague. This book features contributions from the main intellectual figures—including Erik Kluitenberg, Thomas Elsaesser and Wolfgang Ernst. In introduction, editors Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka claim that studies of new media often:
“…share a disregard for the past. While signs of change begun to appear with increasing frequency, it is important to see how the media’s past link to their present.” (Huhtamo and Parikka, 2001:1)
As they note, the roots of media archaeology can be located within two traditions: Firstly, media archaeologists often referred this term to Michel Foucault’s notion of the Archaeology of Knowledge (1970). Media is itself an “archive” in the Foucauldian sense, as a condition of knowledge, but also as a condition of perceptions, sensations, memory and time. In other words, this media-as-archive is not only a place for systematic keeping of documents, but is itself a condition of knowledge. Media archaeology can be seen as a method to excavate the ontology of things, to dig out how a media, manifesto, discourse or trend can be produced, adopted and persisted. On the other side, the term “archaeology” has been frequently used, at least since the 1960s, in the field of film studies. For example, Jacques Perriault (1981) and Laurent Laurent Mannoni (1995), proposed the “archaeology of cinema” as a kind of prehistory of the medium, pointing to philosophical toys, techniques of projections, photographic technologies, and illusions of movements that preceded the advent of film. Looking at social contexts in conjunction with technological histories allows a sophisticated way of understanding different perspectives which relate to film. Media archaeology asks why stop at film, why can’t we aim for a sophisticated analysis of any technology, its heritage and its conditions of its existence?
On his blog “Machinology”, Parikka clarified that media archaeology displaces archaeology restricted to material excavations and works it into a method of archival and philosophical conditions of knowledge – its objects, statements and assumptions. For example, a closer examination of the historical significations of the mechanical clockwork as a symbolical or allegorical device can reveal that at least three contradictory significations of this “master medium” can be found in different historical settings. In mid-century scholastic teachings, the clockwork was seen as God’s intervention bringing divine regularity to the erratic flow of earthly existence. In Cartesian terms, the clockwork was reconfigured into a conceptual model of the heavens and of animal and human bodies. There it became a testimony to the strength of human invention and discovery and the power of the human mind to assert control over nature. As such it was seen primarily as an “extension of human agency”. Under the condition of large scale industrialization, the same mechanical clockwork transformed into a symbol of inhuman oppression, something Andreas Huyssen has called a “blindly functioning world-machine.” (Huhtamo & Parikka, 2011. 49-50) How can we accommodate such completely contradictory significations of a machine that has been central to human development for almost six centuries? Media archaeology engages with this question following a discursive approach. It is not concerned with an excavation of apparatuses or the construction of lineages of these apparatuses. Instead, it uncovers the heterogeneity and multiplicity of its object. Unlike traditional archaeology which restricted to material excavation, media archaeology further intends to influence future media practice.
As such, it is not hard to find that media archaeology intends to unfold media’s rich narratives and juxtapose seemingly contradictory cultural metaphors. By digging out how a media is invented and used and by this process being recognized, disposed, reformed and reinterpreted, it is interested in the forgotten paths and quirky ideas of past media cultures. We can concern it as a collage of historical narratives which aim is not some “clear” lineages but a nonlinear mesh of interlinked perspectives. In Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method (2012), Parikka and Hertz further parallels media archaeology with the practical approaches of using “readymade objects – the practice of collage as art method applied by artists in the early 20th century such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp and Nam June Paik. By recalling this spirit of assemblage, bricolage, readymade or collage, they propose to extend this historiographically oriented field of media theory into a methodology for contemporary artistic practice. According to Parikka and Hertz, the practice of Zombie Media is:
“close to Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture, circuit bending, hardware hacking and other exercises that are closely related to the political economy of information technology. Media in its various layers embodies memory: not only human memory, but also the memory of things, of objects, of chemicals and of circuits.” (Hertz and Parikka, 2012：425)
In other words, instead of using electronics to explore or develop cutting-edge technologies, this approach uses everyday and obsolete technologies as its key resource.
In Sep 2012, Parikka further suggests that we need to develop methodologies that are theoretically rich as well as practice-oriented – “where the ontology of technical media meets up with innovative ideas concerning design in an ecological context”. (Parikka, 2012) That is, to extend the media archaeological as well as ecosphic interest into design issues by actively repurposing things (media, machines) that were considered “dead”. As a manifesto, five points of Zombie Media stand out:
1. We believe that media never dies. Media may disappear in a popular sense, but it never dies: it decays, rots, reforms, remixes, and gets historicized, reinterpreted and collected.
2. We oppose planned obsolescence. As one corner stone in the mental ecology of circulation of desires, planned obsolescence maintains ecologically unsupportable death drive that is destroying our milieus of living.
3. We propose a depunctualization of media and the opening, understanding and hacking of concealed or blackboxed systems: whether as consumer products or historical archives.
4. We propose media archaeology as an artistic methodology that follows in the traditions of appropriation, collage and remixing of materials and archives. Media archaeology has been successful in excavating histories of dead media, forgotten ideas, sidekicks and minor narratives, but now its time to develop it from a textual method into a material methodology that takes into account the political economy of contemporary media culture.
5. We propose that reuse is an important dynamic of contemporary culture, especially within the context of electronic waste.
As planned-obsolescence, ecological impact seems to be inevitable, cultural and political theorists begin to turn their previous interests about the future back to the dig of historical dead media, and concern how the past influences the present. Parikka’s Zombie Media addresses the living deads of media culture and propose media archaeology as an artistic methodology which follows in the traditions of collage and remixing of materials and archives. By circuit bending and hardware hacking, the artist can resurrects and reinterprets the dead media’s memory, cultural metaphors and political economy. The forgotten, out-of-use, obsolete and dysfunctional technologies becomes artists’ materials and the decayed cultural metaphors become nutrition of thought. Reflecting the contemporary digital “Open Source” and DIY culture, the artists/researchers are constructing an approach that is both innovational and archaeological. By this approach we are able to rethink the media’s hidden past, discuss the media’s future and reflect on contemporary ecological problems and aesthetic quality of information technologies.
Reference
Armitage, J. (2006). From Discourse Networks to Cultural Mathematics:An Interview with Friedrich A. Kittler. Theory, Culture & Society, 23.7-8 (2006): 17-38.
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge: Translated from the French by AM Sheridan Smith. Pantheon Books.
Parikka, J. (2012). Zombie Media in Leonardo. Retrieved December 16, 2014, from
Zombie Media in Leonardo
Parikka, J. (2013). What is media archaeology. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Hertz, G. and Parikka, J., (2012). Zombie Media: Circuit bending media archaeology into an art method. Leonardo, 45(5), 424-430.
Kluitenberg, E., Zielinski, S., Sterling, B., Huhtamo, E., Carels, E., Beloff, Z., … and
Akomfrah, J. (2007). The Book of Imaginary Media: Excavating the Dream of the Ultimate Communication Medium. NAI Publishers.
Huhtamo, E. and Parikka, J., (2011). Media Archaeology – Approaches, Applications, and
Implications. University of California, London.
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殭屍媒體論述與實踐：媒體考古做為藝術創作方法學 (上文之中文版本)
（此文簡述殭屍媒體(Zombie Media)論述，以及媒體考古作為藝術創作方法的意圖。）
過去十年來，媒體考古學(media archaeology)在媒體研究中可說無處不在。作為一種研究方法，它探討對於過去媒體的挖掘，如何能夠在歷史脈絡中，發現在「線性」媒體史之外的敘事，進而討論一個「網狀」的脈絡：媒體未發生的過去、媒體的表現、擴張、未實現的夢想等多重面向。媒體考古不僅已經被視為一種文化理論的研究方法，也在2012年由學者尤西·帕瑞卡(Jussi Parikka)和信息藝術家加奈特·赫茲(Garnet Hertz)推崇為一種藝術創作的實踐方法。在一篇名為《殭屍媒體: 電路橋接媒體考古學作為一種藝術方法》(Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method)的論文中，他們將媒體視為循環不息的存在，如同殭屍般死亡、腐敗、重新成型、混雜、歷史化然後被重新詮釋與收藏。藝術家透過電路橋接(circuit bending)與硬體駭入(hardware hacking)技術讓死亡的媒體機器得以復活(resurrect)，藉由一種媒體考古的藝術實踐來反映當代媒體的政治經濟、新與舊、計劃淘汰(planned-obsolescent)等議題。
縱使「媒體考古」頻繁地出現在媒體研究中，它依然很難被清楚地界定範疇。在2006年的一個訪談中，被尊稱為媒體考古學之父的弗里德里希(Friedrich A. Kittler)也承認要清楚地定義媒體考古學是一個困難的問題。而尤西·帕瑞卡(Jussi Parikka)和埃爾基·胡赫塔莫(Erkki Huhtamo)在2011年編撰的《媒體考古:方法、應用和影響》 (Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications)中，邀請了埃里克·克魯恩特柏格(Erik Kluitenberg)、托馬斯·愛爾沙塞(Thomas Elsaesser)和沃爾夫岡·恩斯特(Wolfgang Ernst)等文化學者，試著為此模糊但重要的領域撰文。在此書開頭的介紹文中，帕瑞卡和胡赫塔莫重申媒體考古的初衷 –
「近代學者對於新媒體的研究往往無視於過去，當新媒體的更新頻率不斷加速時，媒體的過去如何聯繫其當下應該更顯得重要。」(Huhtamo and Parikka, 2011: 1)
他們提出媒體考古學應該源自兩個主要脈絡：
一、來自於傅柯的知識考古學(1972)(Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge)
以傅柯學派的觀點，媒體是在某種情境下被創造以及被使用的物件，因此媒體本身可以被視為一個資料庫(archive)，它儲存了一種知識情境(condition of knowledge)、認知情境(condition of perceptions)、也是感受、回憶和時間的情境。而媒體考古即為一種檢視媒體存在狀態的方法，透過類似傳統考古學的研究方法，挖掘為何一個特定媒體、宣言、論辯或習慣可以產生、被拾取以及延續的背景脈絡。
二、來自於1960年後的電影研究
當雅克·佩瑞奧特(Jacques Perriault)(1981)和洛朗·曼諾尼(Laurent Mannoni)(1995)先後提出電影考古(archaeology of cinema)的概念，討論哲學玩具、投影技術、攝影技巧和在電影問世前的各種動作幻象等，認為電影技術性的研究應該加入其社會脈絡的梳理，以更細膩地理解電影本身，媒體考古學即延續了這個電影研究的意圖，將此意圖延伸到關於科技及媒體的研究上。
帕瑞卡在其個人部落格《Machinology》中強調，媒體考古學取代傳統考古學限制於物質的發掘，而轉變為一種資料庫式的(archival)和哲學式的知識情境–探索知識的對象、聲明和假設。舉例來說，若我們考察「機械鐘」這個物件在歷史上的意義（作為一種象徵或寓言機具），可以發現在不同的歷史背景中，它有至少三種全然矛盾的意義：在中世紀西方神學的脈絡下，機械鐘被視為上帝的介入，為此不穩定的世界帶進神聖的規律性（regularity）。在笛卡兒思維下，機械鐘的發條被重新部署為動物和人體天堂的概念模型：它成了一種人類發明和發現力量的見證，以及人類心智試圖控制自然的意圖 –它被視為人類行為能力的延展。而在大規模的工業革命下，機械發條又轉變一種非人道壓迫的象徵，也就是Andreas Huyssen所說的「盲目運轉的世界機器」的化身。(Huhtamo & Parikka, 2011. p49) 當機械鐘站在人類科技發展的中心長達六世紀之久，我們如何安置這些全然矛盾的意義呢？媒體考古學即在於介入這樣的問題。它非要探索機具和其線性歷史；相反的，它試圖透過辯證（discursive）的方法，發現媒體的異質性與多重性。不同於傳統考古學專注於物質挖掘，媒體考古學更意圖影響未來媒體的實踐。
從這個角度而言，我們不難發現媒體考古學意圖開展媒體本身豐富的敘事、並置看似矛盾的文化隱喻，不僅討論媒體如何被發明及使用，並且挖掘它們如何被認同、丟棄、重塑、再詮釋。媒體考古本身就像是一場歷史敘事的拼圖，目標並非拼湊出某種「完整」的線性故事，而是交織出一個非線性的複雜網狀脈絡，並且視這樣的複雜性為媒體的真實情境。2012年，帕瑞卡和赫茲在論文《殭屍媒體: 電路喬接媒體考古學為一種藝術方法》(Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method)中，進一步將媒體考古對照在二十世紀初期，被畢卡索(Pablo Picasso)、 喬治·布拉克(Georges Braque)、杜象(Marcel Duchamp)、白南準(Nam June Paik)等藝術家使用的「現成物拼貼」 (readymade collage)技巧，意圖將媒體考古延伸為一種藝術創作的方法。依照Parikka和Hertz所言，所謂殭屍媒體實踐是：
「一種接近DIY文化、電路橋接及硬體駭入等與信息科技之政治經濟相關的技術，它透過媒體的多層次來體現某種記憶：不僅是人的記憶，而且是物質、化合物以及電路的記憶。」（Hertz and Parikka, 2012：425）
任何媒體機器都經歷其自身的「新媒體階段」、「商品化階段」、「DIY/考古階段」，也就是經歷普及、淘汰、腐敗、重新成型、混雜、歷史化然後被重新詮釋。在這個意圖下，藝術創作者並非使用電子材料來探索或開發尖端技術，而是使用日常、過時、甚至歷史的機具來進行橋接與再詮釋。
2012年9月帕瑞卡進一步提出媒體研究應發展出不僅在理論上豐富，也注重實踐的方法學 – 在一個生態脈絡下，讓科技、媒體的本質論述結合創新思考設計，亦即媒體考古作為當代藝術創作方法，以下是他撰述的「殭屍媒體宣言」：
一、媒體從來沒有死亡，它衰變、腐爛、改革、混種然後被歷史化、重新詮釋並收藏。
二、反對計畫淘汰(planned obsolescence)，因為計劃淘汰是精神生態的流動慾望，並易造成生態威脅。
三、我們提出媒體的depunctualization；以及開放，理解和駭客攻擊隱瞞或黑箱(blackboxed)的系統，無論是作為消費品還是歷史檔案。
四、我們推崇媒體考古學作為藝術方法：遵循挪用、拼貼和混合的傳統。媒體考古學已經成功地挖掘腐敗媒體、被遺忘的想法和小敘述的歷史，但現在是時候從一個文本的方法發展成為一種材料方法學（material methodology）並且把當代媒體文化的政治經濟考慮進去。
五、我們認為「重新使用」（re-use）是為當代文化的重要動力，尤其是在電子廢棄物充斥的環境下。
當信息科技不可避免地帶來計劃淘汰(planned-obsolescence)和生態衝擊，文化學者開始將一直以來展望未來的視野，轉為對於腐敗媒體的挖掘，思考媒體的過去如何影響現在。帕瑞卡近年提出的「殭屍媒體」試圖將媒體本身視為循環不死的存在，將媒體考古學推崇為當代藝術創作的方法，認為藝術家對於陳舊媒體、機器的編篡與橋接，是物的記憶以及文化歷史隱喻的喚回。廢棄的媒體機器成為藝術家源源不絕的創作材料，腐敗的文化隱喻成為創作的養分。此觀點呼應著當代開放社群(Open Source culture)及業餘者DIY文化，形成一種既是開發、又是考古的媒體藝術實踐。藉此，我們得以重新思考腐敗機器的歷史，討論關於未來機器的想像，也反映當代媒體與機器的生態問題和美感品質。
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2015 台灣數位藝術知識與創作流通平台專欄〈殭屍媒體藝術：媒體考古作為藝術創作方法學〉
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