THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WINDOW
published in
Domus m, Magazine of Architecture, Design, Art and Communication"
The Other Side of the Window"
(both in Turkish and English)
© Domus m, dec-jan, 2000.
Television is a piece of cult apparatus that with a momentum equal to that of the consumption mechanism of popular culture has established a place in daily life. The televisual flow is formatted for unconscious addiction, providing toxins of curiosity in 72 dpi tablets. On the overloaded data network, and forward and backwards leaps of digital images and text codes, it offers virtual timelessness and spacelessness index to real time and the machine. It is a noisy piece of machinery which deciphers capitalism; a frantic mechanism which filters and melts the context and content of everything that it conveys through the ‘time’ reference which it codes itself.
Time is passing. Television is flowing. Television is keeping us waiting. Past and future are being repeated in time present. New interpretations of unexpected and unusual ‘bad news’ are given live on different channels. It is impossible to be satisfied. More. Worse. Every item of bad news repeated in present time, with the impact of an alien which pops up in a sci-fi horror film, becomes still more dramatic as expectations gain momentum. The prototype figure of our times who rushes through daily life with breathtaking speed and intensity continues to be pinned to the screen waiting for bad news to come. A network of dystopic expectation accompanies fin de siecle melancholy.
But television is insatiable. The characteristics, which have become a cult over the past half-century have the future of communications technology under their thumb. As the impeccable manifestation of ‘push’ technology, television acts as guide to the computer, the child prodigy of ‘pull’ technology. The supposedly ‘unmentionable’ apparatus of old technology is changing the hypertext logic of Internet pages. Images flowing live on the computer screens, news tickers, which are simultaneously influence by stock market news, and flashing banners which change every 10k/10 seconds. The logic of television is shaping ever-advancing communication technology together on the Internet. The commercial confusion which began with ‘settop boxes’ is bringing push and pull technology together on the Internet. The screensaver, which seeks an empty moment on the screen is transformed into the Economist screen bringing global economic news. Java technology and flash animations are transforming interactive navigation pages into television screens. Film blurb, music clips , and new computer games revolve in the form of lists. While CNN sprinkles flowing real images in its Internet pages, on its live Q&A television programme the studio guests is asked questions via Internet. Zapping by backwards and forwards leaps on the Internet continue. The screen is forever flowing.
The Utopian expectations associated with the millennium compete with television’s dystopic discourse. While developing technology is credited to the millennium, the dystopic discourse overflowing from the sphere of television is regarded as the threat of innovation coded to itself. The life of reality belonging only behind the screen and of flowing information continues until another is reached. The televisual flow, together with the linked movements of Internet pages is coded as a window allowing us access to our private lives as the promotion of the culminating stage of capitalism through the filter of pull and push technologies.
No privacy, no memory, space is lost and time empties. Mirrored postmodern windows do not allow images past. They reflect the interior and cut off the exterior.
‘Windows’
- Paul Virilio defines television as a third window onto the world in “The Third Window: An Interview with Paul Virilio”. Global Television Int. Jonathan Crary, Trans. Yvonne Shafir Eds. Cyntia Shneider and Brian Wallis. Cambridge; Massachusetts; London: The MIT Press, 1991.
- Pull technology: The content is selected by the user and pulled into the foreground.
- Push technology: The content is pushed onto the viewer without defining any linking element.
- Settop boxes: The first commercial ‘cross-link’ using modems to access the internet via television sets.
- News tickers/advertising banners: Commercial visual areas combining pull and push technologies on computer.
- Navigation window: A window by which the user explores a data base, hypertext or hypermedia programme on the Internet.
- CNN Q&A: A television programme consisting of questions and answers (entered live by e-mail).
- Java technology: Like the visual communication language HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) developed to work on all computers, Java is a technology developed as a visual programming language adaptable to all computer environments.
- Flash animation: An interactive visualization platform also including a flexible drawing method developed after Java.
