Digital conditions
Immersion in Deep Space – The Ars Electronica Center
Gerfried Stocker
In his talk, Gerfried Stocker reflects on the »digital boom« of the last twenty years. He argues that, in his view, the real technological revolution only kicked off when the arrival of social media platforms triggered a social revolution. Given that two decades is a short period of time, our present use of digital media is still fairly clumsy, as evidenced in particular by the isolation of users, including when they enter virtual realities by donning VR glasses.
For Gerfried Stocker, digital space is above all social space, measured not by the number of networked computers, but by the number of people connected at any one time. This social shift in the paradigm underlying the perception of digital spaces arrived in the late nineteen-eighties, when it no longer mattered what was communicated, but only that people were and remained connected. In the wake of this, Gerfried Stocker points out, artists wishing to draw on the power of networked computers began defining the Internet as a social space. Besides, during the nineteen-nineties, some users began taking social responsibility for others, with whom they were only in touch via the Internet, by – for example – exchanging patches and anti-virus programs.
Apart from this upside to the private use of the Internet, Stocker also refers to the downsides. Surveillance and monitoring have been made much easier by smartphones and mobile computers connected to the Internet. However, the digital space is in and of itself neither positive nor negative, but constitutes »a habitat that people have created and must cultivate« (Stocker). Technology and machines are not absolutes which exist independently of human beings, and nor is digital space intangible (think of the physically real computers at specific sites that provide storage capacity). A responsible and hence effective artistic use of digital space is still in its infancy and simply requires more experience and experimentation.