Problem Equipment Solution Problem

 A dialogue between Daniel Pryde-Jarman and Simon Morse following his exhibition at Grey Area in December 2006

DP-J: I came across this quote in Jean Baudrillard's 'The System of Objects' and it struck me as being really pertinent to the work you showed at Grey Area.

'We have seen that automatism always embodies an irrational projection of consciousness; in this 'schizofunctional' world, however, nothing leaves a trace except obsessions pure and simple. There is a complete pataphysics of the object awaiting description here, a science of imaginary technical solutions.'

It crops up in the chapter on 'Functional Aberration'. Do you think that it captures something of the thinking behind the images of handheld devices that you developed?

SM: Yeah.

I've always liked that 'pataphysical' stuff, at least as long as I've known about it, maybe the past ten years. 'A science of imaginary solutions'
provides one with a licence for, at the one end of the spectrum, silly silliness for silliness' sake, and at the other, a method of satirising the
structures we create to research, order and control the world and each other. Which is precisely the range of my work. Or maybe it's not a sliding scale, maybe its two ingredients which one can add x or y amount of to a test tube from which the work then emerges. Or maybe it's two fighting bantams, goaded into attacking each other in a barn in Somerset, each of which will die horribly from mutually-inflicted wounds while idiots yell and bet cash money around them, and the work is the chicken curry that the barn-owner's wife makes out of their partially-shredded corpses once everyone's gone home, satiated with bloodlust and lighter in the pocket.

That's the problem with 'pataphysics' - so much time, energy and gratuitous imagery is expended trying to define it (or maintaining a distance from possible definition so as to secure one's pose as a 'pataphysician' that one has to ask 'what is its use? What can I use it for?'

Because clearly I'm fixated on everything having a use. And how one uses it, and who uses it, and why, and why it was created in the first place, and who created it, and what were they thinking, and qui bono?

(As for 'pataphysics' in this regard, I plump for my first answer, the silly-silly-silly/structure satire axis).

But, returning to the quote, I have to wonder what frame of reference Baudrillard had when he was writing that, in 1968. I imagine he was thinking about that sort of 'House of Tomorrow' thing, post-war post-austerity Ideal Home Exhibition stuff, where his 'automatism' has rendered complicated tasks simple through the touch of a button, and simple tasks complicated through, guess what, the touch of a button. And if that's the case then I'm reminded of Hulot's brother-in-law's house in Jacques Tati's film 'Mon Oncle' (though that was actually made ten years before... I'm just working off my own entrenched reference points here (super-entrenched ? I?m a big Tati fan)).
What niggles me though is the 'irrational projection of consciousness' bit. Because I can imagine that in the context of broad satires like the Tati film - this exotic but antiseptic panoply of consumerist 'ease' - that this might be put down to the 'vision' of 'one man', some kind of technical maestro, all aloof. But the reality, in my experience, devices, systems, networks and so on, are the creation of many different people working together. Obviously some of those will be more able (through position/wealth/wealth-position) to dictate the direction of the development of these items, and so it could be said that their 'consciousness' is being irrationally projected onto the end product more than anyone else's. But even in that situation (which, again, I've witnessed) the production process involves the imposition of will, the exertion of authority and sometimes power, by managers onto middle managers, middle managers onto junior managers, and junior managers onto 'the shop floor', and at each stage different psychologies come into contact or conflict with each other, and have to be resolved. So I'm saying the object which results is itself the result of many different 'irrational projections of consciousness'. And so, as much as I agree with Baudrillard's call (across the decades) for a 'pataphysics of the object', I think we also need, in tandem, a 'pataphysics of the group or organisation'.

Isn?t it possible that an inoperable object could be agreed upon throughout tiers of management, as well as because of management, and be manufactured by an organised collective schizo-consciousness? What else could explain the realisation of product names such as the Hyundai 'Pony' or Daihatsu 'Charade'? Do you think that we need to somehow establish a greater level of gestural or physical connectivity between the tools we create and the tasks they profess to perform? Perhaps this would be regressive, like the wire on an early remote control, or a reversal of the miniaturisation of tools for the purposes of actual usability. Or are we too far gone, and instead in need of yet another tool to reduce the size of our thumbs?


SM: Miniaturisation is good. Miniaturisation of consumer items offers the possibility of increasing and expanding their functionality (doing more with less) while decreasing their energy consumption and, perhaps even, decreasing the consumption and waste involved in producing them in the first place. I’d like to own a device that was a combined computer, radio, phone, toaster, dishwasher, telescope, helicopter, library, football pitch, etc. that would fit in my pocket, consume next to no power, not emit harmful whatsits, and allow me to engage with other humans on human terms (rather than its own, or rather those of the industrial monolith that created it). I think that would constitute a rational and responsible approach to design. And, you know what? I think that’s do-able.

However, we’re still stuck, as a species, in Victorian, Industrial Revolution-era thinking. Here’s a quote from the preface to Karl Marx’s 1859 piece ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’, part of which I’ve used on posters in my Marxist Magicians shows:

“Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

“Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.”

Which  can be found here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

It sort of explains why Pony and Charade are thought of by someone (or should that be SOMEONE done in a big reverby voice) as good names for a car. Because they think, given the bubble that we’re enclosed in, the circle on the Venn diagram, which includes the various cultures and languages in the target markets they’ll be selling this in, these words say something positive to those who might buy it.

Which is partially clever, and partially stupid, as any fan of Alec Guinness will tell you the Sunday morning after the Saturday night when they got rat-arsed on The Black Stuff – it’ll take a while before they hear the name of the great actor again without wanting to chuck.

What I’m trying to get at, here and with the handheld devices (which I see more as practical/production-oriented/light industrial objects rather than consumer items), is that Marx is missing the possibility of the runaway train, of the thing we produce with our skill, our ingenuity and, behind everything, the profit motive of The Few, but which upends the very foundations of all of our lives. I’m talking about people needing to come up with emergency solutions to problems they or others have created, and they make these hybrid devices that only use existing elements (we’re stymied by language and the policing thereof) to do something apparently clever, but are doomed from the outset only to make things worse. And in fact, the situation is so bad that there was no point in trying anyway, it was just too late. There are plenty of analogues to choose from here. Nuclear weapons, biological weapons, global warming, Big Brother. Take your pick, we’re all fucked because we got so good at fucking badly.

There’s that famous Wittgenstein quote from the start of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (surely someone somewhere’s made a prog rock album with that as its title) that goes ‘The world is everything that is the case’. Yes, and some people have fiddled inside the case, found a way to make matches, sold a few boxes (which we gladly bought), but now the case is on fire. And my devices are improvised fire extinguishers. Which don’t work.

Or it’s like B.A. in ‘The A-Team’ making yet another jet-powered escape car out of a bedstead, a fridge freezer and a bucket. Except it hits a wall, and they all die.

I don’t love it when a bad plan comes together.

DP-J: Marx’s statement that a problem only exists in a collective consciousness ‘when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation’ really resonates in your work. Invention (Device) being the mother of necessity (problem to be solved). In recent years there has also seemed to be an influx of invented ‘specialists’ fed by an overwhelming public desire to solve a problem that cannot be solved, or who’s specialised insight would really only have been useful before the ‘problem’ event. I am thinking of the countless ‘Terrorism Experts’ who do the rounds across television channels to give us their analysis, always post-event and at the exact point when they are of no use. This is deemed satisfactory because it is the next best thing to a preventative solution, if only as a placebo upon which to masticate in the false satisfaction that a problem noticed is a problem solved.

The possibility of doing more with less is logically desirable, but it almost always necessitates that technology must first regress before improving, as the first miniature device is often technically inferior to the previous generation. If partial regression leads to slight progress, perhaps there is a case for substantial and sustained regression for the purposes of explosive progress. I am interested in the coming together of the ‘big is better’ design ethic with miniaturisation, which is well catered for by the developments in televisions whereby the screen length attempts to occupy as much of the world as possible, whist its depth does its best to deny its existence. Such fetishism embodies Clement Greenberg’s Abstract Expressionist principle of ‘pure surface’; a vast colour field removed of artifice when removed of layered depth. Whenever I see these flat widescreen TVs I can’t help but picture their antithesis, a 52 inch thick-line body and 1 inch squared ‘false to life’ viewing experience.

If miniaturisation refuses to be limited by ergonomics, will natural selection do away with the bulbous of thumb, the owners of which will simply not be able to keep up with the tiny-keyed demands of these devices? Or will thumbs become beefed up with the ceaseless work-out of an operating existence? A destiny of Tyrannosaurus-Rex-like opposables may await us in evolution, all set rigid in grotesquely exaggerated Fonzy ‘thumbs ups’ for the rest of time. Heyyyy!!!
 
But back to harking on about the aforementioned design identities, and the car names which are actually fantastically pertinent in that they are dubious signifiers to extremely dubious vehicles. How far can this misfiring engine of design travel before the ‘lost in translation’ allowance runs out? Actually the idea of working every day to pay off the interest of a loan provided by ‘The Money Hospital’ that paid for a brand new Daihatsu Charade (the Synonyms of which are ‘farce’, ‘sham’ and ‘travesty’) points to how your designs are in the absolute present.
 
A Hands-free Handheld device freshly installed in the All-New-Redesigned ‘Diehard Travesty’.
 
How do you see this work progressing by the way, and how might a consumer device differ from the light industrial prototypes you have developed?

SM: Nice Fonz reference. Henry Winkler was at the Wimbledon Theatre, just a brick's throw away from my house, doing panto this Christmas. Apparently journalists sent to interview him and write puff pieces about the show were forbidden from referring to Happy Days. He won two Golden Globes for that show. Granted he's probably been asked every question in the book about it, but still, it's just another example of low-level news agenda management, the language and terms of which, the modes of its discourse, are seeping into everyday life, the better I suppose to make the viewer, the consumer, accept the net-fed opinion-junk of the Terrorism Experts you mentioned, & other assorted pundits, as reasoned and authoritative.

But anyway, I'll shoot myself in the foot now by attempting some similarly uneducated guesswork... about thumbs. We're told that they're an evolutionary step that's allowed us to become the Masters of the Universe that we are (mice, snakes etc. don't have the hydrogen bomb - IN YOUR FACE,YOU LEFTBEHINDS!), and so presumably, given a few hundred thousand years more, they'll continue to be a part of our evolution into an ever more capable species. But I wonder if we might, through the course of our actions - by the items we invent to expand our mastery - evolve into a less capable species.

Put it this way: while the QWERTY keyboard is still our primary method of inputting data into computers - and while we still have spaces between words in our language - our thumbs will still be of use. But if the use of computers eventually becomes only a method of selecting and choosing - in other words, if we eventually become only consumers - then we're done for.Especially with the kind of touchscreen technology that's coming along at the moment, like with the new apple iPhone. It's a lovely looking thing, and I can't wait to get my hands on one, but I reckon when I do my index finger is going to be doing most of the work (unlike with the iPod's scrollwheel, where generally the four fingers cradle the device and the thumb browses and selects).

So maybe we won't evolve big Fonz thumbs, we'll be more pointers. That is, if we decide to give up, slob out and just consume what's offered up to us. Which reminds me of the Neil Hamburger joke (he's the master of the non-joke joke, lots of his stuff is on YouTube):

Q: Why does Britney Spears sell so many records?
A: Because the public is horny and depressed.

...which is as good a critique of early 21st century consumer culture as I think I've ever heard.

As for how the work might progress, and the difference between consumer items in general and the more light-industrial things I've made, in a funny way I think the two are connected. I mean, to a great degree the work is a reflection of the culture and its modes that surrounds it/me/us. Some parts of them are inspired by specific events, others are more 'long-term' reflections on the culture and language generally, and how invention embodies those things, and by so doing adds to or changes or diverts them. And I wonder if in the present culture what we think of as consumer-targeted items will come to be more like industrial or even military items.

Maybe at the moment this is more limited to the US, where the military is integrated into the culture to a much greater degree than it is over here (at least, here now). I'm thinking of things like people - civilians - driving around in Humvees, a military vehicle. This strikes me as being a symbol of arrogance on several levels. Firstly there's the disregard itsuggests to fellow citizens ('this car is so wide it will encroach on your
space, and if you don't like it it's so tough I will smash your car to pieces with it'). And then, due to its phenomenal petrol consumption, there's the disregard it suggests to other nations and to the planet as a whole ('the military that this vehicle symbolises, in order to keep running, will invade any country it likes'). It all depends on how their fledgling empire develops. If it's successful, and there's (to quote the title of Gore Vidal's book on 9/11) 'Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace', then perhaps we'll see consumer items becoming more industrial or militaristic in design (and perhaps in application). We won't be sending each other emails any more, we'll be issuing SITREPs. Or actually when climate change becomes so bad that inhabitants of the 'first world' start to having to move around (or be moved) en masse in order to survive, expect your local branch of Blacks, Millets or any outdoors extreme pursuit type shop to do a roaring trade.

That's my worry. And these device pieces I'm making are powered by it. I'm converting worry into art. So at least I'm doing my bit for recycling.

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