Kittler Response: Natalia, Mike, Fernando, Martin

In “Gramophone, Film, Typewriter”, Kittler discusses how all media have been reduced into “rows of numbers”, which is the concept that he pushes further in “There is No Software” by stating that hardware is the only significant aspect of computation. He stresses that media define our understanding of the world, and dictate the illusions that we see around us, mistaking them for sense perception. With all media blending into one, the differences between them become negligible, essentially eliminating the concept of media itself. However, this is merely a continuation of the way the world has been defined by media, such as in the relationship between writing and history. In “There Is No Software”, Kittler continues this argument about the control of reality by the media, placing particular emphasis on how this control is driven by arbitrary logic, and is limiting in its representation of the world, which is in essence chaotic.

Since the time this article was written, Kittler’s prediction of the blending of media has already began to materialize in the form of the internet communications. It has also taken another form in art, resulting in the current trend of multimedia artworks that use the ability of shifting media to their advantage. While Kitler appears to be rather pessimistic about it, this blending resembles Haraway’s utopia of hybridity, and can be seen to actually hold promise in how information is interpreted and used. His ideas about non-existence of software, however, are more problematic as they undervalue the creativity that goes into its creation and use. By stating that everything is reduced to 1’s and 0’s, he suggests that all of the work done on the computer is merely that. It resembles the Modernist approach to painting, viewing it merely as colour and plane.

What would be, following Kittler’s idea, the computation arts equivalent of flat abstraction? Would such an artform hold a valid place in contemporary art world?