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The Human Genome project is being touted as the greatest scientific achievement of mankind, surpassing in its significance the discoveries of Newton, Darwin, and Einstein. If biology is made to be but an exclusive function of the genetic code, then it becomes just another field in the study of communication.

The current excitement about the development of the technologies of communication seems to be coated in a blind faith in progress that is just as naive as that which our predecessors put in nuclear power and the space age.

Flooded with enthusiasm, some people believe that these technologies offer unlimited possibilities for the reconfiguration of the self, predicting even the possibility of an ontological shift in the reality of being. They seem to forget that Cyberspace deals only with representations, and as such they are bound -- in an even greater extent than 'real life' -- by the limitations of language and by the inadequacies of a technology that so far can only create either 'word-pictures' or schematic cartoons.

With advances in digital technology and robotics, bioengineering is forging the link betweent the natural and the artificial. Likewise, contemporary photographic practice has entered the realm of imagination, celebrating the virtual and fictitious.

Furthermore, with the end of truth in photography has come a corresponding loss of trust; every image, every representation, is now a potential fraud. And as the eternal debate rages on about the appearance of truth and truth itself, simulation is the only truth we can trust.

The transpersonal universe of Cyberspace is nothing more than an expanded creative act, allowing every common person the kind of imaginative play that until recently was only reserved for artists and writers of fiction. This democratization of the artisitic impulse has the potential of becoming a healing force in society, but at the same time, by being so undiscriminating in its purpose and so selfcentered, it can never become the the kind of collective experience we seem to be most in need of.

[paul's note: we can apply that to our music. with technology making it more common for people to compose songs (midi), and with new kinds of music being invented (such as techno) that do not come from the classical or traditional rules, it has put a democratization in music-making and the definition of music, which is reserved and defined by the elite: those who can afford the technology (pianos, violins) and music lessons; or those who have the power of saying to the masses what makes up music (and what's "cool" -- Rolling Stones, Mtv). On a sidenote, I think it was Herbie Hancock who once said that he embraced the technology of the personal computer, because by bringing the computer to more homes it becomes more widespread for people to experiment and make music. He was disappointed though that it was largely unaffordable to those from where he came from, in the poor black neighborhoods, where he felt a much musical talents were sealed from happening. I think a lot has happened in hip hop and techno]

The buzz and excitment generated by media technologies are but a logical reaction in a culture steeped in materialism: it creates the illusion that we can reduce every mental act into matter, with no regard to how poor or incomplete that alchemy might be. As the technology progresses and the possibility of manipulating and communicating exclusively with images grows, mental space will be eradicated, fixed into flattened expanses of unambiguous surfaces.

The disappearance of mental space is but a further step in the progressive disappearance of private space brought about by the media explosion and its morbid exploitation of confession, gossip, and every lurid detail of human baseness. [ few words: Paula Jones, Jerry Springer, OJ.] Add to that also the progressive disappearance of public space as manifest in the sorry decay of the cities and the trend towards sub-urbanization, and we are left with a strangely imploded void where our lives can barely take hold.

The void is gradually filled with images and metaphors that try to make it a more agreeable habitat. Drawing romantically from the jargon of biogenetics, computer science, and a touch of popular psychology, they present a smooth universe of interfaces, amazing speed, multilocality, and superconductivity, populated by friendly cyborgs, artificial intelligent machines and the shallow creations of our transpersonal selves. Nobody seems to care that this idealized world functions on the basis of extreme human isolation, mediated experience, and global consumerism.

The hyper-human psyche of our age is molded by extreme idolatry. Indeed, the idealization of the body that has been at the heart of artmaking since classical Greece has crossed an aestethic and technical treshold fueled by the needs of the Marketplace, resulting in the representation of human perfection: too perfect even for the gods.

In an electronic, global culture dominated by the need for an efficicient distribution of information, there is a gradual obsolescnence of the body as the Natural becomes subservient to the Technological.

Against such developments, we will face the crucial debate of what are the boundaries that determine the dichotomoy human/not human. It would seem that the contribution of art to this discourse is to offer a repository for compassion. Sometimes the only way of being ruly compassionate is to be ruthless about the precise description of our fears. Compassion is not for the squeamish.

Through developments in digital technology, photography has been freed once and for all from the rigid conventions of Realism. Like life itself, it is not capable of representating not just what is real, but what is possible.

- -- from" Photography After Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age"; ed. Hubertus v. Amelunxen, Stefan Iglhaut, Florian Rotzer in collaboration with Alexis Cassel and Nikolaus G. Schneider; published by G+B Arts, 1996