confidence - La Revue du Cube

Creation and digital society
CONFIDENCE
November 2012
PERSPECTIVES :
Michel Authier, Fred Forest, Étienne Krieger.
POINTS OF VIEW :
Étienne-Armand Amato, Jean-Jacques Birgé, Pierre Bongiovanni, Philippe Cayol, Christian Globensky,
Éric Legale, Jacques Lombard, Marie-Anne Mariot, Antoine Schmitt, Dominique Sciamma, Serge Soudoplatoff,
Hugo Verlinde, Gabriel Viry.
www.cuberevue.com
Création et société numérique
The Cube Review
Given how movement, porosity and proliferation are reconstructing the world in this digital
age, the intention of the Cube Review is to provide opinions from practitioners, artists,
researchers, key figures and experts with different backgrounds. Each edition focuses on
a theme that conveys the emerging trends. With articles, points of view, interviews, video
interviews, debates, and audio or visual mapping, all forms of expression are permitted in
the Cube Review.
The Cube Review is published by Le Cube, a center for digital creation.
Editorial committee: Nils Aziosmanoff, Stéphanie Fraysse-Ripert and Rémy Hoche.
www.cuberevue.com
Le Cube, a center for digital creation
A pioneer on the French cultural digital scene, Le Cube is a point of reference for digital
art and creation. All year round, the space is open to all those, regardless of their age
and their use of digital media, who wish to discover, practice, create and discuss, via
workshops, training sessions, exhibitions, shows, conferences and meetings with digital
artists and stakeholders. Every other year, Le Cube organises an international digital art
festival, as well as a youth prize for digital artistic creation. Its online review was also
launched in 2012.
Le Cube is an initiative created in 2001 by the city of Issy-les-Moulineaux, as the Urban
Community of Grand Paris Seine Ouest’s centre for digital creation. It is organised and
managed by the ART3000 association.
Le Cube
20 cours St Vincent 92 130 Issy-les-Moulineaux
+331 58 88 3000 / [email protected]
www.lecube.com
#3
THE CONFIDENCE
IN THE DIGITAL AGE
#3
Edito
The confidence in the digital age
Nils Aziosmanoff
The world is flat and has no centre. Motionless travellers, we cross the globe via our
screens – the new vehicle of the connected masses. When he painted his multi-perspective
Basket of Apples, Paul Cézanne was already expressing the embryonic multidimensional
world. One century later, digital proximity has proven him right: it diffracts space and combines
perspectives. A new hybrid land has opened up, at the crossroads of the physical world and
the virtual sphere, where soon symbiotic man will be linked to everything. But the proliferation
of possibilities removes any point of reference, blurring tracks and trajectories. By giving himself
the gift of ubiquity, man has lost the meaning of narrative. Disorientated, he seeks to map the
complexity. From everything surrounding him, he extracts the data, quantifies it, analyses it and
stores it. Using numbers and formulas, he seeks to define the indefinable, tame chance and
rationalise chaos in order to make the world run like clockwork. He abandons the ideal for
the standard, which he religiously covers with destiny’s crown. Harried by circumstances,
he abandons Plato’s cave for a planet-sized Tower of Babel. Programmed responses replace
a roving uncertainty of knowledge, of being ‘born with it’. Because having now tamed space,
man wants to own time.
However, the future is a child of chance, a champion of uncertainty and an ace poker
player. Ducking and diving, he can even vanish into thin air. Dazzled by the prowess of
technological advances, our collective imagination no longer functions. Always one step
behind what’s new, it has trouble even going beyond the current moment’s horizon. Here it is,
stuck in an ‘ever-moving today’, a new time space which is flexible and granular, which crowns
the present as king. Deprived of an ‘after’, Homo Numericus paces in his enclosure of the
present.
But isn’t this good news, a sign heralding a profound change? Doesn’t this ‘present’
king reminds us that everything done in the here and now is recorded in the inescapable chain
of causality and that it is part of a future yet to come?
Maybe it was this very ‘life urgency’ that, more than anything else, digital designers
knew to prepare us for. By giving their work the ability to see, hear, feel and express itself,
they have not only made an imminent mirror of our own humanity, but a living alter ego who
transcends our relationship with the world. Because now it calls on our own creativity through
experiencing a state of « being in movement » which plays out in the here and now. Here we
are, on a journey of exploration of internal shores, facets of personality which, for Buddha,
do not create « I’s » but « Unique We’s. »
By stimulating our world reality presence through exercising relationships, digital art
awakens our empathy. In doing this, it teaches us to walk hand in hand with chance and dance
with the unknown. It teaches us that confidence, ‘believing together’, is born of otherness.
It engages us to learn about ourselves which, being more fertile than research into future
consumer products, stamps our uniqueness in a symphony vision of the world.
Nils Aziosmanoff : « Edito» / The Cube Review #3
#3
PERSPECTIVES
Michel Authier, Fred Forest, Étienne Krieger
#3
© Ahmed Fekhar
Disillusionment with trust
Michel Authier
On Wednesday 26th September, my 18-year old daughter decided to leave Facebook.
She no longer trusted it.
On the very same day, the share price had just lost 10% of its value in the space of
36 hours! Had shareholders also lost faith?
In the meantime, according to a rumour from the free newspaper Metro, reported
by the newspaper Le Monde: “Facebook had made private messages public!”
Facebook has reached almost a billion users; something is shuddering, it’s like being
in the plane with Chuck Yeager approaching the sound barrier. It’s trembling and vibrating!
It’s mind blowing! At the one-billion stage, you’re talking to humanity. Millions of little private
spheres are bustling away against each other, on the verge of sublimation; will the unification
of the private spheres confuse the public sphere?
Facebook is the desire for my private to become greater than the public in whose
name it’s imposed upon me. Facebook is extending my private life as close as possible to the
risk of revealing it to all. Intimacy on show. In this movement, the friendship that created my trust
degenerates in order to multiply. Friendly association is no longer the quality of a relationship
between two people, the ‘association’, as we call a club of sorts; it becomes a social group
of which I am the centre and whose members, in joining, even become “friends”. “Do you
want to be my friend?” means more exactly “Do you want to be in my club?”, the project is no
longer about recognition but rather about association. The power of my association is my
value; I am capital.
The murmur that let us know that “people are talking” has just been seen on a wall
telling us “what people are talking about”, namely about everything and nothing. And more
than that, about betrayal, about mistrust, about loss of trust, about denunciation: “he said this”,
“she said that”, “she left him”, “he cheated on her”… It’s a marketplace in which everything we
believed to be intimate is settled in public.
The core makes the number and the number casts its shadow over the world. Thus the
“book of faces” unsettles both the trust of the young girl in front of her electronic mirror and that
of the global collective in its speculation, at the same time. The specular and the speculative
merge into the shadow of uncertainty: was there a bug or not? Mistrust! The rumour is born,
it grows, it stirs things up, it scares people – but what if it was all just an illusion?
Rooted in the human that mobilises it and in the considerable technical equipment that
drives it, the Web is a space in itself. Its logic is not that of the societies and the systems that
we have experienced until now. A pure system of signs (messages, images, patterns, sounds,
etc.), its inertia is low and, like photon packets, it bounces without breaking the mirror. In
this universe, information makes sense only through the fleeting convergence of a multiplicity
of data. The true and the false alternate, dictated by interest, namely the relationships between
Internet users. The main thing is that it produces information. The main thing is to keep on
surfing, to never stop that surfing movement, to play with your senses so as to feel the currents,
the mass and the flows. To exist in and through the movement. So what’s the point of stopping
for an uncertain event and taking the risk of sinking?
In fact, there is so little to be said about this bug. For there is nothing to say about
a tautology. A tautology is barren of all “4=4” information, “what is true is true”, “a social
network has made public private information that Facebook users wanted to make public on
their private wall”. And so what! Big deal! What else does it mean? Food for thought for the
CNIL* which, after everyone else, will end up declaring that there was no bug!
Nothing happened in the end! All that Facebook had to do was assure that “there is no
bug” for the trust to come back, for the young girl to finally remain in front of her mirror and for
the share price to bounce back more than 12.5% over three days. The old media, the paper
tiger, so happy to have found the means of striking at the heart of one of the Web’s phantoms,
offer humble apologies and swear, once again, that one should always check one’s sources
over and over again.
In the 3rd century BC, Hiero II, tyrant of Syracuse, suspected that his crown was perhaps not
made of pure gold. This was a full-blown crisis of trust: what is my royalty worth if my crown
is false? What is my knowledge worth if I’m not sure of it? What is my servant worth if he is
deceiving me? We know that it took all of Archimedes’ science to reveal the truth, to denounce
the forger and to have the tyrant lose his doubts and recover his authority.
These two stories tell us about trust in very different ways. In slowly evolving worlds
in which the willingness of a few could have a considerable effect on the transformation of
the world, it became essential to be able to trust the “other”. As such, truth guaranteed trust,
knowledge legitimated authority, and control justified the use of force in order to impose.
The more the truth was indisputable, the more powerful became the authority that it established.
Michel Auhtier «Disillusionment with trust» / The Cube Review #3
The true word imposed silence, which is the vital condition for the transmission of orders, for the
obedience to the orders, for bringing order. He who spoke did so in the name of God, of the
city, of the people, of the proletariat, of knowledge, whether he was king with divine right,
or tyrant, president, first secretary, scholar, and the strength of his speech depended on his
credibility and on the trust he inspired.
Today, trust has changed its nature. It remains a guarantee of the absence of risk
but, in an uncertain world, one in constant change, we know very well that even truths are
unstable and that they come from the experimental more than they do from the certainties
of logic, theology and definitively established knowledge. Networks of forces, collectives and
organisations expend considerable energy to make the largest number possible agree; to the
extent that, applying the mathematics of large numbers (statistics), they tend to make us believe
that that’s what truth is: the agreement of the majority.
If trust is a guarantee of not being deceived, namely of not being mistaken in
a relationship, a situation, an action, with whom am I really guaranteed?
Of what can I be sure? Where do I place my trust when the world is trembling
everywhere, when truths are negotiated in endless controversies, when lying has become
a behaviour that is excusable in the name of self-interest, when speculation on the future
provides an estimate of existing values? Where is the fixed point with which I can assure
myself, in which I can place my trust?
In our world, which is universally relativist and quantum, obviously in physics but also in
sociology, economics, history and many other disciplines, the only fixed point is in the belief that
“I exist”. I can only be sure of myself. Trust in oneself has become the only point of balance. I
will then trust all that does not excessively unsettle this balance and my well-being will depend
upon the eco-system into which my ego has plunged. All that reinforces the apparent stability
of my “ego-system” will have my trust. Amongst those who resemble me, those who ‘accept to
be my friends”, immersed in the objects that suit me and reinforce my appearance, a spectator
of the idols who attract me, I will watch my being blossom and grow.
Whereas in the past, religion guaranteed Humanity’s links with itself and with the
world, today sees the emergence of the religion of me! Not because the ego is a god, but
because it alone is capable of guaranteeing my links with human, material and cognitive
beings, of guaranteeing my “inter-beings” and my interests. “I am the master of my interests”,
this illusion establishes my trust.
Whereas mistrust, imposing permanent and terribly costly control, has become
a proof of stupidity, the trust that results from my intelligence, from my capacity to create a
link, has become selfishness, making savings in my relationship to the world. It results from my
Michel Auhtier «Disillusionment with trust» / The Cube Review #3
interests, from the effort that I make to maintain the links that showcase me for as long as
possible. My friends, my knowledge, my culture, my characteristics. Me, me, me replicated
as much as possible in a multitude of beings in whom I place my links, my interests, my trust;
me, the capital of interest which assures me that I am indeed there, which guarantees my “wellbeing”. Trust that, thanks to the tricks of morality, could almost make out that I am a “good
being”.
Nobody trusts Facebook, but a billion people have posted a multitude of interests,
inter-beings and links on it. Thus, the young girl remains glued to her wall and the shareholder
holds on to his shares.
“Facebook, why have you abandoned me?” Who will I be if I cut ties? Who am I if
I no longer trust you? Who am I if I no longer trust myself?
Michel Auhtier «Disillusionment with trust» / The Cube Review #3
#3
Art causa mentale
From the visible to the invisible and from
reality to... another reality
Fred Forest
Trust does not order itself. It comes along and gradually applies itself empirically.
Step by step, so to speak. There is a kind of inability for critics and theorists to break away
from the history of art in its strictly aesthetic reading — to break away from form, artist, style —
in order to adopt an innovative approach when confronted with the work produced by digital
artists, sociological artists and, even more, those working with the aesthetics of communication.
An approach that is no longer that of ‘styles’ but rather that of use, function and system.
A functionalism intended to “understand” to what ends these artists have used animation,
interactive participation, the appropriation of new technologies.
Some are to be commended for having attempted to analyse “informational” objects
but the majority have failed, never getting further than a descriptive catalogue. Their approach
is capable neither of conferring upon these UFOs the specific “intelligence” belonging to them
nor of drawing a coherent line between them. By remaining fixated on the obsolete models
of the traditions and the market which hold them captive, they are unable to perceive the new
and emerging models. Held captive by their own knowledge, by the hegemony of painting
and of the eye, for centuries and centuries of formatting, it’s as if they feel dizzy faced with the
absence of visuals that these objects bring. A total absence of image or tangible materials,
as the essential reference for their system of thought, plunges them into understandable states
of anxiety. This leads them to instantaneously dismiss these kinds of artistic practices, without
even considering them, because they elude the conventions of prescriptive codes. The boxes
into which they may fit do not yet exist in the history of art, so the works are quite simply ignored
by the majority. Having nothing else on which to hang their learning, and their knowledge,
their latest updates of these being significantly behind current artistic practices, they will make
do by continuing to talk of the relevance of the steam locomotive in the age of the high-speed
train… :-)
Faced with practices whose formal heterogeneity, fragmentation of approaches,
multiplication of points of view, and absence of constant forms and specific style naturally
lead their thinking to a state of permanent perplexity, they remain entrenched in their habits.
Lacking the necessary intellectual tools, which art history in the making still lacks, in order to
comprehend new situations they have to resort for convenience’s sake to focusing all their
attention and their work on models with reference to times gone by… Thus bypassing one
of the richest and most passionate issues of our time in art history, illustrated by the visibility/
invisibility duo.
For us, “Great Art” is never the repetition of models but rather their invention.
This breakdown and these difficulties in controlling our thought processes are inherent in the
upheavals which are currently affecting every sector of society with constant developments,
and are in geometric progression with technology and scientific knowledge. And inherent
in the “dematerialisation” that strikes all our activities (see Jean-François Lyotard).
Indeed, we have seen more inventions in the past fifty years than in the entire history
of humanity! Physicians, mechanics and politicians have all had to dramatically rethink their
professions with regard to new environments and new tools; why should it be any different
for art theorists or artists themselves? In the history of art, and in the functionalist attempt —
“taking account of the most recent acquisitions of cultural history”! —, something fundamental
is, in fact, missing: a “political” vision of the era. We describe practices, we record recurrences,
we establish all kinds of connections, often with subtlety and erudition, but without finding
coherence or a pertinent principle of unity within the profusion of loose strands. We remain
confined to the self-contained territory of art viewed as an immutable given, whereas the world
and its paradigms are changing at unparalleled speed. The very notion of Euclidian space,
challenged by the perspectivist space of the Renaissance, and then by those of successive
relativity theories, is growing rich today, with the input by nanotechnologies to these fields,
with the new relationship to the world for the individuals that we are. The unique experience
each of us commonly has today in instantaneous remote communication, and consequently
of a certain abolition of space by the use of communication technologies, modifies without
our knowing, at the level of our senses, our perception as well as our awareness of this fact.
Indeed, beyond the particularities of their works, communication artists respond to “classic”
criteria that hail their production as works of art (under certain conditions, Duchamp made
an industrial object into a work of art; communication artists do the same, by selecting
an “informational and immaterial object” corresponding to our current context and in close
alignment with it.)
Cyberspace, as Humanity’s new space, new environment, new habitat, is conditioning
our ways of living, our behaviour, and the types of work produced in what is referred to as
the information and communication society. Of course, the duly materialised space still exists
profoundly, if only through the influence of our own body on our own life and again through
many other things that still give artists the opportunity to express it. By no means does the
immaterial exclude the real, and vice versa, but this explains the hybrid nature of works of art
that now belong to what is known as “augmented reality”.
Fred Forest « Art causa mentale : From the visible to the invisible and from reality to... another reality »
The Cube Review #3
A practical metaphor helps us understand what communication artists do. Today, the
concept of installation (of objects) as a “form” is perfectly integrated into the language of
contemporary art. It’s the interrelation between these objects that makes sense. For a piece of
art that falls under the aesthetics of communication, the same applies, except that the system
of objects used (informational objects) is not on display in a museum room or a gallery but in
a virtual, abstract and undetermined space, which is no less real (cyberspace). The installation
then appropriates for itself, by extension, a new space, which has a meaning above and
beyond what the eye can see. Is art then not, in fact, causa mentale before being solely
perception?
Fred Forest « Art causa mentale : From the visible to the invisible and from reality to... another reality »
The Cube Review #3
#3
Digital trust: utopia or reality?
Étienne Krieger
For cyber security specialists, trust is mainly a matter of encryption systems for
transactions and user accounts. This vision is simplistic or even incorrect, as trust is above all
a dual relationship concerning individuals, rather than interactions with a machine.
In the space of a decade, trust has become a major issue for e-tailers and social
network operators, who pride themselves on promoting secure and high-quality relationships.
In their opinion, it has never been so easy to give one’s trust, since you can consult your
contact’s profile within a few clicks and thus establish if you are dealing with a reliable seller
on eBay, if an investor is rated as a shark on TheFunded.com or if a professional has numerous
mutual contacts, or even recommendations, on LinkedIn or Viadeo.
In fact, trust is partially based on the phenomenon of transitivity according to which
the friends of my friends become my friends … especially if they have a Facebook account.
This assertion, which has many exceptions in real life, is even more specious in the world
of professional or private social networks, many members of which give themselves embellished
or even downright false profiles.
Nevertheless, these new forms of virtual exchange based on recommendations, and
on a form of geographic or social proximity, continue to develop. At a time when everything
is accelerating, it should indeed be possible to carry out an evaluation of other people’s
reliability in a couple of clicks. In a way, it’s like a post-modern version of Kaa, the hypnotic
python from The Jungle Book …
Fortunately, the reality is more complex and trust cannot be reduced to a reputational
graph sketched out by the members of a social network. Trust is relative both to a specific object
and to a given person. As an enthusiastic young PhD student, I formerly protested against the
assertion of Oliver Williamson, an Anglo-Saxon icon of economic science, who had stated
that trust had, at best, its place in relationships of friendship and love but that, in the business
world, it “only muddied the clear waters of calculativeness”, the full quote being “I submit that
calculativeness is determinative throughout and that invoking trust only muddies the (clear)
waters of calculativeness.” I struggled to accept this assertion, which was based on an overly
excessive utilitarian vision of economic relations, even if, on a related note, I more easily
understood the aphorism attributed to Al Capone, according to whom “You can always get
more with a gun and a smile than with a gun alone.” If it is possible to analyse human relations
from the standpoint of a delicate balance of interest, power and trust, it seemed difficult to me,
however, to entirely release this latter from the “price, authority and trust” triptych put forward
by sociologists David Lewis and Andrew Weigert.
In order to demonstrate that, even in commercial and financial matters, trust could
not be reduced to utilitarian considerations, the irony was that I, myself, measured it, thereby
contributing to cultivate the quandary of the dialectic of trust and interest.
This work was undertaken before the advent of social networks, which I have always
considered with suspicion, even if I do occasionally use them. Going without the benefits
of the digital world would be as counterproductive as trusting nothing but this medium.
Trust, taken in the sense of favourable anticipation accompanied by assumed risk, cannot
be reduced to stringent calculations of the risk and potential gains pertaining to a given
relationship. Such a reduction would be even more hazardous if the trust were based both
on a moral dimension – the nature of intentions – and on a technical dimension – competence.
Finally and above all, trust cannot be “equated” because of another dimension, which is,
essentially, irreducible: free choice. In spite of objectively risky characteristics, an investor
could thus choose to give his trust to, or maintain his trust in, an entrepreneur, quite simply
because he is persuaded that this latter wants, and knows how, to do everything possible
to successfully complete his or her project.
For a decade or so, I was in close contact with the founding director and investors
of Xiring, a company that, in the space of ten years, became a leading European publisher
of security software for electronic transactions. One day, the representative of one of the
company’s very first financial shareholders confided to me that she had decided to invest
because the entrepreneur had shown her the company’s situation in a very transparent manner:
not only the very promising opportunities but also all of the technological and commercial
risks… risks of which, as it happens, she was perfectly aware. Such transparency was a display
of trust and what followed showed that it was justified. The director of Xiring had understood
that, in order to build sustainable relationships, it was best not to embellish the reality in which
opportunities would inevitably go hand in hand with significant risks.
To come back to our reticular considerations, networking can certainly contribute
to facilitating relationships of trust but the “last yard” remains, above all, a matter of individual
choice. This explains, in fact, that, when our trust is abused, we experience it as a betrayal and
we adopt de facto a register that is more emotional than rational.
Étienne Krieger « Digital trust: utopia or reality? » / The Cube Review #3
Beyond specific cases, our propensity to almost systematically trust or be wary of others
is not only a reflection of our free will but is also an excellent barometer of our neuroses. We
attribute the following aphorism to Léonard de Vinci: “experience shows that he who never
puts his trust in any man will never be disappointed”… Such a quotation from such a great
scholar makes you think as much as the words of Oliver Williamson.
As much as blind trust granted in almost any circumstances may lead to disappointment,
never granting one’s trust will inevitably result in a life as a hermit. Popular wisdom has it that
“trust is the mother of disappointment, mistrust the mother of safety”, but risk is an integral part
of very existence…
What is fascinating about the notion of trust is that, in principle, it “obliges” its recipient
to show that they are trustworthy. We thus find ourselves in the gift and counter gift category
so beloved of the sociologists of the Marcel Mauss school… but only in principle for, as
Nietzsche reminds us: “people who place full trust in us believe that in by doing so they have
a right to our own trust. This is an error of reasoning; gifts don’t lead to rights.” Joseph Joubert’s
aphorism “we can, by dint of trust, make it impossible for someone to deceive us” is therefore
as questionable as the ideological posturing of Oliver Williamson and the advocates of
transaction-cost economics.
I always have great fun reading attempts to measure a given person’s reliability through
various indices and reputational scores, which send us back to the torment of school rankings.
The underlying logic oscillates between the German proverb “Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist
besser” [“Trust is good, control is better”] and the Russian proverb ‘Trust but check!”.
In conclusion, we can see that trust is an inexhaustible and eminently specular subject:
giving our opinion on trust inevitably leads us to deliver a part of ourselves. It’s also an invitation
to syncretism, since there are rarely topics whose treatment leads one to evoke Nietzsche,
Al Capone, Marcel Mauss, Oliver Williamson and Léonard de Vinci at the same time!
Étienne Krieger « Digital trust: utopia or reality? » / The Cube Review #3
#3
POINTS OF VIEW
Étienne-Armand Amato, Jean-Jacques Birgé, Pierre Bongiovanni,
Philippe Cayol, Christian Globensky, Éric Legale, Jacques Lombard,
Marie-Anne Mariot, Antoine Schmitt, Dominique Sciamma,
Serge Soudoplatoff, Hugo Verlinde, Gabriel Viry
#3
The relationship with the digital era :
from trust to belief
Étienne Armand-Amato
In the social sciences, the theme of trust represents a pertinent perspective, since the
normativity and stability of a common framework are indispensable to humans in order to
undertake satisfactory activities together.
Since the advent of the reign of machines, our relationships with them have continuously
become more complex and richer. In many respects, they represent quasi-partners, so to
speak, from which we expect reliability and quality, in the same way that we expect loyalty
and respect from our fellow humans.
Among the machines, there is a new species that dates back to the last century –
computers. Their specific architecture is behind their power, polyvalence and adaptability.
In fact, the operating programme, namely the software layer, is independent from the
technological configuration, from the hardware layer. For the user, this fundamental separation
leads to a well-known syndrome, that of the “black box”.
With our natural senses, it is impossible to know directly what goes on inside a computer.
The immateriality of information language and the intangibility of electronic infrastructure pose
serious problems of intelligibility, and therefore of trust. For how we can trust what shies away
from our understanding?
These unfathomable and unknowable aspects of the information machine are, in my
opinion, in the process of tearing us from our ancient rationality, which is based on the scientific
and technological progress, faultless and inflexible, so characteristic of the mechanical,
chemical and electric age of the industrial era.
As trust often becomes undermined with regard to interactive products and services,
because of problems of design, use or materials, it easily gives way to phenomena of belief.
Unlike trust, which, once established, is forgotten, belief needs to be maintained and asserted.
It is opposed to doubt and not to mistrust. The best way to convince oneself of this is to focus
on malfunctions. Bugs, as they are called in IT, generate superstitious and religious reactions
sending us back to more ancient times or to other anthropological positions, such as animism.
To conclude, here are two examples of graphic display bugs, taken from massive
multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). In the first, by losing visual contact with
the universe in which his avatar is evolving, the player goes to pieces. The door is open to all
kinds of vertigo, even more so because fellow players don’t know about the incident which
occurred, hence the question of the relationship with others through technology.
A display error while playing the video game Dark Age of Camelot (Mythic Entertainment)
Visuals suddenly turning abstract in Anarchy Online (Funcom)
In the second example, this time, the player is just penalised, as he can try to move
about by trusting the site map, hoping nonetheless that the problem will disappear by itself.
Étienne-Armand Amato « The relationship with the digital era : from trust to belief » / The Cube Review #3
#3
Face to face
Jean-Jacques Birgé
As with the two previous questions, the answer is wider than merely applied to the
digital domain. The question of trust is the basis for human relationships, whether it is earned
or serves as a screen for the worst wrongdoings. Once again, it questions one’s relationship
with oneself as much as that with others. How can you trust anyone if you don’t trust yourself?
Conversely, the relationship maintained with the outside world is that which creates our
balance. Betrayal is, indeed, the worst of experiences and the capitalism which also governs
the digital world derives its founding principles from this. How then can we fight against all that
pushes us towards breaking up, self-withdrawal, segregation and fear? Because this is what
begets mistrust. No matter how you look at the question, the dice are loaded. It is therefore
a question of restoring dignity or, at least, the smiling image of a hand held out with no ulterior
motive other than that of sharing or transmission.
In my line of business, in which the cut-throat competition has neither scientific nor
objective basis, I always thought that only solidarity would save my work. Is love itself not
recognisable through mutual trust? It’s not about saying everything, as secrets are essential
to walk the fine line; the intentions, however, must be clear, and their implementation exemplary.
I was lucky enough to have parents who always kept their promises, whether these
were alluring or threatening. The trust they placed in me when I was very young quickly
became mutual. I liked this example. In the companies that I ran, I decided to practice
transparency, for accounts as well as for wishes. When this applied to ideas, I quickly realised
that these belonged to all those who participated and I designed our basic guidelines on the
basis of what everyone contributed. This can have its limits and we were frustrated at times.
You should never give too much without letting the other party return the favour. Assist them
if necessary by asking for their help or by identifying their jealously or awkwardly retained
skills.
The exchanges made possible by new technology should enable a rapprochement,
but the medium remains dangerously machine-driven. Virtual proximity produces genuine
illusions. Distance is deceptive. Truth may only be seen in people’s eyes. You need to be there.
As for the mistrust inspired by the Internet, whose unreliability is shamelessly emphasised
by the (more) traditional media, we can only laugh at the way in which many of these
professionals deal with the information sent by the big press agencies, with no detachment
whatsoever, swallowing everything they’re told by governmental communication departments.
We know how History is written by the victors. The Net is, at least, open to every controversy
and calls upon connected citizens from all over the world.
Jean-Jacques Birgé « Face to face » / The Cube Review #3
#3
The confidence
Pierre Bongiovanni
Depending on how you look at it, the question asked comes across either as a conceptual
mine field (with each of the terms used being a controversial one) or as a proposal for discussion
at a depressed political party’s annual conference.
In an attempt to avert these sad inevitabilities, I will nonetheless try to provide some
disordered fragments of response (and with a 3,000-character limit, it’s almost like Twitter)
to an excessively predictable question.
In the 1990s, during a conference-performance in Cannes, as part of an international
multimedia and Internet marketplace, the American artist Laurie Anderson compared the notion
of networks to that of awareness. She appeared to be saying this: a network, i.e. a structure
connecting points to other points, does not exist only because of the physical reality of the
links connecting points to other points; it exists, above all, because of our awareness of the
reality of these links. In short, a network is awareness in motion. The problem is what to do
with awareness in motion. We know how, with what skill and with what constant potential
innovation the mafia, the police, the army and the media use communication technologies
and networks. But we don’t really know yet what citizens do with them. And we’re still far from
being in a position whereby we can credit the example of the role played by social media
in the epidemic proliferation of the Arab revolts to democratic splendour.
I’d now like to compare this vision with another, with that of the philosopher Paul
Ricœur, who foresaw the following: the best we can do in an era marked by the turmoil of
change is to attempt to interconnect islands of coherence disrupted by the turbulence of a
world that has become elusive. In a nutshell: let’s immediately connect what is possible; the
creation of global coherence can come later… Perhaps we remember what became of those
ideologies extolling globally coherent systems. The problem is that financial capitalism and
unbridled liberalism adapt very well to the world’s setbacks, since they make them targets
of speculation, when they are not themselves the influential originators of global instability.
Let’s come back to the rather disarming question of cynicism or naïveté: what does
“a socially networked society” really mean?
How is it social? And what is its purpose? Is it really very difficult, very brave, very
honourable to form a network with others in order to buy organic leeks, whilst a growing
proportion of the population (old people, poor people, poor people’s children, the excluded)
are eating substandard food? Are there other ways of showing solidarity than that of social
justice? (Obviously, those professionals in social conflict who have become co-managers
of the global economic crisis would have to step down, but that’s another story).
What does “an open networked society” really mean? Open to what? To consumption?
To itself, its own group identity, its own religious identity, my only double with the exception
of all the others?
And what does “a creative society” mean? What kind of creativity are we talking
about? That of artists? Where are they then, those who are not just merely sales representatives
enthusing over the technological show and the huge profits it can harvest? (Remember the
infernal outpouring that swept the planet on the death of Apple’s guru and the subsequent
general moronic state). Does anything equal or better Orson Welles’ radio performance in
1937, announcing the arrival of aliens?
What kind of creativity are we talking about? That of associations? Then let’s talk
about the power of associations, which is choked by regulatory madness, bureaucratic idiocy
and the denial of the notion of risk taking.
So what? So the question simply needs to be reformulated.
The reformulated question:
“The digital revolution, which is imposing itself upon one and all, is spreading in an
epidemic pattern. It is already bringing unprecedented upheavals, leaving the worst and the
best in its wake. At this point, when everything is accelerating, resetting itself and becoming
more complex, and when Humanity has never had as many reasons to fear general
subjugation and planned disqualification from any vague attempt at critical analysis, it is
high time to create the conditions necessary for the emergence of a networked society, one
that is critical, cheeky and fertile. And the starting point is to take the experts of all shapes and
sizes, of packing.”
But this is madness! It certainly is but it’s a merry madness and it brings good tidings:
the change (connecting, with awareness, islands of coherence, in an ocean of turmoil, and
doing so discreetly and modestly, as Claude Lévi-Strauss would have said) is already taking
place and will continue without them.
Pierre Bongiovanni « The confidence » / The Cube Review #3
#3
For a political and anthropological
approach to Confidence
Philippe Cayol
Confidence is everywhere. It occupies economics, sociology, political communication,
marketing … Considered a « functional necessity » (Georg Simmel) or a « lubricant » (Kenneth
Arrow) of the social system, it remains however difficult to define, to measure, and is going
through a deep crisis: at the time of global uncertainty and of the anxious search for the
reassuring anticipation, it is conspicuous by its absence. It is ultimately nowhere.
Many (very) good and pragmatic ideas, inspired by peer-to-peer’s horizontality, food for
thought on digital technology as a remedy for a hierarchical and obsolete verticality, but many
of these analyzes stop before actually questioning the system behind its disappearance.
In my view, the economic analysis (indeed essential) should not elude a more holistic
and a political approach. I believe that the digital economy and the changes it will trigger
will not be enough. Confidence will be restored when we all have the perception of a more
reliable, equitable and respectful society. Thoughts and decisions, beyond the awareness
of the new industrial world rules and the search for value in this new economy1, are of political
order (social justice, public space, open democracy …) and will need to question the liberal
model, in which digital technology partly plays the role of innovative extension.
The natural and social sciences show that men are spontaneously inclined to cooperation,
a fact resulting from universal cognitive and affective mechanisms. These findings should lead
to a profound questioning of our conception of living together. Web 2.0, a major milestone
in the awareness of cooperation as the basis for new social and economic relations, gives us
an opportunity to think about the world we are building together. If this genuine “informational
magma”1, is indeed a “new anthropological space”2, we will then need to take into account
this anthropological dimension to foster the emergence of a new public space, based on
a newfound confidence, symbolic foundation of a redefined development, harmonious and
equitable.
Confidence is a social construction at the heart of democracy, constitutive of this public
space and of the « life world »3. As a belief, it participates in the social ties and must be shared.
It is a “social imaginary meaning”4.
The digital revolution confronts us with this fundamental and often overlooked question:
in what world do we believe together? What kind of world do we want together? I find
it difficult to raise the question of confidence without addressing these issues and without
putting man at the center of this analysis. If we can do that, perhaps we will be able to
contribute to restore the meaning of concepts such as development and progress, and build
an « open, supportive and creative network society”, that is to say, human.
(1) Voir : Nicolas Colin et Henri Verdier, L’âge de la multitude, Armand Colin, 2012.
(2) Éric Sadin, La société de l’anticipation, Inculte, 2011.
(3) Jürgen Habermas, Droit et démocratie. Entre faits et normes, Gallimard, 1997.
(4) Cornelius Castoriadis, L’institution imaginaire de la société, Seuil, 1974.
Philippe Cayol « For a political and anthropological approach to Confidence » / The Cube Review #3
#3
An eco-aesthetics of trust
Christian Globensky
Today, there is no longer any doubt that the convergence of the energy and
communications revolutions is not only reconfiguring society, social roles and relationships, but
also the status of individuals. Although the communications revolutions are changing humans’
spatial-temporal orientation and, in doing so, are fashioning a new biospheric reality, they
are also generating the possibility that an individual conscience, capable of identifying with
other unique selves in a form of empathy, may become more apparent. It seems particularly
appropriate here to recall two examples of the reconfiguration of individual consciences that
show an eco-aestheticization of the individual, in the sense in which it results in greater trust
in one’s own autonomy added to the collective well-being of humanity.
If Earth is increasingly considered as an artificial habitat whose lithospheric, hydrospheric
and atmospheric conditions we are attempting to regulate, we owe this largely to Richard
Buckminster Fuller, one of the forerunners of eco-globalisation. Seeing the biosphere as a spatial
house, as an “earthship delivered without instructions”, and this was as early as 1969, was
Fuller’s real stroke of genius as shown by his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, in which
he developed his fundamental insight: our planet Earth is not really different from a “capsule
[…] within which we must survive as human creatures”. After having encapsulated the US
Pavilion at the Universal Exposition in Montreal in 1967 — a geodesic dome whose 93-metre
structure represented over 75% of the surface of the sphere —, Fuller put the finishing touches
to his theory of knowledge and developed a code of global cooperation. Showing the
world a new representation of our planisphere, the Dymaxion map (1946), which is a more
scientifically accurate and non-hierarchical mapping of the continents, Fuller definitively left
behind the traditional aesthetic debate in order to invent a global approach, an eco-aesthetics
of trust, by creating a catalogue of the world’s resources, the general trends and the needs
of humanity1. A surprising demonstration of the individual conscience reconfigured to the
dimensions of biospheric conscience!
This phenomenon of the reconfiguration of individual consciences is a constant in the
history of humanity and its technological revolutions. If the maps of Antiquity represented
the world more as a mental image than as a real space, the globes of the Renaissance
were to definitively impose the roundness of the Earth. The secondary effects of the exploits
of navigators, combined with the efforts of cartographers, were to propagate an immune
deficiency in the Heaven of the Europeans of the Quattrocentro, which paradoxically reinforced
the notion of the individual and of individual trust. Although 1492 evokes the European discovery
of total otherness, the New World and its indigenous peoples, there is however another date,
never mentioned, which is equally important such as it marks the moment at which a new
focus on the self and personal autonomy became apparent in the private space of domestic
dwellings. It was in 1490, in the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, that the first individual chair was
inaugurated. Previously one would sit on wooden benches backed onto walls or on stools;
the chair was reserved for the sovereign, as symbol of their great dignity, and for the Popes,
who would endlessly legislate on indigenous peoples’ soullessness while the Bishops sat on
their benches and acquiesced. The same can still be said today of the Houses of Parliament
in London or the National Assembly in Paris.
As strange as it may seem, it was the widespread introduction of the chair in Europe
that saw trust in an autonomous and modern individual make its entrance into the history
of humanity. Although the idea of the chair was, at the time, revolutionary, it was one of
the manifestations of this profusion of light that was opening over Europe and that marked
the exit of metaphysical monocentrism by an accelerated transmission of knowledge and the
technological mutations of the age. For the first time, the immuno-individual sphere could be
symbolically placed at the summit of the social pyramid.
(1) Catalog which is now in New York, the Buckminster Fuller Institute.
« 1490 » 2012, wood, glass, felt, 30x30x25cm : The work holds a mystery, if we lift the
sphere we discover a date directly written on the top of the pyramid : 1490. What does
it refer? Immediately, we think in 1492, in the discovery of Americas, nevertheless that’s
not the case. (…) So, under the sphere is hidden a date which participated in a radical
change, a universalization of the behavior in everyday life. The people, across all classes,
reached a comfort of which he was deprived. » Julie Crenn
,Black picture n°14, 2012, digital print on paper, 70x105cm, 2012
Christian Globensky « An eco-aesthetics of trust » / The Cube Review #3
#3
A desire fort trust beyond the usual channels
Éric Legale
Conservatives on both sides of the political spectrum say that the Digital Revolution is
shaking up, troubling, and even threatening our way of life. There’s nothing new here; in 1995,
Alain Peyrefitte had already shown in ‘The Society of Trust’, that an evolution in mentalities was
more significant than capital and labour in transforming society. He wrote that the impulse for
development lies in the constitution of a society of trust; the trust that the State has in individual
initiative and, above all, the trust that individuals have in the State, and that they recognise
in each other and in themselves.
In times of economic crisis, our society is exposed to fear, irrationality and paranoia.
For, as Michela Marzano demonstrates in her “contract of mistrust”, from Law’s bankruptcy
(1720) to the subprime mortgage crisis (2007-2008), economic history is a long history of the
population’s trust being manipulated. Without trust, our entire society collapses. The challenge
is even greater for us as, according to an international survey carried out by Fondapol
(Foundation for Political Innovation), young south Europeans are among the most cynical with
regard to their countries’ institutions. At most, a third of the French, Spanish, Italians and Greeks
trust their government, the media, the justice system, the army, and the police. This places
them far behind the Indians (68%), Swedish (52%) and even Americans (43%) and the British
(42%).
Trust is, therefore in crisis, but is this crisis linked to the digital world? First and foremost, we
are told that it is a crisis of confidence with regard to the traditional frames of reference within
our societies: institutions, media, experts, science, as well as certain categories of business,
particularly banks. It’s often the same frames of reference that have been shaken up the
most by the Digital Revolution. The growing imbalance between organisations and individuals
finds expression in a listless but real fracture: disloyalty, disengagement, incomprehension,
even cynicism.
One of the most striking phenomena of these past years is the powerful emergence
of large digital spaces in which trust establishes itself and is borne out by exchanges between
individuals and by their mutual evaluations. Millions of Internet users publish opinions and
advice, exchange goods and services, share their experiences, help each other and co-create
content together. They play a major role in certain fields such as the social connection, the
romantic encounter the relationship between patients and physicians, the choice of a hotel or
restaurant.
This emergence conveys a profound desire for trust, which, no longer able to express
itself by the usual channels, seizes upon other mechanisms, invents them or improves them
on the way. The individual is no longer alone.
Éric Legale « A desire fort trust beyond the usual channels » / The Cube Review #3
#3
Trust
Jacques Lombard
It all began with the story of Nathaniel, haunted by the death of his father when he was
still a child. Much later, he meets Olimpia, falling head over heels in love with her, but believes
that he recognises Coppola, who is Olimpia’s guardian, as his father’s murderer. He then
discovers that Olimpia is an automaton, which has been manufactured by Coppola, but he
still cannot distance himself from this android despite the aid of his fiancée Clara. In the end,
he goes insane and commits suicide by throwing himself from a church steeple. We owe this
story to E. Hoffmann; it’s from “The Sandman”, one of his ‘night pieces’.
This fantastic tale magnificently illustrates the vagaries of dialogue between Man and
the machine, of the difficult dialogue between Man and the “beings” that he creates in his
image when he thinks they are going to escape him. The dialogue begun by HAL, the central
computer running the spacecraft in the film “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Stanley Kubrick,
when he has just (?) decided to act independently and no longer obey the instructions of Dave,
the ship’s commander. The dialogue become impossible in the film “The Matrix” by Andy and
Larry Wachowski where Thomas Anderson, hero of the hacking world, understands via his
computer that he in fact lives in a completely virtual world under the control of the Machines
that “raise” humans in order to produce the energy essential to their survival. This instrumental
universe is absolutely inaccessible to human beings who, at the same time, have no awareness
of it. There remain, nonetheless, some rebels hidden under the Earth, in the city of Zion, who
are going to attempt to save humanity!
All these works of fiction draw on the development of research into the domain
of artificial intelligence, of which Olimpia, the automaton, represents one of the archaic stages
if we don’t wish to go all the way back to Ancient Egypt or Greece. The domain is based
on the artificial simulation of intelligent behaviour in all fields of human activity, leading to
the development of expert systems adapted to gradually replace the genius of Men and
encouraging the wildest reveries about the fabrication of a completely “automated” world.
A reverie that also underpins a very contemporary vision of the world’s global transparency,
exploited in the “see all show all” fantasy in which expert systems meet with reality television.
A reverie, finally, about the storage of the digitised genome of every person, cloning and USB
key in order to access eternity, the last avatar of the frenzied race for consumerism, as has
been so well developed by Michel Houellebecq.
It is true that the uninterrupted technological progress made in data processing, whether
it’s a question of gathering, storing or broadcasting information, generates an exponential
growth in available data, which, in turn, leads to the financial and industrial necessity of new
technological innovations. It’s a huge Archimedean screw from which we can no longer
escape and of which the recent events concerning the WikiLeaks association are an interesting
illustration.
This problem fuels passionate and heated theoretical debates about the fantasy of
a global appropriation of reality in computing equations. Debates that naturally come up
against the nature of the elements that fuel these invading algorithms. For they remain symbols
that are admissible only in devices of formal logic, even when it is a question of procedures
authorising cybernetic regulations. Today, the determination of researchers to succeed in the
reproduction of intelligent behaviour leads investigations into the quantum domain where one
can imagine attempts being made to carbon copy the synaptic relations in the brain.
However, to my knowledge, none of these simulated systems, these claimed expert
systems, has yet been able to reproduce the dynamics specific to the “living”, constantly
navigating between learning and homeostasis and which, from the simplest cell to “cerebral
plasticity”, only exists by transforming itself in relation to an otherness, in relation to what
is different to it, in relation to its environment.
Perhaps the question is nestling there, between the irrepressible movement of the gigantic
population of biological players that ensures life through its very movement and what we are
capable of understanding and saying of this, through the human and irresistible willingness of
Knowledge, which is entirely part of the movement of life yet without ever being able to free
itself from it.
Then we could say, to finish the story of Nathaniel, that trust is indeed in the bosom
of shared imagination, in the best of the relationship to others where we are all both ourselves
and already changed by what we discover, by what we give to life every day through
passion, faith, conviction, determination… And I do want to say, evoking a childhood image of
the three-master “Confiance”, commanded by the valiant Captain Surcouf who, at dawn on
7th October 1800, launched an assault on the HMS Kent, which was five times larger, in the
Bay of Bengal.
Jacques Lombard « Trust » / The Cube Review #3
#3
Trust without awareness...
Marie-Anne Mariot
According to a series of studies, the level of trust has an impact on the economy. One
of these focuses on this question1 : “Generally, would you say that we can trust most people
or should we be very careful in how we interact with others?” The conclusion is unambiguous:
by comparing countries in which the level of trust is highest (Scandinavia, Northern Europe
and Anglo-Saxon countries), we also find those with the highest GNP growth levels per
capita. Psychology arrives at the same result and also develops the concept of “self-fulfilling
prophecy”. One of its most celebrated illustrations is doubtless the story of Oedipus: the more
Oedipus and his parents attempted to escape the prediction of the Oracle of Delphi, the
more they did precisely what was needed in order to fulfil it. The more we fear something, the
more we encourage its appearance. The more we look for something, the further away it gets.
Distrust and the search for trust therefore generate a quest for security; thus a proliferation of
practical precautions must be taken (which are, by definition, infinite, thus never sufficient!)2
which end in a feeling of insecurity which will itself generates even more distrust3.
But if trust cannot be a voluntary quest, how can we find the resources to thumb our
noses at the Pythia?
Because the Pythia is everywhere!!! In our expectations, our preoccupations, our
beliefs, our convictions, in our “People say”’s, in statistics, in information, in science or in
the suspicions that make us think that things are going to, or should, follow a certain path
rather than another… So many voices advising us to constantly anticipate more danger so
as to avoid it and institutionalising the neurosis in every part of our life, the future in particular,
that territory which is home to all anxiety-inducing speculations. And where is trust among
all that? Or worse, where is faith? Pure acts of madness thrown before insurers and before all
protectionism? Creators of chaos and of innovation?
Yes, trust comes from a conscious action, even beyond a crazy bet. It is an act of
life and of resistance, qualifiable as delirious, in the face of an ocean of doubt, of the
improbable and of all fatalities. Therein lies the secret. Trust doesn’t come from work or ability,
for speculation works both ways. This is why we can also “create from scratch”. Imagine that
you enter a room with the belief that you are nice and friendly or, failing that, “as if” you were…
And you’ll receive, in a mirror image, a welcome that you would have been denied with the
opposite premise. There’s no sorcery here. In the art of combat, and since the dawn of time,
the stratagem which consists of making the adversary believe that we are much stronger
and more determined than we are in reality, thus making them fear the encounter, gives us
an advantage4. “The doubt and the fear of facing a more skilful adversary work better than
the certainty in one’s own capacities, and create insecurity and hesitation, which generate
a tendency to avoid combat. The skill of “creating from scratch” is not only one of the essential
vehicles of personal and interpersonal power; it’s also a fundamental skill that allows us to
move from the position of the one who constructs what he endures to the position of the one
who constructs what he manages.” In other words, trust does not reside in certainty about
ONESELF but in the certainty of managing as best as possible, by combatting all your fears,
because there is no other choice.
It is not necessary to have trust in oneself or to be a megalomaniac in order to achieve
great things. Did Nelson Mandela believe he was the Saviour or did he make do with not
being able to give up, betraying his own scars or disappointing those who saw him as the
Saviour? The cause supersedes the Self. And if we can focus on this specific point, we can
bring global powers, and why not the “crisis” itself, to their knees.
At a time when everything is accelerating, re-forming and becoming more complex,
when France qualifies as a “society of distrust”,5 how does one create trust? From scratch! And
the same goes for the emergence of a networked, open, social and creative society.
However, one question remains: is trust desirable? As emphasised by Nicolas
Delalande,6 it can also go hand in hand “with conservatism and resistance to change” or
it can conflict with other equally commendable values such as “equality, justice or social
progress”…
Some advice then… Don’t look too hard for trust, it may run away !
(1) Paul J. ZAK et Stephen KNACK, « Trust and growth », The economic journal, vol. CXI, n°470, mars 2001.
(2) For example, even if you establish the certitude that the risk of being killed in a plane is only 0.08%, who
can prove to you in which percentage you belong? The quest for zero risk is a bottomless well.
(3) On this subject, you may find it useful to read “The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious: The Pursuit
of Unhappiness” by Paul Watzlawick, published in French by Seuil, pp 57-58. “The prophecy may triumph
(bitterly) as long as one succeeds in remaining unaware of one’s own contribution to the evolution of the
situation”.
(4) Gorgio Nardone. (2003). ‘How to ride your tiger: The art of stratagem or how to resolve complex
problems with simple solutions’, published in French by Seuil, p 97-99.
(5) Algan Y and Cahuc P. (2007). ‘The society of distrust. How the French social model is self-destructing’,
published in French by Rue d’Ulm.
(6) http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Une-histoire-de-la-confiance-est.html
Marie-Anne Mariot « Trust without awareness... » / The Cube Review #3
#3
No risk no fun
Antoine Schmitt
« Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive — so wisdom wisheth us; she is a
woman, and ever loveth only a warrior. » Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Trust? What trust? Trust in the world, in others, in oneself?
This is an ode to risk taking. We’re talking about the art world; we are neither bankers
nor insurers. If there is no radical, structural or profound risk to oneself in art, then where is there
any at all? Is art not the final refuge of freedom, of freedom of action and freedom of thought?
What is the relationship between freedom, danger and trust?
Freedom is the unknown. It is danger. Are endangerment and full trust compatible?
No. Fear is necessary. Fear of the unknown, fear of danger, fear of the future, fear of the
fatal flaw. Thus vigilance. Thus fighting. And just one form of trust: trust in oneself. This, too, is
structural and intrinsic. It comes from within.
The artist is a warrior. Just like the first bacteria that climbed out of the primeval soup
to survive and reproduce. Risk is immanent to life. Trust is death. Death by boredom, death by
withdrawal. A world governed by insurance, calculated risk, reinsured. No risk, no fun.
What freedom is there to act within a secured cage? A physical cage, a metaphorical
cage, where works of art are predictable, carefully explained, spoon-fed, committee-approved
on application, negotiated and innocuous. Free, but let’s see the synopsis first. Creation within
limits. Because what danger is there for the artist? What’s the real danger? That of no longer
being an artist. That of no longer scaring (oneself). Of creating the well-known. The known
means trust. The unknown means risk.
Follow the artist! Follow the artist, even if you don’t understand, especially if you don’t
understand, especially if you are afraid. Throw out the applications, burn the synopsises, trust
the artist. Fund, buy, and watch! Be an artist, be artists! Take risks, trust yourself, just go for it,
scare yourself, and live life.
Yes, but… it’s risky! What if I get it wrong? Money lost, my fault, from my pocket…
My job is axed! My savings melt away. My time is wasted. That’s the way it goes. No risk no
fun.
So what trust? Trust in oneself, trust from within. Trust in the artist, who takes all the risks,
who goes out without protection, who is free. All artists! With fear in their hearts. And move
forward. Into the unknown.
Photo - Antoine Schmitt
Antoine Schmitt « No risk No fun » / The Cube Review #3
#3
Living in digital harmony
Dominique Sciamma
From time immemorial, Humanity has dreamed of ideal societies, glorious cities, social
tranquillity and accomplished happiness. Be it Egypt, Greece, China, Rome, Europe or the
New World, all have hoped for the advent of utopias bringing simple, immanent and perfect
order. These dreamed-of societies were built on a belief in a permanent stability, engraved
upon the infrastructures, developments, architecture, spaces – even upon the bodies and heads
of those who lived there. The utopians saw all the knowledge and techniques of the time and
their material instantiation as the conditions and tools required to construct this perfect “living
in harmony”. For this reason, these dreamed-of societies were all, and by definition, societies
of trust: they trusted in a stable environment, which induced happiness and inevitably virtuous
social relationships.
The same hope today seems to be attached to the digital world and its revolutions
in knowledge, practices and social relationships.
Alas, history has taught us that this hope is implausible. The invention of writing was full
of the very same promises of emancipation, of societies happily built upon unprecedented
created and shared knowledge, yet we can measure the distance between this dream and
the reality every single day.
Should we then give this up? The paradox is that we should give up both the idea
of stability and the immanent trust that it induces in order to hope to achieve it. We have
to acknowledge that complexity exists and will always exist, that instability is and will be our
daily routine, that our actions lie in permanent uncertainty, and that errors and imperfections
will not and will never be erased and that we should even take a risk on their existence.
This acknowledgement becomes even more urgent because the digital world offers us the
possibility of hoping not to master these effects but to dissolve them, not each of us individually
but together.
For if the digital world is undeniably a lever for individual emancipation, it is also
a collective force field, allowing combined minds to move forward where the individuals,
dependent on themselves, remain powerless.
However, the existence of this field does not mean its victory because this, and we’ll say
it over and over again, is not immanent! We need to debunk this idea that the digital world will
naturally lead to the emergence of a collective intelligence that is an end in itself. The contexts
in which this intelligence is deployed, as well as the policies that allow it, are equally important.
A society of networked individuals considering themselves as peers, meaning a society of
trust, can be reduced neither to this network nor to these digital flows. It depends, and in the
broadest sense, upon the organisation of powers, whether these are institutional, political,
academic, industrial, economic, professional or generational.
Although the digital world may strike political systems with full force, it cannot take
their place. The conditions for the emergence of a society of trust lie therefore in the rejection
of the old categories and their associated organisations, and nation states are not the least
significant of these.
Like the “Invisible Hand of the Market”, there is no “Invisible Digital Hand”. The urgency
is, therefore, that political forces redesign themselves so as to transform themselves and to
allow the emergence of this digital “living in harmony”.
Dominique Sciamma « Living in digital harmony » / The Cube Review #3
#3
Trust
Serge Soudoplatoff
In 1997, France Telecom came under attack from Internet users who criticised its
dishonesty in the marketing of its Primaliste Internet package, which was allegedly cheaper
but, in reality, was much more expensive.
The company made the mistake of withdrawing into silence, fuelling the anger.
One employee took it upon himself in a private capacity to initiate dialogue with certain
leaders of the movement and to provide them with technical information. Even though the initial
problem was not dealt with, trust was established purely on the basis of this exchange and the
tension dropped. Information entropy and thermodynamic entropy are genuinely connected.
Trust is an unstable balance: in a system involving two partners, all that is needed
to upset the balance is for one of them to lose faith. Conversely, mutual mistrust provides
a remarkably stable balance.
Energy is thus required to maintain trust and to prevent the relationship from falling
into the potential well of distrust; especially as even more energy is required to climb out of
the well.
This energy may be exogenous whereby an external authority imposes trust. It may be
endogenous whereby the protagonists themselves make every effort to remain within the state
of instability. It’s the fundamental fault line between two models of society, which can be
seen in several fields: Anglo-Saxon law versus Latin law, hierarchy versus community, imposed
management versus animated etc.
The external model is simple for the opposing parties, who then defer to authority, which
imposes trust in a manner that is, precisely, authoritarian. On the other hand, it does not adapt
well to the world’s growing complexity: with increasing information flows and exchanges,
the authority eventually exhausts itself to the extent of paralysis, before generating a crisis
of confidence, a loss of trust, which is very well documented in post-modern theory.
The internal model, however, flawlessly handles complexity, since trust comes from
the network. As this model is more biological than mechanical, the energy to maintain it is
provided by its various constituents. Many elements, such as empathy, affect and reason,
come into play and all circulate information through the system in order to make it function, thus
resulting in those involved taking on greater responsibility.
The Internet favours the internal model. By conveying empathy and the rational,
the Internet facilitates the circulation of information, and therefore of energy, in a complex
networked system. There are many social websites, such as Ebay, Airbnb, Voiturelib, Prosper,
and Kickstarter, whose visibility in terms of information paths, content and published user
statistics allow trust to be maintained whilst the traditional companies – large stores, hotels,
banks, car hire companies, majors based on expert authority are dealing with more and more
distrust.
Serge Soudoplatoff « Trust » / The Cube Review #3
#3
Who’s afraid of digital art?
Hugo Verlinde
Digital art is paving a path that resembles very closely to that paved by cinematic art in
its day. Although one century apart, the common fate is surprising: the same doubts, the same
pitfalls, the same promises for the future.
In 1919, the future filmmaker Jean Epstein associated with the Lumière brothers. For a
time, he was a translator of the English press for Auguste, and one day dared to speak to
him about cinema. In his words, it was a failure: “Beware of the success of cinema. It’s just
a passing fad. The public will forget this idle pleasure as quickly as they became enamoured
with it.”
A strange warning from one of the inventors of cinema…
The following year would see Jean Epstein join the circle of intellectuals gathered
around the figure of Ricciotto Canudo. The inventor of the term “7th art”, half-poet, halfclairvoyant, was calling for the discovery of these fields that cinema had yet to explore.
Supported by this vision, the group threw itself into a systematic exploration of the methods
implemented by cinema. As early as 1921, in sessions at the Salon d’Automne, the language
was dissected in great detail: the audience was shown film extracts so as to experience
the photogenic richness of the images. They were thus the first to name the elements of the
language of cinema: some slow motion here, a cross-fade there and, in this enormous face,
which fills the entire screen, a close up.
The idea that an artistic form could emerge from the innards of a machine took almost
three decades to become established. During this period, cinema was a volcano… Within were
brewing forces desperate to see the light of day and, for its poetic adventurers into cinema,
nothing was impossible. There was absolute trust in the future of the 7th art; their strength lay
in believing in it together.
In the already long history that links art and technology, anything new has been
welcomed at best by doubt and incomprehension and at worst, dare we say, by outright
hostility. Coming from cinema myself, I have been able to see the expression of these conflicting
energy streams intended for digital art. Is it art by computer? Art from such a complex machine?
Art at the cutting edge of technological progress? And do artists succeed in making a name
for themselves with this form of art? It’s just a passing fad…
The beginnings of the French avant-garde enlighten us on one point: incomprehension
is incomprehension related to the methods available to this art form. To dispel doubts and
to open hearts, the emphasis must mainly be placed on the language, on the vocabulary
particular to this art, on the means of expression that the new form invents.
In places dedicated to the study of digital art, work to identify the elements of language
is in progress: we’re talking about real-time images, degrees of freedom of a generative piece
of work, interactivity in relation to public behaviour, sensors capable of perceiving minute
details, and the relationship to be built over the long term between an autonomous piece
of work and its audience. These are all notions that are “rapidly undergoing change and
differentiation” to repeat Epstein’s words about cinema.
Personally, I am convinced: it’s in these laboratories, creative workshops, and
experimental sites, that the art of tomorrow takes shape. And despite the difficulties, we should
watch over these places because they have great promise.
Hugo Verlinde « Qui a peur de l’art numérique » / The Cube Review #3
#3
A new contract of trust?
Gabriel Viry
« Hello, I have a transaction for you, please contact me.
Donna. » Having read this
e-mail this morning, should I grant relative, absolute, mutual or even naïve trust to the unwanted
Donna Knok, as I should to Dr Edward Tribeca, whose proposal, received just previously,
seems as inappropriate as the remedies? In principle: no. And yet, in France, 150 million euros
are spent annually responding to these virtual frauds that are as big as the famous “Nigerian
hoaxes” whose cyber-authors often have as much imagination as an overconfident novelist:
how do you collect a suitcase, overflowing with notes, in the middle of the savannah, or an
inheritance of several million dollars from an improbable bank account in the distant outskirts
of Moscow? Beyond their trust rating, which is quite worthless, this type of e-mail scam remains
quite symptomatic of the rapid shift between a block of houses, where people can be trusted,
and a global village, intrusive and frenetic, as exciting as it is initially distrustful.
For a wide section of the public, the encounter with the digital society has often
happened between the end of one century and the promise of something new in the new
century, a CaraMail address and a connection pack offered by Club Internet. Another world
has instantly opened up, in which the 56 kilobits rapidly flirted with paradise and human
trust, with a new paradigm. Although Wikipedia continues to define it, rightly, as a feeling of
security vis-à-vis someone (or something) and Google Images still attaches it to the universal
gesture of two hands meeting, the explosion of the Internet will not cease, consequently,
to sanction the disappearance of the subject and to transform the act of the handshake into a
fairy-tale image. Notably for trading. Ultimately, whereas we all grew up learning not to trust
just anyone, we also remain the children of a society that has become inseparable from its
extensions, where trust of the Unknown has simply established itself as the only way of not
staying behind one’s front door.
Today, twenty years after the advent of public-access Web, the notion of digital trust
is no more reduced to a legal standard favouring IT security than it is to a batch of immune
systems, used like signposts, cursors of parental control for anti-spam barriers. Beyond this
impulse, defensive for some time, it has also assumed the role of a genuine motor, giving birth to
emerging activities and, maybe better, to a new social face. Products of the second generation
of the Internet, community-based, the social networks alone constitute an intrinsic dive into the
unknown, where we are learning every day to get into a stranger’s car, to exchange a train
ticket with no advance payment, to welcome a buyer from the Bon Coin*, without making use
of peepholes, or to share one’s home without sealing up one’s cereal boxes. The phenomenal
success of AirBnB (10 million nights booked in five years) is emblematic, for example, of an
unflappable worldwide network in which confidence has found the best thing that it knows
how to do: reign. Like a Californian start-up, the explosion of sharing activities is inseparable
from the context but participates, more widely, to the foundations of a more “fluid” society,
dear to Joël de Rosnay and indeed, although with a significant gap, to Rousseau and Darty,
under the standard of Web 2.0: towards a new contract of trust, social and digital.
Gabriel Viry « A new contract of trust? » / The Cube Review #3
#3
TEAM
Editorial Management
Nils Aziosmanoff, Stéphanie Fraysse-Ripert, Rémy Hoche
With contribution of Carine Le Malet, Isabelle Simon-Gilbert, Hélène Gestin
Coordination
Rémy Hoche
Assisted by Charline Méténier
Web Project Manager and Translation Coordination
Aurélie Jullien
Documentary research
Julie Monne
Logo of the review
Philippe Lakits
Translation
Trad’Online
Publisher
Le Cube -ART3000
PARTNERS
www.tradonline.fr
CONTACT
Rémy Hoche / Coordination éditoriale
[email protected]
+331 58 88 3000
The Cube Review is published by Le Cube, a center for digital creation / www.lecube.com
WWW.CUBEREVUE.COM