The Media Is Down
What do we do with media, and visions of media, that did not come to be? More often than not, we discard them and do nothing. Yet, they might possess potential for rethinking and reconsidering the things that did come to be. In that regard, they are actually of importance and have the power to create impact. Zielinski’s concept of variantology can help with looking into neglected and forgotten structures in media history, just as it can diversify the broader notion of imaginary media (cf. Huhtamo 1996, 2011; Kluitenberg 2011). Further, variantology can help articulating how technological imaginaries entwine with actualized media developments.
With variantology, Zielinksi has developed a method to conceptualize and examine media and machines that never came into being. In exploring media that are ultimately imaginary – such as the seventeenth-century Jesuit Athanasius Kircher’s dabbling with audiovisual automata – Zielinski challenges the categorization of what counts as media (Zielinski 2006: 101-157). He argues that analysis of impossible machines allows us to dodge the danger of chronology – of presuming a linear movement of “progression” – or of a “first” that defines what follows.[11] Zielinski thus wants us to be aware of unarticulated media histories and ultimately of alternative approaches to the writing of history. The intention of variantology as praxis lies in a nonlinear description of the development of media that interconnects different historical settings. Variantology of media is to look for ignored constellations in the flow of history and to be able to “discover individual variations” of media (Zielinski 2006: 7). With the mission of going against traditional(ist) media history, Zielinski wants us to enter a condition of wondering, about fantasies of media, and of speculating on the alternative deep time strata within our media culture. For him, the goal is neither to continue the Foucauldian path of doing archaeology in order to excavate conditions of existence (Foucault 2002) nor to make genealogical considerations of the developments of media (Foucault 1995). Instead, Zielinski is interested in alternative temporalities that do not necessarily see changes as improvements, always striving forward. He focuses on doing an an-archaeology of media that should form the variantology of media. This an-archaeology is a method celebrating diversity and potentiality:
The goal is to uncover dynamic moments in the media-archaeological record that abound and revel in heterogeneity and, in this way, to enter into a relationship of tension with various present-day moments, relativize them, and render them more decisive. (Zielinski 2006: 11)
One of Zielinski’s aims is to broaden our understanding of what media in fact are, of what counts as media. Are media necessarily defined by evolution and continuous remediation? No, he says. Instead, we should discard the very idea of beginnings: why (and how) do media start? Should we always try to find the past in the present? Zielinski is more interested in reversing the perspective – “do not seek the old in the new, but find something new in the old” (Zielinski 2006: 3). According to Zielinski, it is all about time. All media are time media. They reproduce existing worlds and/or create new artificial ones. It is meaningless to believe that one can do studies that encompass entire processes of developments or embrace all possible directions for development. Therefore, Zielinski includes an epistemological time-understanding that he coins deep time. To think of deep time is to reimagine the media and keep in mind what the medium in question is, what it has been, what it will become, and what it could have been. Therefore, to think of deep time leads to the process of variantology. The many, and deep, times of media signify “variants” and potentiate a continually morphing existence: “To vary something that is established is an alternative to destroying it.” Thus, “[t]o be different, to deviate, to change, to alternate, to modify” (Zielinski and Wagnermaier 2005: 8-9) is crucial and yields a positive outcome. Zielinski believes it is a necessity to approach media with a paleontological time, wherein all sorts of connections can be made that create the foundation for a historical explanation. Zielinski’s project is a far-ranging approach to the cultural history of media that assesses possibilities, both realized and imaginary. He focuses on the unrealized possibilities of imaginary media in order to meditate on what time and knowledge are.
Whenever media end up not being set in motion but only invented, or even just imagined, they are still activated in different historical settings. When examining the materiality and practices of media technologies, it is relevant to include the lost or discarded technologies as well. Media scholar Eric Kluitenberg points out how permeable the boundaries between realized and imaginary media are and emphasizes that “both domains continuously help constitute each other” (Kluitenberg 2011: 49). Such thinking widens the picture of media archaeology and helps us get at elaborating understandings of practices and historical junctions. Imaginary media provide us with the opportunity to reimagine pasts. We can look into the history of media in new ways by juxtaposing the antiquated and the impossible, or the unthought-of, with the actual. Kluitenberg insists that we deal with imaginary media with a hands-on approach, that we “situate them in a specific historical and discursive setting, to uncover the network of material practices in which these imaginaries are embedded” (Kluitenberg 2011: 55). According to Kluitenberg and Zielinski, it makes no sense to differentiate between real and imaginary media. Imaginary media participate in the constitution of realized media.
Conceptually, imaginary media operate in close proximity to the concept of dead media, evolved by science fiction author Bruce Sterling.[12] Contrary to imaginary media, dead media are always actual media, realized but for some reason forgotten or discarded. However, as Kluitenberg writes, “dead media imply imaginary media histories when the possible futures that these aborted media lineages might have brought about are considered” (Kluitenberg 2006: 15). By imagining what abandoned media might look like and how they might function today, dead media create an inverse space for imaginary media. Zielinski sees Sterling’s concept of dead media as an important part of the an-archaeological course. “Sterling’s project,” Zielinski writes, “confronted burgeoning fantasies about the immortality of machines with the simple facticity of a continuously growing list of things that have become defunct. Machines can die” (Zielinski 2006: 2). Dead media are part of media’s paleontological time, and their influences and lost potentialities ought to be contemplated (Sterling 2006).