BETWEEN THE SCREEN AND THE EVERYDAY: ETHNOGRAPHY IN/of THE INTERFACE

Simon Gottschalk

BETWEEN THE SCREEN AND THE EVERYDAY: ETHNOGRAPHY IN/of THE INTERFACE

Everything God has created, the multimedia can simulate. Through digitalization, they also allow individuals to engage in a dialogue with this creation, to interact and to live experiences with it (Scheer 1994, p. 187 - my translation).

When humans define the simulated as real, it becomes real in its consequences.

I was looking for a rapidly disappearing field, an idealized ethnographic field where there would be no TV screens, no computer terminals, no databanks and no surveillance cameras -- a field where the everyday would still unfold untouched by electronic signals. I was also trying to maintain a certain critical mental space or consciousness which would remain uncolonialized by the media logic -- a mental space where it would still be possible to conceive of a macro-social and an everyday, a conscious and an unconscious unmediated by such a logic.

But from TV screens to surveillance cameras, from the information superhighway to the point of no return, the likelihood of such an idealized unplugged field or critical consciousness has become unrealistic. In the multimedia regime, consciousness may have become an antenna, a modem through which electronic signals freely circulate. Having downloaded and translated these signals into the hardware (the mind), we in turn circulate them back into the social through everyday interactions, fantasies, fears, desires, and subjectivities. Like the sound waves which collapsed entire physical structures in Jericho (Scheer 1994), the constant circulation of electronic signals on multiple terminals have collapsed the institutional boundaries, interactional dynamics and psychological codes which once constituted the real. As Baudrillard (1993, p. 37) suggests, "the nuclearization of our bodies began with Hiroshima , but it continues endemically, incessantly, in the shape of our irradiation by media, signs, programs, networks."

Accordingly, if the present moment is characterized by an accelerating collapse of multiple boundaries, then one strategy for writing an ethnography of the postmodern consists in making this sense of collapse itself -- or the interface between humans and multimedia -- the very field of ethnography. As a virtual field and as a consciousness, the interface consists of the varieties of space and moment when the mind merges with the media and where the everyday collides against the screen. As a narrative, I will evoke the interface as everyday fragments, petites histoires, disconnected moments of sociological re-cognition. Of course, how one experiences and evokes this sense of collapse -- the interface -- is fundamentally informed by race, gender, class, age, sexuality, desires, situational needs, politics, and many other variables which constitute one's subjectivity -- ethnographic or otherwise. At the same time though, in "the second media age" (Poster 1995) every (ethnographic) subjectivity is always already encoded by media texts. This is probably the only constant.

The purpose of this paper is thus neither to provide a geography of the interface nor a taxonomy of these moments of collapse, but to evoke several of them as they have occurred in everyday interactions. The present text thus draws on real occurrences with real individuals, and instantiate -- to me at least -- this sense of collapse. In writing this multivoiced text, I also attempt to communicate with individuals who don't necessarily read about this sense of collapse, with individuals who have never heard of postmodernism, with individuals who enact/experience the interface without labeling it. I decide to use this mode of communication because, at some level, if individuals cannot recognize themselves and their everyday in our evocations of the present, if what we are saying about the postmodern moment or mood does not strike a chord, the multimedia screen, on the other hand, always does; its simulations of the real are overall more compelling than our interpretations of it. And while we are debating the nature of the real and the authorities we invoke to speak about it, others produce realities on screens, in a language which makes perfect sense, against a soundtrack beating to decidedly fascistic rhythms.

Approaching the interface as an ethnographic field might seem sociologically strange, yet this is where we will spend most of our life, and although we know very little about this virtual territory, it reorganizes fundamental dimensions of the everyday, destabilizes central sociological concepts, and encourages unusual social psychological experiences. As such, the present text is also a self-reflexive topography of this virtual territory, a modest attempt to evoke some of its zones, effects and dangers.

FACING THE EYE/ME OF THE CAMERA

One evening, Debbie and I are contemplating having a romantic relationship, but because of our respective positions in the academic world, we think that it deserves serious consideration. If we decide to go ahead, it will have to be really subtle and discrete. At least for now. The next morning, as we are driving to the airport and discussing possible strategies we might use to keep our relationship secret, I notice a young man, a huge black camera protruding from his right shoulder, standing by the sliding doors of the American Airlines terminal, where I am about to embark. Probably a tourist shooting last pictures of Vegas, I think. We park in front of the terminal and get out of the car to unload my bags.

As we turn towards each other to say our good-byes, I feel a strange presence behind my back. I turn around and find myself face-to-face with the man holding his camera which now I notice bears the "Channel 3" logo on it. While the young anchorwoman next to him sticks a mike in front of my mouth, he blocks my view by forcing the camera in my face.

Anchorwoman: "Hi sir, and what's your destination today?"

Me: " Brussels."

Anchorwoman: "And in which state is that?"

Me: " Belgium, a country really. Europe. In between France and Holland."

Anchorwoman: "I see; you are flying to Europe. Now, sir I am sure that you must have seen the news about the plane crashes recently. How does that make you feel? Are you nervous at all?"

Me: "Thanks for reminding me. And here I was trying precisely not to think about it."

Bad answer. I should have launched into a sociological lecture and explain how in fact passengers' lives are routinely sacrificed because of capitalist imperatives of more flights and faster turn-around. But I can't really think straight; I feel confused and horribly self-conscious in front of this passionless eye recording everything. I also suddenly realize that Debbie and I are caught, trapped, denounced. For all our strategizing secrecy, we're now going to be on prime-time. Just like that. "Isn't this weird?" asks Debbie. "Perfect postmodern moment," I answer.

Somewhere I feel a sense of failure. I was not "camera-ready," this machine still paralyzes me, makes me avert my eyes, fumble, and smile nervously as a sign of submission. In the postmodern moment the I-Me dialogue has taken on an entirely new dynamic. While even the spontaneity of the I has become suspicious, the gaze/voice of the "Me" is now populated by an imaginary audience somewhere in the interface. How do I look from the point of view of someone seeing ME on the screen? More importantly, who is/will be looking at me on the screen? Colleagues? Students? Friends? How will Debbie's and my co-presence be interpreted? Can I ask those reporters to respect my privacy? Ask them NOT to make this small segment of my life public to millions of others tonight at 6 pm ?

Probably not. Live with it, I tell myself, (in)visible cameras constitute as much part of our environment as mirrors, and the risk of one's privacy suddenly becoming "public", the risk of one's image being literally caught and materialized on tape/screen has become unavoidable. Except perhaps that, at least, mirrors are relatively permanent, visible and predictable. Video cameras are so much more treacherous, creeping up on you at the least expected moment. And I also think about the members of a small tribe who really believe that the eye of the camera steals their soul, that it literally traps an essential aspect of their beingness, endangering their very existence, their spiritual, physical and social well-being. As far as they are concerned, the TV camera is the famed notion of the "evil eye" (Al Issa 1990). Do they know something we don't or have forgotten?

THROUGH TV SCREENS AND INTO COMPUTER TERMINALS

About a month later, I also came to terms with the fact that, on the interface, the media-engineered collapse between the private/public and the everyday/screen, can take on more threatening forms.

I am sitting in Dan's living room. A native Las Vegan, Dan is my main contact to a small network of working-class friends and informants. Lenny, who is Dan's roommate, and Bill, a coworker, are also present. A thirty-six years old white man, Lenny moved to Vegas about twelve years ago from what he describes as some God-forsaken small town in the Appalachians. To better evoke what this town feels like, he refers me to the movie Deliverance. Remember? "O.K." I shiver "got it." Thanks to this shared Hollywood knowledge, we "connect" and I can "see" his birthplace.

As usual, the TV is on, the sound is off, and the C.D. player is blasting the latest Rush album. The show on TV is COPS, and from time to time, during gaps in conversations, we look at the silent screen, at night scenes of police officers crashing down doors of lower-class types who seem to be implicated in drug-trafficking, wife-abuse, disorderly behavior, child-neglect, and other activities deserving police intervention and display on TV screens. Suddenly, a loud knock on the door interrupts our little get-together. Dan opens it and a young man and a woman walk in. Both are white, clean-cut, in their twenties, and wear dark blue uniforms with flashlights and walkie-talkies clipped to their belt. Flashing their badge, they introduce themselves: "PAROLE OFFICERS." Friendly but firm. They then turn to Lenny who becomes pale as the male officer directs him to the bathroom and asks him to urinate -- under his professional gaze -- into a plastic cup. In the meantime the woman officer prowls around the apartment, goes into Lenny's room and proceeds to open his closets and desk drawers, moving things around.

I am still sitting on the couch next to Dan; we both look at the screen in a tense silence. As the calm voice of the parole officer can be heard through the bathroom door, on the silent screen, victorious police officers carry tonight's villain off to the street. There in full public view, they spread-eagle him against their car which is parked next to an apartment uncomfortably similar to the one I'm visiting right now. Even though there are only two officers present in the small apartment, the cacophony of static voices emanating from their walkie-talkies makes it sound like the entire Las Vegas Police Department is waiting in the parking lot, ready to launch a daring assault. Or is it just TV? Bill asks me to help him carry the trash downstairs and we hang out in the parking lot for a while. We smoke a cigarette, and look around trying to be cool. No police cars. "Are they going to send other officers around? I heard lots of voices on their walkie-talkies. Are they going to take us in?" I ask Bill. "I don't think so, he answers, but you should go home. There is nothing you can do here and staying can only mean you getting in trouble for nothing." And somewhere, yes, this sudden seek-and-destroy mission occurring simultaneously "live" and on-screen is a little bit disorienting right now.

Later, I learned that Lenny got sentenced to one week in jail and six months under restraining orders at his mother's house -- a fitting Oedipal punishment for a young man who disobeys laws pertaining to his body. During his sentence, he will also be wearing an electronic anklet, meaning that for the next six months, Lenny's body will indeed become a human antenna, unwillingly transmitting electronic beeps monitored by the police. Deported to the interface, Lenny's subversive body will become pure data on computer screens, his private space conquered and converted into a point of transmission in a vast electronic network of surveillance.

But drug-offenders on parole are not the only ones to experience this collapse between the private body and the disciplinarian screen; the forced abduction of citizens to the interface also takes on more perverted forms. Shelly, a shy student of mine who has been silent all semester, raises her hand and confides to the class, a little embarrassed:

At the firm where I work as a secretary, there are video cameras in the restrooms and you never know if 'they' are looking. Going to the restroom at work has become difficult.

For Scott, another student who works as a dealer in a major Las Vegas casino, this is not even a big deal anymore. He knows he is constantly under electronic surveillance. "You get used to it," he says stoically. "Can anybody here certify without the shadow of a doubt that we are not presently being taped?" I interject, "are you absolutely sure that there are no concealed cameras and mikes around?" They shake their head from side to side hesitantly. "I have always wondered what this black box was," says Mike, pointing to a black rectangular metal box hanging from the ceiling, facing the classroom. "Smile, you're on camera," I answer. "Well, no I really don't know what this box is about, but how does it make you feel? Thinking that this might just be a camera which might be 'on' right now? Delusions of surveillance?" Mike thinks for a while. "A kind of paranoia that becomes normal," he offers, "as Scott here said, you get used to it and you can't always be sure."

In this interconnected network of concealed cameras, TV screens and computer terminals, the distinctions between different social spaces have also collapsed. In this integrated system, once distinct sites become reorganized as high-security zones -- a scattered electronic panopticon driven by a paranoid mind whose obsession compels it to demand constant yet random surveillance, and the exponential generating/encoding of human data. Just in case, and the more the better.

ELECTRONIC INTERPELLATIONS

While Lenny's, Shelly's and Scott's stories indicate that, in the interface, we leave permanent electronic traces in invisible databanks and on TV screens, we must also address the idea that TV screens leave permanent electronic traces in us. Two weeks after the parole officers' raid, I am back in Dan's apartment. As usual, we speak about work, friends, Las Vegas , Lenny, and then turn our attention to relationships. He seems puzzled that I have not yet resolved my dilemma with Debbie. Am I taking too long?

Me: "Do you think I am crazy for being so undecided about a relationship with her? Do you know other people who would feel this way?"

Dan: [remains silent, thinks for a while, and then smiles] "Well, no you're not crazy, and yes, I know other people who feel the way you do. Like they just had the same kind of situation last night on the Jerry Seinfeld show."

Me: "Good point, Dan."

The full impact of this benign exchange takes some time to sink in. At some level, what Dan casually indicates is that the very first "other people" he could think of while assessing a real human situation are not "other people" at all but simulations, images, electronic signals appearing on a screen but only there. But for Dan, it seems relatively unproblematic. In the interface, Jerry Seinfeld is another person, and how he manages romantic situations can serve as a model or script for me. Jerry Seinfeld as an electronic generalized other, if you will. Does Dan suggest/transmit Jerry Seinfeld to me because both Jerry and I are Jewish, about the same age, single, and I'll admit, mildly neurotic? Does he see Jerry Seinfeld as his own role-model when he is undecided about relationships, or would he choose some other TV character speaking social-economic and cultural codes he'd rather "connect" with?

In some ways, Dan's commonsensical reaction also concretizes Gergen's (1991) idea that, if in the 1950s we asked that TV convincingly imitates the real, today we ask that the real convincingly imitates TV. "I get it," says Julia, a student, "it's like watching a beautiful sunset, like say in Hawaii , and right away I compare that sunset to others I've seen on TV, and I ask myself whether the real one matches up." Exactly. Is it conceivable that as we meet people or situations, as we "seize them up" -- as Goffman would say -- we unconsciously compare them to TV images which define in our mind how real individuals should look, act and be like? Is it too far-fetched to suggest that we engage in some kind of media(ted) fascistic "human selection"? That when we decide that a person is too fat, not attractive enough, uncool, or having bad taste, our criticism is informed by TV images? That those images urge us to expect or even demand certain bodies and realities? Could it be that in the blink of an eye, we systematically exclude entire categories of people whose only sin or stigma is a failure to fulfill the basic televisual criteria of self-presentation? "You must be kidding," says Gail, a student, "I do it all the time." Others in the class concur. "Uuuh is that really unusual?" she seems uncertain now. What do you think?

Memories or traces of electronic events constantly circulate in our mind. They merge together, move freely between the conscious and the unconscious, blur the past and the present, and surface in dreams and everyday interactions. More disturbingly, traces of electronic events also combine with traces of real events to the point of virtual collapse, to the point where we forget their respective origin, and to the point where we even fail to realize that they are being activated. "Does it also happen to you," I ask in class, "that you remember having heard an idea, a piece of information, a story, and although you remember the message, you can't remember if the source was a real person or an electronic one you saw on TV, on a fax, an electronic billboard or e-mail?" The students nod amusedly. What could be the social psychological consequences of such an electronic presence in terms of our relationships with others, the everyday and the self?

I am watching the TV news on the eve of my departure for Israel . On the screen, there are pictures of exploded buildings in Gaza , dismembered corpses being carried away, and Fundamentalist vows of imminent revenge. These pictures are then replaced by others depicting an American Airlines plane crash-landing at JFK -- which happens to be the first stop-over on my trip the next day, on American Airlines. After the commercial break, the TV continues with a story about airplane food which nearly killed people, and then more stories of mutant viruses travelling by airplane from Africa to France , and from France to virtually everywhere else. How serious is this news-package? I wonder. But I can't think about this for too long. Sometimes, blankness and emotional anesthesia, are the only ways to travel in the interface. The only other reasonable option would be a panic state, but such a state cannot be maintained for very long. With the collapse of what Giddens (1990) calls "our trust in expert systems" -- or the basic trust that the institutions in which we participate and entrust our daily life really work -- the present moment also seems to require a collapse of affective investments. On the screens, the most realist simulations of the contemporary depict an everyday which alternates between the permanent danger of human assault and technological breakdown, between random violence and bureaucratic incompetence, between global crises and local catastrophes. There are too many risks, too many fatal encounters, no safe place and no friendly skies. "The revolution of our time," suggests Baudrillard (1993, p. 43) "is the uncertainty revolution. Paradoxically, however, we attempt to escape from uncertainty by relying even more on information and communications systems, aggravating the uncertainty itself." But time to go. I remind myself that this is just TV and my travel is real. Don't confuse those two and down with the collapse.

At JFK, my first stop-over, I find myself surrounded by Israelis going back home for the holidays. We will be boarding together a direct flight from New-York to Tel-Aviv, a small flying kibbutz. "What a perfect target," I think, flashing on scenes appearing in every one of the three movies about Entebbe . But right away, a more familiar voice surfaces and tells me to stay calm. "Don't panic. This is not a movie, this is real." Too late. I scan the crowd slowly, blank-faced, like a surveillance camera, and zero in on one individual. Focus. He looks like a Palestinian and worse yet, he is young, male and he is alone. According to my media traces, this is the absolute wrong combination of demographic variables in any airport of the Free World. I scrutinize him, look him up and down, and observe his every move while dragging real calmly on my cigarette. His eyes encounter mine and, yes, I'll admit that even after years of activism in the Israeli left, participation in countless group encounters and multicultural activities with Palestinians, I cannot refrain from sending him a cold, unsmiling, squinting look, saying: "Hey you. I am watching." Last night's news juxtaposing pictures of terrorist bombs, a plane crash at JFK and angry Palestinians got the best of me. Or the worst. These electronic traces have now combined, have become materialized in this passenger, and I find myself stuck inside the interface with the TV logic again.

TELEPHRENIA

As I am watching the TV news one night, on the eve of my departure for Israel , I see stories of poisoning on planes, technical breakdowns, supersonic viruses, and exploding bombs. Trying to digest these rapidly firing short stories, a seductive voice speaking from somewhere between my mind and the screen starts posing difficult questions: "Is TV trying to tell you something?" Let's be honest here, wouldn't you, reader, think that there are too many coincidences, too much synchronicity between my projected travel plans and these real televisual bites which sound as a warning?" Or is this a typical case of telephrenia, a new psychosis of the interface? This disorder is not unlike the one deep-sea divers fall prey to. When moving too rapidly between the deep and the surface, the different pressures of changing atmospheres or environments can often cause dizziness, sometimes, the collapse of vital organs, in other cases, permanent brain damage, and in still others, the actual physical shrinking of the individual, and death. Similarly, perhaps, at the social psychological level, telephrenia might be caused by too many rapid movements between the simulated and the real. Characterized by the patient's inability to distinguish between those two realms, such a syndrome leads him/her to assign the televisual a despotic position over his/her mind and body. Paralyzed and disoriented in the interface between the real and the screen, the patient displays inappropriate affect, illogical reasoning, delusions of reference, delusions of influence, and dangerous panic states.

Ted, a student of mine who works in a mental institution told me later about "real" cases: real institutionalized schizophrenics who are convinced that TV is in fact communicating directly to them. They believe that -- or actually experience -- TV voices and images instilling paralyzing fears and commanding their will and their thoughts. Sounds a little bit like Aum Shinrikyo sect members who are equipped with the strange wire helmet which -- they believe -- will facilitate the reception of the thoughts of their leader, Shoko Asahara. The difference is perhaps that while Aum Shinrikyo members voluntarily seek this electronic subjugation -- and there is a small fee for the helmet -- schizophrenics would rather regain the mastery of their mind. At the same time, if Asahara's followers are tuned in to just one channel, one truth, one discourse, telephrenics might have lost the capacity to distinguish between what matters and what does not. Or as Lisa -- a registered nurse -- once told me absentmindedly, "I have been channel-surfing for so long I don't even know what I'm watching any more."

If Jameson (1984), Baudrillard (1981), Devereux (1981), and others suggest that schizophrenia is the quintessential postmodern mood, for Deleuze and Guattari (1977), a schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic on an analyst's couch. But now I also wonder what a schizophrenic on a couch watching TV would experience; how would s/he decode the social in the interface between the everyday and the screen and between the mind and the multimedia.

VIRTUALLY YOURS

Sally and I are going to see each other face-to-face again. For some reason, such encounters seem to follow unusual patterns which I increasingly experience in my other relationships which unfold predominantly in the interface. In a flash, such interface communication patterns switch from emotional closeness to absolute distance, from true confessions to prolonged silence, from the substantial to the superficial. And back. Carried out across time zones, spatial boundaries, and through a variety of technologies, such relationships also follow erratic patterns of intensity and frequency. Gergen (1991) calls them "microwave relationships" -- their function is to generate extreme heat for the purpose of immediate nourishment.

Perhaps one useful approach to such interface relationships consists in exploring the particular technology or medium of communication involved. According to Belgian sociologist Ansay (1994), in the postmodern moment, the private sphere has become an assembly of various categories of machine. The white ones (sinks, toilets, kitchen appliances, bathtub) serve biological needs; the brown ones (walkman, TV, CDs, VCRs) provide culture, entertainment and subjectivity; finally the technologies of tele-actions (phones, fax, e-mail, surveillance cameras, computers) allow us to "connect" with or "contact" others. These technologies create an electronic cocoon, a virtual space whose functions are to protect us from the physical presence of "Others" through the channelling of our interactions with them through multiple plugs, sockets, and screens. "Why speak to one another when it is so simple to communicate?" asks Baudrillard (1993, p. 54).

By displacing others' physical presence to the interface or the virtual, these technologies unavoidably also transform our relationships with them. The routine interacting with virtual Others through electronic signals may thus collapse all pre-existing distinctions between a great variety of Others while reorganizing our relationships with them on the basis of at least one main common denominator: the technology we use to access them. In the interface, former determinants of relationships dissolve and what increasingly comes into play is not so much the social-psychological chemistry of the individuals involved, but their socket of access. We now have our e-mail friends, our computer discussion-group pals, our telephonic colleagues, our fax contacts, our video dates and our cybersex lovers. As such, we become decreasingly situated in physical space and increasingly located in terms of our positions in those networks of electronic access. In each case, the particular technology or socket we use to "connect" shapes the kind of relationship that develops, its dynamics, pace, and possibilities. We may communicate with familiar people on a face-to-face or/and body-to-body basis, less familiar ones are accessed by phone, more distant ones by e-mail, fax machines etc. As a virtual visitor whose presence in my electronic cocoon is simulated via the computer screen, Sally's communication patterns should perhaps not surprise me then. The random shifts in frequency, intensity, form and speed of communication may all constitute significant aspects of such electronically-mediated relationships. Of course, these relationships/connections are not static and individuals can, over time, utilize successively different technologies or sockets. E-mail friends can call each other by phone, set up a date and see each other face-to-face or body-to-body. Individuals formerly on a face-to-face basis may then shift to a telephone or e-mail mode/node, etc. The extent to which such transitions transform these relationships is unknown.

But the electronic cocoon is not without risks. As real others are replaced by virtual ones, as our engagement with the environment is increasingly mediated through the sockets and screens of the interface, a new type of panic emerges, that of technological breakdown; the inability to connect, the incapacity to receive/transmit these electronic signals. What is the fate of the postmodern self when the electronic umbilical cords which feed it constant information, and which carry its signals back to the social are suddenly unhooked, severed, cut off? When the everyday increasingly occurs in the interface and is programmed by it, does this inability to receive and transmit the vital electronic signals which construct the self precipitate its virtual collapse? Would that self -- like Dr. Kervorkian's patients -- die and disappear once unplugged? I connect, I simulate my self, therefore I exist. Switch on, plug in, and above all, never log out.

NOTES:

Al Issa, I. 1990. "Culture and Mental Illness in Algeria ." International Journal of Social Psychiatry 36(3):230-40.

Ansay, Pierre. 1994. Le Capitalisme dans la Vie Quotidienne [Capitalism and Everyday Life -- untranslated]. Bruxelles: Editions Vie Ouvriere.

Baudrillard, J. 1983. The Transparency of Evil. New York: Verso.

-----------. 1981. Simulacres et Simulations. Paris: Galilee.

Debord, G. 1983. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red.

Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. 1977. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: The Athlone Press.

Devereux, G. 1980. Basic Problems of Ethnopsychiatry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gergen, K. 1991. The Saturated Self. New York: Basic Books.

Giddens, A. 1990. The Social Consequences of Modernity.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Jameson, F. 1984a. "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." New Left Review 146:53-92.

Poster, Marc. 1995. The Second Media Age. Cambridge, MA: Politiy Press.

Scheer, A. 1994. La Democratie Virtuelle [Virtual Democracy -- untranslated]. Paris: Gallimard.