perception (time and space) are not that distinct at all, but rather relativistically
interlaced (like the dynamics of the electromagnetic "field").
The Internet today corresponds to the principle analysed by Innis - the "Carthage"
option which means hyper-linked exchange in ports across the sea, as opposed to the
land-based Roman territory (empire). Here the act of transmission is the message
(telecommunication telos) - exhausting itself in operation, in contrast to long
time teleological monumentality as embodied by the Egyptian pyramids.
In the age of transnationally networked economies and cultural exchange by
technological media, the term "tradition" is subject to a dramatic change of
meaning. Emphatic macro temporal („historical") tradition is being replaced by
time-based and time-basing micro-mechanisms of transmission. While tradition
has been associated with long-time memories across deep historical time so far, this
emphatic horizon now seems to shrink to a mere extension of the present (as its re-
and protentive short-time "working memory") - a dramatic shifting of the temporal
prefix.
The expression "cultural transfer" already implies a causal relationship, a traceable
chain of the channels whereby cultural goods as materialities or cultural knowledge
as information are negotiated between cultures. By using the term "transmission"
instead, a technological co-significance comes into play which has arisen with the
epistemology of electric and electronic media since nineteenth century telegraphy:
the idea of "wireless", that is: immaterial transmission of signals. Whereas this
corresponds with the sender-receiver model in communication engineering, an
alternative option is a theory of co-original emergence of structurally similar
technologies without direct exchange of knowledge, according to the principle of the
communicating tubes (and resonance). The development of printing with moveable
type in ancient Korea already took place before (and independent of) the Gutenberg
press, and principles of the wheel-driven clock were developed in China before it
emerged in late-medieval European monasteries - without mutual knowledge
transfer.
Archival materialism versus streaming electrons
High-technological media culture is characterised by the dichotomy between
materiality based endurance and electronic immediacy. Emphatic transmission over
time ("tradition") is based on the materialities of the archive. On the other hand,
immaterial electronic "live" media (transmission across space), by definition (and
essentially) are rather memoryless. Different from the legal record which is
tentatively meant to last for eternity, the quick notice on a random access data
carrier (starting with the ancient wax tablet) already fulfils its function as
intermediary storage. Thus, a new kind of evidence emerges: fugitive moments of the
past which were never meant to enter the discourse of history.
An example is the "direct recording": the immediate engraving of phono discs in the
1930s and 1940s. The material recordings were not used for long-term storage but
for short-time delayed replay in broadcasting across temporal zones or on different
program places, since magnetic tapes were not yet available. Their function was
wolfgang ernst technologies of tradition: between symbolic and material
(micro-)transmission
fulfilled (actually exhausted) in the act of intermediary storage - just like the
intermediary film with washable emulsions on celluloid in early television
transmission of outdoor events by daylight; emphatic tradition here is replaced by
delayed transfer. It would be a misunderstanding to categorise them under material
storage media; they were rather intermedia in the temporal sense (the time
channel). The more informative they are when, by accident, they were not effaced
but frozen over time, to be discovered in the present. Their information value is
reciprocal to their (non-)intention as "historical" records.
We can observe a transformation of an epistemological dimension: the
transformation of the classical, datacarrier based, material storage "archive" into a
literally e-motional archive (that is: in electronic motion), in electromagnetic
ephemerality and latency. The gain of flexibility and computability is paid with a loss
of durability.
When recently the Cologne Municipal Archive materially collapsed, it became
apparent that most records, though being dirty and mutilated, materially survived
this catastrophe, astonishingly resistible against the pressure of stones. In a similar
way the first generation ("analogue") audio-visual storage media turned out to be
surprisingly resistant against temporal entropy (like the Edison-cylinder and
gramophone records, as well as daguerreotypes, photographic negatives and film on
celluloid). More delicate is the destiny of cultural memory based on electromagnetic
storage; digital media, finally, tend to divest themselves completely from their
material embedding - losing the "touch ground" by becomingtechnically "virtual".
Traditional physical storage media have been materially inscribed (graphein in its old
Greek sense): "There must be a writing means by which the information to be stored
is introduced into the device" (Sage, 1953, p. 141-149 (141).; against this invasive
inscription, storage devices such as magnetic tape for audio and video only reveal
their memory content in the dynamics of the electro-magnetic field. Electro
technical storage media take place in a sphere which is different from the scriptural
regime of the classical archive - until, on the level of alphanumeric codes,
alphanumeric writing unexpectedly returned within techno-mathematical
machines. This return is a temporal figure which cannot be reduced to the linearity
of media history; as a Möbius loop, we are confronted rather with a media-
archaeological (re)configuration of times present and times past: a
contemporalisation.5
There are two complementary approaches to the conservation of analogue memory
carriers. The one cares for preserving the physical, especially chemical and
electromagnetic properties of the concrete media body - since all media
technologies are hardware in the first place. The other, sometimes opposing
approach is to preserve media-based memory as information, up to the extreme
point of view that the material body might be abolished after its essential
transformation into its pure binary information units.
archives in liquid times
142
5 To experience the past both in its characteristic difference and at the same time as present in actual
co-presence is a double-bind proposed by T. S. Eliot, 1949, p. 64
143