Discussion group on art and technology

[Thomas Friese <tfriese@eumeswil.org>]

Dear Fellow Art and Technology Enthusiast,

The Association Eumeswil of Vancouver and Florence invites you to consider joining our intimate weekly discussion group on technology, art and human values. You have been invited because of your presumed interest in and/or connection to these topics. If you are not interested in receiving further updates merely forward us this message.

The Association Eumeswil was originally founded in Florence to study the works of Ernst Jünger, Germany's most individualistic (and controversial) 20th century author. He died on February 17, 1998 at the age of 103. We decided to open a chapter in Vancouver partly because its natural splendor complements the artistic loveliness of Florence and partly because Vancouver is in a most rapidly technologically advancing part of the world, the Pacific North West. Technology, our modern magic lantern with all its potential for titanic creation and destruction, is a major theme in Jünger's visionary works.

The book we will be reading this year, The Glass Bees, is a classic of modern utopian literature, comparable to anything Orwell or Huxley ever wrote. It presents a thought provoking vision of the possibilities and effects of technology. It cuts deeply and decisively into the moral and metaphysical implications of our titanic new technical powers. Though written in 1950, it speculates in particular on higher and lower roads for virtual reality in the fields of cinema, high art, education, love and war. But above all, we have chosen this book for its treatment of the question of human soul in an ever colder, ever more mechanical world. 

Here are a couple of appetizers from the Glass Bees.

	" The idea of plays acted by automatons was, of course, an old story; such plays had often been tried in the history of the cinema. But formerly there had never been any doubt about the automaton-character of the figures, and for that reason the experiments had been limited to the field of fairy tales and grotesqueries - with the basic effects of a puppet show or the old magic lantern. Zapparoni's ambition, however, was to re-create the automaton in the old sense, the automaton of Albertus Magnus or of Regiomontanus; he wanted to create artificial people, life-sized figures which looked exactly like human beings. People had taken this idea as a joke, but some had been shocked, declaring it to be in bad taste - the conceit of an immensely wealthy man.
	But they had all been mistaken, since even the very first of these plays had been an enormous success. It was a luxury puppet show without puppeteers and wires; it was the first performance not only of a new play but of a new genre. The figures, it is true, still differed slightly from the human actors we are used to seeing, but they differed pleasantly: the eyes of a larger cut, like precious stones, the movements slower, more elegant, and in moments of excitement even more violent and sudden than anything in our experience. Even the ugly and abnormal had been transposed into new, amusing, or frightening but always fascinating domains....
	Thus one might say that these figures did not simply imitate the human form but carried it beyond its possibilities and dimensions.  The voices reached a pitch that put any nightingale to shame, and a depth that outrivaled any bass; the movements and expressions indicated that nature had been studied and surpassed. The public now admired what it had ridiculed only yesterday. I shall not repeat the praise of enthusiastic critics who saw in this play, performed by marionettes, a new art form presenting ideal types."
							Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees, pp. 99-100.


	"Only recently, I had admired Romeo and Juliet on the television screen, and had occasion to see for myself that a new and more beautiful era in dramatic art had started with Zapparoni's automatons. How tired one had become of the heavily made-up actors who became more insignificant from decade to decade, and how badly heroic action and classical prose, to say nothing of verse, suited them! In the end, one would not have known what passion, what singing really was, had not Africans been imported from the Congo. Zapparoni's marionettes were of a quite different proficiency. They needed neither make-up nor beauty contests where chests and hips are measured and compared - they were made to order.
	I am not, of course, going to proclaim that they excelled human beings - that would be absurd after all I have said about horses and riders. On the other hand, I think that they set man a new standard. Once upon a time statues and paintings influenced not only fashion but Man. I am convinced that Botticelli created a new race and that Greek tragedy enhanced the human body. That Zapparoni attempted something similar with his automatons revealed that he rose far above technique, using media as an artist to create true works of art."
								Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees , p.137.

The meetings are open to all light-hearted, serious-minded people, whatever their level of formal training - we believe that only through a mutual confrontation of diverse opinions arising from a spectrum of educational and experiential backgrounds can objective truth be approached. As an originally Florentine initiative, it is only natural that Association Eumeswil takes such a Renaissance approach to learning. If you are interested in joining one of our evening discussions, they are, for the moment at least, free but it is required that you reserve a place for yourself and any one joining you. Space is intentionally limited. Please e-mail Thomas Friese at tfriese@eumeswil.org or call 732-4447. 

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thomas Friese
Association Eumeswil Vancouver