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Illusory Realities: Deconstructing Nature through the (im)material-Semiotic World of the

Hologram
Abstract
This thesis presents a critical assessment of the way that nature is commonly
approached and uses the engagement with the hologram as an opportunity from which
novel theoretical understandings on nature can potentially emerge. This thesis is divided
into two main parts. The first one consists of a deconstructive reading of nature,
examining the pervasive role that the dualist model with its nature/culture, mind/body,
human/machine, physical/metaphysical dichotomies has had in shaping the development
of modern Western ontology and epistemology as well as the construction of a natural
order. The second part of this thesis deals with a cultural analysis of holographic
technology, which opens up a whole domain of speculation on new ways of thinking
about nature and provides an escape route from these established, hierarchically
organised binaries. Instead of taking the existence of a natural order as self-evident, this
thesis will argue that nature is a discursive domain that is constructed through
repertoires of human practice generated by and around particular historically situated
contexts.
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Illusory Realities: Deconstructing Nature through the (im)material-Semiotic World of the
Hologram
(Salvador Dalis painting Three Sphinxes Of Bikini [1947])
Introduction
In April 2012, the Californian music festival Coachella seemingly hosted a modern day
West-coast reincarnation ceremony. The subject of revival was Tupac Shakur, the
infamous American rapper, who was killed in an alleged shoot-out in Las Vegas in 1996.
To the astonishment of the Coachella crowds, sixteen years later, Tupac appeared on
stage moving, rapping, and dancing brazenly to his hit-songs; he had apparently come
back to life. The figure being eulogised by the Coachella masses, apparently summoned
against the ravages of time from past into present, however, was no more than an illusory
faade of Tupacs corporeal form. It was, in fact, a projection of the rapper achieved
through new developments in holography and the innovative guise of digital technology.
While this event is clear evidence of the presence of the virtual in real environments;
beyond this, the synchronous projection of ourselves removed from the envelopment of
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the human flesh into a physical reality - from past into present, suspended and extended
over space and time - has the effect of disturbing our speculations on the parameters that
separate the human from the non-human, the physical from the meta-physical, the
artificial from the organic, and fiction from reality. New technological innovations are
not merely increasing the efficiency of human interactivity and expanding avenues of
communication, they are actually becoming increasingly receptive to new understandings
on nature and the environment. Therein, what implications does the hologram have on
the way we think about nature? Holographic projections seemingly point to the
unravelling of the thread that separates the asymmetric polarities embedded in modern
thought.
The origins of the discomfiting eclipse between human and machine, of course, is not
unique to this latest technological development in digital holography. The history of
Science fiction is replete with visionary projects of this kind that can be traced as far back
as Mary Shelleys creation of Frankenstein (Shelley [1818] 1992). This gothic take on
the machine-human binary alludes to a certain frailty at the human beings seemingly
bounded dimensional bodyscape, and disorientates our attempts at clearly defining the
bodys geometric limits when it becomes merged seamlessly with technological
interfaces. More recently, a wave of Science fiction films from Blade Runner (Ridley
Scott 1982) to the Terminator series (James Cameron 1984 et al), distinct in their
dystopian tone, have sought to place the idea of the cyborg the fusion of (wo)man and
machine - as their thematic and formal focus (Pyle 2000: 124). Yet, perhaps it is Star
Wars (George Lucas 1977) that has become most synonymous with the hologram albeit
with less sinister undertones - which envisaged the holographic projection as a
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communicatory device through Princess Leias pleads for help in a galactic battle against
Darth Vader.
Having been previously limited to the domain of science fiction, however, holographic
technology has now made the revolutionary leap as an operational dematerialising
medium. As Nasser Peyghambarian, a scientist and holography pioneer, observes [it] is
no science fiction, it is something you can do today (Jha 2010). Developed by the Nobel
prize-winner Dennis Gabor in 1947, the hologram (from the Greek words holos, whole,
and gramma picture) first emerged as a popular material during the 1970s and 1980s,
which saw its two dimensional form rapidly gain ubiquitous use on credit cards and bank
notes. Further development of the hologram has made tele-presence, i.e. three-
dimensional projections of images in thin air, possible in real-time. The holograms
potential uses in peoples daily lives are vast and dynamic. In Japan, the celebrated pop
star Hatsune Miku appears on stage as a digital hologram in front of thousands of fans
and the technology also formed part of Japans failed proposal for the 2022 World Cup,
which would have allowed fans in different countries around the world to watch
projections of games played at the championship in their local stadiums (BBC 2010).
While the hologram is not yet in full flower, it is an embryonic technology that could
revolutionise communication through art, media, medicine, education and various other
aspects of human life. With this potential communicatory device lending itself clearly to
an Anthropological enquiry, how do we make sense of the hologram? Material
constructions are perhaps the most lucid unit of analysis of what societies are and what
they do, hence the idea, the development, and use of holographic technology elucidate
key aspects of the human mind, body and its cultural interaction with the environment.
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In order to consider what is at stake in the blurring distinction between human and
nonhuman, real and unreal, implicit in holographic projections, it is necessary to place the
following discussion within the dualistic model that lies at the heart of the hierarchical
ontological system, which arranges particular root metaphors (Olds 1992) in Western
thinking about nature and the nature [in/and/of] reality. As Arturo Escobar observes,
revealing principles and assumptions that underlie the modern understanding of [nature]
is an important step towards providing new contexts for reorienting the dominant
tradition (Escobar 2000: 57). In the context of the hologram, this requires a
deconstructive analysis, and it is important to note, as Forest Pyle rather insightfully does,
that the point of deconstruction is not to decode [natures] meaning or even unmask
[the] ideologies [that are reasoned about it]; decoding and unmasking presume a secure
position of knowledge outside the unstable oppositions under consideration and immune
from the effects they generate (Pyle 2000: 125). But rather, to unearth its constructions
and acknowledge that the unwelcoming space between the observer and the observable is
intrinsically mercurial. As an inquirer, we are inevitably involved in the historical
processes that underlie the object of study. Thus, an Anthropology of the subject, or the
project of trying to represent something, is inescapably put in Roy Wagners terms - a
kind of retroflex agency compelled by other influences (Wagner 2001: 5).
Following the deconstruction of nature, adopting a heuristic approach this discussion
will probe the hologram through a cultural analysis in an attempt to come to terms with at
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least some of the questions raised by this medium and the implications it has more
generally on our ontological approach to nature.
Deconstructing Nature
nature is the chief obstacle that has always hampered the development of public
discourse (Latour 2004: 9)
Mind, matter, the human body and the environment; these are natures immediate
connotations. Yet underneath this seemingly simplistic veneer lies a complex subject on
various levels. Nature is paradoxical in its materiality yet simultaneous immaterialism.
Even its readily quantifiable qualities such as physicality can be quickly undermined by
its ongoing digitalisation. Much of the difficulty on the subject lies in the universal
categorisation of nature itself, which assumes an inherent division between the
natural and the unnatural order and pre-conceives nature as an essence in itself,
which can be accessed directly and unmediated by individual human beings. It would,
therefore, be easy to neglect the epistemic authoritative imperatives that political, social
and cultural factors have in affecting our interaction with the environment, as well as
(re)shaping our understanding of it.
The way in which the environment is widely engaged with treads on that unwelcoming
space between man, machine and nature, which is often met with clear and distinct
divisions. Yet, if technology acts as an extension of the human body, mediating its
exchange with the environment, then the proliferation of the simulations and immersions
of the digital revolution into peoples daily lives unearths a far more profound and
syncretic relationship between nature, the body and society than initially meets our gaze.
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Whilst there are clear differences between people and machines, rather than being a
matter of a stark disjuncture, the differences are becoming evermore a matter of degree.
The prostheticisation of the body through cyberculture and the metaphysical nature of
cyber-technology, is not only challenging our idea of what constitutes the environment,
moreover it is seemingly blurring the assumed rigid boundaries in the phenomena of
nature between the natural and the artificial, the human and the mechanical, the real and
the unreal, that are interwoven with the foundations of contemporary Western thinking.
Our approach to nature, like all other categorical labels, forms part of a wider
mechanistic procedure achieved through repertoires of human practice that are deeply
embedded in early modern Western thought. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock
argue that the underlying premise, which drives Euro-American thinking, is its
commitment to a fundamental opposition between spirit and matter, mind and body and
(underlying this) real and unreal (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987: 8). The origins of this
dualistic mode of thought can be traced back to the Scientific revolution during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where the way in which reality was addressed
became synonymous with the observable natural world; a shift that Karen Armstrong
identifies as a gradual development from the mythos (myth) epoch to the logos (logic),
which established the basis of modern sciences and led to the construction of an
ontological natural order (Armstrong 2001). As Bruno Latour suggests in his work:
Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences Into Democracy, the Western
construction of a natural order reflects a political division that separates what is
objective and indisputable from what is subjective and disputable (Latour 2004: 231).
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The word science itself originates from the Latin word scienta, from scire, to know,
to separate a thing from another thing, which is interlinked with the proto-Ino-
European root skei, to cut, split. Much of modern thought is grounded by criterions of
distinction established by Ren Descartes, during the seventeenth century. This approach
addressed nature through speculative language that assumed an a priori disposition
between meaning and matter, persons and things, representation and reality
underpinned by the intimation of a deep division between (wo)man and nature. For this
reason, our language and thought is coded by dichotomous metaphorics such as nature-
culture, body-mind, human-machine, biological-technological reminiscent of Aristotles
proportional metaphors, in that they wield a particular correspondence in the form of A
is to B what C is to D (Frank 2003: 68). Thus, their status as proportional metaphors is
both culturally and historically grounded, yet they remain a prominent ahistorical voice in
structuring the chorus of Euro-American epistemological and ontological debates.
These binaries in the hierarchical division of nature are the underlying determinants of
what are widely assumed today to be matters of fact, innate and/or universal. They
yield a particular epistemic influence over the way in which we think about nature -
namely that there is a natural order or there are laws of nature implicit in nature.
Language is key in the formation of ideas that are generated by and around nature, as Roy
Wagner observes, language disguises its limit by merging with its own perception in
thought, becom[ing] the very informing or referral by which perception takes place
(Wagner 2001: 5). However, by accepting these objective notions and boundary
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breakdowns implicit in this natural order, we run the risk of overlooking the way in
which scientific knowledge itself is socially produced and radically simplifying our
ontology (Viveiros de Castro 1998). As a consequence, as Latour perceives, we are
recapitulat[ing] the hierarchy of beings in[to] a single ordered series (Latour 2004: 25).
In order to avoid this, it is necessary to make deconstructive gestures towards the
discourses that produce the problematic nature [in/and/of] the natural order. We can
often best discern an awareness of the ways in which nature and reality - used inter-
changeably here - become obscured by the discourses and practices generated by and
around a particular historical context through a (re)consideration of the phenomenon of
political ecology, which proposes to convoke a single collective whose role is precisely
to debate the said hierarchy and arrive at an acceptable solution (Latour 2004: 29).
Political ecology is distinct from nature, as its chief concern is with nature in its links
with society (Latour 2004: 4). If the singular and capitalised Science has a unilateral
relationship with the natural order, this is nevertheless organised and produced at the
confluence of politics, morality and culture. Hence, as Latour suggests, political ecology
seeks to distinguish these from one and other. So rather than being wholly subsumed in
the discipline of science, political ecology aims to analyse the production of scientific
knowledge as a deconstructive reading. The aim of deconstructive reading according to
Forest Pyle, is not to deconstruct [nature] from the outside but to bring
deconstructive questions to bear upon [it] (Pyle 2000: 127). It thus may be the case
that science can be comprehended as a cultural institution or a cultural system (Geertz
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1973) rather than an apparatus of objectivity, which plays a key role in shaping our ideas
on nature and truths. This can be explained through the Foucauldian notion of
discourse; whereby culturally constructed systems of knowledge govern the way that a
topic can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about (Wetherall et al 2001: 72).
Thus, humans do not have immediate access to nature in general; instead we can only
access nature through the mediation of history [and] culture (Latour 2004: 32).
The semiotic nature of human exchange, which Clifford Geertz argues lies at the basis
of a cultural system, shows how symbols generated in historically contingent
circumstances generate realities directly related to ones experience, which makes them
seem real, and as a consequence draw out new dimensions of reality (Olds 1992).
Humans ability to create and understand symbols is what permits, for example, the
distinction between the involuntary blink of the eye and the crudely similar wink
(Darnell & Sapir 1999: 320). Importantly, the models on which these constructions are
premised have a particular authoritative duality; they both describe the world as it is, as
well as setting a particular order to the way it should be.
Much like religion, then, Science has an intermediary role in the formation of
knowledge although of course in the case of religion this is achieved through God (or
gods) rather than the peer-reviewed process of Science. The category Islamist, for
example, reflects this. The term refers to a distinction made against the political Muslim
in the way that they comprehend Islam: as a system that responds to all human
problems (Bayat 2007: 7). The key is in the translation of ideas into certain objectives
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and activisms the Islamici[s]ing of life-world through organised activism (Ossella &
Soares 2009: 170). The Islamist is one who takes this self-identification as a bearer of
true Islam, and the holistic nature of that commitment, and follows this conviction to its
logical conclusion. This example underlines how the above definition of religion and
science can be seen as essentially a matter of meanings linked to ideas of a general
order (Asad 1986: 238).
Turning our gaze back to the hierarchical organisation of nature points to a pertinent
aspect of deconstructive analyses of nature. Namely, how the deconstruction of nature
requires an examination of its construction in this way, construction and deconstruction
are two sides of the same coin. As Raymond Williams said in Ideas of Nature the idea of
nature is the idea of man (Williams 1980: 70-71). Nature is a discursive domain that has
been shaped by a dualist model rooted in the Old constitution (Latour 2004), which
consequently (re)shapes our way of reasoning about it; determining the reality of
meanings, meaning making and/or the making of reality. These constructions that are
continually signposted, reiterated and recited, perhaps in the most fundamental way
through the semantic impertinence of conceptual language (Olds 1992: 24), are not
merely shaping the way in which we perceive nature and limiting our understanding of it,
they are also leading to the transformation of nature. When nature is treated as a resource,
for example, forests can become harvested, farmed, and deforested, in other words
harnessed and appropriated for human need.
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At this point it is necessary to address the question that lies at the heart of this
discussion: where, precisely, does nature end and culture begin or vice-a-versa? A
fundamental problem with the way in which we think about the relationship between
culture and nature, as Tim Ingold notes, is to perceive culture to hover over the material
world but not permeate it (Ingold 2000: 340). Nature, and the reality [in/and/of] nature
is a nodal point for representation.
We might, then, briefly consider the question of reality through the rather thought
provoking question that Wagner posits: can reality, whatever is meant by that term,
assume a proportion within the sense we make ourselves without remaining a separate
issue - a natural, social, cultural, or meaningful reality alone? (Wagner 2001: 221).
Herein lies a crucial question to hold onto in my discussion of the conceptual aspects of
the hologram. Having considered what is at stake when objective features are marshalled
within the discourse of nature, it is important to introduce holographic technology into
this background of discourse, which intrinsically challenges the pervasive dualisms
embedded in modern thought. The hologram opens up a whole domain of speculation on
new ways of thinking about nature and provides an escape route from the established,
hierarchically organised dichotomies that in many ways limits our understanding of
nature and humans relationships with nature. By probing and socialising technology we
can gain a self-conscious understanding of the way in which we perceive the world and
engage with it.
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Illusory Realities: Towards a cultural analysis of the hologram
The boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion (Haraway
1991: 149)
As cyber technologies are increasingly adopted as the epitome of sociability for people
world-wide, examining their precise nature undermines the antithetical concepts
embedded in the natural order and seemingly transcend the rigid epistemic markers of
difference mapped onto the dyads between human-machine, natural-unnatural, nature-
culture, et cetera. As Kevin Robins suggests, new technology promises to deliver its user
from the constraints and defeats of physical reality and the physical body (Robins 2000:
81). The failure to recognise the ways in which the human body is technologically
engaged and the implications this has on our general understanding of nature is to elicit a
serious misreading of our contemporary context. Although holographic technology is a
unique technology, it can be linked to wider ongoing theoretical debates on contemporary
technology, cyberspace and virtual reality that have developed rapidly over the latter half
of the twentieth century. In these debates, a post-Cartesian backlash has developed.
Thinkers have explored and brought into view an alternative conceptual horizon (see
Haraway 1991, Latour 1996, Viveiros de Castro 1998, Wagner 2001). What these
scholars share in common is a shift in focus from questions of knowledge and
epistemology toward those of ontology (Henare et al 2007: 8).
The concept of the cyborg that Donna Haraway (re)introduces as an academic
category in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (Haraway 1991)
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is particularly effective for bringing new language into the sciences to help describe the
contemporary situation. Importantly, as David Tomas observes:
with the appearance of each new word [i.e. the cyborg], a new threshold is crossed
in the perception and social construction of the human body, between conceptions
of the organic and inorganic, the body and technology, and the human and the non-
human; and, indeed, of machines themselves insofar as they can also be
considered as organs of the human species (Tomas 2000: 22).
Premised on the rejection of rigid boundaries that received wisdom on nature informs
us, the cyborg can be loosely defined as a hybrid creature, composed of organism and
machine (Haraway 1991: 1). It reflects the symbiosis of human and machines; the co-
mingling of metal and meat and as Haraway observes, the late twentieth century
machines [that] have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and
artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed (Haraway 1991: 152).
A particular concern that Haraway takes issue with in the cyborg is the way in which we
have imagined (often sparked by a work of science fiction) and realised cyborgs to make
us think in new ways about the prostheticisation of the body through cyberculture an
approach that builds on Latours deconstruction of nature (and vice-a-versa), and seeks to
establish nature as a social reality, as opposed to an entity in itself, which is experienced
through the environmentally-changing fiction of social relations. This point is
underpinned by Haraways statement: the cyborg skips the step of original unity, of
identification with nature in the Western sense (Haraway 2000: 292).
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As a digital projection of the human figure, which presents itself as a tele-presence in
real time straddling the narrow margin that separates illusion from reality - by
weaving together a synthetic blend of human and machine - holographic technology
stylishly encapsulates the concept of the cyborg. It challenges the firm distinctions
embedded in modern thought between the physical, meta-physical and non-physical,
human and technology, organic and artificial. We might consider this in the context of the
psychologist Craig Murrays observations of the embodiment in virtual reality; the body,
in its kinaesthetic and proprioceptive modes of presence continues to surface in
perceptual experience the phantom body claims its territory and demands recognition
(Murray 2000: 11). For this reason we cannot treat the phenomenological body as a
bounded entity: there is a technologically mediated, syncretic bond between the body and
the environment that is intrinsically fluid.
The development and use of holographic projections is predicated upon a similar
observation made by Haraway: biological organisms have become biotic systems,
communication devices like others. There is no fundamental, ontological separation in
our formal knowledge of machine and organism, of technical and organic (Haraway
1991: 177-178). Holographic projections point to a disassociation between the core-foci
of the physical body and the self - our familiar embodiment reconstituting our body
and the space in which it is located, rendering the body moveable in the primary world
(Murray 2000: 26). According to Murray, the consequences of this technological
embodiment, means that it could potentially (re)define experiential human morphology
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(Murray 2000: 30) away from the organic and sensorial spaces of the body. This has led
some to label our contemporary epoch as the post-human era. Despite its sinister and
dystopian undertones, deploying the cyborg as a creative inquiry points to precisely this.
As Arthur and Marilouise Kroker argue, this age is typified by a relentless effortto
force a wholesale abandonment of the body, to dump sensuous experience into the
trashbin, substituting instead a disembodied world of empty data flows (Kroker and
Kroker 2000: 98).
The question of technology, however, is not primarily a technological matter. What
these virtual technologies reflect is certain social objectives, processes and
representations of social life in a period of deep change, in part as a result of these
technological developments, that are changing the nature of communication and human
relations whilst inevitably transforming the environment around us. Importantly, the form
of the hologram we see today, aired in Japan as a telepresence of Hatsune Miku, is
synonymous to the ideal form that was fantasised as a staple of science fiction films such
as Star Wars and Star Trek. At the time, the holograms depiction on film represented
dystopian visions of modernity and futurism; therefore its social institutionalisation
demonstrates that the hologram, and technology more broadly, is a projection of the
minds ideas and ideal forms upon nature (Ingold 2000: 340). It is precisely from this
starting point that the hologram must be analysed because the hologram - like all material
culture in its most primitive sense is an artefact. Adopting an artefact-orientated
anthropology i.e. thinking through things (Henare et al 2007) - acknowledges the
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relationship between concepts and things in a way that questions whether these ought
necessarily be considered distinct in the first place (Henare et al 2007: 2).
Thus, in order to humanise the hologram, it is necessary to explore the processes
involved with it and its fundamental cultural influences, which requires a reflexive
imperative. Understanding the relationship between the mind, the body, society and the
environment is central to understanding the hologram as an artefact. Therefore, the
hologram will be examined as a projection of the mind and an extension of the body (and
vice-a-versa), which rather ironically encapsulates the hologram both in its literal and
conceptual sense. And, as the body mediates the minds exchange with nature, all too
often externalised from the human mind, the co-operative understanding between mind,
body and nature will be examined too. It is necessary to explore this dialogical
relationship between humans, technology and the environment in order to gain an all-
encompassing comprehension of the hologram. Material constructions reflect social
circumstances, hence the idea, the development and the use of holographic technology
points to key features of the human mind, body and its cultural interaction with the
environment around it.
At first glance, it appears problematic to hallmark a holograms tele-presence as an
artefact because it is not a material object so to speak. The anomalous uniqueness of the
hologram intrinsically challenges preconceptions of artefacts. While the function of the
hologram is to reproduce an image in the same way a television doe, it is distinct from the
television; as it does not have a conceivable physical materiality. However, it is important
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to immediately derail this presumption and establish that as well as being a visual
medium: the hologram is a physical medium. As Bill Vola observes, sitting, hearing
sound and watching movement is a very physical experience (Vola in Morley 2007:
283). Nonetheless it becomes evident, by looking at the semiotics of the word artefact,
that what constitutes an artefact encompasses a much broader continuum than mere
physicality. The word originates from the Latin arte skill and factum make; the two
words combined denote making skill. Skill is an abstract notion, whereas making is a
physical performance, thus in its root sense the meaning of artefact can be construed as
the materialisation of an abstract idea. This is underpinned by Daniel Millers contention
that immateriality can only be expressed through materiality (Miller 2005: 28). With the
symbolic yet ephemeral context of modernity, we are witnessing materials becoming
displaced (rather than explicitly being replaced) by ethereal materials; nonetheless these
are still forms that humans envisioned through a dialectic interplay with their
environment and cultural surroundings through imagination. Hence, in its most basic
sense the hologram can be seen as a projection or extension of the humans mind - (ful)
body (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987).
Beyond the imagination, the hologram embodies the materialisation of the world we
live in and objectifies our cultural situation. As Wiebe Bijker and John Law observe, all
technologies are shaped by and mirror the complex trade-offs that make up our societies
(Bijker and Law 1994: 3). The hologram reflects a culture and its ideas. This is often best
characterised by the concept of modernity, which, despite its novelty, as Arturo Escobar
observes, originates in a well known social and cultural matrix...which we cannot yet
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fully conceptuali[s]e but must try to understand (Escobar 2000: 57). The accelerating
speed of technology since the first industrial revolution in Britain in the latter half of the
eighteenth century which saw the proliferation of the textile industry, to the second
industrial revolution in the early twentieth century, where Henry Fords innovation on the
moving assembly line fostered an era of mass production, to the incumbent: a phase of
development that can be broadly characterised as the third industrial revolution
(Economist 2012).
The third industrial revolution marks a drastic change; namely the digitalisation of
manufacturing towards [the] third dimensional (Economist 2012). In many ways our
society, technologically speaking, has reached its most mature stage (Morely 2007).
Building on currently dominant communication forms such as the television, the mobile
telephone and the Internet, the hologram defines the social networking capacities of
Western society and society itself. It encompasses key aspects of our communication
systems; the connectivity of the Internet, the flexibility of the mobile phone and the
visual-ness of the television. Perhaps these successive technological stages into the three
dimensional are stemmed in peoples desire to transcend national bound borders and
interconnect interdependently on a vast scale, and more generally, to borrow a notion that
Marshall McLuhan coined in the 1960s, the worlds desire to expand into a global
village (McLuhan 1964). While holographic technology may be seen as a
correspondence to the modernist vision of classic science fiction films, it reflects the
hyper-communication culture that deeply permeates society at almost every level.
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On a more profound level, by seemingly devising the ultimate flexible machine or
communicatory device, the materialisation of hyper-communication that the hologram
embodies can be related to the inherent drive to dominate nature, an idea that Sigmund
Freud developed through his theory of the body politic (1962) that based human
development on a progressive domination of nature. Conceivably, with the developments
of the hologram, contemporary culture is veering itself towards a mastery of nature.
This argument can be pushed further by Martin Heideggers analysis of harvesting,
whereby technology is becoming polluted with the language of harvesting. On the first
and most self-evident level, the harvesting of the physical world renders it into a passive
resource of exploitation, yet beyond this it is also the harvesting of our human flesh that
is taking place, as [our] bodies and minds are reduced to a database for imaging systems
(Kroker and Kroker 2000: 102). This drive to dominate nature is also a way for humans
to distance themselves from the organic and innocent rules of nature - albeit
romantic ideas - that we are all too familiar with. Thus, whilst the hologram is a tool
which, in some ways, gives society an enhanced access to the environment it also
distances humans direct physical contact personable friendships are dissolving into
cyber-interactions, experiencing the world through the physical is becoming evermore
reinstated into the networks of virtual culture.
Humans propensity to elevate themselves from the physical nature of their
relationship with the environment is an aspect that Ingold took issue with in Culture on
the ground: The World Perceived through the Feet (Ingold 2004). Here, Ingold probed
the way in which the feet have been cultured through shoes, and idealised in such a way
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as to distance the feet from having an explicit corporeal link with nature, which was a
beleaguered characteristic that had been historically constructed as primitive or counter-
intelligent. Hence, the plain of social and cultural life [literally elevated itself] over the
ground of nature (Ingold 2004: 315). As a result the feet became culturally constrained
and subordinated through what Ingold sums up as the triumph of intelligence over
instinct (Ingold 2004: 321). The realisation of this into an experienced reality, i.e. the
materialisation and social institutionalisation of shoes, points to a pertinent aspect of
deconstructive analysis on the hologram that should be emphasised: the permeation of
cultural ideals into lived realities.
In this case, however, it is perhaps the elevation of communication over conversation -
or at least the prior has become obscured by the latter, therein resulting in machine-
mediated communication becoming a social reality. As, George Orwell had anticipated in
1943 the trend of the age was away from creative communal amusements and toward
solitary mechanical ones (Orwell in Miller 2006: 304). Privileging electronic
communication over humanistic conversation and surfing digital networks devoid of
physical engagement; digital reality provides a new platform of sociability that avoids the
complications inherent in direct physical interactions. This is a dimension of
digitalisation that the journalist Simon Jenkins encapsulates in particularly nuanced
fashion:
The Internet connects us to the entire world, but it is a world bespoke, edited,
deleted, sanitised. Doubt and debate become trivial because every statement can be
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instantly verified or denied by Google. There is no time for the thesis, antithesis,
synthesis of Socratic dialogue, the skeleton of true conversation. There is now
apparently a booming demand for online "conversation" with robots and artificial
voices (Jenkins 2012)
Beyond Jenkins quixotic standpoint, he elaborates on the threshold cyborg culture
provides: by appropriating and normalising cyber-holographic-technologies as well as
transforming them into social realities, these technological euphorias privilege the
digital over the human and electronic communication as opposed to social contact. As
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker suggest, digital life has given us artificial life. Not
artificial life as an abstract telematic experience fabricated by techno-labs, but artificial
life as it is actually lived today (Kroker and Kroker 2000: 99).
By challenging traditional notions of nature and materiality, and arguably displacing
physical engagement and the human body, the hologram is contributing to social change
and new realities. As Escobar observes, in the context of the third Industrial Revolution
new technologies emerge out of [these] particular cultural conditions and in turn help
create new social and cultural situations (Escobar 2005: 56). From telegrams to the
mobile phone, technology has historically functioned to reduce the burden of humans
seemingly intrinsic physical constraints and expanded the capacity of human exchange.
But, technology does not merely function as a conductor for interaction, as Maud Lavin
identifies in relation to the television, we also design our space habits and emotions
around [it] (Lavin in Morley 2007: 278). By (re)shaping networks of communication,
23
technology also (re)defines them. Evan Pritchards statement that people not only create
their material culture and attach themselves to it, they also build up their relationships
through and see themselves in terms of it (Evans Pritchard 1940: 89) seems particularly
germane to this discussion.
Social communication through moving three-dimensional images of friends or
colleagues on different ends of the world reduces the necessity for physical exchange
thereby profoundly affecting social environments. Professor Nasser Peyghambarian
foresees a situation where, different surgeons around the world participate in
complicated surgical procedure in virtual operating theatres in real time and in 3D
(Amos 2010). By improving on current mediums, holograms enhance the value of
participation whilst rendering communication more ethereal. The potential added
communicatory value of holograms exemplified by the distant participation of
experienced doctors in operations, points to the transitory nature of society: society itself
is being built along with objects and artefacts (Bijker and Law 1994: 19). Science and
technology also give rise to the production of life-worlds (Escobar 2000) and the
orchestration of social life in particular ways.
The holograms propensity to transform society suggests what Latour terms as a form
of mutualism between society and technology (Latour 2005). The reciprocity between
culture and technology indicates that technologies are active agents in this relationship. In
this two-way relationship, whilst the mind influences the birth and the development of the
hologram, the hologram influences the mind and society at both the micro and macro
24
levels. Thus, it is not clear who makes and who is made in relation between human
machine (Haraway 1991: 177). Early evidence of this symbiosis between technology
and society is seen in the reciprocal relationship between language and early artefacts
such as the axe. A recent study by Aldo Faisal found that tool making and language
evolved together because both required more complex thought (Sample 2010). This
implies that there are reciprocal effects between a technology and the social system of it
forms part of (Lemmonier 1991: 157). The hologram supplements language and our way
of conveying interactions in three-dimensional terms, thus it could be seen as a way of
developing the human mind. Through Arlene Jurewuzs study on the reciprocal effects of
the hologram, we understand that the existence of image-creating systems increases our
means of expression and imagination (Jurewez 1989: 405), suggesting that new ways of
seeing enable new ways of thinking. If Aristotle perceived the world to be the ground for
the construction of the agent, then in this respect, the mind, the body, technology and
nature should not be treated as distinct, isolated entities but instead as active agents
involved in a dialogical relationship. Therefore, as suggested by Latour in his actor
network theory, they all form a single network (Latour 2005).
In this light it is necessary reorient our ideas on nature, humans and machines, and veer
ourselves towards a more fluid and attuned understanding of their socio-cultural
character. As Latour suggests:
To use the notion of discussion while limiting it to humans alone, without realising
that there are millions of subtle mechanisms capable of adding new voices to the
25
chorus would be to allow prejudice to deprive us from the formidable power of the
sciences (Latour 2004: 69)
Concluding remarks
Man is suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun (Geertz 1973: 5)
Returning in closing to the issues that this discussion opened with, nature is best
understood not as a form of authentic reality but as repertoires of human practice
achieved over the course of history through the imperfect iteration of culture. When there
is a tendency to think reductionalistically on the subject of nature-culture, real-unreal,
human-machine, it is because these binaries - notwithstanding their historicity - hold an
epistemic authority in such a way that it makes sense to think both through and in these
ways. It is, thus, necessary to undress (or deconstruct) the ontological status of the
natural order transcribed with these root metaphors, by recognising their construction,
which is fundamentally derived from the influence of Cartesian thought and the Old
Constitution during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Latour asserts in his notion of
political ecology that there is no reality without representation (Latour 2004: 96), a
mantra, which serves as a particularly pertinent simulacrum in undermining the
deterministic oppositions embedded in modern thought. Thus, as Wagner explains
reality does not represent but only presents itself in any way that it may be
encountered, used, understood, or believed in (Wagner 2001: 222).
The cultural and conceptual discussion of the hologram provokes an escape from the
dualisms interwoven with modern Euro-American thought, and forms an elective affinity
26
to the concept of the cyborg that Haraway fervently pushed forth in her Cyborg
Manifesto (see Haraway 1991). The firm separation of the organic from artificial, natural
from unnatural, human from machine and culture from nature are intrinsically unstable.
The hologram raises certain critical questions that both undo and outdo the oppositions
between human and machine, natural and unnatural, et cetera that are deeply embedded
in modern thought. From a futuristic fantasy to reality, while the hologram appears to be
a giant leap into the dystopian visions once depicted on film and novel (e.g. Blade
Runner 1982; Frankenstein 1818; Star Wars 1977; Terminator 1984 et al) it represents
our hyper-communicatory culture, which puts instant communication in favour of the
dying art of true conversation (however true that may be). In its essence, like all
artefacts, the hologram is a projection of the mind and an extension of the body (and
vice-a-versa), which serves as a useful unit of analysis, in particular for the hologram,
because it encapsulates its (im)material-semiotic essence. Raising questions on new
technologies, such as the hologram, as Escobar observes is a crucial task for
Anthropology to work in the present, as it underpins precisely what Anthropology
concerns itself with: the story of life, as it has been and is being lived today, at this very
moment (Escobar 2000: 72). The reciprocal effects of the hologram and earlier examples
of technology such as the axe (see Sample 2010), also point to the contingent
arrangement of people and technologies, so that concepts, techniques and resources [are]
brought together through relevant technological frames (Bijker and Law 1994: 19).
In these attempts to demonstrate the new conceptual paradigm offered by the hologram, it
could be said that by disillusioning our assumptive world and culturally framed
27
definitions of nature [in/and/of] reality, this discussion points to its illusory nature in
the first place. If the semantic impertinence of conceptual meanings serve as the most
sustentative indicators for why meaning occurs, then the illusive hallucination of Tupac
has a similar effect for the minds imagining. As Wagner observes, the whole power of
trope of any kind metaphor, metonym, synecdoche lies in the identity it states,
however it came to be stated (Wagner 2001: 20). The image of Tupac that was projected
at Coachella festival makes itself mental, not because it imitates the three-dimensional
profile of an object in the mind but because it imitates the impersonation that gives this
effect, the three-dimensional profile of mind in the object (Wagner 2001: 19). If culture
is the ultimate expression of meaning, then, it functions in a similar manner to the
hologram; in that it is ultimately automimetic, albeit through language and representation
(Wagner 2001). In this light, perhaps virtual realities such as the (im)material-semiotic
world of the hologram can sensitise us to the illusory nature of reality itself. As Tom
Bolstorff proposes:
[Conceivably] virtual worlds show us how, under our very noses, our real lives
have been virtual all along. It is in being virtual that we are human since it is
human nature to experience life through the prism of culture, human being has
always been virtual being culture is our killer app: we are virtually human.
(Boellstorff 2008: 5)
28
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