Art for the Human Event: The Anthropocene and Media(S)cene
By: Barry Vacker
Tags: Culture, Media, Ecology, Art, Anthropocene

In the mixed media painting above, the International Space Station is looking down on Los Angeles, immersed in the vanishing points of electric lights. A global capital of media and spectacle, Los Angeles and Hollywood are emblematic of an implosive civilization awash in lights and screens, yet ever more removed from its long-term impact on the planet. As a species, we live in the orbs and webs of electric light, all situated inside the planetary megasystem — on a planet surrounded by the cosmic void, enveloped by the cosmic darkness.

Close-up of “Space Station Anthropocene (LA at Night);” image taken from International Space Station, NASA. Image printed on stretched canvas painted black (acrylic and pumice). Photo: Barry Vacker, 2019.

Painted with a putty knife, the goal was to convey electrified energy and movement. Photo: Barry Vacker, 2019.

The Heart of the Anthropocene — ”Hot Media”

In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan also developed a hot-cool binary to explain our reponses to various media, based on the quantity of information flowing through each medium. But with the proliferation of computers and electronic screens (HD, plasma, desktops, laptops, tablets, phones), the usefulness of McLuhan’s binary was short-lived. However, the hot-cool terminology retains poetic power, prompting Julia and myself to re-theorize McLuhan’s binary towards a different hot-cool scale that explores the effects of contemporary media that look into and away from us. Hot media are at the heart of the Anthropocene.

Powered by electric light and electronic screens, hot media are those ego-driven media that promote an inward gaze among individuals and the human species, with the viewing subjects and viewed objects in close proximity to each other. Hot media are the tools of the pre-Copernican worldview, still maintaining an illusory cosmic centrality. Hot media produce higher densities of humans, energy, and events, and thus higher friction. With things in close proximity, even on a screen, images and and events rub, collide, or smash directly against one another. Moving at the speed of light, hot media fuel acceleration, quick reactions, short attention spans, instant feedback loops. Temperatures are higher, tempers are hotter.

“Hot and Cool Media,” two panels, printed and stretched canvas. 4 feet x 5 feet. Concept: Julia Hildebrand and Barry Vacker. Graphic design: Vacker, Hildebrand, and Sara Falco, 2019. Photo: Gaill Bower, 2019, used with permission.

Julia and I wrote in Hot and Cool in the Media(S)cene: “Hence, heat and friction also lie in our global layers of ego-media, giant clusters of networks and webs, all jammed with ever more data, images, and status updates. Social media sharing and shaming, hashtags and emojis, clickbait and catfishers, jihads and tea parties. Hot takes, hive-minds, and global swarming…

“YouTubers, tribal chieftains, Internet trolls, Twitter Gods, Trump. TV realities. The Kardashians. Copies of copies of copies. Shams, scams, fake news, false flags, and filter bubbles. Siri and Alexa. Colliding echo chambers. #MeToo. Reduce, remix, redact. Firewalls and border walls. […] Tribe battles tribe. Conflict and war. Domination and entertainment. Humans (some more than others) are the center of everything that matters. Trapped in hot media, our politics and political systems offer no solutions, no solace. No way out?”

While hot media celebrate human narcissism, they are consuming ever more electricity. Various estimates suggest that the internet and telecom platforms (servers, computers, social media, networks, etc.) may consume 20–30% of world electricity within two decades. With hot media keeping us at the center of everything, the center of all events and all meaning, how can we hope to handle climate disruption and the Anthropocene? After all, hot media will be heating the planet, too. That’s why we must extricate our consciousness from the sole grip of hot media.

“Cool Media” — Eyes of the Human Species

For three billion years, life on Earth existed within a rhythm of light and dark produced by the sun, moon, and Milky Way. Humans also evolved within the daily patterns of day and night, light and dark. Living in our electrified cities, we have removed ourselves from nature’s celestial rhythms. Given the power and seductions of hot media, it’s not hard to imagine a near future in which most everyone will never see the Milky Way with their own eyes. That’s one reason we need to return the dark skies to civilization and embrace the meaning of cool media.

Cool media are those media technologies with mostly an outward gaze, peering away from humans, with objects further apart or moving away from us. Cool media include telescopes, satellites, and space probes. Earth is below us and the starry skies are beyond us, while the voids are expanding and the galaxies are speeding away. Though filled with information, cool media confront lower densities, lower friction, and more distance events. There is less light and more cosmic darkness. Temperatures are lower, tempers are cooler, and the mind drifts and wonders.

“Hot and Cool Media,” two panels, printed and stretched canvas. 4’ x 5’. Concept: Julia Hildebrand and Barry Vacker. Graphic design: Vacker, Hildebrand, and Sara Falco, 2019. Photo by Gail Bower, 2019, used with permission.

Julia and I wrote: “In the cool gaze, events slow, attention spans grow, reflection trumps reaction, the species supersedes the tribe, borders and wars become artificial and absurd. Micro-particularities and hot affective conditions are not visible, but large-scale patterns, movements, and locations become more apparent. The more distant, aerial, and heightened perspective — beyond the thick, hot, reactive layers closer to us — opens up larger views and visions…

“Google Earth, Hubble Deep Fields, Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The cosmic web of galaxies, in a universe getting less crowded by the moment, with all galaxies are destined to disappear beyond all horizons. […] Voids, holes, and emptiness in outer space and our philosophies become visible. We are the center of nothing. Nihilism and enlightenment are the challenge. The universal over the tribal. Terrestrial heat replaced by the cosmic chill. There are no widely-accepted politics or political narratives in the cool. Hot politics freeze in the cosmic background temperature.”

With cool media, we’re forced to see ourselves through the eyes of our species, to see our existence as a species as sharing a planet with millions of other species, not merely as tribes vying for recognition and domination of our planet. Via the Hubble images on our screens, our daily existence collides with our cosmic existence, inhabiting a tiny region in a vast universe in which we are not central, not significant.