Digital Technics Beyond the “Last
Machine”: Thinking Digital Media with
Hollis Frampton
Mark B.N. Hansen
A Digital Frampton?
In his pioneering introjection of Hollis Frampton into debates about digital me-
dia, Peter Lunenfeld situates experimental film–for which Frampton serves as
an exemplar–as a ground condition for much of what, circa, comprised
new media art production. Suggesting that experimental cinema in its heyday,
from thes to thes, managed to achieve“the status ofgesamtkunstme-
dium”, Lunenfeld argues that it“can serve as a model for computer-inflected
art. I believe,”he states,“that the most interesting new media works aspire to
the condition of the experimental cinema without quite realizing it”.
Lunenfeld’s claim can be understood as a specification of Lev Manovich’s
more general and wide-ranging argument concerning the cinema’s role as cul-
tural dominant. InThe Language of New Media(), Manovich positioned cin-
ema as“thecultural interface, a toolbox for all cultural communication, overtak-
ing the printed word.”In this scenario, again circa, new media plays the
role of cinema’s rejuvenator:“Cinema, the major cultural form of the twentieth
century, has found new life as the toolbox of the computer user. Cinematic
means of perception, of connecting space and time, of representing human
memory, thinking, and emotion have become a way of work and a way of life
for millions in the computer age. Cinema’s aesthetic strategies have become ba-
sic organizational principles of computer software. ... In short, what was cinema
is now the human-computer interface.”Just as Lunenfeld’s argument for the
particular cinematic aspirations of new media art situates it squarely within the
cinematic genealogy traced out by Manovich, so too does his strategy run the
risk of compromising what is singular or different–indeed, what is“new”–
about new media.
For this reason, I suggest that we reverse the directionality of the correlation
between experimental film and new media, substituting for Lunenfeld’s claim
the notion thatexperimental film aspired, as it were in advance of its actuality,to
the condition of new media. To substantiate such a claim, one could invoke the