Paul Virilio and accidents
Posted: March 7th, 2006 | 11 Comments »Just finished reading Paul Virilio’s book “L’accident originel” in the train this morning. It was amazingly interesting, here some excerpts of an interview of the author about this book:
Accidents have always fascinated me. It is the intellectual scapegoat of the technological; accident is diagnostic of technology. To invent the train is to invent derailment; to invent the ship is to invent the shipwreck. The ship that sinks says much more to me about technology than the ship that floats! Today the question of the accident arises with new technologies, like the image of the stock market crash on Wall Street. Program trading: here there is the image of the general accident, no longer the particular accident like the derailment or the shipwreck. In old technologies, the accident is “local”; with information technologies it is “global.” We do not yet understand very well this negative innovation. We have not understood the power of the virtual accident. We are faced with a new type of accident for which the only reference is the analogy to the stock market crash, but this is not sufficient.
The whole book deals with this idea of accidents (“ce qui arrive” / “what happens”), dromology, relation to space, speed and media. It comes form an exhibit he worked on at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, advocating for a future “Museum of the Accident”: here’s what he says: “Is the reconstituted accident a foreshadowing of the Museum of the Accident?“:
I also like his point of how technology reshapes the spatial praxis as well as the notion of familiarity I addressed yesterday:
I think that the infosphere – the sphere of information – is going to impose itself on the geosphere. We are going to be living in a reduced world. The capacity of interactivity is going to reduce the world, real space to nearly nothing. Therefore, in the near future, people will have a feeling of being enclosed in a small, confined, environment. In fact, there is already a speed pollution which reduces the world to nothing. Just as Foucault spoke of this feeling among the imprisoned, I believe that there will be for future generations a feeling of confinement in the world, of incarceration which will certainly be at the limit of tolerability, by virtue of the speed of information. If I were to give a last image, interactivity is to real space what radioactivity is to the atmosphere.
Why do I blog this? because I like what Virilio expresses and how he does it.
Do you know if Paul Virilio’s book “L’accident originel” has been translated and if so under what title? Alternatively can you recommend some english litterature on Virilio’s accident ideas?
thanks
Mathias
There does not seem to be any translation of this book so far.
BUT close to this concepts:
- a translation from a swiss interview: http://frenchphilo.tribe.net/thread/f09709c8-1c47-4c83-a9d8-67c6f77fc168
- things from Fondation Cartier: http://www.onoci.net/virilio/pages_uk/virilio/avertissement.php?th=1&rub=1_1
- another interview: http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/~nideffer/_SPEED_/1.4/articles/derderian.html
recently i quote random virilio concepts somehow more frequently next to others, however within my own graphic enforcements
telematic communication is nice and the globalisation also but cultural perspectives lose quality and artists have now new identification problems… irmyself a lot to get new art works from playing with computers… because the potentials of having various side effects out of softwares are immense… however
i develop new ideas from paul virilio’s writings lately
telematic actions need creative statements and artistic additions in order to take place aesthetically within daily correspondance… actually it is becoming a new way life alkl around
it is nice to read good texts
i actually use a good number of viewpoints from paul virilio books in my url… trying to explain myself new technology understandings. They just need to reevaluate them quite at ease, especially when on the internet
no comment. happy new year 2007
Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology (Autonomedia 1986)
new music is launched by john cage in its least involved and most transparent form as can exist… john cage searched his style from very random i ching possibilities disguising most of his speculative hysteries away from his compositions… in such means, he demanded the audiences to do their own responses to the musics very sanely john case regarded such nonegotistical strategies as a real fair attitude when composing new musical compositions
For photography trying to be very creative for new aesthetical features also in my digital
possibilities, my viual concerns towards rather geometrical findings, and they developed in such both aesthetical and ascetical forms with more feelings involved in further simples forms… Anyway i try to match them or i aimed them to let you match them rather freely… İ did try to do such things artistically but net very commercially on purpose
i just wanted to add supplementary ideas like it is most convenient to practice on new technology tools for photography, video making etc
the softwares apparently have features at the side which may lead to many creative applications to produce new digital form with new aesthetics as very relevant novelties i have 56 new media clips in my site http://www.youtube.com/tmadra