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2009
Pre-Socratic media theory
Brogan S. Bunt
University of Wollongong, broganuow.edu.au
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Publication Details
Bunt, B. S.. Pre-Socratic media theory. ReIive Tird International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and
Technology Victorian College of the Arts. 2 to 29 November. 2009.
Pre-Socratic Media Theory
Associate Professor Brogan Bunt, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong
Re:Live: Third International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and
Technology, Melbourne 26-29 November 2009
Abstract
Drawing inspiration from Siegfried Zielinskis ground-breaking study of media
archaeology, Deep Time of the Media, this paper explores the potential for pre-Socratic
philosophy to provide a model for alternative conceptions of mediation within
contemporary media art. It argues that pre-Socratic philosophy develops notions of
mediation that extend beyond the contemporary focus on technical media. In their
exploration of fundamental dynamic principles within nature and in their sensitivity to the
uncertain relation between truth, appearance and finite human understanding, they
suggest diverse conceptions of mediation that have continuing critical and creative
relevance.
Keywords
Pre-Socratic Philosophy, Mediation, Media Art
Introduction
In his Deep Time of the Media, German media theorist, Siegfried Zielinski, explores
the rich history of seeing, hearing, and combining using technical means (Zielinski,
2006: 34). He focuses on what he terms curiosities charged indices of invention that
point beyond the meaning or function of their immediate context of origin (Zielinski,
2006: 34). The various curiosities indicate sites of unrealized potential; they represent,
for Zielinski, not primitive stages in the development of media, but inspiring possibilities
for contemporary experimentation. One of the first chapters considers the relevance of
the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles conception of the dynamic interaction between
natural things and the contemporary notion of the media interface. My aim in this paper
is to review Zielinskis argument, focusing specifically on his efforts to tease out a
technical conception of media from Empedocles more integrated and cosmological
vision. In my view, Zielinskis emphasis on the technical apparatus tends to overlook
broader and more fundamental questions of mediation within pre-Socratic thought. The
pre-Socratics abiding concern with issues of ontology, truth, unity and differentiation
reveals a notion of mediation that extends beyond the necessity of technical relay. In this
regard, it may have some relevance for thinking through currents of change within
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contemporary media especially as the traditional concern with novelty, artifice, speed,
scale and complexity is unsettled and perhaps displaced by an emerging concern with
immediacy, mobility, reduction, engagement and integration.
As will quickly become evident, I am not an expert in pre-Socratic philosophy. I have
relied upon a very standard set of English translations and secondary and tertiary sources
(chiefly Barnes, 1987 and Guthrie, 1962) to develop my understanding of the tradition.
The distinguishing feature of my approach, drawing upon the model of Zielinski, is the
effort to discern conceptions of mediation within pre-Socratic thought and to consider
their relevance towards re-thinking aspects of contemporary media (particularly within
the context of media art). I am not suggesting that pre-Socratic thought speaks directly to
contemporary media (and media art), but rather that it provides a lateral perspective on
contemporary issues and questions.
Empedocles and the Technical Media Apparatus
Pre-Socratic philosophy (6
th
- 4
th
Century BC) constitutes a key moment in the
development of Western science and philosophy. During this period, according to Barnes
(1987: 16) and Guthrie (1962: 1-3), ancient Greek mythological explanations of the
world gave way to emerging strands of empirical observation and logical argument. The
pre-Socratic thinkers posed the fundamental questions of origin, cause and being that
have informed Western scientific and philosophical thought ever since. They addressed
not only the broad shape of the universe, but also its fundamental stuff, structure and
logic. Many factors contributed to this new perspective, from conditions of relative
wealth and political stability to an acceleration of cultural exchange (especially with
Eastern traditions) (Barnes, 1987: 14-15, Guthrie, 1962: 29-32, McEvilley, 2002). It is
well known that very little of the pre-Socratic tradition remains intact. We are left with
fragments and secondary accounts. This lends the tradition an appealing epigrammatic
intensity. The continuing fascination of pre-Socratic thought is closely linked to the way
which it combines the vivid and the metaphysical, the familiar and the distant, the lucid
and the obscure.
Empedocles appears as a late figure in the tradition. The first group of pre-Socratic
thinkers had made bold statements about the nature of things. Thales (624-546 BCE)
2
argued that everything is made of water. Anixmander (610-546 BCE) suggested that all
specific things were born from the infinite. Heraclitus (535-475 BCE) insisted upon
primordial fire and hence, at the metaphysical level, the primacy of dynamic conflictive
and differential relations over any notion of stable, permanent being. Parmenides (510-
440 BCE) rejected these natural metaphors and asserted the priority of logic. Rather than
describing the nature of being in terms of a perceptible root element, Parmenides posited
a monistic view of the cosmos. He affirmed the singularity of being and argued that the
concept of nothing (non-being) was a logical contradiction. Very significantly, his notion
of homogenous being entailed abandoning any thought of development, motion and
multiplicity. From Parmenides metaphysical perspective, there was (is) only the
undifferentiated and eternal One.
Within this context, the philosophy of Empedocles represents an effort to reconcile the
earlier currents of pre-Socratic philosophy with the austere logical reduction of
Parmenides. Empedocles agrees with Parmenides (and Heraclitus) that nature is un-
generated and eternal. He also accepts, with Parmenides, that it can adopt the form of an
undifferentiated whole, but argues that none of this need contradict the perceptible reality
of dynamic natural processes. Shifting away from a purely metaphysical and logical
conception of being, Empedocles adopts a cyclical view. The cosmos takes shape in
terms of an eternal alternation between the forces of Love and Strife (further complicated
by relations of Chance and Necessity). When Love prevails then all matter comes
together into a unified, undifferentiated whole (symbolized by the form of a sphere), but
then just as quickly, through Strife, it breaks apart into the multiplicity of different things.
Nature and the cosmos represent then an endless passage between unity and
differentiation. The process of alternation is facilitated by four root elements: earth, air,
water and fire. All specific things are products of the relations between these
fundamental elements, and all things are attracted to, and repulsed by, other things in
terms of their underlying elemental constitution. Their mingling and communication are
conceived in terms of effluences, pores and affinities. So rather than imagining the
material autonomy of particular things, Empedocles regards all matter in terms of a
constant process of porous exchange.
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It is this scene of exchange that interests Zielinski, particularly as it entails a theory of
perception. Here perception is cast as an objective phenomenon. It takes shape as a
natural relation of attraction or repulsion, correspondence or disengagement. Material
things physically and intimately interact. They brush up against one another, engaging or
disengaging with each others effluences on the basis of their underlying elemental
predispositions. For Empedocles, this is mediated by the surface character of things by
porous skins, which both release and receive material effluences. It is precisely in this
conception of a concrete perceptual apparatus that Zielinski recognizes a model of
mediation and the media interface. However, Zielinski suggests that this model is
incomplete. It is not properly mediated because it involves a literal, direct material
relation between things,. Zielinski draws upon the thought of the still later pre-Socratic
philosopher Democritus (460-370 BCE) to add the two remaining (modern) ingredients:
an intervening space of separation; and a neutral agent of exchange.
Objecting to Parmenides, Democritus argues that being and non-being exist equally.
Non-being takes shape as the void between existent things a space that opens up all
possibility for movement. Moreover, Democritus asserts a radically multiple notion of
being. Instead of a world of self-sufficient and autonomous things, Democritus argues
that everything is composed of innumerable and imperceptibly small atoms. The atoms
represent the positive character of being. They gain their distinctive identity and
potential for motion in relation to the dimension of non-being that surrounds them. The
void provides the necessary habitat for the multiplicity and animation of being. In this
manner, Democritus atomistic theory provides the two missing ingredients from
Empedocles conception of perception: the void enables a space of separation; while the
atoms provide a neutral carrier of information. According to Democritus, the perceptible
effluences of individual things produce impressions (idols) on the surrounding atoms,
which then become the vehicle for conveying flows of perceptible information to other
things.
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Fig. 1: Democritus model of mediated perception
Overall then, Zielinski combines the thought of Empedocles and Democritus to arrive at a
model of mediated perception that bears a clear resemblance to features of contemporary
technical media. We can, for instance, map this conception to Shannon and Weavers
famous Mathematical Model of Communication (1949). We have a Source in the shape
of specific perceptible thing, a Transmitter in the sense of the porous skin that releases
and receives direct effluences or indirect atomic impressions, a Channel in the shape of
the void and the impressionable atoms, a Receiver cast as the receptive dimension of
porous matter, and finally a Destination, which refers to the material and non-subjective
interiority of the perceiving thing. Of course, the ancient model lacks a specific concern
with issues of message entropy (noise), but it has very modern relevance in terms of the
emphasis on a technically defined perceptual apparatus. A remaining issue, however, is
that it does not define an explicitly technical apparatus. The pre-Socratic model of
perception functions within nature (physis), rather than as a consequence of artificial
making (techne). Zielinski emphasizes this point:
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In actual fact, Empedocles theory of pores renders the construction of any
interface superfluous. The porous skins are ubiquitous; they are material elements
of all things and people and thus move with them. Every person and every thing
has received this gift. Democritus introduced a medium, and thus a third quantity,
wherein one can contemplate the idols, or simulacra, including their truth. With
Democritus, though, one can imagine that, in the future, more artificial interfaces
will have to be constructed in order to bridge the chasm that currently exists
between being and appearance. (Zielinski, 2006: 55)
The pre-Socratic model gains significance for Zielinski precisely inasmuch as it
anticipates the subsequent development of artificial perceptual interfaces (media). At the
same time, however, its status as a curiosity hinges, as we have seen, on its heterological
character its potential to open up alternative insight into the dynamic material character
of media relations. Zielinski preserves a delicate balance between these strands of
resemblance and difference. My concern, however, is that the emphasis on discerning
features of modern technical media in pre-Socratic thought ends up neglecting more
fundamental issues of mediation within the tradition.
Integral Mediation
For me, the potential contemporary relevance of the pre-Socratic thinking of mediation is
that it highlights a play of mediation within the texture of nature (physis). Rather than
depending upon any work of ostensible technical artifice (techne), issues of media and
mediation affect the self-identity of being. This has relevance in terms of developing a
more nuanced conception of contemporary media, one that is not primarily focused on
the traditional dramaturgy of technological alienation, but that is open to new possibilities
of mobility, intersection, reduction and integration. This is by no means to envisage the
seamless incorporation of media within some amorphous conception of living being, but
on the contrary to suggest that media is not alone in its play of separation, distance and
division. The disruption of media is integral to the thinking of being itself (rather than an
external technological imposition). Here I draw inspiration from Heideggers
examination of the philosophical underpinnings of the notion of technology. Heidegger
questions the nature of technology and argues that it is an expression of a more
fundamental existential dilemma. Linked to a complex history of thinking concerning the
6
nature of making and revealing, technology serves as a contemporary sign of the essential
work of displacement and disguise within the conception of being.
The question concerning technology is the question concerning the constellation
in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to presence of truth
comes to pass. (Heidegger, 1978: 315)
The contemporary value of pre-Socratic philosophy lies precisely in its capacity to reveal
these relations, to demonstrate that the question of media extends beyond the need to
envisage a technical apparatus, that it is inherent within the question of the identity and
manifestation of being.
The pre-Socratic thinking of essentially mediated being has two dimensions. The first
involves how the nature of being is conceived. The second involves how this conception
is made manifest. The first relates to the question of the arche (the origin and underlying
generative principle of the cosmos) and the second to the question of the logos (the
account of the nature of being).
Arche
We have seen that Empedocles conceives the cosmos as a dynamic cycle of elemental
relations. In this sense, the fundamental feature of being is less some specific tangible
stuff than a constant interplay of material forces. The arche of being is cast not as a
singular and self-similar quantity, but as a motion of mediation. This sense of
fundamentally mediate being is even more strongly evident in the thought of Heraclitus,
who posits a radically differential conception of the cosmos. If he speaks of fire and war
it is less to designate substantive existential essences than to insist that the notion of
essence is radically problematic. The primary character of being is flux, self-division and
conflictive mediation. In a less pointed manner, Thales arche of water is also indicative
of a terrain of mediation. Water is positioned as both a cosmic habitat and as a (literally)
seminal generative force. Water describes an active principle that gains significant
identity in the processes of life that it engenders. Its importance hinges on its capacity to
enable fecund relations to provide a medium for, and to mediate, life. In this sense, the
whole concept of an arche necessarily involves a thinking of mediation, of the dynamic
relations that structure the nature of the cosmos.
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At the same time, however, there are strands of pre-Socractic philosophy that resist this
mediate conception of the arche. Parmenides notion of an unmoving, undifferentiated
whole provides the clearest example. Yet even in Parmenides if not in his stern
metaphysical vision then in his poetic account a paradoxical thinking of mediation is
evident. The truth of logical singularity must, somehow, become manifest. In the gap
between logic and its conceptual recognition, strands of inspiration, induction and
deduction intersect. The logos itself then is affected by dimensions of mediation.
Logos
Heraclitus is the first of the major pre-Socratic thinkers to speak of the logos:
Of this account [logos] which holds forever men prove uncomprehending, both
before hearing it and when they first have heard it. For although all things come
about in accordance with this account [logos], they are like tiros as they try the
words and the deeds which I expound as I divide up each thing according to its
nature and say how it is. (Barnes, 1987: 101)
Heraclitus plays upon the complex meanings of logos within ancient Greek. Here it
refers both to his spoken/written account of the nature of things and also to the
underlying logic that shapes natural processes. The notion of the logos engages then the
fundamental problem of the relationship between the self-identity of truth and its
mediated representation, particularly with how philosophy can lay claim to truth. I
cannot hope to address this topic adequately here, but for my purposes the key point is
that the issue of mediation, which involves the uncertain relation between truth and its
philosophical manifestation, is evident at the very outset of Western philosophy, and
without the need to describe a specific technical apparatus.
There are many paradoxes associated with the logos. These paradoxes hinge on the
incommensurable relation between the sphere of necessarily limited human knowledge
and the infinite scope of the cosmos. Drawing on the rhetoric of traditional cosmology
(as evident, for instance, in the proto-philosophical cosmogony of Hesiod, 8
th
Century
BCE), Parmenides describes a mythological basis for his access to the logos. He relates
how he learns the true nature of things via an encounter with a goddess on the portal
between Day and Night. It is a metaphoric space that represents the suspension of
8
ordinary common-sense oppositions (Gallop, 1984: 7). It would also seem to
paradoxically indicate that the logos owes a substantial debt to the apparently negative
force of the Night (the goddess emerges from the House of the Night and speaks of things
that exceed mortal perception). The encounter with the goddess serves as a means of
signaling a metaphysical dimension of truth, but apart from this poetic-mythological
conceit, how is Parmenides to distinguish the veracity of his account? One passage from
his philosophical poem seems particularly indicative of the perceptual, conceptual and
metaphoric difficulties:
Only one story [logos], one road, now is left: that it is. And on this there are signs
in plenty that, being, it is ungenerated and indestructible, whole, of one kind and
unwavering, and complete. Nor was it, nor will it be, since now it is, all together,
one, continuous. (Barnes, 1987: 134)
At one level then there is the singular, eternal and homogenous truth and then there are
the multiplicity of signs that point to it. The philosophical narrative (logos) escapes
direct perception and apprehension; it is evident only by an experience that is manifestly
different and intrinsically differentiated. My aim here is less to question the possibility of
metaphysical unity than to emphasize that issues of mediation affect pre-Socratic
philosophy at its very basis. There are gaps, spacings and dimensions of mediating
agency that need not take a specifically technical form. It may even be that the
transposition of these dilemmas into technological terms represents a means of stepping
aside from their implications, of displacing an internal motion of splitting and
differentiation into a safely exterior form.
9
Beyond Narrowly Technical Conceptions of Media
In his introduction to Deep Time of the Media, Zielinski acknowledges that the interest in
technical media is very much a 20
th
Century concern. He predicts that in the 21
st
Century
media will become like air or water so much a part of everyday life (Zielinski, 2006:
33) that they will cease to be a central focus of concern. The pervasiveness of media and
their incorporation in every dimension of human activity is likely to alter the way we
think about and imagine media. If the emphasis was once upon the wonder (and horror)
of novel media mechanisms, especially upon their capacity to enable various forms of
technologically framed experience (mass behaviour, cybernetic participation, ideological
interpellation, sensory amplification, visual simulation and kinaesthetic immersion), now
things are couched in less dramatic and antagonistic terms. Within this context, the
pressing motivation for Zielinskis study is to undertake field research on the
constellation that obtained before media became established as a general phenomenon
(Zielinski, 2006: 33).
For my purposes, pre-Socratic thought provides an oblique vehicle for imagining a non-
techno-centric conception of media. In its central concern with a dynamics of mediation
within nature and with the medial paradoxes of perception, cognition and truth, it offers a
speculative model for re-thinking media in terms of wider contexts of experience and
interaction. My particular interest is in exploring the relevance of pre-Socratic thought
for describing emerging tendencies in media art. While media art has always been a
diverse field, incorporating everything from massive Art-Science projects to critical-
conceptual net and software art, the focus has tended to be on the former - on large-scale,
techno-centric media art associated with exhibition contexts such as ZKM, Ars
Electronica and ISEA. However, there seems to be a growing orientation towards more
technologically modest and contextually oriented projects. Instead of summoning brave
new orders of mediated experience, significant strands of contemporary media art sketch
relations with the natural and social world. Rather than trading on the rhetoric of
technological innovation, they explore elements of anachronism, reduction and
alchemical transformation. Some factors contributing to this change include greater
technical literacy amongst media artists (so that they no longer depend upon partnering
with scientists and technicians to realize their creative concepts), a renewed critical
1
concern with the social and environmental implications of big media and an increasing
level of conceptual-artistic sophistication (evident in the integration of media art within
broader traditions of critical avant-garde practice).
Of course it would be absurd to suggest that pre-Socratic thought can provide a coherent
account of directions within contemporary media art or that it can serve as a blueprint for
new forms of media art (low tech/no tech, mobile, locative, physical, bio, etc.). For me,
very much as Zielinski argues, it serves as a curious and indirect basis for envisaging
alternative media possibilities. If a shift beyond the techno-centric conception of media
is evident, it is certainly not happening in a simple, unequivocal fashion. There are
inevitable dimensions of ambiguity and contradiction. In this respect, rather than trying
to recognize pure instances of technological displacement or overcoming, it may be better
to consider how this counter-tendency appears as a tension within the tradition of media
art itself. In the place then of a detailed discussion of emerging tendencies, my aim in the
remainder of this paper is to very briefly consider three pieces of classical electronic/new
media art that reveal dimensions of post-techno-centric possibility.
Aeriology, Joyce Hinterding (1995)
Aeriology transforms architectural spaces (galleries) into very low frequency (VLF)
antennas. The spaces are wrapped with many kilometers of copper wire that pick up
inaudible frequencies via magnetic resonance. Hinterding explains that the project
focuses on opening up an energetic exchange with the upper atmosphere (Shanken,
2009: 113). While the gallery visitor is clearly enmeshed in a large-scale and
technologically constituted experiential framework, the technology itself is very simple
and appears as an electrical, quasi-elemental vehicle for engaging wider elemental forces.
Hinterding describes the apparatus as a machine for a techne of the invisible (Shanken,
2009: 113). It is this emphasis upon a reconstituted machine one that is oriented
towards technical simplicity and a sympathetic relation to natural (imperceptible)
dynamic processes that is suggestive of another, less technically focused conception of
media.
1
Autopoesis, Ken Rinaldo (2000)
Autopoesis is a kinetic sculptural installation, employing fifteen suspended robot arms
that respond to one another and to gallery visitors. The work is centrally concerned with
issues of artificial life and emergence. The underlying networked programmatic system
facilitates a measure of creative behavioural adaptation. Described in these terms, the
work seems to fit very much the standard mould of immersive and techno-centric
electronic/new media arts installation, yet at least one element of the sculpture points in a
different direction. The robotic arms are made of dried grape vines. Rather than bright
and shiny mechanical devices, the arms are constructed of simple materials that engage a
dialogue between the low-tech/handmade and the electronic, as well as, more broadly,
between the natural and the artificial. In this manner, the emergent openness of the
system extends beyond the obvious technological framework to suggest other
possibilities for re-conceiving the relationship between physis and techne.
Uncle Roy All Around You, Blast Theory (2003)
Uncle Roy All Around You is mixed-reality game in which street players interact with
virtual players via a sophisticated integration of mobile device communication and
networked surveillance and simulation technologies. A product of a major Art-Science
collaboration between Blast Theory and the Mixed Reality Lab, Nottingham University,
the work explores layers of tension and uncertainty that arise when real and virtual social
interaction and game-play are juxtaposed. Participation takes shape in a liminal zone in
which human encounter and technological alienation become indistinguishable. At the
very end of the game participants are posed an ethical question that seems to play at the
limits of the technical infrastructure and game-play (and to gesture beyond them): Are
you willing to make a commitment to [a stranger] that you will be available for them if
they have a crisis? The commitment will last for twelve months. In return, they will
commit to you for the same period. (Shanken, 2009: 137). This final maneuver involves
an opening and a risk. It demands both a trust in mediated social relations and an
absolute commitment to something which exceeds them.
Overall, each of these three examples obeys the paradigm of techno-centric media art, yet
also reveals dimensions and interests that extend beyond the technical. They solicit a
1
dialogue with broader sets of social and material relations and, in this manner, project
wider possibilities of mediation.
Conclusion
This paper has adopted a deliberately very speculative approach. It has attempted to
tease out an alternative conception of media from strands of pre-Socratic philosophy. It
has argued that the genuinely heterological character of the pre-Socratic conception is
linked firstly to its focus on dimensions of mediation that are constituted in natural and
non-technological terms and secondly to its emphasis on the problematic relation
between truth, appearance and telling. In my very brief discussion of the relevance of
this conception towards rethinking aspects of contemporary media art, I have focused on
discerning strands of practice that motion ambivalently beyond conventional techno-
centric concerns. I have said less, however, about the implications of the pre-Socratic
notion of the logos, specifically of how the paradoxes that affect our perceptual and
conceptual relation to truth can inform contemporary media art practice and theorization.
I cannot do justice to this issue here, except to make a single point. In attempting to think
beyond exclusively technical notions of media, there is the danger of assuming that the
problem of mediation simply disappears that a new immediacy is possible. The
paradoxes of the logos provide a reminder that mediation retains its force even without
the intervention of porous skins, atoms and void.
References
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Gallop, D. (1984) Parmenides of Elea. Toronto, University of Toronto Press
Guthrie, W.K.C. (1962) A History of Greek Philosophy, Volume 1, The Early
PreSocratics and the Pythagoreans. Great Britain, Cambridge University Press
Heidegger, M. (1978). The Question Concerning Technology, in Krell, D. F. (ed). Martin
Heidegger: Basic Writings. London, Thames & Hudson
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Robinson, T.M. (1987) Heraclitus: Fragments. Toronto, University of Toronto Press
Shanken, E. A. (2009) Art and Electronic Media. New York, Phaidon Press
Wright, M.R. (1981) Empedocles: The Extant Fragments. New Haven: Yale University
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