Q thank you very much for this nice introduction thanks osgram for inviting me um I'm a little bit excited because um I prepared of course an exact text for this limited 40 43 minutes or so we have and this is for me quite unusual because usually I speak free but this might take two hours and so I think this is a better version for you um preparing for my lecture I have slightly modified the order in which I would like to talk about the individual topics I had offered in my announcement variant variant variant osman's title for the artistic research project at zabanchi provides me with a template for this so I would like to introduce my speech with a short reflection urem has mentioned it already on the nail organism of variantology which I invented some 20 years ago as a dynamic network of relations between art Sciences Technologies and it's constant historical changes or my lecture in an instant version the word of art with and through media is consistent but it is consistent every moment anew only on the first side the current global capitalism is wearing an immense variety of colorful clothes but appearances are deceitful under the surface of diversity paradigms such as unification clustering modularization or standardization are establishing very strongly on the global market this process can be observed in the artistic scientific and media practice as well as the collagated theories and methods therefore around 2004 I began to establish a worldwide research Network under this strange neologism variantology from the perspective of different thinking Traditions the actors the actors of the network you recognize Bruno latur in my formulation the actors in the network involved including my friends Hans belting and Peter Weibel whom we both unfortunately had to bury quite recently occupy themselves with the Deep time relations of the Arts sciences and Technologies very important for our topic today is thinking in deep time Dimensions connects a possible past with a possible future I will come back to that but right for the beginning I want to make this clear as well as I do not understand history as an accumulation of given facts about a past originality but as a reality at least co-created by historians by writers of history for me and I think this might be decisive for your research project here in Istanbul too for me the semantic field of the term variantology has a positive connotation be different be alternate the right change are alternatives for the translation of the Latin verb varyaga these terms can only be used in a negative way if a speaking subject abuses them as a method of exclusion or discrimination the variant the variante the variant is also an axiomatic requirement of ecological thinking to Vari something existing is an alternative to destruction which is not just an issue in economy but also in various artistic avant-gardes especially of the 20th century and of course it includes a strong media concept the variety experimented with the combination of various stage Concepts into a fluorescent and colorful entirety long before the cinema which could only unfold or unfold its strength at the same time of the performance in real time so to speak the concept of variantology contains a paradox which we encounter in other coinages such as Georges batis heterology phenomena that are diametrically opposed that rub each other up the wrong way were there its friction between them or even Mutual repulsion congregate beneath a provisional roof in such a manner that at any time they are able to drift apart again and operate autonomously again this is very important for my concept you can always go back to autonomy again but in contrast to the heterogeneous with its ponderous oscillations in ontology I am interested in the variant both methodologically and epistemologically as a mode characterized by lightness and ease as such the variant is equally at home in experimental science and various artistic and media practices especially in music narrations variations on or different interpretations of an initial theme are integral to the vocabulary and everyday practices of composers and musicians in a specific usage the term variant means sudden changes from major to minor and vice versa by changing the intervals that ease the diminution or augmentation of the Third to sum up an important and very complex aspect of the quite deep research project on the relations of art sciences and Technologies which I call variantology the vertical re-exploration of history and the involving of other than the familiar academic territories are linked to a remarkable geographical reorientation this is politically extremely important from my point of view with the intervention of the Modern Age the European culture declared itself as the Hub of the world the opinions and reviews about Arts about sciences and techniques were made between Paris London Stockholm Berlin or Petersburg these were the places where people decided whether something was retrogressive primitive or Innovative complex or sophisticated and original idea or just a copy and core thesis of my research is I have to sum that up very strongly the philosophical and practical Elements which are the foundations of the modern technical communicational World originate in the Far East especially in the ancient High cultures of China in India as well as in North Africa Asia Minor Greece the Arabic countries and their outposts in Southern and Southwestern Europe I just wanted to show you these two titles of two volumes uh volume number four number five are made in the series of variantology uh this one number four as you can see was focusing uh on deep time relations of art sciences and Technologies in the Arabic Islamic world and Beyond the design was done by artist Erie batsy a Palestinian israelian artist of course we choose her by conscious and this is about IBN al-haitam and many many other beautiful thinkers and artists from the deep time history another example was the fifth volume which we developed in Napoli in Naples in Italy in South Italy um and uh the focus of this volume was the South mainly the European South but in a broader sense thinking the South the vesuvian thinking and so on so with this volumes we were strongly trying to get out of this quite established and very conservative European orientation which you are so familiar with uh from the last decades or even centuries um I firmly believe and this is also a kind of a resume I firmly believe that Oriental cultures in the broadest sense have a much deeper understanding of the idea of variation of variant in relation to works of art and their originality recently uh Japanese parents screen paravo screen as you can see it here on the slide um was under reconstruction at the museum for in Leipzig they prepared it for an exhibition or a re-exhibition that was very very interesting for me the concepts concerning Restoration clashed in a very strong way while the Japanese restorers focus on the perfect functionality of the artifact the Paramore which even implies its reinvention or rebuilding the German restorers prioritized unconditional originality unconditional originality the idea of permanent change is deeply ingrained in the natural philosophy of the South Eastern Hemisphere just think about the important book of change in deep time of Chinese culture but this is my second part what is the state of the Arts in the special Fields generated with or through media which we still call media art because we don't have a better term for it yet on which foreground are we debating the questions of documentation of restoration repair or re-enactment of artifacts in this specific art context of midiarc we may discuss these questions mainly with reference to the radically changing works of art exhibited and sometimes collected in the museums like for example Timo Collins interactive film and sound pieces from the last two decades these are pieces of Internet art the artist himself has now prepared them for a permanent presence on zkm's website the performance the rise dependently from the activity of the visitor as a user you can go into the website and then you can play with it it changes permanently it depends what you as the user is doing or take another example the Samaras and Minion lost living systems you will be very familiar with them from other discussions artworks between the bio and the technological which are changing their performances permanently means there is nothing like originality inside such a piece apart from the specific form of programming but as far as I know the program for your project at zabanchi those aspects of media art will be discussed by other experts and have been discussed by other experts already in the series of talks let me please reflect the topic of the variant in a slightly broader and interdiscursive way interdiscursive that's important for my work I hope these short thought provocations from a media archaeologist are not displaced in the context of your project I start with a question what do we talk about in terms of exciting encounters which are given that we are meanwhile even dealing with more or less more or less intelligent machines as Museum visitors what do we talk about in terms of exciting encounters with art given that we are meanwhile even dealing with more or less intelligent machines as Museum visitors a very irritating questions perhaps but I try to circle around it and of course it puts the question of the restoration repair documentation in a completely different context man a machine declared the heretical philosopher and professional healer Julian Alfredo lametri in his famous worker long machine from the mid-18th century it was the hate of the Enlightenment long before machines had taken on human character humans were beginning to become machine-like this is an important starting point for my thought provocations long before machines had taken on human character humans were beginning to become machine-like lemon tree is unabashed three ties was particularly aimed against Rene descarte the father of French philosophy and his followers who had declared that humans were the only living beings that possessed a soul and accordingly and accordingly also a conscience or the worst sign as we say in German lametri materialized this final review of immateriality closing the cycle of the intelligent availability of material a kind of circular conclusiveness long before the invention of cybernetics during the 20th century this is all familiar to you I just remind you to make you understand my argument a little bit better during the 20th century the Arts were radically transformed the Italian and Russian futurists always asked a reality that was completely pervaded by machines in this period images Acquired and Amplified existence through chronophotography and Cinema the kinokis around Chicago for example preferred microphones to ears and camera lenses to eyes they considered the technological organs of perception much more effective than natural ones and they dreamed of an artificial brain that would control the shooting of their films in electric brain of course in Marcel Duchess large glass both the lower part with a bachelor machine featuring The Chocolate grinder in the center and the upper part with the bride's domain are composed of imaginary animated machines artifacts in the art of the second half of the 20th century games with artificial beings with dolls with manicures with Technical zorrogates and masquerades have become a zap Jarre of the investigation of living artificiality and the delicate mechanics of life from Hans Palma's famous mechanical doll to the object of desire in the films of The Quay Brothers for example all of namjoon Pikes first trashy robots from the early 1960s Roberta Brightmoor some of you might know her Lynn hirschman's leasens Lynn hirschman listens invention of a sword of a doppelganger from the 1970s an autonomous personality who was completely staged anticipates the avatars that were developed at the end of the 20th century in the Arts following the existential catastrophes of Auschwitz and Hiroshima technology no longer merely influences our existence instead it is the unconditional belief in a possible future in which the most complex challenges composed composed by Nature economics culture and art can be solved by learning machines and programs in this sense our existence has now become decisively technological it's not influenced by technology this is not enough it has become decisive technological unconditioned technological learning algorithms generate image and sound artifacts that no longer need a reference in the real artists like Lynn hirschman whom I have shown before or hit or style my colleague from my old University at the University of Arts have experimented with this in their projects on pattern recognition in photography or just take the quite brutal example of IFA and Franco matus better known as zero one dot org from Italy with one of their provoking projects recently shown in Milano the half cat in the 21st century the art world is undergoing its next far more radical transformation what was reserved for a large trade fairs for large trade fairs devoted to Advanced Technology is now taking place in Galleries and in museums the museums and their collections are visited by more or less intelligent artifacts the artificiality of paintings and sculptures is increasingly joined by hybrid techno biological or entirely technical beings tentatively still sporadically but the options for future presences are clearly emerging here we are they say these artifacts they say more and more confidently we belong to a new family to the phylum of artificial existences with intellect with feelings and even erotic appeal machine controlled clocked by the standard time of the worldwide internet outwardly quite similar to the monikers the most even living sculptures with Angelic Alabaster skin I will show you an example soon those artifacts are not just objects for us to look at their eyes are adamantly set on the human visitors winking seeking dialogue talk with me with the other artistic artifacts the traditional works of art which are in principle carved from the same material as they are graceful and seductive testing relentlessly judging we are here differently now these artifacts are saying no longer in the role of objects that you humans can use at will but as subjects that demand attention and respect the frivolous beings as I call them the frivolous revolu these and frivolous beings who appear as visitors in exhibitions are the result of a perception of art by Machine learning processes they do not differ in their degrees of intelligence but in the gesture with which they are respectively in the world as technical individuals let's take the example of the kunstal in Baden Baden were not only expensive contemporary paintings but also artificial viewers have been invited recently by curator Udo kitten mans for an exhibition Jordan wolfson's bizarre female figure is a spawn of information capitalist Consciousness industry it seems extremely narcissistic constantly seducing herself or herself as an image which is a better formulation as if stolen from a pornographic shop fulfilling all the cliches of women as sexual objects loud burlesque diabolical with an identity somewhere between a trashed Madonna a cyberpunk and a fit survival figure of the second half of the 21st century attractive and repulsive evoking affection and disgust and doubts considerable doubts about the meaningfulness of what we call culture or even art perhaps the character is even more of a Stranger Than Ryan gandas clever Mouse it stems from the coming time when humans technology plants and animals finally form an equal Ensemble that plays the planet Earth in this harmonious Concordance but the clever animal the mouse is still skeptical as you can see only briefly does it Peak out from its hiding place behind the museum wall observing the human visitors as well as the hanging pictures and standing sculptures and immediately disappears again she doesn't want to be more than a short-term temporary guest in the museum quite in contrast to Louisa Clements artificial doppelganger in the public at the same time so intimate interior of the art museum casual smoothly beautiful hygienically clean adaptable disposable disciplined alternating between interested and disinterested alienated she seems made for an art exhibition in a German Museum she speaks little English the Esperanto of the telematically determined age the physical features that promise erotic experience are somewhat over accentuated suggesting the identity of an art prostitute the museum has a virtual brothel the lonelier and older the visitors and collectors become the more they want to surround themselves with pretty bachelorettes whether they are Flesh and Blood silicone or simply painted surface what all artifacts which I have just shown as examples have in common is their unconditionality their ruthlessness they know no mercy no compassion they obey orders algorithms of course they execute they are compelling in their Limitless purposeful existence they irritate at the same time those human visitors who have already shifted their own existence far into the machine who have forgotten how to be offline or no longer consider it possible and not much has changed in this respect since Fred's lungs Metropolis the frivolous technical beings the Maria's of the now are usually female I come to my third part let's come back to the wonderful world of manifoldness which the variant is offering the unspoken counterpart to the variant in the art debate of course is the original my thesis is the originality of a work of art in the age of its infinite reproducibility and perceivability either shimera the originality is a shimera and a Phantasm to which the global Art Market clints because it wants to protect itself from becoming superfluous painting as a work of arts a wife the First Transformation in the age of technical reproduction viewed suspiciously as an entity that was pampered and poured by Art historians and the Art Market it will only experience the recent Transformations as an observer as marginalia sending its greetings from the archives and the containers of the collections in the museums in the future only the perfect copies of the most valuable works of art history will be shown that is their avatars their digital clones or their representatives there we are again in representation which we thought we had lost as a paradigm in this way like-minded beings will encounter one another in the museum we don't need to lament this it is the price that homo sapiens have to pay for their claim to power over nature that has been developed over the Millennia the possibility of connecting with homologens which might have saved the human race has been missed instead humans have decided in favor of homoate factors as Joseph chapek sketched out nearly a century ago for the Czech avant-garde in his book on artificial humans from 1924 homo artifactus humans have destroyed the place through which they could develop into subjects this place simultaneously provided a home to their images in the future these images will be homeless like the subjects that produce them and communicate with them the radical consequence of the complete opening of access to a large part of the approximately 55 000 museums worldwide on interactive digital platforms will be that the museums will make themselves Superfluous in their classic functions not completely but in their classic functions as far as the protection of the original artifacts is concerned in the digital presence they are exposed to almost arbitrary deformation and exploitation which is the same thing just two of the most recent examples from Berlin are a gigantic immersive walk installation of Gustav klimt's famous painting the kiss which really makes me sick or the merciless exploitation which even makes me more sit more sick sorry the merciless exploitation of the appeal of vermeer's girl with a Pearl Earring just as necessary as a stronger commitment in technical terms we need an ethical discussion in the debate about how to deal with the Infinity of clones of the real in the internet unfortunately there is no sense of dignity no sense of dignity in the digital world I would like to repeat works of art are subjects and not arbitrarily changeable objects and we should treat them with the same kind of respect and extraordinary sensitivity which we have for other subjects my fourth part and I'm slowly approaching the end in other words future becomes a space of possibility a potential space as the British psychoanalysis and child psychiatrist Donald winnicott calls that time space in which the playful appropriation of coming realities take place in young children play with alternative options for shaping both the time behind us and the time ahead is the inner core of all developed media appear apparatuses dealing with processes and movements with natural as well as artificial life in order to provide a rich future of media activity we must Grant the objects of our research desire a past that is at least as rich and diverse as the future methodologically I go one step further the coveted diversity and heterogeneity in the direction of that era of time that points toward that points forward is to be logically coupled with a confusing multiplicities of past and buried presences the archeology of media and the Arts as I am passionate about is at its core a particular play with potentialities that includes variation as an essential dimension just as I do not accept that Futures are technologically inevitably pre-programmed I cannot agree with the attitude of historians or physicists who view history or material reality as merely an accumulation of given series of facts to be traversed linearly for me working and living in the space-time machine of my research means being able to travel constantly to different cultures to different historical constellations with preference to forgotten or repressed regions and periods in the comfort in the comfort of such a time machine we can continue to focus on the most important thing which is to keep dreaming forward dreaming forward through the exploration of the past presences let me conclude with some remarks revisiting my last lecture at sarpanchi Museum in Istanbul before the pandemic before covet which seems to be centuries ago the lecture was dedicated to my concept of prospective archeology as a theoretical and practical tool for re-activating the past which needs precise documentation as a pre-condition especially in those cases of artifacts where there never has been an original and these are the ones which are interesting me most there never has been an original but there has been a precise description of what the origin the original artifact could have been prospective archeology sees itself foremost as a pleasurable activity in the here and in the now just like the variant in your project the seemingly paradoxical abstract mixed room compositum prospective archeology that is uh constructed by this term consists in essence of a practice that operates in accordance with two opposing arrows of time you can see it here in this diagram in this sketch which I shape and reshape again and again one of these arrows is oriented vertically into the deep time of cultures that Still Remains to be explored and that for me is forever remade by virtue of interdependencies in the relationships among the Arts sciences and Technologies the other Arrow points from the now into an enduringly and unremittingly opaque future where the utopian potential of media archaeological activity and its Associated artistic practices resides is in the possibility of bringing these two arrows of time into relation with one another such that the passengers inside this particular time machine are not torn apart in the process this would be dangerous of course to keep on seeking and finding in the old only the locus of multiplicities and particularities which are no longer accessible because no longer existing is boring and inevitably leads to a profound Melancholy but to learn and intellectually profit from the heterogeneity and wealth of relations in past constellations for the sake of future presence is an alluring challenge only in this way we can our experimental time machine can become a generator of surprises only in this way can our experimental time machine become a generator of surprises prospective archeology is challenging even the concept of the variant and at the same time it is co-existing with it sometimes we are constructing artifacts which had been described in the past but we do not know if they even existed beyond their original description and their original manuals one of my favorite objects of prospective archeology is the elephant clock it's also perhaps the best known example the elephant clock of the engineer al-jazari from the diabaki from the diabaki region of northern Mesopotamia now of course part of turkey this stately artifact may have existed but certainly not in the numerous variants that exist now in science and technology museums of the Arabic Islamic tradition or even in shopping malls like in Dubai the variant this is the Dubai version and this is the culture historical analysis of the object I have no time to go inside of that um the variant uh I had built for our exhibition areas automata artifacts of the Arabic Islamic Renaissance between 800 and 1200 at the said kayam Khal school together with Peter Weibel was done or was made in bursai in Anatolia and this was something very special it was made in collaboration with the science technology Museum in Bursa whose director responded to my request with a beautiful phrase science is for everyone we built this for you this was in the year 2015 I'm not sure if it would be so easy today I'm convinced that once we get to the point in the Arts that we can say art is for everyone he is a version of the artwork that you can look at and use in the best possible quality that we can provide then we won't need the classic Museum anymore it will have become something else that we can't name today perhaps an Open Access luxurious guest house for practicing unconditioned hospitality and dignity which also would be a wonderful thing let me conclude with a few lines of a short techno philosophical thought since there can be no perfection in nature there is no perfection in technology either and certainly not in the Arts all we find are attempts at approaching as nearly as possible the highest Precision the most perfect Beauty the ubiquitous imperfection of artificiality created things thus leads me in conclusion to Define more precisely what the generators of surprise in a prospective archeology would be aiming for methodologically in the future I am pleading the case for the most exact possible variant not of perfect but of precise and likewise beautiful things contrived and developed for the sake of supporting enabling and transforming dialogue with others and with the other into a sensational and consistently spectacular even scandalous occasion thanks a lot for your patient I think I was in time more or less and now feel free to comment or to ask questions this is another wonderful piece of prospective archeology now time to present it now we developed that further but I had presented it last time when I was at the Banshee five years ago or so so this is not such a great loss it's the great musical automaton from 850 constructed by the banumuza from Baghdad