網路空間的影像政治：從數位化藝術影像談起

Abstract

當網路成為人們最常使用的媒體之一後，人類已經進入另一個機械複製的新階段。在這個階段裡，藝術影像被複製並數位化至網路空間上；從此，人們便同時開始經驗兩個截然不同的再現世界：物理的與虛擬的。也因為網路這個相當有效的工具，使得一系列的問題不斷地被討論，其中「藝術品是否真的能夠將物質實體拋開，而單純地存在虛擬空間中？」此一問題已成為多年來最弔詭的議題。本文採現象學的視野，說明藝術面臨的關鍵性議題，並提供理解藝術於網路中傳散的新視野。理論架構則源自於梅洛龐蒂的《知覺現象學》，並依循現象學方法步驟探究藝術影像呈現於網路空間的影像政治意涵。經論證得知，網路中數位化藝術影像完全是一個與我們的存在科技密切相關的現象。網路將世界帶到我們面前，且將所有著名的文化遺產展現在我們面前。然而，因科技並非中立的工具，所以我們必須思考的是它的意識型態脈絡。博物館、藝廊、大眾媒體與教育機構皆意識到數位複製是如何影響文化與思想領域。以致，藝術它開始以政治實踐作為其基礎。本文認為，現今關於博物館展示的權力論述已經轉而關注網路空間的權力論述。博物館政治已經將它們的網路部份與生活世界中的文化遺產威權之間的關係連結起來。因此，網路空間已與我們的生活世界交織在一起；網路空間裡的數位化藝術品顯然已是一個攸關於社會實踐、資本利益生成與展示權力的議題。

This paper investigates the phenomenon of authentic art in cyberspace. The focus is the existence and spatial transformation of authentic art in the digital era, rather than art created by digital technology. The paper proclaims that the spectator exists in a unified world of physicality and virtuality; also, the existence of art in the real world and cyberspace cannot be simply split into a physical space and a non-physical one. By applying an interdisciplinary methodology including Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Existential Phenomenology, Walter Benjamin's Critical Theory, and modern Museology, this paper examines the embodied relations of art-technology-Lebenswelt by focusing on the relationship between technological transformation and the existence of art. The discussion logically leads to the concept of technological embodiment. Under this circumstance, I claim that authentic artworks from the past currently coexist with images produced and reproduced by modern technology. The boundaries between the spheres of the body and of technology have begun to transgress, overlap, and blur in the digital world of cyberspace. Moreover, this paper also points out that the phenomenological temporal aspect of viewing digitized art in cyberspace is twofold, and both are related to the body-subject. The temporality of a spectator's viewing experience is unique because the experience of one's own temporal flow is quite different from the experience of others; one can only grasp his/her own temporal flow in reflection and, therefore, as already past, whereas one grasps the alter-ego in the simultaneity of a present now. This paper discovers the significance of digitized art in cyberspace by stating that this new space and place for human sensory perception is the place for the everyday exploitive power relations to be challenged through the new effect of art-and-technology embodied relationships. They are filled in their circumstantial links with capitalism and with fundamentalist politics. The experience of looking at digitized artworks in cyberspace, such as on museum sites, eventually has its own power and politics of display. This paper eventually concludes that the digitized art images do not lose the context of their original artworks, but maintain an embodied relationship with the physical existence of their artworks. We therefore cannot easily separate them as physical/virtual or real/unreal. Rather, the boundaries between these concepts need to be abandoned. Only with the boundaries blurred can the meaning of art be returned to the originals, and the authenticity of the artwork then returns back to the physical part of the artwork's existence.