August 2, 2004
Histories of Proto-Multimedia Visionaries
Jose Ferez Kuri's "Brion Gysin: Tuning into the Multimedia Age" presents a series of essayistic portraits of the mercurial and proto-multimedia visionary, "Brion Gysin". Gysin is largely known through his more famous colleague, William Burroughs and Burroughs oft-quoted remark that Gysin was the originator of the 'cut-up' technique. In terms of digital library possibilities Gysin is important - his biography provides a window to the historical protogenesis of multimedia. A glimpse at Gysin's proto cut-n-mix digital montage aesthetic also provides a talisman as to the future development of digital libraries.
To say Gysin was a visionary and ahead of his time is an understatement. Many of his pre-internet statements regarding 'multimedia' archives, future libraries and directions have proven true. Regarding others, the utility is unexplored. "Painting is fifty years ahead of literature...there can be no new writing or new images, simply a remix of the old". On the cut-up method (the staple of multimedia web design in a digital arena)
"Use any system which suggests itself to you. Take your own words or the words said to you. The very own words of someone else living or dead. You'll soon see that words don't belong to anyone. Words have a vitality of their own and you or anybody can make them gush into action".
It is interesting to think about Gysin's forward reflections on language and books with regards to digital issues regarding copyright that we experience today. Through his early work, Gysin explored the 'breakdown' of the verbal signifier and a move towards 'visuality' and multimedia exploring technological possibilities and other realms of 'information' organization. There is much to reflect on here. Gysin's approach towards 'multimedia' was at first called by one of the originators of Fluxus, George Maciuna, 'Expanded Cinema'. On technological possibilities Gysin writes,
"There was a whole muggy area of doubt as to what to call this monstrosity I helped bring about. Because of the machines involved, the electronics, I would have called it 'machine poetry' but everyone shied away from that. I felt good about creating through the machines and they did not. I wanted to make language work in a new way, to surprise its secrets by using it as the material one passed through available electronics to amplify the voices of poetry."
In terms of internet possibilities, Gysin was interested in 'network' possibilities. In a project with Burroughs called the third mind Gysin writes, "Whenever two minds come together, a third is created. Use multimedia to create 'interference' patterns' to free thought up from the linear western space/time grid". Much of Gysin's time was spent in Eastern countries and the exploration of non western cultures (Arabic, Japanese, African).
To say that Gysin had a multimedia ethic in a lingering monomedia culture is an understatement. Repetition, permutation, remix, collage, montage, multiple variants and things we deal with daily in multimedia information design and archives were modalities in which Gysin thought. For this alone, this book is worth reflecting upon.