Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.05.2014, Blaðsíða 30

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There Is Definitely, Definitely,
Definitely No Logic...
Or, at least, there is an error within that logic
30The Reykjavík Grapevine
The argument is well known and much
employed. “Think about the environ-
ment before you print this out,” reads
the footer of every third email sent to-
day. At the heart of such politics lies
the all but religious belief in the com-
puter world's immateriality and zero
gravity—the idea that posting some-
thing online is somehow less envi-
ronmentally damaging than printing it
onto paper. Much like recycling, green
energy, organic foods and biodegrad-
able contraception, the digitisation of
the heretofore tangible elements of an
average consumer's daily life has be-
come a key pillar of today's mainstream
environmentalism.
The Inconvenient Materiality
Of Immateriality
A few weeks ago, wunder-musician
Björk (often referred to as “our Björk”
by those in favour of nationalising the
means of production) and her globally
famed friends organised a gala benefit
event for two Icelandic environmental
organisations. Fair enough, one could
happily exclaim, given that the spec-
tacle—consisting of a premiere of Dar-
ren Aronofsky’s ‘Noah’ and a mega-
concert featuring Patti Smith, Lykke Li,
Of Monsters And Men and Björk her-
self—raised 35 million ISK to the strug-
gle for the protection of Aronofsky's
set: Iceland's wilderness. Fair enough,
one could restate, as the wheels of
the economy—largely fuelled by heavy
industry (which in turn is driven by
huge dams and geothermal power-
plants)—have aggressively demanded
faster spinning on that very same set
ever since last year's formation of the
island's current government (often re-
ferred to as “our government” by those
in favour of nationalising sorrows).
In an interview with newspaper
Morgunblaðið, Björk stated that de-
spite her environmentalism, she re-
mains “all for technology and prog-
ress,” stressing that it has to be
realised by “21st Century means.” Fair
enough, one might think. No matter the
calendar numbers, however, favouring
progress means just about nothing
without further explanation. Eventu-
ally, the measurement of progress is a
mere opinion, solely built on subjective
valuations, feelings and sensations.
To some living creatures—members of
certain indigenous tribes being one,
trees being another—the very produc-
tion of paper is a violent act in itself.
To others, the printing and publication
of Andri Snær Magnason's novels, the
Bible, the phonebook—or, as a matter
of fact, the internet as a whole—is an
act of pure beauty.
Enter technology, a good example
of which being Björk's most recent ar-
tistic endeavour—the iPad-based edu-
cational system created parallel to her
grandiose ode to Mother Nature, her
latest album ‘Biophila’. With the help
of Steve Jobs’ magical gadgets, Björk’s
app allows kids of all ages to compose
and perform music using simplified
version of the tools employed in the
production of the album based on the
functions of natural wonders such as
the formation of crystals and the grav-
ity of Earth. Like many of Björk's former
adventures, the app is no doubt clever
and most definitely fun to use.

But fun, unfortunately, has its lim-
its. Leaving aside the question of
technology's alleged political neu-
trality—whether technology runs
on an intrinsic agenda or if it's only
a matter of how it's used, by whom
and for what purposes—the online
world's environmental non-neutrality
won't be questioned. A single on-
line search activates servers by the
thousands, all of which run on ex-
cessive amounts of electricity and
are composed of materials as earthly
as these pages. The same applies to
the computers, the smartphones, the
iPads and the Kindles. At last, when
the gargantuan piles of routers, an-
tennas, cables, power-lines and tools
of transportation are added to the
equation, one cannot avoid walking
onto the harsh material wall of the
immaterial economy. And as environ-
mental issues are directly linked to
social affairs—societies are unexcep-
tionally affected by mining, damming,
fracking and other types of environ-
mental disasters—social neutrality is
also out of the game.
The Error Within
This is, of course, a topic that de-
serves a much wider and detailed
(yet interestingly often neglected)
discussion. However, one thing re-
mains crystal-clear: there is an in-
trinsic error within a logic that posits
today’s creative industries—espe-
cially given their gargantuan size and
subsequent material dependence—
against older industries as a 21st
Century alternative, far removed from
environmental catastrophes caused
by their destructive predecessors.
Just like the calls-to-arms for “recy-
cling or dying,” publishing e-books
rather than meat-books, and keep-
ing emails locked behind the inbox's
well-guarded bars, today's “creative
alternative” blatantly turns a blind
eye to the source of the problem it
claims to be solving—raising false
flags in defence of the human and
non-human victims of past, present
and future environmental disasters.
Therefore, at the end of the day,
siding with the creative industry—as
Björk's collaborator Grímur Atla-
son called for in an interview with
environmentalist website Grugg—
doesn't really mean siding against
heavy industry and its even heavier
consequences. While technological
scepticism is absent and the envi-
ronmentalist knight is armed with
the hollow rhetoric of ‘progress’, the
choice is simply between keeping a
part of the current economy's funda-
mental basis within Iceland's borders
or outsourcing them to other places.
Needless to say, one would assume,
those places tend to be—surprise,
surprise—the so-called underdevel-
oped countries.
The de facto question here is
not about the material grey vs. the
immaterial green—it's not a choice
between struggling and sweating in-
side an aluminium smelter or chilling
with “hope in a bottle” in front of the
screen at the Plain Vanilla offices (or
another creative enterprise aiming to
become “the world's most fun work-
place”). Get rid of the material drive-
force and then count the remaining
QuizUp minutes—they might reach
a number of hours for those lucky
enough to charge their phones just
before the shutdown.
Faced with such an existential ca-
tastrophe, mankind might undoubt-
edly benefit from having access to
at least one well-maintained, printed
copy of the internet.
Words by
Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson
Long before the opening of his exhibition in Mexico City last year—the aim of which was
to print out the entire internet—artist and poet Kenneth Goldsmith received fierce criti-
cism from fellow creatives. Along with exclamations about his goal being ultimately impos-
sible, Kenneth was repeatedly accused of unethical praxis for planning to waste such vast
amounts of the ever-threatened rainforests for his “self-centric” and “pseudo-artistic” act.
An online petition urged Kenneth to cancel his show, some of the signatories encouraging
him to simply extract an e-book out of the internet jungle instead.
Opinion
“The de facto question
here is not about the
material grey vs. the im-
material green—it's not a
choice between strug-
gling and sweating inside
an aluminium smelter
or chilling with “hope in
a bottle” in front of the
screen at the Plain Vanilla
offices..”
Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson
is a word-craftsman, occipied with
socially useless production