Delivering a multimedia lecture powered by his movement on a treadmill, Marcel O’Gorman quite literally takes an idea—and runs with it. This digital performance piece, punningly entitled “Dreadmill,” laments the sedentary effects of our “screen culture” as it simultaneously enacts the possibility for more active and creative engagement with new media technology. This contra-themed approach—exploring both technology’s power to immobilize and its potential to mobilize—runs, so to speak, throughout O’Gorman’s research. "The treadmill itself is an appropriate metaphor for life in a digital culture,” says O’Gorman. “You can travel vast distances, but your body isn't going anywhere. That's a pun too, reminding us that, in spite of dreams of cyborgs and online living, we are still embodied, finite creatures."
A new professor in UW’s Department of English Language and Literature, Marcel O’Gorman first developed “Dreadmill” in 2005 while serving as Director of the University of Detroit Mercy’s Electronic Critique Program, an interdisciplinary undergraduate program aimed to equip students with both the technical and critical skills required in an age of new media. He describes his experience of developing the curriculum in E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory and the Humanities (U of Toronto Press, 2006), a book that also functions as a call for humanities researchers to move beyond their fixation with--and sometimes nostalgia for--print culture in order to more compellingly and influentially engage, critique, and help shape the digital technologies of our time. “Dreadmill,” which O’Gorman is currently updating for a second tour as “Dreadmill 2.0,” does this very thing: it takes a commentary that might otherwise be read by only a handful of academics and develops it into a multimedia performance that is not only able to reach a wider audience but is also better suited to convey the ironies implicit in our culture’s relationship with technology.
Like William Blake, whose artistic and literary work O’Gorman admires and studied as a graduate student, O’Gorman is interdisciplinary minded and always on the lookout for artists, architects, environmentalists, computer scientists, engineers, and medical specialists to collaborate with in his research. And like Blake, who, he suggests in E-Crit, would likely have felt right at home with the new media tools of the 21st century, O’Gorman likes to find innovative ways of giving expression to critical/theoretical ideas. To this end, O’Gorman is currently working towards establishing a Critical Media Lab here at Waterloo—a centre designed to incubate and launch critical projects like “Dreadmill” and several others O’Gorman already has in the works. “OncoGeiger,” for instance, is an emerging project which will involve hardwiring a Geiger counter to a computer to transform residual radiation into multimedia images for cancer patients to manipulate in therapeutic ways.
"I'm trying to develop a notion of 'humane computing,'” explains O’Gorman. This shouldn't be confused with 'humanities computing,' which is really all about archiving. 'Humane computing' means using technology to enhance human well-being and to help us achieve a better understanding of technology's impact on the human condition. If this sort of idea is going to take hold, humanities researchers have to embody their ideas in new media and extend their work and ideas into the sciences, where all of the decisions are made regarding technological development.” While experimenting with new forms for enacting and disseminating critical thought, O’Gorman also continues to publish in more traditional scholarly venues. As well as his recent E-Crit, he has been co-editing a volume of essays called New Media: New Methods, which is forthcoming from Parlour Press. Also forthcoming (Black Moss Press) is a book that traces the path of yet another of his innovative projects: an environment-themed installation piece called “Spleenhouse.” Finally, and most currently, O’Gorman is developing his concept of “necromedia”--a study spawned by “Dreadmill”--into a book-length reflection on the collusion of death and technology.
Despite the ominous (and sometimes slightly creepy) sound of some of his project titles, O’Gorman’s work is actually far from being apocalyptic or pessimistic. To the contrary, O’Gorman likes technology and is a strong advocate for its mindful use. “‘Critical media’ must not simply be understood as media projects that ‘criticize’ this or that technological phenomenon,” he notes. “‘Critical media’ might also take on the sense of ‘mission critical,’ that is, technologies that are critical to human well-being and to advancing our understanding of the human condition. I believe this sensibility is embodied in my various projects, which move from humanities research to the development of marketable, humane technologies that will have a positive and lasting impact on human well-being.”
As O’Gorman sees it, humanities researchers need to move from being simply users and passive critics of new media to participating as developers and inventors too. What is urgently needed in our current environment, he argues, is the critical contribution that those trained in the humanities are particularly well positioned to provide.
Never one to miss an irony, O’Gorman turns his attention to UW’s current "why not?” motto. He finds it amusing that this quote from playwright George Bernard Shaw was also the mantra of Timothy Leary—a fervent transhumanist and the father of psychedelia. “Leary uttered the words ‘Why not?’ sixty times on his deathbed,” explains O’Gorman. “While this mantra is perfect for a man who based his career on risk-taking, perhaps it's not the most responsible approach to technological innovation.” O'Gorman's favorite motto these days goes more like this: "Sometimes it's just not enough to say ‘'Why not?'”Marcel O'Gorman is an associate professor in the UW Department of English Language and Literature. He can be reached at marcel @uwaterloo.ca.
O'Gorman's websites:
Dreadmill: www.dreadmill.net
Spleenhouse: www.spleenhouse.net
Homepages: http://english.uwaterloo.ca/OGorman.html
and http://www.artsweb.uwaterloo.ca/~marcel/
Angela Roorda
Spring 2007
Faculty of Arts
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
519 888-4567
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