Aquariums

Aquariums

See Le Paysan de Paris: Artaud and the aquarium-like nature of the arcades cited by Benjamin for epigraph.

Aquariums contain small, aesthetically-pleasing, heterogeneous representations of a larger natural environment in order to provide outsiders with a spectacle to engage imaginatively in moments of idleness. They are characterized by having walls of glass--transparent walls creating a publically viewable interior. This transparency changes the threshold between the two worlds into a limit--there is no longer an opening up of one environment into another, but a distinct dividing line, an impermeable barrier, between two different worlds that require two different modes of navigation, rely on two different sets of rules, requiring different things of their inhabitants; thus the spectacle that one witnesses when gazing into an aquarium is not only the perspective of relative vagrancy in relation to the contained situation before them and the hyperawareness of dwellingit invites us to entertain, but by existing as a "world in miniature" (AP 31)--a world separate from that in which the spectator dwells--it enables viewers to embrace the notion that the world which they inhabit is somehow less contained, more "natural" (whatever that word means), and thus somehow . . . . one in which the spectator can enjoy a kind of freedom from the constraints s/he can so readily perceive containing the "other world."

But of course the aquarium itself is part of the larger world in inhabits, though the inhabitants of the contained world may not have the freedom to move about within it. Much like the relationship between the earth and the cosmos through which it glides, the aquarium is connected to that which is walled out by the glass that comprises it.

Benjamin--via Aragon--compares the arcades to an aquarium:

QUOTE Paysan de Paris section on aquariums:

Filled with people a nd wares from the outside world, objects forged in the open air, in distant workshops, textile mills, factories, etc., the arcades are vast collections of objects, collectedunder the glass and wrought iron roofs that send out the message: these things are all alike, (SEE Doctrine of the Similar) in that they are all desireable in some way. . . . more on this....

Take the concept now as a metaphor for the world that exists behind the glass of the computer monitor--a world intangible to the "users" that access them. Videogames, television shows, films, photography--all that is framed and impermeable--all that requires a leap of imagination--functions in much the same way as an aquarium . . .

Think of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. It is no coincidence that the occupation of Cayce's father--the occupation which apparently incited his disappearance was concerned with barricades and crowd control and that the answer to the puzzle was related to a website called "The Footage". What else is a computer to the average user if not an aquarium, a text made so only by its perceived separateness from the outside world--a world where weather makes all unpredictable, ever changing, and non static. The illusion of stasis is the attractive thing here--these fish will never leave--these fish exist only in so far as they please some external eye, some larger, freer, more privileged consciousness, these fish can only move within the proscribed paths of the labyrinths the architect of the aquarium deemed most appropriate, most in accordance with his or her motives. . . .