PHILIP.K. DICK: SUBSTANCE MORT (a scanner darkly, 1973)

Date du récit: Californie, juin 1994

Personnage principal: Fred/Bob Arctor

ch.12 (p.273) - Fred ne reconnaît plus Arctor quand il visionne les bandes... "Ce type est dingue. Vraiment flippé (...) Il a découvert je ne sais comment qu’il est sur écoute permanente et il... Il couvre ses véritables activités". (p.275)

Les Levine with Iris. 1968. Three TV cameras and six monitors in an eight-by-five console.	Les Levine with Contact: A Cybernetic Sculpture. 1969. Eight cameras and eighteen monitors. Photo: courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois.

   Levine is fascinated by the implications of self-awareness through the technologically-extended superego of the closed-circuit TV. "I don’t tend to think of my work purely in psychological terms," he explains, "but one must assume some psychological effect of seeing oneself on TV all the time. Through my systems the viewer sees himself as an image, the way other people would see him were he on television. In seeing himself this way he becomes more aware of what he looks like.
(Gene Youngblood: EXPANDED CINEMA, 1970)

Il paraît qu’on ne reconnaît jamais sa propre voix quand on l’entend pour la première fois sur un enregistrement, et le même phénomène se produit quand on découvre sa physionomie sur vidéo ou holofilm 3D. (...) Mais je suis sûr de reconnaître Bob Arctor, ne serait-ce que par ses vêtements, ou tout bêtement par élimination. (ch.8_p.198)

Pendant qu’on y est, qui te dit que Bob Arctor ne se lève pas la nuit pour faire ce genre de truc? Il a des rapports sexuels avec le mur ; les freaks les plus bizarres font leur apparition, toute une bande de types qu’il n’a jamais vus auparavant ; ils ont des têtes qui tournent à 360 degrés, comme les hiboux. (ch.8_p.196)

Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider: Wipe Cycle. 1969. TV camera, closed-circuit system, nine monitors, tapes, broadcasting. Photo: courtesy of Howard Wise Gallery, New York.

"The most important function of Wipe Cycle," Schneider explained, "was to integrate the audience into the information. It was a live feedback system which enabled the viewer standing within its environment to see himself not only now in time and space, but also 8 seconds ago and 16 seconds ago."
(Gene Youngblood: EXPANDED CINEMA, 1970)

«The six holo-scanners now operating within the premises – six should be sufficient for now – transmit to a safe apartment down the street in the same block as Arctor's house.» (...) [Fred] picked the sheet up and studied the locations of the various scanners, in the various rooms, here and there so that everything fell under constant video scrutiny, as well as audio. (Philip K. Dick: A SCANNER DARKLY, ch.7_p.103)

«Je me couperai au montage, déclara Fred. De manière à ne pas être vu. Simple précaution.
– Bien entendu. Vous n’avez jamais fait ça auparavant? (...) Au fond, la solution pour vous consiste à pratiquer un montage – comment dirais-je? Inventif, artistique... créateur est le mot que je cherche... (PKD: SUBSTANCE MORT, ch.7_p.152)

«The inventions of applied science, such as the almost miraculously sophisticated sensor devices right now travelling back from war use in Vietnam for adaptation to civilian use here – these passive infrared scanners, sniperscopes, these chrome boxes with dials and gauges that can penetrate brick and stone, can tell the user what is being said and done a mile away within a thigtly sealed building, be it concrete bunker or apartment building, can, like the weapons before them, fall into what the authorities would call "the wrong hands" – that is, into the hands of the very people being monitored.» «I now have a passive infrared scanning system in my own home in Santa Venetia, connected with what is called a "digital transmitting box", which, when triggered off by the scanner, transmits a coded signal by direct line to the nearest law-enforcement agency, notifying them that intruders have entered my house. This totally self-operated electronic detection system functions whether I am home or not. (...) And Westinghouse will reinstall it wherever I live: I own the components for life. Eventually, Westinghouse Security hopes, all homes and businesses will be protected this way. (...) Someone suggested, by the way, that perhaps this passive infrared scanner sweeping out the interior of my house constantly "might be watching me and reporting back to the autorities whatever I do right there in my living room." Well, what I am doing is sitting at my desk with pen and paper trying to figure out how to pay Westinghouse the $840 I owe them for the system.» (Philip K. Dick: The Android and the Human, delivered as a speech by Dick at the SF Convention of Vancouver, in February 1972. – Reprinted in The shifting realities of Philip K. Dick, Vintage Books, New York, 1995, p.196-198)

INFRARED SCANNERS / VIETNAM

«En 1962 (...) s'élabore à Harvard et au MIT la première guerre électronique de l'histoire. Tout d'abord avec l'installation de capteurs, de senseurs parachutés le long de la piste Ho-Chi-Minh, ensuite, plus précisément à partir de 1966, par l'aménagement d'une ligne de défense électronique, la «Ligne McNamara», champs de détecteurs acoustiques (Acouboy, Spike-boy) et sismiques (Adsid, Acousid) répartis le long des voies d'accès du Laos, autour des bases de l'armée américaine et plus particulièrement autour de la place forte de Ke Sanh. (...) technologies permettant de surveiller efficacement les mouvements ennemis; technologie d'acquisition, utilisant l'infrarouge et la télévision à faible niveau de luminosité, alliés aux moyens de destruction aériens les plus perfectionnés. (...) Après l'échec vietnamien (...) la ligne McNamara fut transférée au sud des Etats-Unis, à la frontière mexicaine, soi-disant pour détecter le passage des ouvriers clandestins.»
(Paul Virilio: Guerre et Cinéma, Editions Cahiers du Cinéma, 1984, pp.138/143)

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