Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Human identity and animal images
With any new technology or form of communication, it is important to ask what
kind of human subjects it suggests (Poster 1996). These are difficult questions to
address, and ones beset by all manner of determinisms. However, in the same way
that the traditional zoo inscribes a dominant position for viewers, so I would suggest
does the electronic zoo. First, the electronic zoo offers a different form of social
space which may replace the collective experience of visiting the zoo with the more
isolated and individualistic encounter of the cinema. Many exhibits in the electronic
zoo are to be viewed in a dark theatre where visitors are disengaged from both
humans and animals. In the electronic zoo the camera has already fixed the animals
in a domain which, although visible to the camera, will never be entered by the
spectator. The devices used to obtain ever more arresting images—hidden cameras,
telescopic lenses, flashlights, remote control cameras—combine to produce pictures
which carry with them numerous indications of their normal invisibility (Berger
1980). In the electronic zoo these animals and their lives will be ever more visible,
but the fact that the animals who are the subjects of these images could once observe
us has lost all significance in this form of encounter. As Berger (1980:14) reflects,
'what we know about them is an index of our power and thus an index of what
separates us from them. The more we know, the further away they are.' The
electronic zoo does apparently offer the potential to present more information about
more animals to more people, without the manifest cruelty of animal incarceration,
and yet I would argue that there is something particularly poignant about the
loss
of
embodied animals in the electronic displays of natural richness and biodiversity.
The processes of image-making stabilise the animals in these electronic spaces. This
has distinct advantages for the construction of animal displays: the images of
animals are guaranteed as intense and eye-catching; their behaviour will be
characteristic and suitable for the interpretations given it; and the animals will always
be visible in the electronic zoo. The knowledge we have of animal behaviour and
ecology appears more secure in this zoo, since the film inscribes evidence that
supports scientific interpretations of animal behaviour. Indeed, the process of
natural history film-making is a collaboration between scientists and film-makers,
with the film-makers constructing their images and narratives from the established
body of ethological knowledge (Davies 1998). The filmed animals in the electronic
zoo can subsequently be reproduced with the certainty of asexual reproduction, and
the images can be recirculated endlessly. Concern for animal welfare and
preservation can shift instead to the creation and maintenance of the bioparks and
reserves in which many of these animals are 'naturally' located (e.g. Whatmore and
Thorne 1998).
This certainty comes at a cost, however, for knowledge always involves some loss
of being (Žižek 1996:280). The uncertainties evident at the traditional zoo are
spaces where competing conceptions of animals and alternative animal behaviours
could be explored. The animals in the electronic zoo do not misbehave, but are
committed to repeating endlessly one interpretation of their complex behaviour. For
