RE: [-empyre-] Re: empyre Digest, Vol 29, Issue 9

[Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com>]

> Here is generally my stance on working in emerging media forms.
> Emerging Media forms are those new technologies that have yet to
> become standard communication tools--they tend to be surrounded by
> hype, fear, disinformation, hyperbole, etc.  Their very unusualness
> makes them massively signifying--non-neutral--non-transparent forms
> of communication, so that the "medium" tends to strongly impact "the
> message".  For instance if you cast one statue out of bronze, another
> as a detailed, 3-d stereo halograph, and another identical shape out
> of putrid, live, glowing transgenic slime-mold the average viewer
> will describe primarily the content of the first and the material/
> medium of the second and third.
>
> Thus, I don't believe that the familiar argument that a given
> bleeding edge technology "allows me to best portray my inner
> dreamscape" is very defendable since such technologies are not
> particularly amenable to transparency.  Artists need to understand
> that their particular medium is not invisible and therefore its use
> will transform/inform the viewer in some way.  It may frighten,
> seduce, normalize, create associations, etc.

I wonder if "transparency" concerning media is merely imaginative
acclimatization to the medium to the point where it seems 'natural'.

Walter Ong suggested that what we 'naturally' think is 'intelligence' (and
test for) is, instead, better described as types of literacy.

New media changes our notions of literacy. And thereby our notions of
'intelligence'...?

ja
http://vispo.com

The more we say, the less it means?
The more we say, the more we affirm what we would negate and negate what we
would affirm?