RE: Our Special Ed. course. Disabilities as a byproduct of modern conditions. Made better by progressing technology to fix caused disabilities--> technium's natural tendency, ad infinitum. RE: Caitlyn's presentation:: Lisa Bufano #freedoms2017
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#freedoms2017
This post is just notes and thoughts// will write up more on some works that intrigued me including Njideka Akunyili Crosby's painting, Andrea Caspo's Parabiosis: Neurolibidinal Induction Complex. Fucking loved them both. Also of interest: Jack Pierson's self-portrait. Transcribed notes/thoughts from Whitney's Human Portraits/Dreamlands, "Who we are and how we perceive and commemorate others" White Box ("old media") VS Black Box ("new/digital media") "In a culture in which the fashion industry, cosmetic surgery, and digital editing have made physical appearance more malleable" "to explore invented personas and darker psychological states" Juxtaposition/repetition/poetry Imposing experience VS interpretation/intention/what manifests Whitney museum costs $17, good thing I go to a 50K/yr elite school that gets me free admission. Who sees this work? I have the privilege of access. What are my advantages? What do I gain from this show personally? How can I/might I incorporate the ideas I intake, the beauty I witness within these exclusive white and black boxes towards outside, the rest of the world, the working class? (re: current events. thinking of my immigrant parents, who won't understand any of the english in this museum? my grandmother, who's whole world is a rapidly disappearing agrarian countryside in south korea? what do these black box gimmicks have to do with the people I love and respect the most? ) What is expected of the audience? To gain from any work is to contemplate them for a good chunk of time, it's impossible to truly intake and appreciate all the works in this museum in one visit. Most people who, even if they could afford the price, can't make time for second or third visits. I think art is important. But I tend to approach art in museums, especially those that can only be experienced in museums at a price like dreamlands, critically: what do i gain from this (as a person, artist, educator)? what might the world gain from this? how can its ideas be beneficial, socially? Besides that, I personally look for new ideas, philosophy. Response to Intro + Concluding chapters of Kevin Kelley's What Technology Wants
I'm writing this approximately 1 week after I've done the reading. My thoughts and feelings were fresher a week ago, but it took me a day to process the latter half of his conclusion. I don't have much to say about the first part of chapter one, I enjoyed his analogies of technology to natural systems, and the educational discourse on how humans had begun to differentiate between "tech" and "art", etc. 'What does Technology want?' is an interesting question, especially given the word choice 'want' as opposed to 'need.' Kelly did not get into the epistemological differences and varying interpretations and analogies that springs from thinking about what technology wants vs what technology needs. Regardless, it's unconventional, fun, and challenging to apply 'want' to machinery. I wrote notes on the side. I ask myself: 'What is my want? Beyond my body.' If the technium is an extension of ourselves, and thereby our wanting, isn't it important to first be able to answer what our collective want is? Is it really simply "more possibilities" as Kelly suggests? This goes back to human existentialism. But Kelly remains grounded in manifest reality with regards to these questions. Kelly argues that "a good choice is to increase choices" and that's ultimately what the technium wants. The justification being that to increase choices means "more opportunities, more connections, more diversity, more unity, more thought, more beauty, and more problems." He asks us to think of what would have been if Van Gogh were born before the invention of oil paint, of Mozart before the piano, etc. I think that argument is nice and dramatic but not convincing of technology's absolute worth. I wonder if our innate talents and creativity are so specific to existing technologies. Can not have Van Gogh's same creative energies manifested else-how using what was available at the theoretical time of before-paint technology? Is it such a tragedy if his talents had manifested through other mediums, which may have been equally as great? Does it matter if art goes unwitnessed? (If a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to see or hear it... does it matter?(does this work?lol)) This retrospective seems too romanticized / contrived to support his argument that more is better. I understand the excitement over the expansion of opportunities into infinity. I think his enthusiasm is beautiful and joyous and it all comes through in his writing, and as a consequence I was reeling on pure energy for several hours before being able to verbalize my disagreements. It's hard not to be swept into excitement by such earnest narrative of technium's beneficial potential. I like his optimism, and I wish all of us the best when it comes to technology's rapid development and saturation into the hows of whats we do. I don't know if he pays any attention to this in other parts of his book, but I think it crucial for him to acknowledge the dangers of abusing technology and its downsides alongside its positive potential. I equate abuse of technology as lack of mindfulness when engaging with technology which I am afraid more people are guilty of more often than not. I think the biggest thing to discuss when speaking of technology is not whether or not it's good or bad or scary, but about how we use it and become addicted unquestioningly, unaware of other realities we forego in the process. As much as the technology creates more and more, it destroys just as much, just as fast. This loss is not necessarily a bad thing, sure, but I do believe we will not benefit if we do not reflect on this loss, and I don't believe we reflect enough, or are even able to, because at the rate of which our lives are changing due to technological progress. We can only truly be mindful of technology and its benefits if we are aware of what other realities are like without it. And we can't know what these other realities are if technology is destroying old opportunities, spaces, places, and times in which we might be able to experience alternatively. If we are not aware of its alternatives, we consequently become dependent on technology, which as kelly discusses, creates its own problems and require new technology to address those problems, ad infinitum. That Kelly does not discuss technology's irreparable destruction of the old at unprecedented rates makes me uneasy. The imbalance of technology distribution in favor of first world countries (imperialist nation states such as the US and UK) makes this rapid destruction of alternatives (at the same rate at which it *creates* more) sociopolitically loaded. As a bi(or, at least two)cultural citizen of Western and Eastern sensibilities, a self-dubbed global citizen (I suppose), and citizen of the earth(this for certain), this directly involves my experiences, memories, and identities, parts of which are growing more null and inaccessible as technology *progresses* [or ravages countries and cultures whole]. This goes back to that testy subject of "hybrid" cultures. Sometimes what we call "hybrid" is really a culture in the process of it dying /being colonized. What is truly hybrid denotes both factors which are being hybridized have equal say/power in giving and taking, shaping and forming, changing and compromising. #freedoms2017 In class yesterday, Sai touched on a topic I'll name and paraphrase here... I understood the subject to be about the decline of "direct"-artmaking (as opposed to mediated and created through the use of a computer). "No one's going to paint and draw anymore!" I think about its implications. If there is a body part I worship, they are hands. I know energy is a really abstract word sometimes abused by new age-y trend-speaks, but energy to me is very real and the word as a language tool is a very valid way to speak of all things. Homecooked meals are not just about flavor or even context. It's about the hands, the intention, the experience of its making, the energy directly given into the making with intention (re: 'made with love' advertising gimmicks are trying to get at something very real) as when the baker molds their dough, or the chef sprinkles and stirs spices into their boiling cauldron. Better if its personal, hence homecooked. But definitely whether in restaurants or the home, food is decidedly a better feel cooked as opposed to microwaved, processed, or even mass produced (even if by way of hands, because perhaps it has something to do with the attitude in the making). I dance and I massage, and even in my art-making I respond to my hands' energy directly. There are degrees of removal from this primary energy source that are our hands. This is experienced in the differences between seeing art in person and seeing it digital. Digital arts are impressive for their technical possibilities and creative content, but without either of these things, they lack something I can't name that I find in traditional hand-drawn cartoons, unlike most of today's tv shows for toddlers and young children. I can elaborate but I just wanted to just summarize some brief thoughts here for further reflection later. What are the implications of individuals + society given a normalization of several-degrees removed (referencing that vaguely defined energy source) artwork/art-making? ALSO: My friend Esther writes. She writes most of her content by hand. She says when she writes with the pen, she can feel the texture of her words. That this word feels italic and the next word a little larger and another one pink. She says all this certainty and feels disappear when she starts transcribing it on Word. This doesn't bother her, she just accepts it in its new form, the words still valuable for their meaning regardless of how in tune or not she might be with their aesthetics and textures. But it speaks directly to what I am trying to get at. |
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