Technological Confused-ness--an essay

The average American experience is clamorous and image soaked, with mass production and digital media acting as the chief agents of saturation. In this newly digitized society, the screen has become a major player. Televisions jockey for ocular attention at bars as well as dentists’ offices while the Internet is readily available at any and all times (thanks to the Blackberry & its counterparts). Walking the streets of Center City Philadelphia, it is nearly impossible to meet the gaze of one’s fellow (wo)man, as most heads are tilted down in electronic concentration. How has this over-reliance on visual perception coupled with the digitization and multiplication of imagery affected our corporeal experience? It is my feeling that our relationship to the physical world as well as two-dimensional art has been greatly compromised in the sacrifice of the visceral to the LCD gods.

LG- Girl on the Left
RG- Girl on the Right

It is blush inducing to admit that it was only just one year ago that I came to this shocking state of awareness, horrifying in its simplicity. This discovery arrived in the form of a Renoir or, more specifically, his depiction of a dress. In the few moments before the museum closed, I stood basking in the blushing cheeks of Two Girls. They are seated in chairs set outside, in what appears to be a field. Because the composition is cropped fairly close around them it is hard to officially discern what sort of activity engages them. The girl on the left (LG) is looking straight out in front of her. Most of her back is to us though the composition is angled as such that we can see a portion of her left side as well as her cheek and the curve of her eyelashes. The girl on the right (RG) is turned toward LG; as a result her face is also turned outward toward us though her vision is not directed at us. She is dressed in a bluish black while her companion is more lightly attired in a yellowish-pink pastel. RG’s eyes are deep, wet violet and she looks somewhat forlorn; there’s a weight on those smallish shoulders. Why so sad? The day is bright and the two girls are seem to be caught in an act of leisure, though their mode of dress is a bit constricting and formal.

Up to this point, my attention as a viewer had been directed exclusively towards the second dimension until a small three-dimensional “fold” in LG’s dress pulled me out into my own fleshy reality as well as Renoir’s. One small swab danced out from the composition to declare “Hey! I’m paint!” In that instant the dual reality of Two Girls’ existence became abundantly clear. This painting exists as both representation and object. Through Two Girls we are exposed to three moments/cycles of time:

1. A sunny day, if not multiple days, in a field with two fresh faced girls.
2. A year’s worth of physical labor on the behalf of Renoir, which may or may not have occurred on site, in the field.
3. The painting’s existence from completion to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

All of these lifecycles carry informational tools essential to the enrichment of artistic and humanistic experience. In this object we are given access to many hands and lives, but only if we are able to perceive it as just that: a physical object. Though Two Girls is plenty beautiful and interesting, we lose much by regarding it as composition alone.

As a painter, it feels as though my world has been rocked, my artistic reality shifted by the revelation of a simple card trick. His handling of the paint speaks to both a love of the act of painting as well as tenderness towards his subjects. The flowers atop LG’s hat burst as the fold of her dress does. There is an excitement about the application of pigment to which I can surely relate. Renoir and I share a love for the action. However, these formal flourishes do not detract from Two Girls’ representational function. LG and RG are not beside the point. As painting is an activity I likewise relish, I am quite familiar with that gray area between action and representation. How could it be that the sheer magnitude of this gray area (between image and object) has only recently emerged in my conscious?

As earlier stated, I believe digitization, mass production, multiplication and screens have all played alternate roles of importance in this sensory imbalance and confusion. While rummaging around on the third floor of my apartment, I found a stack of my housemate’s photographs. The images elicit memories spanning from adolescence on up to adulthood, middle school to college. Hair went from brunette to blonde back to brunette while noses were pieced and plain once more. The photo’s themselves were caked in plaster, an obvious result of being stored with art supplies.

Though a photograph is a flat representational window, it is the product of a number of physical reactions and processes. A button is pressed on a cool autumn day, light hits gelatin and burns an imprint onto a strip of film. The roll is then brought to one’s standard photo-mat of choice in order to be processed, perhaps by a tired teenager, only to be excitedly reclaimed days later. The photos themselves then travel from place to place, apartment to apartment, shoebox to shoebox. That photo has a history and life beyond the one it documents. At this point in time, digital photography has almost fully replaced film-based photography in recreational usage. Whole albums have come to exist completely on the computer, in virtual folders and assemblages. They are easily posted online, to be tagged and accessed by others thanks to social networking sites. The Internet is flush with personal imagery. In this format, it is more and more difficult to discern the difference between one photograph and the next. If you’ve seen one girl in a fedora vamping for the camera, it feels as though you’ve seen them all.

Mass production and multiplicity throw individuality and specificity right out the window. Yes, the girl with the fedora is a particular girl in a particular fedora. Perhaps she cries at sad movies and is allergic to strawberries. Perhaps her fedora is soft and velvety. Perhaps it was her father’s and that’s why she wears it. Mass production of both objects and imagery washes those particulars clean in such a way that we cease to wonder what they are and where they went. Human hands are seemingly removed from our objects. A chair from Ikea may seem quite neutral, free from human touch; it is actually the product of numerous human-made systems. From design (conception) to delivery, that chair passes through many human hands and minds. However, automation wipes these crucial individuals clear from our minds.

For a potter produces his forms by placing his hands and fingers in particular positions to make clay shapes. And when we are able to find these positions with our own fingers a pot can spring to life in an extraordinary fashion. With more standardized and repetitive ceramics these positions may be rather stereotyped; with mechanization they don’t exist at all. (Rawson, 20)

The generic make-up of an Ikea chair likewise prevents us from making a specific relationship with it. You’ve sat in one you’ve sat in them all.

Finally, computers and the Internet combine to create a rift between our consciousness and our bodies. Like a disembodied eye, we go forth and ferret. Though hands are crucial in the act of surfing great swells of information they swing on mechanically, as an afterthought. Chairs hold aching buttocks, backs curl in a rictus-producing hunch while minds expand under the expanse of overabundant KNOWLEDGE. Corporeal existence is almost forgotten in this act of acquirement. “Car-bodies, stainless steel gadgetry and especially television images all conspire, by a sort of sensuous castration to destroy for us the whole realm of touch experience.” (Rawson, 19/20) I believe Philip Rawson’s statement is easily applied to the computer. It is there that I may travel to Hawaii without ever having to, as if the computer could fully translate that experience.

It is not that the procurement of online information is completely evil; it is both beautiful and wondrous how many doors the Internet has been able to open. Access to knowledge has always been a class issue and the Internet has the power to level the playing field. That being said, it is worth analyzing its affect on sensory perception. It is also worth pointing out that for every nugget of genius, the Internet has 10 nuggets of garbage. The garbage combined with the “need for speed” and immediacy in this cultural moment does not foster intelligence. What it does foster is the concept that a little bit of information is enough. As with the Hawaii example, for all the digital images (both mobile and static) I’ve seen in my life, I do gain a vague sense of familiarity that masquerades as concrete experience. A friend told me recently that he loves, Loves Kandinsky but had recently realized he’d never seen one of his favorite paintings in person. When he was finally given the chance, he felt a disappointed air of ruination and he got grumpy. He left the museum disillusioned.

As this friend of mine just so happens to be a bit of a curmudgeon, I can’t help but feeling that had he spent a bit more time with the actual Kandinsky, something may have come forward, an element misplaced in multiplication and reproduction. Or maybe whatever Kandinsky had to offer my friend did not exist in the physical realm at all. It is possible that in this case the painting had little to offer that particular fellow in that particular moment. I would argue that since the object begs a consideration of physical process and production, a live-read has much to offer. It’s simply up to the viewer to enter into a dialog with the object as object. Though Rawson focuses his attention upon three-dimensional objects, I don’t think his points have to be limited to them. Touch is very much a part of looking at a Renoir. Apparent brush marks bring his arm back to life, alive in the mind of the viewer. This affect is not easily achieved via Google images.

I do not blame digital media as the sole dictator, holding court over my senses and my artistic consciousness. If I want to know something, but go no further than Wikipedia or the first website I find, the Internet is not to blame but myself. The choice is up to me. I must decide how far I wish to go in order to gather the richness of artistic experience. However, I do think it [digital media] has had a robotic hand in my development, not fully realized until a warm summer afternoon in a quiet museum.


Bibliography:

Rawson, Philip. Ceramics. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1984. Copy.