Amanda Broughton
BFA 332001
Essay Semester 1
The Lived Body in Contemporary arrangement
“Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent....”[1]
When viewing an artwork, what makes you like or dislike it? Are you limited in what experience you get before you even start? How much of what you see and feel is your choice?
Sight and optics follow the laws of physics, as do the sound waves received by our ears. Even some of your colour perception is pre-determined by your sex, and your hearing range varies from person to person, so how much of our experience in interacting with a work of art can we really choose? Many scientists also claim that human habits are pre-determined by genetic code, from our habits to our likes and dislikes. Chemical and physical laws control the behaviour of every object in the world, including humans. These same laws also enable us to create technology to defy them and overcome the physical limitations we were born with. Looking at digital arts, the implications of the computer as a medium, and the physical limitations that it is controlled by, I want to investigate how much of what we see and do is by our own free will, or if it is in fact at all, and how over time technology has helped us to transcended these limits.
Like a computer, we're just a physical system; an arrangement of organic carbon molecules like everything else and our physical behaviours adhere to these laws. Technology; in this scenario the computer, has begun to effect our aesthetic values. The computer defines for us what is red and what is blue, and gives us a colour palette to adhere to, anything you see printed follows a pre determined colour format such as RGB, CYMK etc. Although these colours are getting closer every day to imitating reality we are still limited …..
Our genetic code means that women perceive a broader spectrum of colour in the red orange range, and that men are more likely to be colour blind. This is because Women have two X-chromosomes; men have only one X-chromosome and one Y-chromosome. The colour vision gene resides on the X-chromosome, so rare detrimental changes at this gene cause colour-blindness in males, whereas females are likely to have at least one good copy of the gene. So when viewing an art work, part of your experience is already pre-determined by your sex as well as your background or taste.
Danish artist Olafur Eliasson's installations are often experimental and laboratory-like, aiming to provoke visitors to reflect upon their own processes of perception and the difference between knowledge conveyed and knowledge produced by real experience. The subject of colour perception is of particular interest to Eliasson. At Ikon, Eliasson proposes to create a self-contained sculptural environment in which a colour matching laboratory is created exploring variations in human colour perception. In his Colour matching Experiment[2] he placed visitors to the exhibition in front of a computer screen and asked them to match what they thought to be the same tone of blue with what he had on the screen. The results were so varied, with very few people matching the colour closely to the original blue. It would have been interesting to see if he had collected data as to wether the participants were male or female, to see if different sexes perceive tones of blue differently.
James Turrell manipulates colour and light in his work and uses human perception as his medium to place viewers in environments of pure colour. His works usually enclose the viewer in order to control and manipulate their perception of light to create illusions.
Australian artist Stellarc addresses many post-human concerns and experiments with emerging new technology and the limitations of the body. He transcends these limits by creating extra limbs, isolating senses and pushing his body to extreme physical limits as well as his mind. He questions which way the human species will further develop, and states that "Technology pacifies the body and the world, and disconnects the body from many of its functions. DISTRAUGHT AND DISCONNECTED, THE BODY CAN ONLY RESORT TO INTERFACE AND SYMBIOSIS."[3] He wants to free us of the limitations of the flesh, but won't this just introduce a new set of limitations? The fundamental laws of physics and chemistry cannot be broken, so while he ma… The mind and body cannot separate, because of lived experience
"Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibres. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on."[4] This brings about ideas of Determinism, with every advance in the area of DNA research-humans have no choice in their lives but to live as biologically motivated beings limited by what DNA spells out for their lives. Do we have any free will at all? Are our lives determined by a chaotic system, and our actions determined by probabilities?
Using the internet as a medium we are everywhere at once, engaging with bodies of other people, in different countries or as close as the other side of the room. The computer is no longer just a tool and a means for making art, but an entire new medium with new implications and new conditions. Cutting edge computer technology draws back to modernist tradition, artists point out the limitations and conditions of computer programs so that they can produce works to challenge these. Most new products will be cast aside if they do not function flawlessly, and this is where the artist can find new and unexplored mediums to engage with. Artists Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignoneau have created a work that lets people communicate with each other virtually through bodily sensations such as smell and sweat. These ‘Mobile Feeling’ devices share private bodily sensations to create unusual and unsettling feelings for the users. Although their
We already use the internet to communicate with people across long distances and these devices present a whole new level of intimacy. Through technology we can literally ‘feel’ what the other person is feeling and our physical limitations are overcome. Investigates how technology has transformed our social and individual lives [5] and how we have accepted a reduced sense of privacy in exchange for connectivity and mobility.
Users at the Arts Electronica are provided with specially equipped "Mobile Feelings" phone devices that resemble organic or bodily shapes. These devices host miniature bio-sensors and actuators that capture the users' heartbeat, blood volume pressure and pulse, skin conductivity, sweat and smell. All data can be sent to other anonymous users who can perceive and feel these most private sensations through actuators, vibrators, ventilators, micro-electromechanical and micro-bio-electrochemical systems which are also embedded in each "Mobile Feelings" device.
"Engines give huge forces available; it looks like his muscles in any direction can send, and that the ship Plane makes that neither water nor air prevents its movement. With the glasses he corrected the deficiencies of the lens in his eye, with the telescope he looks to distant expanse, with the microscope he overcomes the limitations of visibility caused by the construction of its retina concerned. In the photographic camera, he has an instrument that the fleeting vision states, which gave him the gramophone record for the same transitory sound impressions, both basically given him materializations of the assets of remembrance, his memory. With the help of Telephones he hears distances (...). ßuse this translation, quotes, love the ideas.
I myself don't believe in a God, but this complicates the problem of free will even further, how can we be making our own decisions when God already knows in advance what we are going to do? Atheistic thoughts arise from this; without a 'God' in existence to put you here on purpose, you must not be here for any particular reason, making you an accident. Life's just an accident and so are you. You can find short term reasons for living like you're here because your parents wanted to have children, etc., but ultimately you're just an accident and so are your parents. Life is one big accident. You serve no purpose, you'll cause no lasting effect, and in the grand scheme of things your life is utterly meaningless. Because there is no God, our worth is ultimately subjective. You might think you're worth something but someone else might think you're worthless, and as long as there's no ‘God’ to have the final say, how can anyone be right or wrong? Just because you don’t want to die does not mean you have a right to live. Someone else on the other hand might want to kill you regardless of how you feel about it, and who is to say that they're wrong?
In conclusion
Taking into consideration all of the scientific facts about the way the body functions and the way we perceive and experience things, I don’t think we have a lot of choice in deciding what we can experience, and if we like or dislike it. Sure your background and previous knowledge may seem to influence your decision, but who’s to say that with further, or in fact less education that your opinion would have differed? That’s just another ‘what if’ conundrum. I can’t see how anyone can come to a solid conclusion about something when it is impossible to know everything about a subject. Nobody is qualified to tell me what is right or wrong, and everything that anybody says or thinks is just a matter of opinion. We can invent and master whatever technology we like to enhance our sight, hearing and movement, but everything has its limits, the further we push the more limits we discover that we want to overcome. Take for example the artists growing a jacket from human tissue, or creating a glowing neon rabbit. Nobody has the same values or morals to collectively decide that his is right or wrong unless it agrees with your own personal reasoning and your own common sense which again is just a product of your past experience and background. You can put a ‘God’ in place to scare people into adhering to a set of rules and conditions, to make them feel full of purpose while at the same time limiting their lives to follow a pre-determined set of rules and morals. Who wants that?
Art is about pushing boundaries, so is life.
I feel sick and I hate this essay and I won’t be able to sleep.
I wish I was ignorant, I wish I followed rules. I wish I truly believed in heaven and that life had a purpose but I don’t and I can’t pretend to. I wish I could go back and un-think all the things I have thought of but that is not a CHOICE. But nobody else thinks like you right? You’re unique, one of a kind individual so you smile and be happy for the sake of everyone else’s happiness. The rest of the population isn’t walking around with a fake smile covering the despair they feel at the realisation that life is meaningless. Wake, shower, eat, walk, work, eat, work, watch, eat, sleep it all seems kid of pointless like its leading to nothing. Where is the climax? Like at the movies, where is that point where you can say ‘I got there I did it?’ Or maybe you can say that lots of times. It’s not always memorable though. By being happy you make in bearable for everyone else. We’re all in this together I guess. I love my friends. I love my family, I don’t love me and I don’t love thinking or being alone. And it’ll only get worse. How is my train of thought working as I type, how many other different paths could I have gone down and would they have matched up again? Like a big knot in your hair, annoying, endless tangle. There is so much more to come out but for what purpose? Not the essay anyway! Fuck 20 to one and its half ramble, half quotes and half shit which adds to too much of nothing good L I think I have a mental problem to be quite honest. I can’t even sleep with the lights off. Then I feel guilty for using that light source, like I’m draining the energy that somebody else that has a purpose in life could be using. And why did I just clean that wax off the floor, its not like it matters to anyone but me that knows that it is there, a white blemish freezing the carpet fibres upwards towards its decaying source. Why did I waste my time doing that? How much time do I have left? I wish I could make a work of art that said all of this and all the other things I think but can’t put in to words but I can’t. Nobody would notice it except me anyway, why can’t my artwork just be my life? My thoughts and actions documented in whichever way I see fit, in the way I do my hair or the way I arrange the things on my shelf, somebody could spend their life time analysing the imagery and symbols in that. What a joke. Maybe this is why I keep things and hoard them, like they have a significance or meaning. I wonder if by cutting up this page you could re-arrange the words and lines and make it positive, or into a beautiful picture. I’d say no with absolute certainty.
I guess this writing is a portrait of sorts. The sort that nobody should see and certainly not the sort to be handed in as an assessment and critiqued. And even then it is typed and hideous. Computer as a medium, how impersonal I should have used my one of a kind handwriting to connect on a more personal level. That is what that means right? The sensation of my fingers tapping on the keyboard and wearing the keys down is connecting with the computer personally, wearing down its little printed keys, leaving my mark. I’ve had enough about thinking what to write or not write without having to come up with some ingenious way of how to present it to show even more ‘thought’. Cool (cool) if I could just sit here and think at the computer instead of making my poor mule-like fingers type the thought train. The computer is my chosen medium, just as a painter chooses a brush (stereotype, tick), not a tool, a medium. Everybody knows how to type, just as everybody knows how to use a crayon, it’s just how you use it I guess.
[1] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/sigmundfre151782.html Quote from Freud, Sigmund. (1931). Civilization and its discontents.
[3] http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/anaesth/anaesth.html
[4] Excerpt from the film “A waking Life”, Directed by…
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