“[Through electronic dimension,] art [can] reflect post-industrial society more accurately” (Gidney).
The distortion of communication through technology serves to be an issue of our times. Liz Filardi confronts the complications and expresses how technology is changing the way we communicate. Announcment greatly implicates the function of communication in society to individual expression of identity. In the piece, she rides the bicycle (“freedom” symbol) with a sign stating, “Just Single.” As Facebook can allow individuals to explore identity, it breaks down the psychological affect we experience when communicating in person. Digital art acknowledges this impact as Eric Gidney suggests in 1991, “there is an urgent necessity for artists to enter into a dialogue with, as well as, a critique of, our technological culture.” Now, several years later, Liz Filardi is one of many digital artists doing just that.
Here is one of the models that reflect the interaction of two users of technology by Everett Rogers and Lawrence Kincaid, which suggests that the context or meaning behind the original “message” has the tendency to become distorted. Also in regard to identity, Gidney suggests that philosopher, Jean-Francois Lyotard, observed the technology would break down the bridge between human identity and the material world. That would create a “shared consciousness” between the users of the technology. I think Kutiman’s ThruYou is a good example of this evolving consciousness. Plus, he shows the creative advancement of technology into an artistic medium and how its interaction creates the new form of communication. Many of these ideas developed in the 1980s before Facebook or other major forms of the current communication applications were created. Now, artists are responding to these consequences of technological use.
With the availability of computers for public use and the Internet, this new form of communication was able to evolve quickly and even unintentionally. One example written by Merel Mirage, she discussed her cyber communication experience in Leonardo in 1997. This communication began unintentionally when she was researching silkworms and came across a Chinese forum. “Then casually, we started to email back and forth, and, from an anonymous source of information, this person I got used to and even started to appreciate. It was an experience just like real life, in which you come across many people but like some more than others” (377). For me, Facebook gives this experience, but in such a quick manner that we are not even conscious of the fact that we are making these distinctions.
By Liz Filardi addressing “identity” in the cyberworld with Facetbook. I wonder what will come of our ability to communication and function as a society with technology absorbing us. “Barriers are disappearing. The machine penetrates us, we penetrate the machine and this knotting creates a cyborg ‘identity’ that is distributed and multiplied over information networks” (Dyens). Dyen indicates that technology will evolve our consciousness into a new state that will include new perceptions, works of art, and emotions. Facebook and Filardi’s response through Facetbook already show the signs of our loss over the ownership of our identities. Through our responses of creating and destroying identities, perhaps this is the field where our cyborg identity shall rise. Have we already given over our identities to the machine? With my experience with the cyberworld and cyber communication applications, I admit that my identity of Cam rose and continues to develop from cyber communication.
“Art maybe be a method of finding the true meaning of technology”
–Martin Heidegger, Philosopher
Dyens, O. (January 01, 1994). The Emotion of Cyberspace: Art and Cyber-Ecology. Leonardo, 27, 4, 327-333.
Gidney, E. (January 01, 1991). Art and Telecommunications: 10 Years on. Leonardo, 24, 2, 147-152.
Mirage, M. (January 01, 1997). Memories of a Virtual Butterfly: The World and the Screen. Leonardo, 30, 5, 377-383.
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