It is really funny but I’ve been bouncing around with Benjamin’s “technological (mechanical) reproduction” in my readings for the last couple of years. I’m coming away with a completely different understanding of what he was driving at, something much more integrated with primitivism, colonialism and the Enlightenment (as defining of meaning and hence what primitivism “means”, colonialism, etc.). It is also very much connected with what he was trying to describe as aura, or the “new” aura being reproduced through these technological innovations. It is also tied in to a completely different understanding of the word “medium.” The word medium, for Benjamin, probably did not have the same connotations it does for us. After McLuhan, the word medium has a much more sterile, generic connotation (like a telephone wire, radio wave, or digital code- capable of carrying any signal, i.e. signifier). With Benjamin, it is tied to the understanding of aura, that is, a medium embodies or transfers the aura. I also came at all this AFTER reading a lot of Baudrillard who established an understanding of the possibility of a culture “grounded” on signifiers with no signified (the emphasis on potlatch, where the original, and the power of the original, is wasted on purpose in order to display “real” power). With Benjamin, there is still recognition of the “power of the original” which somehow is transformed with the technological copy (hence his forays into aura and the difference in the connotation of the term medium). So for Benjamin, there was the intuition that technological society was, in a sense, becoming primitive, but not in the Enlightenment sense (where it is the opposite of intellectual “enlightenment,” i.e. ignorance), rather in the sense of how the power of the original is transferred or found in the copy, the technological reproduction, as a form of knowing (i.e. a mimetic faculty of which Michael Taussig writes in Mimesis and Alterity). This is very different from what Baudrillard (who wrote well after Benjamin and with knowledge of Benjamin’s thought) seized on with regard to Disneyland being America, and a social order, ethics, and raison d’etre that does not have any origin, any original, but is only a simulacra. Origins are ostensibly the sources of power for primitive cultures, as in songs of origin. But I digress.

Theorists of postmodernism such as Slavoj Zizek and Jean Baudrillard explore the ways that post-Fordist capitalist societies present reality as a replication of that which has its origin in texts. Similarly, the film The Matrix presents a world in which human beings live in a computer-generated simulation designed to distract their minds while artificially intelligent machines use their bodies for energy. The film, then, literalizes the idea of a textual world; however, it does not merely convey this point through plot but also through cinematography and mise-en-scene since the world within the matrix resembles computer code in terms of color and downward vertical motion.

The opening shot of the film establishes the formal elements of the computer code. Green lettering runs downward in vertical lines, eventually revealing the film’s title. This shot signifies the concept of the matrix as text, using a specific color scheme (green on black), motion (vertical), and pattern (lined). Following this first instance, the film repeats this use of code throughout, raising it to the level of a motif.

The film reproduces the formal qualities of the computer code in scenes that take place in the matrix, emphasizing green tones during these segments of the film. The scene of Neo’s first interrogation by the agents demonstrates the use of green tones through cinematography and lighting.

Other scenes bring green tones out through costume and set design. The Oracle, for instance, wears a green patterned dress and her kitchen’s tile and counter tops also display the color. As a result, the mise-en-scene and cinematography align the color schemes of the world within the matrix with the motif of computer code.

A shot from The Matrix that illustrate the use of lighting and mise-en-scene to bring out the color green.

On-screen motion and patterns during scenes within the matrix also mimic the vertical fall of the code. One scene in which Neo meets Trinity under a bridge brings the code to mind through heavy rain. Kristen Whissel makes this connection in her essay on contemporary cinema and verticality, stating, “Fragments of marble and concrete, spent bullet casings, shards of glass, and water from a sprinkler system create a constant stream of downward motion that mimics the descent of binary codes seen falling across the screens throughout the film” (850). Hence, the downward vertical motion within the world of the matrix replicates the motion of the computer code.

Two shots from The Matrix that illustrate the importance of verticality to the film's aesthetic.

In essence, the film portrays the world of the matrix as a simulated text through these formal elements, literalizing the postmodern notion of a reality based on text. Still, The Matrix’s aspiration to allegorize the work of Baudrillard falters in a significant way: by so dramatically contrasting a simulated world with “the desert of the real,” The Matrix suggests that what Zizek would call a “real reality” exists beyond the simulation (19). For Baudrillard specifically, “the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials,” and only simulacra remain (2). In many ways, then, The Matrix offers a comforting narrative in which the simulated world can be identified as such, and cinematography and mise-en-scene help make that distinction.

Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press,1994.

Whissel, Kristen. “Tales of Upward Mobility: The New Verticality and Digital Special
Effects.” Film Theory and Criticism. 7th ed. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 834-852.

Zizek, Slavoj. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. New York: Verso, 2002.

“Die jüngsten Abhandlungen bezüglich der ›Ästhetik der Entmaterialisierung‹, und hier speziell einer ›Ästhetik des Verschwindens‹ — wie beispielsweise bei Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Johannes Birringer, Paul Virilio, Peter Weibel, Vilém Flusser und Peter Zec — verweisen trotz verschiedenster Diskrepanzen einvernehmlich auf den »chronokratischen Prozess« (Peter Weibel) in der aktuellen Gesellschaft und dessen Auswirkungen auf die menschliche Zeitwahrnehmung, die künstliche Beschleunigung, die körperliche und materielle Desintegration und die räumliche Simulation.”

Claudia Giannetti, Ästhetische Paradigmen der Medienkunst in http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themen/aesthetik_des_digitalen/aesthetische_paradigmen/

documenta 12 | Florian Pumhösl / Modernologie (Dreieckiges Atilier) | Modernology (Triangular Atelier) | 2007 | Fridericianum

“We are laboring under the illusion of the end, under the posthumous illusion of the end.”  –Jean Baudrillard

 The Austrian artist Florian Pumhösl recreates Modernism’s formal language.  The so-called death of Modernism is a courageous (if not over-determined) leitmotif.  The artist with his quoted historical artifacts transforms the gallery/museum as a reliquary of the Modern.  The late philosopher Jean Baudrillard has already addressed the end of history. At the present time, art seeks to move away from the defunct ideologies of an exhausted Modernist hegemony, purity, progress & predictable aesthetic fulfillment.  However, the relics of Modernism continue, persist & resist, just a bit older. 

The question that confuses is: how do we properly mourn Modernism?  Pumhösl appropriates the architecture & art of the high Modern.  His cold concrete forms, the installations, his under-glass painting, the antique Japanese garment patterns, the appropriations & the Constructivist “quotations,” remind one of the possible future–the way it used to be, the way we saw it then.  Post-Modernist, post-conceptual, post-minimal or post-colonial might work here, but none are a perfect fit.  Everything is always “after” the past.  Baudrillard wrote on the endless proliferation, this “necro-spective” of the past, of Modernism (gone, yet obsessively refurbished).      

Pumhösl’s cynicism is not overt–it’s lithic & ashen.  His gestures are a vivid simulacra, a simulacrum that reaches into a Modernist rhetoric, with its constraint, its sterility.  When observing his artistry, we too reach back to a frail remembrance, one that was insufficient, anxious, & anemic.  We might find a reliable grid & pattern to palliate (momentarily), but will that sustain our aesthetic needs today?  On the anxiety of art objects Baudrillard says: “Instead of first existing, works of art now go straight into the museum.  Instead of being born & dying, they are born as virtual fossils.”  Pumhösl fathers these elegant fossils, ossified, resistant & un-emotive. 

It’s Pumhösl’s job to keep an eye on this presumably deceased past.  How do we treat this memory, (these memories) our collective regret? This new art is a memorial to an idealized time gone by, now perhaps, with an unrecognized hum of nostalgia.  This is the art of looking back, an art of exquisite exhaustion.  After reading Baudrillard & thinking of Pumhösl, we learn what has been, we learn to understand that a contemporary art of the NOW, is simply a thing of the past–gone to be revitalized later.  The future is looking to what was.  Again Baudrillard writes: “When everything can be seen, nothing can be seen anymore.  What is there beyond the end?”

Aurelio Madrid

Modernologies

(Image found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/architektur/634605977/  

by .ack-online.de)

Once upon a time we all lived together,

and then lived separate lives;

Now we’re connected more than ever,

but miles and minds apart.

It’s the irony of technology, the grand price of the grand prix: how we live some more yet die a little; or come together yet make no more than a superficial connection.

Find it in the themes of recent doomsday and futuristic movies. Even in tearjerkers set in the oh-so-familiar present, with their many-angled takes on the classic carpe diem (Latin, “seize the day”).

They all warn: the price of our progress is the pending harm not only of our planet, but more tragically, of ourselves.

This warning unfolds in the Bruce Willis action film “Surrogates”. In its very-near-future setting, society looks, acts, and feels like our own. But no one’s really there. Instead, it’s virtual reality come alive.

The catch? Almost everyone you see is a physically perfect robotic stand-in (read: surrogate) controlled by the real person lying at home. A situation that can deceive.

Like old Bruce Willis (right) controls younger Bruce Willis (center). Or even female partner (left).

In that age, the practice is accepted for its benefits. If your surrogate turns road-kill, relax. You’re unscathed. Just remove the headset and buy a new robot. By that time, getting one is a must and even affordable.

But you lose touch with reality, because everything is a fantasy come true with few consequences. While you can do and be anything you want, you enjoy it all in isolation. Touch is merely an electric s(t)imulation. And tears are only shed at home.

Social interaction changes. When conversation turns sour, just “freeze” and log off. Get the hang of it, and no one will know the real you.

If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, yes, it does sound familiar. Think chat rooms, PEX, and Friendster. Or comments-slash-flames on YouTube and PEP.ph.

Only when it all shuts down do you blink and realize what you’ve missed all along.

In the utra-futuristic animated movie WALL-E, people in a space colony had grown fat and stagnant through centuries of zero gravity, movement, and genuine human contact.

It had to take robots to disrupt and reanimate life too relied on the artificial.

The contrast was too apparent: a love story centered on robots Wall-E and EVE. None more emotional scene than the janitorial robot who mixed concern and curiosity with his mechanical work. All in talkless scenes nearly half the film.

"What really interested me was the idea of the most human thing in the universe being a machine because it has more interest in finding out what the point of living is than actual people." --Wall-E director Andrew Stanton

Some do say the Internet–and the routine, monotonous life it feeds–is mainly making us lose it. In fact, the original graphic novel “Surrogates” stems from that premise: People detaching from life as they’re absorbed into the alternative, more accepting world of cyberspace.

Undeniably, the change comes with new forms of media. Take it from media patron saint Marshall McLuhan.

To him, media are extensions of ourselves. But even as we use them to experience our world, they too change us. With each new medium, we people either come together or move apart.

And he thought that decades before Web 1.0.

This also has shades in late postmodernist Jean Baudrillard. He sees our society as “hyperreal,” where technology and entertainment give us experiences that seem more real than what’s real.

Since media, amusement parks, and malls simulate more ideal, more exciting realms, people “flee” everyday life for those experiences.

Any solution? Maybe a reconnection to what’s real and important. Like relationships, love, and experiencing life with others.

None can escape the pull of the virtual. It is, after all, human nature to aim for and experience what seems impossible.

But so is it to stick together.

Let WALL-E’s Stanton have the final word:

“The greatest commandment Christ gives us is to love, but that’s not always our priority…[In the movie] irrational love defeats the world’s programming. You’ve got these two robots that are trying to go above their basest directives, literally their programming, to experience love.

“…Our programming is the routines and habits that distract us to the point that we’re not really making connections to the people next to us. We’re not engaging in relationships, which are the point of living—relationship with God and relationship with other people.”

————————

*With apologies to this band I know of the same name.

“Promoção de até 50% qualquer peça!!”; “Saldão de verão!”; “Compre e pague em até 10 vezes sem juros!”… Quem nunca teve a tentação de entrar em uma loja com um anúncio desses estampado bem grande na vitrine? O problema não é entrar, nem experimentar e muito menos em olhar. O desafio está nas estampas, nas revistas e nas roupas das atrizes usadas nas novelas ou em filmes. E quando você pàra, para ingenuinamente “dar uma olhadinha”, todas essas imagens impregnadas no seu inconsciente e que, por algum motivo {que a maioria das pessoas não sabem}, te desperta o desejo e o desespero de ter aquele determinado objeto, como se fosse uma obrigação. Você compra. Ele compra. E lógico, ela também. Mas isso não é suficiente. Você e eles precisam de mais, muito mais, porque as novidades nunca se esgotam não é mesmo? Até que o limite do cartão estoura e começam as dívidas. “E quem liga para dívidas? Todo mundo olha para mim quando eu uso objetos da moda!” E é exatamente aí que está o problema.

Baseado nesses conflitos da vida contemporânea, está a história de Rebecca Bloomwood {Isla Fisher}, uma mulher viciada em comprar roupas, bolsas, sapatos e enfim, objetos fashion. E seu vício a deixa endividada em um grau inimaginável, que a desespera e a faz procurar por um emprego para quitar suas contas atrasadas. Suze {Krysten Ritter}, sua grande amiga, tenta ajudá-la sempre que pode e, quando ambas percebem o grande problema que Becky arranjou, ela sugere que vá fazer terapia para se curar deste vício.

Rebecca vai à terapia e encontra muitas pessoas na mesma situação e outras ainda na fase de recuperação, mas não se conforma e ainda acredita que não tem nenhum problema em gostar de fazer compras. Paralelamente à esta cena, ela consegue um emprego como colunista de jornal em uma empresa. Surgem mais conflitos, pois ela não entende nada sobre economia, mas tenta disfarçar e contornar a situação.

Pode parecer uma simples comédia de uma mulher que não sabe se controlar. Infelizmente não é bem assim. O filme retrata o estilo de vida de muitas pessoas obsessivas por compras. O que parece ser uma simples etiqueta na sua blusa, na verdade, é bem mais do que isso. É muito mais fácil e excitante ganhar olhares quando se veste um modelito Dolce&Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein ou muitos outros, do que usar “coisas da loja do meu bairro”. Veja bem, o sucesso não está apenas em usar algum item de marca famosa, mas em usar sempre e diversos artefatos etiquetados com nomes caros. Tanto que é assim que “Os delírios de consumo de Becky Bloom” se inicia: ela desfilando na rua e citando as marcas que veste.

As novidades nunca se esgotam e é por isso que o consumo se torna um vício inquietante. Entretanto, esta compulsividade não é sempre um problema para as classes superiores, pois elas têm dinheiro para sustentar sua salvação superficial, ou seja, para ser constantemente aceito e bem visto pelo seu grupo e, ao mesmo tempo, se distanciando dos demais. Uma situação como essa é bem representada pela rival de Becky no filme, a Alicia Billington {Leslie Bibb}, rica e poderosa, ela é o ícone que causa ciúmes em Rebecca Bloomwood.

Por ser uma comédia romântica, a história se encerra quando Becky Bloom consegue superar seu vício e resolver os problemas que se agravaram por conta disso. Logo, um final feliz que todos esperam que ocorra, porém é uma pena a comédia tirar o ar de seriedade deste quadro todo, afinal, não é a toa que vemos economistas nos alertando para sempre ficar de olho com dívidas e não gastar em excesso, frequentemente passado na televisão.

Segue trailer {legendado}

Créditos:

- BAUDRILLARD, Jean. A sociedade de consumo.

- YouTube.

Die Überschrift stammt aus einer Reportage von Katrin Hummel zum Thema Computerspielsucht am Beispiel des Online-Rollenspiels “World of Warcraft”. Der Artikel ist in der F.A.Z. vom 3.11.09 auf Seite 4 unter der nicht weniger reißerischen Überschrift “Wenn das echte Leben aufs Spiel gesetzt wird” im Politik Resort abgedruckt oder online hier abrufbar. Frau Hummel unterstreicht die besondere Gefährlichkeit des Spiels mit folgendem Zitat, das sie einem “Hilfeforum” entnommen hat:

„Bei uns fing mein Bruder (45) mit dem Spiel ,World of Warcraft’ an, aber in Maßen. Meine Mutter war davon begeistert. Also dachten wir uns, dass es vielleicht nicht schlecht wäre, ihr das Spiel zu erklären, damit sie selbst spielen kann. Sie hat sich im Internet als eine 35-jährige heiße Braut ausgegeben, und da sie sich so verjüngt hat, existieren wir als Kinder natürlich nicht. Der Hammer war aber der 12. April dieses Jahres. Mein Bruder ist an diesem Tag gestorben, Sekundenherztod. Meine Mutter hat den anderen durchgeknallten Fuzzies aus dem Spiel gesagt, dass ihr Cousin gestorben sei. Sie ist nicht mit zur Beerdigung gegangen, angeblich könne sie das nicht. Als wir danach zu ihr gegangen sind, in der Hoffnung, einen Kaffee zu bekommen, war der PC-Bildschirm noch warm, sie hatte in der Zeit gespielt!“

Dies hat mich an zwei Dinge erinnert. Erstens an eine der ersten Call-In Shows a la “Domian”, bei der ein aufgeweckt klingender Jugendlicher der Moderatorin seine ellenlange Leidensgeschichte erzählte, wie er von Heim zu Heim geschickt wurde und immer ganz schlimme Dinge erlebt habe. Nach ungefähr dem fünften Heim erzählte er von einer Frau, die ihm quasi das Leben gerettet habe und seit dem wäre alles wieder gut. Die Moderatorin machte inzwischen einen skeptischen Eindruck und sagte wenn die Frau ihm so toll geholfen habe, dann wäre es doch nur fair wenn er ihren Namen nennen würde. Nach einer nur geringfügig zu langen Pause kam die Antwort: “Das war die Frau Tausendfreund.”

Keine Ahnung, ob das außer mir noch irgendwer lustig findet, für mich war es ein erhellend aporetischer Moment: war irgendetwas davon echt? War der Anruf nur ein Hoax? Ist der Anruf gestellt und von der Sendung geplant? Und: ist das überhaupt von Bedeutung? Gibt es hier eine “Wahrheit”, die erfahrbar sein sollte?

Zweitens erinnert mich das Zitat der F.A.Z. Redakteurin an The Wire, Staffel 5 (die meiner Meinung nach weltbeste Kriminalserie). Es geht unter anderem um einen Redakteur auf dem Weg zum Pulitzer Prize. Er schafft dies durch die Fabrikation von Nachrichten. Der Verlag, geschwächt durch die aktuelle Medienkrise darauf angewiesen jeden Scoop zu nutzen, lässt ihn gewähren, obwohl das Copy-Desk schon herausgefunden hat, dass die Quellen des Redakteurs gefälscht sind. Da die Stadtverwaltung und der Polizeiapparat ebenfalls ein Interesse an diesem Simulakrum haben, erfährt die Öffentlichkeit nicht, dass die von der Polizei erfundene und von dem Redakteur weitergesponnene Geschichte über Morde an Obdachlosen komplett fabriziert ist.

Auch hier hat die Wahrheit keine Bedeutung mehr.  Diesmal nicht, weil es in der Sache gleichgültig ist, sondern weil niemand der die Wahrheit kennt Interessen an der Preisgabe der Wahrheit hat.

Das ist insgesamt keine Neuigkeit. Jean Baudrillard hat in der 90ern festgestellt, dass der Golf-Krieg nicht stattgefunden hat. Paul Watzlawick hat darauf aufmerksam gemacht, dass Realität konstruiert wird, und nicht einfach “ist”. Und Schopenhauer, als Vorbereiter der Postmoderne, beginnt sein Monumentalwerk mit dem bekannten Satz: “Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung.” Angewandt auf virtuelle Welten könnte mit Recht auch gesagt werden: “die Welt ist mein Rollenspiel”.

Was den Baltimore Sun F.A.Z. Bericht so interessant macht ist die Vermischung von Realitätsebenen. Frau Hummel hängt den Artikel an einer jungen spielsüchtigen Frau auf, mit der sie wahrscheinlich auch gesprochen hat. Das groteske Zitat von der siebzigjährigen Rabenmutter hat sie – ich kann dies nur vermuten – einfach so im virtuellen Raum aufgeschnappt. So mischt sie fröhlich den einigermaßen realistischen Suchtbericht mit einem durchgeknallten Hoax das Heroin im Vergleich zu einem Rollenspiel wie ein Schnupftabäckchen erscheinen lässt.

Die Chance, über die sozialen Bedingungen der Rollenspielsucht zu berichten, nutzt Frau Hummel nur sehr oberflächlich. Die Sucht schreibt Sie dem alten Dopamin-Ausschuss Schmarrn zu, mit dem uns Wissenschaftler auch schon die Workaholics und die Sportfanatiker erklärt haben. Ungefähr so: “Der Mensch möchte sich wohlfühlen. Wir sehen im Kernspin dass Aktivität XY Wohlfühl Z auslöst. Deswegen macht Aktivität XY süchtig.” Interessanter wäre, warum sich Menschen in der virtuellen Welt tatsächlich wohler fühlen. Hummel schreibt dazu:

„World of Warcraft“ entfaltet nach Ansicht von Fachleuten von allen Online-Rollenspielen das größte Suchtpotential. Weil Blizzard dem Spiel in regelmäßigen Abständen neue Spielebenen hinzufügt und in diesem Augenblick fast alles, was die bereits geschaffenen Charaktere sich bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt erarbeitet haben, wertlos wird, können auch Neueinsteiger schnell auf der obersten Ebene mitspielen.

Besonders suchtgefährdet sind Menschen, die im wirklichen Leben wenig Erfolg haben.

Dass das Rollenspiel eben genau das bietet, was die Gesellschaft nicht mehr hergeben will aber hergeben sollte, dass Blizzard mit diesem Spielsystem eine Art von Steuer etabliert hat, sieht sie nicht. Aber sie meint, dass in Asien und den USA “zehntausende Menschen” davon leben, professionell das Spiel zu Spielen um die erlangten Güter dann weiter zu verkaufen (das hat sie auch aufgeschnappt). Auf den Gedanken, dass es auch für Westeuropäer lukrativ sein könnte, eine virtuelle Existenz aufzubauen, kommt sie nicht. Warum nicht als Redakteur bei einer Gilde im Rollenspiel anheuern?

Es ist, als hätte die DDR die Internet-Blüte noch erlebt. Auf “westsucht.dd”* würde ein junger Mann berichten, dass seine 70jährige Mutter zu viel Westfernsehen gesehen habe, jetzt ihre eigenen Kinder nicht mehr erkennt und den ganzen Tag nach Ferrero Küsschen schreit. Und Frau Katrin Hummel schreibt für die Freiheit: das Dopamin ist schuld.

* “die Top-Level-Domain .dd wurde in der Nachwendezeit durch .de der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ersetzt” (Wikipedia.de)

En una singular conversación a modo de tertulia es que dos grandes pensadores discuten sobre objetos singulares, objetos singulares que van de la filosofía y la arquitectura a través de las tendencias e ideas de Jean Baudrillard y Jean Nouvel.

Muchas son las formas de abordar la arquitectura y su construcción ideológica, pero en definitiva la presentada en la publicación “Los Objetos Singulares Arquitectura y Filosofía” es una de las que sin más, da un acercamiento a éstas dos disciplinas que de forma dialéctica construyen obras de arte.

Premisas como ¿Qué es un objeto singular? o ¿Hay una verdad en la arquitectura?, son las que comienzan a encaminar lo que se va convirtiendo en una tertulia a lo largo de las páginas leídas, donde uno como lector se siente totalmente inmerso en una charla que nos da visos de la genialidad filosófica de las construcciones arquitectónicas.

Radicalidad, espacio y libertad, hiperrealidad, verdad, y otras son las vertientes discutidas en el libro que nos dan una mirada sobre la profesión del arquitecto también, del arquitecto como constructor de espacios, y como prestidigitador que engaña a los sentidos creando espacios virtuales de ilusión.

Ambos pensadores dan paso a sus argumentos entre diversas obras que van desde la monstruosidad de las ciudades totalmente cosmopolitas hasta la poética de la creación en la pobreza, o las mismas concepciones de las ciudades del futuro en una realidad representable.

Seducción, metamorfosis, estética de la desaparición y utopías sobre la concepción de la luz, los espacios, y la materia, son temas que se trastocan en el ir y venir de la lectura, una lectura que una vez que comienzas no puedes dejar de seguir, ni evitar imaginar los espacios y las grandes obras en las urbes que dan plausibilidad al poderío estilístico.

Varias son las muestras citadas en la publicación que edita el Fondo de Cultura Económica y que en definitiva valen leerse y apreciarse, a través de la guía de dos grandes pensadores.

Aquí dos obras que utilizan para ejemplificar sus conceptos, las que de solo ver dan paso a interpretar a través de una lectura amena, digerible y en 126 páginas, los argumentos del filósofo y el arquitecto.

Beaubourg

Fundación Cartier

othername®

Frank Rich is certainly my favorite of the NYTimes columnists. His columns often revolve around the notion that the media, in a functioning democracy, should serve the public interest by informing the electorate and hence providing some structural oversight to curb the excesses of the rich and powerful. For Rich, this doesn’t occur in America because media organizations are dominated by private capital and hence dwell upon spectacle for the sake of profit, a la the film Network. I’m pretty sympathetic to this idea, which was elucidated once again in Rich’s column this morning.

But as much as Rich expressed his standard Left-y stance on media in today’s column, as befits the genre of muckraking, he also incorporated glimmers of Baudrillard’s hyperreality.

Check this out:

“Richard Heene [fame-seeking father of the "balloon boy"] is the inevitable product of this reigning culture, where “news,” “reality” television and reality itself are hopelessly scrambled and the warp-speed imperatives of cable-Internet competition allow no time for fact checking…”

And this:

“He knew how easy it would be to float “balloon boy” when the demarcation between truth and fiction has been obliterated.”

And:

“If Heene’s balloon was empty, so were the toxic financial instruments, inflated by the thin air of unsupported debt, that cratered the economy he inhabits.”

Rather than simply making fun of Fox News, I think the subject of Rich’s polemic is more fundamental. Rich is assuming a kind of existential stance that’s only tangentially related to this bubble boy thing — he’s taking the position that representations of “reality” should trump simulations of false reality. Just as nobody attempts to prove that the sun will rise tomorrow, nobody would take this obvious position unless it was somehow being called into question, i.e. unless the boundaries between truth and fiction were being blurred in some way. Now, Baudrillard gives me and everybody else a headache, but I couldn’t help thinking about him this time.

If you like, you could substitute “Truth” or even “Democracy” for “God” in this excerpt from “Simulacra and Simulations”:

“All of Western faith and good faith was engaged in this wager on representation: that a sign could refer to the depth of meaning, that a sign could exchange for meaning and that something could guarantee this exchange: God, of course. But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, reduced to the signs which attest his existence? Then the whole system becomes weightless; it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum: not unreal, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.

So it is with simulation, insofar as it is opposed to representation. Representation starts from the principle that the sign and the real are equivalent (even if this equivalence is Utopian, it is a fundamental ax~om). Conversely, simulation starts from the Utopia of this principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum.”

I don’t really know anything about Baudrillard, but he seems to dwell in this location within media studies where the set of meanings that constitute “reality” is irrelevant because (thanks to world-creating crazy new media) meaning becomes impossible — the signifier never quite resolves itself to the signified. This uncomfortable place is starting to look familiar for Frank Rich, or so it would seem.

Nous fêtons cette semaine (29 octobre) l’anniversaire d’Astérix, et donc d’Obélix, même s’il jouissait dans l’album de 1959 d’un rôle tout à fait secondaire.

Le point fort des Aventures d’Astérix le Gaulois est connu : la multitude des niveaux de lecture, permettant à chaque âge d’y trouver son bonheur. Mais l’âge ne fait pas tout et l’agrégé de latin comprend certainement des références qui m’échappent.

La pertinence d’œuvres abordant maints sujets est toujours sujette à caution, et l’estimation la plus précise qu’on a de l’ensemble dérive souvent du traitement accordé au thème qu’on maîtrise le plus. Aussi, je vous propose une revue des questions politiques, économiques et sociales abordées dans les albums originaux (dont le scénario est de Goscinny) : d’Astérix le Gaulois à Astérix chez les Belges. En espérant vous faire lire ou relire les albums cités.

L’économie dans Astérix (ou plus équitablement, dans Les Aventures d’Obélix)

Remarque préliminaire, cette revue nous portera davantage sur Obélix qu’Astérix. Le petit guerrier n’est en effet que raison et courage sans grands sentiments, tandis qu’Obélix déborde de passions : les sangliers toujours, les filles parfois, ou encore en d’autres occasions… l’argent. L’entrepreneur Obélix – exploitant d’une fabrique de menhirs – fait part à plusieurs reprises de ses ambitions. Coquelus, fabricant  de roues de Clermont-Ferrand lui inspire le songe d’un sommeil profond de capitaine d’industrie « en réunion ». Le néarque Saugrenus réveille plus tard cette âme d’homme d’affaires sérieux aspirant à la reconnaissance dans Obélix et Compagnie. J’y reviendrai dans un billet dédié.

Astérix dans la préfecture de Condate

Sur les 24 albums, les fonctionnaires sont sans doute les plus visés, Goscinny préparant ainsi nos petites têtes blondes à la bureaucratie étatique. Critique réelle ou flatterie d’un préjugé populaire, impossible de conclure tant Goscinny aime jouer de ces derniers. Qu’Obélix doive envoyer ses menhirs en recommandé afin qu’ils ne se perdent dans le tri de la poste semble par exemple un petit clin d’œil innocent (Astérix et les Normands) ; en revanche le scénariste insiste bien plus longuement sur les errements administratifs d’Astérix dans la préfecture de Condate et l’exaspération qui s’en suit (Astérix Légionnaire). Un passage qui inspire le dessin animé les Douze travaux d’Astérix dans lequel la recherche d’un bordereau administratif se révèle la plus redoutable des missions herculéennes proposées.

A l’opposé de la critique facile (d’autres diront évidente) sur les fonctionnaires, ou la fainéantise des Corses – dont le Druide fait la sieste en attendant que tombe le gui (Astérix en Corse) – Goscinny fait des clins d’œil beaucoup plus subtiles et cultivés. Pour un exemple économique, Le Cadeau de César, album dans lequel un vétéran de la légion se voit offrir par César un titre de propriété du village irréductible, rappelle un thème central des Bucoliques de Virgile, évoquant la distribution aux vétérans de la guerre civile de terres ayant déjà des propriétaires.

Je passe rapidement sur les coffres forts de banques suisses (Astérix chez lez Helvètes) et les affres de la fiscalité et de l’exclusion (Astérix et le Chaudron) pour m’intéresser plus spécifiquement au Domaine des dieux…

Le Domaine des dieux (1971)

Le projet de César, Parly II aux portes du village gaulois

Une des inquiétudes qu’on peut avoir vis-à-vis de la compréhension de certains albums dérive de leur ancrage dans une actualité qui cesse d’être contemporaine. Le Domaine des dieux, par exemple, suit de deux ans l’ouverture de Parly II près de Versailles. Cet ensemble adosse un des plus grand centre commercial de France à la plus grande (et surement une des plus aisée) copropriété résidentielle d’Europe.

On peut mettre en parallèle Le Domaine des dieux avec La Société de Consommation de Jean Baudrillard, parue en 1970. Se référant parfois à Parly II, Baudrillard explique comment la « consommation » ne cherche pas à répondre aux besoins physiologiques, ni même à l’appétit excessif de plaisir, mais est un langage issue d’une combinaison de biens et de services choisis moins pour leur utilité pratique que leur signification sociale et leur aspect différenciant. Parly II est à l’époque le paradigme de cette société : ses résidents possèdent à la fois toutes les marques de la réussite sociale – piscine et court de tennis pour chaque groupe de résidences ; bibliothèques et centres culturels sur place – mais ont aussi tout loisir de se différencier entre eux via les grandes marques de mode et leurs élégantes boutiques d’un centre commercial de grande taille intégré au complexe.

Le Domaine des dieux symbolise parfaitement l’opposition entre cette société nouvelle et l’ancienne (celle du village). A contrario de la nouvelle, où les « consommateurs » vivent dans un environnement artificiel composé d’objets « signifiants », les villageois sont cernés d’un environnement naturel, la forêt. Le projet romain vise d’ailleurs explicitement l’abatage des arbres. Autre opposition forte, l’économie du village est entièrement tournée vers l’utile et non le signifiant, sans d’ailleurs que cela induise la frugalité. Les mensurations d’Obélix sont en soit un signe d’abondance, mais Obélix mange par passion, et non pour signaler son talent à la chasse.

Seule Bonemine manifeste de temps à autres des regrets vis-à-vis de son prestige social et, avec la femme d’Agecanonix, des pulsions de consommation, évoquant souvent Lutèce à ce titre. Le moment de tension de l’album est l’adaptation progressive des autres gaulois au modèle consumériste, symbolisée par l’évolution des boutiques du village.

Avoir placé Parly II aux portes du village gaulois, symbole de la résistance aux évolutions du monde d’une vieille France amicale mais fière, illustre à merveille à la fois le clivage et l’attirance réciproque qu’entretiennent cette France rurale et traditionnelle et la société de consommation urbaine.

Billet à venir : Anniversaire d’Astérix (2) : Obélix et Compagnie ou Goscinny vs Keynes

The Ludic fallacy is the fallacy of mistaking the model/map for the reality/territory. Check out this one-paragraph short story from Jorge Luis Borges, “On Exactitude in Science”:

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartograhy attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
- Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658

[Translated by Andrew Hurley, in a compilation of Borges' fiction titled Collected Fictions, published by Penguin in 1998.]

Using Borges’ short story as a starting point, Jean Baudrillard discusses the inversion of the relationship between models and reality in “The Precession of Simulacra”, the opening chapter from his book, Simulacra and Simulations. The following are the first two paragraphs:

If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts — the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction testifying to a pride equal to the Empire and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, a bit as the double ends by being confused with the real through aging) — as the most beautiful allegory of simulation, this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory — precession of simulacra — that engenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empre, but ours. The desert of the real itself.

[Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser in Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulations, published by the University of Michgan Press, 1994.]

Human beings in today’s society succumb to countless forms of hyperreality, as this is a reflection of an innate human desire to pervert the Ludic “fallacy” of the mind into the Ludic “fellatio” of the mind.

MALLANTA LISTO

En Sakramento hieraŭe ŝtormis pluvante kaj ventante kaj inundante. Stratoj pleniĝis per akvo kaj multaj arboj kraŝis ĉie.
Dankinde, nia energio ne foriĝis!

Ŝakoludoj ĉi nokte! Mi efektive ekscitiĝas pri tio. Pro tio ke ŝakoludantoj estas mensemaj, mi pensis ke mi renkontos iun ĉe grupo kiu parolas Esperante, tamen mi plie ŝance renkontos iun, kiu parolas klingonan…ĉu ne?

En Usono Nacia Tago de Elŝrankveno (vidu ankaŭe: Elŝrankiĝo) estis Oktobro 11a.
Oktobro ankaŭe estas Historia Monato de GLAT (gejoj, lesbaninoj, ambaŭseksemuloj kaj transgenruloj).
fiskot afiŝis afablan blogeron pri ĝi kun bona filmeto: Eliru el sia ŝranko!
eventeo havas artikolon: Urugvajo : en la avangardo de gejaj rajtoj

J Tarducci skribis:

Kun la hipotezo “La plej parolata planlingvo” tut certe venkos, char havas ekzemplo nur en Vikipedio pli ol 100 000 artikoloj esperantlingvaj, kaj aliaj motivoj. Kiu prezentos la proponon? Chu Zamzono, au UEA, au privata e-isto? Estus potenca varbilo: www.guinnessworldrecords.com

Mi ŝatas ĉi tian ideon.  Mi serĉis retejon kaj trovis nenion pri Esperanto tie.  Kiu prezentos la proponon? Ĉu ni kiel grupo devus alsendi proponon?

Ĉu vi antaŭe aŭdis pri Jean Baudrillard? Li estis franca kultura teoriisto, sociologo, filozofo, politika raportisto, kaj fotisto…tamen li ankaŭe esits tre incitema.
Ĉar mi honeste pensas ke ili estas interesaj, mi montras kelkajn citaĵojn fare de li:

Usonanoj eble havas nenioman identecon, sed ili ja havas mirindajn dentojn.

Se vi diras, “Mi amas vin”, tiale vi enamiĝis kun lingvo, kiu estas jame formo de disrompado kaj misfidelo.

Eble dua plej malbona krimo de mondo estas enuo. Unua estas esti tedanto.

…kaj jene lia malpli pozitiva citaĵo…

Ami iun estos izoli lin fore de mondo, forviŝi ĉiomon da li, senposedigi al li lian ombron, tiri lin en mortigan estonton. Ĝuste ĉirkaŭi aliulo tiel kiel mortinta stelo kaj sorbi lin en nigran lumon.

Citaĵoj el ĉi tie.

Nune al venkinto de Eŭrovido-Kantokonkurso:
Una rango: “Fairytale” fare de Alexander Rybak

Apparently, last week was deemed Mental Illness Awareness Week and aimed to raise awareness about mental health issues and raise funds that would pay for research.

I missed hearing about the week until now, and in fact the only reason I learned about it late was because of a friend’s e-mail alerting me to this column on the Huffington Post, which states just how misguided the whole idea is and with which I thoroughly agree.

That’s not the reason for this post.

The reason for this post is that the week gives me an excuse to quote from a great book: Jean Baudrillard’s The Ecstasy of Communication, which draws parallels between his interpretation of mass media and the pathology of schizophrenia. He writes:

The schizophrenic is not, as generally claimed, characterized by his loss of touch with reality, but by the absolute proximity to and total instantaneousness with things, this overexposure to the transparently of the world. Stripped of a stage and crossed over without the least obstacle, the schizophrenic cannot produce the limits of his very being, he can no longer produce himself as a mirror. He becomes a pure screen, a pure absorption and resorption surface of the influent networks.

It would be useful to know if access to the conditions Baudrillard writes of – at the date of publication, television and radio; but more recently, high-bandwidth Internet networks – correlate positively with schizophrenia. I assume, for all its apparent failings, Mental Illness Awareness Week isn’t only relegated to the United States and seeks global perspective on these important global issues.

The end of art is where the word “art” ceases to be a meaningful term because it refers to nothing or everything. There is an idealistic and a conspiratorial view of the end of art. The idealistic vision of the end of art is where art becomes self-conscious of itself and everyone is an artist and everything that they do is art. In this version the words “art” and “artist” then ceases to be a meaningful terms of reference because it refers to everything. The conspiracy version of the end of art is where either the conspiracy is exposed and art is shown to be nothing or where the conspiracy succeeds and art/everything is just another hyped commodity on the market.

The death of art has been long anticipated; perhaps it has already happened. Loud Dada cheer! Art is dead, long live art! Duchamp’s Wanted/$2000 Reward (1923) poster says it all: “Operates Bucket Shop in New York under name Hooke, Lyon and Cinquer.” Christians expect the apocalypse to be final, the day of reckoning, but this is not a necessary feature; the post-apocalyptic world is a possible state.

I have been enjoying reading Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art (Semiotexte, 2005). There are many attacks on contemporary art but Baudrillard’s conspiracy is a literary device for understanding the web that gives meaning to words, it is a crime metaphor, not a fact. “You can no more identity the instigators of this plot than you can designate the victims. This conspiracy has no author and everyone is both victim and accomplice.” (p.66) He extends his metaphors to examine the way politicians do not represent those who elect them. This is what I enjoy about reading Baudrillard he writes literature, he writes with metaphors and an enjoyment of language.

If Baudrillard is turning police informer on the conspiracy it is because he has already been recruited as the get-away driver. Baudrillard enjoys Warhol, Pop Art and Hyperrealism, although he wonders why he enjoys them. He is familiar with the history of modern and contemporary art and has exhibited his photographs in a gallery.

This is a very different conspiracy to Robert Dixon’s The Baumgarten Corruption – From Sense to Nonsense in Art and Philosophy (Pluto Press, 1995). Robert Dixon is a mathematician and as the subtitle of his book indicates has a no understanding of modern art or philosophy. There are many books and other literature like this a long conservative complaint about contemporary art. For Dixon, like other critics of contemporary art, the decline of art is a matter of fact or his own twisted logic; there is no subtly, it is all vitriol. Remarkably Dixon identifies the start of this process with Alexander Baumgarten’s use of the word “aesthetics” in the 1750s – a long process of corruption indeed.

Bitforms Gallery is pleased to announce a third solo exhibition with German photographic artist Michael Najjar and the world premiere of his high altitude work series. In this body of work, Najjar continues to weld fact and fiction. Exploring vocabulary of the romantic sublime, including paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, and informed by the artist’s own climb up to the 22,800 foot summit of Mount Aconcagua in Argentina, high altitude features breathtaking panoramas. Picturing spaces in society driven by networked financial data, these virtual landscapes are a meditation on the global market structure, its sophistication, and vulnerability.

The spectacle of elemental forces at play in mountainous vistas has been an enduring source of fascination for people, and especially artists, across the ages. Relating a parable of risk and cataclysm, Michael Najjar’s nine large format photographs draw a visual comparison between the forces of nature and those in the modern economy driven by computer networks. Cliff and rock formations in these sweeping horizons portray development of the world’s leading stock exchange indices over the past 20 – 30 years. Like a graph or blueprint, Najjar suspends the performance charts of indices such as the Dow Jones, Hang Seng, Nikkei and Dax over the mountain peaks, and then alters the natural course of each mountain range. Pairing pure natural beauty with the development of the global financial system, a virtual value system is mapped.

“The current economic crisis has dramatically highlighted one thing in particular – that we now often deal not with real goods and commodities but with chains of signifiers” says Michael Najjar. The irrational – something which defies our powers of imagination – in turn shapes the reality of our daily lives. In this way a symbiosis is created between reality and virtuality. The expressive power of mountains and stock markets share certain aspects in common. Both have an emotional force; they can awaken feelings of happiness (reaching the summit, windfalls from speculation), yet they also carry components of risk within them (injuries, losses). Both have the power to destroy lives. This is most strikingly revealed in the work entitled lehman_92-08 which shows how the high degree of complexity in our present-day virtual world can lead to a total system crash. The shared course climbs and climbs, and ends abruptly – leaving only emptiness and the sloping mountain plateau behind.

Najjar’s works are also concerned with exploring the nature of the sublime, the ineffability of perception. According to Edmund Burke, sublimity is compounded delight and horror in equal measure. We may encounter feelings of the sublime in our everyday lives, in nature, or indeed in the financial world whenever the benchmarks by which we usually measure and gauge experience are invalidated or transcended. Such views and experience of sublimity are also reflected in the new works by Michael Najjar. The mountain has proven a consistent theme across the history of art, although not all artists have been interested in rendering an exact portrait. Caspar David Friedrich, for instance, painted the “Watzmann” peak without ever actually seeing it. His painting was not intended as a mere reproduction of nature but rather as a means of arousing feelings of awe and wonder “too deep for words”. It was scientific curiosity that drew Leonardo da Vinci to mountains, while Gerhard Richter painted them for the atmospheric conditions they offered, their unclear contours bathed in diffused light. The motifs chosen by Michael Najjar are mystically haunting moments with craggy cliff plateaus, fragile cloud formations, frozen snow-clad summits or crisp views of mountain ridges against an ice blue sky – yet always with the jagged lines of the mountain’s silhouette – a monument of stock market quotations, hewn in stone, rising majestically over the world.

The work series is based on the photographs Najjar shot during his three week expedition up Mount Aconcagua in the Argentinean Andes whose summit he reached in January 2009. At 22,800 feet, Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas. According to Najjar, “The reality of nature and the life rhythm of a mountain cannot be measured on any human scale and thus becomes a virtual experience. Such experience of virtuality can also be found on the international economic and financial markets where the staggeringly large sums of money circulating the globe in real time defy our powers of comprehension.”

images an text provided by Bitforms Gallery

Photos: John Berens

There’s one opportunity for wedding photography that I have not yet posted about – what does society, today, perceive to be the “perfect” image?

In order to elaborate on this, I would not do justice to the industry without giving you a brief historical rundown. It is not only digital advancements but the social culture surrounding what society views as the “perfect” image that plays a major role in influencing wedding photography. So how have these influences, over the years, impacted the perception of the “quality” image?

The profession originated in the 1800s where pre-wedding daguerreotype portraits would be taken in a studio and printed on a tiny copper sheet. The idea of the photographer being present at the wedding only originated during the post-WWII “wedding boom” when cameras became slightly more accessible and photographers began to imitate the studio settings on location. This traditional style of photography is still popular today, using posed shots to give the wedding a glamour feel. See my ‘Traditional Wedding Photography’ tab.

This wedding portrait daguerreotype has been dated back to February 1856. http://www.theweddingco.com/thedailynews/2009/05/photo-of-the-week/

Compare this current style of traditional photography with that of the 1800s. http://www.weddingphotographydirectory.com/wedding-photo/photo-of-the-month/2006-12-Steve-Depino/entry/view.aspx

As cameras became more accessible in the 1970s and 80s, and photojournalism became popular in recording news, (which showed that society was getting tired of cheesy, staged shots), the industry began moving towards a photojournalistic approach, which has taken off in the last decade. Here, the photographer will not interrupt the event to “stage” photos – he/she is higly reactive, taking snaps as the day unfolds, recording the event as an historian rather than a director.  By doing this, it is believed that the true essence of the event can be captured. See my ‘Photojournalism Gallery’ tab.

An example of wedding photojournalism. http://www.weddingphotographydirectory.com/wedding-photo/photo-of-the-month/2007-12-Danny-Iskandar/entry/view.aspx

This brings me to the subject of this post: The most recent trend is the fashion approach, influenced by high-end fashion magazines like ‘Vanity Fair’ and ‘Vogue’. This approach requires high artistic talent behind the camera and in post-production because fantasy is emphasised over reality, with the photography embraced as an artform.

A magazine-style fashion shot. http://www.weddingphotographydirectory.com/wedding-photo/photo-of-the-month/2008-5-Corey-Mcnabb/entry/view.aspx

Photgrapahers charge thousands of dollars for this photography and more and more couples are willing to pay for it. Why is this?

The fashion approach offers almost endless opportunities to create competitive advantage because there are no boundaries as to when creativity becomes too much. Ken Sanes argues that any type of simulation (which is what a photo essentially is – see Baudrillard’s ‘Simulacra and Simulation’) is often more appealing than the original. By making the couple feel like celebrities for a day, fashion wedding photography creates a simulation that allows them to escape the fallen state of society and experience a world transformed by the imagination.

If these simulations also present our basic desires, then I must ask: is a flawless world everyone’s desire?

http://www.weddingphotographydirectory.com/wedding-photo/wedding-photography/photographers/NC-North-Carolina/Caroline-Ghetes/

Jean Baudrillard, in his book ‘Simulacra and Simulation’, once wrote that in viewing images we are dumbfounded not by the memory of the events they capture but “by the perfection of the programming and the technical manipulation, by the immanent wonder of the programmed unfolding of events”. Techniques, both behind the camera and in post-production, are considered they key elements to compare a professional “quality” image from a wannabe “amateur” image.

This “wonder”, when it comes to “technical manipulation” is described by professional wedding photographer AnnMarie Sciascia in her article on what to look for in wedding photography - Before and After, Gain the Bride’s Confidence:

Many clients have expressed to me that I have photographed very pretty brides, and worry that they would not look as beautiful. These beliefs often create pressure and tension on the bride, but not to worry, with the essential ingredients of proper posing, lighting, and makeup, a beautiful formal portrait image will prevail. I have shown brides before and after pictures of my portraits, and many have been astonished seeing my brides wake up in the morning looking like most of us, and then transformed in the photography to be picture-perfect brides. Just as the transformation of a butterfly needs the correct environment and nurturing, the same holds true for a photography shoot, which requires the proper artists, and the collaboration of the bride herself to create and capture her beauty.

Enter: The digital era. Since the advent of the digital camera, photography has become more and more commercialised – with quality images becoming less expensive to produce and photoshop software pretty much allowing photographers to “technically manipulate” images to their heart’s content. This has created opportunities to “transform” brides in the photography to be the best looking “picture perfect brides” they can be, by allowing photographers to stretch the limits of their creativity and passion to create competitive edge when convinving their next customers as to why they should hire [insert name of wedding photographer here] for their wedding.

Obviously, these opportunities have ensured that wedding photography has become one of the fastest growing and lucrative fields in the wedding photography industry. But with commercialisation, comes many challanges: 

a)      The increased ubiquity and democratisation of the camera has inspired many “Uncle Joes” to take up photography, rather than fishing, as a weekend hobby, allowing them to produce acceptable (albeit not “great”) but more affordable images. This is supported through the finding that couples’ spending on wedding photography declined by 26% between 2007-2008. Obviously this isn’t the only reason for this statistic but the increased number of photographers offering quality services at a lower price is a contender.

b)      As a result, the “pros” need to stay afloat in the vast, buoyant ocean of embarrassing, mundane, acceptable, good, great and amazing photographers through effective marketing and testing the limits of their creativity. See this forum for more details.

“Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.” – Jean Baudrillard

New media like Twitter often have to endure a lot of criticism. A lot of the critical comments, however, can be seen as the last remains of the century-old debate about the distinction between high culture and low culture. Postmodernism annihilated this distinction but that doesn’t mean we should immediately embrace Twitter. I would like to give a critical perspective on the aphoristic nature of Twitter and our society in general. I shall use Twitter as the main example in this short essay, however it is good keep in mind that this is part of a much broader tendency.The Dutch philosopher Rob Wijnberg wrote in his book Boeiuh! Het stille protest van de jeugd (2007) about the apparent indifference of younger generations. They don’t read newspapers anymore and seem to care only about who has the newest mobile phone. Wijnberg blames this indifference to what he calls ‘the information overload’ which stems from Jean Baudrillards notion of the metonymic bombardment. Young people, far more than older generations have to deal with a tremendous amount of information. For a lot of people Twitter is one of the main sources of this “tsunami of information.” Hundreds of tweets are fired at them day in, day out. Wijnberg concludes that because of this tendency it becomes necessary to shield ourselves otherwise we will “drown in the whirlpool of tragedies that each new event brings with them”. It is apathy out of self-protection.

Furthermore, Wijnberg argues that the nature of this “information overload” helps to promote apathy. Every event or fact has to be presented in a easy to comprehend form. We see this on television where the conflict in the Middle-East has to be explained in under two minutes, but Twitter with it’s 140 character limit is the epitome of this. It enables passivity rather than revolution as some media would like to claim. Of course I have to remark here, as other posts have pointed out, that Twitter has many faces and can be uses for different purposes. Also the agency of the user plays a large role so I would like to point out that Twitter doesn’t inherently lead to apathy and passivity. It is possible to make a meaningful contribution in 140 characters. They are, however, a minority on Twitter.

I also believe that new media and technologies like Twitter have the ability to transform our offline activities. For centuries the pen was good enough when someone wanted to write something. But with the introduction of typing machines and later computers, the pen was used mainly for small notes. If we, hypothetically, would be told we had to write our master thesis by pen we would no doubt panic. We seem to have lost the ability to write longer texts by hand. You could ask yourself whether this is bad. We also don’t make fire with brimstones anymore. However, we see now that new technologies, first the television and now the internet also transforms how long we write or read. Everything has to be fast and quick and there seems to be no more time for contemplation. The steady decline of the newspaper industry seems to be the most prominent symptom.

Äh, var tar några citat igen. Tack alla ni som bidragit med förslag. Jag tar mig den helt distanslösa friheten att citera mig själv också.

Nobody has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually revished by someone dressed as a liberal.
PJ O’Rourke

How can you thank a man for giving you what’s already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what is yours?
Malcolm X

Do not
Allow
Yourself
To be
Programed
Underground Resistance

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction
Pablo Picasso

Om det inte vore för fängelset, skulle vi veta att vi alla redan är inspärrade.
Maurice Blanchot

Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real
Jean Baudrillard

Måste vi ta över produktionsmedlen är det inte min revolution
Fredrik Edin

Den borgerliga kritikern har alltid haft svårt att se småborgaren i gangstern. Jag tror det kommer sig av att de har så svårt att se gangstern i småborgaren
Bertolt Brecht

Don’t hate the media, become the media
Jello Biafra

If you thought things had changed
Friend you’d better think again
Bluntly put in the fewest of words
Cunts are still running the world
Jarvis Cocker

I am pretty much over the whole anti-post-modern dialogue at church. My perspective is that moderns and post-moderns are no closer philosophically to the truth of God than the other. They both have problems, so why not just leverage the strengths and compensate for the weaknesses.

I think it would be beneficial, though, to address the problem with post-modernism in worship.

If you watch this clip from Return to Source: Philosophy & the Matrix you can get an idea of what the problem is.

Starting at the 1:02 mark (the section ends at 1:57) Frances Flannery-Dailey retells the beginning of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, in which he utilizes a Borges fable to make a point.

The story is of an empire that makes a map so detailed it covers exactly the real world. As the story goes the map degrades, which represents the fall of the empire.

In this story the real world holds primacy, and the map is secondary.

Baudrillard takes the idea and flips it. For his illustration the map endures as the real world rots. His point is that now the “maps” of our lives have primacy and the real has become irrelevant.

Sheryl Crow’s lyrics from “If It Makes You Happy” reflect this state of life

If it makes you happy
It can’t be that bad
If it makes you happy
Then why the hell are you so sad?

The bottom line is that lives are no longer being based on reality. The reason life still hurts is because reality hurts.

How does this relate to worship?

Worship usually is leveraged through songs which when done correctly are a representation of the real – Scripture backed truth.

What happens when people start to base their beliefs off the songs and not an encounter with the Truth?

Fyodor Dostoevsky is credited with saying

At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art. Then life will find its very existence from the arts.

We can apply this to worship in this way: “At first, worship is rooted in a true encounter with God. Then an encounter with God will be rooted in worship. Then our relationship with God will find it’s very existence from worship.”

Is it a real relationship with God if worship is what makes our relationship with God? Worship is an interactive response with God for who He is and what He has done.

Worship as the base for our relationship with God is like physical intimacy without the relationship. Intimacy without relationship, while fun is ultimately hollow.

The problem with post-modernism in worship is the predisposition to allow the reflection of the truth and the associated experiences as truth themselves.

God’s truth should hold primacy while worship should be a reflection; it should hold a subsequent position in our hearts.