Images, power and imagination.
After over 100 years from invention of photography, we all seem to know that images are only slightest representation of the reality. “Photoshopping” has became banal activity which every- body can afford. The distinction between professional and amateur, between sender and receiver is now quite blurred.
Theoretically I could say that there is no reality in the media. Yet I have to admit that I have some- how certain idea of geographical and historical world-view which I usually believe to be the real- ity. I have re-constructed this tentative reality unconsciously from vast amount of informations which consist partly of what I experienced myself but mostly of what I saw as forms of represen- tations i.e. visual informations such as paintings, films and photographies, knowing that they can be false and manipulative. Moreover, I vaguely believe that this particular reality reconstructed by myself should be more or less identical with the reality of others. Thus I, as a member of so called civilized society, have groundless confidence that we all have a common world-view which ap- pears as a collective of images which are illusory and inevitably superficial.
In my case, the process of reconstruction of the reality goes almost automatically so that I can hardly question or even notice it. As log as I can not experience all of occurrences myself, I’m supposed to learn things by informations provided by others.
How we see our world is used to be how mass media wants us to see it. How is the situation now? Has the internet become democratic medium comparing to TV or news paper as some would
claim? Or power of mass media still consolidates its position? The answer can not be found eas- ily, since no one knows what integral of internet is. However, now I would like to examine how it changed our perception towards images and our surroundings.
Today we walk through the world of network as we do in real life thorough streets near by. Need- less to say, the most significant point of this activity which is normally called “surfing”, is that we do it on global level. So our world, our world-view more to say, seems to have become even smaller and more comprehensible. Geographical distance thus visually disappeared in our con- ception of the world. If the act of watching TV can be likened to riding roller coaster, on which you have certain rail already provided by media corporations, using internet is like driving through a maze of highways. Nevertheless, cars and highways i.e. infrastructures are still required and must be provided by others. In this sense, internet can never be democratic as it is vaguely believed to be, because it requires certain financial foundation of individual users.
It is true that once we have access to the internet, we will get the ability to express ourselves to a large amount of audience globally. The problem is that we are now encouraged quite passively to be an active member of this network society which is basically faceless. The Carnival of Ven- ice is thus revived but digitaly. Capitalism took the idea of individuality and self expressiveness of each consumers to sell products. Self expression through selection of commodities is in fact still the biggest motivation to buy. In addition, act of creation seems to be utilized by capitalism as well so that we buy things to express ourselves not only thorough selection but also through “creation”. Consumption and creation, those two almost conflicting concepts are strongly con- nected today as never before and internet functions as fundamental element of this circulation.
Image recording media such as photography and video are spreading drastically as digital infor- mations over the globe. There was time where only professionals published their works, that is over now. Every single consumer has chance to create, recreate and publish. From this point of view, the internet is more democratic than any other media as we all consider it to be. Benefit- ted by its virtual democracy, the whole amount of visual informations increased enormously in last decade. As long as one can see, it is hard to distinguish those images from reality. They are familiar to us because they are created by consumers like ourselves with same kind of equipment as we possess and thus already integrated deeply into our daily life. The power of mass media might have been weakened. However, what is now so dominating is the power of networked mass communication which merges even mass media.
Incoherent juxtaposition by the media occurs on different level today. The possibility of combina- tion is just infinity. Every possible images which are provided by professionals can be seen on thesame level with everything by amateurs. Sometimes simple home video footage reflects more reality than professional journalistic images. Quoting Guy Debord, our society has become theat- rical and spectacle, network of mass communication fuels the spectacle increasingly and it slowly comes to the visible surface.
It is almost meaningless to mash up of fictional images and journalistic documentations within a single framework of an artwork because it will be mashed up again with other materials anyway when it is published. On the contrary, instrumentalized footage could even disadvantage the re- ality which they are supposed to transmit.
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
William Gibson wrote his “Neuromancer” in 1984, beginning with this line. Sadly enough, there is no visible dead channel in the world of internet which makes us imagine and contemplate what the nature of the media is. Our sky has no color just empty, zero. We can never actually see it.
In the world where whatever informations are available, imagination would not be required. Images would give us instant answer but they plant inevitably biases, prejudices and preoccupa- tions in us, since most of images are basically made by “others”. The world is used to be fur- nished with “second-hand perception” as Susan Sontag once put in her essay “The aesthetic of silence”. It is now furnished also with third-hand, forth-hand perceptions.
Imagination must be the key of our era. It is not too late, because individual imagination is not yet utilized by consumerism unlike creation, even though I believe it will be someday if we keep not imagining.
