I have been thinking of similar things lately. it seems that benjamin's
concept of the aura, which was obliterated by cinema and tv as well, is
reconnected within locative media, at least in context of experimental
projects and research. But it seems like there are two trends: one
reintroduces our environment, immediate surrounding, and nearby citizens
to us t hrough mobile media, and one potentially alienates us further, in
the sense that more and more we can f unction without need for direct
human and tactile interaction. but i agree, this newfound complexity is
the interesting part, as it is the unpredictable part and the part hard to
compare to past mass media development, whether tv, print, etc.
>>One work sits in a phone, another in a frame - but that
>>doesn't make it necessarily different.
> ...snip...
>>a free network is a political response
> ...snip...
>>As a structure
>>it seems no different to a picture frame
>
> A picture frame designates the status of that which it encloses as an art
> object, at the same time as it separates the art object from the world. A
> further act of distancing occurs by virtue of the critical distance of the
> perceiving subject and the physical distance from the perceiving body
> within the gallery context.
>
> This might be opposed to what Walter Benjamin identified as a 'tactile'
> mode of perception, one characterised by distraction rather than
> concentration: 'Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by
> attention as by habit.' Benjamin relates this 'tactility' to the way in
> which architecture touches and directs the lives of those who move around
> and within it, not as a distanced object, operating on a more subconscious
> level, its affect all the more powerful for getting under the skin.
>
> For a long time I have been interested in how Benjamin's thinking on
> cinema
> relates to the musical event, and it again comes to mind in relation to
> mobile and locative media. Technology (if by that you mean gadgets) is not
> the issue. Equally, I think we would only get so far by arguing whether
> what is at stake is a fragmentation, multiplication or expansion of the
> frame. What is interesting to me is precisely where things become blurred,
> where mobility and embeddedness within the social cause us to view the
> possibilities for art in different ways. Marc's comments on the vehicle
> suggest another metaphor here. To quote a passenger on Shanghai’s new (but
> yet to catch on) airport train, "the farmers' plots were reduced to
> streaking geometrical abstractions, and time seemed to bend, with the
> thick
> traffic on the parallel highway down below zooming in reverse."
>
> Drew
>
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