Maps Feedback Reflection
As mentioned in the previous post reflecting on week 5, I definitely enjoyed every single groups presentation on their maps.
The general feedback given on the class's maps presentations was that we had to engage further with digital art in addition to how we were already engaging with digital culture.
As such, the two questions posed to us were as follows:
1. Can Digital Culture be viewed as a new medium in the way that photography and film, and, more specifically, the photographic/cinematic close-up were in the 19th/ 20th centuries? What might be the efficacy of this new medium? (according to McLuhan, it’s not what we’re watching on TV that matters – the news or a football match – but the fact we’re receiving televised information passively).
2. How does extensive data collection of our humanity shape the unconscious? What is the aesthetics of this process?
The first question seems to be referencing Mcluhan's aphorism "the medium is the message" which states that the medium is far from simply being a neutral channel through which media messages flow but rather produces symbolic effects through the content in which the media transmits. As such, his point is that the medium itself is more significant than the content it carries. My take on answering this question would be that similar to the way close-ups in photography and cinematography enabled one to take advantage of the capabilities of the medium of photography and film and position us as in a focused, 'intimate relationship' of sorts with the subject, viewing digital culture as a new medium that monitors the inter-personal dynamic between people and their usage of digital technologies distances us from the actual digital content to focus specifically instead on societal/cultural effects
As for the second question, the ability to collect and quantify different aspects of our humanity in the form of human data collection perhaps shapes the unconscious in the way we it affects our personal and social sense of digital selfhood and identity. As such, since we develop digital extensions of ourselves that are built through extensive digital collection and storage of data on the individual, people often have multiple personas and new forms of identity. However, this could also prove to be problematic in terms of how people's identities are often embedded into these technologies and as such data monitoring, tracking and mining are possible, raising many ethical and political problems.
The general feedback given on the class's maps presentations was that we had to engage further with digital art in addition to how we were already engaging with digital culture.
As such, the two questions posed to us were as follows:
1. Can Digital Culture be viewed as a new medium in the way that photography and film, and, more specifically, the photographic/cinematic close-up were in the 19th/ 20th centuries? What might be the efficacy of this new medium? (according to McLuhan, it’s not what we’re watching on TV that matters – the news or a football match – but the fact we’re receiving televised information passively).
2. How does extensive data collection of our humanity shape the unconscious? What is the aesthetics of this process?
The first question seems to be referencing Mcluhan's aphorism "the medium is the message" which states that the medium is far from simply being a neutral channel through which media messages flow but rather produces symbolic effects through the content in which the media transmits. As such, his point is that the medium itself is more significant than the content it carries. My take on answering this question would be that similar to the way close-ups in photography and cinematography enabled one to take advantage of the capabilities of the medium of photography and film and position us as in a focused, 'intimate relationship' of sorts with the subject, viewing digital culture as a new medium that monitors the inter-personal dynamic between people and their usage of digital technologies distances us from the actual digital content to focus specifically instead on societal/cultural effects
As for the second question, the ability to collect and quantify different aspects of our humanity in the form of human data collection perhaps shapes the unconscious in the way we it affects our personal and social sense of digital selfhood and identity. As such, since we develop digital extensions of ourselves that are built through extensive digital collection and storage of data on the individual, people often have multiple personas and new forms of identity. However, this could also prove to be problematic in terms of how people's identities are often embedded into these technologies and as such data monitoring, tracking and mining are possible, raising many ethical and political problems.
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