I realize that lately I've been quite silent with my writings on here.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the idea of the full time artist. I personally don't think that we should pay people a full time wage to just 'create' art. I know this probably comes as quite a controversial view, but hear me out.
I'm not referring to art which serves a purpose or is commissioned. I'm talking about the more self-indulgent forms of art which are created purely as a piece of art, which in turn may then be commodified.
Why do I think people shouldn't be paid full time for this?
Well, at the moment I'm a fierce believer that art should be a by-product of living. We should be living our lives to the fullest, pursuing our goals and cherishing the things we find important. Any art we should create should secondarily to this, it should be a part-time enterprise that we create because we feel so compelled to, by our breathtaking day to day existence. Our art should be an expression of the way we're living our lives.
This is why I believe that you shouldn't spend all day creating art - you should get out there and do the things you love (if that's creating art, fine - but I don't believe that a full time wage should be derived from this)
As such, I'm in a bit of a dry spell in terms of output and creation. I'm going to take a bit of time out to realign and focus on living life.
When I feel compelled to write with fervor and excitement, I'll be back.
See you on the other side.
Extend and Numb: Why we should label technology
As I'm sure you're aware, pretty much every foodstuff for sale in the UK comes covered with labels, forming our view of how good or how bad that piece of food is for our body. It gives you the amount of sugars and fats in grams, tells your what percentage of your RDA the nutrients in that food provides and some even go as far to offer a traffic light warning system: if it's green, you'll feel amazing. If it's red, you're going to die within a week.
Or something like that.
This week I've been thinking a lot about another of Marshall McLuhan's ideas: the idea that every technology extends and numbs us. For example: shoes. Shoes enable us to extent the 'reach' of the foots capabilities, allowing us to walk over all sorts of surfaces and temperatures. But to attain this, we sacrifice being directly in contact with the earth, being able to feel the surface we're walking upon. For example: Mobile phones. They extend the reach of our ears and mouths, allowing us to communicate in hyperreal fashion of great distances. Yet, the quality of the conversation is lessened. The nuances we see or feel in conversation, like body language or eye contact are diminished.
The idea that we are both extended and numbed by our technology is ultimately a neutral one, but variable depending on your view point. You have to weigh up what you are willing to sacrifice to incorporate this new technology in to your life.
So what's this got to do with labels?
Well, those labels are there to warn us. To help us further understand our food choices and making decisions accordingly. Whilst I have no quantifiable data to express it I believe that since the rise of such labels consumers have begun to calorie count and fuss over their food choices infinitely more. As I said, I have no data to prove this, only my personal experience - but for me that's enough.
Should we maybe consider having labels upon all forms of digital and electronic technology? One column stating what it will enable you to do, with another column telling you what you're going to have to give up in order to attain the new ability?
Sure, you can have this new app/social network/internet service - it'll let you do all these awesome things! But in return you've got to give it your attention 24/7, you've got to surrender your privacy and personal data and the quality of the relationships you share over it. Deal?
Often we unthinkingly adopt new technologies, we get swept along with the tide of culture - not questioning the impact of certain devices upon our lives. Could labeling open our eyes to consider how our lives change when we adopt these new gadgets?
Personally, and this may come as a surprise considering I've just written this article, I'm against the idea. I think it would frankly be a bit ridiculous. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of labels and warnings all over my food, I'd rather just educate myself a little about the things I should and shouldn't consume and then eat with moderation. But I'm writing about it to highlight a point. I strongly believe we need to be considerably more mindful about the way we use our technologies. We shouldn't allow ourselves to be seduced by the apparent magic of new digital tools. And we certainly shouldn't succumb to just saying:
"Well, it's here now. Might as well use it. It's the future whether we like it or not. That's just the way things go."
Take the time to think again and remember Thoreau:
Or something like that.
This week I've been thinking a lot about another of Marshall McLuhan's ideas: the idea that every technology extends and numbs us. For example: shoes. Shoes enable us to extent the 'reach' of the foots capabilities, allowing us to walk over all sorts of surfaces and temperatures. But to attain this, we sacrifice being directly in contact with the earth, being able to feel the surface we're walking upon. For example: Mobile phones. They extend the reach of our ears and mouths, allowing us to communicate in hyperreal fashion of great distances. Yet, the quality of the conversation is lessened. The nuances we see or feel in conversation, like body language or eye contact are diminished.
The idea that we are both extended and numbed by our technology is ultimately a neutral one, but variable depending on your view point. You have to weigh up what you are willing to sacrifice to incorporate this new technology in to your life.
So what's this got to do with labels?
Well, those labels are there to warn us. To help us further understand our food choices and making decisions accordingly. Whilst I have no quantifiable data to express it I believe that since the rise of such labels consumers have begun to calorie count and fuss over their food choices infinitely more. As I said, I have no data to prove this, only my personal experience - but for me that's enough.
Should we maybe consider having labels upon all forms of digital and electronic technology? One column stating what it will enable you to do, with another column telling you what you're going to have to give up in order to attain the new ability?
Sure, you can have this new app/social network/internet service - it'll let you do all these awesome things! But in return you've got to give it your attention 24/7, you've got to surrender your privacy and personal data and the quality of the relationships you share over it. Deal?
Often we unthinkingly adopt new technologies, we get swept along with the tide of culture - not questioning the impact of certain devices upon our lives. Could labeling open our eyes to consider how our lives change when we adopt these new gadgets?
Personally, and this may come as a surprise considering I've just written this article, I'm against the idea. I think it would frankly be a bit ridiculous. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of labels and warnings all over my food, I'd rather just educate myself a little about the things I should and shouldn't consume and then eat with moderation. But I'm writing about it to highlight a point. I strongly believe we need to be considerably more mindful about the way we use our technologies. We shouldn't allow ourselves to be seduced by the apparent magic of new digital tools. And we certainly shouldn't succumb to just saying:
"Well, it's here now. Might as well use it. It's the future whether we like it or not. That's just the way things go."
Take the time to think again and remember Thoreau:
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Kindling up a storm
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| Click to enlarge - A little bit hard to read at this size but my blog layout won't work with it any bigger. |
eNaked II: Leaving my phone at home
So I recently posted a quite rambling article, which I ended with:
For the last few days, I've been leaving my mobile phone at home. Initially, it was a way to distance myself from a personal problem, but it has grown to more than that. I have a laptop (that's how I'm writing to you now) but the charger has recently broken, meaning I can't really use it very often. I also have a Kindle, which does have internet but of such a basic nature that it's hardly worth more than simply checking emails (certainly not replying - the method of text input is similar to that of putting in your high score on a Sega Megadrive).
These are the three main tools with which I join the connected world, the post communications revolution world, the internet.
Last night I was out with two of my close friends. We were drinking and being merry - celebrating being (almost) done with university for the year. For me, that took the form of enjoying quite a few Sailer Jerry's on the rocks (my head is actually in pretty good shape this morning - I took precautions and necked a pint of water).
At one point during the night I drunkenly stood outside the small bar and had a personal epiphany. I was standing in the heart of Manchester's Northern Quarter - one of my favourite parts of the city - and the street was quiet. I stood outside alone and it felt like someone took the blinkers off me. The world started to look like it was in widescreen, I could see so much more. The level of detail, the magnitude of the buildings, being along and integrated with the urban landscape; it all suddenly appeared so much more real to me.
Now, you could argue that I was just ratted out of my face - my epiphany was purely a bi-product of my drinking. But whilst it no doubt had an amplifying effect, it was not the sole creator. The cause of this realization was quite simple: I didn't have my phone with me.
On any other night, I might have simply flipped open my phone whilst outside, flicked through contacts, drunkenly updated Twitter or drunk-spammed my friends inboxes. Naturally, not having my phone didn't allow me to do this.
Instead I just looked around.
I felt like someone physically unplugged a cable from my head: I felt truly in the moment. I wasn't worrying about what time it was, where we were going next, where we had just been - I was just focused on being right there and right then.
I returned in to the bar and, through excited slurs and spills of my drink, discussed this with one of my friends. We concluded that the generation I'm a part of grew up with the Internet but were never weaned off (I think they call us the Net generation? I don't know how true that is).
It's early days of trying to establish what I think about this, but this is the status quo: I like to be connected to other people - especially my family as I live around 200 miles away from them - and I like using the internet. There's a lot of cool stuff on it and some fantastic tools available. But I also feel like the line between the real and digital realms is beginning to blur. People are carrying their 'connection' with them in their pockets. They can contact anyone in the world (provided they're connected in too) from anywhere and they can do it anywhen (I'm aware that's not a word, the little red line is reinforcing that, but I like it so I'm coining it). Whilst I appreciate this technology, I'm starting to feel that I want to opt out of it further. I'm starting to believe that, whilst I'm living in this one location, maybe technology should be tethered to a point, that its mobility isn't necessarily a good thing. Whilst being hyper connected, people seem to forget about the real world, real people, real connections.
In the following video, Colin Wright talks about how carrying a camera changes your perspective and the way you look at your environment. You begin to look for photos. Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase 'the medium is the message' and McLuhan knew and highlighted ways in which our technology, whilst being a medium we use to transmit our agenda, leaves an indelible print upon our lives. In much the same way that carrying a camera makes you look at your environment differently, so does being hyper-connected. I think the ever connectedness puts on the blinkers that I felt removed last night.
Suffice to say, I think I'm going to be carrying my phone a bit less, more often.
Go eNaked for a day and just be in the world, unconnected.Mainly the article was intended to just re-kick start my regular writing which had hit some sort of a rut - as such it was quite unstructured and not really particularly well thought through. But, by just blurting out my thoughts at the point in time, I hit upon something wider that I'm working with at the moment.
For the last few days, I've been leaving my mobile phone at home. Initially, it was a way to distance myself from a personal problem, but it has grown to more than that. I have a laptop (that's how I'm writing to you now) but the charger has recently broken, meaning I can't really use it very often. I also have a Kindle, which does have internet but of such a basic nature that it's hardly worth more than simply checking emails (certainly not replying - the method of text input is similar to that of putting in your high score on a Sega Megadrive).
These are the three main tools with which I join the connected world, the post communications revolution world, the internet.
Last night I was out with two of my close friends. We were drinking and being merry - celebrating being (almost) done with university for the year. For me, that took the form of enjoying quite a few Sailer Jerry's on the rocks (my head is actually in pretty good shape this morning - I took precautions and necked a pint of water).
At one point during the night I drunkenly stood outside the small bar and had a personal epiphany. I was standing in the heart of Manchester's Northern Quarter - one of my favourite parts of the city - and the street was quiet. I stood outside alone and it felt like someone took the blinkers off me. The world started to look like it was in widescreen, I could see so much more. The level of detail, the magnitude of the buildings, being along and integrated with the urban landscape; it all suddenly appeared so much more real to me.
Now, you could argue that I was just ratted out of my face - my epiphany was purely a bi-product of my drinking. But whilst it no doubt had an amplifying effect, it was not the sole creator. The cause of this realization was quite simple: I didn't have my phone with me.
On any other night, I might have simply flipped open my phone whilst outside, flicked through contacts, drunkenly updated Twitter or drunk-spammed my friends inboxes. Naturally, not having my phone didn't allow me to do this.
Instead I just looked around.
I felt like someone physically unplugged a cable from my head: I felt truly in the moment. I wasn't worrying about what time it was, where we were going next, where we had just been - I was just focused on being right there and right then.
I returned in to the bar and, through excited slurs and spills of my drink, discussed this with one of my friends. We concluded that the generation I'm a part of grew up with the Internet but were never weaned off (I think they call us the Net generation? I don't know how true that is).
It's early days of trying to establish what I think about this, but this is the status quo: I like to be connected to other people - especially my family as I live around 200 miles away from them - and I like using the internet. There's a lot of cool stuff on it and some fantastic tools available. But I also feel like the line between the real and digital realms is beginning to blur. People are carrying their 'connection' with them in their pockets. They can contact anyone in the world (provided they're connected in too) from anywhere and they can do it anywhen (I'm aware that's not a word, the little red line is reinforcing that, but I like it so I'm coining it). Whilst I appreciate this technology, I'm starting to feel that I want to opt out of it further. I'm starting to believe that, whilst I'm living in this one location, maybe technology should be tethered to a point, that its mobility isn't necessarily a good thing. Whilst being hyper connected, people seem to forget about the real world, real people, real connections.
In the following video, Colin Wright talks about how carrying a camera changes your perspective and the way you look at your environment. You begin to look for photos. Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase 'the medium is the message' and McLuhan knew and highlighted ways in which our technology, whilst being a medium we use to transmit our agenda, leaves an indelible print upon our lives. In much the same way that carrying a camera makes you look at your environment differently, so does being hyper-connected. I think the ever connectedness puts on the blinkers that I felt removed last night.
Suffice to say, I think I'm going to be carrying my phone a bit less, more often.
eNaked
Recently, my flat mate and I have both been working on presentations - It's part of our assessment for university. My flat mate is comparing the idea of art for arts sake vs. self indulgent artists, discussing motives for creating art and whether one holds greater moral or cultural capital than the other.
Edgar Allen Poe, in his 1850 essay 'the poetic principle' states:
Whilst musing on this topic, I started thinking of it in context of our use of the internet, and electronic tools in general.
When we post on the internet, does it tend to take the form of sharing for sharing's sake, or is it self indulgence? The internet is a form of rapid pleasure technology - a technology that exists purely to satisfy a person's need or wants at the fastest rate possible?
Lately, I'm starting to feel that our obsessive societal relationship with being so hyper-connected and always switched on has become super unhealthy. We spend hours indulging in our interests, wildly skipping from one page to the next. Research has shown that the average time spent on a webpage by a UK user is around 21 seconds (source: Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows'). We're creating dependencies upon peripherals.
It feels like we're slowly creating digital incubators for ourselves, making certain that every input channel of our body is in some way satisfied.
Touch screen phone in hand. Check.
Over priced headphones on ears. Check.
Eye crazily scanning computer screen, occasionally flicking to the phone. Check and Check.
I think sometimes it's really important to just turn it all off.
Unplug.
Go eNaked for a day and just be in the world, unconnected.
Edgar Allen Poe, in his 1850 essay 'the poetic principle' states:
'...the simple fact is that would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem per se, this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem's sake.'To be honest, I don't know if I entirely agree with Poe. Surely the highest form of self indulgence is looking in to one's soul and producing a work to exist for no other reason than simply that the artist wishes it to exist? Especially when one proclaims one's own work to be 'supremely noble and thoroughly dignified'.Edgar Allen Poe (1850)
Whilst musing on this topic, I started thinking of it in context of our use of the internet, and electronic tools in general.
When we post on the internet, does it tend to take the form of sharing for sharing's sake, or is it self indulgence? The internet is a form of rapid pleasure technology - a technology that exists purely to satisfy a person's need or wants at the fastest rate possible?
Lately, I'm starting to feel that our obsessive societal relationship with being so hyper-connected and always switched on has become super unhealthy. We spend hours indulging in our interests, wildly skipping from one page to the next. Research has shown that the average time spent on a webpage by a UK user is around 21 seconds (source: Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows'). We're creating dependencies upon peripherals.
It feels like we're slowly creating digital incubators for ourselves, making certain that every input channel of our body is in some way satisfied.
Touch screen phone in hand. Check.
Over priced headphones on ears. Check.
Eye crazily scanning computer screen, occasionally flicking to the phone. Check and Check.
I think sometimes it's really important to just turn it all off.
Unplug.
Go eNaked for a day and just be in the world, unconnected.
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