|
Bette Mifsud, Coronation
of the Virgin with |
Random Access |
| If you are not out for some social interaction in a
MUD or a MOO or other types of discussion groups in which
you basically function as a player, calling up a Web site
can generally be likened to a type of computerised
browsing in a virtual library. The user's objective;
information, entertainment or diversion, determines their
approach. Connections are text-based, so the user acts in
a mode of random-access reading, able to jump to any
portion of the stored information without having to read
any other first. Images are not seen but scrolled, scanned or clicked on. The nexus between perception and the construction of meaning relies on skimming the surface, in an instantaneous desire to see, interpret and know. Recently deceased Australian artist Ian Burn identified a contemporary disregard for the act of seeing, calling it a shift away from perception, "(a)way from using our looking as part of the dialogue with a work of art, as a way of questioning the object".1 Burn considered the phenomena of reading pictures a rhetorical vision, which eliminates the tension, contradiction and paradox between what we see and what we know. The computer screen engages new dialogues with the viewer and between artist and audience. What are these new relationships and do they reduce the subject’s range of experience to purveying abstract information? Our embrace of computer technology and the determinist standpoint adopted by sections of western governments, media and business require attempts to recognise the cultural impact of this industry. How does reality compare to the rhetoric and fashionable metaphors associated with digital technology? What changes do we have to make to accommodate these new forms of communication (digital photography, networks, multimedia) and do they make a difference? Are computerised communications altering concepts of presence, place and time? Who is being empowered by these tools and are they being used to address the social, cultural and artistic ramifications of living in an age of the "information autobahn" (whatever that might be)? Footnotes |
 Patricia Piccinini, T.M.G.P, digiprint 120 x 100 cm, 1994 |
