Advertising media, Broadcast media, Digital media, Electronic media, Hypermedia, Mass media, Multimedia, New media, Social media … the catalog is prolific. Divergent, but all have something in common: technological media are not tools as much as they are a significant part of our social and psychological lives, intervening not only in what we do but in how we think and feel. Computer, network and digitally generated “new” images, constitute not just another type of representing, but of perceiving. These images manufacture and articulate lived experience. In this respect, media participate actively in social processes creating a novel human condition. Affect and identity are constructed around vast digital archives that are able to impact how people think of themselves. Information technologies are becoming our second nature. This novel “genealogy of the sensible” requires one to rethink the actuality and historicity of human desire and aesthetics. Are there consequences for one’s psychic and collective individuation?
The exhibiton, SelfConscious, asked artists to re-think the notion of contemporary identity—both collective and singular—by expressing themselves using a variety of technological media. Questions for the viewer to entertain include:How does novel audio and/or visual technologies construct a culture or counter-culture of affect, emotion, memory, desire? Do the installations propose a reconceptualized society?
The exhibiton, SelfConscious, asked artists to re-think the notion of contemporary identity—both collective and singular—by expressing themselves using a variety of technological media. Questions for the viewer to entertain include:How does novel audio and/or visual technologies construct a culture or counter-culture of affect, emotion, memory, desire? Do the installations propose a reconceptualized society?
