[iDC] Blanking________ (the desire beneath CPA...)

[twsherma at mailbox.syr.edu]

There is a new psychological phenomenon emerging in this era of hyper-
telemedia, information abundance and overload. People of all ages and
walks of life are 'blanking'_______that is, they are shutting down or
experiencing momentary ruptures of consciousness, or in very severe cases,
'blanking' sometimes lasting for days. This is not attention deficit
disorder (ADD) or daydreaming (dd), but a sudden breakdown of
consciousness brought about by sensory and cognitive over-extension
induced by hyper-connectivity.

People rarely choose to focus on one coherent stream of information these
days, but rather gather data from multiple sources simultaneously. Instead
of simply listening to the radio or watching TV, we read a newspaper,
magazine or book while listening and/or watching while we have something
to eat and we have a conversation on the phone while we stroke our dog's
tummy with our bare foot. This is how we function in our leisure time--we
choose to compose our immediate information environment from multiple
sources, mixing our multi-layered reality on the spot.

We've become very good at loading or packing more and more sources of data
and information into our shorter and shorter days. In school or the
workplace we have learned to concentrate on specific, required tasks in
chaotic environments characterized by high levels of noise. In a sense we
are always in training, learning to swim in more and more confusing,
turbulent currents of data. Each successive generation has become better
at coping with louder, busier, more crowded, more discordant surroundings.
When we come home to a dark, quiet apartment, we find a need to flip
switch after switch, turning on our info-appliances until we achieve our
preferred quotient of information. We panic without the pressure, a media
presence akin to atmospheric pressure. We sleep as an escape from
exhaustion with our televisions and radios and computers left on...

Today people have multimedia workstations to turn up the volume during
their days and nights. Many work at home and these workstations are
transformed into playstations and vice versa by simply pointing these
machines in different directions. Or perhaps more accurately the
difference between work and play is something that is determined
internally, psychologically, as we adopt these different attitudes
inside... We mix our multichannel, multidimensional realities internally,
in a private place, wet and cool and blue with a sense of bioelectrical
equilibrium.

Hyper-connectivity is the buzz. When we're flying high we tie into
anything and everything and we enjoy building bridges between audio and
video and data and touching and looking and tasting and being here and
there while wanting to be somewhere else alone together in sweet
intensity. We're strong and immense and spread out in tandem with the
forces of the universe.

But then we blank and it's frightening to go down, to crash without any
sound or punctuation. To terminate into a well of emptiness. First it's
scary and then it's disappointing, an experience racked with futility. [A
loved one strokes our hair in the distance.] Our own fingertips are frozen
in the curl of our empty hands. Coming out of blanking is the realization
that overload has been achieved. You've gone further than ever before.
This is better. This is okay. You have pushed yourself into the organic
reset mode. You'll have to stay 'down' or quiet or disconnected for a
short while, but step by step you'll begin to reload again. Progressing as
if dancing through a series of inevitable contacts, tying yourself into
this and that until you feel whole again, up and running, functioning,
expanding, turning up the volume, finding the rhythms, opening your eyes,
wider, stepping out further, reaching across, bridging impossible
distances and differences, until again you blank.



Tom Sherman, 1996


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Blanking________ was originally written for the online project SUBVERTICAL
ORG, 10/96. This is the original text, later performed and recorded by Tom
Sherman and Bernhard Loibner, and published on "Personal Human," an audio
CD coproduced by Kunstradio/ORF and Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 1997.
This text appears, revised slightly, in "Before and After the I-Bomb: an
Artist in the Information Environment" by Tom Sherman, Banff Centre Press
(Banff, Alberta), 2002.

http://www.kunstradio.at/TAKE/CD/sherman_cd.html