[iDC] (no subject)

[sergio basbaum]

Hi David,

Thank you for interesting ideas which make me curious about your book.
I may be obvious, but both internet and television, along cinema and
advertising are embedded in this broader question of the image regime
in the XXth century -- which modern and contemporary arts are suposed
to challenge and question. Many interesting thinkers -- who you've
probably know very well -- have worked on this, with many interesting
directions.

Most of all, I'm very sympathetic to Vilém Flusser's ideas on
"technical images" shaping the imagination of post-historical
societies -- they open many productive directions to think
contemporary culture; and also to Debord's explorations on the notion
of Society of Spectacle, when he clealy affirms that spectacle is "a
social relation among people, mediated by images".

When I have shortly adressed here the problem of a certain future
which is now being projected in the labs of technological corporations
I mean most of all and image of the future which is projected in the
minds of people, thus shaping the imagination of future. Such images
program society to act in different directions. So there's this war
going on in our world in what concerns to images, imagination and
imaginary. Televison and internet -- which many think are soon going
to be a single media -- have a major role in shaping people's minds.

This is much probably pretty obvious, but such obvious things can
always be regarded and re-found through different paths.

best vibes for all

S.



On 6/19/07, David Joselit <david.joselit at yale.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Hello:
>
>  My name is David Joselit, and based on my new book, Feedback: Television
> Against Democracy
> (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11109),
> Trebor invited me to pose a few questions to the list.
>
>  One of my motivations for working on television of the initial network era
> (whose terminal point, in my view, occurs when cable becomes the dominant
> delivery system) was my surprise at how TV seems to drop out of most new
> media discussions even though its genesis as a medium, like radio before it,
> is very similar in its structure to that of the Internet:  military research
> and development leading to a technology with uncertain use value; adoption
> and dissemination by enthusiasts; and commercial enclosure.  I was
> particularly struck in my research by how closely the early discourse around
> cable-when it was still based in community access-mirrors the early claims
> made for the Internet.  Is TV irrelevant, or does it embody a possible
> future for the Internet?
>
>  And secondly, as an art historian I'm attracted by the prospect of
> displacing our analysis of images from what they mean-i.e., their face
> value-to how they circulate, how they get concentrated (visual tumors even)
> as icons that may create publics (think of the Abu Ghraib photos, but, for
> those of you who are American and old enough, Campbells soup!).  Is it
> possible to do for images what Franco Moretti has done for the novel-create
> a kind of political geography or economy?  Obviously television and the
> Internet are two important public "spaces" structured by the circulation of
> images.
>
>  Thanks for any thoughts on these questions.
>
>  David
>  --
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity
> (distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> http://mailman.thing.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/idc
>
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>
> iDC Photo Stream:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>
> RSS feed:
> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>
>
>