Ascott Article

After reading the article, "Planetary Technoetics: Art, Technology and Consciousness" by Roy Ascott, I reflected on the idea that human beings are all connected and we should attempt to realize that we are all the same species. It is a challenging task to come to greater understanding of one another to overcome our differences, and Ascott treats the advances of technologies as a fix that will easily hold the solutions.

While quite an idealistic stretch, I have had thoughts like this before, and they come from my interests in space and science fiction. While it is hopeful to believe that a new form of art or technological engineering can work to expand our consciousness, the niche of people who are the forerunners in this type of lifestyle and research are few and far between, well outside of the mainstream, and generally lacking the political influence to raise their concern on the national or global agenda. Espseically when it comes to Narby's idea of vegetal reality, and the concept of getting in touch with our consciousness through DNA signals seems to be quite a stretch. It is more likely in my opinion to take some kind of external event from our planet, the discovery of another life form, of another intelligence, to really awaken the billions of people on this planet to a form of planetary consciousness!


However, I believe there can be an impact through interactive art. I believe that it does have the ability to bring people back together, to bond them to come closer to the human potential. The more we can interact and share experiences that are beyond our normal state of awareness together, the more chances we have to understand eachother. To move away from the television, and create the nightly family activity into a creative, interactive endevour may move the scale in the right direction. I agree with Ascott when he mentions that "meaning is created out of interaction" and the jobs of an artist are to "offer new creative contexts in which meaning can be built." However, access to these type of experiences will remain limited to the few.


In the part of the article that talks about terror as a medium of design-built strategy, Ascott just seems to believe we can easily change our paradigm of thinking. The fact is, it takes a lot of energy and knowledge to think along these broad lines on a regular basis. To understand the larger forces behind what is going on when it comes to terrorist attacks instead of the day-to-day events that become forgotten and just add to the amount of deaths and suffering for the people does not come naturally. That we need a "sensibility to culture that lie outside the Western paradigm" is true, but our brain can only hold so many pieces of information at one time, and when we have to attend to our immediate realities and the daily demands placed on us, it is very hard to stay attuned to people's lives and cultures that are outside our immediate awareness.


When "two world views are so fundamentally opposed to interaction between eachother," it is going to take more than any one conversation to begin to allow for forgiveness of the others' thoughts and actions throughout the course of time. It makes me believe that it will be in the work of the artist that can symbolically show what we are in the larger scale of the universe to begin to move the ones with political influence.

The issue is in what medium will this art be? A medium that already exists, such as film? Or one that has yet to be created? Even the most wisdom-filled, conscious works of art never end up reaching their entire intended audience, and the metaphor is generally lost along the way and not even comprehended by many. At what point will the new media art actually "take its place in the world," if ever?