by Jaron Lanier
Poster developed @ Institut Art Visuel d’Orleans during workshop with Nicolas Filloque & Adrien Zammit from Atelier “Formes Vives”
On the 29th of October 2014 I attended Dr. Orla Murphy’s research seminar where she discussed the shift between what was once existed only as linear, and can now be perceived as chaotic and transformative- the shift to new media.
In this seminar Dr.Murphy spoke about the ability of new media to change the way in which we write and represent ourselves, the commodification of humanity. She explained that the screen operates in a different manner to a page in print, the screen can do so much more for us both academically and personally. The printed page is what is, two-dimensional and somewhat limited, the impact of new media however has altered this significantly. Our interests, our work, and perhaps to a less positive effect, our personal information, can be shared globally. These ‘pages’ can be hyper-linked to further the amount of information available, they can be translated into almost any language, or an aural dimension can be added o make the information vision-impaired user-friendly.
This quickly expanding world of new-media is not necessarily seen in a wholly positive light however. Dr. Murphy quotes Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget in pointing out that tools (such as social networking) which were created to assist us, can negatively impact our individuality. There’s an illusion/delusion of choice when it comes to sites like Facebook where everyone’s lives need to fit a certain template. This is quite different from my beginnings on social media through MySpace where your profile could be pretty much anything you wanted, play your favourite music in the background, and display every colour of the rainbow. This, to me, would imply that social media is developing in a way in which our freedom and personality is increasingly compressed. The commodofication of humanity.
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