The Technology & the Society

Written by Raymond Williams, The Technology and the Society and was published 1972, and attempted to recognize how technology and society interacted in order to bring about the television. Williams proposes two categories of how technology has altered our world: technological determinism, and symptomatic technology. From there, Williams  suggests that we dismiss the first two categories, and that we view technology and inventions as effects of human intention, guided by "social needs, purposes and practices". This view remedies Williams initial problem with categorizing technology as an effect or a cause, because every invention is then en effect of intent.

Raymond Williams

The late 19th century and early 20th century format for inventions could be illustrated from Williams conclusion of technology, as effects of human intention guided by social needs, purposes and practices. This format continues to bear striking resemblance to the late 20th century and the world we live in today. For example, I can remember being in high school and hearing from my teachers that many of the world's new technology originates from science fiction novels, but are created for "current" needs. Technology that was proposed in books such as Star Trek, and Star Wars can be seen to be coming true today.

Here are just five inventions we owe to science fiction (from this website):
1) Electronic Book Readers
2) Wireless Tracking Monitor Bracelets
3) Light Sculptures
4) Networked Electronic Voting Machines
5) Computerized Language Translation Software

One example that I love, from one of my favorite book series, Harry Potter, inspired technology that the U.S Army is inventing right now, called an invisibility cloak. If anything, history, and series of events like designing technology originating from novels, tells us that while some inventions are created accidentally,  most are foreseen (as Williams states) in human imagination or are created out of necessity, and are constructed when the technological means are available. I've heard from many teachers that the future is essentially governed by science fiction novels, which interestingly coincides with Williams view that technology is "foreseen". This idea in itself is an immense and fascinating concept to contemplate.

Possible Invisibility Cloak Technology

Screen Capture from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

I thought Williams consideration of technology and society was commendable because he united the two thoughts of technology, technological determinism and symptomatic technology. But while he characterized technology as the effect of human intention, he also recognizes but simultaneously glosses over accidental inventions/discoveries that have altered our world today, such as penicillin, radioactivity and plastic. Perhaps Williams would argue that these discoveries nevertheless contained an intention to discover, and would then correspondingly agree with his thesis. However, William's thesis would be a lot stronger if he were able to account for these accidental discoveries more adequately if he actually discussed them as results of intent, instead of glossing over them.

Today, television is being used as an artistic medium, which is a far cry from it's initial objectives of a mass media communications device. Film genre's categorize narrative elements of films, and the experimental film faction is quite a, for the lack of a better word, unique result echoing from the invention of the television. After viewing William Wegman's  short video's, including Deodorant and Crooked Finger, I questioned his intentions for making the videos, as well as his intentions for calling them "art". While silly and sometimes amusing, they didn't convey any humanistic truths to me, weren't beautiful, and were not significant, to use all the available definitions of art. This was true of the videos watched in class, but upon viewing his photographs of his dog Man Ray, I could begin to understand why he is considered an artist:

"Puppies" by William Wegman

"Hansel and Gretal" by William Wegman

"On Set" by William Wegman

The photos, unlike his videos, conveyed artistic conception and thought, and demonstrated talent.

Along the same vein of Wegman, the artist Anthony Goicolea utilized video as a tool for artistic expression. The video Amphibians was a very different use of the medium than Wegman's approach. Goicolea's video's followed more of a conventional plot and character design than Wegman's, but is still considered an experimental piece because it places the viewer in a more thoughtful and active relationship to the film than mainstream films. I appreciate the effort put forth of Wegman and Goicolea's films, but will abstain from placing an opinion on the experimental film genre until I see more films along the line of Stan Brekhage, because I can actually think of his films as being art.

Burroughs & The State of Decay

In The New Media Reader, Noah Wardrip-Fruin declares that "there is nothing new under the sun." While this may sound like a sentimental artistic recycling notion, it also holds true in the realm of physics. The law of conservation of mass states the mass of an isolated system will remain constant over time. If this is true, than every artistic endeavor ever attempted is a part of an immense recycling system. However, this idea only holds true to domain of mass, right? Perhaps, but the idea of reusing information and ideas, not just physical material, has been a debate amongst philosophers for years. Most people believe that everything someone acquires, be that knowledge or matter, is due in some part to the preexisting world around you. And in that sense, there is nothing new under the sun.


Additionally, in the New Media Reader, Wardrip-Fruin states that "the surrealists were uninterested in tossing dice unless the throw might help to coax something up from the unconsciousness". This echos the ideas brought up in the article "the Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin" by William S. Burroughs, in which Burroughs adamantly attests that "poetry is for everyone" and that the act of "cutting up" words in order to create a new dialogue is a true form of art. Wardrip-Fruin and Burroughs I believe, would both support this notion of the need for human interaction or editing during the process of "cutting up" words, because of this necessity for the words to be able to speak to the human unconscious. If this is true, than the use of a computer for editing processes would eliminate this connection with the unconcious. The human unconscious was explored in depth by the psychologist Carl Jung, and proposes to express inhumanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience. A personal unconscious differs from a collective unconscious in that the collective unconscious collects and organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a particular species. And so, to Burroughs point, any form of cutting up words or objects and edited by human hands should in some way speak to our collective unconscious.

William S. Burroughs

Carl Jung

I believe that the idea of speaking to our collective unconscious is what the "cutting up" of works relies upon in order to be relevant to society. Unless of course, the aim is to be as intelligible as possible (which, to be fair, some people would consider this an art form). Perhaps one of the earliest popular "cut-ups" or "mash-ups" in human literature was the novel Finnegan's Wake, by James Joyce. This book is in an experimental style that includes a mash up of linguistic items and the abandonment of conventional plot and character developments, which makes it one of the most difficult to read novels in the English language. I feel as though my initial stance on being introduced to the cutting up style of poetry or art is not to be inclined to it, because I think that while it's fun and experimental, it lacks a purposeful drive and intention. And for me, those are the things that I most admire in artistic talent, rather than the happy accidents that Burroughs exalts. Here's a short clip of the author James Joyce reading from Finnegan's Wake:




In continuation of this idea of an artistic collage, the 2002 found footage film Decasia explores the medium by considering old and decaying silent film footage. Created by Bill Morrison, the film was constructed by using found snippets of decaying film footage. The film evokes a sense of loss, due to the obvious deterioration of the film used. Morrison enhances this idea of the loss of something that can never be recaptured by the compilation of decaying images set to a dramatic (and purposefully out of tune) soundtrack. Morrison's use of technology transforms these found footage reels from singular, perhaps sentimental remnants of life, to a collective pool of decaying pieces from a lost world. And in that sense, I believe that Morrison made use of Carl Jung's idea of a collective unconscious, in that this film definitely speaks to us as human beings by being a world in which all that we know was previously a part of.

The Panopticon & The Still Image

This project exhibits three kinds of surveillance: self-surveillance, being watched by an authoritarian figure, and surveillance by an anonymous entity through reflections. These sets were largely influenced by the invention called The Panopticon, created by the 16th century philosopher, Jeremy Bentham.

The Panopticon was a prison building that was constructed in such a way, that the prisoners were able to be under surveillance at all times, but they would never know if they were actually being watched, or if no one was in the surveillance tower at all. This design would have bred fear and anxiety amongst the prisoners, and was meant to cease forbidden behaviors and activities. This is an image of Bentham's Panopticon:

Further information on the Panopticons invention is illustrated quite well in this informational video:

With these three sets on Flickr, I wanted to examine critical self-surveillance, an approach that humanizes a source of surveillance, and depersonalizing or dehumanize surveillance. My method was to start with examining the self, turn that into a larger picture by humanizing a normally anonymous entity, and then to abstract that idea of an identity completely.

First, the "Reflections of One's Self" set examines the very human idea of being aware of one's appearance, and attaching identity to one's self through their appearance. This concept became more interesting to me to look at it on a time scale, and to realize that people have used their appearances as a means of identifying who they are, perhaps more so than their personalities, beliefs or actions throughout time. This became more apparent in the context of time due to the  the various fashion decades dictating what a person's appearance was. I decided to capture this through the surveillance of one's self by reflections.

For "The Antiquated Watcher", I wanted to form an identity for what the public calls "the man" when referring to the government. The government plays a crucial role the surveillance of civilians, and because the identity of "the man" is obscured by a mask of anonymity, ideas of "the man" can generate fear. I think fear is heightened when a being remains anonymous, because it becomes more of an idea instead of a tangible corporation made of tangible beings (here comes the V for Vendetta comparisons). What kind of retribution can someone get by attacking an idea? This is why I wanted to provide a face to the entity known as "the man". This humanizes that entity, but at the same time, he is portrayed in desolate, lonely and ramshackle locations. This is a comment on "the man" being able to exist in every corner of our imaginations, because of the fear generated by anonymity.

"The Windows" set, in contrast to "The Antiquated Watcher", attempts to portray surveillance again as an anonymous source. By dehumanizing the entity by abstracting their silhouette, it heightens the sense of tension and fear. The pictures show reflections from very domestic locations, such as around a house, to give the sense that you are being watched even from the comfort of your home.

For each set, I used a different technique in editing the photos. for the self-surveillance set I wanted a lost of contrast, and softness to convey a feeling reminiscent of film noir. "The Watcher" set was the most time consuming to edit because I used the same format for editing to create a cohesive esthetic. I wanted an old-world feel, so I added texture and some vignetting, and made all the color palettes subdued and vintage looking. The result was a gritty, antique feel that seemed to bring out the best in each picture. For "The Windows" set, I played a lot with trying to get the pictures to have a green tinge for a sense of unreality, and for a surreal quality. I took an editing cue from film editors after I read on article that pointed out the fact that certain genres of movies have similar color palettes created in post-production. For example, a green tinge conveys a psychological thriller, grays or a desaturated palette seem to be standard for post-apocalyptic worlds, and oranges and teals run rampant in action thrillers. I thought this article was rather hilarious, but also put forth an interesting point- that colors can create the emotional setting or feelings of pictures, and I tried to set that up for each picture to convey what I wanted.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a computer term that is commonly associated with applications that facilitate interactive information sharing. The first arrivals of this interactive sharing on the internet were the use of text, then a program called Adobe Photoshop, then flash. Each of these platforms allowed sharing through different mediums. Text facilitated conversation through discussion, such as email, blogs and message boards. Photoshop allowed people to share still images, and flash allowed videos and moving pictures to be shared.

When Rachel Crowl, the Lawrence University New Media Coordinator came to speak during class, I thought that she shared invaluable information as someone who was present during significant periods of change through the digital age. It was interesting to hear her personal thoughts about what happened and the effects of the changes. I enjoyed how she broke the technological breakthroughs down, such as assigning email as taking communication into our own hands, and blogs enabling people to self-publish, as well as the age of social networking and Facebook being created solely for the purpose of socializing.

Furthermore, her take on how Web 2.0 allows and almost forces an integrated kind of learning was for me, a different way to think of how the web effects people. Because I've grown up with the challenges of computers being an entity that changes constantly, I've just sort of adapted to that change without looking at it as a hurdle, but as something that comes with the territory. And along with that territory, I've made it my business to get a grasp on every popular program out there and be proficient with it because it enables me to have much more control on the internet as an artist. When Rachel talked about the necessity of learning how to use common programs such as Photoshop, Flash, and Illustrator I completely understood what she said, because the tools that learning how to use those programs enable you to navigate the internet so much better. And for me, I really threw myself into the process of learning photoshop, and I became really interested in using it as a an artistic medium for digital painting. Without Web 2.0, there wouldn't have been this entirely new platform to create the kind of art I have been creating with Photoshop. Here are some of the paintings I've been able to create in photoshop:

The development of the democratized invention called Web 2.0 has enabled artists of all shapes and sizes to come out of the woodwork and has given them a platform to showcase their works, no matter who they are or where they come from. It has leveled the artistic playing field that used to only allow artists of a certain caliber to enjoy an audience. And in my opinion, it has "upped the ante" of what artists can aspire to become, because they are now up against the artistic endeavors from people around the world in this digital age.

Here's a short video that illustrates (very consicly) the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0:

The Decisive Moment

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer of the 20th century, and is widely regarded as the father of modern journalism. A French churchman of the 17th century named Cardinal de Retz once said, "there is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment". Considered to be an expert on snapshot or candid photography, it's no wonder that Cartier-Bresson's photographs remind the viewer of what Cardinal de Retz referred to as the "decisive moment". Cartier-Bresson's use of the then new Leica 35 mm miniature camera technology enabled him to exploit that "decisive moment" due to the Leica's size, mobility, shutter speed, as well as Cartier-Bresson's unabashed outlook on informal, "not-in-the-studio" portraiture. While the Leica gave Cartier-Bresson a means to take of-the-moment photographs, his method was to travel extensively and to be in the right place at the right time.

One would believe that the concept of the "decisive moment" in regards to image-hosting giants such as Flickr, would play out as millions of "decisive moments" in photographs from around the globe. However, in order for there to be that mastery of the candid photograph that the likes of Cartier-Bresson captured, one has to either have many happy accidents, or be very intentional about when they take a photograph. In today's day and age, Flickr is a web community that enables people from around the world to upload photographs for many different purposes, and many of those photographs are not taken with the intent of any decisive moment, but merely for the purpose of sharing. Because of this, pictures of the kind of decisive moments referred to by Cardinal de Retz are more numerous due to websites like Flickr, but are perhaps captured unintentionally and do not hold the same intensity and gravity that pictures solely taken for the capture of the decisive moment do. Here's an example of what may happen to photographs with and without intent:

Captured with intent:

Captured without intent:

If what Cardinal de Retz said about everything having a decisive moment is true, then it follows that Museum of Modern Art curator, Dan Leers would have many of them on his transition from Lawrence University to the New York art world. Interestingly, Leers referenced many decisive moments that led him to the many experiences of his life during his lecture at Lawrence, including his classes taken at Lawrence, moving to the west coast, his time spent in west Africa, and his time at Columbia University. Dan Leers encouraged those at the lecture to try and explore a diverse range of subjects while at Lawrence, and it seemed as though his message to his audience was that by expanding your interests and exploring your world, you enable yourself to experience more of life's decisive moments.