Remediation, ad nauseam: if you mess with Alice, you mess with me

I did not look at the date this article was written until I finished; it was painfully obvious that the article was written about fifteen years ago.  This first becomes apparent when the authors babble on excitedly about virtual reality helmets – remember those?  The authors begin the essay talking about how technology adapts to immediacy by breaking down the natural world into a mathematical interface, applying principles of both mathematics and linear perspective in making computer graphics appear as realistic as possible.  I was picturing the “Star Trek” holodeck, the square room broken down into smaller squares.  However, the aspect of this essay that dates it the most is its focus on visuals and graphics when talking about how new technologies will integrate themselves into our everyday lives.  The authors wax philosophical about making computer graphics imitate real life, from the literal (those virtual reality helmets) to the allegorical (they talk about how the Windows interface mirrors a “window” into a world of information).  However, what has happened in the years since this article was written, is in fact the reverse: computers no longer try to imitate the real world.  Your computer isn’t going to try and imitate the way our brain works; rather, new technologies, especially social media, have caused our brains to imitate the way technology works.

I must admit that I only got about two thirds of the way through the article before I became frustrated and just started skimming.  All the parallels being drawn between art of centuries past and the fabulous new virtual technologies were, to me, just obsolete.  Plus, the authors’ understanding of art, and the philosophies behind certain art movements, was woefully incomplete.  The camera obscura allowed art to become more realistic in a photographic sense; however, the powerful representational characteristics of pre-Renaissance art was completely hypermediatic, which many Modernist artists, including Picasso and Rothko, addressed (and mirrored) in some of their most famous works.  Representational works were used in a religious sense, to encourage contemplation, just as abstract modernist works use the physical medium as metaphor – to misquote McLuhan as badly as the authors have, the medium has been the message for a long, long time.

I think I completely understood what I read of the article, except for one part: where they said that the “traditional musical qualities” of Alice Cooper were “never very complicated”.  Not only are they not art students, they’re not musicians, either.  The Alice Cooper band made some really orchestrally complicated progressive rock masterpieces – they started off as proteges of Frank Zappa, one of the greatest post-modern Western composers.  But that’s another rant, best saved for another blog.

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