chewie-Reading03

I would say my interests align more with first word art than last word art. I love experimenting with mediums and disrespecting established form, however I also love exploiting the invisibly standard characteristics of the medium I'm working in. In a lot of my work I have attempted to use the barrier between physical matter and conscious realization to allow the audience a very self-aware and honest experience.

The ways in which technology shapes culture are easy to think about conceptually, but it's very difficult to practically realize where this shaping takes place. Because we use technology as a tool of expression, the limits of that technology become the limits of expression which become the limits of the resulting ideas that manifest themselves as culture and reality. As we add dimensions of complexity to the tools we're working with, so do we add dimensions of complexity to what is expressed through those tools. Audiences accepted the first videos as partial fact, as if the filmmaker (often personally invisible from their perspective) was an omnipotent dictator of reality. With the introduction of role playing video games this illusion of authority becomes much more complicated with many more layers of oblivion to the form. Because the action is up to you, you are forced to operate under a specific set of unflinchingly rigid laws, tuning your brain to a specific set of functions through repeated action. The game controls your mindset completely because it is yourself who is being expressed in their fabricated reality, rather than you watching someone else express themselves.

Culture shapes new technology in the sense that it decides what we pay attention to. Our minds operate based on a defined set of existing ideas. If technology is the manifestation of those ideas in a practical, operational system, technology caters only to culture and the benefit of the human experience. It builds upon what came before and is in fact our culture. I believe technology is culture and therefore it is inherently shaped by the manipulation of culture.

When a new technology is developed, the new abilities of those working with that technology become the center of attention as substantial features. As technology ages and becomes more familiar to us, these new abilities become standard and insignificant. The flashing lights and spectacular explosions that caught our attention become nothing more than a quiet, blank slate to jot ideas on. As we become more capable, our efforts of the past become more frivolous, and we almost feel embarrassed to have put so much time into seemingly "nothing".