Category: Research

The Galaxy Reconfigured, otherwise known as I May Have Gone Over the Word Limit

Born in 1911, Marshall McLuhan was well-placed to comment on technological developments in a post-industrial, pre-digital revolution era.

A Summary of the Galaxy Reconfigured

The eponymous galaxy of The Galaxy Reconfigured refers to McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy concept: a world in which new technologies reinvent the ways we think and perceive, through affecting our sense ratios. By sensing objective matters with our 5 senses, we form subjective thoughts and perceptions (as such, emotional interaction is seen as a byproduct of tangible interaction).

McLuhan elaborates further on the unveiling developments of mass media as the herald of an electronic age. Where society was previously constrained by single vision and Newton’s sleep, recent developments have triggered an awareness of simultaneity in perspective. In essence, there is a newfound appreciation for the collective consciousness as a subject and audience, than the individual point of view. This directly affects the arts through redirecting emphasis towards the impersonal audience experience than the personal artist opinion.

My Opinions

This reading resonates very much with me, since I’m studying philosophy and researching mythology. Thus I will respond as a student of both, and as a human.

Where my research is an experiment in crafting a false myth, I find his reference to the myth accurate: there is a tension between individuality and collectivism. It is extremely difficult, as an individual with unhinged desires and feelings, to successfully imagine myself as the consciousness of humanity. Creators today certainly still struggle to balance these: we cannot help but rely on our own experience, and we need to pander to audiences to avoid starving on a street.

A summary of my research project involving mythology. One of the hardest decisions was the inclusion of my bias towards feminism, transience and multiculturalism, which I still fear compromised how well it represents the society.
An example of a video game which poorly navigated the divide between individuality and the collective. While there was an attempt to appeal to a mass audience familiar with feelings of isolation and lack of direction, the excessive presence of the creators’ own opinions and interests distanced players from much of the narrative.

As a philosophy student, though, I find that McLuhan seems to give insufficient attention to the individual. Though he remains (admirably) fairly impartial, I feel that his comments are skewed towards holism. That is fundamentally at odds with how we perceive the world, where we consider ourselves individual agents than nodes in a system. This individuality is often demonstrated even today, such that I find it difficult to believe that we can ever fully embrace our existence as insignificant parts.

Was everyone else really as alive as she was? ..If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance. But if the answer was no, then Briony was surrounded by machines, intelligent and pleasant enough on the outside, but lacking the bright and private inside feeling she had. This was sinister and lonely, as well as unlikely. For, though it offended her sense of order, she knew it was overwhelmingly probably that everyone else had thoughts like hers. (From Atonement, by Ian McEwan)

Objects from an exhibition on the Super Normal movement. This is an design movement which encourages the eradication of personality, to create intuitive products as defined by the culmination of human experience. However, are these truly lacking in personality? All these items must have been invented by certain personalities, who certainly had their own preconceptions. The perception that these are “nameless” objects comes only with our consumption.

Lastly, as a human of the modern era, I wonder how his comments will fare from now on. I personally feel that his claim about how technology affects perception is an unquestionable truth. If so, where is this current world heading? Might we see the resurgence of the individual as a backlash to the collective? Will the rise of technologies like VR/AR push us towards aural/tactile predominance? Are we stagnating in assuming that the visual should be our main form of information dissemination?

An example of an interactive design using sound to encourage people to throw trash. Personally, interactive art is a brilliant representation of that exploration of sense ratios and audience experience, where many artworks today experiment with various sense detectors and a reliance on the participant.

A final pertinent claim McLuhan made is the acute weakness of lacking experience. “A few decades hence it will be easy to describe the revolution in human perception that resulted from beholding the new mosaic mesh of the TV image,” he states. “Today, it is futile to discuss it all.” I think that we, too, can only wait and see how humanity transforms.

References

  • McLuhan, M. (1969). The Galaxy Reconfigured or the Plight of Mass Man in an Individualist Society. In The New Media Reader. (link).
  • Featured image (link)
  • Marshall McLuhan hyperlink (link)
  • Newtons Sleep hyperlink (link)
  • YIIK image (link)
  • Holism hyperlink (link)
  • Digital Narcissism hyperlink (link)
  • Atonement quote (link)
  • Super Normal image (link)
  • Critical Regionalism hyperlink (link)
  • Volkswagen Bin video (link)

Nature’s Breath: Arokhayasala, and its Relation to Interactivity

What a familiar smell, I think, as I drift towards its source. Pillars which arch inwards, unite over an unfilled space. Something about that emptiness beckons me to come hither.

Titled Nature’s Breath: Arokhayasala, this piece is heavily associated with ideas like death and illness. A Thai artist, Boonma himself stated that the purpose of this piece was “to cleanse and cure the mind in order to experience the condition of relaxation and mindfulness“. There is an evident relation to his affinity with spiritual healing and religion as a means of coping with his wife’s terminal illness.

Image from Wall Street Journal. Nature’s Breath: Arokhayasala, by Montien Boonma. 1995. Metal, herbs. 256 × 215 cm.

What I find most impressive is the use of scent as a form of interaction. There’s something intriguing (and also philosophical!) about the idea of interactivity which relies on a connection between extant knowledge and sensory cues. Through the act of breathing, one becomes conscious of a herbal aroma which evokes ideas of traditional healing, even before the artwork is seen.

Image from myself. Note the form, which curves inwards and appears dusted in earthly colours, evoking a sense of the natural. Additionally, the lungs in the center, a clear indicator of his interest in breath.

An interaction through visual cues is also evident, as with the lungs and the symmetrical dome, which resembles places of meditation. I am hesitant to suggest it resembles a stupa, simply because those are places not made to be entered, unlike this piece.

Regardless, I can see ways in which this piece might fail to engage its audience.

  1. Without context, an audience unfamiliar with Buddhism (or, at least, a basic understanding of Southeast Asia) might not find the form familiar, nor the scent appealing.
  2. The ordained inability to touch, to enter, creates a distance between the perceiving and the perceived, which is at odds with the sensory cues (which suggest intimacy).

In essence, awareness of your target audience is crucial to interactivity, as are rules which work in tandem with intuitive/inherent knowledge.

References

  • Buddhist Temples and Buildings. On Facts and Details. (link).
  • (Excerpt) In Search of Lost Time. (link).
  • Montien Boonma: Temple of the Mind. On National Gallery of Australia. (link).
  • Nature’s Breath: Arokhayasala. On Asia Society. (link).
  • Weight of History: The Collector’s Show. On ArtAsiaPacific. (link).

A.I. in Video Games

Humanity is approaching a moment in which technology and human understanding culminate, and video games is at that forefront. I may or may not write a short essay later, but everything I would say anyway is essentially in the slides.

Examples used: Assassin’s Creed Origins, Life is Strange and Bioshock Infinite (in that order). Also interesting to consider are games by Bethesda and Dontnod, as well as The Last of Us, SOMA, and Nier Automata.