The Cinema Screen as Prosthesis of Perception

I have a book from the library called The senses still [C. Nadia Seremetakis, 1994; The University of Chicago Press]. It's a collection of essays around questions like "What happens when perception and memory are globalized through transnational media and the homogenization of material experience?".

The first essay I think we should all read is The Cinema Screen as Prosthesis of Perception [Susan Buck-Morss]. Here's an amateur attempt at a synopsis:

She proposes that Cimema (the consumption of images by large numbers of people via a screen) is a good way to understand what Husserl was getting at in The Idea of Phenomenology [1964], where Husserl was trying to uncover the essential truths of 'perception': what exactly it is 'to see'. Buck-Morris suggests that Cinema actually does what Husserl tries to theorise.

When something is perceived you've got:
a) The person perceiving
b) The thing being perceived
But to get at the pure nature of perception (some kind of universal truth of it) you have to get rid of a) and b). He did this in a really complicated and academically rigorous way which most people will never understand.

Because cinema provides a space where no thing or things are actually experienced, only the image of things which are not really there, then b) is removed. What we see is the presence of an absence, and it doesn't matter what we are shown: makes no difference if it's fact or fiction, because it's not actually there!!

Because in cinema every individual perceives exactly the same representation (whatever the director decides the camera should capture), then there is a standardisation which can be allied with universality. In an actual experience, each individual percieves from their subjective view point. In a cinema experience the entire audience perceives from one point of view: they have no choice, there is no subjectivity to their "seeing".



I am going to stop here because I don't know if writing all of this on the blog is useful or not... If it is, then I will post some quotes which feed in to quite a few things we are doing.

Philosophy of futility

Philosophy of futility is a phrase coined by Columbia University marketing professor Paul Nystrom to describe the disposition caused by the monotony of the new industrial age. Nystrom observed the natural effect of this malaise was seeking gratification found in frivolous things, such as fashionable "apparel and goods used in one's immediate surroundings." This tendency, he theorized, could be used to increase consumption of fashionable goods and services, resulting in a vicious circle of dissatisfaction and the desire for new consumer goods.

From here. Looks like he said this around 1928. We know this, and it's not exactly what we are about, but it's a lovely phrase and I'm going to read my Thorsten Veblen to see if there's anything in all that Conspicuous Consumption stuff.

Nic Hughes!

I know Matt already knows Nic well (he taught him on the MACTP), but I just read his spiel on the Goldsmiths website. It's a section for graduates to talk about their experiences. I have bolded a couple of bits because I thought they were important:

Nic Hughes, graduate 2006
“I’m a graphic designer with 11 years of experience - designing for clubs, music, magazines, fashion, art, corporate and retail. I have always maintained a level of ambivalence towards my chosen career. No matter how interesting your client is, inevitably you’re in the game of shifting units. Basically, certain expressions of design cannot be explored within a commercial context. No client is going to fund an all-out attack on themselves, their product, or their culture!
Last year I packed it all in to pursue a full-time MA - the time split between this and childcare. The MA at Goldsmiths explores the relationships between theory and practice and how one informs the other. Yet more importantly it is about design’s ability to generate questions and stimulate critical debate. For me, the programme offers a space to explore through design many of the areas that commercially lie off-limits.”

OK, so maybe we know this already... We teach there for God's sake... But I really like the straightforwardness of his comment in the first paragraph.

That's why Design Research should be funded: because the Mass-Consumable Product Design Establishment does not want to ask any questions or have anyone ask questions of them because then they might sell less. Because Design is about "shifting units" and not about making anything better (not sure if that's the right word) for anyone.

?

Jimmy's realisation slightly reorganised of course

The word design has been subverted for commercial gain.
Design is no longer design in the commercial context: it is marketing and technological application, and generally in a competitive market it is part of the big problem.

Iphones would be exempt if they were not controlled by market forces, because they are generally useful.

We are in a period where profit is more important that people.
We have more of a right to consider ourselves designers than them.
Design is the mediation of an interaction between an object and person, or person and person.
We are not part of the commercial mechanism.
We are more in touch with the human thing.

That is why the bracket is a nice piece of design, so is the mask hat and the camera attachment (in fact all of our stuff).

Everything we do is linked purely to the mediation of an interaction of person and object or person and person.

That's why I think "(architecture) design and the living dead would" be a good book to write... because it could have been written by those people who presented the paper to RIBA in 2008.

In 2008 a group of architects declared: "We are no longer living, but dying in our buildings" and created a manifesto called Architecture and the warm facilitation of the end featuring a series of architectural proposals that were exhibited at RIBA later that year.

Here is my sophisticated 3D rendering of the Reiffel Tower Souvenir (mark 1):



Original photo taken from here.

Finding a thread: response

Again, from the car conversation this morning.

Objects for a new form of commodity therapy
Following on from the loafers conversation and Laura's post here, the projects that we're talking about are looking at how artifacts, systems and material cultures can give us some sort of relief from the emptiness of contemporary living..

Yes, I think that's completely right.

They all involve a search for meaning in the construction of the extra-ordinary, they involve activites, actions and experiences that re-design our own position to our environment.

Like the initial impetus behind us working together, we're design a form of self-help or therapy. How do we design object therapy for the over-consumed?

That's what I was saying to Jimmy the other day... that the link between the projects is us, and issues underlying the fact that we got together to do this in the first place. We are screwed up, and all of these ideas are forms of object/action based therapy. One way to approach it is to give the projects labels as treatments I suppose.

The problem with consumption is tricky though. It's the Fight Club dilemma. If you fight against something, you can't then turn round and promote it.

I hate materialism. The desire for stuff, which fuels the need for money, which makes us all into work-horses for the people who pay us AND NOT for ourselves. The fact that I can't make money doing what I would like to do, and so I have to do something else to be financially OK. The fact that success is equated with financial surplus and I feel looked down upon because I don't own a house... These feelings make me anxious and upset with the world. There is nothing wrong with me or my life, but I am made feel as if there is. Don't get me started on "holidays" as a concept.

How therefore, can I put things into the world for people to want?

Commodity Therapy cannot be the right way. A commodity is something which can be bought and sold, but not all things traded are commodities (I don't think). Somehow I feel we are all using this word in a different way.

Wikipedia: Commodity (Marxism)

Characteristics of commodity
"Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity."
— Che Guevara [1]

In Marx's theory, a commodity (Ware in German) is something that is bought and sold. It has value, which represents a quantity of human labor. Because it has value, implies that people try to economise its use. A commodity also has a use value, an exchange value and a price.

* It has a use value because, by its intrinsic characteristics, it can satisfy some human need or want, physical or ideal. By nature this is a social use value, i.e. the object is useful not just to the producer but has a use for others generally.

* It has an exchange value, meaning that a commodity can be traded for other commodities, and thus give its owner the benefit of others' labor (the labor done to produce the purchased commodity).

* Price is then the monetary expression of exchange-value (but exchange value could also be expressed as a direct trading ratio between two commodities without using money).

According to the labor theory of value, product-values in an open market are regulated by the average socially necessary labour time required to produce them, and price relativities are ultimately governed by the law of value.

Illustration
To understand the concept of a commodity, consider a chair. It is a commodity if the chair is a tradable product of human work possessing a social use-value. By contrast, a fallen log of deadwood sat upon in the forest is not a commodity, as it was not produced by human work for the purpose of trade. A chair created by a hobbyist as a gift to someone is not a commodity. Nor is a chair a commodity (as a chair) if its only use would be as firewood (unless one purchases a chair specifically to chop it up for firewood). A chair that nothing could sit on, has no use-value, and cannot be a commodity. An ornamental chair might yet however, have value.

I think the word commodity is wrong right now. It has political and economic connotations that we are not ready for. Therapy = yes.

Finding a thread

Objects for a new form of commodity therapy

Following on from the loafers conversation and Laura's post here, the projects that we're talking about are looking at how artifacts, systems and material cultures can give us some sort of relief from the emptiness of contemporary living.. They all involve a search for meaning in the construction of the extra-ordinary, they involve activites, actions and experiences that re-design our own position to our environment. Like the initial impitoius behind us working together, we're design a form of self-help or therapy. How do we design object therapy for the over-consumed?

On a Barbara Kruger trail

With regard to the content of the resistance, i actually think that Barbara Kruger is great. Although it's full on feminism, that i know Laura wants to avoid, she does highlight and communicate some of the 'top issues'. Here is a couple of examples;


This i like because of its link to the masculine idea of the hero.


And this because it highlights the personal body space as a place of resistance.

Consumed

I think the feminized resistance project could go in a few different directions... Looking at the Fight Club catalogue and thinking about Project Mayhem, it's really important that they are resisting capitalism - the overwhelming cultural pressure to consume. I think, as designers, this is something that we are uncomfortable with. So far, we've avoided discussing the 'content' of the resistance... maybe we need to explore specifics?

When 'resistance' is prefaced with 'feminized', is it important to link it to the act of consumption - shopping? Are the acts of resistance, acts of resistance against the stereotype of feminised consumption?

Fight Club Catalogue

As a promotional gimmick members of the Press were given copies of a Fight Club Catalogue (Fall Fashion). It looks like a real, glossy, lifestyle brand-type marketing tool. Here's a page:

The rest you can see here.