TOWARD COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

Part three of Gene Youngblood's paper, "Expanded Cinema," discusses the idea that art and science have exhausted our image language from traditional earthly/ tangible schemes of awareness. Stating that, "the end of fiction, drama, and realism as they have been traditionally understood. Conventional cinema can be pushed no further. To explore new dimensions of awareness requires new technological extensions." (line 2-4, pg.135) The article also discusses that to move to new levels of awareness and new bounds of artistic expression, we need to look beyond our senses, showing that majority of our life experiences are based around non-visible objects. The author writes, "What we "know" conceptually has far outstripped what we experience empirically. We are finally beginning to accept the fact that our senses allow us to perceive only one-millionth of what we know to be reality— the electromagnetic spectrum. Ninety-nine percent of all vital forces affecting our life is invisible." (pg. 136) Simply put, we can see the telephone cables and wires run, but not the conversation that is being taken place over them. We can see the outer parts of a plane or car, but nothing truly tells us how we are moving or hovering 10,000 ft above the ground. These are all things our senses cannot understand.

We need to move beyond our physical environment and move to a meta physical or further off environment. I'm not a proponent of saying things like mysticism, but what he is going for is turning and going after art that describes the invisible and inconceivable. His example is drama and how it is a finite concept, limited to human emotion and the physical environment that we place it in. He states that the, "concerns of artist and scientist today are transfinite." (i.e "things that are"infinite" in the sense that they are larger than all finite numbers, yet not necessarily absolutely infinite." wikipedia on transfinite)

The authors main example of moving toward cosmic consciousness and thinking beyond our physical realm is with Einstein's equation E=mc^2. This equation is an example where the meta physical took precedence over the physical. Another example he used was with Nam June Paik, the GrandFather of electronic music where he writes "Electronics is essentially Oriental... but don't confuse 'electronic' with 'electric' as McLuhan often does. Electricity deals with mass and weight; electronics deals with information: one is muscle, the other is nerve." This is where the meta physical, intangible, invisible object of information transference takes place over the tangible.

In all of this, YoungBlood is saying we need to broaden our horizons because we have stretched the physical realm to the end. As artists or scientists, we need to look beyond the past existence of media and press forward into a deeper realm of creativity. Looking into things we cannot see, hear, smell, or touch but yet we still experience. Pushing the limits of our conceptual intake by raising our gaze to things beyond and unexplained phenominons. Its an interesting idea he is pushing. I'm not 100% sure I am behind his statement but it is interesting.

I immediately thought of surreal art work when reading this. I assumed this article was about looking at new and beyond perspectives in art and entertainment. Check it out

I also can't help but think about science fiction art work that focuses on undiscovered elements and expounds on them. I know the article was about cosmic consciousness and for our understanding to transcend the physical confinements that we conventionally allow but regardless, here is what i initially thought about when reading this.

Corny music I know...

-Tim

P.S. You all better post, cause I'm not coming to class:)