I do not believe in entropy.

"The viewer of commercial entertainment
cinema does not want to work; he wants to be an object, to be acted
upon, to be manipulated. "

This is a rather narrow perception of the viewer. Sure many people are satisfied with passive watching but aren't the films and other artwork that truly resonate with us the ones that have a little work involved? Elements of ambiguity have long been used even in commercial films to challenge the audience.

"Art explains; entertainment exploits."
Of course we know that art can exploit, and exploit to great effect. And we can have entertainment that explains. Great science fiction films can do that. They can act more on our own speculative fears for the future and subtle human psychology than any recent visual artwork I have seen.



"The notion of experimental art, therefore, is meaningless. All art is
experimental or it isn't art. Art is research, whereas entertainment is
a game or conflict."

My perception of this section is that it places Art on a kind of pedestal. This idea of "Art" with a capital A is always problematic to me. Art is seem as totally separated from commercial ventures. Art is pure. Commerce is dirty. When exactly has that ever happened? Even the most avant-garde art is created within a commercial system. Nothing is made in a vaccum. The Great Masters had patrons. Damien Hirst had Charles Saatchi. Even the art I create is subsidized by the University of Florida. True, UF is a research institution but we are aware on how the university must create money to survive.

Synaesthetic Synthesis: Simultaneous Perception of Harmonic Opposites

As I read this chapter I began to see how much the author understood the mentality of humanity and how much it had changed since we had begun the efforts of civilization building. The Author mentions that before "800 B.C. few cultures thought in terms of past and present". Yet here we are today with everything in front of us and we cant wait for what tomorrow will bring. The present no longer matters for us, we will always be looking forward to the apple tablet, or next weeks episode of Lost. Instead of representing the future as the "Present manifesting" and past as "Present Manifested", the past becomes ancient history, the present is the past, and the future is our present.

This mindset could have risen from the can-do attitude of the 60's where the future was an ambitious vision of robot maids, flying cars, social utopias. Even now people still wonder why we still don't have those things since now was the future the past promised them tomorrow.

The Intermedia Network as Nature

I also read this section of Part I. This isn't so much a summary of the reading but more of the thought that came to mind while reading it. It's interesting to think that this was written back in 1970 and the trend of media enveloping our lives has far surpassed saturation. When paralleling past and present ways of life, it is apparent and possibly saddening that, with the advent of media through technology, certain "good, wholesome values" have been thrown to the wayside. However, as part of the GenY crowd, I don't even notice it. Sure, the era of personal computers and the Internet came around when I was in elementary school, but I don't remember much before then so as far as I'm concerned, they've been here all along.

One thing I do find to be noteworthy, with regard to the author's mention of society being one of Pavlov's dogs, was living in a foreign country away from all the stimuli and propaganda. Living in Korea for 2.5 years, completely takes you out of your routine. You can't get American television, newspapers (other than Wallstreet Journal), magazines, only a few movies. So unless you are glued to the Internet, you fall out of the loop quite quickly. Koreans themselves are very media-centered, but as an ex-pat who didn't speak the language fluently...I felt very detached from the newest fads. Coming back into the States, required a lot of catching up. I feel people are inundated with information that they don't even realize it's ingrained in everything they do. It was sometimes difficult to have a current events conversation with some people becasue I had no idea who Taylor Swift was or those Kardashian sisters who are famous but I have no idea why. Extracting yourself from mainstream culture for a while puts a whole new perspective on your surroundings.

The Intermedia Network as Nature

As soon as I began reading this section, my mind immediately went to Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message.” Vasulka takes this point a bit further, tracing the evolution of man’s conditioning throughout the ages to the present “Cybernetic Age.” It is a tough pill to swallow. Here we are creating these technologies, yet we’re not controlling their power over us. Our environment has always conditioned us. This new technological era is no exception. We live in a society where those with decades of experience at their jobs are deemed worthless if they are not able to use technology to convey their messages. Our children are growing up in a completely connected world, and functioning within this world will be second nature to them. Hence, they will be conditioned to communicate and receive communications in this way, whether they realize it or not.

Art, Entertainment, Entropy

I'd like to take a look at this section.

- Francesca

The Artist As Design Scientist, from Expanded Cinema

In our text, it is Youngblood’s contention that popular entertainment is just a rehashing of ideas that are known, and always one of three basic takes on the human condition: idealization, frustration, and demoralization. In his view, the true artist is seeking to explore new experiences, such as “synaesthetic research of expanded cinema” (p. 67-8). He alludes to in a previous chapter and offers his opinion that truly significant films, like “Beauty and the Beast” by poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, are the ones that transcend their genres because of the style and design.

The author then draws a comparison between Art and Science, stating that they both are searching for the “unity in hidden likenesses” and that both seek to reveal potential in the relationship between man and the universe. He doesn’t spend much time making a case for this comparison, though it provides the title for the chapter. In my view, the scientist is most comfortable adhering to boundaries while categorizing and quantifying, while the artist is generally much more capable of crossing boundaries: between mental and physical, Self and Other, cerebral and emotional, and that of the temporal and the timeless.

The aptly named Youngblood goes on to describe the role of an artist as that of establishing imagery and symbols, and by doing so creating a structure of thought so that new modes of reality and consciousness can come into human awareness. The artist creates new language that relates more directly to experience by separating an image from its official symbolic meaning. This new language, according to the author, makes it possible to arrive at a new understanding of old facts, and addresses the ineffable “domain between the conscious and subconscious.”

In his view, the parameters of genre, plot, story, and drama restrict the choices available to filmmakers. He said this is illustrated by cybernetics, which shows that the “structure of a system is the index of the performance which may be expected from it.” This reminded me of an article we read last semester about the paradigm of the database versus the narrative in digital culture. The author states that an Auteur such as Antonioni has, through his art (design science) articulated for his generation that which went unspoken.

In what I think is the most interesting passage in the chapter, Youngblood quotes Rudolph Arnheim in Art and Visual Perception, who is quoted as saying that perception is to sensing as understanding is to reasoning, and that “eyesight is insight”. The author also says that by viewing a film, we are allowed to see through the eyes of the artist, that is, to see intuitively. He makes two statements here that I found myself agreeing with and which could easily discussed at greater length: “our psychological balance are the result of our relation to images” and that “the more ‘beautiful’ the image the more beautiful our consciousness.” However, in the next paragraph he ends the chapter by quoting John Cage for a somewhat different view of Beauty, which is that “Where beauty ends is where the artist begins.” This is a polemic directed at one of the traditional concerns of artists, a definitive statement with all the shadings, nuance, and logic of Christian fundamentalism.

The Artist as Design Scientist

I'd like to look at this section. ES