Ballpoint pen drawing illustrating social navigation; virtual information spaces and places accessed. |
'Yet within this world of instant and absolute communication, unbounded by limits of time or space, we suffer from unprecedented alienation. We have never been more detached from one another, or lonelier. In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are. We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information' (Stephen Marchie: May 2012).
One of the most noteworthy findings, they wrote,’ “was the tendency for neurotic and lonely individuals to spend greater amounts of time on Facebook per day than non-lonely individuals.” And they found that neurotics are more likely to prefer to use the wall, while extroverts tend to use chat features in addition to the wall
The main character, Des Esseintes, in the book titled Against Nature – published in 1884, I am
referencing for my artists book, withdraws from society. In his irritable
state, sensitive to anything and everything, he dreamt of ‘a desert hermitage equipped with all modern conveniences, a snugly
heated ark on dry land in which he may take refuge from the incessant deluge of
human stupidity’. A new existence beckoned – he would immerse himself in the peaceful silence of his country
retreat. The hero is impotent and misogynist – he seeks out even richer more
dazzling and dangerous pleasures – becoming even more eccentric. It brings out something of the theatrical
director in him. What is more he has access to resources to indulge his
vanities. The author depicts a world in which the main character withdraws from
society (at the turn of the 20th century) – a feeling prevalent amongst
us at the dawn of the 21st century. For most of us however, it is an
opportunity to withdraw and connect via the Internet – a world awaits, beyond
the constraints and boundaries imposed by emotional and physical limitations.
A considerable part of Facebook’s appeal
stems from its miraculous fusion of distance with intimacy, or the illusion of distance
with the illusion of intimacy. Our online
communities become engines of self-image, and self-image becomes the engine of
community. The real danger with Facebook is not that it allows us to isolate
ourselves, but that by mixing our appetite for isolation with our vanity, it
threatens to alter the very nature of solitude (noccolo and donkey; April of 2012)..
As mentioned in a previous blog entry, Des Esseintes, the
novel’s hero, sleeps during the day, to take advantage of the still of the
night – ‘holding that night afforded greater intimacy and isolation and that
the mind was truly roused and stimulated only by awareness of the dark…….the
world is dark, silent and dead. The information superhighway (social networks
etc.) is a means to escape reality - surfing the net in search of
self-fulfillment – in itself an alienating experience (withdrawing into ones
own fortress). The time of day is of no consequence when one surfs the
superhighway.
'Among 18-to-34-year-olds, nearly half
check out Facebook minutes after waking up, and 28 percent do so before getting
out of bed. The relentlessness is what is so new, so potentially
transformative. Facebook never takes a break. We never take a break. Human
beings have always created elaborate acts of self-presentation. But not all the
time, not very morning, before we even pour a cup of coffee' (noccolo and donkey; April of 2012).
It
must be said that we are therefore lonely because we want to be lonely. We have
made ourselves lonely. Robert D. Putnam, in his book Bowling Alone
(published in 2000), attributed the dramatic post-war decline of social
capital - the strength and value of interpersonal networks—to numerous
interconnected trends in American life: suburban sprawl, television’s dominance
over culture, the self-absorption of the Baby Boomers, the disintegration of
the traditional family.
'Facebook, of
course, puts the pursuit of happiness front and center in our digital life. Its
capacity to redefine our very concepts of identity and personal fulfillment is
much more worrisome than the data-mining and privacy practices that have
aroused anxieties about the company. Solitude
used to be good for self-reflection and self-reinvention. But now we are left
thinking about who we are all the time, without ever really thinking about who
we are. Facebook denies us a pleasure whose profundity we had underestimated:
the chance to forget about ourselves for a while, the chance to disconnect' (noccolo and donkey; April of 2012).
Two of the most
compelling critics of Facebook—neither of them a Luddite—concentrate on exactly
this point. Jaron Lanier, the author of You
Are Not a Gadget, was one of the inventors of virtual-reality
technology. His view of where social media are taking us reads like dystopian
science fiction: “I fear that we are beginning to design ourselves to suit
digital models of us, and I worry about a leaching of empathy and humanity in
that process.” Lanier argues that Facebook imprisons us in the business of
self-presenting, and this, to his mind, is the site’s crucial and fatally
unacceptable downside (noccolo and donkey; April of 2012).
Huysmans books are full of retreats – exploring solitude, the yearning individual
in a valueless world. He attempted a book that would banish that world.
Central to the book is one decadent character referred to above. As an author Huysmans
had a passion for reproducing and commissioning copies and more importantly he
had a fine collection of finely bound books. He is a bibliophile – lover of book as object, overcomes the reader. The
hero in his novel does not read, instead he is obsessed about the paper quality and the
bindings.
Installation of Artists Books by Penny Payne. Exhibited at FADA Gallery last week. 2012 B Tech Visual Arts student. |
The paradox referred to in the opening paragraph of this blog post (with reference to social media) can also be applied to the dissemination of information in the future – when we wish to read do we connect or disconnect with hardcopy in hand for the couch. The following study conducted in Australia anticipates the transformation of accessing and the dissemination of information, as we know it.
Installation of artists books by Penny Payne. FADA B Tech Visual Arts Student. 2012 yearend exhibition. |
The installation of artists books featured here is the work of Penny Payne, a B Tech student at the university of Johannesburg - exhibited at the FADA Gallery last week. The Cube installation represents the balance of the body, mind and soul. The tablets for each wall is intellect, psyche and spirit. Text from the artist's Statement at the exhibition.
Each wall has been created around specific experiences remembrances, discovery of identity and anxieties. The book as an object becomes a symbolic format not only in being a container for stories but distorting and disfiguring the book to form a narrative itself.
I use books frames and boxes to create pieces which portray a growth and an understanding of self and the struggle to find identity by transforming books from the past and constructing them into symbols and metaphoric images. The construction of this wall, with its infestation of book art, channels the search for my identity.
Each wall has been created around specific experiences remembrances, discovery of identity and anxieties. The book as an object becomes a symbolic format not only in being a container for stories but distorting and disfiguring the book to form a narrative itself.
I use books frames and boxes to create pieces which portray a growth and an understanding of self and the struggle to find identity by transforming books from the past and constructing them into symbols and metaphoric images. The construction of this wall, with its infestation of book art, channels the search for my identity.
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