video and intermedia: remarks on their relationship

When reading Foster's article, the concept that resonated with me the most was how video is an extension of ourselves. As human beings, emotion is elicited easiest when we are watching things that relate most directly to ourselves. This is demonstrated when studying the difference between watching a film in which a group of aliens or other creatures is destroyed vs. watching a movie about the Holocaust or a different human to human genocide. We clearly care much more and are much more emotional about the latter. Foster claims that video "has been characterized as an extension of the nervous system," and that "if one uses an extension of one's self rather than as an extension of one's notion of art, cannot avoid confronting problems in areas in communication, information, and meaning." I took this to mean that a big part of the power of video is that it's similarity to our everyday lives makes it relatable on both an artistic an non-artistic level, to people with all types of artistic backgrounds. I can stare at a work by Jackson Pollock for hours and derive little to no meaning, but when watching a film with real life emotion and characters, it is nearly impossible to get absolutely nothing out of it.

Negatively, use of video in society is changing our perceptions on what normal life is, and raising our expectations. This reminded me of a quote from a novel I read recently, which I posted below.


"We were the first human beings who would never see see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A commercial. You know the awful singsong of blase: Seen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality really can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared scripted. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.” 

― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl"


Yes, I am overreaching a bit by taking the article in this direction, and I most certainly think that the author of the novel was taking things a bit too far as well in the excerpt above, but the idea is something to consider. Foster mentions it in the article as well, when he talks about the fact that we can "no longer distinguish between ourselves and TV-type technology. This to me is both a positive and negative effect of the medium. The negative parts were discussed above and as far as the positive attributes go, yes it is much easier for an artist to assure emotion will be elicited from video, but is "art" supposed to be easy?


- Cara Kessler