Foster- Karina Banda

Foster's writing on Intermedia raised more questions to me than it answered of what intermedia is and I'm at an absolute lost at how he was trying to define intermedia. The part that I understood about intermedia is its political nature in its ability to facilitate “intellectual, critical, and aesthetic activities”. What I was confused about was his description of it also being “active”. Now I may have completely misunderstood his explanation, but I don't quite agree with his statement: “any art 'means' based on private or unpersuasive vocabularies or information structures, are not empowered to activate anything excepting themselves”. I think anything has the power to “activate” something within at least one viewer. Yes, somethings better accomplish this than others, but what is the cutoff point?

What I was also able to understand and agree with Foster is his interpretation of video as a medium that has extreme amount of power to compel. I agree that video feels alive. He states that “video is an extension of ourselves because we can no longer distinguish between ourselves and TV-type technology”. Even if a video is abstract in nature, we know that it filmed real things and our brains get engaged in trying to discern the reality in it. He also goes on to say that “video puts us back in touch with the structures by means of which social and psychological patterns are fabricated” . Right now, video, among all mediums, has the most power of creating similar subjective experiences in all its viewers because it gives us sound and a string of images all in one place which are the primary senses people need to understand the place around them and their place in it. Touch is another primary sense but it doesn't compare to the string of information we get by hearing and watching something.

In 1985, Wergo Records published this 9 minute sound piece (http://www.ubu.com/sound/sound_sculptures.html) titles Sound Sculptures. Music has the power to take you on a journey (similarly to video when done right) as the speed, melody, and instruments change and interact with each other. This piece in particular was all about the interaction of the different instruments and it literally had a physical affect on me. I could feel physically rushed and hurried when the instruments got louder and faster, while other times just letting my emotions be swayed and manipulated by the sounds. For example, when there were only soft high chimes, I felt happy as I could picture a christmas scene. At another instance, I could feel a battle playing out as different instruments with heavy drums were playing. You can literally visual the sounds as sculptures rather than a normal composed music.