(Disclaimer: I wrote this over a week ago and forgot to click ‘publish’. Enjoy #NoH8)
OOOOH WE’RE HALFWAY THERE…. (sorry – I had to)
This week’s symposium, while slightly rushed, was just as in-depth and intensive as usual, leaving me with the type of information overload-headache only Network/ed (?) Media lectures can provide. Luckily, I had the train ride home to digest.
As both an artsy-fartsy kind of gal and tech-savvy millennium, I was truly engaged in this week’s opening question; “can technology progress independently of art and culture?”. Adrian and Betty may have had opposing opinions on the matter, but I was in almost total agreement with Adrian (an inaugural moment for me), selling me by his proclamation that “fire is technology”.
Which it is.
And that “culture is technology”.
And you know what, I guess it is!
While we may generally see technology as a grand, modern idea, we tend to forget the difference between technology and digitalisation, whereby its common that we tend to blur their definitions and associations into one. The paintbrush is a technology just as much as an iPad, the internet and Nokia brick phones. Therefore, I feel as though the question is worded incorrectly. It should be “Can art and culture progress independently of technology?” to which the answer is no – no it cannot. Art has progressed in a way that films can now be viewed in colour with the highest quality Dolby Digital sound, imagery can be created through mediums beyond charcoal; including pencil, pen, paint, photography and computerised designs, and music can be created with endless types of different instruments, non-instruments and digital technologies.
In terms of culture, we define ourselves and the society in which we live by determining the technological progressions or trends which separate one era from another. For example, although what we have today is built upon what we had in the 1990s, we still consider the 90’s to be so societally separate from anything today (albeit the garments pushed by the overpriced yet ‘uber kewl’ American Apparel). When we think 90’s, we envisage VHS tapes, mom jeans, overalls, scrunchies, tattoo necklaces, Kelly Kapowski and “when Nickelodeon was good” – we don’t view it as merely a transition phase between brick phones and iPhones, film projectors and DVDs, and 501s and skinny jeans.
It’s a bit odd to consider how as a society we constantly push for faster access to greater amounts of content, and ‘higher-tech’ devices, yet we relish in and bow down to the nostalgia and ‘simplicity’ of the past… so that leads me to my answer to the symposium’s leading question: we’re thinking about it too much.
