Austin Machine Vison

Everyone missed out on some really cool pieces last Wednesday (and extra credit..). They showed four pieces.
first was a piece called A lecture by Hollis Frampton. It described the basics of what film is while you stare mainly and a white square. She changed the screen to pink and said that pink was actually less appealing to us then white. that white even though it has less is really more cause more can happen to it.
Next they showed Shutter Interface by Paul Sharits which I dont know if I like it more or less then the flicker. It meant to have four projections they said but we only saw it with two. they had two projection with a small overlap as they flew through diffrent colors and mixing in the middle for 24 min. It was hypnotic to me as the speed of each side change never staying constant and the noise of clicking as each one went by just drew me in more.
Next was my least favorite piece Urban Episodes by Steina Vasulka. it was just one of her contraption in citys shooting video. I would prefer to see the contraption then see the video. though some of the effects she used was cool it just didn't really fit with the other pieces we were watching.
Last we watched The Flicker by Tony Conrad. This piece was also hypnotic as you watched the screen go through black and white screens pretty fast for 30 min. They gave us a warning for about 3 min saying a physician should be present and i understood why about half way through as it started to give me a head ac. it was interesting to me when the people next to me moved up and i could see them in the corner of my eye and they flickered in and out of view of the corner of my eye.
overall these pieces show that simple can some times be best and have really cool effects. So you all missed out!

Digital Divide Response

     The failure of artists, in Claire Bishop's view, to address how digital technology and the advent of the internet affect our lives and surroundings, or conversely, the trend of using "retro" technologies and objects in works of art, is in my view a temporary one. As each generation reaches adulthood, there exists a de facto cultural vacuum which this generation has not yet been able to fill with cultural productions and the discourses that surround them. As the eldest members of this generation begin producing art, music, films, essays, novels, etc..., they are necessarily influenced by what their societies have produced in the past. Many of these older artists, looking at what is considered "cutting edge" at the moment, inevitably end up producing something which has its roots in the practice of artists of the former generation. However, as time progresses, and younger (creatively inclined) members of a generational cohort reach maturity and begin to produce work, they are less likely to look to the same artists and technologies as their immediate predecessors. What happens instead is a gradual shift of the source of inspiration from the previous generation and their technologies, to the beginning of the present generation and the technologies which have accompanied the emerging artists throughout their lives.
    This relationship between generations is present in many other areas of western, industrialized societies. In the realm of politics, the generational shift generally happens much later in the life of the members of the generations involved, and a strong generational cohort may produce several administrations, which can last many years (the Clinton and Bush administrations, both Baby Boomers, lasted for a total of 16 years). One reason why this relationship may seem skewed when considering the art world can be found when we examine art's relationship to the art market. Over the past 30 years, the prices commanded by the most popular artists have risen dramatically. People buying the art, who because they are rich also wield power, have an interest in, and the means to keep their art relevant. This can be achieved through coordinated sales to artificially increase the price of works (see Damien Hirst, http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/37270/), or by buying up media outlets in order to secure undue societal influence (see Rupert Murdoch, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/07/rupert-murdoch-australian-election-2013).
     The apparent lack of response to digital technologies may of course have its roots in other issues as well. The extremely rapid pace at which these technologies are being developed far exceeds the creative output of most, if not all artists, and the lack of availability of these technologies in many parts of the world obviously hinders many artists working there from employing them. But if change appears to be happening slowly here, it can almost certainly be chalked up to nostalgia and strategic investment banking.

Interesting book on generations:

Generations: the history of America's future, 1584 to 2069
Authors	William Strauss, Neil Howe

Digital Divide

I feel like the opinion that digital art isn't around the same way it may have been promised a few decades ago is an archaic point of view, however I am not familiar enough with the contemporary art world to really criticize anyones opinion on it. I feel as if digital media is still so early in its development, especially compared to other mediums. I think the genre of digital art needs more time to mature into its full potential, like a fine wine. There is so much possibility in digital technologies that we have yet to understand, and change is a scary thing to artists set in traditional ways. When you find success doing things a particular change, why fix what isn't broken? Give digital a half century and see the amazing things they create. There are plenty of digital artists, you just have to look.

The Clair Bishop article

It's interesting to see this put into thought. It seems that digital art is a bit finicky when it comes to describing what part of it really is "art". With the technology we have today, it enables us to create all forms of work that can be considered a piece. Considering the fact that now most handheld devices have apps that allow some kind of drawing/movie program to be used on it, almost anyone can create something and call it their own "art". Though, with this convenience, we might tend to forget about the traditional style of how an art work was made. Like the article stated, the techniques and time used in making a piece of work is no longer really looked at; instead, it's the meaning of what the artist was wanting to state. We've begun to over look the effort put into a digital work, and only see it for its meaning most likely because of this easy access to its creation. Perhaps when working traditionally such as with analog and paint/canvas then those ideas pushed away can be brought back up again.

Claire Bishop

This is an excellent article. I don't find it to be such a shock that there aren't many artists creating work that questions the effect of the digital age on art or perception. I think mainstream art will always embrace its marketability, and therefore unique and/or limited objects will continue to reign supreme. The situation is kind of sad though. At one time, art stood for the cutting edge, or at least this is what the avant garde artists were after. But rarely today do people seek experiences with art to find out what's cutting edge. I think that's because modern user technology is the new cutting edge. Interacting directly with new devices or software can be more entertaining and thought provoking than experiencing an art object. Heck, why not just experience art objects on your phone? saves you time and you can view greater quantities at your leisure. So then if art is no longer cutting edge, what is it? What is it's function? It seems to be mostly for novelty sake. This might be why analog media is so readily absorbed by mainstream art, because in a digital world, analog is arcane: it's rare and fancy. Analog looks good, and it's object based, and let's face it, it's cool. And if something is cool, it's marketable. Perhaps the few artists Bishop mentions, who are truly absorbed in questioning our digital paradigm, are the present cutting edge avant garde. So what if there are only a few artists in this category? Does art have to present an idea about its place in time to be important?

Andrew McCall

The thing that I think that is most interesting about Andrew McCalls Line Describing a Cone, is that McCall started to think about the medium in a different way. He started to think about more than just the image on the film screen by light, but the light alone. I think that it is really interesting when artists take their medium and approach it in a unique manner. However despite the difference in his approach, he thinks about aspects of film that other more "traditional" film artists think of as well. Such as the space that his work will exist in. How long the piece will be. Who will be watching the piece, and will they be alone? What is the scale of the piece? What is the relationship between the viewers and the work? What kind of camera, projector, lens, and film will be used?

Basically, I think art is just a constant re-evaluation and about trying to find a place to live.

after reading the Anthony McCall work i have more of a perspective on what it means to articulate a piece involving an audience or to be interactive. When dealing with people coming and going to view a piece, there is a lot to consider that i had never really thought about like, the necessary size of the projection in proportion to people, just thinking more sculpturally, rather than the usual 2-D mind i have. He also made me think about looping and how long the work stays on if it runs all day or just for a couple of hours, or just once, and how this affects how people will see it. McCall also made me think about visibility, like actually how well people can  see the work, he said he was amazed at how the people gathered around his pieces to get a glimpse. I like to think in this big sense, like thinking of the space that we have to work in as well, like a big wall or just simply a overhead screen, and to take them into consideration when trying to get your point across and make people see your work the way that you intend.

Claire Bishop

I can understand why this article upset a lot of people. Bishop calls out the new media, saying that it still contains old media like projectors and film. However the part of it, that is new media, everything has become digitized and has become cheap and easily accessible. Because of this, digital media doesn't have the feels of the analog medium. Programs, cameras, and apps are easily used with a click of a button to create instant results that we no longer take the time to think of the process of creation in between.With old media, it was a long drawn out process, usually expensive too, so it took real dedication to use, however now it is only used for nostalgia. After experimenting with the film camera I can say that it makes me appreciate digital medium a lot more. It takes quite a bit more work and dedication and patience to have to work with. Having a good amount of knowledge and experience beforehand would also help. I really like the part where she ties in research and google, how it's kind of destroyed the physical value of objects

cats also destroy physical value of objects

Claire Bishop

Claire Bishop's article said a lot about how it seems that New Media art really has not come to be. So much so that only a few like Frances Stark and Thomas Hirschhorn may have broken through. Most of the actual works that I have seen do not even use the same principles of art that I see in traditional works which might be why you do not see new media in the mainstream art world.

To say the least, I think she might be right in saying that New Media Art has not arrived yet. I think we are still experimenting with the media from the past like analog films. Many works that I see are seem to be unfinished in some ways, not in concept but creation. I think that once we find a way to merge the art world with what is now the New Media world, we might see ourselves more prominently.

i wish i hadn't deleted my xanga :(

Clare Bishop makes a reasonable point in her contribution to the discourse on digital art.

As artists, we are individuals responding to the technological revolution as it is happening around us.

This response is not always acknowledging of the way that perceptions and actions have changed, because these changes in habit and form are gradual and become quotidian. 

These everyday practices seep into are art making, but in our expression, Clare Bishop feels (and I agree to a certain extent) that there is a glazing if not ignorance of the why (if not also the what and the how).

In our experience, it is crucial in critical thinking to acknowledge thought.

-To ask "Why am I thinking what I think?"

-To ask "Why am I feeling the way I feel?"

and by extension here

-To ask "Why do I/we do the things that I/we do?"

Bishop sees a lack in the acknowledgment of active thinking and making about our actions in our present digital environment.

As a response to the overwhelming nature of our daily digital lives, works have turned to the analog for nostalgia, the social and public for physical contact, and in other ways dodged the elephant on the screen.

We are in a transitional period (as we always are). Is it not crucial to recognize that there is a difference between the then and the now (if not only to emphasize the now)?

We are "prosumers" that actively co-produce content on:

the Internet- our dominant social field.

I find this disconcerting to a certain extent, but also very intriguing, and believe as Bishop does, that it should be explored.

I am currently working on a piece related to this subject, and it isn't easy.

I feel that the difficulty may lie in the failure of my group members to fully grasp the concept which has been illuminated here.

Any complete portrait of an individual in the present day must represent two personas, the online (digital) and the actual (physical).

In reality these personas may conflict (or in our case both be totally banal).

It is difficult to address the fact that how we exist online, is different that how we exist IRL.

Our presentation of self online is active, interesting, and multiple.

Our actual presentation of self may be active, interesting, and multiple- but in completely different interpretations of the words.

Now we exist as data as much as in real life to others (potentially). 

This digital code, as Bishop points out, is inherently alien to human perception.

Yet we must go beyond the mere understanding of clicking buttons, and reevaluate or function in the matter.

Digital divide

While reading it, I stumbled about the author’s question of “while many artists use digital technology, how many really confront the question of what it means to think, see, and filter affect through the digital?”. I came with the bottom question of “does she really mean it?”. Many think, and re-think the medium they want to portray. artist would know the limitation and choose the best. Sometimes, the subject matter is more important than the medium itself. I will agree that medium matters, but somehow, the way she says it, seems… clueless. It started to worry me more when she said that “on one hand” seems to matter this theme. It worries me that she says that “K-Corea Inc.K, section a” is a good example of mattering media. I will argue that is common sense that as this “technological revolution that we are undergoing”, will bring new consequences/results. She seems angry/dislike toward the experimentation. It starts very apparent when she comments about the email account. Sadly for her, I do not recall any “pervasive sense”. I am too young to recall it.

 

Surprisingly, she touches almost every stereotype of an artist: foggy, indirect, lazy, unsure, doesn’t-care, it-is-what-it-is, empty concept. I am not surprised that she got bad criticism from people of the art world. Knowing toward where she was shooting, I took patience. She has a valid point that she wants to make, but her examples and adjectives seem not to be helping her. she also argues how we, humans of this time, are separating the medium from social interaction; that digital is replacing performances. She seems to be going to a theme, that many people of the art world, does not care. It is not in the priority list. If you don’t get the art world, do not become part of it: you will get nowhere if you don’t get it. However, she touched many interesting points such as “can communication between users become the subject of an aesthetic?” and actually… I will let you think about it.

week 10....late

I couldn't find week 11 reading and i missed week 10 so here week 10. I enjoyed this reading not only cause it was really short but also how it talks about how we see things. Everyone see things differently and has different reaction to object but we also want to understand how other see things in this world. Through cinema we can attempt to walk in someone else shoes and understand how other see things. This is also a problem because the cinema is often over done and becomes fake but this is still how we will think other see the world causing us to become more fake to act like how we see in the movies.

Stan the man

So.... Stan Brakhage is pointing out that almost everything we know is actually an invention. Every perception is a reality, just for existing in our reality (even just as an idea). Language, for example, has come to represent ideas that have been invented before we realized we were inventing them. It is interesting to study the different cultures on the globe, and how they can invented their reality and ascribed meaning to everything. These ideas dictate our life and our psyche, whether or not we are able to acknowledge them. I think that this also can represent the power of art and artist- for it is a blank canvas open to a new language that is being created by the artist. A new way of communicating. Why ascribe language when you can make your own?

The Dreamer and the Cynic

I guess this man was already a bit cynical even before he reached old age. He says that once a person loses their innocence as well as their imagination. Furthermore, he states that intellectual pursuits can get some of that perception back. For all this perception that we lose when we are forced to grow up, I do think all the intellectual reading and scholarly thinking would be the thing that would bring such things back. I think that taking the time to really look at something away from distraction like we were once able to, away from cities and technology, just might bring it back. Even with his belief that artists would be the one's to bring back this perception, I think artists have that power to do that but not them alone, but who?

Dorsky–Devotional Cinema

In Devotional Cinema, Nathaniel Dorsky explores the qualities which he finds present in the films he deems successful. He begins this exploration by relating to the reader the experience of being “completely cured” after attending a student production of a Mozart opera. The reason for this, he asserts, is that great, “uncompromising” works of music, just as great works on film, resonate in their timing and rhythm with the metabolism of the viewer or listener – are “transformative to it – and therefor realign the metabolic energies in a harmonious fashion, producing a feeling of wellbeing or rejuvenation.

Next, Dorsky turns his attention to the material qualities of film, and how these are experienced in the cinema. He compares the human skull, a dark space illuminated by visual images, with the cinema. He maintains that from this point of view two distinct possibilities of seeing the world, or of making films, emerge. The first is grounded in the own psyche, and is concerned with a view of the world emanating from one’s own consciousness. According to this view, a tree falling in the woods with no one there to hear it produces no sound. The second view can be considered to be the polar opposite of the first one. In this mode of vision, the viewer is considered to be a part of their surroundings, and the surroundings themselves are seen as continuous, whether or not they are inhabited by the viewer.

Dorksy then goes on to explain that, in his opinion, the best films are those which achieve a a delicate, yet forceful, balance between these opposites. Dorsky strongly favors films which are firmly grounded in an objective temporal reality of continuously unfolding time and narrative, but which also allow for the possibility of transcending that reality in favor of preserving or extending the present moment, and which ground the viewer in that sense of presentness throughout the film. This is when watching a film becomes akin to a religious experience, or as Dorsky put it, when film becomes Devotional Cinema. 

While I have experienced sensations similar to what Dorsky describes in his text when watching films, those experiences seem to be few and far apart, and their occurrence seems more probable when I’m not watching big budget American movies. That is not to say that those movies aren’t entertaining, they are. However, they seem to function more as a device conducive to escapism and temporary oblivion, rather than to presentness within the “now” and transformative experiences.   

Vision

It's interesting to see how Brakhage put into thought how much our eyes and brains are filtering the world around us. As artists, we have been taught to create pieces with certain kinds of composition that allows us to make them as interesting to look at as possible. Though, what if we were never taught was was supposed to be the right kind of set up for a work? How differently would we try to create things if there was no set lines of what's right or what's wrong? But the idea isn't just for the artist to think about, it's merely something we should all think. If we were to get all the rules we have already set up, would we start to create our own set of rules, or would we simply go back into constructing it back all over again.

real scenes

Brakhage first opens the reading by asking the reader about our differences in perception and how defined ideas, such as labels for different colors, limit true perception. He then asks us to accept everything we see, whether it is in "real life" or in a day dream... as it is all equally important to visual understanding.  He says that the primitive man had a better understanding of perception, as they didn't allow popular labels and pursuits affect their view of things. Brakhage seems to feel that popular images of things, such as: "birth, sex, death, and the search for God" limit our perception as we focus on these familiar ideas instead of delving into the realm of true perception.

vision

The reading is an attempt to show how important vision is and how crucial it is to humans, specifically. It says that vision is one of the most important ways to perceive and that we should accept all vision like they were real scenarios. When he talks about accepting dreams and day dreams and hallucinations as real-life occurrences, it made me think that we as a whole society would have a much greater sense of things because we would be looking at things from a different perspective, giving us more understanding through exploration. With cinema i think that it takes vision in a whole new direction, it allows for seeing more than one image at a time, and this will change the perspective of the viewer, being able to seeing and attach meaning to more than one image creating more sensations that will allow for more understanding and interpretation.

metaphors on vision

What I pulled from the reading was that, perspective of something new, could be anything endless. There are an unlimited number of colors that we can see until we run into the man made establishments of blues, greens, and reds. Once someone puts a label on it, you're no longer seeing things through your own eyes, but through theirs. It reminded me of a thought I had a long time ago, what if we don't see the same colors but we all call them the same thing? Like for example we'll say that grass is green(unless it's dead, or natural grass) but we all see it as a different color, maybe I see it as blue and you see it as red, but everything that I see that is blue I call green, and everything that you see that is red, you call green.

anyways here is a cat gif...

Stan Brakhage

What begins as a pleasant thought experiment about perception, sharply turns into a loaded philosophical rant against our lais a fair attitude towards existence. The mainstream of us have been spiraling downward in our understanding of the world, amounting to less understanding of our place in time than the relative existential knowledge of cavemen. Quite the argument. This reminds me of Terrance McKenna who warned us that "culture is not your friend"and who stated "we are led by the least among us." This also ties into the work of Joseph Campbell whom I quoted in my last entry. So what? I tend to agree with these attitudes, but what can be done? It is easy to forget and become absorbed into the humdrum of society, experience mundane, prescribed reality, rather than having deep human moments or perceiving the world as an outsider looking in. However, polls show that the "millennial" generation (people 18-33) are less religious and less political than previous generations. So it seems that we are collectively dropping out of earlier mainstream attitudes. We are also more educated that previous generations. Could any of this mean that we are more capable of understanding our place in the universe and experiencing a reality that is not prescribed to us? Not sure, but it's interesting to consider. How does one measure the spiritual deepness of a generation or society? Maybe less war, less hunger, more cooperation...less phallic, more yonic (funny that spell check doesn't recognize that word)... a balanced yin-yang utopia. OOOOOOHHHHHHmmmmmmm

Vision

I have read like 3 times already, and I cannot fully understand where does this idea comes from and where is trying to go. I think I am taking it too literal what the author says, therefore, in his “metaphors”, I get lost. Somewhere in this tangled reading, it reminded me of Baudelaire’s “flauneor”. If I remind it correctly, the flauneor is like a flying eye that nobody notices it, but the eye sees everybody. It acts as a tourist with no purpose but to wonder and watch. This reading also reminded me of our kino-eye reading, which is nothing and everything at the same time, as the flaneuor.

For what I understand, the author talks about the live and disasters of a watchful eye. As a person’s eye, camera’s eye, etc., is everywhere but nowhere at the same time. the author makes his point across about that knowledge and innocence are two things that does not together. A watchful eye always gets something and cannot ignore whatever it is watching. He also mentions about death, symbols, and children, but I did not get why exactly. I think that he wants us to understand that, as artists, we have a mission: to let the world know what we want let them know.

We fight for what we think is right.

In metaphors on vision Stan Brakhage sets out a vision for a cinema that could "create a new language made possible by the moving image," a new language which could be used by new visual artists to "deal imagistically with–birth, sex, death, and the search for God."
Brakhage seems to be calling for a generation of artists, presumably film makers, to begin with the production of works which dispense with conventional approaches to subject matter, and instead focus on conveying meaning through the "pursuit of knowledge foreign to language and founded upon visual communication."
Finally, he implores the reader to accept formerly shunned forms of vision as creative sources. "Allow so-called hallucination to enter the realm of perception, ... accept dream visions, day-dreams or night-dreams, as you would so-called real scenes, even allowing that the abstractions which move so dynamically when closed eyelids are pressed are actually perceived."

I cant believe its been 8 weeks....

This reading was very interesting to me. It felt like psychology reading in a way on us as human beings. like in the formal situation part it describes our basic human feeling that are our natural animal instinct. I did like how it ended talking about the film maker finding a hidden world with in his film I think alot of us do that not only when making a film but when watching we immersed ourself into a film or even reading a book we sometimes feel like we become the main character. over all I enjoyed this reading. I hope every one had a good spring break!

                       Cat I saw on the Great Wall of China!...... it didn't like humans though... 

week 8

I really liked this reading so I created my own response by quoting the text.

"As human beings we find ourselves in a strange situation.

We have the same basic qualities, problems, ernotions,

and interests that animals have: we experience

danger and often need to defend ourselves, we need to

eat and sleep, we feel anger and tenderness, and we

reproduce. At the same time we also have the ability to

observe this entire experience". "The temperature is at 

least reasonable, and we have the freedom to walk around 

and look at things. At times we feel alone; we desire, we fall

in love." "Yet we didn't make up any of these possibilities." 

"We did not make up our emotions. We did not make up the 

fact that we find things beautiful or that people fall in love.

After all, I don't even know how I move my hand or turn my 

head. I don't even know how I'm speaking. All I know is that 

I can participate in this situation." "With humility, we can 

perform an act of alchemy and transform what might feel 

like leaden claustrophobia into an expression of openness 

and clarity" "I realized" "there" "is" "something" "beyond
its intellectual or narrative content". "I began to become
more sensitive to these" "experiences and the qualities"
"that might produce health" "and" "possibly extend to
another media." "We view films in the context of darkness."
"This situation is a metaphor for the nature of our own vision."
 "it can be a way of approaching and manifesting the
ineffable"- "it penetrates to the very core of our being,
and vibrates in a way that is close to this core."
"Existence and nonexistence alternate at an
extremely fast speed". "This intermittence is part of our 

daily experience". "The nature of our life" "is" "truly

disturbing".

dorsky

In the reading, Dorsky is stating that cinema is religion and relates both together. He says that there is an entire process behind what the cinema, not only the film but the area and feeling and all the people involved that help produce an alchemy. He goes into the post-film experience and how that helps create a certain feeling after a film. This vulnerability or invulnerability helped the film and showed that people all experiencing the same thing can have opposite or feel the same depending on how they interpreted the film. i like the idea of interpreting and trying to find out the effects of post-film experience, i had never thought about analyzing peoples reactions after films, and i like him talking about "no" time. The "no" time is when during relative time, we as human stop it by not having an interactions with the physical world around us, and try to almost pause time until the event is over. It is a cool realization and i would like to explore it because it was never brought to my attention until now.

Influence

He tries to make an emphasis that the human body and the film are alike. I didn’t fully understood it, but he says that “we are both appreciators and victims of material existence”. That the body and film, both touch, expedient, and desire. I took an interest in his idea that “we might think that all this is our own discovery, that we are actually responsible for all this. Yet we did not make up any of these possibilities… We did not make up our emotions”. As a machine of ideas, we think that most of our ideas are new, twisted, or unimaginable. In most of the cases, more than we want them to be, have already being done. We, as avant-garde, did not invented the warm water. To touch and twist, or modernize, it can change an old idea to new. However, we should have always in mind that “The filmmaker seeks the safety net of an idea, or something to accomplish that is already known.” Don’t be afraid, there will always be somebody out there that will get it and like it.

As I read, I got his point, but what happens when I change it a little. He was explaining about Voyage to Italy, he says that “these two people are stuck, each in their own view of life and their view of each other”. What would happen if he change his sentence about the couple and about each other, and use the producers (directors, cast, and everyone) and the audience? Both are stuck in the entertainment desire, the producers with an idea of what the audience wants and their lives, while the audience is expecting maybe cheesy film and have their own view of the other. At the very end, the relation between the producers and the audience is forever changing, “they snap at one another to the point of absolute impasse, until there's no way out except through divorce or renunciation”. Some audience and producers will give up on each other.

I will agree that film, television, radio, mass media and communication, and all of them, of course that changes our lives, so it does not surprise me that in his case “everyone was completely accessible and vulnerable to one another, looking at each other, all strangers”. Does anybody remembers what Wall-E did to the audience? People suddenly started to recycle, be green, and environmental. Influence is everything and will always be everything.

Dorsky

Dorsky pinpoints what I have found to be evident of great artworks regardless of media: transformative power.

"When film does this, when it subverts our absorption in the temporal and reveals the depths of our own reality, it opens us to a fuller sense of ourselves and our world."

Perhaps cinema is more visceral than other art forms because it demands a specific amount of time from the viewer as well as presenting both a visual and audio experience. Also, the combination of projected light in a dark room makes it easy for us to become enveloped in the action. Now compare this to a room of brightly lit paintings hung on white walls—it's a completely different kind of event. In the gallery or the museum setting, we are able to choose our route and hover at a piece as long was we desire. In the exhibition space, I would argue that it's more difficult to have an immersive experience; or at least, it takes a different kind of mental preparedness. With cinema or TV it can be as if we get helplessly sucked in. This sort of brainwashing can happen with religion too, but that's besides the point Dorsky is trying to make. He is more concerned with the metaphysical.

Dorsky reminds me of Joseph Campbell, who was a mythologist and quite the philosopher too. Here are some quotes:

"The object becomes aesthetically significant when it becomes metaphysically significant."

"Poets and artists who speak of the mystery are rare."

"A real artist is the one who has learned to recognize and to render the 'radiance' of all things as an epiphany or showing forth of the truth."

"What the artist must render is a living moment somehow, a living moment actually in action or an inward experience."

"One looks, looks long, and the world comes in."

Perception becomes the key player in all of this. If we are open enough to take the journey to have an experience with art, then transformation, awe, and evocation of spirit can happen; but still, the experience relies on the artwork's ability to communicate, and so it works both ways between the viewer and the artwork. As with anything, some will "get it" and some won't, but it's likely that when most get it, there's really something to it! Hurray for the Beatles!