Your inputs linked Eugenio's points to this question: "has new media created a new art or has it created a new artistic expression?"
I would like to point here on an observation I have on the Lebanese setting that has more to do with people's creativity. I've been noticing how new media is changing the social behaviour:
Not only was the Lebanese satellite dish era a turning point in the local social behaviour, but so were the SMS and mobile phone eras. A 60-year-old citizen sitting on the balcony, observing and even supervising the activities taking place in the street below, noticing the tiny changes and micro-events happening here and there has now a new favourite place at home: the sofa in front of the TV set with the wide choice of satellite channels, or in the Lebanese (literal) terms "sitting in front of the 'Dish' ". The large variety of channels offered this person a new way to spend his spare time. This citizen needs to find ways to fill the emptiness of what is left of his life: what remains after their spouse's death, their children's marriage, their children's trips abroad for work or study; what remains after his role of telling stories and leading discussions in the family is eclipsed and defeated by new technology.
This citizen is convinced that studying in Lebanon is good, but not good enough, and that working in Lebanon is also fine but not always available and secure because of the unstable security and economic atmosphere. Thus, young people leave Lebanon for good in order to seek stability, security, and a better future for their children. They seek a second nationality; a sort of social security paper that would enable them to be evacuated from the country should another war start again.
Then the parents of these young people start to enjoy the multitude of channels… the hundreds, even thousands of channels! They discover how lively zapping can be. They become zappers. They are no longer desperate Lebanese. They wake up in the morning and start zapping. The remote control has become their favourite tool; even though they do not necessarily know how to fully use its features, they are at least able to locate the channel and volume buttons. These two buttons fill their spare time occupation, zapping: a tool of energy for life. Having become advanced zappers, they have discovered that they can zap whenever they feel bored. Zapping, thus, has become a means to escape boredom, control the media, and react against the passivity associated with TV. As such, they keep zapping and only stop for a short while to watch what seems to be interesting fragments to them. They enjoy these 'peak points' which connect them to life. Each peak point is
a link followed by the search for another peak point. However, there is a red alert when the next link happens to be very distant.
This creates mutual business between the viewer and the broadcasting company because the moving images are coherently constructing a new edited meaning by the viewer: the broadcasting company has to provide interesting quality content and the viewer has to hunt them. Hence, this adds the new role of hunting to zapping.
If art questions the social attitudes, zapping is one of the things to deal with. But is zapping a creative action, an expression, a real time editing, a "TVJaying"?
Footnote
---------------
Our topic:
This running discussion deals with how (new) media can affect local behaviours related to creativity and innovation within a socio-political context, and what is the link between politic and the ways that users behave.
Questions that are raised include:
- Is (new) media a tool which reinforces people's creativity and how it is expressed in terms of social behaviour?
- What new media is entailing in connection to artistic expression? Is new media just a tool or an art form?
- How are democracy and social connectivity via new media related?
- Are global and local systems two separate entities, or is it about one place?
- What is the impact of the media content on identity in your socio-politic sphere?
- How is the economy affecting visual forms of communication?
- Do artworks emerge from a specific Intention or from media models constrained by business requirements?
- What new roles do virtual social networks adopt to maintain difficult relations?
________________________________
From: "Wagner, Teresa" <T.Wagner@unesco.org>
To: cubo23@yahoo.com; YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
Sent: Friday, April 3, 2009 11:59:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] NEW MEDIA: USER'S BEHAVIOUR, SOCIAL SYSTEMS, AND THE BODY POLITIC
Dear Yasminers and friends,
Allow me first of all to thank Ricardo and Roger for inviting me to participate in your discussions.
I would like to link the very interesting point made by Eugienio, which opens a one month discussion about the impact of new media on social behaviour and creativity, to the creative experience. He explains how the new media brings local into global and vice versa. I would like to apply his statement to creativity and put on a new question: has new media created a new art or has it created a new artistic expression?
In other terms my point is whether new media is a powerful tool for creativity in different art fields or whether it has introduced new concepts and new ideas which had permitted the emersion of a new form of art.
Generally speaking if we look back to the art history we know (as defined by J. Rancière) that in the 19th century fine arts had a representative "scope". Creativity kept on serving that aim. In the 20th century art moved towards expressivity. With the introduction of new media in the 60' something else has raised. P. Weibel thinks that digital image has changed man's conception. Movement, speed, transformation, etc. are considered as the main essence of contemporary artistic forms. What new media is entailing in connection to artistic expression? Is new media just a tool or an art form?
Coming back to Eugenio's point can we associate the "tool" and the "art from" or shall we keep them separated?
Teresa
++++++++++++++++
Teresa Wagner
e-mail: t.wagner@unesco.org
Http://portal.unesco.org/culture
-----Message d'origine-----
De : yasmin_discussions-bounces@estia.media.uoa.gr [mailto:yasmin_discussions-bounces@estia.media.uoa.gr] De la part de Eugenio Tisselli
Envoyé : jeudi 2 avril 2009 21:22
À : yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
Objet : Re: [Yasmin_discussions] NEW MEDIA: USER'S BEHAVIOUR, SOCIAL SYSTEMS,AND THE BODY POLITIC
Dear Yasminers,
First of all, I would like to thank Ricardo Mbarkho and Roger Malina for having me as a respondent in our new topic: "New Media: User's Behaviour, Social Systems, and the Body Politic"... I hope that we will have an interesting exchange!
I would like to start by adressing one of the main questions that Ricardo has proposed: "Are global and local systems two separate entities, or is it about one place?" ... for too long, a tendency to think about the local and the global as two separate -yet interacting- social spaces has prevailed. But what lies in between? Do we have to make a quantum leap to travel between those two spaces? And where would we "land" if we did the jump from our locality into "the global"?
As Bruno Latour proposes in his revealing book "Reassembling the social" (by the way, I'm not a sociologist ;), we can "expand locally everywhere", provided we can trace the links between different localities. The theory of network topology, together with interactive visualization technologies, can become valuable tools for tracking the myriads of connections in the increasingly complex system that our world is becoming.
Think about your mobile phone for a while: a symbol of the globalized practice of ubiquitous communication, and yet an intimate and personal object with which you can contact your colleagues or reach your loved ones... whether they are physically near or far. Your mobile phone turns you into a moving communications hub, a tool for invoking dispersed localities and bringing them into your own. But think also about the thing itself: the screen, the plastic case, the circuits and microchips... where do all these parts come from? Components from all around the world, suddenly in the palm of your hand. And while mobile phones are being used more and more as tools that serve not only for communication in daily life, but also as media in which creative and artistic practices are based, they are also the direct cause of many conflicts which (seem to) happen "out there", in the "global space". If we trace the route which ends in the palm of our hands, between
the circuits in our mobile phones, we will almost certainly find its origin in Central Africa, where brutal wars are being financed greatly through the exploitation of Coltan, a metallic ore mined mostly in Congo which has become an indispensable material for the manufacturing of consumer electronics... such as our phone.
Viewing "the local" and "the global" as two separate entities tends to obscure the links, routes and connections that we must be aware of, if we want to make a more humane, rational and respectful usage of technology, or of consumer products in general. We should be able track the far-away localities from which our own local things come from; otherwise, we will find ourselves blinded by the distance. Quoting Latour, "... this tracking may end up in a shared definition of a common world"... sounds like it might be worth giving it a try! But how do we start?
Looking forward to hearing from you all...
Best wishes,
Eugenio.
Eugenio Tisselli Vélez
cubo23@yahoo.com
http://www.motorhueso.net
¡Obtén la mejor experiencia en la web!< Descarga gratis el nuevo Internet Explorer 8. http://downloads.yahoo.com/ieak8/?l=e1
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
