Our week 10 lecture discussed the internet, and the connection between the personal and the public. We looked at a book called “Windows & Mirrors”. We talked about how the book dispelled some myths about the internet, things like, how people think the computer is not there, explaining how we actually look through it, like a window, hence Windows aptly entitled name, this lead on to us discussing, Microsoft Kinect.
Microsoft Kinect is a motion sensing input device for the Xbox 360. It’s based around a web cam based add-on, it enables users to interact and control with the Xbox without having to touch a game controller through a natural user interface. This has made a huge change to the internet and the way we use it, because normally manufacturers don’t want the consumer to change or modify there product, but Microsoft have embraced it, and have even set up a forum were people can post and share there ideas and thoughts, this is a very smart idea, because it basically has the consumer doing their work form them.
We then went on to discuss internet art and the definition of internet art. We talked about three main points, they are; the computer has become a new medium, to design a digital artefact is to design and experience and Digital design should not try to be invisible. These three points I think are very important, the point that the internet is a new medium is a subject point, because, it’s hard to call something new when it has been around a good number of years, But I guess it’s only recently that it has moved into daily global usage.
We then began to talk about internet art and the link between the personal space and the public space. We talked about how your experience when viewing the web is normally a very personal one, at the same time it is completely public, especially when we post anything online. We talked about the dangers of posting things online, and the problems with it. One of the things discussed was the “Free Floating Signifier”. Floating signifiers is a term used in semiotics to denote signifiers without referents, for example a word that doesn’t point to any actual object or meaning. In our discussion, we talked about this in the context of facebook, and how when we post things on facebook, a lot of the people viewing it don’t know the context of it, hence many people taking different meanings.
We were then shown a piece of art by a performance artist called Stelarc. We discussed his 2007 piece of performance art, in which he had a cell cultivated ear surgically attached to his left arm. Apparently he did it so he could hear is IPod. Quoting Stelarc, he said that, “The biological body is not well organ-ised. The body needs to be internet enabled in more intimate ways. The ear on arm project suggests an alternate anatomical architecture, the engineering of a new organ for the body: an available, accessible and mobile organ for other bodies in other places, enabling people to locate and listen in to another body else where.” To be honest when we looked at this piece of art I didn’t know what to think, and to be totally honest I still don’t.
