Friday, April 20, 2007

a seemingly (un)important occurence...

Thursday morning was unlike any other morning...

the way the furniture is situated in my room is that whilst reclining in bed I and able to extend my arms and reach to obtain any one of the expanse amounts of items on my desk, including my laptop... at approximately 5:20am while shifting in position... i caused my pillows to moved, which consequently knocked over a tall glass of water... before i realized what had happened my poor computer was immersed with water... seizing my computer and immediately attempting to shake it dry... i watched as the blue lit 'on' button slowly flickered then faded off.. as did the screen immediately after...

thus followed the desperate attempts to thoroughly dry and revive... through broken sobs i continually blow dried and wrapped a towel around my computer... i also took this as an opportunity to thoroughly clean in between the keys... i'm sure my computer was not too fond of being as dirty as i had let it become ... and i was willing to do anything in an attempt to coerce this thing back to life... which really intrigues me in retrospect...

The almost death of my computer was almost like and felt like it was the death of another person or being... the time i spend on my computer is insane... It has been said that people interact with their cell phones more than they do with any one person... which is not only fascinatingly true... but incredible... because not only do we use our phones as communication to talk to people we continually check them for the time, set alarms, use them as planners, type and send text messages to other people... machines are extremely crucial and inevitably will be interacted with multiple times through out the course of our day...

Its nuts to think about how much time i spend with my computer... and to think how much this machine is like a best friend... just by going on my computer you could find out so much about me... through my music, typed documents, photographs, artwork, video, etc... and my computer has gone through and been to alot of places with me ...its fascinating how when i recounted the seemingly destruction of machinery as a 'death in the family' ... because of all the memories my computer has documented... to me it was a seemingly traumatic loss to experience... and im sure that this doesn't hold true to just myself...

this analogy of human to machine... got me thinking... about the whole idea of man/woman vs. machine; man/woman becoming machine; the actions of human mimicking that of a machine; the routine life of a human equated to that of the routine process a machine has been made to carry out...

I have put a lot of thought into this... and have on two occasions created art work expressing this idea... the first being a stop action short film "your bones got a little machine" and an approximately 5'4" plank of wood painted with acryllic paint to reveal the inside of a human vein juxtaposing red blood cells with nuts [and bolts] entitled "in the vein of humanity" ...

i feel like there is something extremely interesting in this and something that can be further explored with in this realm and duality of machine/human...

there is also something extremely interesting in how people and get on a computer or a video game system or any other interactive electronic for that matter... become so immersed in and easily learn and know how to manipulate it... what is also interesting in how both man an machine have a linear duration... that is for life existence ... perhaps on and off could be deemed similar to sleep and awake... or conscious and unconscious... also human error vs. mechanical error...

there is much that can be extracted from this comparison i feel... more to follow...

Edit:

Ken Berman in response to the question: "why machines?"
taken from: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/05.29.03/berman-0322.html

"I see them almost as human. Nowadays everything is mechanized, you can't get away from them. Because of that, I see man and machine almost melded. I don't see it as a takeover of human nature, but I see a way for the machines to explain what I see as human nature. I also wanted the pieces to connect, so that they connect into other paintings. The idea is that they could be reassembled and rearranged, and that permeates this avenue of thought."

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