“The ARTIST is a person who is
especially aware of the challenge and dangers of new environments. Whereas the
ordinary person seeks security by numbing his perceptions against the impact of
new experience, the artist delights in this novelty and instinctively creates
situations that both reveal it and compensate for it.” – Marshall McLuhan
Readings
1. Alice Rae, "Art (Anti-environment)"
2. Darren Werschler, "Artists as RADAR: McLuhan reading poetry"
Technical knowledge cannot solve the problem of numbness since technical knowledge is always about how to do something, not why something should be done or how personal and social identity are unconsciously altered by the use of a technological solution to a problem. So what kind of knowledge can help us avoid cultural narcosis? Only ART can.
Art is the ability to overcome perceptual dissonance, not by becoming numb to the dissonance, but by REVEALING it, and therefore discovering a new way to reach a DEEPER LEVEL OF EQUILIBRIUM with the environment. The artist bridges the gap between past and future, reveals the dangers of the new media environment to others, unifies her experience rather than remaining fragmented, studies the distortions of experience created by our OUT-OF-BALANCE RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE, is the canary in the mineshaft warning us of spiritually-poisonous ways of relating to each other and the world, allows us to accept our experiences for what they truly are, frees our mind.
Artists are the only people who actually live in the Present. The technical side of art is the technology of creating effects. The artist can see the present environment because she studies how to reproduce effects of the environment, but in a way that slows down the process to make it perceivable.
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