PROJECT OUTLINE

Sound and image together combine to create a synergistic sensory effect that is greater than the sum of their separate sensory effects. This synergy between sound and image gives television media a leading edge in evoking emotion.

 The power of the television to carry emotion is very strong. When children sit in front of a television show, they are engaged in it with every part of their being, their emotions are taken on a ride through the ups and downs of the programmed content.

 People living in a ‘Television Culture’ learn to differentiate the emotions of ‘real-life’ and the emotions artificially evoked by television media. To our bodies however, the emotions evoked in both situations are indistinguishable.

 In front of the television we learn to distance ourselves from emotion. It is said in hypnotic science that the subconscious mind can not distinguish between suggestion and real life, which is also the basis for creative visualisation and affirmation and neuro-linguistic reprogramming.

 Imagine the effect on the subconscious mind, of the constant ‘distancing’ from artificially evoked emotion. The subconscious learns from an early age in life that ultimately emotion is exhausting and irrelevant and easier to simply repress it. When one encounters an emotionally evocative event in a real-life situation the subconscious mind will be ready to act in the way it has been conditioned to. It will be ready to switch off from emotion. Through the power of media to continually evoke emotion in our lives we learn to become indifferent to it.

 Emotionally evocative media will ultimately give us the training to respond objectively to emotionally evocative situations where it is beneficial for our judgment and action to be more machine like. But what will this seemingly mechanical capability mean for our broader cultural and social interaction as it replaces our more natural human emotive actions and reactions. As television becomes more and more a part of reality, the line distinguishing ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ emotion will become even more blurred in our cognition.

 Many may argue that this indifference is a good thing, that it will help us to remain objective in the face of personal decisions. But ultimately this seems very empty and mechanical to always make life decisions objectively and really does not leave any justification for romance or for the passionate expression of deepest desire.

 At the most superficial level, re-VISION will simulate abilities to see into the past and distant locations. At a deeper level, it will act as an interactive critique of television news and the lack of identification that many viewers feel towards the human drama and tragedy that grace our television sets on a daily basis. At an activist level, it hopes to encourage the user to reflect on the unthinking consumption of current news stories and images and the effects on their personal life and community.

 Re-vision requires you to interact by way of a typically caring human gesture. This gesture of nursing the image becomes the device which breaks through the wall of emotional indifference we have constructed around the images presented to us through television media.

 The emotional index of the images is informed by the ancient Chinese medicinal associations between the 5 elements and the five emotions. Each sequence of images and sound aims to achieve an emotional reaction and will be determined by the ball selecting for the viewer, what it deems as most appropriate for the viewer at the time of engagement. The dynamics of the real-time audio visual composition inside the ball ensures that the viewer is presented with a unique image sequence of emotionally evocative intension.

Images ranging from war, natural disaster, SARS, human triumph, through to nature documentaries are re-interpreted in this installation. Image sequences with emotional weighting for the user, ranging from ANGER, CONFUSION, MELANCHOLY and FEAR to feelings of JOY will appear in the "crystal ball".

 

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The truth about Australian media ownership law reforms and the Harradine amendment.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/25/1056449303733.html

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/22/1056220481832.html

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 Further Discussion:

 People that live in a ‘Television Culture’ often feel emotionally overloaded when exposed to news programmes. This can be seen in our society by many youth refusing to watch news programmes. By ignoring news they are making an effort to limit the overload of emotional provocation; enabling for themselves purer emotional responsiveness. By ignoring news programs they can also limit their exposure to certain international and community issues; leading to social isolation.

 In Australian social interaction the spirit of our identity exists in our general slang and tone more so than in a refined vocabulary. Our local Media often makes use of this typically Australian language to help us identify with the stories presented to us in a closer, more trusting way.

 Australia’s physical isolation is exploited by the mainstream media companies, some celebrities, and politicians, in a way in which they blatantly sensor issues and synthesize deliberately deceitful rhetoric using simple ‘Australian English’ that ‘everyday Australians’ can identify with. Our isolation makes us particularly vulnerable to this rhetoric because we really are on the other side of the planet, isolated by cultural identity, ocean and language.

 If the spirit of Australia’s cultural identity is to be kept uniquely Australian (or more importantly uniquely human), then we must insure we are aware of this indifference to emotion that we are developing in response to provocative media and marketing. Our indifference to emotion evoked by fictional and non-fictional images can easily lead to further emotional indifference to many international and local issues that often require a deep seeded will to overcome. Without emotion, the passion and will to overcome human issues cannot exist.

 The science of manipulating human emotion with intent to remove or maintain an idea in the human mindset is called marketing. Media marketing is actually a very objective art-form that manipulatively targets peoples’ emotion. E.g.: Evoking insecurities, like the very feeling of nothingness that materialism and objectivism seek to cure.

 If we do not remain aware of the psychological effects of emotionally overloading the human being through provocative images, we could find ourselves becoming subtly controlled by a media dictatorship that does not overthrow us by force but through manipulative suggestive rhetoric.

 This may seem like a far-fetched forecast but if we consider the mechanical device of artificial intelligence and compare it to the notion of human decision without emotional influence, we can see that objectivity could ultimately totally remove our essential human characteristic.

 With our increasing and unquestioning belief in the authority of objective science we are beginning to abandon other essentially human concepts which objective science cannot define. The emphasis on intellectual objectivity leads to an emphasis on the use of processes with definiteness, provoking doubt and mistrust for essentially indefinite processes like human emotion and intuition. E.g.: Where the essentially human device of moral intuition is the foundation for ethical behavior, the forsaking of indefinite processes in human life can lead to the abandonment of ethical constraints.

 Objective science forsaking moral intuition can be seen in the way that our speed limits in Australia are so rigorously enforced. Ironically there are still many roads in Australia that use the Ø symbol ‘drive to suit conditions’ a sign of the beautiful trust between authority and human moral judgment. Today we are told how the speed limit of 50 has been scientifically proven in laboratory test conditions to be safer that 60 and a hefty fine is imposed on you if you break this limit even by 3 km. It is an example of a science based authority that shows the complete mistrust of human ability to conceive of the very nature of safe driving. A rigorous enforcement that forces one to use a machine to regulate speed or to look at the speedometer more frequently than the odometer does not necessarily make for a safe driver.

 The authority of science is the most powerful that has ever been exercised in the world. However stupid a man may be he can say ‘but science established that’. Science is the ultimate authority. If we do not bring personality back into science we may find that one day we are simply just cogs in a machine that has encompassed us from our own superficial intrigue for the external and our ignorance of the internal.

 Our longing for cinema, our longing for external stimulation of emotion, co-incides with our objective approach to seeing everything from the outside, no longer paying attention to our inner activity that is indefinite by nature.

 With our willingness to participate in cinema with its safety of ‘unreal’ emotional evocation from beyond our real-life situation together with our unconscious conditioning to distance ourselves from emotion, and our tendency for objectivism. It is not surprising seeing a lack of trust in our community and seemingly increasing hopelessness in resolving issues.

 Through television media; this manipulation by mostly political and market forces (both consciously sought and unconsciously received), we are being programmed and emotionally overloaded day after day. We must be more conscious of the selective mind numbing stories of inadequacy and distrust.

 If objectivity rules the world, slang or the local melody within language would only be there to serve as an indication of where one is from (similar to that of British dialects indicating class), not to reveal any underlying local spirit. News readers will ultimately give monotonic rationalised orders and structures for life.

 The future of human ethical behaviour depends on the power of moral intuition becoming stronger not just the instruction set of moral sciences. Intuition is formed with emotion. Without emotional clarity we cannot make decisions for ourselves.

 Turn off your TV & Live consciously.