I've been staying in lately and not doing much.
My thoughts are revolving around Guy Debord's concept of spectacle and all the images surrounding us.
In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.
The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.
The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.
This fragmentation is both disturbing and captivating - we can never grasp the essence of a person or whichever phenomenon as a whole or as it "really" is, but at the same time, it leaves room for the imagination and mystery. But it is surely true - everything is represented through images.
I remembered American Beauty and that teenage boy who thought a plastic bag in the wind was the most beautiful thing he had ever filmed. Though this concrete example might be a bit corny, accordingly to one's tastes, I still like the idea it imparts. When something simple represents something else. Beauty in ugliness and ugliness in beauty. Transferred meanings, metaphors, symbolism, aesthetics of random things. You can make anything out of anything. And hope it won't get lost in the spectacle.
My representation of my hangover this morning.
My thoughts are revolving around Guy Debord's concept of spectacle and all the images surrounding us.
In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.
The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.
The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.
This fragmentation is both disturbing and captivating - we can never grasp the essence of a person or whichever phenomenon as a whole or as it "really" is, but at the same time, it leaves room for the imagination and mystery. But it is surely true - everything is represented through images.
I remembered American Beauty and that teenage boy who thought a plastic bag in the wind was the most beautiful thing he had ever filmed. Though this concrete example might be a bit corny, accordingly to one's tastes, I still like the idea it imparts. When something simple represents something else. Beauty in ugliness and ugliness in beauty. Transferred meanings, metaphors, symbolism, aesthetics of random things. You can make anything out of anything. And hope it won't get lost in the spectacle.
My representation of my hangover this morning.
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talamia:
From your list of interests it seems you may be taking a course involving visual communications and art history, are you? We studied just about everything on your list too in my course a few years back 
talamia:
oh I just meant that list of your "into's"