— chapter 3 – about virtuality —
Having already analysed the possibilities and problems that arise from the spatial dimension and the phenomenon of communication for this kind of artwork, I think it is time to dedicate a few lines to the definition of the role that the media could play in this project. Thinking about them not only as artefacts devoid of intention, whose coldness originates in believing that they are passive channels to facilitate communication, but, on the contrary, thinking of the active role they can play within this communication by making a brief historical analysis.
In classical mythology and also in philosophical literature, the figure of other spaces-realities that communicate or to which we have access through channels or characters that allow us to communicate, dates back thousands of years: it is perhaps the case of the Judea-Christian heaven or hell, of Plato’s cave and of course in Kantian theory and later Heidegger’s theory regarding the essential of things (The Being) and how limited our understanding of them is.
However, I would like to emphasise the figure of classical mythology: where a God or Gods seeking to communicate with humans to deliver their message or different knowledge, resort to different mechanisms that allow the bridging of both worlds. Many times these bridges are other mythological beings that support different heroes within religious stories.
I think the comparative figure is interesting because in many of these stories these channels, these agents of communication between a space (of knowledge, of the land of the gods, of paradise) and our space, does not act without intention. These characters rarely play purely passive roles in transmitting a message, but are also more or less passionately involved in the conflicts of humans: heroes and protagonists of these stories.
In his work the philosopher Marshall McLuham is categorical in attributing and highlighting the role that the media and new technologies play in our society. Of course, as artists we cannot leave this analysis aside when analysing or producing art in the 21st century, but I think it is even more important to be aware of what new technologies mean and represent for today’s music.
In our art, understanding this relevance goes largely through assuming the filters that our technology implies. On the one hand there are the strictly technological impediments: technical limitations in being able to share digitally some sensory stimuli that prevent us from using them as features or part of a digital aesthetic discourse: although, as Professor Dr. Georg Hajdu presents, this phenomenon may only depend on time in the sense of waiting for a technology that allows us to send those stimuli.
However, technology always suffers from a more relevant factor in my opinion, which is that it always responds to the needs and interests of the human being. Technology by itself never decides or defines what the final result of a work is, even though it plays a very preponderant role. Even in matters of Artificial Intelligences, I believe that technology is still far from escaping human decisions and supervision. This is why I think it is always relevant to ask ourselves how and what we are doing with our media: to give a simple example, let’s just ask ourselves who stores the information that is taken from our social medias and what it is currently used for.
I believe that in the same way as the analysis we made previously regarding the attitude that an auditor should have (active or passive) in front of an artwork, an interesting perspective for our project could be to have a medium with which the audience can interact to shape and contribute to the development of our work independently or in parallel to the communication between performers.
In this way, we bring to our discourse of communication and discovery of the space a fundamental role to the audience who, through their ideas, their imagination could affect the communication between both spaces in a conscious way and with a politically playful perspective regarding the awareness and discourse on the use of technologies.