The death of fantasy!
Roland Barthes professes that we no longer have a logic for driving but a subjective logic due to a loss of fantasy for speed and for machine of the car. Is this loss of fantasy due to the rise of digital media being that we no longer depend on our minds to fantasize but rather rely on technology to do it for us? Have we created a pseudo fantastical universe by allowing digitization to penetrate our consciousness at every level?
It was also said in the reading that the television makes our places of habitation a space to both receive and distribute data, lending telematic power to habitation in a sense. Telematic power implies the ability to regulate things from a distance. Perhaps this condition of dis-contact and over regulation has additionally contributed to our loss of fantasy. We are at a loss for spontaneous projection therefore everything is calculated, controlled and regulated. Everything is a device, even our habitats. Thus given that our homes take on a device like machine character they become predictable, just like many things have because they are products of technology and communication. When we have the ability to predict outcomes our ability to fantasize is compromised. As actors of fantasy we lose currency and are replaced by mere bodies within a telematic system projected to the universe in what Baudrillard refers to as a screen.
8 comments:
Regarding identity and objects:
"...people no longer project themselves into their objects, with their affects and their representations,..."
How is it possible for people to disassociate their identities (as suggested by Baudrillard) from the things they choose to possess?? I find the act of making a 'large' purchase, such as a computer, car, piece of art, etc to be ceremonious: a large amount of time is dedicated to various forms of research before the purchase; there is a dance-like aspect to interacting with the desired object during the selection phase, in a search for 'compatability;' I feel 'seduced' by certain objects more than others because of this compatibility; and, in deciding on my final purchase, the object's reflectance of, or complement to my identity (or it's capacity to be adapted to my identity, especially in the case of clothing) are major 'selling points.' It's like Eduardo said back in the day (block course) - when we go out searching for things on the internet (or in reality), we are searching for ourselves.
So, depending on the mode of interaction between human and object, perhaps the object exists as mirror AND screen (identity AND use value). For instance, the decision to purchase a 'power car' may be identity-based, and the car is a power symbol when it's parked out front, but once in the driver seat, becomes the use-value becomes dominant (but power symbol certainly still exists)!
I think that our relationships to objects have significantly shifted in the last 40 years, being that we have become more disassociated from the objects we choose to purchase. I realize that there is the “ceremony of the large purchase” like Bobbie has suggested but even our large purchases have seemed to be de-sacrilized. I think it is reasonable to say that more and more people today live off a false income, in that credit is often the source for our purchasing power. In that sense we do not save, count our pennies and hoard our income for months or even years to make enough cash to buy that one expensive item. It is far too easy for us these days to get anything we want because even if we don’t have the money for it, it can be loaned to us. Therefore I think we are far more disconnected from what we buy as it is not really money we earned that bought it, it is not a product of our labor and efforts.
True true Larraine, but even still, do we buy things that we don't like? What does it mean to desire, or like an object? When we 'like' something, what mechanisms are at play? I think that to like something is to recognize something in it, perhaps subconsciously, that speaks to our identities. Sometimes I make 'mistakes' when purchasing something, such as a hat, and end up never wearing it - yes, it was an impulse buy, but no, it doesn't really speak of my personality / identity, so I never wear it. So I guess with increasing purchasing power comes a greater risk of investing in a mirror-less object, but then the use value of the object is diminshed when our identities aren't inscirbed in it.
New question: Individual vs collective.
In this blurring of public and private spaces, what happens to the states of the 'individual' and 'collective': are their limits also beginning to overlap, and if so, what exactly does that mean in 'real' terms?
I think that it is true that my private life is becoming more public, but at the same time, my individuality is becoming increasingly asserted, rather than mixed into a faceless collective. I think an emerging trend is to give identities to members of a collective, so that, rather than blurring limits, limits are better (more clearly) deliniated.
Another question: what is the value of obscenity in architecture? For instance, when a building is completely legible, from the outside in (when you can read a facade, in the sense that the facade speaks of what is beyond), what is gained or lost from this form of communication? Considering that values are formed through exposure to a multitude of conditions, one would assume that transparency (obscenity) in architecture is (will be) a preferred trend.
“What was projected psychologically and mentally, what used to be lived out on earth as metaphor, as mental or metaphorical scene, is henceforth projected into reality, without any metaphor at all, into an absolute space which is also that of simulation.”
The loss of metaphor in our daily lives could be associated how we have begun to embrace technology. By technology I specifically mean digital and electrical machinery like the computer etc. Our society has begun to rely heavily upon technologies as significant contributors to our daily habits. We rely on email and telephones for communication, electricity and gas fro lighting and heat, refrigerators, ovens and microwaves for our food, the list goes on and on. These technologies do not allow for metaphor or mental space, they are definite machines defined for specific purposes. There is little room for possibility and creativity when defrosting a breast of chicken in the microwave. I think that because we have allowed these machines that create absolutes like on/off, cooked/raw, hot/cold into our lives, our mentalities have followed suit. We have started to rely on yes or no answers more heavily than speculation and creativity. I think that this mentality also comes form our shift of faith and beliefs away from religion and towards science. Science has a way of removing the metaphorical from having authority in ones beliefs and thoughts.
I think desire from a commodity object ownership sense is created through marketing, is specifically the result of a desired lifestyle, and ultimately happiness. We perceive happiness to be something different. But we are told we can find happiness in a variety of purchased objects and items, from cars to burgers to life insurance the ultimate pursuit if of happiness. I think desiring an object gives it importance in our minds towards our happiness. I think the mechanisms that establish happiness are no longer natural processes. I think our desires and their establishment are learned from cultural immersion (this is assuming that the north American culture is becoming or is consumerism). Why do you think in general we (architecture students) want to live in clean modernist dwellings? Do we see happiness in these structures?
Physical and mental movement.
When technologically advanced objects are introduced into our daily routine we immobilize our bodies. We no longer have the use for our limbs, our feet, our waist, etc. we no longer know how to organize our body with our minds when these objects are introduced into our micro and macro landscapes. As an affect of losing ones ability to organize the body and the mind at the same time there is a loss in memory through doing. There is a linkage that has been broken between the two which has cascaded into a butterfly affect onto the individuals lives and moreover onto the lives of groups of individuals. I believe that initially technological advances were introduced as aids in time saving. They were invented to save time so there would be more time to spend with ones family and friends. But, there was an elastic effect in which time was sucked up by pertaining to the maintenance of the objects and as well as the physical and mental effects on the individual. How have these objects affected communication between the individual one a micro and on a macro scale?
What happens to cultural customs that are no longer passed down by generations due to technology? The old way takes too much time? Does it really and how many traditionalist are left anyways. I guess we create new customs with each technological update. We cannot hold on to the past forever can we. But is each custom really that old? Or does the custom just a marker for change in a technology (object introduction). For instance no one can ever have the same food they ate as a child at a Christmas dinner. All the actors involved such as the atmosphere, time difference, family members, weather, and food stores etc are never the same. So why do we try than to simulate it? And how does technology play a part in that. How can technology take you back to a place without physically being there? Is it the same thing? There is a loss of equality in physical and mental movement.
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