Working Thesis (which will surely undergo drastic revision): While the digital age
affords us seemingly infinite opportunities, with those opportunities comes the danger of
destroying mankind's most fundamental and universal quality, his capacity to
experience and create awe.
Realistically, you should probably just skip to the end and read my end commentary, because I'm tweaking my emphasis a bit, and that's the part where I'd be most interested in hearing your feedback. Thanks!
Adorno, Theodor W and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cummings. New York: Herder & Herder, 1972. 120-167. Print.
Realistically, you should probably just skip to the end and read my end commentary, because I'm tweaking my emphasis a bit, and that's the part where I'd be most interested in hearing your feedback. Thanks!
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adorno, Theodor W and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cummings. New York: Herder & Herder, 1972. 120-167. Print.
Adorno and Horkheimer propose that modern media encourages passive consumption over true creativity and that in their aspirations toward popularity and industrial utility, they have fallen into a state of artistic or aesthetic impoverishment. This ties into my focus on digital creativity as a means of overcoming the impoverishment and rising from passive consumption to a state of "flourishing" productivity.
Arnold, Matthew. “The Study of Poetry.” 1880. Poetry Foundation. 13 Oct. 2009. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
In this essay, Arnold proposes that the measure of a work’s poetic or artistic greatness (and I would argue, it’s potential to inspire awe) is based on a combination of personal and historical perspectives. Great works, then, partake of the same spirit as landmark works that have come before--touchstones, as he calls them. This in some sense helps to overcome the sense of subjectiveness that many of us have been struggling with in defining awe.Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 3rd ed. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. 1233- 1249. Print.
Benjamin has lots to say about the “aura” of massively reproducible works of art/literature, suggesting that the awe component is inherent not in the image or idea but in the ritualistic physicality of the object. That would essentially mean that massively reproducible (digital, for example) works are incapable of conveying the same awe that an original work can, because they are deprived of that original aura.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. "Introduction to The Philosophy of Art." The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 3rd ed. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. 1233- 1249. Print.
Mitchell, Grethe, and Andy Clarke. "Introduction to Video Games as Art." Journal of Media Practice 7.1 (2006): 5-6. Print.
As I discussed in my earlier post, the Hegelian dialectic lends itself nicely to a study of the progression of art and thus ties in with my discussion of video games as an eventual synthesis point for art as a whole. He posits that the harmonious union of the sensuous and phenomenal leads to the quality of geist, which correlates nicely with a work's ability to produce awe.
Mitchell, Grethe, and Andy Clarke. "Introduction to Video Games as Art." Journal of Media Practice 7.1 (2006): 5-6. Print.
Grethe and Clark look at video game art separate from games themselves, suggesting that the latter trivializes what might otherwise be seen as a legitimate artistic form. My argument is counter to this, so their research serves mostly as a contrast to mine.Mitchell, Melissa. "Awe Inspiring." Online photo board. Pinterest. Pinterest. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.
I guess more than anything I was more interested in the idea of people curating sources of awe. This board, along with many others, shows how digital tools can be used to create wonder, but at the same time, I realized as I was looking through the photos that in many cases I wasn't sure if they were real or digitally created. I wonder if that might be an item that I could address in greater detail.
Pearsall, Paul. The Delights and Dangers of our Eleventh Emotion. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 2007. Print.
Pearsall looks at awe as a synthetic emotion that simultaneously partakes of various other emotions while “overwhelm[ing] and drain[ing] the power out” of them. Another interesting point is that he sees awe as intentionally stressful or aggravating: it is intended to make us uncomfortable in our current (static) condition to help us create and re-create our lives.
Ruggill, Judd Ethan, Ken S. McAllister, and David Menchaca. "The Gamework." Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies 1.4 (2004): 297-312. EBSCO. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
What's Next?
The more I think about my project and paper, the more I feel like I want to relate it to my recent study of virtual worlds/reality. I guess this whole time, I've been talking about the idea of "real" awe versus counterfeit/empty awe, but I don't know that I've necessarily been able to figure out for sure what it was that differentiated a physical object from a digital one. Only now am I realizing that the digital medium actually calls into question the authenticity of the object as a reality. Kant's mode of perception basically suggests that the only things that exist for the individual are those things which he has experienced and created within his imagination, and in an imaginative sense, the things we experience through digital media are certainly real: they bring us to awe, they invite us to wonder, they take our minds to new climes of possibility. But the thing is, in the end, there's still the question of whether it's all a dream. If the senses were unreliable in Kant's time--without digital filters--then they are exponentially more so unreliable in the digital world.
I feel like this is the direction that I've been moving toward unconsciously the whole time, and it's going to change my emphasis a lot, but I feel like it's true, and that matters most to me. With all of my other ideas, there were always unlesses and most of the times on the end of every statement, but this is something that I feel like I can get behind with greater surety. It's no longer just theoretical, because it's something I've seen in my own life.
I guess that brings into question whether native awe (that which is tied to real things) is intrinsically superior to synthetic awe (that which is fabricated) or whether there is really no difference. I'll definitely be thinking about that over the next while. I'd love to hear your insights on the matter.
Ruggill et. al serve as a counter to Grethe. They suggest that games are not "sub-medium or permutation of an extant artifactual form" and that they deserve their own theoretical models (298). This supports my end point, that games and other digital media resources serve as novel means of artistic conveyance with possibilities yet unforeseen.Silva, Jason. "Technologies of Ecstasy." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
Silva explores Eliade's notion of the shaman as a guide to spiritual awakening/ecstasy and suggests that digital creators will be the shamans of the future--those with the potential to lead people to meaning and understanding of the universe.---. "Transfixed by Beauty." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 28 Jan. 2014. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
I guess I'm slightly ambivalent about this source. It was the first of Jason Silva's works that I encountered, and it really did invite me into a moment with awe, but I'm wondering if this is the best way of doing so. The video itself talks about the aesthetic arrest that comes with beauty (awe), and I really like the message, but I wonder if this is really the form of creativity that I'm trying to encourage in saying that people should use digital resources to their full potential.I think my favorite thing that I've found so far, though, is a comment on one of Jason Silva's videos: We Arts posted, "I feel i have eaten a galaxy and [am] still starving." Jason Silva and others have done a lot to try to awaken people from what Pearsall describes as the modern ADD: "Awe Deficit Disorder." But the problem is that even things like Silva's works aren't taking people to a state of productive awe. I'm still looking into that notion, but I think awe as we've defined it has numerous destinations, and not all are desirable.
What's Next?
The more I think about my project and paper, the more I feel like I want to relate it to my recent study of virtual worlds/reality. I guess this whole time, I've been talking about the idea of "real" awe versus counterfeit/empty awe, but I don't know that I've necessarily been able to figure out for sure what it was that differentiated a physical object from a digital one. Only now am I realizing that the digital medium actually calls into question the authenticity of the object as a reality. Kant's mode of perception basically suggests that the only things that exist for the individual are those things which he has experienced and created within his imagination, and in an imaginative sense, the things we experience through digital media are certainly real: they bring us to awe, they invite us to wonder, they take our minds to new climes of possibility. But the thing is, in the end, there's still the question of whether it's all a dream. If the senses were unreliable in Kant's time--without digital filters--then they are exponentially more so unreliable in the digital world.
I feel like this is the direction that I've been moving toward unconsciously the whole time, and it's going to change my emphasis a lot, but I feel like it's true, and that matters most to me. With all of my other ideas, there were always unlesses and most of the times on the end of every statement, but this is something that I feel like I can get behind with greater surety. It's no longer just theoretical, because it's something I've seen in my own life.
I guess that brings into question whether native awe (that which is tied to real things) is intrinsically superior to synthetic awe (that which is fabricated) or whether there is really no difference. I'll definitely be thinking about that over the next while. I'd love to hear your insights on the matter.
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