METACITY
In a plaza, three girls were walking alongside each other. This perfectly merry scene of social interaction, however, was strangely divided in its function. You see, it struck me that each were engaged in conversation, but instead of amongst each other, the conversations were confined between three different people who were not there. This strange scene was enabled by the now so ubiquitous technical device, none other than the mobile-phone.
This scene, in its strange divided simplicity particularly struck me as I became more attentive to the thought of how relations between people seem to have fundamentally changed in a relatively short period of time. In squares, public transportation, even when with friends, the opportunity of 24/7 ‘connectedness’ provided by such technological advancements seems to have lodged its way into our lives and the social fabric in a way which is rapidly becoming the norm. It is no longer, it seems, considered rude, or even sad, if one takes their leave in a social situation merely to engage in another one through social-sharing websites or ‘texting’ with people not present. On the contrary, this activity seems to be earning the status of acceptability. On the one hand, in some ways, it severs the immediate social experience, yet on the other, it provides a replacement in the opportunity to transgress, as it were, the spatial limitations set upon social-connections in the way of negating distances between people. At the same time as such spatial limitations are seemingly nullified, however, it might yet be more the case that the negation of distance is just transferred from another place to another, for it is whilst engaged with modern communications technologies that the individual is effectively subject to a non-space which occurs in their being cut off from their present situation.
This state of affairs is seemingly irreversible and seems almost pathological to the extent of becoming physiological and the increasing proliferation of mobile-phones and multimedia equipment, especially in Italy, even in the climate of current economical trouble, serves only to further accentuate this phenomenon.
The more this technology takes over and the conventions as to its use are morphed into everyday life, the more people become dependent of such technologies regarding even the social realm. A sort of Tyranny of the object takes over under the pretence of ‘better communication’.
It is this in mind that the video Metacity was conceived. This video tries to capture some of this paradoxical isolation involved in ‘better communication’. In it, pieces of computer components have become small rafts adrift amidst the changing architecture of our western lives, floating on a flow of inevitability. Without any pretence to preach, the idea of this video is to enable us to distance ourselves and reflect upon this contemporary situation.
In this way we seek to initiate a journey elsewhere, an alternative place, through what are the ever-changing remains of the ever-advancing technology, the components of which in their short life-cycle before becoming obsolete are fashioned the objects of floatation keeping our heads above the surface while at the same time taking us ever deeper into the running rapids of their advancement. Fluctuating cities of such obsolete components flourish under the basking rays of the demiurge of neon-lights where all spirituality is the advancement of the object. In this strange place where space is negotiated in terms of negation and addition the human evolutionary potential in the form of primates navigate these blocks of space, reflecting their own capacity to interact by surfing on top of rafts of defunct technology while ever curious of their own reflection. Here in Metacity, there is loneliness and alienation, but also infinity of possibilities to create collectively and participate by interchanging spatial relations, navigating space-blocks. Operator, I would like to place a call to... As such, the video aims to question assumptions that may otherwise be too close for us to recognize.
This scene, in its strange divided simplicity particularly struck me as I became more attentive to the thought of how relations between people seem to have fundamentally changed in a relatively short period of time. In squares, public transportation, even when with friends, the opportunity of 24/7 ‘connectedness’ provided by such technological advancements seems to have lodged its way into our lives and the social fabric in a way which is rapidly becoming the norm. It is no longer, it seems, considered rude, or even sad, if one takes their leave in a social situation merely to engage in another one through social-sharing websites or ‘texting’ with people not present. On the contrary, this activity seems to be earning the status of acceptability. On the one hand, in some ways, it severs the immediate social experience, yet on the other, it provides a replacement in the opportunity to transgress, as it were, the spatial limitations set upon social-connections in the way of negating distances between people. At the same time as such spatial limitations are seemingly nullified, however, it might yet be more the case that the negation of distance is just transferred from another place to another, for it is whilst engaged with modern communications technologies that the individual is effectively subject to a non-space which occurs in their being cut off from their present situation.
This state of affairs is seemingly irreversible and seems almost pathological to the extent of becoming physiological and the increasing proliferation of mobile-phones and multimedia equipment, especially in Italy, even in the climate of current economical trouble, serves only to further accentuate this phenomenon.
The more this technology takes over and the conventions as to its use are morphed into everyday life, the more people become dependent of such technologies regarding even the social realm. A sort of Tyranny of the object takes over under the pretence of ‘better communication’.
It is this in mind that the video Metacity was conceived. This video tries to capture some of this paradoxical isolation involved in ‘better communication’. In it, pieces of computer components have become small rafts adrift amidst the changing architecture of our western lives, floating on a flow of inevitability. Without any pretence to preach, the idea of this video is to enable us to distance ourselves and reflect upon this contemporary situation.
In this way we seek to initiate a journey elsewhere, an alternative place, through what are the ever-changing remains of the ever-advancing technology, the components of which in their short life-cycle before becoming obsolete are fashioned the objects of floatation keeping our heads above the surface while at the same time taking us ever deeper into the running rapids of their advancement. Fluctuating cities of such obsolete components flourish under the basking rays of the demiurge of neon-lights where all spirituality is the advancement of the object. In this strange place where space is negotiated in terms of negation and addition the human evolutionary potential in the form of primates navigate these blocks of space, reflecting their own capacity to interact by surfing on top of rafts of defunct technology while ever curious of their own reflection. Here in Metacity, there is loneliness and alienation, but also infinity of possibilities to create collectively and participate by interchanging spatial relations, navigating space-blocks. Operator, I would like to place a call to... As such, the video aims to question assumptions that may otherwise be too close for us to recognize.
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