dadadodo - exterminate all rational thought
\\\Owning your responses\\\
A written text has no power to abuse you. It is a dead string of
bits that needs an interpreter before it has any meaning. That
interpreter is you, and you have to accept responsibility for your
interpretation. If you fail to do this, you will believe that other
people said what you interpreted it to mean, and it becomes
impossible for anyone to show you that you interpreted it wrongly.
(Erik Naggum)
This idea of Erik's (RIP) goes back to something we have lost in
nearly all online discussions, the idea that you choose to be there
and you respond to what you read (and see) according to your own
mind, your own history, the things that make up /you/.
It is absolutely impossible for an author, artist, anyone that puts
content out there for the world to experience, to know all of the
ridiculous ways you might take what they have offered to you.
Marcel Duchamp played with this idea - the fact that the viewer
makes up as much of the artistic experience of a piece of artwork
as the artist - that the artist's control is very much an illusion
and probably a pretty silly one. (And in fact artists and authors
that can create work that touches people regardless of their
preconceptions and internal worldviews are revered for their
ability to do so.)
The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the
spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by
deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds
his contribution to the creative act. (Marcel Duchamp)
By this thinking an artist without an audience or reader is thus
unable even to complete the creative act, the viewer or reader is a
part of it. We should take ownership of our part in interpreting or
deriving meaning from any text, image, or other content because we
are half of the equation. If something offends us part of what
offends us resides within ourselves. While some of the disgust that
'Immersions (Piss Christ)'[0] conjures up in some of us is the
result of Serrano's combination of images and materials some of it
also comes from our own belief that urine is disgusting and contact
with it is a defilement. Absent that belief the meaning of the
piece suddenly changes completely!
Don't underestimate the power of the ideas you bring to what you
read and see and hear as our entire experience of the world is all
interpretation of stimuli. Try to take responsibility for your
responses and be a good online citizen because we desperately need
more people who can do that.
[0]
http://100photos.time.com/photos/andres-serrano-piss-christ
NO CARRIER
