Presuppositions of the Modern Mind

One of the dangers (of computers) I’ve written about. It’s called ’Welcome to Cybeclysm. Who Will Change the Lightbulbs?’ There’s a danger of estrangement from the natural world. Virtual reality is becoming more real than real reality. - Arthur C. Clarke


Every mind operates with presuppositions or premises as well as within a particular way of thinking. In the face of the tragic failure of the modern mind, incapable of preventing its own destruction, it became clear to me that the most important philosophical problem of the twentieth century was to find a new set of presuppositions or premises, a different way of thinking. In this digital nightmare we ourselves as artists and designers continually witness acts of injustice and hypocrisy but we rarely grow indignant or overly excited. My thoughts are outbursts of turbulent emotions. My rebuke of this insensitive technological era is relentless. But if such deep sensitivity to injustice is to be called hysterical, what name should be given to the abysmal indifference to the inequity and insensitivity I observe? The narrowness of our comprehension, the incapability to sense the depth of misery caused by our own failures. Our eyes witness the apathy of our generation. My purpose in creating this thesis is not just self-expression but the "purging of emotions." The idea of choosing Interactivity as the vehicle of thought is to translate reality into poetic notation.


During my graduate studies at SVA there was a tremendous difference between what happened to me and what happened in me, between the transcendent and the spontaneous, as well as between content and form. Four fundamental things were happening simultaneously, on the transcendent level there was content of inspiration, on the personal level there was the content of inner experience, on the psychological level there was the sense of being overpowered and on the fourth level, pathos of the events that were unfolding before my eyes. In the academic environment in which I spent my graduate student years computer art had become for me an isolated,self-subsisting,self-indulgent entity. The answers offered to me via the computer and its so called cyber network were unrelated to the problems, insensitivity to the silent travail of a person and to situations where humanity became irrelevant, in which people become increasingly callous to catastrophe and need, ready to suspend assistance.


I was slowly led to the realization that some of the terms, motivations, and concerns which dominate our Postmodern thinking may prove destructive of the roots of human responsibility. The challenge that we are all exposed to as artists of the Millennium, and the anxiety that shatters our capacity for inner peace, defy the ways and patterns of our thinking. I am forced to admit that some of the causes and motives of our thinking have led our existence astray. It is up to us as artists to decide if digital freedom is self-assertion or just a response to the human conditioning of popular culture.


As a student of art who turns from the discourses of the great Modern and Postmodern Thinkers to the orations of the great metaphysicians, I feel as though I’m switching from the realm of the trivial to the realm of the sublime. Instead of dealing with issues of being or becoming, matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, I am being thrust into the poetry of the kabbalists’ meta-world.


The Narrative as Selective Thought / The Subjective Eye

Because memory is such a selective, imperfect and malleable process, we all invent and reinvent our autobiographies. Photography provides us with documents. The camera is a repository of promises and frustrated hopes. My work juxtaposes nostalgic family photos with my own moody images of the present. I’ve ransacked the family albums and home movies for clues to their lives at that time, circumstances etc. There is no gap between what they expected and devised for their lives and what they accomplished. This interactive exhibition of photos within the aesthetic of an Interactive piece illuminates the view of both my parents and myself. These photographs are weighted down with emotions as faded and as elusive as the pictures’ subjects. It almost does not matter whose family it is. The letters, the poems, the photos are fraught with nostalgia; they sit on the edge of memory like links on an invisible chain. This story chronicles the light and darkness of life. After combing through the family photographs and letters, I gathered a photographic record of their life together. There is a section in the interactive piece that has numerous photographs of him posing in uniform or his wife striking a leggy pin up pose. These photographs shaped our families aspirations. This is how I choose to see them. I want to leave some "mystery" allowing them to speak their own language. Truth, they say, is in the eye of the beholder, or perhaps in the editors wishes. Or maybe I might even try to influence the historical record.


Although these images have been taken from the past, this interactive presentation juxtaposes and fuses together computer-generated images with stark analog black and white images of vintage photographs and 40’s newsreels captured in a different time and culture. The forcible messages and tender thoughts are refected within the photographs. Putting voice to my intense feelings and expressing uncovered wishes are paramount political and cultural messages. In art, as in philosophy, the reflective soul is the foundation of the recognition of the common bond.


Freud told us that the answers to our confusions were locked in the secret drawers of our past. Photos provide us with documents. Artists and Photographers think they are on to something here, but Sigmund Freud understood it long ago.

© Copyright 1997 Denise Urban