Town & Country, Part 3: The Parks

Perception

Just a quick note to say that it's come up again, as it continues to do from time to time these past 2 months or so. This fact of reality being mediated, first by the senses and then by whatever mechanical or digital or other filter we employ.

We never (or--most of us, almost never, ?) have a direct experience. The time lapse between brain and foot and back again is compensated for in order to walk and balance. The visual cortex reconstructs what's in front of us; we see what our visual organs can register, filter, process and understand; we apprehend what is in front of our faces by "seeing" it in our minds. Our hearing modulates, mixes, and eliminates from the constant raw sound it recieves, based on what it has learned will be most useful or relevant in any given moment.

And then there's media. Compressed music and video, porous mockups of the smooth, solid original, with enough of the structure to remind us of the contours and textures of the original. Sometimes like calling a gutted building a building. Technically, it is, but before it had rugs and windows and intact trim. Now, it is the representation of a building, and the illusion works best if you look at it in short bursts from far away. Compressed media as signpost, bookmark, mnemonic device. Thumbnails. What happens when there is no original with heft to reference, no intact landscape to plunder for parts? When what we make is full of holes from its very inception?

Welcome to the swiss cheese factory.


p.s. This really is a 10 minute post, I apologize. I'll try and revise it soon.