“Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.” ~ Alan Kay
On the one hand, this could be a display of old technology. Shelf after shelf of what was once understood as a camera. Not so long ago a camera was a device that employed a once-revolutionary-invention, a light sensitive plastic strip called “film,” to capture images. These film devices, the miracles that populated my youth, are now antiques.
On the other hand, this could be an art piece, a commentary on the contemporary world. Many, many, many cameras, all with their lenses pointed back at us. There are cameras in phones, each a trafficker of the relatively new obsession known as the “selfie.” There are cameras at almost every major intersection of my town. Traffic selfies that come with tickets. In stores I am told to smile because I am on camera. There are cameras in doorbells. Many medical procedures employ teeny tiny cameras capable of fantastic voyages, inner selfies. The cameras shot into outer space transmit back to us images of a tiny speck in this vast universe, a dot called Earth. Our art piece reveals to us that we are the central object of our study.
Standing in front of the shelf, looking at the myriad lenses looking back at me, I understood with some sadness that the cameras on the shelf used to be understood as arbiters of truth. There is a now an antiquated term, you may have heard it: photographic proof. Proof. It is not so much that the camera – film – is antiquated – but it’s purpose is most certainly passe’. Truth is out of date. Proof has no reliable root. We have replaced ‘photographic proof’ with a new concept, a ‘post-fact’ world.
Buckminster Fuller once said that, “Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.” Were this beautiful unintentional-art-piece-found-in-an-antique-mall one of my creations, you can bet that I’d scribble Fuller’s quote someplace on the shelf, though, you’d have to look beyond the cameras to find it.
read Kerri’s blog post about CAMERAS
Filed under: Art, Creativity, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Navel Gazing, Perspective, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: antique, art piece, buckminster fuller, camera, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, film, image, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, photograph, proof, technology, truth | Leave a comment »
