Embracing technology

The essay "Is there love in the Telematic embrace?" by Roy Ascott discusses quite poetically the importance of messaging in the development of new telematic art. When armed with tools that allow for the wide ranging connectivity such as networks and the internet, it is easy to lose vision of what this tool can create. Any man with strong arms, a hammer and a chisel can carve marble, it is only the Greats like Michelangelo that can sculpt a David. Telematic technology has redefined such stalwart arts such as cinema, music and writing. This is undeniably true, what seems a bit hazy is what new things has this technology created. How can innovators use technology to "support a whole new field of creative endeavor that is as radically unlike each of those established artistic genres as they are unlike each other." How can we use telematics to create a new object d'art. Once an established genre is created it seems like it would be going against the very thing that constitutes a telematic work of art a telematic work of art. To create an establishment would be eliminating the very anarchic beauty of telematics.

With the emerging field of study being dedicated to web development, design, communications and literacy it is easy to lose sight of what is truly important about these fields. The internet allows us the ability to have a font of information readily accessible. It is simply not enough to just understand one thing. It is as Roy Ascott says in this essay "the further development of this field will clearly mean . . . the formulation of a transdisciplinary education." Every nuance learned about this field is always enhanced by the additional knowledge provided by another unseemingly related field of study. Throughout the essay Ascott dances around the question of the relevance and the actual of content of telematic artwork. He names the mode of content and even gives a lot of context. What seems by far the most important parallel that he draws is that even in this seemingly new and unheard of technology artists, scientists, users and developers alike use this medium like any other medium as a way to search for an understanding of how this world works. Philosophy is inextricably linked with multimedia. It is from philosophy an inextinguishable study for truth and meaning that we derive most other subjects. The developments of technology forces us to redefine they way we see and order the world. How will our new definitions of the world impact the artistic commentary that always seems to be fueled by this discourse?