Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/2747
Title: Contemporary community : an analysis of connection through art and technology in the digital age
Authors: Barbaro-Sant, Giuliana
Keywords: Image (Philosophy)
Representation (Philosophy)
Aesthetics
Information technology -- Social aspects
Interpersonal relations
Human-computer interaction
Issue Date: 2014
Abstract: As it persists in sculpting itself further into the consciousness of individuals, digital technology cultivates a different conception of connection and community. Constantly tethered to a world other than their physically proximal one, individuals make connections that add to or, arguably even, replace the connections that they already had outside of the screens of technology. Thus, they are strewn between two senses of community: one that, as maintained by Sherry Turkle in Alone Together (2011), is ‘constituted by physical proximity, shared concerns, real consequences, and common responsibilities’, and a virtual one that disposes of all these characteristics in favour of immediacy and mediation. Using examples from contemporary art and technology, this study seeks to analyse how the substitution of physical proximity with screens in human connection has put meaningful connection at risk, consequently redefining how individuals form communities. Despite the emancipatory discourse of the digital age, connections have been rendered less and less authentic due to this substitution, and, in turn, falsely proclaiming the emancipation of the spectator. With reference to Rancière’s The Emancipated Spectator (2011), the introduction of immediacy and mediation through screens is argued to be preventing individuals from a visceral, meaningful experience and a complete ‘knowledge of ignorance’ that, arguably, only physical proximity can provide. The inauthenticity clouding the digital has its lasting effects, reverberating through to real-life, proximal community and its constituents. As Turkle argues, technology, as ‘the architect of our intimacies’, hones in on individuals’ vulnerabilities directly, offering them ‘the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship’, because they ‘are lonely but fearful of intimacy’. In this sense, however, constant connection forces the wound of an insatiable loneliness deeper, rather than remedies it, as it continues to distance people away from one another, and from authentic, meaningful connection. Thus, the value of the emancipation that technology offers, as well as its purposes, must thus be questioned: how is the ‘inauthentic as a new aesthetic’ reframing human connection and community, and to what avail?
Description: M.A.ENGLISH
URI: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar//handle/123456789/2747
Appears in Collections:Dissertations - FacArt - 2014
Dissertations - FacArtEng - 2014

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