Marshall McLuhan debates his ideas on Australian TV in 1977
"In June 1977 Marshall McLuhan visited Australia and was a guest on Monday Conference, a popular live ABC television show hosted by Robert Moore. McLuhan debated his ideas with Moore and took questions from a feisty studio audience made up of members of the media and advertising industry, including TV boss Bruce Gyngell (see Part One at 14 mins), and young, funky Derryn Hinch (see Part Two from 3 mins).
McLuhan had been brought to Australia to address a broadcasting conference organised by Sydney radio station 2SM, and the Monday Conference was broadcast from the ballroom of the Sydney Hilton Hotel.
Many in the audience clearly admired McLuhan who has well into his prime and at ease with the live television situation. The discussion covered an eclectic range of topics, from television, privacy and Richard Nixon to holograms, transcendental meditation, Jane Austen, Euclidean geometry, denim jeans and nude streaking.
Towards the end of the program the always unpredictable McLuhan can be heard just off-mic, saying to Moore, 'I'm terribly sorry, but I'm going to have to sneak off and have a pee!'."
(ABC Radio National, Australia)
Fig.1,2&3 Marshall Mcluhan, lecture recorded by ABC Radio National Network on 27 June 1977 in Australia.
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CINEMA ESSAY: SHALLOW FOCUS, DEEP FOCUS, TRACKING SHOT, ESTABLISHING SHOT
Majestic Micro Movies: Lloyd Fonvielle, James Lester, Kendra Elliot, Joe Griffin and Jae Song.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Miss Representation: mainstream media is contributing to the under-representation of women in positions of power
"Like drawing back a curtain to let bright light stream in, Miss Representation (90 min; TV-14 DL) uncovers a glaring reality we live with every day but fail to see. Written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the film exposes how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. The film challenges the media's limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, which make it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions and for the average woman to feel powerful herself.
In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms, the collective message that our young women and men overwhelmingly receive is that a woman's value and power lie in her youth, beauty, and sexuality, and not in her capacity as a leader. While women have made great strides in leadership over the past few decades, the United States is still 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, women hold only 3% of clout positions in mainstream media, and 65% of women and girls have disordered eating behaviors.
Stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, entertainers, activists and academics, like Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem build momentum as Miss Representation accumulates startling facts and statistics that will leave the audience shaken and armed with a new perspective."
(Jennifer Siebel Newsom)
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Electronic Hybridity: The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web
"While mass-mediated communication technologies have empowered the institutional, participatory media offer powerful new channels through which the vernacular can express its alterity. However, alternate voices do not emerge from these technologies untouched by their means of production. Instead, these communications are amalgamations of institutional and vernacular expression. In this situation, any human expressive behavior that deploys communication technologies suggests a necessary complicity. Insofar as individuals hope to participate in today's electronically mediated communities, they must deploy the communication technologies that have made those communities possible. In so doing, they participate in creating a telectronic world where mass culture may dominate, but an increasing prevalence of participatory media extends into growing webs of network-based folk culture. "
(Robert Glenn Howard, 2008)
1). Robert Glenn Howard (2008). "Electronic Hybridity: The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web" Journal of American Folklore, Volume 121, Number 480, Spring 2008, pp. 192-218. DOI: 10.1353/jaf.0.0012
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Internet as Art: In the digital age, the medium is the new message
"Just as video and computer technology attracted pioneering artists in the 1960s and 1970s, the Internet today is inspiring artists to tinker with the possibilities and boundaries of the World Wide Web. What started as a playful and often tongue-in-cheek experimental venture by a few code-savvy artists in the early 1990s has grown into a global art movement that is attracting attention from museums and private collectors. Karlsruhe-based media museum Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie, or ZKM, has been running a series of net.art exhibitions. Berlin's Digital Art Museum recently showed the video performance 'Hammering the Void,' by Gazira Babeli, the pseudonym for an artist who exists only in Second Life, an online virtual reality game.
Among the artists who first saw the potential for creative uses of the information superhighway were Belgrade-born Vuk Cosic and Amsterdam-based artist duo Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, who perform under the pseudonym jodi on the Web. Their early digital works, much like the art being made today by Italian duo Eva and Franco Mattes - who call themselves 0100101110101101.ORG - often imitated or at least paid ironic homage to the clandestine machinations of computer hackers."
(Goran Mijuk, 29 July 2009, Wall Street Journal)
Fig.1 'T-Visionarium’ (2003-08), by Neil Brown, Dennis Del Favero, Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel
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