veiled
performance art / installation 2018 trailer: https://vimeo.com/266549823 archival footage : https://bit.ly/2tPB6Z6 |
i refuse to involve technology. let us talk as men, face to face. let us see the glister in the eyes. the facial expressions, let us hear our tones. our gestures, our theatricals. our voices are now drowned by the humdrum of the click. it is with no doubt that technology has bridged distances, yet this is a case of quantity over quality, where communication is rendered to either:
emails/messages: words, emoticons phone/ voice call/voice messaging: voice,tone video call: face conversation, voice whereas a face-to-face conversation involves body language, voice and facial expressions. we only create a generation of dumbed down people when we rely on communication largely through technology. what brings the world closer may end up tearing the world apart too.the ease of access and on screen communication effectively desensitises us greater from our awareness in the choice of words, our tone and sometimes it’ll lead us to be more rash to speak. when the internet reduces a person to a faceless screen name, it can make it hard for some users to remember that an actual person exists behind the avatar, which can encourage hostility and exclusionary behavior. young people are especially prone to online hostility, with 43 percent of kids reporting that they’ve suffered online bullying – 25 percent of them on more than one occasion. the ease of access may increase communication opportunities, but at the same time it increases social isolation too, reducing the need for people to actually meet the other party(s). while it may be easier for socially awkward people to then speak honestly about their thoughts, social networks sometimes replace a small number of strong social connections with a larger number of much shallower connections, leading to situations where a user may have large numbers of “friends” but few actual real-world companions. communication on screen = image; illusion words = signs; illusions therefore by communicating on screen, another layer of illusion is added upon existing illusions and signs formed in the communication. while one can argue that lying can happen through face to face communications, the tendency for lying increases and is harder to unravel in on screen communications; the lack of ability for the other party to gauge the vocalisation, body language and gestures are significant factors in its failure. meaning is relational rather than substantive. a word driven communication such as that on screen is thus heavily dependant on assumptions of associations. assumptions in the area that we assume that the other party would understand our intent/idea; associations in the context of mental images and what we associate with a word. how do we communicate? mehrobian’s rule 7-38-55 07– words and its meaning 38 – voice, tone 55 – body language “the non-verbal elements are particularly important for communicating feelings and attitude, especially when they are incongruent: if words and body language disagree, one tends to believe the body language.” face to face communication also involves the olfactory sense, apart from a host of other sense. animals and humans alike communicate through chemosignalling as well. these subtle signals may not be consciously acknowledged in the course of communicating but still plays an important factor in communication. |