Been away a while...

need to catch up, but it may take a few days.

I needed a break, so all is well. Things are moving along in my research. It has evolved to take on the perspective of government propaganda as well as censorship as they relate to media's relationship to public perception of war. The current situation in Iraq is such a great example of this. There has been such a concerted effort to control and spin every piece of information from Abu Graib to the absence of WMDs. The media has still failed in many ways to overcome some of the obstacles to truth, but at the very least, the negligence of our current policies seem to have forced to light some of the important issues and brought some accountability to the powers that be. That is not to say we are getting the whole truth or there is enough accountability, but the talk of a change in tactics is a welcome sign.

For the most part, the war coverage seems to have become a daily update for the egregious violence that is occurring all the time. There is little new information raised. It is almost glossed over to the point that one has to wonder if there is even anyone left over there covering the war. More wallpaper video, more bad news of casualties and deaths. No new stories coming back, no pressing for answers. We seem to accept the status quo, although the general public is less accepting everyday.

Sooner or later the current administration is going to have to make some effort to appease the audience, or more likely, they will stretch it out to the point of leaving it for the next guy to clean up after. The growing trend with government media relations has been to work harder to control the flow of information as technology changes in the field and journalists become more and more mobile. This tactic, usually reserved for war has crept into the daily mine field that is our current political landscape. As artists, it becomes necessary to question this system, since the media often fails to do so. We are not under the same constraints, yet we are dependent upon the movement of information in a truthful way in order to comment on society as a whole.

I loved this story, apropos to the discussions of last week on mapping. I read it just a day before class.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/nyregion/28map.html?_r=1&oref=login

This idea of psychogeography is an interesting notion. I think that often the function of a public space is not fully considered in respect to how it inhibits human behavior. It is almost accepted that some inhibition is a good thing. Is it useful to discuss these far fetched approaches to city planning? They are interesting concepts, however they clearly can never be a reality. In the case of Walt Disney, much of his ideology has become a reality in a controlled setting, with the same basic rules of decorum applied to acceptable conduct within these spaces. Despite the effort to appear otherwordly, Disney World is still a place that requires the same general societal rules that apply anywhere else. It has in fact become a symbol of the corporate entity that controls our free thought and expression more today than ever before. A great deal of money is spent to draw our attention to this product, that movie or tv show and to return our own money to that cause of continuing to build a larger and larger capitalist empire.

There is no question that to a certain extent the Situationist views of psychogeography were never meant to become a reality, but more to influence our thoughts about how we design public spaces. In this respect it is a useful contribution as it does provoke some thought and it seems this is the fundamental function of art.

I am interested in the ethnocentric views of mapping that occur, particularly within this country. Americans are largely unaware of the world around them, unaffected by anything outside of their own realm. This comes down not just to ignorance of geography, but of culture as well. The map of the upside down world is one of the more interesting illustrations of this:

http://flourish.org/upsidedownmap/

Clearly, our most basic assumptions about the orientation of things is quite an arbitrary convention that has no basis in scientific fact but is more politically motivated than anything else.

Of course maps are about more than just geography. They have a vastly diverse matrix for the understanding of art, culture and the exploration of ideas.