Presentation delivered at the conference “Panic and Mourning” organized by the CECC
In the panel discussion on Mourning and New Media Dominik Schrey from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Carla Ganito from the CECC - UCP Lisboa and Frauke Surmann from the Free University Berlin presented some reflections about changes in media and the effects on human emotional life with respect to mourning and grief. Fernando Ilharo from the CECC – UCP participated in the discussion by commenting and tying together the presentations. The chair was held by Cátia Ferreira.
Dominik Schrey spoke about emotional reactions to new media developments such as the “digital revolution”, highlighting certain pessimism of the masses towards the new virtual media and, connected to that, nostalgic feelings about a loss of substantiality and authenticity in media and technology.
Carla Ganito gave talks on the role of mobile phones in nowadays life and their effects on grief as well as on the way of dealing with human mortality. Based on the theory of “emotive objects” by Sherry Trunkle mobile phones are no longer considered to be mere technical objects, but rather virtual representatives of their owner and a source of emotions and affections. In the context of mortality, grief and mourning they can adopt the function of a “portable memory” by way of saving messages, pictures and videos of friends or family members that are far away or even dead. In her work about this topic Carla Ganito asks, if this evolution is a positive one, if people are still able forget and let go of the dead or if they feel forced to keep them alive through their virtual presence.
Subsequently Frauke Surmann told about an art project of a suicide simulation spread through the internet by the program “Chat Roulette”. In this case a fictional event is presented in a way that makes the spectators believe it was real. The boundaries between fiction and reality seem to fade, as for the internet user, it is impossible to know if the suicide has really been committed or not.
The discussant Fernando Ilhardo commented the works, revealed some interesting points and drew a bow to the common topic of the panel. He observed that nowadays virtual reality appears to be more real than substantial reality. From an ontological perspective, reality in the new media, that in fact is a simulation, replaces the substantial one by disguising it. Often the spectator is not able to distinguish one from the other. This becomes obvious in the project, Frauke Surmann described. “To see is no more to believe”, Fernando Ilhardo points out, because one cannot be sure about the level of reality contained in the things you see. The replacing traits of new media become equally apparent in Dominik Schrey’s reflections . In the presentation of Carla Ganito we are pointed out the influence of media on our lives. Mobile phones do not only accompany human emotional processes; but they are also able to change and to guide them. They keep memories alive in the form of pictures and voice of the dead In that way, they are able to deny death and to be an extension of life.
Other new media like Facebook work in the same way, keeping up profiles and pictures of people that already died. In this way they keep a picture of people in the world that can defer from a person’s own memory. One starts to wonder, which picture is “the right one”, which one really counts: The own memory or the “public” memory, the virtual one, that is, in fact, a simulation of the person.
According to this development Fernando Ilhardo questions something else: When everything is becoming visual, why to see is no more to believe? A possible reason: Visualization does not only occur in substantial reality but it is also a common practice of simulation in virtual reality.
Therefore it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the forms of reality.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário