Synthetic computer generated imagery is not an inferior representation of our reality, but a realistic representation of a different reality. Manovich, P. 202.
The result: a new kind of realism, which can be described as “something which looks exactly as if it could have happened, although it really could not.” Manovich, P. 301.
Just before starting this semester, I decided to sow grass seeds in my lawn for the fall. I had to water daily and within a week the new seed began to sprout. Since, rains have come and the lawn is now transforming itself from summer brown into a nice green for the remainder of the growing season. Of course, this new growth will mean continual mowing until frost turns the lawn dormant. It is at this point that the typical suburbanite usually talks about installing artificial turf so that lawn care does not interfere with football season.
After reading Manovich, I realize that artificial turf would not be as bad as I once thought. It is just a different kind of reality that would free me from the seasonal loop of lawn care and free me to choose whatever I like from the database of life. Whatever I choose will form a narrative of my life without the constraints of grammar.
I find this concept to be interesting because I am a child of the twentieth century who is having difficulty with the realities of the new millenium. I was discussing just recently with one of my cousins our perceptions of life 50 years ago. We both grew up on subsistence farms. Our parents grew what we ate, built their own houses and barns, and worked according to the demands of each season. We were all captives of Manovich’s twentieth century loop, but I am hard pressed to remember anyone who was unhappy with their lives.
As I turn to life in Northern Virginia with its perfectly manicured lawns, I have been struck by how many people have turned their lawn care needs over to professionals who chemically kill weeds and fertilize according to an exact schedule and who use their powerful mowers to cut the grass in about 15 minutes before heading to another lawn. Homeowners have been liberated from the seasonal requirements of lawn care and are in the twenty-first century navigable space to “do their own thing.” The interesting thing is trying to find one of these freed persons who is not constantly complaining about their lives.
While I was sitting on the front porch reading Manovich last Friday, a neighbor walked by who had just gotten back from a job interview. He has just turned 50 and has spent a career in the new media. He is one of those persons who Professor Cohen described as self-taught, but he has been very successful in marketing his talent to some of the better companies in New York and the DC area. He is proud of all the companies that have hired him over the years and his ability to meet his salary requirements. Since I am a retired federal employee with a defined benefit pension, I asked him if all his different jobs meant that he has to self-fund his retirement. He looked a little puzzled and replied that he and his wife would have to work on retirement after they paid for their son’s college.
Suddenly Manovich was beginning to make more sense to me. My neighbor has been living in navigable space while I have been caught up in life as a loop. He chooses data as he sees fit, and I keep worrying about the linear progression of life’s loop from birth to death.
So now I am really confused. I see the syllabus as a linear progression towards completion of the course and Professor Cohen sees it as a dynamic product that will change as the semester progresses. Yet, I am still stuck to the calendar. I know that I will be raking leaves at the same time I am doing my final paper thinking about how to use this navigable space to create a new reality.
My worry is that I will be happier in the old reality of raking leaves while smelling the mustiness of fall and feeling the chill of the air than I will be trying to create a new reality. Besides, my dog will happily play in the leaves while I am raking, but will sit and look at me with boredom while I am creating the new reality. Maybe, I should try to create a virtual dog, who would not be caught in the old loop of eating and pooping. With the virtual dog, no neighbors would be mad that their perfectly manicured lawns had been soiled with dog poop. Of course, if they put in artificial turf, maybe poop would miraculously disappear and I can keep my twentieth century dog. But as Manovich says, in the new reality that could seem to happen even though we know it cannot. Therefore, the virtual dog seems to be the answer. Now, all I have to do is break the news to my twentieth century dog that there is a new reality that has made him obsolete.
Curtis
