Fred Forest. For an Aesthetics of Communication
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The ideas of, and the work undertaken by, Communication Aesthetics
help us to share and understand processes which are still complex. Through the artists who
represent it,
Communication Aesthetics helps to bring to light the sensory contact we have with the new
media. After having thought for a long time that these new media " desensorialised
" communication, we have now to admit that they do nothing of the kind. They have
become integrated into our lives to a greater and greater extent, they now constitute a
sort of sensory network through which our exchanges are constantly travelling. They have
become the bases, the extension and the amplification of our most intimate vibrations. Our
dependent relationship wih Communication technology in everyday life allows us to confirm
thata this situation is giving rise to a new form of awareness. Television, for example,
has created a singular form of aesthetic relationship based on the " distant presence
". This television, like the computer, is a source of strong environmental pulsation,
the effects of which on our nervous systems we have not yet mastered. Questions can indeed
be asked as to the way in which long-term utilisation may even transform certain of our
thought processes. It is apparent that the media systems in our electronic society heat up
our environment " cold " and bring with them a certain degree of "
sensualisation ". We are permanently immersed in a electronic bath which dispenses an
ever-increasingly intense range of stimuli to the individual. The body of society, like
our own, is caught up in a huge net of communication. I now wish to address myself to
those who point out the risk or our being cut off from a direct physical relationship with
the immediate world, to them, to their fears, to their nostalgia. As of now,
hybridisations which constitute rites of passage are being carried out. More and more,
these hybridisations are bringing man into closer association with che machine. In the not
too distant future, it is highly foreseeable that the computer will play the role of
interface betweeen technical and organic functions. Electronic media are bringing about a
cognitive rupture which constituytes a veritable psychological revolution and this may
well radically modify our relationship to the world. Contrary to the most pessimistic
fears, this revolution is enriching the sensorial faculties of our organism. Our tactile
and acoustic senses are being actively sollicited. Perceptible facts and cognitive facts
are from now on simultaneously integrated into new configurations which cannot be
contained by linear thought.
The Communication artist attemps to show through his actions that we are situated in the center of a global information process, and that its complex mode of functioning places the individual in a brand new position from which he is obliged to discover and invent new forms of adjustement to his surroundings. The goal of Communication artists is certainly not to produce first level meanings, but above all to make us aware as to how, in the end, the generalised practice of Communication interreacts on the whole of our sensory system. This evolution is about to put into place the data for a " new awareness " at the edge of our perception, and then, along with new " ways of feeling ", it will open up new aesthetic paths.
Fred Forest
Translated by
David Sugarman
Joanna Weston