MEDIA!

I have been hearing a lot about media lately, having just jumped into art school (well over my head...).

Media. I think it is a distraction. A major one. Or perhaps I am trying to say the exact opposite.

At Berkeley there is an institution called the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), which justhrew a very loveley opening party [at which I drank more champagne than was perhaps offered to me, as well as stuffed grape leaves, oranges, pineapples, la vache qui rie cheese, etc., and which I paid back by polluting the ceiling with balloons.]

Anyway, there was an opening speech to which I was not listening to too clearly (I was trying to smile at people). What was said is that everything is media. Hum. Yeah. Anything in the middle of two people is media. Medium, middle, a simple words-make-it-true definition. Which I agree with.

Here is the representation I might come up with for that idea:

In which the two dots represent two people communicating, and the line represents some kind of communication traveling through a medium.

Media studies focus on this arrow.

I think it is more interesting to study the dots.

But there is a little problem. Where does the dot start and the arrow begin? We can say that the air is the medium for sound, voices talking. But why stop there? What about the tongue, voicebox, teeth and lungs being a medium for speech? What about the electrical signals being relayed from the brain through nerve fibers? And where within the brain is the dot located? Where in the mind is the center of the person from which the signal emanates and to which incoming signals are routed?

And where is the dot inside your partner? In my own studies, as well as my own personal life I notice over and over again that the signal doesn't seem to get through in the way it has been traditionally posited (and of course, tho I don't really want to say this, this is all motivated by the most intense sorrow and loneliness and regret, and, worst of all, hope). After all, every transmission is a translation, and, as they say, much is lost in translation - mutation is an inevitable part of communication. But this is more than just a fidelity issue. Because much is gained in translation as well - don't dis mutation - it makes evolution possible, right? Signals are not received, they are decoded and reconstructed. A creative act (which always must incorporate some form of fiction-writing) is always involved. If we are lucky, after all this nonsense, something will be communicated accurately.

Sometimes we can check whether the communication has succeeded if it is very specific and concrete. I.e. if we say "cut the blue wire" and our partner cuts the red wire it can be assumed that the level of mutation in the communication was unacceptably high.

But if we are communicating something complicated - personal or poetic impressions, love, obscure analyses of the world, etc., then the accuracy of fact-checking communication loop itself falls below the threshold where inaccuracies are equal to the general level of inaccuracy and mutation inherent in all communication (I think this is an area of studies in transmission engineering, or whatever it's called, the signal vs noise issue.) Checking whether the communication succeeded becomes functionally impossible because the random inaccuracies will always obscure the true functional inaccuracies. Of course, improvements can be made - you can move somewhere quiet, use images to reinforce words, employ rigorous fact-checking, learn the same vocabulary, and study rhetoric so you have the same method of discourse, but there will always be a threshold that limits how detailed communication can be. This threshold is much higher than the ideal point at which "perfect communication" (which would theoretically represent the uniting of two dots) is possible.

Here is a representation of this limitation on communication:


Think of a conversation. You are listening to someone, and her words reach your ears, most of the time, although there are all kinds of frustrations in between from guys riding huge noisy machines, to high winds, to poor signal strength, to buzzing mosquitoes, to... well it never ends. And that's not even going into issues in your partner's sphere - from poor volume control, to chewing gum, to strong accents, etc.

So assume that the sound reaches your ears wth enough fidelity that it doesn't immediately make you ask your partner to repeat herself. Sometimes you are not paying attention for some reason or another. Or you completely (even deliberately)misunderstand a word depending on what you want to hear. Or something you idly read or that you hear on the radio intrudes on your mind, sneaks in as an impostor. Then you can misunderstand or not understand the meaning of a word, or not be able to follow your partner's logic.

Think of how words work (many people smarter than I have done this and not yet figured it out...). Say the sound of a word enters your brain - it triggers a series of associations. Some of these may be highly universal (i.e. most people display the behavior that proves they can differentiate red and blue.) But others may be highly subjective. But think of how it actually works - when you hear a word you are already thinking of a response, and the response affects how you hear the word. And a certain word may remind you of a very obscure event from your life, and those strong associations highjack your train of thought. And a kind of internal editor may tell you to not pay attention to this or that, or not acknowledge that you understand this or that to serve some social function such as avoiding embarrassment or trying to impress someone. All this may occur without you being very highly aware of it. And there may be two conflicting interpretations of a series of words which actually appeal to your conscious mind - does she mean this or that? And both of these interpretations can be considered at the same time, and depending on the future of the conversation you may switch your interpretation back and forth.

Finally, where are all these words and information headed to? Where is the dot? This is not a superfluous imponderable. I personally don't really think the dot is anywhere. To put it kindly, consciousness is "decentralized." Information is flying around, and some of it enters consciousness and some of it does so briefly and is then gone. It is routed through different systems, some of it energizes network combo packets in the memory, some of it results in uncontrollable physical reactions, some of it fractalizes off into endless tangential thought spirals, some of it is laboriously formulated into sentences and sent off into typing fingers, wagging lips, and winking eyes.

What I am trying to say is that beneath the skin the media continue. They go all the way down. What is most interesting to me is to see where they go... The media themselves don't really hold any fascination for me. After all, they are just different forms of frustration. I want to examine the dot. But the irony may be that I also think the dot doesn't really exist. So that is why I have to say, perhaps after this whole spiel it turns out that media is all I have left to be interested in. That or nothing.

Here, then, is what I think is a more accurate representation of communication:


(Kind of looks like something:


)

I think the solution (or perhaps the further imponderable) is that we don't communicate only to motivate our partners to action. We also communicate to make ourselves feel like we are not alone in the universe. And this might not involve having t understand the words at all - it could just be the singing voice, the curve of the skin at the outside of the eyelids, the kissing - I can't even go into that... But even when you have a strong sense of togetherness and identification with someone there might be something there, and later you say "that wasn't me" "that wasn't what I meant" "I wasn't being myself" and later it might turn out that the feeling was a misconception. What does the fascination with the dot add up to then?

From here on out it is all confusion.