Meaning in Image/Action

Gave a presentation tonight about a paper that I'm working on. The title is Meaning in Image/Meaning in Action. The idea is to focus on how meaning is ellicited through both images and actions. Specifically, I was going to look at the JFK assassination and track it's development from action to image. Then look at Ant Farm's re-enactment of the assassination, tracking that from action to image. Finally, looking at the game JFK Reloaded, where again action is played into image.

I think one of the important parts that I want to get at is the connections made to a subject. Take me for instance, I was born in 1977, 14 years after JFK was shot. I remember as a kid watching some documentary on the subject and being terrified by the images I saw. While I didn't have a lived connection to the events they some how remain vibrant through that media. (A fellow student made an interesting comment on the study of the technologies used to document events, will have to look into that) Taking Eternal Frame, I am still distanced as I saw the video on a television screen during a video class. Though the people who encountered the re-enactment were reliving the experience. Finally, the game - Here anyone can relive the experience and do it over and over. I could shoot JFK all the time. There are performance issues here. What is important about becoming Oswald? There are just a bunch of things rattling through my head.


After class, I was walking and thinking again about interactivity. I want art to be felt in a multitude of ways. Physically - Emotionally. I want it to be like having Sex or being at the birth of a child. Something that is so palletable that it remains constantly present. Is that too much to ask of art? To me it is always much of a let down. Always very surface and never any depth. Reading old art criticism about Rodin, the writer seems like he wants you to fall in love with the art. Why doesn't that happen - catharsis? I remember seeing the Sistine Chapel and thinking about how beautiful it was, though I wasn't awe struck. It's plaster and pigment. But it is so distant. Seeing the cigarette butts in a Pollock has more meaning to me. Anyway . . .