[...] Mythology gives eyes to statues, religion sits choirs in the theatre, the story of a squared chunk of wood gives birth to the picture (preferably rectangular). Paper reed rolls unfold and become codex, palimpsest, illuminated book, printed book. The square-angles door is now wide open, and from the darkroom to photograph, movies and the computer screen it is a short path. [...]
[...] the privileged organ of Western knowledge, the same that has produced all the hardware and software we use: “For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else” (Aristotle). [...]
However, in the 20th century, the screen obtained its secular massified consecration with television, and playing with globalization is well worth a mass: a new Flemish mass that borrows materials from rock songs and, in the arts, finds its expression and “aura” in Nam June Paik’s Videoflag. And again, now that year 2000 is ancient history, isn’t there an aura, as well, around the Magnavox/Odyssey Pong console, or maybe the Arcades, entirely immersed into a cloud made of smoke, not from incense, but from the nostalgic player’s cigarettes?
Photo by Luca Traini (c)
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