Swimming in the Sea of Cyberspace by Chipka
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Description
>How can I be sure that you are real?<
The question confronts him in bland and utter silence: words on a screen
He swims through seas of data, unsure of where to find solid land.
I am the sea, he thinks. I am the shore.
Only here, in the digital ether of cyberspace might a man stand safely on shore, watching himself drown. He smiles at the thought, though he draws no comfort from it.
With fingers on flesh-warmed, plastic keys, he types a response.
>How can you be sure that YOU are real?<
He has had this discussion before, and always the answer is a skittish and illusive thing.
>I am real,< his unseen opponent types, >because I say so.<
He expects that answer and lets it hang on the screen before him. He has lost interest in this game. He prefers, instead, to simply swim in a sea of data, and watch himself from the shore. This strange, emotional splintering is his joy, and so text-driven interrogations and the answers to probing challenges are of little consequence.
He sits back, rakes outstretched fingers through his hair and glances at the diminutive clock in the lower right corner of his screen. In five minutes, he thinks, he’ll stretch his legs, retrieve his cigarettes, and go outside for a smoke.
* * *
This image and the text accompanying it were inspired by conversations I endured in the past. On numerous occasions, my digital life was called “false” and “unreal” simply because (ultimately) things like body odor were not involved. Funny how that works! I like that logic: true reality is determined by its ability to stink. There is some sense to that argument, I suppose, but such sense is limited and woefully specific.
I’ve always believed that human tools are as much a part of humanity as the opposable thumbs that help to grasp them (or to hit the space bar at appropriate intervals.) I always find myself amused by arguments that the digital is somehow less valid than the plastic (plastic as in “shapable” even if you need hammers and chisels to do it.) Online friendships, and indeed amatory exchanges, are somehow discredited simply because they are expressed through a digital medium. High tech art is somehow less valid than its low tech counterpart. The whole “digital isn’t real” mentality seems a bit like the “It’s not Lomgraphy if a Lomo camera didn’t make it,” but Lomo cameras are notoriously cheap, and the Lomo effect—no matter how cool it is, happens to be the sign of a flaw. This flaw can be reproduced, enhanced, and completely recontextualized by Photoshop. This doesn’t make “digitized Lomography” any better than the original, just as digital painting doesn’t devalue the time-honored craft and skill of actual painting, but the love of “dissing the digital” seems to be little more than dogmatic sentimentality: a remembrance of “the good old days” that never existed.
There’s so much more about this issue to say, and there simply isn’t space to do it here, but that’s the gist of what went into the creation of this picture. I have to say that it was fun to make as I smirked at a person who loves porn and hates computers. How odd that he’d turn his nose up at a source of free, streaming porn that won’t clutter up the space beneath his bed...and well…as anyone can attest to…what’s more real than a digital venereal disease transmitted from a site like “smutmongers.com”?
Smut mongers? Hmmm…I should go check Google just to see if there really is such a site. And no Shaun is not the person I was smirking at as I made this picture. Shaun was just the now-digital model, sitting there so politely, while I tweaked and fiddled.
***
As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you're all on the verge of a great weekend.
Comments (22)
tamburro
Fantastic artwork my friend!!!! Hugs:)
MrsRatbag
I love the artwork, and wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment; well done, Chip!
Roxam
beautiful portrait (and post-work)/ whether "real" or "digital" it's 'really' only 'people' and there are constantly and everywhere pleasant and unpleasant interactions between these creatures
KatesFriend
When it comes to the question of whether other people are real, I reflect on the expression, "I would never have thought of that". An acknowledgment of an act of creativity that was beyond your own abilities. So, if you could not have created a thing or idea then how does it exist if it were not for someone else? Your artwork is very classic - thinking of the 'old days'. The notion bating in a sea of information and ideas almost to the point of obscuring the participant is compelling.
beachzz
Right on, Chip---this just rocks. Cyberworld is another dimension, people can be who and what they want to be. It's sort of like remaking yourself. Love your work here, yet another way you express yourself so well!!
blondeblurr
We are all expandible, useful or useless to someone elses needs... Who knows, maybe the digital will outlive us all and can't ever be disposed of ?...Terminator ? but first there was always 'us' who created the digital or to make better copies of himself...so the digital may never be a true copy, just wishful thinking and dreaming, not even close to the real you, which exist's only in somebodys mind or as 0's & 1's, the way we would like to see ourselves, fantasy or factual. In a future where only machines exist, will they ever try to create a human ? hear, hear and long live cyberspace ! BB
Meisiekind
Being real is irrelative! This piece of art and especially your narrative hits deep. First hand experience makes me believe that 'real' can have many forms and even when the cyberman turns into flesh and blood you can still not really see the 'real' until he is forced into showing true colors and the 'really real'. Don't know if that makes sense! Wonderful work Chip.
durleybeachbum
Fascinating! One of those endlessly intruiging philosophical discussions like What is Beauty? Thought-provoking indeed!
zulaan
Fantastic artwork !!!
helanker
Chip, you did it again, made us think your thoughts. Exiting thoughts and fun to think about too. Amusing even. Your image fits perfectly to these "spinnings" Wonderful, just wonderful.
kgb224
Outstanding work my friend.
jclP
V.nice illustration
romanceworks
Intriguing image and dialogue. Seems when we are connecting mind-to-mind with our thoughts and heart-to-heart with our art, I'd say that's very real. CC
auntietk
Oh, all those folks on the other end are real all right! Just because they only "exist" inside our computer monitors doesn't make them any less real. I remember early on, defining people "here" (physical presence) as my "real-life-walking-around" friends. You all seemed a little less real, somehow. Now I've met (I think) fourteen people from RR in person and had voice conversations with two more, which has made everyone more real to me, even the ones I haven't met yet. Your image shows a nice balance between cyber and flesh, and imho it conveys just the right balance of both. As far as the art goes ... why sneer at such a creative tool? I can do things on the computer that I can no longer do "out here" due to my vision limitations. Not only that, I can do things on the computer that I never COULD do in "real life!" LOL! Before it was digital vs. film it was color vs. b&w, and before that it was painting vs. photography. Digital rocks! Ansel Adams would have LOVED Photoshop! :P
CoreyBlack
Hmmm...I wonder who this person is you're talking about...without naming names I'll ask if it's a certain "Nealea-Jane?" There are so many pathologies at work in that person to keep thousands of analysts in swanky-new BMWs for at least the next twenty years. I don't think I've ever had any normal roomates? Do they exist? The last three have been doozies and then some! Onto the cyber-issue, reality is what you make it, and well...what most people forget about "cyber" is that it is an enhancement of the human and NOT a replacement of humanity...as you once pointed out, "a man with dentures is a cyborg too." Computers--like any other too--are an enhancement to life; computer stuff is just as valid as low tech stuff. As for the picture, Shaun looks rather high-tech and snazzy. He also looks more serious here; how do you do that? Every time I see you taking a picture of him, he's all casual and mellow, but then the pictures look so intense! It must be his stubble.
flavia49
wonderful image!!
sandra46
great image and inspiring thoughts... if it stinks is real? yes, but it's a limit to human knowledge. In fact, since language and culture were (wo)mankind's answer to natural selection, and therefore symbolic communication, why a digital piece of artwork, a relationship which uses a digital media and not, for example, a piece of paper, a runner, a pigeon or a bottle (;-D) is less 'REAL'? and what does 'real' mean? is a dream less 'real'? a dream is real both if it's real to the dreamer, and causing him/her an emotional (even a physical) reaction, and in a more abstract sense, such as those dreams Black people, suffragettes and their daughters (like myself), and other people fought for.
kasalin
Wonderful image ! A superb composition too :) "Happy Easter" !!!!! Hugs Karin :)
minos_6
This has incredible impact, and your words are fascinating. To quote painter, Shane Edwards: “To say that technology somehow hampers creativity is not only flat out wrong, it is unfair and ignorant. It is not surprising that people who have never used computers to create would spout fallacies like, "the computer does all the work for you." Like the paintbrush or pencil, a computer is simply a tool. It requires an incredibly high level of knowledge skill and craft to create work that has merit. Plopping one's self down in front of a computer and scribbling in MS Paint is no more or no less worthy than scribbling on a piece of paper...”
marybelgium
fantastic artwork !
myrrhluz
Your words hit on issues I've thought of a lot since becoming active on rr. There are definitely differences, though also similarities, between connections and near brushes made digitally and physically. It is both limiting and freeing to get to know someone digitally. When you are writing someone, whether because you would prefer to seem at least semi-intelligent or because your typing skills require brevity, you tend to cut out the meaningless crap that litters daily conversations. Oh, rambling is fine and to be encouraged, because it opens up windows into thought processes, but the inconsequential, boring chatter gets dropped. There's nothing like the long conversations in person, that spring up spontaneously and that carry on late into the night, but corresponding by long letters has its advantages too, and can lead to deeper understandings, just as the conversations do. As far as what's real, the person we put on view in daily life is not always real and never complete, intentional or not. This posting has opened up a floodgate of thoughts. Too many to try to write in a comment. Perhaps a nice long letter when dawn is not quite so rapidly approaching. As far as the art goes, I think if you create something beautiful, meaningful, insightful, moving and all the other adjectives regularly applied to art, it doesn't matter the tool you use, your hands or a digital tools. It's art by the effect it has, not by its method of construction. Love the image! Love the fragmentation of his body, the digital elements all around and the strong light on his face where visual digital images come in.
Tea_Rex
I luv' craftwork that sends the brain cells out for a lap. Finely envisioned and well accomplished. Your supportive text is refreshing to take in. After fifteen years online, it has long settled in for me that whatever we experience out here is "real" if we feel it's real. For all its seeming physicality the "real world" is an illusion of tightly swirling spheres of energy. What we see is determined by what we accept in our consciousness. Things literally have to be believed to be seen. Someone halfway around the world can create an image or write a short piece of prose and through this medium that craft reaches my senses and is absorbed into my awareness. I am changed by this interaction, no longer exactly who I was before I integrated the expression generated by another soul in this temporal world. How could I be changed by something that is not real? Thank you for these enjoyable and inspiring moments! With warm regard, Terry