"But then what exactly is that reality?"

Hans Op de Beeck.


"I wonder where my son is. I see his body daily. He eats and washes, masturbates,
relieves himself and sleeps at the oddest moments and in the oddest places in my
house. But where has he got to?
The times I’ve thought: I’m going to chuck the whole digital theme park out of the
house. But what’s the good of that? He’s a grown man, he must do what he thinks he
has to do. Of course there’s recognition, and – I admit it – guilt. He’s holding up a
mirror to me. Wasn’t my scientific obsession just as much a virtual biotope? Wasn’t I
just as much alienated from real, concrete existence? So am I supposed to deprive
my son of his virtual life? Wouldn’t I be killing my own child?
In his maze of apparatus Thomas has found a kind of continuation of himself, an
extension, a prosthesis. Perhaps his virtual life is the real, essential life for him.
Apparently freed from his own body, he dwells in complete abstraction. Via
technology he achieves an existence almost free of matter. Perhaps virtual
relationships and contacts are more open, honest and authentic than our clumsy,
physical communication? Perhaps he can finally be himself and not what others want
him to be? Perhaps his situation is in fact highly enviable?
(...)
Dad daddy-o,
How’s the old boy doing? How’s things there in that spa that our know-all Lauren forced on
you? You let yourself be bossed around by her far too much, Dad.
The house is very empty right now.
I miss having you here, even though we don’t talk much. I like hearing a door slam or when
you’re on the terrace smoking a cigarette seeing the living room curtains billowing in the
wind. You are the snatch of sound that wafts from that lousy old radio in the kitchen. You’re
the blanket I find over me in the mornings when I’ve once again fallen asleep on the sofa.
You’re the smell of toast and coffee. Come back.
I’ve already given you a life in cyberspace. It’s fun playing you. You’re very popular.
Nevertheless I’ve modelled you 100% on yourself. You’re a very marketable item. In your
cyberversion you already have a new girlfriend. Her name’s Mary. Haha. What’s more she
gets on very well with my virtual Helena.
Yesterday the real Helena was here with Elias. It wasn’t a visiting day, but she couldn’t find
anyone else, so once again I would have to do for our child. He started playing computer
games straightaway. So again we didn’t say much. And before I realised, his mother was at
the door again and they were gone.
Now you’ve gone I’ve lost all grip on the transitions from day to night. You were my clock.
My sense of time has gone. Everything is dissolving into a huge timeless zone of directionless
contacts, images, words, sounds.
Am I crazy, father? Am I crazy now that I consider my love of fiction just as authentic and
sincere as my love of reality? Am I crazy when I sit staring at a photo of Elias for a whole day
but don’t look at him when he’s with me here? Have I gone as crazy as my little sister?
Tell me straight: do you think I’m crazy, father?
Love,
Thomas
parte do conto SPA, aqui em .pdf.

balanço

e não é do ano (ainda na brincadeira dos objectos): funcho, avelãs, arroube ou uvada, tomate, nabiça, clementinas com folha, courgetes, bróculos, Marsupilami. bacalhau com natas. Histórias muito pequeninas. pão biológico Moinhos Vivos. reality.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." disse Philip K. Dick. the state of things as they actually exist. e a que gosto, a do ponto-de-vista: "Such results have led some, such as Amit Goswami, a theoretical nuclear physicist and member of the University of Oregon, to assume that there is no reality existing, independent of our own consciousness as observer." tudo na wiki. "Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.", diz a S. Sontag. "The crisis of the visual in the era of postmodernism where paradoxically almost everything 'is increasingly formed and informed, inflected and refracted' through images, evolves exactly from the acceleration and the cirulation of images. It no longer can be distinguished from where they do come, because 'the humanistic distinction between the real and the virtual has disolved.", diz Nicholas Mirozoeff. e ainda "The creation of an image through a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective choice through selection, framing, and personalization. Despite this, photography has historically been regarded as more objective than painting or drawing. The combination of the subjective and objective is a central argument about photographic images." e ainda: "In 1975, filmmaker and writer Laura Mulvey published an essay about women in classical Hollywood cinema. She argued that conventions of popular cinema are structured by a patriarchal unconscious, positioning women represented in film as objects of a “male gaze” Her theory stated that the camera is used as a tool of voyeurism and sadism, disempowering those before its gaze." (gostei logo de Laura Mulvey. (também, "In the history of art, most of the collectors and primary viewers were men. In a typical female nude, a woman is posed so that her body is on display for the viewer, who is implied to be male. John Berger wrote that in his history of images, “men act, women appear.” This way of viewing women thus defined them by their appearance, in essence their ability to be pleasing to look at.") não sabia que Braque tinha um Português. (A “copy” of a digital image is exactly like the “original.”) Le flâneur. quase tudo daqui, em .ppt.

foi um grande dia. and discussing reality has been going on for three days. Konstantino did it. some reading for the next couple of days.

e entretanto

KONSTANTINOS-ANTONIOS GOUTOS. que vai estar aqui, onde eu gostava de ir. (foto que se movimenta). mesmo sem mais nada, gostei de ler: "It is not fiction because, with a few exceptions, it is based wholly on unstylised reality. It is not documentary because the reality is not organized into an explanation of itself. And it is not cinéma-vérité because the artist shoots and manipulates his unstylized reality in such a way that the result has style." dita por Gene Youngblood. estava capaz de pensar nisto durante dias.

e esta cisterna (sem fôlego) de Claudia Schmid, que também lá vai estar.