Is there any longer a reason to designate media as “digital?” That our news and entertainment come to us online now is a given. Marshall McLuhan would say we’re blinded by the omnipresence of the internet — to us, it’s synonymous with information.
Here’s proof: doing things offline –in other words, reality– is now a movement: D.I.Y., Maker, crafting. “Because we are benumbed by any new technology,” McLuhan said, “we tend to make the old environment more visible; we do so by turning it into an art form.” An art form that we then, ironically, share online.
The Analog-ist is a new Flip the Media column shared by Betsy Hauenstein and I that seeks to explore the implications of the offline world as a movement, defined against our screen time. Is “offline” a physical place or a state of mind? If you always carry a smart phone or think in status update syntax, can you even get there? We’ll seek to answer the question of whether the internet has rewired our brains through a closer look at the crafts, machines, people, and places that exist beyond the screen.
One of my favorite examples of offline culture is Portland’s Independent Publishing Resource Center, about which I made a short film in the MCDM’s Digital Media Storytelling class in 2010. It tells the story of how cartoonist Jesse Reklaw connected to Portland’s creative community by collaborating with others in person at this nonprofit:
The IPRC: What are you making? from C. Lowry on Vimeo.
Tags: Analog, D.I.Y., Maker movement, Offline
This post is categorized in: Social Media
As someone who enjoys making “art” both on a computer and offline (reality as you say) I can see the value in both. Creating art digitally appeals to the perfectionist in me that wants everything to be perfectly lined up, straight and organized. And use of “undo” and “save as” allows for a lot of experimentation that is more difficult in offline tasks (I find myself frequently making the command Z gesture when painting or drawing only to find that I have to live with whatever mistake or decision I just made). But of course that concept of having to make a commitment is also a big part of the offline art making process that makes it different than digital. So I think in a way you have to be more mindful of what you are doing and think the whole thing through ahead of time. So I see a place for both approaches. Digital creation lends itself to clean, exacting work with easy experimentation while the “offline” approach works well with more organic freeform art. Anyway, I think it is an interesting topic (which I could likely yammer on for a while). Looking forward to future articles.
I think ‘rewired our brains’ might be understated. From paying bills to doing research, there are a thousand things that I have trouble remembering how I did them without the internet. I find myself amazed by people who are still able (and know how) to do “offline” tasks like the folks at IPRC. I wish there were more of them.
With mobile it’s becoming even more pervasive/pathetic – now I find it difficult to even enter a restaurant without hitting my Yelp app first, and something that would have been a conversation and debate between friends turns into a contest to see who can find it the fastest on Wikipedia.
I love the McLuhan reference – so prescient.
Thank you for the excellent video! Well-done and informative.Looking forward to more posts and videos.