Good-for-nothing (no. 1)

Nathan Matteson, Nicholas Kersulis
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The screen's nature is to both show and to obscure. It forever hypnotizes us, seamlessly eliminating its own qualities as a substrate. It owns the characteristics of a Zelig: forever changing, unstable in any context, and destabilizing context itself. Informed by photography, film, and every meme that ever was, the digital image shifts readily between aspects of each. Its meaning is necessarily slippery and hard to define; possessing a quality that makes it hard to pin down or make fit into a neat category. Given this slipperiness, can we ever grasp the basic, tectonic components of the digital image? The bits and pixels of the screen do little to help our visual understanding of its relationship to one's perspective in everyday life. The seductive illusions and concomitant complexities of our online experiences have enabled an entirely new trompe l'oeil hell of phishing attacks, spoofs, and cross-domain tomfoolery. Digital images, precisely because of their ambivalence towards the picture plane, forever slip from our grasp. Only as Flusser's metaphorical wind blows them from our mental, perceptual grasp do they reveal aspects of their construction. Rather than fight against this liminal quality, we exploit it. Good-for-nothings celebrate the disappearance of materiality; albeit, through lack, dejection, and an embrace of the absence that seems to have brought much of our culture to a standstill. Forever shifting, always shiftless, on an endless joyride from nowhere to anywhere. How does one go about working with this shiftlessness? Each Good-for-nothing raises its metaphorical glass to Herman Melville's crème de la crème good-for-nothing anti-hero, Bartleby. They are images aligned with a scrivener of the post-modern age that can only tell us: 'I prefer not to'.
无用的(没有。1)
屏幕的本质是既能显示又能掩盖。它永远催眠着我们,无缝地消除了它作为基质的特性。它具有蔡利格的特征:永远在变化,在任何环境中都不稳定,而且环境本身也不稳定。受摄影、电影和每一个曾经存在的模因的影响,数字图像很容易在每一个方面之间转换。它的含义必然难以界定;难以归类的,难以归类的具有难以归类的特点的考虑到这种不稳定性,我们能掌握数字图像的基本构造成分吗?屏幕上的比特和像素无助于我们从视觉上理解它与日常生活中个人视角的关系。诱人的幻想和伴随而来的网络体验的复杂性,使网络钓鱼攻击、欺骗和跨域愚蠢行为成为一个全新的错视地狱。数字图像,正是因为它们对画面平面的矛盾心理,永远从我们的掌握中滑落。只有当弗卢瑟的隐喻之风将它们从我们的精神和感性的把握中吹走时,它们才会揭示出它们的结构方面。我们不是与这种有限的品质作斗争,而是利用它。一无是处的人庆祝物质性的消失;尽管如此,由于缺乏、沮丧和对缺失的拥抱,我们的文化似乎已经停滞不前。永远在移动,永远没有能力,在无尽的兜风从一个地方到另一个地方。一个人如何在这种无所事事的状态下工作呢?每一个一无是处的人都举起了隐喻的酒杯,指向赫尔曼·梅尔维尔笔下一无是处的反英雄巴特利比。这些图像与后现代时代的书记员一致,只能告诉我们:“我不喜欢”。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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