Braun's discussion of "openess" and "lack of completion" makes me think of the difference between so-called reality television and what could be called documentary or even ehnographic media. Although Bechtold says that "everything on TV is reality" it is the presence of the modes of representation that provoke a particular kind of realism, which is, most of the time, disavowed. Documentary (and especially cinema verite), however, attempts to reveal the mode of production and tries desperately to find some truth behind what unfolds. I'm thinking specifically of the Seven-Up series which seems open and resists completion (as long as the participants remain alive and willing), but what bothers me is the distance that the films place between participants, producers, and audience. I think Braun is advocating, at least in part, a way to close this gap with conceptual designs that hold make producers out of spectators and, in turn, partcipants.
I do think (and you can argue this) that in addition to, as Braun states, engage a Utopian non-space of dialogue, the annonymity of the Internet encourages a kind of morbid voyeaurism. I don't think that it is passive, to the contrary, it is an active engagement in the sense that voting for American Idol is active. So while we wait for new conceptual models of how we can use the Internet, it feels more like an extended reality show (maybe even [gasp]... one of those awful dating reality shows that you know you shouldn't watch, but you do anyway. Or is that just me?)
2 comments:
Josh,
I found the Braun article interesting too ... looking at it from a medical rhetorics perspective. As I read Braun, especially the opening pages, I kept thinking of the bodies exhibit that has gained much attention and notoriety this year ... cf: http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/intro.html
I haven't seen the exhibit yet ... hope to ... it came up in discussion with friends this summer who are involved in clinical education ... not surprisingly, the exhibit generated a wide range of responses ... great interest from an anatomical and clinical perspective, concern about the ethics involved in obtaining the bodies, lots of reflection about how the exhibit's aesthetic features ... debate about whether it's art or a weird new form of voyerism, etc. It seems to me the exhibit definitely is an interplay of visualities generating discourses about bodies and power over bodies in life and death.
Also drawing from a medrhet pov, Braun's discussion on p. 75 about spaces as relational systems and the suggestion that art viewers are reconstructors of various references and contexts reminds me of the way radiologists sometimes talk about how they read and interpret films and scans ... looking for anamolies in relationships among ultra fine gradations of grey, black, white ... a topic in visual medrhet that I hope to learn more about through research.
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