Re: <documenta X><blast>

Eve Andree Laramee (wander@earthlink.net)
Mon, 21 Jul 1997 21:05:00 -0500

Keller Ann, I am perplexed by some of your words, could you please explain?

At 11:20 am 7/19/97 Keller Ann Easterling wrote:
>The virtual is still so invisible in the daily commerce of our lives. So
>few people train
>themselves to use it, like any muscle or any tool in any ordinary
>craft & train themselves to use it in a way which is palpable.

How has this been studied or documented? How do we know that so few people
train themselves to use the virtual? Who are you talking about?

>Animals, too, so clearly rely on a different set of virtual and
>sensory parameters which make them powerful and attractive.

I thought we are animals.

>I can see my dog literally using her mind to do different things, store
>memories and
>locations etc. Of course, these things, or anything that does not align
>with our limited occidental frame of mind and its insistent language
>system are regarded as mystical and silly.

I use my mind to store memories and locations too, but I never thought of
it as mystical or silly. I admit my occidental mind is limited, but I am
unclear to whom you refer.

>It would really be an amazing thing if we were watching streams
>of data from Mars instead of just reviewing some narrow bandwidth of
>outcome expressed in photographs and stupid rock names.

Are rock names more stupid than planet names or people names or dog names?

> I wonder what kind of broader
>cultural effects there will be as a result of our newest tools --to inform
>our dumb media broadcasts, book contractss and face to face conversations.
>Sometimes it seems as if these realms really need to maintain their
>dumbness or even to increase it. Make a greater volume of celebrity books,
>have 24 hours of continuous coverage of the same exact thing overa nd over
>again. This dumbness and desire for repetition fascinates me too.

Could you please define what you mean by dumb?

At 10:47 am on 7/21/97 Keller Ann Easterling wrote:
>I dont think we have to convince
>each other about the poetical or the spiritual. I should have been more
>clear. I meant that sometimes these pursuits are considered to be very
>specialized or rarified and so dismissed by a broader culture. I was
>trying to refer to the simplistic negative judgements associated with
>those things.

Could you elaborate on this? Which/whose "broader culture" are you speaking
of who hold these simplistic negative judgements associated with the
poetical and the spiritual?

Thanks. Eve Andree Laramee