Blog #4: Visiting Artist Darrin Martin

Commercial advertising is not only implementing conditioned responses to formulas of societal life, but is lacking any creativity in delivering such messages and is thereby inhibiting its audience from exerting or appreciating any creative or artistic ideas outside commercial media. Author Wallace Stevens is insinuating that new art that was once praised and utilized as a vital inspiration for other works, is now being rejected because it goes against the structured conformities and societal regulations that have been laid down by the media; art is experimental, making it impossible to produce original media in such a narrow-minded society.

This lack of creativity has become especially apparent in the world of socializing via internet. Internet chat programs and social networking sites, such as AIM, ICHAT, Myspace, and Facebook, have taken on a media-constructed language of their own. Although some users are completely oblivious to the conformity of such social sites, typically conversations on such programs all begin the same way. For instance a conversation may start out:
“Hey”
“Hey”
“Whats up”
“Nm. U?”
“Same.”Conversation tends to vary from this point in the conversation, but will continue to employ the use of “chatspeak” such as LOL, NVM, BRB, as well as the shortening of words by using less letters or replacing letters with numbers(ie someone then asks “How R U?” with a response of “Gr8”). Although these sites may enable us to talk more consistently, the way in which these interactions are being conducted are so structured that it almost defeats the purpose of conversing. A computer could produce the same answers that people are sharing with their supposed closest friends. Unfortunately emails and texting share these same tragic yet realistic issues. As if these social interactions were not impersonal enough, friends are getting together to watch TV or videos off the internet and using these activities as replacement for conversation. So while people may have more means of connecting to each other and sharing forms of entertainment in each other’s company, they could practically have these same experiences alone.