Professor Donna Reiss 

Humanities 105-77 

March 9, 2000 

My Reflections on Technology and Art 

In the fall semester of 1999, I embarked upon an adventure in technology with a number of other students, all of us taking a class for a variety of reasons. The class title in and of itself was intriguing, Man, Woman, & Machine. Unaware of the real time involved, I signed up for the class because of the need for teacher recertification, and because I wanted to learn more about computers, especially the on line classes. 

A big surprise was in store as the semester began to take shape. We started with introducing ourselves on line to our classmates. We subscribed to a mutual listserve through our professor, M. Reiss. All of a sudden, our e-mails were full, full, full. We should each have received eighteen e-mails from the class, but because most of us weren’t sure the first or second went through, and being the eager students we all were, some of us had a bombardment of e-mail. Here is a response to one of my pleas for help, thinking I was doing everything all wrong: listpals #1 . 

Well, that was just the beginning of the many interesting things that would happen to us as we delved blindly into the cyberworld of M. Reiss' Humanities 105. We would view movies and read stories such as Frankenstein, and then compare the technology uses therein: answers to Frankenstein questions. We also discussed the answers with our classmates through a mutually accessible web board:  http://webboard.tcc.edu/~hum105/login.  We wrote notes to classmates, or about someone's homework assignment. We received feedback from each other as well as from our professor, creating our own little cyber-community. Learning to use the webboard was a real challenge, and one which produced a great feeling of accomplishment. The smallest little mistakes could make a huge problem, such as not threading the assignment properly. It is difficult to explain what that means, but if you visit the webboard link above, you'll see. 

Several of the assignments left me feeling insecure about my finished products, and reluctant to send them into cyberspace. Those will follow under poetry and field trips (my original copy of a contemporay painting and a poem about technology). Even though I didn't feel secure about the work, I was glad I had done it afterwards. It gave me a deeper appreciation of what true artists must experience. We had to reflect on the use of art in technology and technology in art before ever beginning the first assignment: introductory thoughts.   If anyone thought there was little connection before taking this class, certainly they have learned otherwise. 

One of my favorite readings from the text was by Kenneth Gergen. In it, he spoke of the acceleration of the future. You can read for yourself from the WebBoard if you'd like. He is a professor of psychology at Swarthmore, and his views are well worth studying. He has a site which addresses head-on the issues and labels society and the field of psychology continue to place on individuals at alarming levels. He warns that litigation and lots of it will be a necessary reaction to derogatory and damaging labels of  personality types. The resulting prejudice, unfair practices in the work place, and unfair treatment by health insurance companies, are all going to be brought to light  the courtroom. A construct of the field of psychology, the labels may do more harm than good. What I pondered as I read the essay in the book, and the views he expressed in essays I found on line, is if our accelerated society isn't contributing to the "problem." Is Diagnosis a Disaster?: A Constructionist Trialogue, Gergren.

Technology is spinning out of control, and our populatation is barely able to keep abreast of the changes. The art of learning the uses and applications is a gift. Most people do not possess the skills nor the time to learn. Technology is itself an art. The great artists of the future will have the techno-geniuses among them. If one fails to continue to grow with the changes, consequences could lead to major problems. No matter what one's station in life, every person is well-advised to explore the vast changes and opportunities greeting us with each new dawn. 
   

E-mail Karen S | TCC | TCC Disclaimer | developed by Karen S. October 1999 and updated 15 March 2000