The notion of the tangible
Monday, April 26, 2010 at 05:32AM Natalie Ellen-Eliza:
Everything seems to be becoming increasingly two dimensional. Second lives can be ‘lived’ online, people are ‘Seeking relationships – online’ and money is no longer cash but rather pixels filled with black light that then make up the numbers of your bank account balance(s). The documentary Food Inc reminds us that we no longer buy food, but rather purchase the notion of food. We buy tomatoes which are no longer grown. We buy the idea of a tomato that has been engineered in a laboratory and speed-ripened with ethylene gas in place of the no longer fashionable sun. The cumulative effect of the above developments seems to have deemed the tangible superfluous to necessity and as such; the physical is becoming increasingly redundant.
I am too young to remember the pinnacle of the cassette tape craze, but, I’m very conscious of the era in which I live, where everything seems to act as a referent to that which once was tactile. So perhaps I should not have been so shocked to be reminded by Popular Archaeology that the way in which we interact physically with popular music has already become far less tangible. McKinnon’s sound archive values the tactile qualities now stripped from the popular music of today where sound bytes are engineered in laboratories (studios) and digitalised for a more convenient, less ethical, transfer to touch screen MP3 players and the internet. Popular Archaeology, to me, values cassette tapes (and their players) in order to compare the distant memories of a three dimensional era with the ever increasing move toward the intangible.
Reader Comments (5)
Interesting - but couldn't this also be described as a kind of fetishism for material objects. Material objects have to be produced by someone - where were the cassettes produced? Who got paid? Etc. Etc. I am not saying that the idea is BAD - but just that by opposing it to the byte I feel that a war is waged. I do not want to go to war anymore. Why not celebrate BOTH at the same time. They have their own qualities - and both must be savored and experienced (oops - did I just return to a modernist position - FUCK IT, some of modernism must be retained).
Why return to cassettes because of nostalgia? What is this yearning for the past about?? The past was SHIT too. And why is a digital file not tactile?? Do I not hit keys on the keyboard? Do I not slip headphones into my ears.
Some thoughts...
It's odd to attached to an expressed idea to the removed self, of being unable to accept the qualities that we once grounded ourselves in, as though the objects we interact with ever hold lasting meaning. It's no longer a question of sustaining our disbelief. We know that it's horse shit, that's why Modernism fell on its face.
To believe in the self as a transient object that barely touches the truths of reality seems again silly, we all piss, shit and fart. Some hide it better than others, an some just hermit it. To believe the world is our ten percent of luxury is as odd concept, luxury isn't a universal ideal. Though it's one I enjoy.
Wouldn't it perhaps be simpler to say, I enjoy my tomato, though I know I'm shit out of luck if I try to grow one this shape, size and color. Isn't it simpler to say, I love my comforts, but I realise sooner or later my self will fall to bits regardless of them.
Extremes are never good, in facing our fundamental natures we realise this, though searching for that nature is something worthwhile to be sure. To believe you'll understand it even after finding it. Slightly immodest.
Your entire experience is sensory, even your dreams are based in reference to this experience. Dream up something I can't imagine, and then make me forget it, and then perceive it anew. I'll hold that up as something special, something worthwhile. Otherwise it's all just flickering moments.
I agree with dick that it is not beneficial to be restricted to a polarity of the digital and the analogue.
However I disagree on the argument that the digital is just as tactile as it predecessor. Yes, we interact with digital modes by touch as an exterior value but we cannot as easily reach its innards and invisible function in comparison to the analogue technology of the past and present.
Tactility as far as the "poxy on-line generalised dictionary" tells me is the quality of touch, not the touchness of touch, how can we give value to something we haven't taken time to understand why it feels like that and in comparison to what else.
I am most grateful for your all of your insightful comments! Thank you.
Dick, your modernist (as opposed to your proto-postmodernist preferences which I know you have) argument proves interesting ringing loud and clear of Duchamp (paint is a readymade because someone, somewhere made it).
Analysis of this level, however, I decided to be outside of the scope for a blog writing. I could have easily become distracted by other potential conversations i.e. how light is the only 'material' that requires no medium to carry its waves (Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos) or about the tactility of aural experience (music/sound) but chose to go with my desire for a seemingly forgotten prominet quality of the touch.
We do indeed press the spacebar to pause a song on itunes, and yes, a 2GB ipod shuffle does take up space in our pocket but this is a different level of tactility when compared with the clunky thud of pressing a play button down on a cassette tape player until it locks in place or jogging wih a portable cassette tape player in your hand(s). I personally, do not think one to be 'better' than the other, just different. And such an interesting difference it is...
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