We made a wiki for our 3rd. assignment in AVS2220. (it’s in norwegian)
http://avs2220gr6.wikispaces.com/
We used the free system wikispaces.com for our wiki, it worked ok, but if I where to actually use a wiki I would have set up one of my own, there are plenty of good free alternatives for your own Apache web-server.
That’s how we roll
In his book “The Hypercomplex Society” Lars Qvortrup talks about how we can create optics that we use to view the world trough. By changing and modifiying the lens wich we se the world trough we can observe and understand other aspects and fasets of our own society.
In chapter 7 he explands on how art is reflective of how mankind sees, or wants to see itself. He goes to say that we have gone from a human-centric view to a multi-faset view that is constantly redefining itself, or to simplify we have gone from Leonardo Da Vinci “The Vitruvian Man” to Picassos “Portrait of Nusch Eluard”.
Leonardo Da Vinci – Vitruvian Man – ca.1485-90
Pablo Picasso – Portrait of Nusch Eluard – 1937
Seeing these images it is easy to agree with Qvortrup, we may very well have gone from a human-centric view to a more poly-centric view, in terms of how we se ourselves. Yet I don’t completly agree. I think that different views have always existed, it’s just become more acceptable to present these views in our modern day democracy that is build upon the idea that we are all different and have a right to be so.
Qvortrup mentions the impressionist movement that went in a radical new direction in terms of artistic style and visual representation. One of my favourite paintings is from J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) that is called “Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway” from 1844. I saw it once in the National Gallery, London. What made a deep impression (pun intended) was that it looked nothing like a train, yet captured the essence and feel of the scene that resonated with the idea and concept of a train moving trough the landscape.
J.M.W. Turner – “Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway” – 1844
Even tough Turner falls under the era of romanticism, I personally feel that much of his art is impressionistic. It should be noted that he was a huge influence on Eduoard Manet, who in turn is said to be the forerunner of the impressionism. The interesting thing to notice here is that this is the presentation of how the artists sees the world. This is Turners vision of a industrial society, a roaring beast that speeds trough the landscape in a golden-dark stride. It fits with Qvortrups idea of having optics to view society, and that these ever changing optics in turn change ourselves and our society.
The first report for AVS2220 is done. It has been a deep dive into the thoughts of Lars Qvortrup and his ideas on what he calls the hypercomplex society. The basic premise is that technology is not changing our society, it is we who are changing our society and therefore make the technology we need to make it change in the direction we want it to. Sort of a reverse technodeterminism (yet still kind of deterministic). I don’t agree with mr. Qvortrup on many accounts, I will try to express all of these disagreements in turn as I read his book “The Hypercomplex Society”. This post is the perfect opportunity to start such a rant.
First of all I belive it to be ignorant and arrogant to try to predict almost any kind of development, all we can do is guess from our current standpoint and then se how it goes. What we can do is try to make observations of our current society and then compare this to what we know of other societies, that be our own society in history or other societies today. Qvortrup claims that the modern day society is polysentric in that it requires multiple views from many standpoints to understand it. I believe this to be key to understanding any society, this is not something new to our current one.
I also disagree with his ideas on a hypercomplex society. Even tough I theoreticaly can relate to 5 million people trough the magic of the internet doesn’t mean that I wan’t to or even have the capacity to (people have the biological capacity to relate to ca 120 different sosial relations, wich is of the highest and most complex in the animal kingdom). Yes our society is getting more convoluted in a certain sense, but it’s still humans living in it and humans are not evolving or changing in the same pace as the technology is (such a tought is almost frightening). Perhaps I am reading to much into Qvortrup’s statements which often seem as toughts out on a vim, but I’m retaining a sceptical view on his ideas none the less.
This is hypercomplex
This is just a little convoluted, no?
