Happy Easter

Artie Vierkant Comprehensive

Cairns I, II


Cairns III, IV, V

Confessions of a media junkie

My eyes, ears and hands are permanently addicted to consuming images, information and sounds in copious amounts, I believe this is a very common affliction for my generation but also it is one latently encouraged by various proponents of consumption fuelling these desires as a healthy process and extension of the production of capital. The systems and mechanisms that have developed over the last 150 years in the production methods of society have revolved around the singular model of mass-production an eye that sees beyond the local to absorb a cybernetic understanding of society as a larger organism. The switch from a local carpenter building a singular chair for use in a customers home to a factory worker making several 100 chair legs that will be passed along to be assembled by many others for many others.

These methods have always existed and been put into use from the Egyptian pyramid builders to the stone mason collectives whom carved the great cathedrals of the medieval ages. The difference of the latest incarnations of production is the exponential increase in speed and scope, capital planning for an ever widening birds eye view of society, mass-production supplies the formula to generate capital of all kinds. Hitler's third Reich acted through the fascist propaganda machine, a processing of images and the production of technology by and for the people; a man-machine in its truest sense. The Volkeswagen and the Volksempfänger, respectively the peoples car and the peoples radio reciever encouraged the laymen's relationship with technology and the man-machine sought to bring that which we desired closer through the efficacy of technology. Initiatives such as Kraft Durch Freude (Strength through joy) sought to bring the leisure activities of the middle classes to the working classes, effectively normalising society, bringing the masses into the circle of consumption be it cars, radios or holidays. The Third Reich perfected the production and processing of capital more efficiently than the capitalists as they saw the advantage's of a looser, broader definition of the market, the inclusion of all tiers of society within culture, the government encouraging interest in art and music, all individuals were responsible for capital but their contemporary desires were ultimately steered by propaganda. Walter Benjamin describes this shift towards 'the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life' linking the 'mechanical reproduction' as an attempt to satisfy the thirst for bring things closer and almost perfectly describes the function of the internet a good half a century before the first working model: "Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our need in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign"



From the 80's onwards the culture-machine whirred into effect, consumption of cheap Chinese goods and the proliferation of affordable home entertainment from vinyl and cassette players to calculators and computer games systems spurred on a generation defined not through its actions or ideologies but its consumption of media. This consumption has devolved or expanded beyond the horizons of its original function, the substances of media are simmered down into separate units and bits crystallised as simulacra that mirror a fractured distancing of meaning. It is from these bits that we create ourselves.

A blog is perhaps the most effective cipher of personality it acts to encode the instantaneous and almost unconscious micro-decisions that occur within the act of consuming which then re-emerges as an act of display. These are your digital peacock feathers our level of interest within a subject is tied to the same curbed desire that is inherent to the fascist processing of images. The only problem in today's society is that no one is steering the ship. We are all election factories voting through our traffic upon the information superhighways.