|
NEW STIMULI |
| Text: Dagfinn Fjelddalen Photo: Ingwill M. Gjelsvik |
| New Stimuli: Influences of an as yet unknown nature. So, what"s new? Our world view is different. Space has been reduced to the smallest imaginable extreme, and time is close behind. That which happens far away, can be experienced almost simultaneously on the other side of the globe. We can interact over vast distances as though our partners were next door. In a year or two we will be able to «touch» them as well. This is not exactly new. Television and telephones have existed for a century. What is new is networked communication. As long as electronic communication worked from one to many (televisions) or one to one (telephone), we were still somewhat separated from each other, feet rooted firmly in the «real» world. Now we are neighbours one and all, in a virtual world that exists in our collective mind. And not only is this «virtual» reality - not to be mistaken for the computer concept «virtual reality» - compressed in space, we are compressing time at the same time. What we imagine possible, we assume is already there. Technology on the drawing board has consequences long before it is realized. And the same adjustments simultaneously across the globe. It is necessary to be ready, because when new technology comes, another is already waiting at the door, demanding its own adjustments. When media discuss social etiquette for when you meet your own clone, or what your Virtual Reality (the computer generated) workplace will be like, it is because the masses are capable of considering these things as real, many years before human clones are actually realized. No wonder a new, virtual sensory apparatus is necessary, in order to receive impressions that arise when time and space become zero. It is this that The Undercover Girl perceives as «New Stimuli». It is an artificial concept considered to be connectied to biology, psychology and sociology. The Undercover Girl sees «New Stimuli» as mutations of real needs; new forms of familiar modes of behaviour to support a virtual world view; a reality that physically speaking is imagined, yet real enough, because everyone agrees that it exists. «New Stimuli» can be a sensory aspect we attribute to information in order to be able to feel and exist in a communicational society. Because the flow of information that makes up our environment does not correspond to the expectation of a continuous and complete reality, we respond with a constructive, creative and supplementary activity in our consciousness, in order to create a meaningful worldview. «New Stimuli» does not perhaps influence the sensory apparatus externally, but rather occurs out of our own «virtual» perception of reality. Does «New Stimuli» mean that new types of organisms exist; creatures that can only exist through the simultaneous thoughts of thousands of people? How do you then justify your own stimulus/response reflex? The trick is to direct the question to existence itself. The question itself often initiates change. It all in who´s asking. So, what is «New Stimuli»? |
