Xxx

Medium: Photography Why: Digital images have a way of virally proliferating media.

"The modern media environment, the proliferation of virtual images and sounds that ever increasingly surround us, recalls earlier models of the relation between consciousness and the cosmos that drew on magical or supernatural analogies.13 I am far from proposing here a project of reenchantment of technology. Rather I want to probe the unique cultural nature of modern media, which confront us with representations that are fundamentally different from conventional realist theories of mimesis based simply in resemblance. However, rather than offering yet another review of the ontology of the photographic image as proposed by Andre Bazin, Roland Barthes, and others, I want to explore the ontology and phenomenology of modern media of reproduction (the debates surrounding photography can be extended to both moving image and sound recording) through the metaphor of the ghostly and the phantasm. The ontological argument claims that photography not only por trays things but participates in, shares, or appropriates the very ontology of the things it portrays. In what way does the medium disappear in photography, abdicating in favor of the object portrayed? How does the photographic medium mediate? "-100-scan a ghost

Subject: Cows Why? Religious significance Cultural significance as a food product, symbol of farm land, rural landscape, local cultures. Why specially did I begin working with cows? I was drawing inspiration from psychedelic literature and movements, and it is theorised by Terence McKenna that human consciousness was pushed forward in its development by the psilocybin mushrooms that grew in cow piles. Also, I really think they are stunningly beautiful.

I am interested in working with them using a science fiction/psychedelic/ritual magic/surreal aesthetic

A judgement I am trying to make is that cultures have repressed paegan religions in favor of dominate and oppressive religions that demand blind faith in something unseen. they worship saints, confess through priests, sacrifice their lives and desires for the benefit of an unseen entity that has never shown itself, or done anything

Rather than have faith in themselves, they are more likely to worship a saint, a symbol, A COW, something that has really never shown itself to be magical or have a spiritual capacity

but what has shown to have a magical quality or a spiritual capacity is MYSELF, yourself. we as individuals are the most amazingly diverse in our perception. Here I am trying to bring it back to the idea of Allan Watts in "The Taboo against knowing who you are", when he says we basically have a culturally driven fear of arrogance or self love and we would never openly procalim that WE ARE GOD because it is not in good taste

and some how, it is better taste to worship idols or deities that have no real ground to stand on which would confirm for us that they deserve our faith

and now that we are moving further away from religion, we lean more towards a technological pragmatism. and this is in a way, a good thing. because religion creates boundaries for experiences and limits our ability to accept one another but what this also does is prevent us from ever finding our way back to spiritual traditons that are rooted in nature and I think that a way to tie our culture of technology back to nature and our organic components is naturally occouring psychedleic substances.

Another gem from McKenna is that he theroized that human anxiety is a dietary issue where we are lacking in mushrooms

so back to the cow---we can again use the cow as a symbol, but a symbol which is referencing the mushrom and our need for it.

the cow is basically the source, so if i can create this viral images of this psychedelic-technologically produced cattle image-it can be the symbol for our need to ingest mushrooms in order to allieviate the anxiety which comes with the high moving, and increasingly complex new media world