Dennis van Vreden, Trimester 1, 2011.

Silence is Golden

Description

There is a tension between two values: "silence is golden" and "freedom of speech". With this piece I wanted to show this tension. Using all new techniques for the first time. After Effects, Video in high definition and the installation format.

Media

Photos

Video

Essay

Abstract: The biggest thing in writing, researching and discussing the theme of How Media Effects Us is that the majority of people are not aware of the effect while it is affecting them. Therefore the first message would be, and is seconded by essayist Rob Riemen (2010), that massmedia should no longer be blatantly interpreted as truth. Riemen speaks about mass-society, a name given to society by Ortega y Gasset in 1930. “A society that, according to early suspicions from Goethe and with all of the features that Tocqueville and Nietzsche had predicted, is indeed manifesting itself all over Europe.” Riemen writes that Europe is on the verge of being a free society (more specifically in this society, he states that media is broadening our view of the world). But that this great moment of history is being rejected by this massamens (literally translates to masshuman). This massamens, he so describes, is found in all classes, rich and poor, literate and illiterate. Riemen (2010, p.16) quotes Gasset calling it a “threat of the values and ideals of the liberal democracy and European humanism; traditions where the spiritual and moral development of the free individual is the fundament for a free and open society.” The terrifying part about the massamens is that he thinks he is always right without required arguments. Non-massamens have to adjust to him and “in the language of reason, he knows only one language, the language of the body: violence” (even more so, everything that is not part of this mass, cannot exist). Now what happens with the media here is also a reflection of the massamens. Massmedia is created, feeding the massamens, for he does not think. (2010, p.17) “He is free of all spiritual effort. He adjusts to the mass - with for his look the current fashion and his opinion the massmedia as his aids to guide him through life.”

Link to essay: http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/wiki/Dennis_van_Vreden/finalessay

Additional Information

To see more of the process go to http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/wiki/User:Dennis_van_Vreden#.2A_Project_1