Im sitting in a café in France. There's a lot of chatter around me. This morning I was 'on the Internet'. How different these experiences are. It's hard to compare pears with apples, and yet we often do. Working in the office and working from home, for example, are similar, looking for company on social networks or in a café, for example, reading in the library or researching on the internet. These are apples and oranges, similar and yet categorically different. On the Internet, however, we are ultimately alone. We can interact virtually, our image, our movement and our voice can be communicated, but physically we are separate. Metavers will not fundamentally change this, and this is also where the Matrix reached its limits.
But this morning I was thinking about adrenaline. How different it feels 'alone' in front of a screen or in a café. In a room with other people, this feeling of stress and anxiety transforms into excitement. I wonder if anything can be deduced from this observation. What does it mean to be alone or together in a virtual or real space?
'A soul at work' is the title of a book by Agamben. We are merely dependent on the internet, we feed it and the commercial value is created by the big tech companies and political demagogues. Aren't we still in the Stone Age emotionally and hormonally? Can we really change our biochemistry cognitively? How can Foucault's concept of biopolitics be reinterpreted from here?
Although we can also guide, transform and understand our feelings through meditation, this solitude of meditation is borne in a greater consciousness, it is something other than being at the mercy of a screen. Media art is actually about this fundamental experience. The aesthetic experience in the temples of art gives us the social space within which we can engage with the potentials and irritations of the digital, virtual, telematic, collective and isolated.
It takes a village: Community, interaction with children, sharing a social space - these are corrective factors for our hormone balance.
