I will admit that my thoughts at the beginning of this new read were not very academic. The discussion of advancing digital media and increasing complexity of digital art honestly took my mind to memes. I remember the early MySpace age graphics and ‘rage faces’, the transition to reaction gifs pulled from other arts, and now vine references are almost universal. It’s not the most sophisticated but I love the discussion around how unifying online language and art can be. 

“The metaphor of the window as a technology of vision persists in the digital age… The point is now to look at the window itself, not through it.”(6)  I had never thought of technology as limiting to art in any capacity, but now, especially with the discussion around Chan’s lack of a window in 1st Light, I do wonder about how our digital screen limits the possible perceptions of our art. Later in the chapter(9) it mentions how the adaption to digital media in our lives is not always a good thing. It’s not in the same way, but I do think the abundance of social media and the values it’s normalized in society can be incredibly isolating. I wonder if it’s similar enough to the limits of new art: that the windows of our tech are one-way, and allow only a limited perception.

As the author discussed the increasing opacity of human history with advancing digitization, I kept thinking of the Library of Alexandria. I read somewhere that there’s an estimated 7 or 8 events of similar size in our history(that’s probably a low ball, human’s suck), and I always tell my dad I think the next one will be because of technological failure. I’ve been increasingly concerned with the closures of libraries and increased book bans- even with these things available digitally, it’s becoming harder to find easy and affordable access. If it goes the way of streaming services, some of these materials might be destroyed indefinitely. 

The author also mentioned ASCII as it is a written computer language, but it presents as an aesthetic humans can interpret. I had never called it art before, but the way the author described the interactions between technology and humans has been an interesting thought to chew on. It mostly reminded me of a connection from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There’s a scene where a supercomputer is asked what the meaning of life is, and it’s answer(after some time) is 42. It was funny and nonsensical as a kid, but when I was taking coding classes it was a connecting dialogue that’s never really left the back of my mind. 42 is the ASCII code for “*”, which in coding is used to represent ‘everything’ or ‘anything defined’. 

I always took that to mean that the meaning of life is whatever we assign value to. It’s pretty close to the philosophies that have been governing my life anyways, but I appreciated the connection it made for me. Science and art have always been very divisive and this was one of the earlier moments that bridged the gap between them. 

“The mere fact that We do not know what our writing does not mean that we should find out, or indeed that we can.” – This quote is pretty specific to coding, but I love the feeling it invokes.