Raymond Williams wrote an article entitled, The Technology and the Society, in 1972. I was expecting the article to be about the content of television, movies, magazines and other media is linked in with the culture at the time of publication. The article was much different than that; it was about the causes and effects of technology and how it changed the notion of social communication. Williams discusses how technological advances happened as a result of many different developments (military uses and the ability for corporations or the state to broadcast to people are among a few). Williams nicely put it this way: "It is not only that the supply of broadcasting facilities preceded the demand; it is that the means of communication preceded their content". This idea brings my assumptions about the reading forward and I can place my own thoughts in this style of thinking. While the television was invented long before 1972, Williams brings up an interesting point. The ability to broadcast was there before people had to worry about what they were watching. And since the introduction of of new technologies in social communication, people have pushed the envelope along the lines of how much sex can I sell? How much violence can I get away with showing? Yeah, we want to see these things and we should have the choice to see them, but we only care because we know they exist on television. I'm not advocating censorship, I'm just saying theres a bunch of dumb shit out there.
Furthermore, I watched some experimental videos in my class. After reading Williams' article, I can see how these artists have used the existing technologies as a major on their content. William Wegman is an artist who clearly spends time contemplating the role that television and similar video technologies have in society and he creates art that fucks with our expectations of what video should be. But that's the idea for a lot of experimental film makers I think. I dont think that cheapens it, they obviously have more of a message or direction if they're good, but this is something film makers look at. I think this is a weird video, but his dog stuff is kind of weird to me:
I dont think it's fair to look at experimental video by writing it off as dumb shit. But it's not fair to give dumb shit the title experimental art. This particular video might be close to a gray area.
Williams worked to be slowly methodical in his analysis of the cause and effect related to technology and society. Funny that you bring up pornography as there is a definite pattern of it using emerging technologies the fastest going way back to even before stereoscopic viewers. We've all lived to witness the uses on the Internet, etc.
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