So the question is, how do you want to feel?
So I've become really interested recently in this idea
of mediating experience.
OK?
Of directly engaging the technical material
of subjectivity itself.
Of employing technologies of rhetoric,
like language, songs, storytelling,
cinema to capture and control attention
and thrust one's subjectivity into a state
of deep immersion, absorption.
A necessary precursor for any kind
of interpersonal persuasion or transformation or education
to take place within one's psyche.
Janet Murray and her book "Hamlet on the Holodeck"
talks about the fact that, as narrative beings, we
long to be immersed.
We long to merge with the narrative
to obliterate all sense of separation.
To be enveloped in the mediated environment, the story world.
We want to disappear and come out on the other side.
And she says, so powerful is our desire
to be immersed that it's not just that we suspend disbelief,
but that we actively create belief.
Using our sophisticated intelligence
to reinforce our belief in the story world
rather than to question it.
We actively metabolize belief and story.
Knowing this then, the challenge for the artist,
as he constructs the cultural technologies
of the 21st century and our technological desire
to virtualize reality, we should keep in mind
that we have this immense opportunity
to artfully and creatively construct
these subjective story worlds.
And thus the narratives of the future
have the potential to literally transform
what it means to be human.
To employ landscapes of mind.
And turn subjective experience into a living,
breathing painting.
A wake-walking lucid dream.
This is our opportunity.