by Christina Rosalie Sbarro
Media Consciousness 3.0
An exploration of media historyand human consciousness.
Combining free verse prose poetrywith highly visual graphics, this project
examines the potential of evolving human consciousness and emerging
media.
We begin with breath.
skin.
milk.
touch.
We begin with wonder.
smelling.
tasting.
feeling.
seeing.
hearing.
WE BEGIN.
1.
We discover
words.
And our tongues learn to shape them
syllable by syllable.
2.
We learn the names for everything...
and in the names, the secrets:
One thing can be round and also red...
and another thing also round and red, but floating..
We touch words with our tongues
share them, one by one with fingers pointed
toes curled, arms extended
our entire bodies thrown into the act of creating
(a ball)
(a balloon)
language.
3.
We learn sentences
and suddenly we find
ourselves among the words,
as separate
from the mountains or the air,
or the apricot colored cat curled like a parenthesis
I and I
and also me
on the windowsill in the afternoon sun.
I can tell you
who I am now. I am not you. I
am I. I am me. You are
you. We are
not each other. I know, be-cause
words tell me so.
4.
Soon we learn the secret of symbols
and our hands learn to make the world
until we are there on the page faces round as the moon, as a dinner plate, as a nickel
(that in a child’s drawing is always the grass)
below the thin blue line (that is always the sky)
and somewhere
|in this narrower space|
that now only holds
what we think we know
we learn our letters and forget our birth.
5.
5.
a e
ea
And with forgetting
begin the quest of always looking
for ways to not forget again
one thing after the next
held by time
and the container of space
matter
data
pixel
bit.
This is
the periphery of our collective inteligence as defined by the information available to us through our sensory perceptions and abstractio
ns. Th
is is the
outer limit of our knowing as defined by time and space
.
6.
Eventually we learn
to zero in
on particulars.
We learn to squint our eyes;
to specialize
our focus.
quantify
analyze
Compute contain collect
aggregate disseminate
quantify
analyze
Compute contain collect
aggregate disseminate
quantify
analyze
Compute contain collect
aggregate disseminate
quantify
analyze
Compute contain collect
aggregate disseminate
quantify
analyze
Compute contain collect
aggregate disseminate
quantify
analyzeCompute contain collect
aggregate disseminate
This is
the periphery of our collective inteligence as defined by the information available to us through our sensory perceptions and abstra
ctions.
This
is the
outer limit of our knowing as defined by time and space
. 7.
And maybe some of us (many of us?)
of the collective of information and intelligence.
will make a very small markat the perimeter
.
8.
This is the periphery of our collective inteligence as defined by the information available to us through our sensory perce
ptions
and abstractions.
This is the outer limit of our knowing as defined
by time an
d spac
e.
of all we do not know...
we lose all sight
towards this narrowing point
...but aiming always
9.
....of breath
...of death
....of secrets
...wonder
...chaos
....chance.
But what if we were to begin againinstead like this:
10.
of anything not boundby time and space?
....knowing how little we know
11.
the metaphors we know the best...
Maybe, as some say,
this is the beginning of
a pollutinga darkening
of one way of seeing and believing
all of us amateurs
accessing and sharing thought
in ways that undermine how things have always goneone thing
some kind of rarity to be bought or sold
authorship and ownership
after the nexteach object or idea
quantify
analyze
aggregate
quantify
analyze
quantify
quantify
analyze
This is the periphery of our collective inteligence as defined by the information available to us through our sensory perc
eption
s and abstractions
.
This is the outer limit of our knowing as defi
ned by time a
nd spa
ce.
12.
But maybe...
it is also a beginning
in the dark
and beyond it
at once.
(Rapid fire consciousness evolution.)
What if we could in this way see
the new media emerging now
beyond what is perceptible now?
as a harbingeror blueprintfor what is possible
of another way of being
This is the periphery of our collective inteligence as defined by the information available to us through our sensory p
ercept
ions a
nd abstractions. T
hi
s is the outer limit of our knowing as defined
by time an
d spac
e. 13.
thought
as we know it.
Maybe emerging media reveals this:
consciousness can exist beyond thought
as we know it.
BEGIN HERE.
14.
A project for the Emergent Media MFA at © Christina Rosalie Sbarro 2010
Champlain College.