>> open the work


Concept

Benjamin Woolley points out in his book Virtual Worlds:

Conventionally, we think of networks as transparent, as systems for conveying messages from one human being to another without in any way shaping their meaning.
McLuhan's other great contribution to the media age was the phrase: 'The medium is the message.' What he meant was that networks (or media - in other words, systems for carrying information) are not transparent. Television is not a window on the world, it does not simple show its audience pictures of events that happen to be taking place elsewhere. Rather, it actually has a role in determining what the audiences see and how they make sense of it.

Cyberspace. Page 127 Penguin Science. ISBN 0-14-0015439-6

My intention of this project is to consider the meaning of McLuhan's word ' The medium is the message' and express it as an interactive movie.

Firstly, I made a chart to comprehend the meanig of the word. This chart represents the process of generating message from particles of reality.

The gray dots are particles of reality, in other words, plain and pure information without any meanings. If you can directly access to them, the situation can be quite transparent.
However, when they are sent to us through a medium, it can not be completely transparent, because the medium generates message from the information. The medium researches, interprets and combines the information in its own way, and shapes the meaning of them. Then the final message from the medium is sent to the viewers. It is a good example that the media such as newspaper and TV report their news based on a fact in different ways although the reality is unique. If you want to know the reality, you have to see the truth by yourself directly.

Based on the idea of this chart, I tried to reveal the process of generating message from reality in my work and make it transparent as much as possible.

The 16 dots represent particles of reality. When you put your mouse pointer on them, they change their form and colour continuously and you can create a beautiful image with manipulating these objects. This operation is the process of generating your message through research, interpretation, combine and shaping the meanings of the information. The final image you make becomes your message, your final work to show to the audience.
There are some action script codes around the image, and you are to realize which script you are driving now. This is for revealing the system of this work itself as a message generating process.