well i just read in the other thread that you said you were on the piss last night but still thats a kind thing to say.
I don’t know much at all about mcluhan. Like the grapejuice says, until i read the catholic humanism essay recently i had the vague notion of him being a wired magazine style media guru. Between that essay and this grape series there are countless brilliant ideas, none of which i really understand. Perhaps primarily this thread should be an investigation into how we reallign the sensorium, but if it just stuck as a close reading of these two accounts I would be very happy.
The main thrust of both pieces, new to me, is that perception is analogous and emblematic and evidence of the incarnation, catholic or otherwise, an ongoing eternal return to the creator that can be perceived at any and all moments by everybody, hierophany-free. which is demonstrably true and changes everything and nothing. before incarnation chop wood carry water, after incarnation chop wood carry water etc.
By the process of perception everybody instantaneously transforms chaotic sensory data into an ordered cosmos, it’s a metaphorical account of the union of spirit and matter and also literally the very fact of that. The potential reconstruction of the world that could be achieved by manipulating individual sense perceptions, through control of their technological extenstions, is the main problem raised by mcluhan. To counteract this, we must become aware of the process of perception, and rebalance the sense ratio that is knocked out of whack by the successive development of print, radio, tv, phones, vr. i reckon “become aware” refers to more than this kind of rudimentary sparknotes summary of this version of the incarnation.
There’s a bit where he says that tv, or the cinema, is promising because it foregrounds this mechanism of reconstructing the world, reverse engineering the process of perception externally. You sit in the theatre, you see the projection, you’re aware of the artifice but still immersed, maybe. The screen’s an immersive environment but its still a clunky simulation of human vision if its a 16 by 9 rectangle. We’re still at the point of “becoming aware of the process of perception” / the incarnation as long as the shoddy analogue of the silver screen is mediating.
As far as mind control, subjective perspective is more difficult to pull off convincingly with video than sound - asmr therapy is democratic and accessible, vr therapy is expensive and reserved for war veterans. First person shots in films for instance are tricky because they most clearly stick out as being filmed, the robocop interface works for instance but otherwise you create this critical distance for the audience - the first person shots in rear window which have that red filter that matches the cinema curtains are an example of how embarassing this limitation is for directors.
By comparison recorded sound is much more invasive and tricksy, amplified it gives rise to the biggest social changes in last sixty years, it doesn’t require you to be fixed in a hypnotic gaze at a single point, has a much clearer synasthetic tactile component, that’s why get far more upset by muzak than billboards.
The conclusion of the grapejuice is fantastic, the tone they seem to conclude on is always very hopeful without feeling weedy, but i’m having the most difficulty with that part. If touch is missing how is it to be restored. what is touch? in both accounts its the centrepoint of the cross that acts as the interplay of each sense. didnt version describe their spirtitual breakthrough in the snow as a sudden buzzing feeling? Is that kind of tactility the awareness of the perceptual process? Is that too literal minded? version whats that quote from?