dadadodo - exterminate all rational thought



    \\\Owning your responses\\\



A written text  has no power to  abuse you. It is a  dead string of
bits  that needs  an interpreter  before it  has any  meaning. That
interpreter is you, and you  have to accept responsibility for your
interpretation. If you fail to do this, you will believe that other
people  said  what you  interpreted  it  to  mean, and  it  becomes
impossible for anyone to show  you that you interpreted it wrongly.
(Erik Naggum)


This idea  of Erik's (RIP) goes  back to something we  have lost in
nearly all online discussions, the idea that you choose to be there
and you  respond to what you  read (and see) according  to your own
mind, your own history, the things that make up /you/.

It is absolutely impossible for an author, artist, anyone that puts
content out there  for the world to experience, to  know all of the
ridiculous  ways you  might take  what  they have  offered to  you.
Marcel Duchamp  played with this  idea -  the fact that  the viewer
makes up as  much of the artistic experience of  a piece of artwork
as the artist - that the  artist's control is very much an illusion
and probably a  pretty silly one. (And in fact  artists and authors
that  can  create work  that  touches  people regardless  of  their
preconceptions  and  internal  worldviews  are  revered  for  their
ability to do so.)


The  creative  act  is  not  performed by  the  artist  alone;  the
spectator brings  the work  in contact with  the external  world by
deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds
his contribution to the creative act. (Marcel Duchamp)


By this  thinking an artist without  an audience or reader  is thus
unable even to complete the creative act, the viewer or reader is a
part of it. We should take ownership of our part in interpreting or
deriving meaning from any text,  image, or other content because we
are half  of the  equation. If  something offends  us part  of what
offends us resides within ourselves. While some of the disgust that
'Immersions  (Piss Christ)'[0]  conjures up  in some  of us  is the
result of Serrano's combination of  images and materials some of it
also comes from our own belief that urine is disgusting and contact
with it  is a  defilement. Absent  that belief  the meaning  of the
piece suddenly changes completely!


Don't underestimate  the power of the  ideas you bring to  what you
read and see and hear as our  entire experience of the world is all
interpretation  of stimuli.  Try  to take  responsibility for  your
responses and be a good  online citizen because we desperately need
more people who can do that.




[0] http://100photos.time.com/photos/andres-serrano-piss-christ




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