Make Sense

Before the Internet, when texts were confined to publications or notebooks, they were solid (or at least encased). They had a place, a center, and their meaning was partly derived from their participation in objecthood. They had to be copied, printed, and passed around from hand to hand. One could trace their history and track their movement.

These days, however, texts are like water. They spill and run through the infinity of cyberspace, being absorbed into everything or evaporating before you know it. As a writer, I’m almost afraid—better yet--embarrassed, to pour. Without cups to catch and hold them, texts just slip through our hands into the abyss.

Better to be a visual artist then! The problem discussed above is of no concern to the painter or the sculptor (we’ll suspend consideration of the photographer) since we deal in objects. A word is a word whether it’s in a book or on the Internet. But a painting on the computer screen is not a painting. It’s a picture of a painting and it doesn’t come close to recreating the experience of an actual painting. One can only judge the size of a painting relative to his or her height and one can only examine the thickness of the paint by viewing it from all sides. To see a large painting in person is to enter it; to see one on the Internet is only to catch a whiff.

At a time when the Internet is swallowing all—newspapers, books, the mail—it can’t touch art objects. Going to a gallery cannot be replaced by browsing the web. If someone makes a drawing, there’s still a delay between its construction and its public presentation unlike blogs, which can be “published” immediately upon completion by anyone, anywhere. The gallery system continues to function as the publication industry did before the Internet. It decides who’s in and who’s out, acting as a necessary filter to retain the value of the goods.

Make an object and be proud! That object holds a significance that exists in no other place. By locating meaning, you are making sense in a world that desperately needs some.