Search:/emotional+con=condition (emoticon) [4.4.12]
For the last 3 years or so I’ve been overusing emoticons like a motherfucker.
Why though? Why would a late 20s man perpetuate the overuse of this thing called emoticon?:/
I was happy and excited one day :)
Another day I was sad:(
My emotions were pretty consistent with very basic emotions pretty consistent with what the computer keyboard allowed for. BUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
-I NEEDED to keep pressing the issue. :(:):(:):/;/;/;:?:););) every day, email after email
IM after IM, text after text… tweets, for sure… EVEN omg hand written letter to my mom for her birthday. Happy Birthday Mom :)
OOPS!
Why? What?
I needed the sterile computer communication to hurry the fuck up –catch upppppp, hurryyy upppppp— with relaying nuanced tone, emotion and inflection. It is an integral part of my communication style. Without my charm and witty banter- I’m a walking corpse. But not a zombie. Just a corpse who can walk.
P.S. If you get the ;) I either wanna do you or I’m being sarcastic.
-Dominic Quagliozzi, 4.4.2012
Search:/estranged+intimacy [01.08.11]
Surface has a lot to do with estranged intimacy. Surface has become the thing, and the thing has become surface. Take for example the computer, it can allow for an infinite combination of fact and information, all presented on a flat screen. TVs are now “flat screens” and they give us what we want, entertainment, movies, news on a two-dimensional surface. Flat screens are far from just home invaders though; their reach for surface junkies follows to the grocery store, gas station, pubs and even in the car. We cannot escape the desire to be consumed by surface.
The surfaces we have in our lives now are most often shiny, pretty, smooth, crisp and BIG- its seduction is just too strong, its lure is just too eye catching. Next comes the smartphones and their big (relative to the beeper screen or the “regular” cellphone black and white text-only screen) beautiful surfaces- shiny and bright, ready for our eyes whether its morning or night, light or dark. Each time our eyes get carried away by one surface, it is swept up by another crossing its path- so seductive.
TVs are no longer boxes. The boob tube can no longer fit boobs inside of it. The size of TVs far overshadows the one to one scale of the on-screen close up of years faded and tubes burnt out. Scale today is massive, larger than life faces, cars and buildings not just in movie theatres but in our own homes. We now relate to that epic scale, we now fill our eyes with things that would pop our eyes like grapes. Yet we have to watch. The desire is too strong to look away; the numbers are too great to hide.
Computers bring anything you’d ever want to know right to your face. Moreso, you can read, watch, listen, participate in just about anything you’ve ever heard of and then hear about a thousand more new things three seconds later. All flat up against your eyes. That surface has been made very powerful. It has a lot of control and a lot of flexibility making it even harder to say no, harder to turn off, harder to shut the laptop. Just push the surface down? Impossible.
Just now, mid thought- a song popped in my head and I was listen to it six seconds later. My jukebox is my typewriter is my TV is my friends is my community. All packed neatly onto my 17 inch surface.
Do I love it? Fuck yes. I’m a surface junkie. I can have a conversation with a friend via texting on my cellphone over a day, or a week or the rest of my life (I’d assume). I wouldn’t trade that for actually being hip to hip with any of my friends for those durations of time. But the surface allows for that. The surface allows for me to write this from a doctor’s waiting room on my cellphone through a notepad app, upload it to my laptop six hours later, email it to 10 editors I know and have a finished final draft back on my four different surfaces before bed. Is that awesome? Fuck yes.
I haven’t figured out any of the negatives to being a surface junkie yet. I’m still a toddler in surface junkie years. But what I do know is, the new-borns put my habit to shame. Can I recognize a complete stranger at a gallery opening? I sure can. Why? Because we’re friends on Facebook. I also saw all the paintings in the show on that surface- I’m not even sure why I went.
My only problem at this point is everyone is flat. Not just everyone, but everything. I almost choked on my wine when a guy I “knew” came up to me after
sorry about that. I had to change up my music mix, then send off an email, and a friend had sent me a YouTube video of a Panda scaring her cub by sneezing- which I had to watch.
Anyways, the guy knew me. He knew the flat me, from my Facebook. I was taken aback for almost a minute trying to figure out who he was, even though he told me his name, mentioned Facebook and I had commented on one of his mobile pics earlier that day. I realized I couldn’t make visual sense of his three dimensional face. In the round really fucked me up, I was disorientated.
My flat life has put me in a place of satisfied detachment. I am satisfied because I satisfy all my lusts towards the desire and seduction of the surfaces in my life. The detachment comes from, well, I don’t really know. I just feel detached. But I know one thing, last week I was at a party with a bunch of friends, meeting new people and all that shit- but I had forgotten my cellphone. Talk about feeling detached. That has to be the new “show up to school naked” nightmare.
This can’t be a shock to me or anyone really. We have been lusting for flat things, for surface, since maybe the cave paintings? Art seems to be in love in surface and flatness. Movements were made just about the notion of flatness alone (fuck you Greenberg). And when new genres like photography and video art came into the game, again it was flatness. We want the perspective and depth and dimension, BUT we want it through illusion- illusion from the flat surface.
I often think that we love our flat surfaces because our interface to the outside world appears to be flat. Our heads like cameras swiveling around with our eyes the lenses. This can explain only so much though, mostly the structural nature of entering the world. But does it explain anything emotional or behavioral?
I don’t really know anything, but I can find it at my fingertips, just give me three seconds. Which hey, ain’t bad, thinking takes longer than that.
-Dominic Quagliozzi, 1.8.2011
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