Open Sky: Part I

         After reading and re-reading again Part I of Open Sky, it seems to me that what Virillo is trying to make a case out of, is simply that we as human beings are moving too fast. He implies this in several different examples, complete with the definition of literal speed which is velocity. One of the things that stuck out to me when reading this was when he mentioned "The urbanization of real space is thus being overtaken by this urbanization of real time which is, at the end of the day, the urbanization of the actual body of the city dweller." It made me think of some computer software program thing called Second Life that my Intro to Comm professor mentioned, which is essentially designed for people to live "digitally," sort of like your playing sims but actually believing you are the character you choose in the program. To me, that is really sad. No judgement or anything (okay maybe a little...) but you're not really living life if your living through a machine. For someone who is handicap/disabled, there is definitely something appealing I could see, as they don't have the same abilities that normal people do and can't function the same way.

         Things definitely got more interesting when he talked about the debate between Auguste Rodin and Paul Gsell, and how the sculptor said that "No, it is art that tells the truth and photography that lies, for in reality time does not stand still." But wouldn't you be able to argue the same thing about art? What people paint, or sculpt or anything art-related for that matter, is capturing an image. By committing the act of capturing, isn't that considered "a moment frozen in time?" Virillo then, compares all of that with videos, which of course is where time does not stand still and is in fact constantly moving. I thought it was kind of a unique perspective to say that the transition from photography to video is essentially similar to that of the transition from daylight to electricity. Never thought about it in that way before.

         Thinking about the transition of art -> photography -> video, then I thought about what the next big thing could be. In relation to Virillo's whole obsession with speed/velocity, I thought about stop-motion videos, which I think are incredibly fascinating. A friend first told me about it when we were applying to universities, and she had decided to make a stop motion video of her experience as a track runner in high school. I don't have her video but I went on youtube and looked up some pretty cool post it stop -motion video.