Sweeny - Lines of Sight in the "Network Society"

The article Lines of Sight in the “Network Society” discusses today’s technological society. In this “network society,” every individual’s actions are connected somehow to the actions of another person. The Internet opens new doors in communication as well as image viewing, as information on the Internet often shifts between visuality, textuality, and sound based information, which is called transcoding.

In the middle section of the article, Sweeny compared a spiral model of cognition to a lattice structure, which he then stated was similar to the structure of the Internet. He said that art education practice was a centralized spiral curricular structure and suggested that it should instead be a lattice. Honestly, I have not even the slightest idea of what he’s talking about.

I found the last section of the article, entitled “Lines of Sight in a Digital Visual Culture,” to be most interesting. This section of the article highlights complexities within a social technological network.  Sweeny talks about how individuals and machines are connected. Many people form identities over the Internet. For example, a person can create a blog, myspace, or facebook page that represents them in whatever way that they choose. Performance artist Stelarc combines human and machine interactions that challenge the boundaries between the two. In “Ping Body,” Stelarc attached electrodes to each muscle group in his body and allowed users to send information into his server, controlling how he would move.

            Another aspect discussed is Cloned Perception. Art that is created on the Internet has the ability to be multiplied, or cloned. This concept is also discussed in Walter Benjamin’s article The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Art educators can benefit from this controversy by discussing reproduced images in the classroom.