Digital Art: The World of Alternative Realities – Professor Tim Flannery

CURATORIAL ESSAY: Digital Art: The World of Alternative Realities by Professor Tim Flannery

“We only need to reflect on the way that the net and social media are influencing our lives to understand how digital technologies are profoundly altering how we relate to each other, and the world. But over coming decades digital technologies will extend their reach into transport (via driverless electric vehicles), medical care (via robotics), our relationship with the natural world (through webcam), and the wellsprings of human creativity, through the creation of digital art.

The sum effect of the digitisation of information across this vast array of interactions can be thought of as organising matter in two great spheres. Within our species it will act to integrate and synchronise individual human thoughts, emotions, and actions, in effect creating the beginnings of a unitary consciousness. At the global level, however, it will operate to exert our influence on nature. We can also see the beginnings of this, for example, in global environmental treaties such as the Paris Agreement on climate change are aimed at altering Earth’s temperature, and thus its metabolism and chemistry. And of course the Paris Agreement would be impossible to monitor and implement without digital technologies.”

To read the full article please visit https://www.jahm.com.au/2017-digital-the-world-of-alternative-realities