TV
forms an immersive environment that is stocked with a veritable
garden
of images. Nam June Paik arrived at just this realization
with this project, TV Garden. In this environment made
of images, he brings to light the notion “that images were
now themselves our raw material, the natural world upon which
we exercise our
influence as subjects.” The light of TV bathes and
encloses us, but this
immersive condition is less a matter of literal
containment.
Instead, we extend ourselves—spatially—through
and into the TV medium.
In
the space of TV, We are engulfed in a total environment, where
our senses are flooded through the devices of a “techno-aesthetics.” Yet
we are not in this space in the usual sense, as we
might be surrounded by four walls, contained in a space we understand
to be concrete. Rather, it is through the perceptual process, our
nerve endings firing in a vegetal extension, that we are spatialized.
The immersive environment depends on this deployment, as we turn
our bodies inside out to unfold the space of the gaze. As the gaze
is extended, forming a space of occupation, it is also amplified
to reveal strange and consuming views.
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