Here's looking at you

Afterimage, Sept-Oct, 1995 by Yosha Goldstein

Although the Seminar's themes appeared broadly applied at times, Gonzalez-Tamrong and Jenkins presented an array of visual practices in order to address the problems of imagemaking. They suggested that these practices addressed issues relevant to interactive communications technologies such as the internet and CD-ROM. Although these connections were intimated by the Seminar only in a preliminary manner, their implications are significant. The urgency of the legislative context has necessitated that much of the dialogue around the internet only address the rudimentary issues of access. The fundamental problem of access in the face of communication monopolies is undeniable, but it is also crucial to sustain other struggles within the field of representation, and to confront the ramifications these have for emerging communications technology as well. For instance, problematic notions of unmediated communication, notions widely interrogated in contemporary ethnographic film practice, have resurfaced, albeit differently, under the banner of interactivity. Corporate producers' attempts to define these technologies as circumscribed within the terms of the marketplace is evident within the formal logic of their products. The application of historically developed critiques, partially derived from considerations of framing and positionality, challenges the closure of this logic and the limitations imposed by market-driven production.

YOSHA GOLDSTEIN is a Brooklyn media critic and videomaker.