Just started to read John Berger, The Shape of a Pocket. The book (not surprisingly) resonates for me with the beginning of #ededc, our initial core / secondary readings and film fest! Empty clothes and unworn masks, idols, icons to Iconoclasm! The separation of the apparent and the existent in physical experience. Berger argues that “painting is an affirmation of  the existent, of the physical world into which mankind has been thrown” and that the impulse to paint comes from an encounter, an encounter between the painter and model, an affirmation of the visible that constantly disappears and appears. Berger goes on to tell us that now “appearances are volatile” and that “technological inovation has made it easy to separate the apparent from the existent” indicating that the system in which we now live has a “mythology” that needs to continuously exploite that fracture “turning appearances into refractions, like mirages: refractions not of light but of appetite, in fact a single appetite, the appetite for more”, giving rise to false idols and a dystopian topology (Damien Hirst’s diamond skull and the postmodern?).

In my opinion Bell, Hand and Johnston echo Berger but from a less fundamental perspective. Johnston cites Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and tells us that “speech, thoughts and actions are based upon metaphors” and that “metaphors are so entwined in our lives that they are invisible to us”, indicating that ”our conceptual system defines our reality” and in that case “we only understand reality through metaphor”. If I accept Johnston’s argument and juxtaposition with Berger’s separation of the apparent from the existent, what cataclysmic dystopian culture will ensue? A culture where our conceptual system is founded not on the physical, but on refractions, mirages “not of light but of appetite”; false metaphor resulting in financial meltdown at the beginning of the 21st century perhaps? Yet people still flock to Art Galleries!

Are metaphor combined with the separation of the apparent from the existent defining the conceptual systems that now define reality and culture? Bell ‘Storying Cyberspace’ uses story and metaphor to define cyberspace for us, Bell cites Hayles ‘virtual creatures’ in chapter two to scaffold further understanding of cyberspace, a space that does not exist. Yet Berger hints at a definition of human reality outside of the existent, a mirage, a story; to what extent does this story shape our lives, our culture? I would argue that Hand attempts to identify these dystopian worlds by, in his words “map the dominant narratives of digital culture at the broadest level – including economic, social, and political dimensions – and identify their key metaphors and tropes”, by doing so Hand begins to define the consequences of worlds that have no existent, and the impact of the narratives that we/he has used to help map digital culture.