The installation in ArtLab, with its combination of digital images and material objects, is a kind of test of Marshall MacLuhan's ideas from his 1964 book Understanding Media, in which he discusses the differences among hot and cold media. For MacLuhan, "Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book for less than a dialogue." For MacLuhan, cool media are detached, requiring an appreciation for overall patterns and simultaneous comprehension of all parts.
I consider the video (on YouTube and in AMUM's Media Room) to be the hot part of this thesis. The videos are clear and relatively easy to interpret, with textual explanations that aid the images and a fast-pitched pacing that leaves little time for deep comprehension. In contrast, the postcard installation is practically ice cold. Patterns and narratives emerge in ways that are mysterious even as I'm arranging the work, using intuition like a jazz musician to create abstract and evocative patterns. Even examined as individual objects the postcards are cool, demanding the viewers' active participation in the construction of narrative.
