A word about the photoshopped images from McLuhan's "neighborhood" scenes ... the preceding screenshots were altered through photoshop to show some more differences in living spaces that followers of McLuhan's philosophies and theories would potentially employ. Tools used during the photoshop insertion include, but are not limited to: paths, layers, scale, warp, skew, rasterizing, lighting, shadows, eyedropper, history brush, pen, and perspective.
1. The Living Room – This urban living room features soft, unobtrusive lighting that corresponds with humankind's singular attachment to "nature." The laptop on the counter not only signifies the brochure's claim to provide every citizen with a laptop, but it pokes fun at the advertisement—a symbol reminiscent of the "glyph," which is the foundation of all archived data, and a direct descendent of the digital age. The magazine on the couch is an old copy of Time, featuring Bill Gates holding an old floppy disk on the cover. The poster of McLuhan shows him holding a portable television—an object of fascination and personal rejection.
2. The Shower – There may be a television screen in here, but it's for digitized archives of the news, and for continuous feed of educational and communications material.
3. The Kitchen – Featured here are two symbols that attach the global village to an acceptable form of visual media, which is film and cinema. Film is considered a "hot" form of media, while television, radio, and telephones are "cold." There is also another copy of print media on the counter (news is better than art; it is "artifact"), and the sign in the corner is a joke that plays off of McLuhan's quote, "An advertisement is an advertisement of an advertisement."
Informatics, UIUC, Final Project from Aaron Geiger on Vimeo.
“Welcome to the Global Village”
Lecture II by: Aaron Geiger
Project partner: Jen Hanson
Final Project / INFO 390
Jon Stone, University of Illinois
“The Neighborhood”
McLuhan’s “neighborhood” is really no different from the “frontier.” A car isn’t a car—it’s an extension of the foot. It walks from building to building, as you would walk from sink to refrigerator to bathroom. It is a part of you.
Traffic lights could be considered doors, and each road a hallway, or a footpath in the terrain. McLuhan said, “The road is our major architectural form. The road is a flattened out wheel, rolled up in the belly of an airplane.”
The buildings are extensions of simpler living. They are fractals of technology. Small businesses prevail in the ideal Global Village. The idea of big business was distasteful to McLuhan, even though he died in 1980, just as companies like Wal-Mart were beginning to take foot.
He said, “In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once.” Small businesses promote intimacy and personal interaction. In the Global Village small business architecture grants access to nature through large window openings, grassy rooftops, and comfortable winding interiors.
The most intimate part of McLuhan’s “neighborhood” is the home. Like the frontier home, accessibility to nature and community is paramount. Unlike homes you are used to, here they observe the rules of artifact, archive, and education. McLuhan used to echo the line, “Tomorrow is our permanent address.”
Welcome to tomorrow.
Living spaces are simple and refined, there is no television, there are no phones or radios, and print media is just as important as the Internet.
The balcony is a parapet from which to observe the actuality of living things, of neon lights that represent the foot of man.
The living room demonstrates minimalist settings, “wired” communication through laptops, sculptures and posters vs. television, and print media, which is a source of archived history. The large windows are transparent portals that connect human and nature. Notice the absence of “entertainment centers,” radios, and telephones.
Even the shower can be a source for news and education: “With TV it is not so much the message as the sender that is ‘sent’” (McLuhan, Media is the Massage, 113).
The kitchen shows the natural style of lighting. Soft, relaxing, and replicating the waning rays of the sun, light is a prominent fixture. Like the skylight in the shower stall, humans need the light for health. Also in this kitchen we see the connection to film and cinema—acceptable forms of media.
And with the launch of a folded piece of print media, the metaphorical McLuhan artifact takes flight, taking a viewpoint that crosses “frontier” and “neighborhood,” the terms of “hot” and “cold” media, the accessibility to nature, and the defining creations of humankind.
Thank you.
