{"id":151,"date":"2008-11-18T20:35:48","date_gmt":"2008-11-19T03:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/?p=151"},"modified":"2008-11-18T20:39:41","modified_gmt":"2008-11-19T03:39:41","slug":"cold-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/cold-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Cold Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"centrality<\/p>\n

For a while now I’ve had an idea brewing. As time passes, the more it firms up in my mind, and the more real (and scary!) it seems.<\/p>\n

So here it is: for a period of one year I will give up computers and mobile phones.<\/p>\n

This idea presented itself while I was working on the Bon Scott Blog<\/a>. At first, it emerged as a sort of bodily need – I was spending way too much time on the computer, and I needed to stop. <\/p>\n

I am, to a degree, addicted to email and electronic communication. <\/p>\n

It is noticeable to those around me – sometimes they are bombarded with emails from me, which they can’t keep up with. And it often means that although I am present to you, online, I am simultaneously absent to those who are physically near me. This can be very annoying to them.<\/p>\n

The main reason I want to do this, as a project, is to make myself available to the myriad of diverse artmaking processes and tools which are not mediated by computers. Before I started blogging-as-art, I used to work in different ways: screenprinting, sculpture, rubber-stamping, performance, carpentry… The problem is, the computer became such an incredible tool for focussing my creative energies, that all these other ways began to drop away. I crave a more physical interface with the world, but the computer does not like that idea. Like HAL, my computer just keeps coming up with reasons why I need never leave.<\/p>\n

When I first began to use blogs as an art-making tool (in Bilateral Kellerberrin<\/a>, 2005) I was fascinated to have the ability to “capture” experience in the real world, and “feed back” stories about experiences into encounters in physical places. This created a kind of mutually productive loop. <\/p>\n

But that was three years ago. I remember, while working in Kellerberrin, I first opened a Flickr account. Access and uploads were slow. I rarely included pictures on my blogs, and when I did, I would shrink them to 30kb and apologise to my readers! Blogging was a sustainable (so I then thought) way to document experience without getting too heavy, a great way to publish without the need for paper and printing and deadlines and editors…<\/p>\n

But now, with broadband, just plain text on the screen seems boring. Everything has to have multiple pictures and videos and sound files. And I have about 8 blogs which I maintain, they all need regular weeding and preening. Before you know it, a mere minute’s worth of interaction in the real world results in an hour’s processing of material online. The balance has tipped in favour of the virtual, and I find myself sitting in front of my screen for much longer periods of time. <\/p>\n

It’s not good on my back, it’s not good on my eyes. The worse my eyes get, the more I have to lean in to read the screen, the worse my posture becomes.<\/p>\n

Recently, I read an article which compared compulsive email-checking (I am a victim of this repulsive trend) to poker-machine use. Both have a regular chance of a small payoff. With email, if you keep checking regularly, there is a chance that sooner or later you will win a “prize” – an email will pop into your inbox, as a sort of reward for your gamble. This keeps you hooked.<\/p>\n

[Actually, while writing this, I googled “email addiction” – over three million pages came up. Crikey, this is no small phenomenon! And I’m not even experiencing the worst of it – I don’t have a PDA<\/a>. God help those who do…]<\/p>\n

When will I start this project? Well, let’s say, mid-late 2009, when I’ve finished my big computer-based writing project currently underway… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a while now I’ve had an idea brewing. As time passes, the more it firms up in my mind, and the more real (and scary!) it seems. So here it is: for a period of one year I will give up computers and mobile phones. This idea presented itself while I was working on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[413,414,40],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-odds-and-ends","tag-cold-turkey","tag-computers","tag-giving-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucazoid.com\/bilateral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}