Spaceboy

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“The question of politics in the age of virtual reality must depart from a new materialism, a new theory of the imbrication of technology and culture, one that comes to terms with the transformation of mechanical machines into smart machines, into ‘artificial intelligence’, self-regulating systems, digitizers of images, sounds and text; it must commence from an appreciation of the dissemination of these software-hardware systems throughout social space and the installation of interfaces that unite humans and machines in new configurations of agency… [my emphasis]. The reconfiguration of time and space, body and mind, human and machine, imagination and reason, gender and ethnicity, the virtual and the real must congeal into a postmodern relation of force before critical theory’s owl of Minerva takes flight.”1

 Mark Poster

 The Information Subject 

The Spaceboy series is meant to be an allegory about the threat of Cognitive Overload in the Information Age, where the relationship between Technology and Flesh becomes blurred between the Bits and Bytes of the Digital World and the Lived Experience of the Real World. The space in which our sons and daughters will grow up has been changed forever by the influence of Predictive Analytics, the spread of Infotainment, and the construction of Information Grids that can track us wherever we go. 

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Taking this as a starting point for how we understand the perils of the Attention Economy, it is easy to see how the children of the Last Metaphysical Age can be re-imagined as figures caught inside of a world of Grids and Dot-Matrices rather than frolicking in pastoral scenes from the ‘natural’ world or living in the hustle and bustle of city life. This change has occurred because the World of Simulation is nearly indistinguishable from the operations of Everyday Life, or rather, the two worlds now overlap to such a degree that they can no longer be conceived of in isolation.2

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Imprisoned within the operations of an Info-Matrix, crucified by the Cull-of-Data, and laid to waste by our Collective Overexposure to traumatic content, we can see the negative impact that Data-Flooding is having on the Mental Ecology of the next generation. We have created a Psycho-Sphere for Youth Culture were immediate accessibility, online bullying, and a digital footprint that lasts forever are fusing with the circumspect powers of the Observational Gaze.3 The Spaceboy series is a portrait of the #LastGeneration being folded into the Hyperspace of Digital Confinement, where Phenomenological Complexity, Data-Dynamism, and Psychological Fission collide in new and unimaginable ways.