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Prometheus
Prometheus (2008) created by Franken Beaumont
"I opened mind in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around." Mary Shelley, 1831
Prometheus (2008) is an Online project, performed on the 18th March 2008, exploring the relationships between realities, the virtual reality, and the real one; posing the questions, "What is real?" "Are we really here?" And "Who/what am I?"
Based on the work of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1831), the project explores the isolated creature in his challenges to adapt to the world he lives in. His birth and conception have become the destruction of him.
Prometheus was performed in 2008, as part of a research project exploring the nature of realities in an increasing techno-centered culture of Facebook, Twitter or Online gaming. What happens to our existence within these world that seem to blur the boundaries of the real and the not real?
Our centre of attention is driven towards the screen that we no longer are able to authenticate our attention to the real in the same way as previously done."The image of cyber travel has currently precisely because it offers a metaphorical world beyond a computer screen, a 'globe' that no longer stands for the world because it became 'the world'" (Nunes, 1995,Reproduction, représentation et diffusion littéralités p.316).
Jean Baurdillard has stated that we live in a hyperrealism, one that is more concerned with the image and the technical intervention that the real itself. " All events, all spaces, all memories are abolished in the sole dimension of information: this is obscene" Baudrillard, J. 1987. The Ecstasy of Communication. p.23-24). Many have also stated that we exist in a post humanism culture where the body has become obsolete, to quote Stelarc.
Where do I stand? The real is phenomenal; it is something special, something that you cannot recreate. It is organic. 'The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced'. A technological world whereby the focus is in the simulacrum is an inauthentic existence based upon fabricated possibilities. The solitary chamber that the body confined itself, centred towards the computers screen, or the mobile phone screen or the televisual images that indicate our Being-in-the-world.
To present an event through a technological medium, one is rejecting the involvement of the event on the body. The event, or the performance, becomes a 'sign', reduced to the same nihilism of a televised event. The telematic performance accomplishes a similar effect. The division of factors, performer and audience are distanced to the extent that "the technique of reproduction detached the reproduced object from the domain of the traditional" (Benjamin, W. 1935, The work of art in the age of technical reproduction).
Second Life, the work challenges the authenticity of the body itself and the biological impact of the binary exponent of the body, the image. Can we live in a digital liveness as well as organically, biologically? The ecstasy for communication is the foundation of a post humanist culture where "My body is [no longer] a conscious structure of my consciousness" (Sartre, J.P. 1943, Being and Nothingness p.353), within the world.
Artistic Design: Franken Beaumont
Film: Faidra Films
Photographs: Julieann O'Malley
