2 October 2007

--Detecting Authenticity--

Today, The New York Times published Claudia Dreifus' article, "A Conversation with Hany Farid: Proving That Seeing Shouldn't Always Be Believing". In her article, Dreifus discusses digital forensics with its creator, Dr. Hany Farid. In a nutshell, because our advanced digital technologies enable us to manipulate images at will so "the once-held belief that photographs were the definitive record of events is gone", digital forensics software allows us to "discover how computerized forgeries are made" and to "authenticate the validity of images".

Indeed, we are no longer living in an age where the image is an accurate snapshot of truth in time. The real can be made out to be a pastiche-manipulation in the virtual sphere so the resulting material real is not real, and the 'truth of ocular proof' is a rather insidious deception of pernicious consequence.

--Denying Authenticity (At Least, Avoiding It At All Costs To The Emotions)--

Today, The New York Times published Benedict Carey's article, "Friends With Benefits, and Stress Too". In his article, Carey reports on the FWB phenomenon that has become "a cultural signature of today's college and postcollege experience". With the FWB experience, distinctions between the virtual and the real have completely become negated when what is experienced is an act devoid of emotion and thus, devoid of engagement.

Why the fear of committing emotions?

Perhaps it is because emotion conveys thought-revealing intention and to expose intention adversely (albeit falsely) devalues one's character, the need to declare the real anything but by blindly maintaining the broken veil of virtuality is coming to fruition in the FWB - the play. At issue then, is more a struggle for self-acceptance - a willingness to acknowledge one's wants and desires and to accept, dare say validate, that corresponding instinctual activity.

Rather than an authenticity of digital image, Carey (perhaps inadvertently) exposes a profound need for authenticating the self - a self away from (mis)construed perception.

--Disciplining Authenticity (In A Carefully Hidden and Crafted Manner of Maskery)--

Today, The New York Times also published Dr. Kent Sepkowitz's article, "Cases: Behind the Doctors' Mask, a Little Room to Maneuver". Interestingly, Dr. Sepkowitz writes of mask and uniform as costumes enabling him to mediate expressive communicative 'cues' to his patients in a very controlled and "accurate" manner. What strikes me is his closing remark:

"the mask's final contribution to the doctor-patient interaction: when the time comes for a furtive departure...it allows us to backpedal out of a room as if invisible".

Here is a twofold purpose to his article then:

1) The issue of a mediated invisibility further adds to the interconnection between virtual and real - that the two share far greater commonalities of instance and continuance than ever before - and

2) When authenticity of expression and reaction are so carefully disciplined with "tranquil" and "accurate" "composure", how authentic can they be? Can they be manipulatively fabricated with honesty intact?

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Authenticity is one of the last bastions between the virtual and the real because it maintains the dyad. When it is manipulated and coerced into something other than the real, material or not, there must be pause to redefine the existing language structure.

There is too much 'blurring' to be overlooked any longer. Beyond good, evil, and judgment, the 'intermorphing' of erstwhile dichotomies - the fluid interchange towards transmogrification - is being more common than rare and needs acknowledgement. This is an acknowlegement through language and a language of quite a different ontology than we are given to work with today.