Hybrid
Great to see that this word is the anchor of a major festival in 2005. Active in cross-media and mixed-realities for a number of years, I do have affinities with this notion/concept related to “hybrid”.
Derrick de Kerckhove, a regular Doors of Perception participant, has written a piece quoted in the Ars Electronica site, the major media arts festival, for which he is also one of the curator for this 2005 edition.
The first hybrid is the human. And living in paradox. A mix of mind and matter, a translating device, a handshake from mind to matter and vice-versa, humankind is in a permanent state of hybridization, consciously and unconsciously.
Why then focus on such a pervasive condition? Because new drivers of hybridization have emerged that make the hybrid condition always more evident and more uncomfortable for some. With globalization comes implosion, all cultures and time zones piling up upon each other. When imploding, things either integrate or break. Another driver is digitization, inviting an infinity of recombinations, all hybrids, carefully cultivated with software, like flowers.
We live in paradox, in a suspension of disbelief that will last until the dust settles and the contradictions between self and other, between nationalisms and globalism, between democracy and state control are resolved. And the contradictions between the power of media and that of the state. And the contradictions between science and the economy generating hybrids for all purposes with a clear bias towards profitability over service to humanity. And the contradictions …
Art is the food of hybridity. It is translating and transporting the modes of one culture into another, lifting bits of both and mixing. Sampling is not just one of the techniques of the digital, it has become a way of life. And we have DJs of culture, albeit operating at longer-term rhythms. What can people do but sample in an environment where everything is always available?
Art is the food of hybridity ?
or
Hybridity is the food of art ?