It's All Artifice
While technologies can extend perception, they can also mask it. Hearing music through speakers or headphones is one level of transmission loss. Experiencing the visual world through a camera is kind of a transmission loss, compared to direct observation, but creates a space for creativity. On a cold morning recently, the air was very still and I got a chance to experience sound refraction, where the sound source is displaced or bent, similar to light refraction through glass or water. Sound appears to be closer than it really is, even though sound is traveling slower through cold air. But there is no way to artificially recreate sound refraction through headphones, as the sound spatiality is flattened. Then I realized that direct experience is not always better in an aesthetic sense because with art you want some degree of artifice because that's where the creativity is. There is no creativity through simply experiencing a moment and storing the memory, or recording it so th...
