Video, 1’ 41’’
The "handless, two-fingering human being" of the future —Homo digitalis— will not be a man of action. This hand is a sacred symbolic representation — the symbolic body becomes degenerate in the result of the digitalised world. Vilém Flusser claimed that today’s human being, equipped with digital apparatuses, is already living the “immaterial life of tomorrow”. Manual atrophy characterises such an existence. Digital technology is making human hands waste away. It means liberation from the burden of matter. The term “digital” itself references the finger and counting. In the future, humankind will no longer need hands. The new man will no longer have to handle or work on anything: he will have truck not with physical things but only with immaterial information. Fingers will take the place of hands. The new man will finger instead of handling or acting. Human beings regarded nature as hierophany and nowadays people are obsessed with mobile electronic devices. This contrast gently touches on the worries about body alienation and faith transformation. Ancient peoples believed that when they died, beliefs did not also die, but just fell asleep. The eternity of the soul of modern people after death may be just as the eternal existence of data.
freiraumfestival.eu
litingwei.de
