Experience: The Media Rat Race

Our image of the world, our conduct and our thinking is to an increasing degree influenced and determined by visual media. Each day presents an ever larger amount of images and media messages to process--to cope, we develop mental filters that exclude unwanted visual impressions. Breaking these mental filters necessitates constantly new and unexpected media strategies, most recently the use of techniques geared to the immersion of the viewer. For example, the simultaneous stimulation of multiple senses received in a multimedia installation by artists like Chantal Ackerman, Alfredo Jaar or mondophrenetic. The great appreciation shown by the art world for the contemplative, classic photo work of such artists as Rineke Dijkstra and the Becher School would seem to be a contradiction; placed in the right environment, these works counterbalance the agitation of visual culture, offering rest for the eye and the potential for voluntary immersion and meditation. The Photo Bienniale Rotterdam has chosen to confront these positions with one another.