mywebcowtube | Marshall McLuhan 1968 - Through the Vanishing Point - Fordham University Tap #8 @webcowiv | Uploaded January 2017 | Updated October 2024, 4 hours ago.
Title: Through the Vanishing Point
Date: 7 March 1968
Location: Fordham University
Introduction: by John Culkin
Speakers: Marshall McLuhan, Harvey Parker
0:33 McLuhan tells the students to study their younger siblings (using themselves as the norm)
becoming folk song
3:07 Culkin mentions near-point reading (used to be 18 inches) in young people
4:35 the Negro question
7:55 McLuhan's "multi-media" solution
9:00 McLuhan's dilemma as a literate man
9:14 using the telephone vs. going to work
9:20 "the global village is not connected, like a pun (all the cultures at once)"
9:00 the Beatles stop public performances
10:15 the meaning of "meaning" ("experience/involvement, not classifying, but a relationship")
12:50 Parker begins a slide show
16:10 headlines as sculptural and iconic, no story line
17:12 the Parthenon's "Elgin marbles"
17:35 2 Chinese paintings
19:35 the "irrational": "intuitive, depth, ESP, LSD, discontinuous, unconnected, non-uniform, iconic, all dreams, no vanishing point, no eyes, cathartic purification, purging by repetition"
20:34 dream torture by interrupting the dream
22:00 Coleridge's definition of "poetry"
22:40 Caravaggio was "pure show business (visual bias)"
24:00 definition of "sensationalism" ("appealing to one sense")
24:15 definition of "foreshortening"
25:10 becoming like movies (chiaroscuro)
26:10 advantage of being backward (quoting Bob from 1980 at NFB)
26:16 McLuhan reads a George Herbert poem, "The Collar" (kinetic bias, "let's move")
27:30 Renaissance discovery of 2 points-of-view (also Donne's poem) (sensationalism via "split-personality")
29:40 African schizophrenia vs. European schizophrenia (McLuhan can't recall the name of Carother's article)
32:00 Culkin brings up the Esalen Institute approvingly, George Leonard (editor of "Look" magazine), and Mike Murphy ("Zen background")
33:40 McLuhan responds by stating that "the artist is the antenna of the race" ("they're the point where evolutionary changes take place, intellectually and spiritually") ("every man is potentially an artist as soon as he stops blocking his awareness")
34:30 Madison Avenue is the equivalent of the primitive, Cave artist engaged in the magical manipulation ("voodoo") of the corporate life of the community (McLuhan says "they aren't the same kind of artist as Pound's somewhat more elevated modes of awareness")
42:31
35:00 McLuhan doesn't like the word "Art" (the word "Art" cloudily says "include me out!" [Groucho Marx])
36:11 McLuhan says "art" means "making (sense)"
38:00 Robert Louis Stevenson on his epic "newspaper" poem (if only he knew what to leave out)
39:00 the Oriental says "the Westerner is always getting ready to live" (be an artist and stop buying Art)
40:00 Parker cites the hippie involved in the "nowness of now" (not getting prepared for anything)
40:10 McLuhan explains "getting ready to live" ("an orderly blueprinted fashion")
40:05 Parker gives his definition of "art" ("'creativity' is the ability to challenge one's cultural assumptions")
41:00 McLuhan responds by saying "the artist is always a rebel"
41:20 McLuhan explains the bias of the Esalen Institute ("an imported Oriental mode of doing this ['alert, alive, sensitive rather than blocked, cliched, blind'] rather than making use of our own Western means of perception")
41:45 Parker's definition of "good taste" (and McLuhan responds)
42:20 Culkin asks about the "put-on" and McLuhan responds with the "mask" motif (only way to be a "star") ("holds the mirror up to Nature")
43:30 Parker adds more about the Gandaran slide (the addition of "the Western story-telling, psychological connectives [arms move to arms, hands touch hands, a whole building up]" in the ancient East)
43:50 Parker says the electronic age emphasizes "separate units with no connections/intervals and abrasions" (like Oriental Art)
44:00 McLuhan adds "the tendency of Oriental art is not to connect anything to anything but to isolate the form meditatively"
45:00 McLuhan ends with "the ultimate development of all progress is stasis, meditation" ("inventors will soon be put in jail for endangering the whole equilibrium of society, opening up Pandora's Box again and so on")
Title: Through the Vanishing Point
Date: 7 March 1968
Location: Fordham University
Introduction: by John Culkin
Speakers: Marshall McLuhan, Harvey Parker
0:33 McLuhan tells the students to study their younger siblings (using themselves as the norm)
becoming folk song
3:07 Culkin mentions near-point reading (used to be 18 inches) in young people
4:35 the Negro question
7:55 McLuhan's "multi-media" solution
9:00 McLuhan's dilemma as a literate man
9:14 using the telephone vs. going to work
9:20 "the global village is not connected, like a pun (all the cultures at once)"
9:00 the Beatles stop public performances
10:15 the meaning of "meaning" ("experience/involvement, not classifying, but a relationship")
12:50 Parker begins a slide show
16:10 headlines as sculptural and iconic, no story line
17:12 the Parthenon's "Elgin marbles"
17:35 2 Chinese paintings
19:35 the "irrational": "intuitive, depth, ESP, LSD, discontinuous, unconnected, non-uniform, iconic, all dreams, no vanishing point, no eyes, cathartic purification, purging by repetition"
20:34 dream torture by interrupting the dream
22:00 Coleridge's definition of "poetry"
22:40 Caravaggio was "pure show business (visual bias)"
24:00 definition of "sensationalism" ("appealing to one sense")
24:15 definition of "foreshortening"
25:10 becoming like movies (chiaroscuro)
26:10 advantage of being backward (quoting Bob from 1980 at NFB)
26:16 McLuhan reads a George Herbert poem, "The Collar" (kinetic bias, "let's move")
27:30 Renaissance discovery of 2 points-of-view (also Donne's poem) (sensationalism via "split-personality")
29:40 African schizophrenia vs. European schizophrenia (McLuhan can't recall the name of Carother's article)
32:00 Culkin brings up the Esalen Institute approvingly, George Leonard (editor of "Look" magazine), and Mike Murphy ("Zen background")
33:40 McLuhan responds by stating that "the artist is the antenna of the race" ("they're the point where evolutionary changes take place, intellectually and spiritually") ("every man is potentially an artist as soon as he stops blocking his awareness")
34:30 Madison Avenue is the equivalent of the primitive, Cave artist engaged in the magical manipulation ("voodoo") of the corporate life of the community (McLuhan says "they aren't the same kind of artist as Pound's somewhat more elevated modes of awareness")
42:31
35:00 McLuhan doesn't like the word "Art" (the word "Art" cloudily says "include me out!" [Groucho Marx])
36:11 McLuhan says "art" means "making (sense)"
38:00 Robert Louis Stevenson on his epic "newspaper" poem (if only he knew what to leave out)
39:00 the Oriental says "the Westerner is always getting ready to live" (be an artist and stop buying Art)
40:00 Parker cites the hippie involved in the "nowness of now" (not getting prepared for anything)
40:10 McLuhan explains "getting ready to live" ("an orderly blueprinted fashion")
40:05 Parker gives his definition of "art" ("'creativity' is the ability to challenge one's cultural assumptions")
41:00 McLuhan responds by saying "the artist is always a rebel"
41:20 McLuhan explains the bias of the Esalen Institute ("an imported Oriental mode of doing this ['alert, alive, sensitive rather than blocked, cliched, blind'] rather than making use of our own Western means of perception")
41:45 Parker's definition of "good taste" (and McLuhan responds)
42:20 Culkin asks about the "put-on" and McLuhan responds with the "mask" motif (only way to be a "star") ("holds the mirror up to Nature")
43:30 Parker adds more about the Gandaran slide (the addition of "the Western story-telling, psychological connectives [arms move to arms, hands touch hands, a whole building up]" in the ancient East)
43:50 Parker says the electronic age emphasizes "separate units with no connections/intervals and abrasions" (like Oriental Art)
44:00 McLuhan adds "the tendency of Oriental art is not to connect anything to anything but to isolate the form meditatively"
45:00 McLuhan ends with "the ultimate development of all progress is stasis, meditation" ("inventors will soon be put in jail for endangering the whole equilibrium of society, opening up Pandora's Box again and so on")
