The Media are Making Artists of Us All

Abstract

The point I wish to make here is obvious yet vital to an understanding of the function of art in the environment. It's the idea that man is conditioned by his environment and that "environment" for contemporary man is the intermedia network. We are conditioned more by cinema and television than by nature. Once we've agreed upon this, it becomes immediately obvious that the structure and content of popular cinema is a matter of cardinal importance, at least as serious as most political issues, and thus calls for comment not from journalists but from those who work at the matter, artists themselves. Gene Youngblood in Expanded Cinema