Marshall McLuhan seems to be an odd person with quite profound opinions on the nature of technology, and of art. He brings up the point that what we often perceive as a message is actually just its own medium, and that each medium's message is another medium. This forces an observer to consider the medium as a part of the message, if not as the message in and of itself. He talks about people asking what the meaning of a painting is, and saying that it is the medium of the painting itself. By bringing up cubism, he points out that the style of cubism is itself a message, and not necessarily a medium through which messages are conveyed.
To be perfectly honest, however, I cannot claim to have totally understood McLuhan. Many of his analogies went over my head, and as interesting as some of his points sounded, their inner meaning eluded me. His analogy of a supersonic jet, in which sound becomes a visible object as soon as it stops being sound (or something like that) just ended up confusing me.
As much as I didn't understand it, I am going to try and take what I did understand to help me reform my own ideas of art and technology. It is important to acknowledge that the medium someone chooses is not simply an arbitrary medium through which they can convey a thought, but it is part of the thought itself.
For the artist, what does it mean to use oil paint versus the Net? These choices are important and so obvious that not everyone things about their meaning. Check out the blogs of some of the other students as they include excellent points to help illuminate and expand McLuhan's writings.
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