Scientific Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Communications - Media History, course: N/A, language: English, abstract: Since the early twentieth century, civilization's obsession with the moving image has helped it to go backwards instead of forwards. Because of the nature of the way moving images are proliferated especially during our present age of digital expansion, the past and the history of the past produce a cultural amnesia which creates a misperception that we are greatly ahead of our past. Much of this is because our continuous fascination with the moving image has undermined and effaced a Modernist reasoning which had been more concerned with searching for an internal depth in objects and things which were reflected in the human being. As a result of our visual thirst for the moving image which takes us away from this, we now live in a situation void of causal reasoning which makes it very easy for very little reason, or difficult, for well-justified reasoning to exist since our thirst and addiction to the moving image has seen a spiritual shift away from the search of internal value and meaning that has been tied to our culture and cultural perceptions. By tracing civilization's obsession with the Classical which it had once used as a 'steadying metaphor' the paper attempts to explain some of the influences that have made us lose our focus on the importance of the internal and offers to explain why we are now more than ever before bereft of a focus for searching for the internal depth that exists within people, objects and things.

Author Biography

Cyrus Manasseh is an essayist, philosopher, historian and musician. He teaches in universities and privately as a higher education consultant. He is an international scholar and has presented his ideas in a number of countries. Dr Cyrus Manasseh PhD is also a Freelance Researcher, Novelist and author of the books 'The Lead Guitarist' and 'The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum 1968-90'. He is also author of numerous essays and articles in the field of art history, film, architecture, video, museums, evolving media and drama. His published essays and articles include: Art without the Aesthetics? Defining Conceptual & Post-Conceptual Practices', 'From Passive White Cube Viewer to Active Black Cube User: Tracking Changes in Museum Environments via Installation Art (Analogue to Digital 1968-2008)', 'Art, Language & Machines: Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia & Raymond Roussel'. He has presented his research at international academic forums which include those in London, Sydney, Perth, Venice, Prague and Harvard where he was session chair and has lectured and taught extensively in Australian Universities. He was a finalist for the International Award for Excellence in the Constructed Environment Journal Writers Award Annual Prize for the academic essay 'An Inquiry into the Design and the Aesthetics of the Venice Biennale Pavilions and Film'.