Controlling_Connectivity

Online Therapy Institute, Corporate Sponsor

Kate and I had the recent fortune of being a part of a project that goes beyond our basic understanding of cyberspace. I was asked to write a short essay about Internet Addiction to be included in a book about cyberspace and relationships. The book, Controlling_Connectivity: Art, Psychology, and the Internet is a summary of an art project by Gretta Louw. Gretta made herself available 24 hours a day for 10 days for discussions, emails, comments and interviews from any internet user from anywhere in the world.

The performance uses the pervasiveness of internet-based social networking as well as the obligation and opportunity for constant connection with these platforms as a paradigm for a severe and systematic disruption of normal, socially accepted patterns of life and interpersonal interaction during a self-documented performance.

The subsequent exhibition at the Art Laboratory Berlin not only documented the performance but analysed the phenomena of total connectivity.

When I received my copy of the book I was quite bowled over with how succinctly Gretta captured the various cultural innuendos of cyberspace from twitter to Google+ hangouts and Second Life. Not only did she capture cyberspace as culture, but she captured the transculturalism of Cyberspace!

(excerpted from Cyberspace as Culture: A New Paradigm for Therapists and Coaches)