New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication
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Reviews of BW Powe’s Collection of Poetry: Mysteria: The following 12 reviews focus on BW’s Mysteria which can be purchased at Amazon.ca or Amazon.com
No full textReviews of BW Powe’s Collection of Poetry: MysteriaThe following 12 reviews focus on BW’s Mysteria which can be purchased at Amazon.ca or Amazon.co
The Philosophical Topicality of Marshall McLuhan
No full textDespite the flourishing literature on these matters in the past century, McLuhan’s work stands out as one of the most pioneering and original attempts to understand media: not just because he considered media with an unprecedented and ‘omni-inclusive’ level of breadth, but rather because he brought to light their inherently productive, performative, and ‘poietic’ character. McLuhan’s theory of media, which emerged from the great ferment characterizing the Toronto School, influences and inspires the philosophical reflection on the transformations in the most diverse areas. The present paper identifies the particularly interesting and fruitful connection between McLuhan’s perspective and the research on technology and its formative and transformative effects on the human being. It’s not a matter of thinking exclusively of issues pertaining to the post-human, the cyborg, and alike, but rather of the philosophical, anthropological and sociological scholarship on anthropogenesis that came to prominence in the past decades. This kind of study emphasizes the ‘technical life’ of humans or, to put it in more significant terms, the technical genesis of homination and the role of material culture for humanization. The McLuhanist theory of media is then explored from an eminently philosophico-genealogical perspective, in order to reveal the way in which human experience can receive a new significance by the action of technological prostheses
William Blake, Electric Thinking, Holism, and The New Art: Blake Helps the Toronto School Unlock the Seals to the Great Code; or Reconnecting
No full textI suggest in this essay that a key force that gives structure to recent art and thought is the development of the science of electromagnetism and, consequent upon that, the invention of electrotechnical devices. A foundational notion of the science of electromagnetism—a pattern that I suggest Blake was the first to recognize—is the idea of interpenetration. 
McLuhan, Social Media and Ethics
No full textThe field of media ethics and the impact McLuhan has had on the field is described
Review of Human as Media: The Emancipation of Authorship by Andrey Miroshnichenko
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Andrey Miroshnichenko, a media futurist and journalist, trained as a philologist, has written a book that I first read and reviewed a number of years ago three weeks after first meeting Andrey. I never published the review before, but I believe it is an appropriate piece for New Explorations. I mention this background because Andrey is now a friend and colleague and my review is a rave review and I want to dispel the notion that I had a conflict of interest when I wrote the review. The most that I can be accused of is that as editor of the journal I chose to publish the piece in New Explorations. To guard against this, I had my review undergo a blind peer review, which it passed. 
Street Art Rising
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This illustrated article discusses the various manifestations of street art—graffiti, posters, stencils, social murals—and the impact of street art on urban environments. Continuing perceptions of street art as vandalism contributing to urban decay neglects to account for street art’s full spectrum of effects. As freedom of expression protected by law, as news from under-privileged classes, as images of social uplift and consciousness-raising, and as beautification of urban milieux, street art has social benefits requiring re-assessment. Street art has become a significant global art movement.
Detailed contextual history includes the photographer Brassai\u27s interest in Parisian graffiti between the world wars; Cézanne’s use of passage; Walter Benjamin\u27s assemblage of fragments in The Arcades Project; the practice of dérive (passage through diverse ambiances, drifting) and détournement (rerouting, hijacking) as social and political intervention advocated by Guy Debord and the Situationist International; Dada and Surrealist montage and collage; and the art of Quebec Automatists and French Nouveaux réalistes. Present street art engages dynamically with 20th C. art history.
The article explores McLuhan’s ideas about the power of mosaic style to subvert the received order, opening spaces for new discourse to emerge, new patterns to be discovered. The author compares street art to advertising, and raises questions about appropriation, authenticity, and style. How does street art survive when it leaves the streets for galleries, design shops, and museums?
Street art continues to challenge communication strategies of the privileged classes and elected officials, and increasingly plays a reconstructive role in modulating the emotional tenor of urban spaces. Two cases studies of Christchurch, NZ and Hanoi, Vietnam illustrate how street art is being used to heal tragic wounds and inspire hope.
I want to dedicate this article to J.S. Porter—friend and writer—who took a keen interest in my photographs of street art, interviewed me for Hamilton Arts & Letters, and wrote about my work in his blog. Please see the References for links to his writing for further context. All photos (except Figure 1) are by the author.