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Artists as “the Antennae of the Race” | McLuhan Galaxy

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“The power of the arts to anticipate future social and technological developments, by a generation and more, has long been recognized. In this century Ezra Pound called the artist ‘the antennae of the race’. Art as radar acts as ‘an early alarm system,” as it were, enabling us to discover social and psychic targets in lots of time to prepare to cope with them. This concept of the arts as prophetic, contrasts with the popular idea of them as mere self-expression. If an art is an ‘early warning system,’ to use the phrase from World War II, when radar was new, art has the utmost relevance not only to media study but to the development of media controls. When radar was new it was found necessary to eliminate the balloon system for city protection that had preceded radar. The balloons got in the way of the electric feedback of the new radar information. Such may well prove to be the case with our existing school curriculum, to say nothing of the generality of the arts. We can afford to use

Artists as &#8220;the Antennae of the Race&#8221; | McLuhan Galaxy McLuhan Galaxy About << Congress Joint Session &#8220;Innis Acros the Disciplines&#8221; , May 27, 2014 14:00 &#8211; 15:30 Mansaram at A Space Gallery, Toronto >> Artists as &#8220;the Antennae of the Race&#8221; 26Apr14 Marshall McLuhan wrote in his Introduction to the Second Edition of Understanding Media : “The power of the arts to anticipate future social and technological developments, by a generation and more, has long been recognized. In this century Ezra Pound called the artist ‘the antennae of the race’. Art as radar

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