Ghosts of the Machine

There is a spectre haunting contemporary art -- the spectre of Media Art. That's what came to mind when I entered the Polygon's Ghosts of the Machine exhibition on Saturday, two days before its closing. Only it wasn't the potentially restorative power of Media Art that led me to Marx's opening line of The Communist Manifesto, but Media Art's ongoing discomfort with three-dimensional gallery display. Indeed, much of what lies behind our new technologies -- like the objective flow of capital that Marx and Marxists talk about -- goes unseen. And in its place it is often only the plastic casings of these technologies that are shown, a technology whose currents invariably assist in the accumulation of capital at the expense of those who consume it -- those distracted enough to believe that a smart phone will free them (to spend more time fighting that which ails them?). Somewhere in there is the spectre that haunts contemporary art. Nowhere in Ghosts of the Machine's cineplex lobby layout was there anything resembling that particular form of complication I crave when entering the art of our time. Or was I missing something? I'll be the first to admit that maybe it's me, that it is the ghost I can't see that frightens.