Work Of Thought

Mohamed Hassan’s animation Work of Thought questions the role of the media and its power in shaping our reality and patterns of thought. Invoking the research of psychologist Herbert Krugman, Hassan presents the medium of television as in the dominion of the right hemisphere of the brain which “treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical responses and reactions.” Television media, Hassan proposes, leverages this media/mind relationship in its own self-interests through deception, misrepresentation, and cerebral programming to manufacture truth for its own benefit. Through the metaphorical image of the surgical implantation of a chip which glitches the brain, the artist implicates media in the theft of individual cognitive sovereignty and the transformation of the spectacle into substance.