Chris Shofner

My goal is to achieve harmony by becoming more aware of how I interact with the world. I seek peace, privacy, and normalcy. It is this quest that manifests itself as my art. Like Marshall McLuhan I view media as an extension of man, though I tend to gravitate towards Neil Postman’s explanation of the medium as the metaphor. I believe just as Postman describes in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, that “each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility.“

My work is typically digital or electronic in nature. It involves the identification and activation of the inherent elements of the media that stands to best serve the chosen message. This includes video, photography, sound/music, performance and/or installation. My work is a physical and emotional endurance challenge. It utilizes theories of persuasion, social influence, compliance gaining, cognitive dissonance, group think, deindividuation and semiotics to direct the experience. It often involves the appropriation of content (typically from social networking, video sharing, and online dating sites) in an attempt to rearrange our field of view, a new orientation, while pushing the limits of media law. I ask my audience to question how and why we think and act (react). Are they comfortable and should they be?

Chris Shofner is an Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator of the Program in Mass Communication at East Central University in Ada, OK.