sensory awareness to tell what the world is made of

The present is only faced in any generation by the artist. The artist is prepared to study the present as his material because it is the area of challenge to the whole sensory life, and therefore it is anti-utopian, it's a realm of anti values And the artist who comes in contact with the present produces an avant-garde image which is terrifying to the contemporaries. Marshall McLuhan

Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan Debating 1968