M-Theory: Reclaiming art from the content abyss

When we applaud a performance, who or what are we actually applauding? This may seem like a stupid question, but I’d argue the answers are becoming much fuzzier.

When the performance is delivered courtesy of technology, particularly if the performance would have not been possible without it, what – or perhaps more accurately, whose – performance are we actually applauding?

This Medium article wedged these questions into my brain. The idea of a holographic musical performance isn’t new. Nor is combining digitized and live performance. In this case, it was a hologram of late opera singer Maria Callas and a recorded vocal performance, accompanied by a live conductor and orchestra.

There’s no risk of mistaking Callas for a real person, but on the plus side, thanks to the technology used there were some arresting effects to accentuate the storytelling beyond “just” a performance.

So in that case… who are they clapping for? Callas, who died in 1977? The orchestra, who were performing live? The engineers who created the digital magic? The very concept of “art” that catalyzed the audience’s emotional response?

If you want to make it even trickier, try deciding which part(s) of the event were art and which weren’t, and where technological intervention negates notions of art… or even of reality.

And then this piece came along and tied new knots in the philosophical part of my brain. Apps and services have, to a degree, become our entertainment. The platforms, rather than the content they serve up.

Per the article, we’re watching Netflix or listening to Spotify, as opposed to intentionally consuming specific shows or albums.

If your goal is to spend a few hours achieving maximum couch lumpitude, or just have some background noise while you work, do the specifics of consumption really matter? Making A Murderer vs. The Christmas Prince? Ariana Grande vs. Post Malone?

On one of the books podcasts I listen to, the hosts often mention book covers that they find particularly interesting or attractive. I never thought much of it, but now I wonder if what they’re doing serves a greater purpose than just expressing aesthetic opinions. They’re intentionally giving the works, the art itself, more presence, more identity.

Especially as we read ever more books on digital devices — read our Kindles — which means most book covers get a half-second’s glance as we swipe past.

They’re reminding us to stop and look. To enjoy with all our senses. To experience. (If you’re reading an actual paper book, especially a new one, be sure to give it a good sniff in addition to actually looking at the cover.)

I tend to find Marshall McLuhan and his quotable quotes rather dense and gibberish-y, but “The medium is the message” is actually starting to make sense.

In more detail, from the Cold Discovery article:

Speech is the content of writing, while writing is the content of print. Print, along with music and video, has become the content of another medium, the internet and its digital formats. Movies and television, in the aggregate, have become the content of Netflix, so when we watch video on Netflix, we are watching “movies and television” at a less differentiated level of abstraction.

Of course, then The Beaverton distilled it down to pointed perfection, as it so often does: Child Dreams of One Day Creating Content.

We have entire industries producing media, centered not around creating anything new, but in critiquing, reviewing, and remixing other media. People grow their fame commenting on other famous people or re-reviewing other content, which may already be rehashed. Media and celebrity as fast fashion, and just as problematic.

Even the creative media we actually produce – say, taking photos – isn’t about technical mastery of photography or sharing something beautiful or thought-provoking or even informative. We’ve made it about aspiration.

Instagram is not about photography. On its grand scale, the scale intended to amass followers and make money, it’s about making you (and me) want and keep wanting. About making us feel like everyone else (who matters) looks better than we do and has cooler stuff and knows more awesome people and goes to more interesting places.

So we try to buy, and keep buying, to achieve that. (We can’t, because there’s always more.)

What the Instagram platform has become is no accident. It was designed that way. If there was an episode of Black Mirror that realistically showed the degree to which our interactions with our social platforms were engineered, we’d likely think it’s still fiction.

Of course, the other big intent of the media we consume is to create data. Social media usage and online shopping habits, Netflixing and Spotifying – it all creates a beautiful, sparkling data trail that companies use to make money. Data is worth way more than art.

We don’t require that content to even be unique, let alone aspire to being art. It just needs to draw eyeballs. And thanks to ever more sophisticated technology, we can keep remixing what we already have. Who needs the messiness and slowness of actual human artists?

Additionally, as the Medium Hologram article I linked earlier notes, software is already able to manipulate us into emotional responses and targeted behaviours. (If you disagree, explain why a tech giant would release an intended tearjerker of a video about… search results.)

And machines are just getting smarter. When we’re losing a definition of what is real, it gets even trickier to try and define what is art, since art has always reflected a manipulation of reality. The abyss is, indeed, looking into us.

Considering that broader and more sinister context of how we’re so often marionettes in our own lives, concerning ourselves with the nature of art seems like the least of our worries.

Or, perhaps, it’s the solution… or at least a solution.

If you made it yourself with your own voice, your own tools, your own sticky fingers, there’s a solid chance that it’s original, it’s real, and it’s art. And that no external entity is going to warp it or manipulate it for its goals.

Neil Gaiman gave his now well-known commencement keynote in 2012, which seems like a lifetime ago in internet time. The nearly 3,000 words of it boil down neatly into just three: make good art.

We can be Netflix-transfixed lumps on the couch, or we can make good art. By ourselves or for ourselves, or in ways that involve and build our communities. Building community is absolutely, positively a way to make good art on a grand and infectious scale.

Share what you make. Collaborate with others. Comment and express appreciation and ask questions of others making art. Like talking about book covers, it gives art (and artists) more presence and identity.

It can’t be stripped down into just more data, and it gives us (and the abyss) something worth gazing at.