Attention is the new commodity, the next big 'wish I had,' and in the end the holy grail of existence on the planet. The environment will get worse before it gets better, but they’re working on it and making progress, cleaner air and water some places. Water, itself, will become more valuable than oil as time goes by, so they say, but it’s possible to convert sewage into drinking water with prototype treatment systems already, so we’ll figure it out.
One thing we’ve all seemed to notice, that as our intellectual capacity extends to encompass everything that was ever written, sung, or thought about, the floor comes up. It all gets shallower, time evaporates, and all that stuff ends up pushing us down. Everyone still here? It doesn’t need explaining. Went to a panel discussion concerning “attention,’ and they all agreed it was a big conundrum, media addiction and attention erosion, outdid each other with scary typical examples, but before long everyone was checking email.
Complain if you want about it texting while driving, typing away as the microwave hums, but you’re not getting out of it, a bunny in a briar patch of scotch tape. The component that’s lacking, it would seem, is real-time actual experience, and the way events are witnessed these days some dazed bystander is there telling the cameras it was like inna movie. Could go on but the point is this -- life is becoming vicarious, sensation is becoming digitalized, and reality itself could probably be manipulated by about anyone who knows, popups and porn adulterating every dose.
Couldn’t fix it myself, but can offer a cough drop for the fever. There’s a device you can purchase that will at least slow it down, the black hole descent into a vortex of homogenized goo, digital group mind and the sugar water and caffeine diet of drones, and it’s art. Original art didn’t used to be that much different from other stuff in the living room, a rookwood lamp, the hand-woven carpet, all the woodwork installed without power tools, such as that, but times have changed. Original art, and not its indistinguishable digital reproduction, is an object with the weight of time built in, and the subject, sailing ships or bowls of fruit, is just the outfit it wears. Suffice it to say it probably took at least a few days to make it, that it embodies the the artist’s history back to their first beginnings, and once made it shouldn’t change at all until you’re gone. Sounds like a time-trap to me, an anchor for your little boat, a token to help you remember who you are.
Art slows you down. If you don’t slow down you can’t look at it, won’t be able to see it, simple as that. Living with it pulls you back, fights for your attention, and builds its attachments with your mind through slow unchanging repetition, so different from everything else you have. That’s the pitch. Don’t really care what was in the magazines last year, or ever, and Damien Hirst is a brat, millions smillions, look him up online. Seeing art as a sort of machine, a household appliance, like an oxygen generator freshening up the climate and supplying a few nutrients, is a nutty way to think of art that might catch on as folks start eyeing the exit signs.
One thing we’ve all seemed to notice, that as our intellectual capacity extends to encompass everything that was ever written, sung, or thought about, the floor comes up. It all gets shallower, time evaporates, and all that stuff ends up pushing us down. Everyone still here? It doesn’t need explaining. Went to a panel discussion concerning “attention,’ and they all agreed it was a big conundrum, media addiction and attention erosion, outdid each other with scary typical examples, but before long everyone was checking email.
Complain if you want about it texting while driving, typing away as the microwave hums, but you’re not getting out of it, a bunny in a briar patch of scotch tape. The component that’s lacking, it would seem, is real-time actual experience, and the way events are witnessed these days some dazed bystander is there telling the cameras it was like inna movie. Could go on but the point is this -- life is becoming vicarious, sensation is becoming digitalized, and reality itself could probably be manipulated by about anyone who knows, popups and porn adulterating every dose.
Couldn’t fix it myself, but can offer a cough drop for the fever. There’s a device you can purchase that will at least slow it down, the black hole descent into a vortex of homogenized goo, digital group mind and the sugar water and caffeine diet of drones, and it’s art. Original art didn’t used to be that much different from other stuff in the living room, a rookwood lamp, the hand-woven carpet, all the woodwork installed without power tools, such as that, but times have changed. Original art, and not its indistinguishable digital reproduction, is an object with the weight of time built in, and the subject, sailing ships or bowls of fruit, is just the outfit it wears. Suffice it to say it probably took at least a few days to make it, that it embodies the the artist’s history back to their first beginnings, and once made it shouldn’t change at all until you’re gone. Sounds like a time-trap to me, an anchor for your little boat, a token to help you remember who you are.
Art slows you down. If you don’t slow down you can’t look at it, won’t be able to see it, simple as that. Living with it pulls you back, fights for your attention, and builds its attachments with your mind through slow unchanging repetition, so different from everything else you have. That’s the pitch. Don’t really care what was in the magazines last year, or ever, and Damien Hirst is a brat, millions smillions, look him up online. Seeing art as a sort of machine, a household appliance, like an oxygen generator freshening up the climate and supplying a few nutrients, is a nutty way to think of art that might catch on as folks start eyeing the exit signs.
No comments:
Post a Comment