Diigo Bookmarks 07/20/2008 (p.m.)
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Computer says get a life – and we have | Simon Jenkins – Times Online – Annotated
Simon Jenkins ponders the seeming paradox that while music cd/ record sales plummet and prices for individual recordings drop as well, live concerts sell out at premium prices. He ponders other, related phenomena, too — readings by writers, lectures, live performances of any kind: all seem to get more attention (and MONEY) than the products themselves.
He concludes and argues that people are willing to pay for what they want, and that what they want is the real, authentic thing (i.e., the person / author), not another technologically mediated simulacrum.
Two things: one, if he’s right, this has dire (**) consequences for visual art, unless the visual arts want to devolved strictly into performance art; and two, for those of us who are terrified of public speaking/ public performances, this isn’t comforting news. Some of us like the internet because it preserves our sanguinity (if that’s a word).
(**) PS: “dire” isn’t the right word. What I meant is that painters and sculptors and crafters, too, are obliged to get out of the way of their product, and the product itself has to speak. So that begs the question, how does it “compete” in a framework that puts a bigger value on immediacy and contact as a verifier of authentic experience? Will contact with the work itself be enough? But if it is, that means that people have to travel to the work (unless the work is in a traveling exhibition), which means you have to move huge numbers of people to allow contact with the work (as opposed to moving only a single person or small group of people to create a “reading,” “concert,” or “festival” situation). For visual art, you’ll have to physically move the masses (unless it’s artwork in a traveling exhibition), but for music, authors, etc., you just move small groups or single individuals.
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