FlashART: Art in the 3rd millennium
By Niko Angelis
Most developments in art are superseded and often directly initiated by advances in technology and science. The past century is a prime example of how awesome breakthroughs subjected art through fascinating transformations. Liberated from its past role of pure representation, art emerged dynamically to draw new courses through a remarkable array of experimentation and theoretical discourse. This journey, in its vast entirety, was sustained through great personal struggles of independent artists and the few individuals and institutions that supported them.
Art in the 20th century ceased to be solely defined through previously established modes of expression. The very notions of painting, sculpture, literature, music and theater were indeed challenged and further expanded to new territories. Photography and cinematography emerged as new mediums. Mass production and transportation changed the way things were made and accessed. Further modes of expression started to interact dynamically creating new hybrid mediums. Art literally exploded into an unprecedented proliferation of creative vocabularies, offering a renewed desire to re-examine our world through its spectrums. Unfortunately many of the brave new developments were so advanced that they remained doomed into obscurity. On the other hand, the widely known versions of artistic development were encumbered by a growing desire to be branded and capitalized simply as a new way to re-represent the world. Art saturated and tantalized continued to remain eclectic commodity and taking further back steps, it fulfilled perfectly the role of prostitute for any other scientific, social, political, economic, religious need of society.
As the world was propelled with greater impetus through the advances of the latest information technologies, the symptoms persisted through the new millennium. All this of course is not the result of any artist, art critic, or art patron. There is no point in searching for any faults here but simply a compelling call to reflect upon the new parameters.
The new technologies of the 21st century assembled even greater hyperdromes from which art could shoot off to bold new dimensions. Digital art, multimedia art, internet, animation, virtual art, electronic, blogart – the list surely does not stop there. New -isms, spasms, chasms are born and art continues to flourish yet remain somehow in chains. It seems an oxymoron that while offered such immense new possibilities art, has remained captive of its own treasures.
The signs of this captivity are overwhelming. Art continues to be a commodity; one of superior and unique quality available to the very few, and one of ephemeral often degrading quality, readily available for mass consumption. Furthermore, despite numerous and elaborate transformations art continues to reconstitute and recycle the imagery and languages of its past. This of course, contrary to what the frontrunners of the avant-garde might think, is not detrimental in itself but it does begin to feel restrictive and somewhat oppressive if it characterizes the vast majority of art produced today.
On the other hand the ability to re-produce reality and its numerous re-presentations almost instantly and with unprecedented ease has indeed been so proliferated (and rightly so) that it has turned the whole aspect of artistic production to a form of democratic re-production. That is indeed a fascinating perhaps even liberating phenomenon that goes beyond the mere outlines of any particular style and its omnipresence around the globe. It may also be a necessary means of allowing effectively a sort of time delay for the digestion of the super fast technological advances and their cultural impact.
Yet one has to seriously consider the impact of this fast food art. What are the un-seen repercussions of minimal direct engagement in terms of production and consumption to the overall value of any artwork? How can abstract thought or deeper philosophical and psychological issues be effectively addressed and engaged within an overwhelming state of flux. Flashart, the new global mode of art production, capitalization and consumption seems to have placed a few significant parameters on the backburner while it readily remakes_ replays_ recycles everything and anything from past to present.
There are good signs though to look for in this new technutopia we are living in. The need for human interaction has been greatly embellished by so many means but mostly it is the use and applications of computers and the internet that have brought a real revolution in the way we engage and learn from each other. During most of the 20th century, information and communication was limited to immediate locality. Any information reached its target audience with considerable time lag and with hardly any opportunities for interaction and feedback, making it a rather sterile endeavor. Today every single human being with internet access can readily share, distribute, exchange, assess, and re-adjust the flow and nature of information in a truly global scale. Information has become multidimensional and perhaps the very activity of handling it is an art form in itself.
How all this will affect art is yet to be seen but some indications are readily available. The ability to create virtual nodes of information, to bring together pools of resources and groups of people (that would otherwise be left in modes of singular activity), has carved new ways of collaboration and progress. Art is readily available and readily effective. Limitations of physical space will be in their majority bridged. Institutions and galleries continuing to rely on their current modus operandi will be rendered virtually irrelevant and ineffective to shape cultural and artistic trends. The internet will emerge from its modest beginnings of digital showcase to become a global workshop; a place to create and share art – not simply advertise it. Words will become increasingly important and will enter intrepidly the creative vocabularies of many artists. The infinite capacity of words to behold concepts and abstract ideas will be recombined with a renewed capacity to flash them and project them into new realms. Symbols and words will clash strongly with hordes of images. We don’t know and can’t predict where art will lead us as individuals or as societies, or if it will indeed lead at all. We can reasonably predict though, that art will continue to spiral relentlessly and bring forth new as well as old values.
Technology inevitably helped liberate our perceptions and it will further encourage and facilitate individual creativity. Art will be given a chance to refocus on its pure origin; the simple need of every human being, to communicate and share what would otherwise remain unchartered terrain.
