A couple of days ago we got our AAA (auto association) magazine in the mail.
Nothing unusual about that, except one of the items in the table of contents caught my eye: ”celebrating the last copy of the magazine.”
As it turned out, it wasn't really the last copy of the magazine, it was just the last copy of the magazine that was going to be in print.
I thought about that for a bit, and it made me wonder about the future of art.
Are we going to reach a point where there is no more physical art being made? Will art as we know it simply cease to exist, and be replaced entirely by pixels on a screen... a series of zeros and ones stored on a memory stick, somewhere?
And NFTs and "Digital Editions" notwithstanding, what is going to happen to the idea of owning "The ORIGINAL, made by the artist?"
The End of the Physical World?
I couldn't help but dive a little bit further down inside that thought process. Will it all mean that we ultimately are going to retreat inside our heads and completely turn our back on physical space and the physical objects the occupy that space?
Maybe that sounds a bit far fetched.
And yet?
Our 33 year old son has been staying with us over the holidays and he spends an awful lot of time gaming. A couple of days ago he came outside while we were taking the dog out and having a cup of coffee in the back porch.
” Wow, I haven't been outside in six days!” he remarked.
Good vs. Bad - or it Simply IS?
I suppose the thing I find slightly unnerving about it is thinking back to the scenario in the movie "The Matrix" and the state of humanity in that. Maybe we won't be taken over by a group of technological aliens, but will we essentially end up putting ourselves into The Matrix, created by US?
That's the point at which it's not that far fetched anymore... Facebook/Meta is already getting ready to serve up that world. Virtual Pizza, Anyone?
Science fiction books and movies on occasion portray beings who "ascend" into purely virtual or spiritual forms of existence... and I can certainly get behind that idea.
But those portrayals usually involve beings that have developed an extremely high level of consciousness and awareness... not people whose day is mainly filled by looking at Stupid Human Tricks on TikTok.
... and I'm still no closer to answering the question of what's going to happen to art.
Where do YOU think it's all going to go? What is the future of physical art?
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