Energy crisis in culture (Peak Art)
There's no greater cure from genre fatigue than return of the essences and elements of music, e.g. using rhythms not beats, harmonies of voices and instruments, not collages of sound files. Looking back 100 years we find the same rapid pace of invention and experimentation in music, all the while thinking we just made up something new.
The analogy of an 'energy crisis' in art assumes that creative energy is a finite resource, or that it may ossify over time and turn to stone. I disagree. The current is always there--you just need to turn it on.
It's too easy to blame technology for not delivering as advertised, but it's really not all it's cracked up to be. It doesn't necessarily mean art grinds to a halt. I fear that our over-reliance on technology to solve our problems, environmental, economic and otherwise will result in similar spiritual bankruptcies, leaving us wondering what to do next. The answer: back to basics.
The analogy of an 'energy crisis' in art assumes that creative energy is a finite resource, or that it may ossify over time and turn to stone. I disagree. The current is always there--you just need to turn it on.
It's too easy to blame technology for not delivering as advertised, but it's really not all it's cracked up to be. It doesn't necessarily mean art grinds to a halt. I fear that our over-reliance on technology to solve our problems, environmental, economic and otherwise will result in similar spiritual bankruptcies, leaving us wondering what to do next. The answer: back to basics.
 clipped from www.newstatesman.comThe current decade, however, has been characterised by an abrupt sense of deceleration. A thought experiment makes the point. Imagine going back 15 years in time to play records from the latest dance genres – dubstep, or funky, for example – to a fan of jungle. One can only conclude that they would have been stunned – not by how much things had changed, but by how little things have moved on. Something like jungle was scarcely imaginable in 1989, but dubstep or funky, while by no means pastiches, sound like extrapolations from the matrix of sounds established a decade and a half ago.
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