[ExI] Art of the Future

[Tomasz Rola]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2012, Kelly Anderson wrote:

> I was looking at one of the articles referred to in another thread,
> and I stumbled onto Albert Robida... he was a French artist active
> from around 1880-1920, and he drew illustrations of the future. He
> obviously got a lot wrong, but he got a lot right too. Basically, he
> was right on with many forms and uses of video (including television,
> porn, Tivo, personal broadcasting, etc.) and he called WWII dead on.
> He wrote an illustrated story about a great war fought to a great
> extent from the air. He even got who was fighting who right, with

O yes, I think I stumbled upon Robida about twice during last 2+ decades, 
via "Featured artist" gallery in Polish s-f monthly, "Fantastyka". It was 
interesting, indeed. However, he also proposed biological warfare as a 
humane alternative to traditional fight. I'm not sure what to think about 
it :-).

> Anyway, this all got me to thinking... how do we illustrate the future
> that we envision? As I think about the future as I believe it will be,
> I find it difficult to construct mental images of what such
> illustrations might look like. You in a chair with a funny hat on?
> What does that convey? How do you illustrate nanotechnology? Or
> Artificial Intelligence? Sure, robots have been done, and for a long
> time... but what else is out there.
> 
> If I'm wrong, and there is work being done in this area, who do you
> find inspiring in the world of future art?
> 
> We have talked about Science Fiction as a vehicle for getting
> transhumanist and futurist ideas out there... but what about the other
> arts? Music, Illustration, Photography, etc. The images of the past
> from Robida and others are inspiring. Science fiction often isn't, but
> that's another thread on the ubiquity of dystopian visions.
> 
> Art has an indispensible role to play in preparing people's minds for
> the future. We have movies like Gattaca... that are somewhat possible,
[...]

Well, with the caveat that I am not an expert or connaiseur of art, just 
from time to time looking at a painting or piece of architecture, etc etc, 
here goes - all of this just some opinion of mine.

Short answer is, I guess, no. With some exceptions.

One can look at art as a donor-recipient act. From donor's (artist) POV, 
art is either contemporary or old fashioned. Even Futurism was, AFAIK, a 
contemporary reaction to growing mechanisation of ordinary life. If an 
artist wants recognition, she needs to express things in way recognizable 
by general public. Either this, or her art is dead. Well, chances are, 
after artist's death, it will be appreciated, but certainly not because of 
far sighting aspect of this.

As of recipients aka mob, there is many kind of them - mecenators, 
lookators, hangonwallators, buyators, passerbyators, criticators and so 
on. But for them, art is either about ego/status pumping or about show 
business - or about to go out the window. It is also worth citing 
Heinlein's opinion from "Stranger in a Strange Land", that what mob wants 
is "sex, blood and money". Either put it on the table explicitly or put 
there some allusions and metaphors that will create plausible associations 
inside mob's pleasure centers.

Now, for the art to be about The Future, an artist needs to be a 
philosopher AND to be somewhat concerned about The Future. Then, she risks 
being not recognized as interesting and failing to get out from artistic 
hell.

There are also different kind of arts, and not every kind is good for 
taking on The Future, so books win IMHO while music looses. It is much 
easier to put interesting ideas into a book. I think graphics have 
deteriorated to simply illustrating stories, to make them more pallatable 
for the mob. On the other hand, graphical novels seem to be an interesting 
intersection, provided the author(s) are, guess what, philosophers. I 
mean, it does not require Plato to be a philosopher, but it requires an 
attitude.

In no particular order, apart from Stanislaw Lem's books, I find those art 
pieces interesting and inspiring:

- "2001: A Space Odyssey" by Kubrick (and it's sequel, "2010" by Hyams, 
wasn't bad either)

- "Dr. Strangelove" by Kubrick

- "A Clockwork Orange", again by Kubrick

- "Layer cake" ("Przekladaniec") from 1968 by Wajda (adaptation of Lem's 
novel and with scenario written by him, a take on idea of organ 
transplantation and modern/future surgery/medicine and social reaction to 
them)

- "Inquest of Pilot Pirx" ("Test pilota Pirxa") by Piestrak - a lot of 
people shun this film because of somewhat primitive special F/X, but I am 
no child and I pay attention not only to visual niceness, which isn't 
really that bad.

- "Golem" by Szulkin

- "O-bi O-ba, The End of Civilization" ("O-Bi, O-Ba. Koniec cywilizacji") 
by Szulkin

- "The War of the Worlds: Next Century" ("Wojna swiatow - nastepne 
stulecie") by Szulkin

- "Ga, ga, Glory to the Heroes" (translation of title to English is mine, 
because I couldn't spot it anywhere, in Polish "Ga, ga. Chwala bohaterom") 
by Szulkin

- "Blade Runner" by Scott

- "Singularity 7", a graphic novel by Templesmith

- "Orbiter", gra-nov by Ellis et al.

- "Mek", gra-nov by Ellis et al.

- "Ocean", gra-nov by Ellis et al.

- "Black Summer", gra-nov by Ellis et al.

- "Ministry of Space", gra-nov by Ellis et al.

- "Pi" by Aronofsky

- "Terminator" by Cameron

- "The Time Machine" from 1960, by George Pal

- "THX 1138" by Lucas

- "Metropolis" by Lang

- "Matrix" by Wachowski brothers, only first movie with fragments of two 
others and with somewhat mixed feelings about including this one, but ok, 
it belongs here

- "Doctor Who" - newer series (from 2005 on), as I don't know older one, 
by BBC and number of writers, really nice, and it shows how a good s-f is 
not really about shitloads of money but simply about imagination - of 
course one has to be capable of it, which is obviously lacking on the side 
of producers/management, when one looks at what they deliver to the 
cinemas, but this show is different

- "Twilight Zone" - I have watched misc episodes from misc series, 
overally I liked them, see above (imagination)

- "Masters of Science Fiction" - nice, well made, intelligent, provoking a 
bit

- "Backtime" from 1998 by Miller - it is hard to find it, I think they 
only sell it on VHS, and it doesn't have great rating on imdb [ 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0189383/ ], but I liked it a lot, because a 
plot wasn't a total fail like it happens in megabucks productions nowadays

Majority of films, as one can easily see, are from 80-ties. "Star Wars" 
somehow doesn't fit - while I might include original, analog trilogy, the 
hexalogy is a bit sterile for me. Besides, I cannot see much of things to 
learn from it, while of course it is nice and colorful eye candy.

It is possible I have forgotten of something worth mentioning. However, I 
cannot recall a film made in the last decade and worth mentioning. At 
least when it comes to s-f. Actually, a decade and half, null. Actually, 
two decades, not counting positions already mentioned. It went to such 
extreme, that I barely expect anything interesting from single s-f films - 
I mean, all right, nice actresses, yeah, somewhat interesting plot, yeah, 
a concept or two, yeah, but watching it for the second time - not so 
often.

However, I am not up to date with s-f cinema. I watch them without hurry, 
and I don't remember regretting such attitude, so far. So, I didn't see 
"Avatar" but from what I have seen I don't have to hurry at all.

> "And it came to pass that the thirty and seventh year passed away
> also, and there still continued to be peace in the land."
> 
> It's the most utterly boring part of the whole book. It is a relief
> that it is so short while other parts of the book are sometimes quite
> fun and interesting.

I can only imagine. If it is similar to the Bible, rape and murder, all 
very inspiring. As of the boring part, this piece of land of peace must 
have been uninhabited, so no wonder it became land of boredom.

> But this illustrates a point, that talking about
> techno-utopia is also pretty boring. Let's say that you were able to
> write accurately about today twenty years ago... about the good stuff,
> what would you say?
> 
> "And kids have little devices that allow them to listen to whatever
> music they want to, and you have access to more information than you
> can imagine from a hand held device that doubles as a telephone."
> Boring... I guess... reads a lot like The Age of Spiritual Machines...
> LOL.

There was a contest once, not very long ago, to describe a future life in 
Europe. Guess what, utopia won hands down, AFAIR. What was it that I have 
written about associations above?

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **