• Home
  • About
    • diacritical
    • Douglas McLennan
    • Contact
  • Other AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

diacritical

Douglas McLennan's blog

Do Artists Have A Vision For The Future?

July 10, 2016 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

Around the beginning of the 20th Century, some French artists were asked to design a series of cards that would imagine what life would be like 100 years in the future in the year 2000. The first cards were created for the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris and eventually there were at least 87 of them.

This was the mechanical age, the dawn of automation. So it’s not surprising that the artists’ futurism imagines the newest, sexiest technologies of the day applied to solve everyday tasks.

France_in_XXI_Century._Audio_journal

The audio newspaper. A phonograph reads the evening newspaper.

Then there were the discoveries of science projected to practical uses in the future (without the inherent dangers).

France_in_XXI_Century._Chauffage_au_Radium

The parlor of the 21st Century heated by radium.

Some of the ideas were prescient, if strictly analog in their execution.

France_in_XXI_Century._Correspondance_cinema

A two-way “video chat” as imagined in 1900.

Though not nearly so clumsy-looking as this early Roomba.

France_in_XXI_Century._Electric_scrubbing

You can see 57 of the cards here at Wikimedia.

It’s fascinating how much the artists’ imaginations are inspired by technologies of the day, but also how mundane are the tasks they suppose those technologies might solve. And yet, it’s also remarkable how many of the artists imagined technologies that have actually come to pass in some form.

Their versions of the future were strongly rooted in their present, and for good reason. Imagine if one of them had seen ahead and figured out the digital revolution and drawn an actual Roomba. It wouldn’t have made any sense to anyone. It would have seemed like magic, like fantasy. It would have seemed impossible. Without anchoring their futurism in the familiar and nudging the viewer’s imagination forward with things they already knew, their version of the future wouldn’t have had credibility.

The claim has long been made that artists drive innovation:

Grand projects like the Great Pyramids, the Hoover Dam, or a moon landing were preceded by stories. “Someone had to imagine them and create a narrative that brought that vision to life for others.” Or as Neal Stephenson puts it, science fiction “supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place,” producing icons that serve as “hieroglyphs — simple, recognizable symbols on which everyone agrees.” Science fiction is a way to craft big, compelling visions that will get people working on building the future.

The question is, in the age of accelerating technological innovation driven by the wizards of Silicon Valley, are artists still out front painting visions of the future? Ask someone where today’s great ideas are coming from, and few will point to art. Instead, they’re likely to mention neuroscience or tech or medicine. If once Beethoven and Michelangelo and Shakespeare gave insight to the human condition as imagined in their time, which artists are serving that role now?

Share:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: arts & tech

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Douglas McLennan

I’m the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, which was founded in September 1999 and aggregates arts and culture news from all over the internet. The site is also home to some 60 arts bloggers. I’m a … [Read More...]

About diacritical

Our culture is undergoing profound changes. Our expectations for what culture can (or should) do for us are changing. Relationships between those who make and distribute culture and those who consume it are changing. And our definitions of what artists are, how they work, and how we access them and their work are changing. So... [Read more]

Subscribe to Diacritical by Email

Receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 3,820 other subscribers
Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

Archives

@AJDoug

Tweets by @AJDoug

Recent Comments

  • Sam Hodak on Too Many Artists Or Not Enough Value?: “So what you’re telling me is… make a VR experience” May 12, 00:03
  • Mark on What If Disruption Was Just A Tech Con Game?: “Thank you” Mar 19, 13:15
  • Douglas McLennan on Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale: “Hi John: Yes – remember over the last decade how Big Data was going to change everything and drive every…” Nov 26, 07:46
  • John McCann on Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale: “I haven’t read this book, yet your review triggered an insight about information shared within organizations and how so much…” Nov 26, 03:57
  • Richard Voorhaar on The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?: “We have reached the point where the average American has no attention span. A 3-4 minute pop tune is all…” Jun 10, 11:22
  • Alan Harrison on The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?: “Brilliant piece, Doug. It’s why, in my own columns on LinkedIn and Medium, I may have become more strident recently…” Jun 8, 15:46
  • Tom Corddry on The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?: “Slick analogy. Social scientists estimate that 95% of everything we do is basically done out of habit, because it’s an…” Jun 7, 21:04
  • sandi kurtz on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: ““As for seat licenses in the arts – I think it doesn’t work unless demand is so spectacular you can…” Jun 1, 23:19
  • Douglas McLennan on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: “I think the membership model is an interesting variant. And the web has gone back and forth on labeling its…” May 31, 07:42
  • Douglas McLennan on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: “Thanks Gary. I originally had a section in this podcast discussing why the NYTs’ success hasn’t worked its way down…” May 31, 07:19

Top Posts

  • If Dance Can't Pay Its Dancers What Does It Mean To Be A Professional Dancer?
  • The Mass Market Ain't What It Used To Be (And What That Means For The Arts)
  • "Art Is Good?" Not Much Of An Argument For Art Is It?

Recent Posts

  • Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale November 25, 2022
  • The UnderTow: What the new Edinburgh Fringe Tells us about a Post-COVID World June 26, 2022
  • The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts? June 7, 2022
  • The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts? May 23, 2022
  • This Week’s UnderTow: Why are Police Playing Disney Songs? And Why did this Orchestra Fire its Conductor for… Conducting? April 23, 2022
July 2016
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Jun   Aug »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale
  • The UnderTow: What the new Edinburgh Fringe Tells us about a Post-COVID World
  • The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?
  • The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?
  • This Week’s UnderTow: Why are Police Playing Disney Songs? And Why did this Orchestra Fire its Conductor for… Conducting?

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in