Why we Need Art Now More Than Ever

We recently published an article by Tali Ramsey about how technology will fuel inclusivity in the art world, but what if it also kills our ability to dissent? Sedition, anti-establishmentarianism, is one of the most electrifying roles of art.

But surveillance capitalism, could change all that.

Big Tech Controls the Conversation

Facebook and Google may be open for all but they are also de facto monopolies. No longer do they simply organize data, they also curate. Yes there are ‘Instagram galleries’ but it may be more instructive to think of them as wings of the same gallery — the ‘Instagram’ gallery. There may be a curator for a certain page but if art becomes uncomfortable or inconvenient, Facebook, through one of its many avatars, will simply cancel it.

Yes, they are corporations (and we love to fetishize corporations) but they have become the de facto public square. We would certainly survive without them but if they are going to exist they needs to be free speech areas. Throughout history, it wasn’t just the scientists that were crushed by an overreaching, power hungry establishment. It was also the philosophers, the writers, and the artists.

If we were back in the seventies I doubt corporations would be clamouring to embrace equal rights for all races. My bet would be that they would suppress those kinds of sentiments expressed by their workers, ban the symbols and suppress the art. Corporations only care about one things, let’s not forget that. When art becomes seditious and anti-tech, more specifically anti-tech establishment, when it starts to threaten the power of those same companies that currently allow it, it’ll get (shadow) banned.

Just because we’re currently in a period of ‘wokeness’ doesn’t mean we always will be. Just because today’s victims are conservatives doesn’t mean tomorrow’s won’t be progressives. With Facebook and Google bending both to popular will and also reinforcing their own agendas, we’ve effectively allowed freedom of speech to take a backseat.

Why is this Dangerous?

In her book, Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff talks about the insidiousness of technology and surveillance. As tech companies collect the minutia of our behaviour, they also use that information to guide our behaviour. They nudge us this way and that, gently herding us to purchase some crap or walk towards a certain event.

Not only can tech companies nudge us towards certain commercial outcomes, they may also have the ability to shape the way our very thoughts. Changing our behaviour might also be the first step towards changing our thought and the way we see the world. The concept of shadow banning is instructive in this regard. Something doesn’t need to be removed from the internet, it just needs to be somewhat hidden. Conservative talk show hosts claim to be familiar with this tactic (whether it’s true or not, I have no idea). Just the drive to avoid shadow-banning, to gain credibility and an audience on social media can change how and what we post to suit the algorithm gods.

The opposite is also true though — information that is safe for tech companies is easier to share. An opinion can be changed based on what information is disseminated and what information is withheld. This became apparent during the 2016 election when positive news about Hillary Clinton was favoured by Google’s search algorithms. Zuboff also claims that Facebook is constantly running a/b tests on its users. These tests serve to test and refine its ability to gather data and exercise influence. We all know what happened with Cambridge Analytica. We may be incentivized to think in a certain way, or nudged, based on our feeds and our revenue streams.

Imagine a world where your brain is neutered to the point where resistance actually is futile. Might be extreme but not altogether out of the realm of possibility (Neuralink, anyone?).

Tech isn’t an enemy and I don’t think there’s a cabal of nerds sitting in a room plotting the future of the human condition. I do think thought that there are a bunch of nerds thinking about how to amass more power, make more money, and grow their corporations. What’s new in the 21st century is that all of us are customers, no exceptions. Not only are we customers but we are also products, and dopamine addicts. We are obsessed with viewing technology as empowering but it’s also a prison.

Just think about this idea that the future is inevitable, that we are powerless data mines commodifying our lives for an extra convenience we didn’t know we needed. It serves the interest of tech companies for us to accept the inevitability of that future. We won’t question it, or examine it because there’s nothing we can do. That idea — that dangerous idea — is already ingrained in our psyche and the deeper it burrows the less we question it. As long as we think that way, we won’t create content that questions our dependence, questions are way of life and challenges authority.

We are creating a world without thinking and we are slowly eradicating the language used to think about it. It’s Edward Bernays’ fever dream.

Why Art?

We all know by now that politics is downstream from culture. Culture comes in many forms: discussion, books, visual arts, TV, and music. With the exception of books, all are controlled by tech monopolies. Google filters the video, discussion and news. Spotify and Apple filter music. Netflix does TV. These aren’t inevitable but do you think Washington’s going to police it? Europe has a better chance of resisting the omnipotence of tech but for how long?

Art is a highway to ideas. Very few people want to read a book — especially one as dense as Zuboff’s. The fastest way into people’s minds is with video, music, and the visual arts. Unless those highways are paved fast, they may never be paved at all, at least when it comes to tech.

Take Black Mirror, a favourite of mine; nothing comes close to Black Mirror when it comes to imagining the dystopian future that awaits us. It’s basically 1984 but a new version every episode. Even the visual arts like Shep Fairy, Banksy, and the @yesuniverse.art gallery are potent catalysts for thinking about the way we live.

We always think of seditious art as being against the government, against the prevailing political trend but seditious art from now on might be more focussed on the very nature of our lives. The mundane will become the focus for a tiny revolution.

I’ve painted a bleak picture, and maybe that won’t be the case, but it certainly could be. Technology might bring us more inclusivity and break some glass ceilings, but it might create others. Just ask the marginalized political thinkers and artists of today. Nobody is going to care about our freewheeling, chaotic, creative environment if it gets in the way of power and convenience.

Forget fighting the government, the real 21st century battle is going to be with ever invasive, and ever controlling, technology. Art is the only thing that can safeguard our soul.