Posts about Art (RSS, JSON)

8AM — Connection, the multi-media exhibition at Lume showcasing aboriginal art from all over Australia has ended on the weekend. On Lume’s own event website, the exhibition was announced with the usual fanfare:

Connection was born from an idea to celebrate First Peoples’ art and music and give back to their artist communities. Within the brushstrokes and melodies of their art and music, this landmark experience tells the story of our country’s rich and enduring cultural history.

And that’s what it is: An experience with all its negative connotations.

Two small rooms that feature actual art. One is a collection of paintings hung side by side without apprarant curation. The other is Emily’s Wall, an admittedly impressive mural that is expanded by mirrors mounted on the room’s ceiling and floor giving the impression of an boundless artwork. Emily’s Wall should be the centre piece of the exhibition.

The most room, however, is taken up by the main hall, both in space and in Lume’s marketing. A humongous area broken up by canvases hanging from the ceiling. A continuous reel of animated art is playing, underlined by music and the occasional sound piece, each segment no more than a minute long. It creates a colourful atmosphere, the ideal scenery to gather photographic evidence that you were there. And so, few people are taking in the projections, many more are taking photos of themselves to post said evidence on Instagram.

All grandeur aside, Connection is no more than aboriginal art and culture repackaged in short videos and soundbites, optimised for the consumerist mind of the TikTok generation.

7PM

The location (an empty parking garage), the lights (many, flashy, arranged to form a grid), the music (loud, electronic)—Mandylights’ Plexus is like a random techno club in Berlin and just as disappointing. But it works as a reminder for how much of the clubbing experience hinges on drugs and alcohol and the people around you, and how little it has to do with lights, music and location.

10AM — Tanya Basu, MIT Technology Review:

Smalls—whose real name was Christopher Wallace—was in fine form on Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse platform on Friday: heaving between stanzas, pumping his fist rhythmically, and seeming very much alive. The performance can be seen here but may require logging into Facebook.

The allure of old music—and art, generally—is that it can’t be recreated if its creators aren’t around anymore. You can paint a picture that looks like a van Gogh, except it isn’t; you can create a digital avatar of the Notorious B.I.G. or John Lennon, but it’s not the person. As much as I’d love to attend a B.I.G. concert or see the Beatles play, an avatar performing playback to a recorded track isn’t the same as seeing the actual person doing their thing. I don’t get the appeal of cover bands or the tenth special remastered edition of an album that happens to be released just before Christmas. Not even the Glastonbury recordings the BBC broadcasts every year. It’s the original recording or the actual musicians on stage.

If we can digitally reproduce everything, what’s the point of venturing out of our homes to see art where it is performed? What’s the point of theatres, concerts and museums if I can just sit at home with a pair of huge goggles over my eyes? In these places—theatres, music venues, and museums—you experience art differently, unmediated. You go to a theatre because a great movie hits differently on a big screen with great sound. You go to a gig to feel artists’ emotions when they play their music on stage; you can hear the sound of their voices before a sound engineer adjusts the controller. And you visit a museum because a painting looks different standing in front of it; when you can see how the paint has been applied to the canvas.