Needing New Paradigms

during the late 60s early 70s, there was such a fresh energy among artists. the miasma of the vietnam war was countered by a revolution in relationships, a collapse of the establishment pop culture, four long-haired lads from liverpool, the creation of a counter culture that eventually became the new establishment, so that by the 80s and 90s, the arts were back to a ho-hum, hum-drum existence, although there were derivative revolutions that diffused any ideas of mainstream artistic energy and ideas. this dispersion was further enhanced by the development of a new kind of network, an internet, which effectively decentralised publishing of text and images...

the major development as we turned to a new century was to give the internet the technology to eliminate the need for central distribution of music and video. now artistic and media consumption has become a mania, a fixation. many of the advances in technology have focused on increasing bandwidth and storage, key factors for making consumption of media practical and desireable. everything seems to move toward instant gratification, and digital technology has made it possible for us to focus more on process than product, a paradox, since the new dictatorships of artistic distribution and development have shifted from the publishing houses, network television and the established arts centers to the corporate world (i.e. microsoft, apple, adobe, etc.) that controls these new instruments for creation...

this seduction of the arts by digital technology has distorted the meaning of multimedia and created a digital replica of media that has an inherent sameness as long as our artistic expressions remained confined to the dimensions of audio speakers and high definition screens. in a sense, digital technology has bottled up artistic expression so that it is poured through hi tech resonators that can achieve an enormous sense of scale... overwhelming an audience, consumers of this new media-induced art...

these new media must draw upon energy, electrical energy generated by every possible source, and we are at the mercy of this energy. it is the supreme translator of binary code into something we can comprehend and recognize. without this reader of the code, all the ideas and artifacts are more remote and inaccessible than the most obscure hieroglyphics...

control the source of energy and you control the world. we are ready for a new revolution in technology, one that succeeds in decentralizing the source and flow of energy, just as exclusive central control for the creation and distribution of the arts was shattered near the end of the twentieth century. the solution will astonish us. energy is the underlying substance of the universe. we are on the verge of a new paradigm because our current framework is too fragile to accommodate the emergence of ground-breaking creative awareness and achievement...