The world is so vast. Every minute people are born and people die. Billions of lives comprise humanity. Each person separate and important, the main character in their own story. How could one idea, one conversation pass judgement on what all those lives mean. What defines them, their homes, their nations. Who are we to do that? What capacity do we have that we can even understand this vastness? I can't comprehend such an immense place.
All we can do is see the world through our own eyes. Subjectively. Biased. It is our job as storytellers to give our unique perspective on life, on the little sliver of existence we inhabit. We should be the eyes through which others see the world.
In terms of how I see this little planet's place in the vastness of time and space, I don't know. But I do think, at least within my little microcosm of existence, there is a uniqueness about this time. Now is a time in which the mass production of digital content has begun to grow more than exponentially. In 2006, 161 exabytes of data were created. That's three million times as much information as contained in all books ever written. It's expected to reach 988 exabytes (nearly a zettabyte) in 2010. In all this information, it's very easy to get lost. I find that our particular generation looks toward nostalgia for comfort. Our art is the recycling of generations past, supplemented with the results of the digital revolution.
We borrow from the modern art of the 20th century, but blend it with digital images and push it into video and song. The new media seems to be multimedia because it's so easy to create and so appropriate for the multifaceted world we inhabit. Artists today have become a jack of all trades in a way. They must be able to not only paint or photography or draw or sculpt. They also must know how to capture that work for the digital world and present it within video and images. Find music that will tell its story well.
I find that young artists represent my view of the world at least a little better than older ones. A friend of mine, in particular, captures a world that I want to live in. A world of fairy tales and forest creatures. We works in two dimensional painting, drawing and video, as well as three dimensional installations and I guess I would call it crafts. You can find some of his work here.
My favorite of his installations is this. The photograph doesn't really present it the way it was. The entire floor was covered in dirt. A band played music in front of the projector so that the light cast strange shapes upon them. As the band played, he and I danced around in masks he had made. We played like children.
What most strikes me about his work is the nostalgia in it. Every piece seems to reckon back to childhood. It's like Beudelaire said, " The child sees everything as a novelty; the child is always 'drunk'. Nothing is more like what we call inspiration than the joy the child feels in drinking in shape and colour." But the childhood, in Errol's is a much more literal thing. He captures the child rather than using that view as a tool. But this childhood comes with the maturity of age. Monsters that once might have filled our dreams with fear, now seem to be understood as everyday people. Those monsters likely had lives before they came to scaring little kids. I find that different perspective refreshing.
But who knows, the world is so vast with everyone so different, how could I know.
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