Future Art

Art interprets, defines, and responds to the social and intellectual milieu of any era.

Impressionists reacted to the precise definition of the day, somewhat from the newtech, photography, by making things more blurry. Modern art reacted to everything having been made visible by transcending into the conceptual and abstract. What is the iconic reaction that could drive the contemporary art of today into a radical new era?

Computers, data flows, communications, machines, computation, and software are the hallmark of today’s culture. Their ubiquity and influence invites rejection and commentary, and the anticipated response has been portrayed in dystopian machine art.

Beyond the obvious rejection of the machine era, computers, software, and data provide a vibrant new medium for art. For example, data visualization could be seen as art modulated with information.

Sentiment engines have become the art and barometer of worldwide emotion, for example We Feel Fine (blogs), and Pulse of a Nation (Twitter).

The time lapse photography concept used for flight pattern visualization (US, worldwide) could be extended to other areas.

Software code base data visualization
One form of contemporary art could be the sped-up visualization of code commits to software repositories for large-scale projects. The code might look like living organisms, possibly interesting new species. The fast flash of DOS is the prokaryote to Windows 7 and Mac OS X eukaryotes. iPhone could be the raptor to the Android’s human.