Cavemen,
Explosions and Psychothyretics:
The
Future History of Art
By
Bob Billing
©2002,
Bob Billing
When
humans first moved into caves, they began to decorate the walls. It's reasonable
to guess that they were responding to a deep-seated desire to represent what
they saw around them, to practice make-believe about good hunting. And perhaps
they simply wanted something nice to look at. What they did was largely dictated
by what they could do; by the pigments they could find and the natural
fibres that made the first artists' brushes.
Every
artist since has faced the same challenges. The limitations of technique define
what can be done, and the audiences decide what they will accept. Audiences can
be capricious. For example, Spike Milligan's classic comedy series The Goon
Show, which ran on British radio from soon after the end of the Second World
War and went on for several decades, regularly used the comic explosion as a
plot device. One character, ususally the hapless Bluebottle, would do something
that involved a large quantity of dynamite, and towards the end of the show
there would be a thunderous explosion from which the character would stagger
shouting, "You dirty rotten swine, you've deaded me!" This went down
remarkably well with British audiences despite their having recently emerged
from the blitzkrieg in which large sections of cities had been bombed out of
existence by the Luftwaffe. However when decades later terrorist bombing, aimed
at killing and injuring civilians rather than destroying property, became a
regular feature of British life the explosion became less funny as a plot device
and very few shows now make use of it.
Every
new technology, as it has been developed, has found an artistic application. The
Venetians learned how to make clear glass and their artists made some of the
most stunning glassware in history. Developing metallurgy allowed us to make the
grand piano. Aniline dyes handed the dressmakers gloriously coloured fabrics.
Fast photographic emulsions made possible the creation of the cinema. Television
gave us-- well, perhaps there have been a few failures.
What
comes next? I think, as a science fiction writer, that future artistic history
will develop in the same general way, but future technology will enable artists
to do greater and more spectacular works.
This
is a theme which many writers have already used. Douglas Adams, in the second
series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, used a chorus of
off-key robots. They were supposed to be singing the praises of the Sirius
Cybernetics Corporation, or rather its complaints department. But since nothing
the corporation built ever worked properly their singing never quite came
together, with disastrously comic results. Stanislaw Lem, in The Cyberiad, describes
Trurl's attempts to build an electronic poet, a machine that can simulate the
muse. However, the machine proved impossible to turn off as it made such
impassioned pleas in flawless verse that nobody had the heart to pull the plug.
Even deaf technicians were defeated as the machine could mime.
The
sky is most definitely not the limit. As writers of speculative fiction, we can
dream about new, and more powerful, technologies to put into the hands of the
artists we conjure up as characters. In Run from the Stars, (still
looking for a publisher) I refer briefly to Arcturian Grand Opera. While
performing out-of-doors, the cast is assisted by light shows, pyrotechnics, and
synchronized spaceships overhead. Tolkien added a dash of magic to the fireworks
in The Lord of the Rings.
There
is still much more to be done. What about entirely magical performances, where
actors and set alike are conjured out of nothing by a director-mage? Can we
imagine robot court jesters, performers whose skin can display moving,
three-dimensional pictures or whole planets used as canvases? Asimov has already
looked at the last of these. In Buy Jupiter aliens paint an advertising
slogan on the unfortunate gas giant.
Finally
I'd like to look at one idea I'm developing myself for the novel I'm working on
at the moment. This is the direct connection of the viewer's brain to a computer
programmed by the artist. The work of art is then presented to the viewer as a
lucid, realistic dream through which the audience can move at will. The artist
simply creates the game world and defines its rules: for example, nobody gets
killed, magic works if you can afford to pay for it, and there are wise guides
who will help you through the game. I've called the technique psychothyresis
from the Greek psyche, the soul and thyra, a gateway. Literally it
is a gateway between the soul and the artistic creation. However, it allows a
great deal of audience participation. It’s possible to buy a gun and shoot the
computer generated characters, or decimate the wildlife, if that's what you want
to do. It's also possible to dive off a thousand-foot cliff into a rock-fanged
sea, only to have the safety mechanism trip in the last second before impact.
The player then splashes gently into lukewarm cocoa dotted with giant
marshmallows. But within the artist's game world you can cheat and lie, help or
harm, kill or make love as you choose. Nothing is real, nobody actually gets
hurt. Or do they?
Within
the psychothyretic world is there any such thing as a moral imperative? Are any
actions right or wrong? The point of the story is to challenge the whole idea of
morality, to ask unanswerable questions. And in doing that to make the jump from
"Thou shalt not kill" to "Don't murder people because..." In
other words, to take the readers out of themselves and enable them to turn
around and see into their own souls. Perhaps if we could understand the why
behind right and wrong we'd be better and wiser people.
Which,
in a sense, is what artists have always been trying to show us.
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