When the internet came online in the 90s there was a wide-eyed belief about the amount of space available for data storage and operation on a personal computer and what it would take to fill it. Essentially it was seen as a limitless void. As a complete novice with an AppleMac, I tried to make sense of it alI and a helpful colleague used the analogy of being able to store the whole of the bible on a pinhead with digital space apparently being composed of multitudes of pinheads. This put digital space on par with an endless universe – something I still have difficulty in coming to terms with when my world has defined edges. However, when I got my first computer it took no time at all to fill the one gig hard drive and I had to add a ‘sidecar’ of extra memory just to be able to run it. At this point I was just confused.
Today with portable hard drives running into terabytes and server farms the size of factories processing and storing billions of images and words, how much space is available is hardly a question worth asking to say nothing about the power needed to run it all and what happens should the power run out. However, I digress. It is not just the extent of digital space but how it is filled that interests me as every image, word and sound and is logged and lodged as everyone becomes a writer, musician and artist by virtue of being able to post anything without mediation. Now I’m not for a minute suggesting that people shouldn’t post their every utterance and their existence be recorded for posterity but when scrolling boredom, monetary value and ill-defined big tech qualifications of decency are the only measures of what gets preserved, there has to be a concern of just how this time will be remembered in cultural terms.
In spite of an obvious supersaturation of art on the internet, a belief in an unlimited void prevails and artists are queuing up to fill it either as self-marketing or via a gallery/company willing to undertake the work for a fee. I have at least one such company a day offering such brokerage. Self-promotion has become an industry in itself and as a result the art market is saturated with little breathing space for reflection or indeed any semblance of mediation to guide to understanding on the part of the audience. It there was a void, there certainly isn’t one now. This is the era of the self-indulgent proliferation of images which has engendered a sort of horror vacui amongst the general population who endlessly scroll hoping for understanding.
In visual art, horror vacui, or kenophobia, is a phenomenon in which the entire surface of a space or an artwork is filled with detail and content, leaving as little perceived emptiness as possible. It relates back to Aristotle who is credited with the idea that nature abhors a vacuum. In the minds of some contemporary philosophers this defines the artistic and cultural direction of contemporary society – immediacy and saturation. But then again, there is nothing new about over production or of over representation. A trip to the Louvre in Paris, a physical space housing 500,000 pieces of art, 35,000 of which are on display daily might convince the audience than even deciding what is worth keeping is a mind-boggling exercise when historicity replaces cultural worth.
For those lucky enough to access a white cube gallery, an invention of the 1920s, the artist has the god-like feeling of beginning with a pristine white canvas and rearranging the detritus of his/her existence into some sort of perceived order. In shutting out the world beyond its walls there is an illusion of control in the face of chaos. But even here, it is not just the space but the rotation of exhibitions that adds to the saturation – in one case I know of three new artists hang their work in the gallery every two weeks.
If art can still be said to have a purpose the idea that if you immerse yourself in an installed environment or stare long and hard enough at a painting, revelation will overtake you, still pervades thinking about art. Staring into the artistic abyss seeking revelation may just be a symptom of hope in the face of hopelessness. While contemporary humanity lauds its understanding of the planet on which it lives and the universe around it, it is no closer to ascertaining the meaning of life than were its ancestors. The availability of all knowledge simultaneously and the compression of past and present into one dimension has been praised as the path to revelation but whether art can still be associated with exploring the dimensions and depth of the soul in a search for spirituality and meaning exemplified in much mid 20th century art is open to question. The void experienced by so many in western society who see little purpose or meaning in their lives, is hardly going to be resolved through Art become therapy. This is the selfie generation seeking to fill the void of their existence via a mobile phone demonstrating a narcissistic personality trait characterized by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an overwhelming need for admiration, and a reduced ability to empathize with other people’s feelings.
Whatever belief artists have about their would-be position in the pantheon and their right to post images of their work into an immeasurable void, in the end the only seeming filter is one of saleability and selling a work is no guarantee of worth in either the short or long term.
Sure, the abyss is great for staring into.
But if screaming is your thing, you’ll want to go with the void [anon]