Unfinished…
There’s a great moment in Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, where the archdeacon wistfully stares out at the cathedral, and exclaims:
“Alas! alas! small things come at the end of great things; a tooth triumphs over a mass. The Nile rat kills the crocodile, the swordfish kills the whale, the book will kill the edifice.”
Hugo wonderfully captures the chagrin of the archdeacon — faced with the brand new technology of Gutenberg’s printing press, and fully aware of the potential of this technology to disseminate ideas far more widely and effectively than the church ever could — being fearful; fearful of what this wonderful new technology could mean to the established institutions of church and state.
It’s a feeling and an emotion I can relate to.
Technology is rapidly changing the way we create art and tell stories.
Stories and works of art used to (and mostly still do) reach as the output of the creative process — someone (or a small group of people) comes up with the germ of an idea, goes off into a corner to nurture and craft it, and then releases it as a finished piece of art for future generations — and then moving on, starting the process all over again for yet another work of art.
What’s changed now is that the cost of distributing your idea (even in its infancy) to a much wider audience is near zero, and there’s no limit to the audience you can reach, right down to the palm of their hand, wherever in the world they happen to be.
The creative process itself might therefore be evolving — instead of works of art in isolation — it’s now possible to start out with your raw idea and shape it in full view of the audience, giving rise to a new form of art — where sharing is just the beginning, and there might never be a finish.
There’s something great, something bad, and something inherently interesting about this:
The Good
The art of sharing early might in itself give rise to a better work of art, where you can capture more perspectives and feedback very early in the process, and incorporate all those diverse perspectives into creating something sublime.
DisPLACEd - which I just discovered recently — is attempting to do exactly this : the first 6 episodes of the story will be created by DisPLACEd’s editors — with the rest of the story thrown open to the whole world, and submissions from literally anywhere. It’ll be truly amazing to see what comes of this sort of collaborative writing experiment.
The second great thing about this sort of process is that when you first hear of the work of art: it will be raw and unfiltered, infinitely moldable, and truly non-polished and authentic — the sort of thing that would definitely appeal to a world increasingly chasing authenticity. This is one of the main reasons Snapchat successfully gained traction — the ephemeral nature of the platform allowed its early adopters to express raw, unfiltered images and emotions without any thought
The Bad
We humans are an intensely social species — we’re wired to seek consensus, to seek the approval of the herd. And if the creative act itself becomes one where everyone’s influence creeps in early — will we be able to sneak in those individual quirks and variations that breathe spirit into our great works of art? Will we see a world with little or no variety — where all our works of art and wonder are shaped by what pleases the majority aesthetically?
This might seem a little alarmist — after all, nothing will prevent the individual from going off into the corner and creating just as before. On the other hand, the technology we use does shape the way we think as a society — we’ve mostly stopped writing letters by hand: so, has that changed how we write a letter?
The Interesting
“Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books.” ― Julian Barnes
This is perhaps the most interesting aspect — the fact that by virtue of being ever-changing and evolving, a story, or a work of art could forever be in progress — and never be finished. This would truly be art imitating life — things in real life are sometimes never resolved, and not every story in life has an ending.
This is why the premise of the Hooked app fascinates me — imagine reading a story one chat message at a time, following the two person story told in chat message format. There’s always one more message hidden behind the next set of messages that takes the story forward — for a while, at least — the story has one more message — the story is unfinished.
Our new works of art could truly never be finished, with many new variations improving upon them constantly — like open source branches with unique twists and expressions.
I’d be excited to see this happen.
If you liked this, please hit the green heart below so it can reach more people — and send me responses — I’d love to learn what you think, and your feedback could collaboratively help refine this article as well :)
