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Richard Wagner
wrote that opera would become the "art work of the future." It
would synthesize all the arts into one grand public presentation- the
musical in the score, the plastic in scenery and costuming and the
dramatic in the libretto. It was an impressive prediction.
Arguably, however, the closest any "opera" has come to
fulfilling Wagner's prediction has been, for good or ill, the movie
Moulin Rouge, and then only because it has breathed life into the
apparently moribund form of the musical.
But while Wagner's operatic prediction, while stimulating, has failed,
his reasoning about the fruitfulness of combining the arts seems apt.
The art work of the future will transcend categorization. Perhaps we see
it's beginnings in the kitsch culture MTV and interactive video games.
But we also see inklings of it in the internet, where the patron of the
arts, or if you will, consumer may and does interact with the artist in
creating a work of art The internet provides the medium in which art is
capable of constant flux and evolution.
We see evidence of that in the interaction of the poetry workshop
boards. While most writers post poems in the context of work shopping
them, something else is going on--an art of evolving interactivity. The
internet poem becomes a communal artifact, and more than the Romantics
poets would ever have envisioned, the true antennae of the
"race," allowing us to reach creative levels not heretofore
achieved. With ample opportunities to mix media, we potentially could be
well achieving Wagner's dream of an art work of the future.
That may seem hyperbolic, especially since so far, internet poetry has
failed to achieve this potential. Many complain that internet poetry at
best becomes MacPoem, poetry written by committee, and at worst a
cataloging of fungible emotions. The same democratization that allows
wide public access and interaction can grind unique poetic visions down
to the smooth acceptability of populism. A cat can look at a king, but
on the internet, unlike other mass media, the cats not only look, but
rule.
Yet there is a greater and more insidious danger to internet poetry,
internet art, than the dictatorships of the masses and of the
marketplace. Simply put, it is the homogenizing effect of
"code." Lawrence Lessig, a professor of cyber law, writes
that, as all civil societies have been governed in the past, future
civil societies will be governed by laws, often referred to as code. But
when he refers to future society he is not talking about governments'
legislating laws, he means, simply, the forcing of certain structures on
our reasoning by the laws of computer code. We will end up, even if
computer illiterate, thinking in terms of Visual Basic, Java, and mass
marketed HTML synthesizers. If it is not allowed by computer code, it
will not exist. if we are not vigilant, the computer geek in his cubicle
will
govern not only our poetry, but all that we value. His "code"
will govern our reasoning. In this sense, Bill Gates will be a more
subtle, more sinister dictator than Saddham Hussein. If poets are the
antennae of the race we can expect to see "code's" effects now
in our poetry. Yet the internet remains the place of greatest potential
for poetry. Our white edition has tried to strike a blow against
"code" and a vote in favor of Wagner's dream. |
