taste
In the digital age, cultural artifacts are eroded by abundance. Timelines layer and compress artwork, images, and artifacts into corners of the internet. In my corner, I stumbled across a speech entitled “Perfume, Defense and David Bowie’s Wedding” delivered by Brian Eno in 1992 at the Sadler Wells Theatre in London. In it, Eno predicted the... See more
The Future Will Be Like Perfume | Are.na Editorial
“Authenticity”, I think, looks like the power to opt in or out, perform or not, when you want to—in other words: freedom. So when it comes to the Internet, if switching off entirely isn’t possible any more, then surely the words of MGMT can be useful: “control yourself, take only what you need from it.”
The New Nostalgia
To be clear, some people are great at making things and simply bad at dressing. But what inspires me about the examples above is the running theme of work and talent making you look better . Too often, when we desperately search for “the perfect jeans” “the perfect tee” or “the perfect haircut,” I think that what we are really looking for doesn’t... See more
Do good work and your fits will follow
By contrast, when “everything is at our fingertips” — when art is compressed into the same omnipresent and infinite digital non-time as every random piece of internet garbage — I think that we’re left feeling incomplete on some basic human level, like we’re the practitioners of a vibey old religion whose rituals were all but erased, and whose... See more
Streaming is an affront to God
And so, when people valorize these kinds of outmoded media, and outmoded acts of endurance and devotion, I don’t think it’s just about empty nostalgia. Because these are touchstones and processes — precisely in their inefficiency — by which people can open themselves up to transformative experience, and honor the depth and fullness of what art means to us.
As anything scales too effectively - from fashion to restaurants to music - the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, many of us crave the artisanal coffee shop. Once our favorite Italian restaurant becomes a chain of three, we grow tired of it. Why? First, so much of what we buy and do is tied up in... See more
Scott Belsky • Joyspan, Emotional AI Bumpers, Persona Designers, & More Wild Concepts Bound to Become Commonplace Plus Where High-Tech Entertainment Brings Us
As much as I share his concerns, this book repeatedly made we want to yell back at him for willfully underplaying obvious exceptions and counterarguments.
Chief among these is to what degree Chayka’s “flattening” is anything new. When he writes, “If anything, mass culture lately appears more aesthetically homogenous than ever,” he seems to forget... See more
Chief among these is to what degree Chayka’s “flattening” is anything new. When he writes, “If anything, mass culture lately appears more aesthetically homogenous than ever,” he seems to forget... See more
bookforum.com • Kyle Chayka Looks at Our Supposedly Flat New World
To put it more plainly: As you grow older, you face the interconnected questions of which parts of yourself to preserve, which parts of yourself to evolve, and which parts of yourself to abandon .
I think these are fun questions to work over, because they’re questions without easy answers and, anyway, there’s no opting out of them. You can ignore... See more
I think these are fun questions to work over, because they’re questions without easy answers and, anyway, there’s no opting out of them. You can ignore... See more
Are you even alive if you aren't confused?
Educated people feel a duty to know these trends as part of cultural literacy. They don't buy Labubus, yet they join the "we" and descend into introspective angst about what Labubus mean for the state of "our" collective psychology.
As a general strategy for cultural consumption, omnivorism was very smart: Erecting artificial barriers against “low”... See more
As a general strategy for cultural consumption, omnivorism was very smart: Erecting artificial barriers against “low”... See more
The New Yorker Roundup
We are adrift–a culture of consumers accustomed to buying objects and building collections as the sole means of documenting our cultures–deprived of the infrastructure to do so. But our individual inability to collect and store is one I’ll lament the least.
Yes, we’re drifting, but maybe we can choose to float towards a more collective stewardship... See more
Yes, we’re drifting, but maybe we can choose to float towards a more collective stewardship... See more
Crimes Against Search | Dirt
personal agency vs enshittification