The complete version of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander is stunning from the opening frame. Alexander peering through his toy theater sets the stage for the drama that unfolds. The theme of the “little world” and the “big world” that surrounds it continues to recur throughout the story. The little world is the extended family of the theater; the big world is larger world beyond their control. The story takes place in the years before World War I.
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When thinking about buying and selling music and films, we often attempt to point to the work of art as separate from the container we buy it in. It’s as though we think one can buy a song without any physical manifestation– perhaps just the ideal of a song. I would contend that reproduced works of art do not exist except for their containers.
This is in contradistinction to original works of art, because they are singular, they are the work itself embodied. This is the unique value of owning and living with real works of art. The viewers relationship is with the work, rather than the means of reproduction. Over time the containers through which we reproduce music and film have changed. From a business perspective, it has been effective to have each work recorded on to a small portable format that can be packaged and sold.
As the methods of reproduction change, the recording formats change– and we buy the next container. It’s at this point that you’ll generally hear the complaint that a particular piece of music has been purchased in many formats over the years. But of course, that’s all there is. There is no recorded music outside of the containers in which it’s sold. To hear actual music one would need to attend a performance.
We’re currently seeing the transition from a physical container to the digital container. Suddenly the purchaser owns a master file than can be placed on multiple devices and copied on to material formats like DVD and CD. This radically changes the economics of the entertainment business. The business used to be the production and sale of units. Marketing and distribution were keys to success.
We can see from examples like Google and Facebook that providing the entry and orientation point for the Internet can be highly lucrative. If a user chooses to pass through your site on her way to any and every destination, you can change a small fee for billboards on that road. A small fee combined with the volume of traffic that passes through Google equals a compelling business.
No company or product has emerged that holds an analogous position to recorded entertainment product. The leading contenders are probably Apple’s iTunes, TiVo and probably Amazon. The “recording industry” is busy defending the old model in the courts. This is a classic sign of the end of a business model cycle. Unable to compete in the markets, they turn to the law to encode their models (See buggy whips).
As the container as format moves to the digital, a new container emerges. The player is now the thing. It’s the iPod, the iPhone, the laptop, the television, the car stereo, the satellite radio player that is the other new ground for innovation. Two good examples of this are the Chumby and Dave Winer’s new FlickrFan. The television is a much more flexible output device in the age of HD flat screens, and Chumby is a classic simplification play. The iPhone and multi-touch creates an almost unlimited platform for software created user interfaces; freed from mechanical user interfaces (KVM) the field is open.
Organizing, curating, editing, programming, sequencing, suggesting, categorizing, collecting on a theme: these are the value propositions in the new landscape. Can it be done algorithmically? Should it be? Amazon often provides comical suggestions based on the attention and gesture data they’ve collected. Steve Gillmor has created an iPhone site that filters news based on sets of selected editors (professional and amateur). Jason Calacanis and Mahalo are attempting to provide curated search results, but maybe search isn’t the thing that people are really looking for. Maybe it’s the curation itself.
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The Metropolitan Museum’s new Greek and Roman section is a revelation. When looking at the work you are deeply impressed with the power of the classical forms. But the other thing you learn is the sculpture, that today is simple white marble, was painted to simulate human appearance. The effects of time have uncovered the classic form in the work.
I wonder how the digital artifacts are our time will be viewed in 2,000 years. Presuming the file formats can be properly decoded, time will have had no effect on them. Color won’t fade, text will be just as readable, layouts will be intact. No noses lost, no missing arms, no papyrus scrolls with faded writing. The digital will appear dated by language, hairstyles, turns of phrase and clothing. But the viewable artifact will appear exactly the same in 2,000 years, or for that matter in 1,000,000 years.
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I spent the last week on holiday in New York City. While I was walking around with an iPhone, and still somewhat connected to Twitter, my focus was on looking at the art and design that serves as the foundation for Western Civilization. The digerati, while filled with a certain type of creativity, they lack any real sense of history. That’s a big generalization, but in a general sense it’s true. There are a number of threads that were spawned by my trip. I hope to capture a few of them here before they return to the aether.
The Frick had a show of the portraits of Hans Memling a few years ago. It was a small show, the Frick doesn’t have a large exhibition space for shows, and there aren’t many Memling portraits still in existence. At the time, I spent more than an hour with those faces. On this trip, I had to seek out the portraits. Some are in the Frick’s permanent collection and their are a few at the Met. These portraits present humanity to us in a manner that seems to have been lost. Memling was born around 1435; the portraits deliver us the visages and the souls of people from that time.
In thinking about the wonderful creativity of our time, and the vast power of our digital tools, we have nothing to match what Memling accomplished. And these works must be seen directly in person. No form of reproduction can convey their power—in this sense they are the anti-digital.
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