in the past few days i've heard of two things that have made me shake my head in wonder at the paucity of new ideas (nothing is entirely new, but lately it seems much is on the less-than-terribly-original end of the spectrum):
- on new year's eve while sharing a drink with our friend, we learned that andrew lloyd weber is working on a new musical; a sequel to 'the phantom of the opera'.
- and today tripping across the nets i came upon ''something good 08', a slightly remixed reissue of 'something good' by utah saints. i think the video is fun, but the song was done and is being released by...utah saints.
we're in an age of more remakes and non-original material than ever before - recycling seems to be the mantra of entertainment as well as environmentalists.
i'm curious to know if we've seen this before - is this a unique time in history? with the technology available to us to not only preserve past media but remix and reuse it easily, is this the natural progression of expression and tools? perhaps this is just an inevitable step, much like how nascent technologies simply ape their predecessors before they discover their true potential.
perhaps the incessant remix, remake, reuse, homage and ripoffs are all part of the sorting out of this stage of development. the childhood sandbox where future artists and engineers learn the basics by just playing around with malleable material.
“a nation without dregs and malcontents, is orderly, decent, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.” - eric hoffer
3 deep thoughts:
Perhaps it is all a social practice, practice in the repeating a task to master it sense, a necessary part of our evolution as we master one level in order to move on to the next.
Ya know, I seem to recall reading somewhere that in times of cultural stagnation, there were more accolades given to the artists who copied the previous masterworks, and less recognition to those who innovated.
Rome was one of those cultures that, I believe went through over a hundred years at the end where poets and sculptors and playwrites were only hailed if their works closely followed the forms of Ovid, Sophocles, etc. I seem to remember some kind of stagnation that way at the end of the Renaissance as well.
I don't know what all that says about where our culture is at, but hey...maybe we're a scant century away from some new material!
or a societal collapse!
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