The Next Art Thing, 2015

Via my older brother who introduced me to the author, I am a fan of William Gibson. Gibson is well known for his predictions and applications of future technologies. The household term cyberspace is one of his babies, amongst others. I read him because he spins such fun and intoxicating tales, but also because he is somehow jacked-in (there’s another one of his ideas), to what ever is coming next. I kid you not. Earlier this year I finished reading the two newest novels by the Canadian, Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. Pattern Recognition‘s protagonist, Cayce Pollard, is a free-lance cool-hunter. She spends her time hunting down the next big thing for Brand Marketers and industrial big-wigs. I would not be surprised if this is Gibson’s alter-ego as she seems to have a radar for the next trend. She even wears Mr. Gibson’s favorite jacket.

In Spook Country, a follow up to PR, a new kind of geo-spatial, public installation is making the rounds, and Gibson calls it “locative art” (he did not invent the phrase). It is based on a complex relationship between the internet, GPS (a product of released military technology, just as the internet is) and cell-tower triangulation. The viewer gets to see the art via a headset and computer hooked up to the system. One installation entails a memorial to River Phoenix which is a reenactment of his death outside the Viper Room in LA. The idea is that these invisible installations will eventually take up the space around us, placed there by the digital artists who claim the territory first. The preservation of historical moments and the iteration of memory is at the heart of the idea.

Having said all that, I nearly dropped my coffee when I saw this. Although it is not the full-blown thing, it is a step towards Gibson’s vision, brought to a very public level. Gibson’s vision is very much DIY and underground, but real research (think MIT) and experimentation has been going on for a while. This kind of user friendly app could make this the next big thing in terms of media exploration and communication. Here is a brief essay on the phenomenon.