home › Test Drives › A well-known futurologist will tell you what the art of the future will be like. Does media technology have a future in contemporary art? Past and present

A well-known futurologist will tell you what the art of the future will be like. Does media technology have a future in contemporary art? Past and present

reflection Andrey Bely about the art of the future. Lecture 1907. Publ. on Sat. articles "Symbolism". 1910.

We clearly see the path that development will take art of the future; the idea of this path is born in us from the antinomy that we see in the art of our time. Existing forms of art tend to disintegrate: their differentiation is endless: this is facilitated by the development of technology: the concept of technical progress more and more replaces the concept of the living.

On the other hand, the varieties of art forms merge with each other; this is expressed by no means in the destruction of the lines separating two adjacent forms of art: the desire for synthesis expressed in attempts to arrange these forms around one of the forms taken as the center.

Thus arises the predominance of music over other arts. This is how the desire to mysteries as a synthesis of all possible forms. But music corrupts the forms of related arts just as much as it nourishes them in another respect: a false penetration of the spirit of music is an indicator of decadence: we are captivated by the form of this decline - this is our disease: a soap bubble - before bursting - shimmers with all the colors of the rainbow: a rainbow carpet exoticism hides both fullness and emptiness behind it: and if the art of the future built its forms, imitating pure music, the art of the future would have the character of Buddhism.

Contemplation in art is a means: it is a means of hearing the call to life creativity. In art dissolved by music, contemplation would become the goal: it would turn the contemplator into an impersonal spectator of his own experiences: the art of the future, drowning in music, would forever stop the development of arts.

If the art of the future is understood as art, which is a synthesis of currently existing forms, then what is the unifying principle of creativity? You can, of course, put on the clothes of an actor and pray at the altar: the choir can at the same time perform dithyrambs written by the best lyricists of their time: the music will accompany the dithyrambs: the dance will accompany the music: best artists of their time will create an illusion around us, etc., etc. What is all this for? To turn a few hours of life into a dream and then break this dream with reality?

We will be answered: "Well, what about the mystery?"

But the mystery had a living religious meaning: in order to mystery of the future had the same meaning, we must take it beyond art. It should be for everyone. No, and the beginning of the art of the future is not in the synthesis of the arts!

The artist is first of all a man; then he is a specialist in his craft; perhaps his work influences life; but the craft conditions that accompany creativity limit this influence: contemporary artist bound by form; it is impossible to demand from him that he sing, dance and paint, or even enjoy all kinds of aesthetic subtleties; and therefore it is impossible to demand from him a striving for synthesis; this desire would have expressed itself in savagery, in a return to the primitive forms of the distant past, and primitive creativity, developing naturally, led art to the existing complexity of forms; a return to the past would bring that past back to the present.

The synthesis of arts on the basis of a return to the distant past is impossible. on the basis of a mechanical reunion of existing forms is also impossible: such a reunion would lead art to dead eclecticism; the temple of art would turn into a museum of art, where the muses - wax dolls, no more.

If an external connection is impossible, a return to the past is equally impossible, then we have the complexity of the present. Can we talk about the art of the future? It, perhaps, will only be a complication of the present.

But it's not.

Artwork is currently being evaluated due to special conditions artistic technique: no matter how strong the talent is, it is connected with the entire technical past of its art; the moment of knowledge, the study of one's art, more and more determines the development of talent; the power of the method, its influence on the development of creativity is growing by leaps and bounds; individualism of creativity at present there is most often an individualism of the method of work; this individualism is only a refinement of the method of the school with which the artist is associated; individualism of this kind is specialization; it stands in inverse relation to the individuality of the artist himself; the artist, in order to create, must first know; knowledge, on the other hand, decomposes creativity, and the artist falls into a fatal circle of contradictions; the technical evolution of the arts turns him into his slave; it is impossible for him to abandon the technical past; the artist of the present is becoming more and more a scientist; in the process of this transformation, the last goals of art flee from him; the field of arts is being brought closer by technical progress to the field of knowledge; art is a group of a special kind of knowledge.

Knowledge of the method of creativity is substituted for creativity; but creativity is prior to knowledge; it creates the very objects of knowledge.

Concluding creativity in existing forms art, we doom it to the power of method; and it becomes knowledge for knowledge without an object; Is "non-objectivity" in art a living confession of Impressionism? And once "non-objectivity" is established in art, the method of creativity becomes "an object in itself", which entails extreme individualization: to find one's own method - that is the goal of creativity; such a view of creativity will inevitably lead us to a complete disintegration of the forms of art, where each work is its own form: under such a condition, internal chaos will be established in art.

If it is possible to create a new temple on the ruins of a temple that has apparently collapsed, then it is impossible to erect this temple on the endless atoms-forms into which the existing forms will be cast without abandoning the forms themselves: thus we transfer the question of the purpose of art from consideration of the products of creativity to the very processes creativity: products of creativity - ash and magma: processes of creativity - flowing lava.

Did not the creative energy of humanity make a mistake in choosing the path along which the forms that captivate us today were formed? Is it not necessary to analyze the very laws of creativity before agreeing with art when it appears to us in forms? Are these forms not the essence of the distant past of creativity? Should the creative stream now plunge into life along petrified ledges, highest point which - music, lower - architecture: after all, having identified these forms, we turn them into a series of technical means that chill creativity: we turn creativity into knowledge: a comet into its sparkling tail, only illuminating the path along which creativity swept: music, painting, architecture, sculpture, poetry - everything it is already an obsolete past: here in stone, in paint, sound and word, the process of transformation has taken place, once alive and now dead life; musical rhythm- the wind that crossed the sky of the soul; running through this sky, hotly languishing in anticipation of creation, the musical rhythm - "the voice of the coldness of the thin" - thickened the clouds of poetic myths: and the myth curtained the sky of the soul, sparkled with thousands of colors: petrified in stone; the creative flow created a living cloud myth; but the myth froze and disintegrated into colors and stones.

arose art world as a tomb temple of life creativity.

fixing creative process in form, we, in essence, order ourselves to see lava itself in ashes and magma: that is why our perspective on the future of art is hopeless: we command this future to be ashes: we equally mortify creativity, then combining its fragments into one heap (synthesis of arts ), then fragmenting these forms to infinity (differentiation of the arts).

And here. and there the past is resurrected; both here and there we are at the mercy of the dear dead; and wonderful sounds Beethoven symphony, and the victorious sounds of Dionysian dithyrambs (Nietzsche) are all dead sounds: we think that these are kings clothed in fine linen, and these are embalmed corpses; they come to us to enchant us with death.

With art, with life, the situation is much more serious than we think: the abyss over which we hung is deeper, darker. To get out of the vicious circle of contradictions, we must stop talking about anything, whether it be art, knowledge or our life itself. We must forget the present: we must recreate everything again; to do this, we must recreate ourselves.

And the only steep we can still climb is ourselves. At the top we are waiting for our "I".

Here is the answer for the artist: if he wants to remain an artist without ceasing to be human, he must become his own. art form. Only this form of creativity promises us salvation. Here lies the path of the future of art.

Dear Science Fiction Fans.

I am writing to you to share my observation turned into a study.

Quite by chance, I noticed a strange fact. IN science fiction, there is practically no description of what the art of the future will look like.

Spaceships, weapons, medicine, and even architecture are described in detail, visualized by cinematography and rapidly (not always as rapidly as we would like) develop, fed by the imagination of science fiction writers.

Why does art seem to be so an important part material and spiritual (I'm not afraid of this word) culture - slips away from the attention of writers and directors? Is it just because science fiction is written mostly by people with technical education? Or is there simply no place for art in the “perfectly beautiful” or “perfectly terrible” world of a fantastic future?

For example, as you well remember, in Star Trek ("Star Trek: The Next Generation" 6x16 Birthright: Part 1), the android Data is engaged in painting, drawing, sometimes with two hands at once, simulating humanity with all his might. Overcoming serious internal conflict Data tries to be a bigger person than the people around him. Normal crew members of the Enterprise artistic creativity were not noticed. They don't have time for that either. Art as an activity and as objects is not necessary healthy people the future of Star Trek. They have a halo deck.

Data

The Solaris station (“Solaris” by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972) is full of works of art. But it's all antiques. Brueghel's paintings, icons, figurines. The entire film is laced with the subtlest, most exquisite references to the classic great art of the past. But where is the modern tragic events at the art station? What did the artists do all this time after Brueghel?

As an artist, this seemed to me a serious problem. And, perhaps, not only the problem of art. It can be assumed that the world of science fiction would become more voluminous if there was a place for art in it. The place is not only, as an illustration, on the cover of a book and on a movie poster. But also a place in the text as part of an imaginary universe.

What to do?

How to establish contact between close but, for some reason, not intersecting civilizations?

Realizing that I could not overcome this problem with my own mind, I turned to older, more experienced colleagues and specialists. I know science fiction really very superficially, at the level of an amateur, and maybe there are detailed descriptions Romulan Biennale or Bajoran Conceptualism, and I just don't know.

This is where curiosity began to turn into research.

With a small group of like-minded people, I began to write letters to science fiction figures discovered on the Internet. The writers began to respond well, but from the filmmakers only Paul Verhoeven answered so far, and even then, very briefly. To quote the esteemed director's response in full: “I don't think sci-fi films represent the future. Basically human mind cannot foresee anything really new and therefore extrapolates everything that has been done in the past. So where do ideas about the art of the future come from?

The science fiction figures were asked five questions in order to find out their attitude to the problem and their interest in art in general. Artists answered exactly the same questions, and the question of the influence of fantasy on their work.

What do you think about the role and influence of science fiction on the development of civilization? Is the degree of this influence changing now?

Why do you think that in the world of the "imagined future", in science fiction, there is so little attention paid to the visual arts?

Could art get an additional impetus in development if it were described in detail in science fiction?

How do you separate the world of imaginary and realistically predictable future?

Has it affected your creative activity some work of art? (science fiction?)

On this moment The writers Vasily Zvyagintsev, Barry B. Longyear, Nikolai Gorkavy, Vladimir Vasiliev, Roman Arbitman, Christopher Priest, Larry Niven, Pavel Shumilov, Andrei Ulanov, Elizabeth Scarborough, Nikolai Romanetsky, Alan Dean Foster, Alan Steele, Pet Cadigan and Greg Beer.

Of the artists, I managed to talk with Andrey Monastyrsky, Ivan Chuikov, Sergey Alimov, Aristarkh Chernyshev, Stanislav Shuripa, Irina Korina, Taus Makhacheva, Maria Sumnina and Mikhail Leikin, Alexei Shulgin, Yegor Koshelev, Alexander Dashevsky, Viktor Alimpiev, Peter Bely, Georgy Litichevsky.

Now we are trying to correctly analyze the received invaluable information.

A detailed report with the answers and analysis of these answers will be published here a little later.

Thanks to the involvement of the curator Sasha Burkhanova, I managed to get acquainted with English artist Gareat Owen Lloyd (http://codepen.io/garowello/full/EjGXmM/). Which deals with similar problems and even made a timeline of the history of future art, placing works of art found in films and books on it.

I am publishing this text here, in the Fantasy Lab, partly to understand the degree of interest in the topic of art of the local audience - science fiction lovers.

If you have any thoughts, ideas and considerations on this topic, please write to me.

In 1910, the book "The World in a Hundred Years" was published in Germany. In it, various experts predicted what our society would be like in 2010. They even managed to guess something: for example, a "pocket telephone", or - not at all mainstream at that time - the decolonization of Africa. But when it came to music, the moral of the connoisseur was this: "In the future, solo performances will come to naught, and arias will be performed by choirs of identical voices." In general, this is not without meaning - YouTube is full of videos where a person, using modern programs, performs a pension, being a "chorus" from his voice. But to say that this is a defining feature of modern, sorry six-year-old music - hmm...

Do you consider pixel art to be art? Personally, I do. Pixel art evolved from the limitations of computer memory, but has remained as a stripped art and for a long time after these restrictions are gone. And even more - sometimes pixel art creations only disguise themselves as, say, pictures from games with 256 colors, but in fact they use the entire palette. As an example, I never tire of giving " The Last door"

But who would have thought that something like this would become art? To do this, one would have to imagine the whole evolution computer technology, then - the nostalgia of the generation that grew up on these games, for the past times, and, finally, a rethinking as separate genre computer games in particular and fine arts in general.

But this is only one, small facet of the whole variety. Like science and technology, art develops in many, completely unpredictable directions. Now is not the era of renaissance, when, in addition to and together with the need to please the customer, he had some conditional goal - to achieve maximum credibility. This plausibility has already been achieved by XV-XVI century, and since then experiments have begun on what and how can be omitted in order to focus on something else. By the twentieth century, we already had hyperrealism, and impressionism, and cubism, and primitivism, and Dadaism ... In general, it would seem that people have tried all the extremes, but - art, as the art of rethinking reality, picks up and transforms all phenomena of the world without exception.

Not being a specialist, I would venture to suggest that now, when a virtual reality, albeit with a delay of about twenty-five years, is finally becoming more accessible to ordinary mortals, work may appear, one way or another in an unexpected way those who use it. But virtual reality is also just a canvas, and what is so interesting and unexpected will be “written” on it ... if I knew, then I probably would have already done it myself.

Working with virtual reality is already a fig, but with a very high probability, artists will simply not be interested in it in the long term. Secondly, it is conceptually alienated, that is, only a very narrow, from the point of view of theory, range of works works in it. Secondly, the topic is too current to be a new canvas. It's like writing in 1995 that soon all art will be on the Internet - indeed, then a small layer of net.art appeared, and ended there.

Author's Preface

This is a popular science article in which I tried to give a forecast, to reveal some trends from a transhumanist point of view. The article was published in Discovery magazine in May 2009 under the title "Aesthetics of the Future". The title of the article was changed by the editors, since the heading itself was called "Art", and the editor wanted to avoid repetition. I do not agree with this title (aesthetics and art are still different concepts), and therefore I publish the article under the original title.

Our descendants will hardly know what a printed book or going to the cinema is. But they will be able to live in moving houses, sculpt sculptures from "living" clay and collect their own art museums. And, perhaps, they will be completely overwhelmed by virtual reality, where, hand in hand with powerful artificial intelligence, they will create great symphonies and exciting movies.

The world is changing. New technologies break into life, excite the minds and feelings of musicians and artists who seek to understand with the help of imagination the world and look into the future. People of art are more receptive than others to any innovations, especially those that allow them to be better implemented. creative potential. Therefore, biotechnologies, virtual universes and unique cybernetic systems are more and more clearly included in artistic use.

Everyone has their own Louvre

Little revolutions that shake one after another post-industrial society, exert their unconditional influence on art. For example, it is obvious that due to the decrease in employment at work (thanks to scientific and technological progress, we are confidently moving towards a “free time society”), more and more people are fond of creativity. It should also be taken into account that the technologies of crafts and the secrets of craftsmanship are becoming publicly available, and art is becoming democratic. There are and are developing new computer programs, allowing anyone who has mastered them to create with the help of virtual brushes, pencils, paints and various joysticks the likeness of graphic and pictorial canvases, as well as any three-dimensional installations.

This is the simplest and most obvious trend. It is equally clear that neotechnological subcultures will begin to develop rapidly in the coming years. We are talking about hackers, bloggers, communities of file-sharing networks. Finally, the art of flash mobs will develop. However, retroenclaves will also remain, people will continue to read paper books and go to the cinema. Islets traditional art– historical reconstructions, drawing circles, orchestral music- will partly serve as a psychological protection against the ongoing changes, and partly will make it possible to pass for the originals.

Ideas are spreading at a tremendous speed today. The era of global, collective thinking is coming. Books, music, paintings, theatrical performances thanks to digital technologies become available to the public. As a result, it has developed special genre creativity is fanfiction when famous work arbitrarily added or modified by the reader, listener or viewer. Thus, everyone is involved in the process of creating a work. For example, there are almost half a million fan versions of Harry Potter, and some are more original and interesting than the original. This may lead to the socialization of works of art, and, perhaps, in 2030, children in school lessons will be able to name a dozen authors of War and Peace.

The digitization of paintings and the creation of 3D or holographic models of sculptures, in turn, will allow you to enjoy art without leaving your home, visit many galleries around the world and even private collections in a day. Everyone can collect works of art in his Louvre. Art is gradually moving into virtual worlds, exhibitions are already being held there.

As further development technologies, imaginary reality will finally overwhelm the world, the feeling of "presence" in the virtual environment will approach 100%. The smallest changes in color and temperature, the nuances of smells and sounds - everything will be directly broadcast to our brain. And that's when the "crazy" symphonies of gravity, pressure and wind will appear. Remember Sergei Snegov and his wonderful trilogy about the future "People are like gods"!

Let's draw - will we live?

The future brings not only new topics, but also new materials and tools. At the same time, critics do not get tired of complaining that artists often confuse new materials with new ideas. But artists are people who are fond of, and experiment with pleasure, not paying attention to unpleasant remarks.

More recently, experiments have begun with ferrofluids - magnetic fluids obtained by mixing liquids and magnetic particles. They create unique, yet small, kinetic sculptures.

An avalanche of discoveries awaits us in fashion design. Already, high-end fashionistas can purchase glowing and partially invisible clothing, instantly-drying swimsuits, stain-resistant trousers, bacteria-killing socks, liquid armor for athletes, shark skin for swimmers, and even mermaid tails for swimmers. And at the exhibition "Rosnanotech-2008" metallized fur was exhibited, which does not transmit electromagnetic radiation. Probably, solar-powered transparent fur coats will be created, unless nanotechnological skin appears earlier, which will not only be invisible, but also protect and warm a person. At least, such skin-clothes are going to be made in the USA for soldiers.

As for music, with the advent of synthesizers it became possible to model any sounds, and it is already difficult to come up with an instrument with a wider range of possibilities. And what? The eternal crisis of music? Hardly. Most likely - a further path to the synthesis of arts. After all, today Music clip combines many various kinds creativity.

The main task of architecture is the organization of space. However, here too famous phrase Schelling - "Architecture is frozen music" - is losing its relevance. After all, architecture does not stand still, and - in the literal sense of the word: moving and rotating houses, turning artificial trees have already been developed. For example, a house is being built in Moscow, all 60 floors of which will be able to rotate independently of each other.

With the spread of modern building materials and technologies, the architectural form, in accordance with the wishes of the customer or the author-architect, is becoming more sophisticated. Especially popular is the conceptual movement, the purpose of which is to bring the forms of buildings closer to natural ones, created by nature itself. Such developments are still in the process of formation. But soon biomorphic curvilinear structures, additional shells, self-similar fractal forms will successfully resist the conservative rectangular layout of buildings.

During a historically ludicrous period, our computer universes have gained volume, realistic landscapes and characters endowed with the rudiments of artificial intelligence.

It is also interesting that projects of tunnel cities, that is, cities located at different levels along the roads, are now being implemented in several countries. They lack a traditional center, which completely transforms the entire urban structure, and the very concept of a city with its central part disappears. The idea is to combine all the settlements into a common unbroken chain.

body art

New time - new themes in art. First of all, it will take a long time for a person to recover from the shock caused by revolutionary discoveries. Confused, frightened, stunned and enthusiastic characters of the Moscow photographer and sculptor Oleg Gurov seem to stand on the border of time: present and future.

The development of biotechnology will lead to the improvement of body painting; changes in this area of creativity will be truly significant. In the future, there will be much more ways to change the body, and accordingly, a new type of creative activity will flourish - body modification. But not in the modern sense of the word (piercing, tattoos), namely as a change in the body. Humans will be capable of total transformation, including both mind and body, and each individual will become their ultimate "work of art." Changing the shape of the eyes and skin color, like Michael Jackson, will not surprise anyone - it will be possible to modify the shape of the face, and also, depending on the changing fashion and personal preferences, grow new organs, up to body parts.

Is your girlfriend a short brunette? Smart and kind, but not quite your type? However, if she loves you, she will have the opportunity to change beyond recognition. So ugly people won't stay. Everyone will look the way they want.

But while such developments remain in the laboratories, the art of avatars is developing. The virtual component of personality - the avatar - is becoming more and more sophisticated. For example, three-dimensional avatars are used, often having little in common with the real appearance of a person. They can already be considered as a special kind of art, as well as one of the steps towards body modification, because such an avatar is a kind of ideal model of the desired image of the author.

Inhuman prospects

Rapidly, but somehow away from the attention of critics, the most important art of the future is emerging - the creation of worlds. And the question arises: is not the entire thousand-year history of art just a training session for the majestic creations of the future? After all new world will contain everything that its creator wants: art, technology, science...

During the last 20 years, when people have learned to create computer games, imperceptibly there was a radical turn in the field of creativity. During a period that is ridiculous from the point of view of history, our virtual universes have received volume, realistic landscapes and characters endowed with the rudiments of artificial intelligence. And the variety of plots of these games reflects the complexity of civilization and human relations. As the power of computers grows, we have the right to expect more realism and stereoscopic virtual universes.

There are already primitive mechanisms for transmitting sensations directly to the human brain. No doubt in the future to feign external environment will be possible in all details, and the direct impact on consciousness in virtual world first equalize and then become stronger than in external reality.

Mark Stankenburg, director of the well-known American company Image Metrics, said that very soon they will be able to bring to life everything that only a person can invent. Here it is - space for new universes. Improving software will lead to the fact that we just need to talk about the invented world or set the basic parameters - and it will “come to life”.

And one more important aspect: speaking of art, we always assume that we are talking about human creations. Indeed, in the history of the Earth there were no other creatures capable of creating masterpieces. But this state of affairs is unlikely to last forever. And it's not about aliens, although their appearance may change our ideas about everything. Other players enter the scene: robots and artificial intelligence. A similar, albeit very conservative, scenario is explored in the film Bicentennial Man. There, an ordinary “iron” android robot changes its modules for improved ones over the centuries, introduces more intelligent programs into its cyber brain, and even acquires an artificial nervous system. He begins to create new things on the verge of craft and art, and even learns what love is. Reality won't wait that long. Computers are already writing poetry and prose, and musical works, composed by the program, win contests anonymously.

A well-known scientist, a specialist in artificial intelligence, Alexander Shamis, in his book Ways of Thinking Modeling, directly writes: “It is possible that all interpretations of the psychological level will be possible at the level of computer modeling of the brain. Including the interpretation of such features of the brain as intuition, insight, creativity and even humor. So, even if humanity exhausts its creative potential or becomes completely lazy, we will almost certainly continue to be provided with brilliant books, songs and paintings.

In order to get a preliminary idea of the art of the future, you can download the program "Cybernetic Poet" by the famous American inventor (the synthesizer is his brainchild!) Ray Kurzweil. She, for example, reads the poems of some author, then creates his language model and confidently composes verses in his style, many of which are good quality. Typically, poets use such programs as assistants preparing the original poetic material. Another Kurzweil program - "Aaron" - draws with strokes on the screen ...

New trends have, of course, reached the youngest of the traditional arts - cinema. Already now, the battle scenes of big-budget films (for example, in The Lord of the Rings) involve not actors and not their drawn images, but virtual characters with the level of artificial intelligence they need. There are also computer versions of real actors. And it is even known that one of the popular artists (his name is not disclosed) turned to LightStage, which deals with computer graphics. He is now 30 years old, and he asked to model his complete computer double, so that in the future he could "act" in films, remaining just as young.

The article is also accompanied by two small sidebars:

Box 1. Who is made of clay?

Can the myth of the sculptor Pygmalion and the statue of Galatea come to life become a reality? Yes, if Seth Goldstein, head of the Pittsburgh scientific center Intel will get its way. The fact is that he is trying to revive the stone! More precisely, clay - it is easier to revive it. The scientific direction that develops this area is called claytronics.

The point of the idea is to create tiny particles that could assemble themselves into objects. And they must move, holding on to each other. To do this, they will be equipped with electromagnets or other grippers, control chips and power transmission systems. The first prototypes, still four centimeters long, capable of moving only on a plane, already exist. Now the researchers are trying to improve the design and at the same time work out the behavior of future crumbs on computer models. By 2025, Intel predicts, claytronics will reach such a level that a copy of a person assembled from clay atoms will look and move indistinguishably from the original!

This is where art opens up. You can not only design "living" sculptures, but also give dynamics to any objects. Stucco molding that changes shape and color will allow you to decorate the walls of dwellings with “living” flowers, grass and butterflies. We are accustomed to the constancy of textures, but with the help of a clay tron coating, the surface can become either velvety, or rough, like wood, or smooth, like marble or metal...

Immersed in claytronics, a person may be frightened by unusual variability. But opportunities will be more important than constancy. And things created according to a given design will be exactly as we want. The developed claytron world can be considered a work of art. After all, the computers that control our environment will themselves change clay tron objects, adapting them to our requirements...

Robots in Lately increasingly inspire artists. It is worth remembering at least the robotic sculptures of Gordon Benet. Details for his wonderful work Gordon finds among a variety of junk and gives old units a new life.

But perhaps the most unusual (and at the same time so understandable!) Application of robots was found by Magnus Wurzer from Vienna - a technophilosopher and artist, a researcher of possibilities human psyche, and also the organizer of exotic parties in which robots play a very important role. They prepare and serve cocktails, serve customers at the counter, offer them cigars. Wurzer's party-festivals are both entertainment and exploration at the same time.

Until 1999, no one could have imagined using "cocktail robotics" to publicly analyze how deeply Newest technologies penetrate into human life. Nor has anyone seriously attempted to document the practice of hedonism in the relationship between man and machine. The resulting niche in culture is now being filled by the Vienna Roboexotica festival.

Magnus, its permanent organizer, says: “Keep in mind that the future is very active today, it is striving to become the present as never before. And each of us must choose in which future he will live - in the gloomy, post-industrial, described by the forefathers of cyberpunk, or in the cheerful future of "Roboexotics", full of new and ultra-new pleasures and entertainment that new technologies give us.

Over the next decades, we should expect a real breakthrough in robotics, which means that such technologies will continue to help people enjoy life, and Magnus Wurzer's parties will continue to be a success.

Valeria Pride, member of the RTD Coordinating Council, sociologist, futurologist and Ekaterina Kokina- architect

The world is changing. New technologies break into life, excite the minds and feelings of musicians and artists who seek to understand the world around them and look into the future with the help of their imagination. People of art are more receptive than others to any innovations, especially those that allow them to better realize their creative potential. Therefore, biotechnologies, virtual universes and unique cybernetic systems are more and more clearly included in artistic use.

Everyone has their own Louvre

Small revolutions, which one after another shake the post-industrial society, have their unconditional influence on art as well. For example, it is obvious that due to the decrease in employment at work (thanks to scientific and technological progress, we are confidently moving towards a “free time society”), more and more people are fond of creativity. It should also be taken into account that the technologies of crafts and the secrets of craftsmanship are becoming publicly available, and art is becoming democratic. New computer programs have appeared and are being developed, allowing anyone who has mastered them to create with the help of virtual brushes, pencils, paints and various joysticks the likeness of graphic and pictorial canvases, as well as any three-dimensional installations.

This is the simplest and most obvious trend. It is equally clear that neotechnological subcultures will begin to develop rapidly in the coming years. We are talking about hackers, bloggers, communities of file-sharing networks. Finally, the art of flash mobs will develop. However, retroenclaves will also remain, people will continue to read paper books and go to cinemas. Islands of traditional art - historical reconstructions, drawing circles, orchestral music - will partly serve as a psychological defense against the ongoing changes, and partly will make it possible to pass for originals.

Ideas are spreading at a tremendous speed today. The era of global, collective thinking is coming. Books, music, paintings, theatrical performances, thanks to digital technologies, are becoming publicly available. In this regard, a special genre of creativity has been developed - fan fiction, when a well-known work is arbitrarily added or finalized by the reader, listener or viewer. Thus, everyone is involved in the process of creating a work. For example, there are almost half a million fan versions of Harry Potter, and some are more original and interesting than the original. This may lead to the socialization of works of art, and, perhaps, in 2030, children in school lessons will be able to name a dozen authors of War and Peace.

The digitization of paintings and the creation of 3D or holographic models of sculptures, in turn, will allow you to enjoy art without leaving your home, visit many galleries around the world and even private collections in a day. Everyone will be able to collect works of art in their Louvre. Art is gradually moving into virtual worlds, exhibitions are already being held there.

With the further development of technology, the imaginary reality will finally overwhelm the world, the feeling of "presence" in the virtual environment will approach 100%. The smallest changes in color and temperature, the nuances of smells and sounds - everything will be directly broadcast to our brain. And that's when the "crazy" symphonies of gravity, pressure and wind will appear. Remember Sergei Snegov and his wonderful trilogy about the future "People are like gods"!

Let's draw - will we live?

More recently, experiments have begun with ferrofluids - magnetic fluids obtained by mixing liquids and magnetic particles. They create unique, yet small, kinetic sculptures.

As for music, with the advent of synthesizers it became possible to model any sounds, and it is already difficult to come up with an instrument with a wider range of possibilities. And what? The eternal crisis of music? Hardly. Most likely - a further path to the synthesis of arts. After all, even today a music video combines many different types of creativity.

The main task of architecture is the organization of space. However, here too Schelling's famous phrase - "Architecture is frozen music" - loses its relevance. After all, architecture does not stand still, and - in the literal sense of the word: moving and rotating houses, turning artificial trees have already been developed. For example, a house is being built in Moscow, all 60 floors of which will be able to rotate independently of each other.

During a period that is ridiculous from the point of view of history, our computer universes have received volume, realistic landscapes and characters endowed with the rudiments of artificial intelligence.

body art

Is your girlfriend a short brunette? Smart and kind, but not quite your type? However, if she loves you, she will have the opportunity to change beyond recognition. So there will be no ugly people left. Everyone will look the way they want.

Inhuman prospects

Rapidly, but somehow away from the attention of critics, the most important art of the future is emerging - the creation of worlds. And the question arises: is not the whole thousand years of history art is only a training session for the majestic creations of the future? After all, the new world will contain everything that its creator wants: art, technology, science...

Over the past 20 years, as people learned how to create computer games, there has been an imperceptible revolution in the field of creativity. During a period that is ridiculous from the point of view of history, our virtual universes have received volume, realistic landscapes and characters endowed with the rudiments of artificial intelligence. And the variety of plots of these games reflects the complexity of civilization and human relations. As the power of computers grows, we have the right to expect more realism and stereoscopic virtual universes.

There are already primitive mechanisms for transmitting sensations directly to the human brain. There is no doubt that in the future it will be possible to simulate the external environment in every detail, and the direct impact on consciousness in the virtual world will first equal and then become stronger than in external reality.

And one more important aspect: speaking of art, we always assume that we are talking about human creations. Indeed, in the history of the Earth there were no other creatures capable of creating masterpieces. But this state of affairs is unlikely to last forever. And it's not about aliens, although their appearance may change our ideas about everything. Other players enter the scene: robots and artificial intelligence. A similar, albeit very conservative, scenario is explored in the film Bicentennial Man. There, an ordinary “iron” android robot has been changing its modules for improved ones over the centuries, introducing more intelligent programs into its cyber brain, and even acquiring an artificial nervous system. He begins to create new things on the verge of craft and art, and even learns what love is. Reality won't wait that long. Computers are already writing poetry and prose, and musical works composed by software are anonymously winning contests.

In order to get a preliminary idea of the art of the future, you can download the program "Cybernetic Poet" by the famous American inventor (the synthesizer is his brainchild!) Ray Kurzweil. She, for example, reads the poems of some author, then creates his language model and confidently composes verses in his style, many of which are of good quality. Typically, poets use such programs as assistants preparing the original poetic material. Another Kurzweil program - "Aaron" - draws with strokes on the screen ...

New trends have, of course, reached the youngest of the traditional arts - cinema. Already now, the battle scenes of big-budget films (for example, in The Lord of the Rings) involve not actors and not their drawn images, but virtual characters with the level of artificial intelligence they need. There are also computer versions of real actors. And it is even known that one of the popular artists (his name is not disclosed) turned to the company LightStage, which deals with computer graphics. He is now 30 years old, and he asked to model his complete computer double, so that in the future he could "act" in films, remaining just as young.

The article is also accompanied by two small sidebars:

Box 1. Who is made of clay?

Can the myth of the sculptor Pygmalion and the statue of Galatea come to life become a reality? Yes, if Seth Goldstein, head of Intel's Pittsburgh Science Center, gets his way. The fact is that he is trying to revive the stone! More precisely, clay - it is easier to revive it. The scientific direction that develops this area is called claytronics.

Robots have been inspiring artists more and more lately. It is worth remembering at least the robotic sculptures of Gordon Benet. Details for his wonderful work Gordon finds among a variety of junk and gives old units a new life.

But perhaps the most unusual (and at the same time, so understandable!) Application of robots was found by Magnus Würzer from Vienna - a technologist and artist, a researcher of the possibilities of the human psyche, and also an organizer of exotic parties in which robots play a very important role. They prepare and serve cocktails, serve customers at the counter, offer them cigars. Wurzer's party-festivals are both entertainment and exploration at the same time.

Until 1999, no one could have thought of using "cocktail robotics" for a public analysis of how deeply the latest technologies penetrate into the human living space. Nor has anyone seriously attempted to document the practice of hedonism in the relationship between man and machine. The resulting niche in culture is now being filled by the Vienna Roboexotica festival.

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