A Blueprint for Change

New Economy Mechanics

We are fast reaching the threshold of command and control mechanisms in the art ecosystem, education, business and even in government. We need new mechanisms of value and meaning, new ways to understand each other and new ways of being that sit lightly on the earth. Web3, game technologies and metaverse experiences are the closest thing we have to infrastructure of the future. Distributed governance systems, decentralised value signalling and social graphs, fractionalised ownership, peer-to-peer reputation signalling protocols and compensatory networks. These New Economy Mechanics help us to reframe the art ecosystem as both a future-forward community of practice and an imagination canvas.

Our imaginings about cities of the future and the infrastructure that accompany them continue to be constrained by the dominant mindset. SMART city technology is viewed through an instrumentalist lens, driven by functionality that assumes the sum of the parts will equal or succeed the whole. More problematically, we define infrastructure as investment in roads and buildings, in constructed ‘things’, which positions governing forces as ‘infrastructure project managers’. Important yes, but not the whole picture. Not by a long shot.

The status quo sees cultural imagineers and the institutions which support them, focused more on fundraising than creative production, commercialising their assets and access just to survive. And yet in a time of global crisis, it is Art that has the power to transform not only physical spaces but the hearts and minds of people. Imagining the future is how we interpret the world around us — how might Art be the collective imagination infrastructure for a more equitable human society?

A New Social Operating System

We recognise that the polycrisis presents us with challenges — global, systemic and complex without an easy solve. The Regenerative Economy sees Earth and demands that we assume the role of caretakers, but who will teach us? What will move us?

How do we shift social systems from being hyper-individual to more relational and reciprocal? How might art help us to contemplate our worldviews and create new imaginings of possible futures? new stories of what might be possible?

We have the economic and environmental arguments for the critical shift we need to make and yet we haven’t. Perhaps because humans are not computers and just as we vote with our hearts and overlay logic to justify, so too do we need to feel the urgency of this new shift in something other than rational news or written words. Perhaps we need to feel the human urgency within ourselves and on the streets of our collective communities.

What will be the human foundations for this new social operating system?

The underlying challenge with shifting citizen behaviour toward ecological balance at scale, is worldview. At heart, the core problem is that our relationship with the planet centres on production and extraction. Not just in industry, but in the very nature of ordinary everyday acts.

Just as the International Situationist Movement of the 20thC inspired us to rethink the ways in which we interact with the environment through reformed maps which encouraged wandering . . . How might a grand scale societal commitment to art and culture as a means of envisaging alternative models of interaction between people and their environment catalyse a change in everyday worldviews? Art as a cultural commodity has a fundamental disconnect between it’s real use-value as imagination infrastructure, and it’s current economic value as commodity.

A Glimpse of Post-Capitalist Art Futures?

From a systems perspective we see that capitalism produces a standardising of sorts driven by market demand, a financial act satisfied through supply. The creation and production mechanisms of artwork are of no interest to the market system; art has no ‘use value’ inside the system beyond its commercial price.

And yet . . we know it is so much more.

Is our obsession with the production and extraction of value, preventing us from seeing the true value of art?

Roland Barthes’ ‘death of the author’ theorised that the author is not the authoritative figure and the meaning of the text does not reside so much in the author’s intent, but rather in the reader’s own individual interpretation . . surfacing the ‘birth of the reader’ . . and the ‘value’ of the text as necessarily emergent.

What might be gained from reflecting on the value of experiencing art in this same way? What if . . we resist the framing of artwork as an economic asset or a system output, and instead consider that magic moment when a spectator experiences the change from artwork as a material thing into artwork as an experience of being or knowing in a new way. How might this reframe our understanding of art’s true value, not as something that can be bought and sold, but only something that can be experienced. When will we recognise creativity, as a systemic force that can be harnessed for good?

Art as Revolutionary Practice

When we consider the emerging digital art ecosystem, we see traditional notions of spectatorship are being replaced by active participation as viewers become co-creators in the artistic process. Technology will make distributed and decentralised networks of governance the standard rather than the norm — how might this reshape our ideas about access, equity and power? What does it mean to believe in revolutionary art practice, at a time of multiple crises and global struggle for progressive causes?

“When a system is far from equilibrium small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to lift the entire system to a higher order.”

Chemist and Nobel Laureate, Illya Prigogine.

Finding Pockets of Coherence in a Complex System

In time the Art ecosystem has shown itself to be a harbinger of future states. A microcosm of what might be to come as the current system buckles under the strain. The distributed and decentralized technologies of web3 will unlock the capability of Art to realise it’s true potential as a transformative cultural infrastructural force. This might take the form of mutable and experiential spaces that leverage technology to help us all cultivate new ideas about the future, collective imaginings about our place on the planet, fluid spectrums of diverse identity and a sense of place firmly rooted in our local communities.

Perhaps Art is one of the systemic forces that can be harnessed for good, to support collective awakening and mechanisms for change. Perhaps the art ecosystem is a pocket of coherence within the larger societal systems, helping us to shift toward future possibilities. If we want it to be.

Scaffolding Uncertainty

As the world becomes more polarised and people lurch from one vision to another whether it’s techno-solutionism or unregulated free markets or off planet solutions . . the common thread seems to be a shying away from complexity or uncertainty. The challenge when we hold grand scale future visions like these is that we experience overwhelm at every level; it also tends to negate any sense of personal responsibility on the part of the individual. What we need more than anything is the cultural infrastructure to scaffold our uncertainty, without seeking to reduce it or conceal it.
No small task.

How might Art help us to experience and express our collective imaginings for new alternate positive futures?

Art has the power to transform not only physical spaces but also the hearts and minds of people . . to stretch the public imagination and provoke discussion, connection’, reflection and sow the seeds of possible positive human futures. How do we as humans interpret and navigate the world? we story. We tell ourselves stories about how the world is, how it could be and our place within it.

Imagining the future is how we interpret the world around us. We can’t make decisions or move toward the futures that we cannot see. If Artists are our cultural imagineers, what role might they play in inventing, building and reorganising our living environment?

In what ways is future governance a creative practice and where does technology offer a point of leverage?

• How might art help us to contemplate our worldviews and create new imaginings of possible futures?

• How might art catalyse new stories of adjacent possibility?

• What if . . Art shifted from private commodity, to public responsibility?

• What if . . access to Art was a basic human right?

If we believe future possibilities in society are integrally linked to the question of culture… What role do we think Art plays in our ability as a society to imagine alternative positive human futures?

Art as Civic Imagination Infrastructure

Art is one of the few forces which can disrupt the spectacle of capitalist life and yet, we continue to make the act of producing and consuming art, a spectacle unto itself. How might art be a conduit for change?

Our approach to technology has been a bit cart before the horse to say the least. There’s no doubt in the future we’ll look back at some of the decisions (or lack of decisions) surrounding technology ownership, regulation and governance and wish we did things differently. Even in this realm there is a role for artistic experience which encourages reflection on the sort of future(s) we want and the kinds of science and tech we need to bring into the world?

How might Art be the collective imagination infrastructure for a more equitable human society?

///

The Futures of Art in a Post-digital World

This post forms part of a much larger project around 'Post-digital Art Futures', further posts can be viewed below:

1. Exploring the Digital Art EcoSystem : How might the future role and value of Visual Art be transformed in a post-digital world?

2. Critical Tensions and Transformations Emerging within the Digital Art EcoSystem : Will a crypto-based art economy ever fulfil its promise of emancipation from the historical systems of access, power and value?

3. A Hypothesis of Change : Exploring potential forces of change shaping emergent futures within the art ecosystem

4. A New Social Operating System : What role might art play in our ability to imagine alternative positive human futures?

5. Possible Art Futures : Three Stories of (Post) Growth, power, Art, Ecology and Activism
   You can view the extended versions of the three alternate futures narratives here

6. Civic Imagination : Transforming Governance for a Connected Future - speculative designs