It's not about the destination

The plan was to put the theory to the overnight test, to consider and and perhaps re-frame the argument offered below.  It didn't come.  Perhaps I was expecting a fully formed argument on how to understand and achieve cultural significance just as the sun began to stream through the blinds.  Perhaps I need darker blinds when sunrise is 4am.

Then today the London Paper reported how St Pauls cathedral has commissioned video artist Bill Viola to erect - or rather his response is to erect - two giant plasma screens either side of the alter. The paper reports that Canon Martin Warner believes they will "add to the devotional and reflective experience of visitors to St Paul's, arresting people's attention and inviting them to pause and reflect." (... before rewinding, pausing, freezeframing selction and fastforwarding to the good bit. Sorry). 

I fully aplaud organisations taking chances.  I like things out of the norm.  And indeed the Church has a long history of artistic patronsism, displaying the intangible, God is love.  It may be the next Sistine Chapel, who's to know, but does a big telly encourage you to pause and reflect? Or do you just see a wacking incongruous thing sitting in St Paul's.

This reminds me of the Scientologists.  Their name suggests they know a thing or two about the digital age and to be fair, Hubbard probably came up with an early version of the Internet a long time ago, albeit in fantasy.  But, it was only a month or so ago that Wikipedia barred them due to an excess of 'self serving' edits.

 

Both of these are emblematic in their own way of what is significant in digital today.  No longer (like in the days of advertising) is the end product the only thing that matters (no longer does the magic of television mean that you only see a perfectly presented end product).  What is significant is the process of getting there.  What is reported about scientology is the active management of their image not the image itself and what you will see on entering St Paul's is not artistic content but the screen itself.

Which is why I shouldn't try to clarify the objective of this blog.  It is the process of writing which is the goal and not the idea behind it.

The King pt. II

First up a quick confirmation about the Facebook fans.

CNN reported that before his death Michael had 80 000 fans.  This is a mere bagatelle when compared with his current fan page.

As an amendment to the previous post, it was his memorial broadcast and not the funeral itself.

More about the point of this blog later.

The King is dead, long live the king

Blogs need to be about something and not be in the tiresome business of re-blogging others' effort.  Which is as good enough a reason not to have a blog as it is to have one.

But something changed today which inspired the beginning of another blog.

Today, Michael Jackson's funeral is to be broadcast live on the Internet.  The expectation is that this will grind the Internet to a halt as people tune in, rather like they did around their televisions on so many other culturally significant events, so many other times throughout history.

You could say that the fact that so many people have gathered to watch it online is emblematic of the age we live in, the new digital age that so many people harp on about, but frankly it's no different to crowding around that home made wireless my father bangs on about building sometime after the war.  We just sit around different things these days.

Now to the point of another blog post, indeed another post about Michael Jackson...

This is actually the end of something more than just the worlds most famous pop star.  It is in fact the the last culturally significant event from a non-digital world.

With the exception of some well reported cases, we didn't really hear about Michael for a few years.  In fact I read that before his death he only had 80 000 fans on Facebook (confirm tomorrow).  This will never happen again.  No longer will an event be so un-touched by digital.

Cultural significance cannot exist without digital any longer.  Cultural significance is what I am interested in.  Cultural significance is what this blog is about.

So with my flag in the ground, the job is now to qualify this.  And I will leave that for tomorrow as I am off home to watch C4 news on my telly.