This is an essay I wrote in 2022, inspired by Kyle Chaka’s 2016 viral essay, “Welcome to Airspace”. After seeing an excerpt from Kyle’s new book on the front of /c/Technology, I thought y’all might be interested in reading this piece of mine, which is less about the design of physical spaces, and more about The Algorithm™'s influence on creative practice in general.
This is a conversation I can have a million times, so I hope you enjoy.
You’re not wrong but that’s not at all what the essay is about. I actually anticipated this how-shall-we-say reddity response in the post itself:
And that’s what I’m disagreeing with. When experimental or edgy art moves into the mainstream, it always gets sanitized for the general public. It has never bled into the mainstream unchanged. Look at the bowdlerization of Shakespeare for mass-market publication in 1818. Look at the literal fig leaves added to works of art for display in the 16th century.
How do you define “bleeding into the mainstream” such that doing is less often doesn’t imply “smaller market share”?
I mean, I explain it in the essay. But picture a Venn Diagram with a big “mainstream” circle, and smaller “artsy fartsy” circle. Now picture them slightly further apart so the overlapping area is smaller, but the circles remain the same size.
Don’t get me wrong, if you told me weird and challenging art indeed does have a smaller percentage of the market share than it used to, I would believe you, that’s just not what the essay is about, and I also don’t have that data to back it up anyway.
I think they also meant to say that challenging art has always failed to bleed into the mainstream much
Yeah I understood with what they were saying, it’s just not at all what the actual post is about.