The Metaverse Mini Series — Part 2
We continue from Part 1 of the series, we go on a journey to the past to explore the inspirations of art and thoughts that will shape the future of the Metaverse. Welcome to the Future Past.
A holistic timeline of the virtual environments that have been inspired by the concept, as progression and refinement of a certain variety of artistic expression, where virtual worlds and avatars in them are constructed, beautified and edited, bearing uncanny semblance to the description of innovative booms.
Historical Origins of the Future
Written by Harshita Singh
“Necessity is the mother of invention”
This article is an understanding of the rise of the metaverse, a conjunction of the virtual reality of video games and the social reality of man in his physical atmosphere, from the basic and innate human need to be expressive and communicate his deepest personal desires.
We dive into imminent moments of human civilisation to decipher how articulation through art is a driving force towards creating compelling content and meaningful experiences that are coincidentally also the prime objectives of the upcoming future of technology. It is of utmost importance to acknowledge and regard the stepping stones in history which have influenced the augmentation of humans and the definition of being the same in the future. Using the examples of various timelines of the past, I emphasise on how the metaverse is not about separating us from the real world, but instead, allowing technology to blend with reality, enhancing us and our historical roots in that total blended enrichment.
The debate around the relationship between art and science always feels like old wine in a new bottle. The fundamental dispute pertaining to epistemic diversifications and respect for plurality holds true in all cases but it’s essential to focus on how science and art are both manifestations of human attempts to comprehend and describe the world inside and outside us better. Though the tradition and methodology allied to the two subjects may be different and entertain distinct audiences, their motivations and goals seem to converge.
It is with the aid of such elaboration that I aim to nourish the discourse about each period of enlightenment or scientific revolution accompanied by some sort of artistic boom or the other.
Renaissance and the scientific revolution
The development of modern science is considered to be the most important event in the intellectual history of humankind. The period ranging between 14th and 16th centuries marked renaissance under which the radical idea of science was birthed as educated people paid more attention to the power of reason by affiliating themselves to the logic of observation as opposed to the rule of thumb and word of mouth propagated by disciplines such as theology.
The growth of Humanism, during renaissance, as a philosophical stance placing virtue in the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, led to writers, artists and scholars to spend most of their time studying the natural world around them and translating those designs into distinguished fields of science. Thus, Humanism, interest in the ancient Greek writings and experiments in alchemy contributed to the inception of the scientific revolution whose remnants can be spotted in today’s world as well in the form of biomimicry of ideas from the natural world and their adoption in the latest technological impressions. It is drawing inspiration from the ideas of humanism and supremacy of science that the metaverse aims to avoid unleashing the dichotomy between man and nature and works towards unionising the two. The interplay between technology, art and sciences calls for novel pedagogical strategies to foster participatory and immersive learning.
Industrial revolution and the machine age
Billions of years of evolutionary advancement have modified Homo sapiens in such a manner as to indulge themselves in shortcuts and ease of doing things to gratify their pleasures. With the advent of the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, we were dispensed with a wide lexicon consisting of words such as production, mass production, product, by product due to our ability to make things faster and cheaper. The entire landscape of development came to be identified with characteristic features like factories, towers, trains, cranes, steam engines, smokestacks and what not.
Billions of years of evolution have also turned Homo sapiens to be antagonistic to change, feeling pressured by the need to improvise and adapt. Hence, art of the industrial revolutions tends to be situated away from urbanisation in pastoral, plein-aire settings, as a reaction against the speed and metal of the machine age. We witness the blooming of Romanticism, Impressionism, and the Hudson River School to be dedicated to the splendour of nature. David Galernter is an American computer scientist, artist and writer whose apotheosis on the metaverse is structured on the emerging data-centred view of computing emanating from the realm of human control over the natural surroundings with the objective of transforming fractious and frightful elements into domestic ones and to make manageable the power of nature with the help of binary code.
Stefan Sonvilla- Weiss, in his book, ‘(IN)VISIBLE, Learning to Act in the Metaverse’, talks about how the ever increasing possibilities of interacting with computer technology can lead to both tech-utopia and dystopia. He elucidates on how the metaverse is going inside-out which means that virtually controlled sensors are permeating the physical world to help us express our thoughts, feelings, emotions and desires through electronic communication systems. It is comforting to know that the premonitions existing in the minds of the general populace today can be traced to our chapters in history and that today we have the vocabulary to address and ameliorate such concerns with the instruments of expression we were devoid of at that time because not only are knowledge and technology changing incessantly, but attitudes and lifestyles are also becoming increasingly fluid across such developments.
Futurism
Futurism is an Italian Art Movement initiated by poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti at the start of the 20th century hinged on an amusing anecdote in which he met with an accident by swerving his car to swish past a cyclist. By 1910, the young artists Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra and Luigi Rossolo had joined the movement and delineated its ambition to conquer nostalgia and capture the energy, dynamism and speed of the modern world in art as prescribed in the ‘Manifesto of Futurism’.
Futurist artists denounced the oppressions of the past and embraced the celebration of modernity and technological innovations. The most prominent expression of such a celebration can be found in the sense of motion, using techniques such as blurring and repetition, displayed in all the works. Parallels of this Art movement were found in France and Russia. After the horrors of the First World War, the futuristic artists were abhorred and disillusioned by the technology that led to large-scale destruction and withdrew from the movement. This process was referred to as the ‘return to order’.
The metaverse will span the spectrum of such interconnected artistic questions of artistic expression and the maintenance of peace and order through adherence to science and political economics of the future, where the virtual space rife with creativity of the mind and soul will be seen as a symbiotic synthesis of technology and corporeal phenomenon. Consequently, the metaverse will incentivise the opportunity to express through art via the construction of self in virtual environments, for the mind and body to become one in order to pursue a unified goal and bring to fruition, all the aspirations of the painters, sculptors, filmmakers, writers, singers and dancers in us.
Talking about architecture, in particular, where the effect of futurism has been the most noteworthy, Netflix series ‘Abstract’ encapsulates the works of Bjarke Ingels, Zaha Hadid, and other Pritzker Prize winners who had a chance of designing buildings for the Serpentine Gallery and turning fiction into concrete reality.
A bone of contention lingers when we factor in the idea of misanthropy of art, which might compel one to recognize the unhuman attributes associated with ideality, transcendence and immortality. It is to the tune of this understanding that futurism is assumed to be dancing on the song of violence to destroy commonality and the agency of man against machine.
Marinetti wrote, “One must prepare then, for the imminent and inevitable identification of man with motor, facilitating and perfecting an incessant exchange of intuition, of rhythm, of instinct, of metallic discipline absolutely unknown to the majority and yet divined by the spirits of the most enlightened.” He added that to do so, we must “vanquish the apparently irreducible hostility that separates our human flesh from the metal of motors.”
Far fetched as the idea may have seemed, along with being fuelled by velocity and emotions of rage, it moulded the awareness of the artists today to get rid of the toxic repercussions, channelising the poetic ideology of the movement into something productive and worthwhile that only beautifies the life of man and his machine counterpart.
Digitization
The fact that you are able to peruse through this article by gazing into a screen establishes the supremacy of digitization as the prevalent time period. With the ongoing digital revolution, the relationship betwixt science and art has gained a brand new boost. Creating utility and upgrading our ways of life through imaginative exemplification is the holy grail of aesthetics in the metaverse. From 3D printing, interactive art, online art to augmented reality, artists have found a plethora of ways to perform in the technologically empowered platforms.
Chris Milk writes in an artistic statement, “What is interesting to me is the two way conversation between the work and the viewer. The participant is an active character in the content and concept of the piece, and while the technology allows that interactivity, the emphasis is on the experience, on transcending past the enabling innovation to the spiritual immersion.”
Amir Baradaran, Frenchising Mona Lisa, the viewer can position their smartphone cameras over any picture of Mona Lisa and they will see the woman in the image come to life to wrap a French Flag around her head in the manner of a hijab headscarf, an Islamic motif, banned in France, to deliver a political message
Conclusion
Science and art have been impacting each other from as early as man drew his first painting in a cave. Life cycles, illustration of movements, commerce and evolution in the form of symbols, or myriad ways of communications through hieroglyphics represent that one has never been too apart from the other.
The metaverse, this way, is not a fanciful concept, but a design so powerful that it blows through all the paradigms and stands for something. The scale and revolutionary quality of the metaverse envisions such an eclectic mix of the two so that a magical manipulation of a conventional element brings human beings closer together. This closeness will be compounded by a perception of ‘hedonistic sustainability’ in which metaverse as a product will reinvigorate and revitalise the brands and the participants associated with it, through engineering and creativity, that, since time immemorial, have formed the backbone of human consciousness.
I have done gross injustice to this article by mentioning so little about what could be compiled into a whole other body of literature, but I wish to add texture to this discussion in the subsequent article, ‘Philosophizing the Metaverse.’ See you, then!
