Our society has reached a terrible crisis of the soul. The very devices which strive to socially network us together have driven us away from actual human contact and real experience of the world.

Likewise art has reached a point of serious jeopardy. We are so accustomed to animation and interaction happening in our hand that we do not look at a painting long enough to see the movement viscerally present. Even cinema, theater and video are threatened by shortened attention spans, multitasking, and interruptions from hand held post notifications.

The artist fights against this alienation and seeks to return humanity to a spiritual, truly connected existence. But how? How can an artist engage an audience which refuses to engage art? The artist must dismiss the audience. Not by turning one’s back, but by removing the very idea of an audience. Thus, we transform the passive into the active and the audience into fellow participants. Only those who participate in art, will participate in art!

Technology may be used by the artist as a fire fighter uses fire. Artists must create technology which brings people together in the real world and transforms viewers into participants, interacting with the work and with each other. Thus the artist-technologist shall guide people back into participation with the world and society.

This we must do or else bid our souls goodbye as we recreate ourselves as machines inorder to service our machines and nothing more.

~David Arthur Aronson, July 2013