Anecdotes on seeing vs. reading, plus some musings on isolation
Whenever I read “serious” texts it makes me feel like a cheat for not reading them more often or for being ignorant of so many great texts. Reading is a creative practice all unto itself, never mind writing. I rarely find time for either, it’s either the ADD or the fact that I am committed to a completely parallel “reading” of images and spatial structures. That sounds like a stupidly pretentious thing to say, but it’s true. If you’re a visual person you spend as much time taking in visual input as an academic might do taking in text.
When I first discovered that I could work visually I stopped reading overnight and spent the next few years taking in visual culture in as large doses as possible. What do you think all these damn “inspiration” Tumblrs are about? It’s pure junkie fix, bigger, better and improved. Too much of it and you’ll go on the nod, over-stimulated and de-motivated.
To think I once had to resort to bi-monthly and hard to find magazines to get news of a rapidly changing world now seems preposterous. Fads and memes could take as long as 6-12 months to filter from California all the way to Norway, by which time the original phenomenom was most likely dead already. Today it takes all of 15 seconds for an aesthetic concept to transmit, maybe 2 days to incubate and a week before you see it integrated in creative output worldwide.
But isolation is often a good thing. Great bands aren’t from London or New York, they just moved there from some less hip place. Most major cultural phenomena sprouted in places just isolated enough that they allow something interesting to grow unnoticed, yet well-connected enough that it is “discovered” when it’s ready to emerge. Electronic music (even the popular kind) is best created away from big crowds, think Biosphere vs. Scooter. Black metal could never have been invented in LA. It might be seen as an ironic style now, but it was an utter lack of irony that allowed it to manifest in the first place.
I occasionally dream of doing a residency in some bleak and sparsely populated area with brutal terrain (Iceland or the Faroe Islands come to mind.) It’s a shamelessly romantic idea, I know, but then Norway has plenty of these kinds of residencies. Obviously, a broadband internet connection would have to be involved. Having to commune with sheep is a little too much isolation.
I know several artists who say that being aware of other people’s work makes them less creative or less sure of their own vision. I’m not sure if that’s just a nice piece of artist mythology or a real issue, but in one or two cases it seems credible. But even on days when I question the productiveness of being a plugged-in social media junkie I would never consider a Luddite reading-books-by-candlelight counter-revolution.
However, I do wish I could take just one hour a day to read long-form texts or books. It would undoubtedly make me feel so smart, reading usually does - more so than any other activity I know of. On the other hand, I would also like to see what would happen if you force-fed academics high doses of intensely visual pop culture, say Japanese music videos. Would it make them feel dumb (as in the “MTV Generation” cliche), or would it cause an interesting shift in the growth of their neuron pathways?
