Source: Liberation Daily
One
No matter from which point of view, the world today has entered the era of consumption of art culture. In particular, the live interactivity and multi-media advantages brought by digital art with high technology provide a new concept for art creation and appreciation, opening up endless space, so that digital creation, dissemination and reading have increasingly grown into the main body of the art market, and the volume is becoming more and more incomparable to the traditional style. At the same time, with the popularity of the Internet, the cultural consumer identity of netizens around the world has become more prominent, and with the help of sensors, computer collection and processing technology, their dependence and trust on new media communication methods have reached an unprecedented height.
In China, the 49th Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network released in 2022 shows that by the end of last year, the number of Internet users had reached 1.032 billion, and the user usage rate of online video and short video increased to 94.5% and 90.5% respectively. Under the strong impetus of the market, digital cultural products with the help of 5G, AR and VR technology have emerged, such as the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics with digital light and shadow mechanical devices to present the 24 solar terms, and Henan Satellite TV uses 5G +AR technology to combine virtual scenes and real stages to interpret "Tang Palace Night Banquet" and other high-quality programs. The number of episodes produced by digital platforms such as "Aiyouteng" is also showing a blowout trend, and the quality is constantly improving, such as "Hello, Old Time" produced by iQiyi, which won the largest award in the network unit of the 5th Wenrong Awards, and the number of files, total periods and duration of online variety shows such as Tencent.com and Mango TV have also doubled.
Looking at other art categories, the "China Fine Character Library Project" has brought classic calligraphy to life through digital technology, and the dissemination and demonstration effects have been unprecedentedly improved. Digital music has gradually become the mainstream of music consumption, with a market share exceeding that of audio-visual, music books, performances and copyright combined. "Performance" is no longer only one form, with the help of motion capture system and virtual technology, the "digital body" of the real person is projected into the virtual space, through the interactive XR, bringing the audience a realistic immersive experience, and the magical effect of traveling through time and space produced by it is unprecedented in any previous performance. In short, not only have traditional arts such as painting, sculpture and photography been transformed by digital technology and digital media, but also forms such as internet and software art, digital installation and virtual reality have been identified as promising new artistic practices and have gained a firm foothold in the market. As for the use of digital technology by some institutions to launch real-life game experiences, museum scene role-playing and other projects, the diversified and dynamic interactive art spaces created by them have directly narrowed the distance between tradition and the present, and brought people a different cultural experience.
Literature piece, in 2018, the total number of registered authors of online literature has reached 14 million, the Network has become an important channel and even the main channel for the release and sale of literary works, so the number of English translations of online literature has grown rapidly, which has made a solid contribution to the spread of Chinese culture in the Confucian cultural circle and even the entire world. Given that since 2019, the exposure rate of adult digital reading has approached 80%, and more than 70% of respondents believe that digital reading can help people increase reading and recognize that they are the most acceptable way to read; More and more people have begun to contact intelligent creation, human-computer interaction, virtual scenes and immersive experience, "digital literature" has thus become a new growth point of literary creation, its non-linear narrative, non-stable structure, as well as reader participation and multimedia characteristics, subvert people's traditional literature and aesthetic habits and cognition, saying that the ecology of literary creation has undergone revolutionary changes, it is not an exaggeration.
Two
Based on this situation, following the release of the "Cultural Industry Revitalization Plan" issued by the State Council in 2009, the digital content industry was identified as the focus of the development of emerging cultural formats, and in 2017, the former Ministry of Culture issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Innovative Development of the Digital Cultural Industry", which clarified that the digital cultural industry is a priority development industry with cultural and creative content as the core and relying on digital technology for creation, production, dissemination and service. Its rapid technological change, digital production, communication network and consumption personalization and other characteristics, enough to cultivate new supply, promote new consumption, worthy of careful investment. Hengzhi's previous successful examples of various cultural industries and digital technologies can best promote each other, achieve each other, have a high degree of "adaptability", it can not be said that they are the most direct witness to the grafting of technology and artistic creation - dissemination, confirming Christine Paul's book "Digital Art: The Exploration of Digital Technologies and Artistic Concepts" said that digital technology has completely changed the way people create and experience art in the world today.
In fact, since Aristotle divided man's manufacturing activities into "indoctrination skills" and "structural skills", and was convinced that technology would make human life better, to Bacon's belief that all difficult things can be solved by technology, Hobbes's so-called human best interests, that is, technology, and even the social trend of affirming the universality of technology formed in the 19th century, people have long established the concept that technological progress contributes to human liberation, and regard this liberation as a natural unfolding process. Benefiting from the high development of science and technology in the past century, today's people naturally recognize that technology has its natural attributes, there is no good or evil, and will not question the rationality of the above judgment, let alone think that the "limit of growth" in today's world is caused by science and technology, and will not require technology to pay for various social problems from violent crime to climate change. But this does not mean that, as an extension of human organs, or an extension of bodily faculties, technology can completely swing out its subordinate social attributes, because it is ultimately active according to human purpose and will, and is loaded with specific values. Especially when this digital technology causes unprecedented artistic production and conceptual changes, directly affecting and even constructing people's daily lives and ideologies, it empowers intelligent customization and diversified independent creativity, consumption scale growth and cultural dissemination expansion go hand in hand, but also directly or indirectly causes various negative effects including "virtual consumption", "imagination consumption", "symbol capital consumption" and so on, people have reason to call for a new examination of the social attributes attached to it.
Three
Based on this understanding, we would like to point out in particular that the use of computer graphics, photoelectric imaging technology and sensing technology to create a variety of virtual environments with audiovisual touch and smell and multiple perceptions, although it can provide people with a fresh and immersive interactive experience, but in this era of public noise, while enjoying the freedom and convenience brought by technology, people should not face up to the reality from the subject matter, content to communication form, digital technology is forcing back the reality of traditional media, and the resulting simulation is ahead of reality, reproduction instead of production, Finally, people's inner experience and aesthetic perception are integrally shaped by the scientific and technological environment, and then reduced to different degrees to technical appendages to maintain the necessary vigilance.
Look at the various new arts that are currently popular, all of which are flaunting "black technology"; In various network animation and three-dimensional still frame and digital video competitions, imagination shrinks, aesthetic ability deteriorates, and the winners are all technology, and only technology. However, 25 years ago, although people were overwhelmed by the big-scale and large-scale production of "Titanic", they still did not think that the reason why it could far exceed the box office of 35 films of the same theme and the influence of more than 100 novels of the same theme was due to the digital images of the "digital field" of Cameron Stunt Productions. Because when the first wave of shock receded, after years of washing, people found that what moved them most was only the power of love and the courage of men revealed by the film. In another 17 years, Nolan's "Interstellar" scene is more grand, the sound and picture special effects created by high technology are more shocking, and even subvert people's cognition of outer space, and this time technology is not only used as a means - the director repeatedly declares "I hate special effects" - but also immersed in content, such as the most cutting-edge wormhole theory of physics today, but in the end it is not technology, but the noble emotions that people have with him, which is the affectionate glimpse of the father in space to his daughter. It tells us that technology is only technology, it can express art, but it is not enough to reflect on art; What it most looks forward to is to find a reasonable settlement in reality and to be controlled by people full of intelligence, reason and feelings. Especially after multimedia technology, the new generation of human-machine system interface technology integrates a variety of technologies such as computer graphics, simulation, sensing and display, which can interactively virtualize the three-dimensional graphic environment and simulate the scene, thus creating an immersive sense of realism. Of course, this kind of manufacturing can be crowned as "spiritual technology", but compared with the above emotional reality, whether the virtual reality it creates has the "authenticity" that Benjamin calls it really does not stand up to deep questions.
Four
So we should emphasize that just as all online literature is still literature after all, all digital art is still art after all. Technology is about emotion, and there is more humanity behind it. Without a clear understanding of this, it is impossible for people to make good use of technology to serve themselves, and as a result, it is difficult to avoid the crisis of mental space being occupied by technology, until Marcuse's book "One-Dimensional Man" says, "mass production and large distribution occupy the entire body and mind of the individual", originally wanting technology to serve themselves, but ultimately being eaten by technology. Especially at present, the field of artistic creation is full of contradictions of fragmentation, immediacy and classicization, contradictions between standard customization and individuality originality, and contradictions between cultural indoctrination and entertainment consumption.
How long is the accumulation of culture, and how fast is the technological update. In the mutual jaws of these two variables, the confrontation between technical rationality and aesthetic indoctrination always holds people hostage to the front line of choice. As for the generalization, the contradiction between tradition and the present, the contradiction between the digital world and regional culture and even civilization, is a problem that cannot be avoided by any artistic creation in the era of globalization. Therefore, in the face of the increasing impact of digital technology on art production and wider human social life, people need to seriously examine and expand the social attributes of technology, so that in the integration with culture, they are not subject to the identity of tools and carriers, but also the core and soul of the latter. Only by combining such skills and arts, art and Taoism, can we fundamentally avoid the loss of "technological optimism" that idealizes technology absolutization, avoid blindly affirming its social value and development prospects, simply regard technological progress as the decisive force of social development, and even think that this progress can determine the fate of people. At the same time, it is also possible to avoid blindly amplifying the social function of technology due to the high development of the new technological revolution, believing that it can eliminate various social problems and bring about boundless happiness in the quagmire of "technological salvationism".
To this end, it is necessary for human scholars and artists to examine and reflect on the process of industrial revolution and industrialization that mankind has gone through, and to appreciate the critique of technological determinism by the predecessors, including the Frankfurt School. For example, The above-mentioned Marcuse's one-dimensionalization of society and people due to the development of technology, Fenberg's separation of the theory of technological tools and the theory of substance, and Heidegger's definition of technology as a way of showing, which is essentially a definition of the field of truth, not only is not outdated, but is still targeted today. Marcuse's theory is now widely known, and Heidegger's statement that technology aims to obtain maximum benefits, and that if people abuse it, they can only become slaves to technology if they are satisfied with "pure technology" and do not understand the "nature of technology", and are often quoted.
A special point to mention here is Fenberg's point of view, starting from the interrelationship between technology and society, especially pointing out that technology has pluralism, neither a "neutral tool" nor an "autonomous force", but has the same social attributes as other institutions, and as for specific technological products, it is only the "materialization" of a social consensus. The idea that technology is neutral to no value load, and that efficiency is the highest criterion of modern technology is typical of technological instrumentalism. He went on to use the fact that technology is a combination of means and results to affect human life, warning that it will eventually constitute a new system capable of reorganizing all natural and social realities, and that this system will strive to control all and sweep away all traditional relations in order to achieve autonomous development. So in his essay "Questioning Technology: Technology, Philosophy, Politics," he argues that "technology is not just a tool, it forms a culture of universal control." Nothing can escape it, not even its makers." Globally, technology itself is increasingly targeted, and modern technology is becoming an oppressive cultural system that influences all forms of cultural life. On the surface, its existence increases people's freedom of choice, in fact, many times it may cause a split between the human life world and the spiritual world, and even turn people into tools of technology, and his views are worth listening to.
In the final analysis, no technology should replace people's thinking, and technology must ultimately be subject to human control and beneficial to people's artistic creation. In the era of consumption, it is easy to make people laugh or open their mouths, but how difficult it is to make people move and shake their eyes. Whether it is blindly immersed in the "narrative revolution" and "language experiment", greedy for heavy tastes, showing off small freshness, so that the scene is three-dimensional, the characters are flat, or with sincerity, follow life, seek high latitude soul tremor, and take the technical support of grounding gas, it needs every art creator and practitioner to carefully consider. The purpose of artistic creation is to let these colorful lights see people's own plight and inner dreams. You can never forget this purpose. For such purposes, technology is often powerless. Of course, in the face of changes in people's appreciation of taste, how to make real creations overcome large productions, creative subjects sometimes feel helpless and confused. But as Miller wrote in "Will Literary Studies Continue in the Age of Globalization?" "Literature is never the right time", art is never a lucky person who is particularly blessed, it always faces challenges and grows up in challenges.
Today, it is the time for it to face technology with its ideals in mind!
(The author is Wang Yonghao, Vice Chairman of the China Literary and Art Critics Association and Professor of Fudan University)