A short spoken discussion (YouTube) by Lennon Bone about how social media and cell-phone use affect experiencing art. The speaker describes 'Free the Air,' a four-movement concert-installation in NYC using recordings of spider activity, and poses the debate: do phones help by driving attendance or harm the authenticity of the experience?
This art installation in New York City recently garnered a lot of attention on social media. Free the Air is a concert series in four movements with recordings of the activity of various spider species. And the installation is ripe with opportunity for people to share their experience online. So the question then becomes, are they truly experiencing the work, or are they taking themselves out of the experience in order to share it? And there's two sides of this coin, right? Like, on one hand, this is driving a lot of new traffic to these art exhibits, which I think is incredibly important. But on the other hand, people are criticizing the fact that they're trying to have this experience at this installation, and people have their cell phones out. I'm curious. What do you think, in the modern climate of how social media can really push things out into the world and get people in to actually experience it? Is it a small price to pay to have people around with their cell phone? Or do you feel like people should be forced to have their cell phones put away and essentially, maybe we don't get as many people at these installations? I'd love to know your thoughts.
