As much as it can seem or sound a truism, a new thing can happen only once. The second time, it’s over, it’s not new anymore.
In the midst of mass media and ultra connectivity, cultural, scientific and technical innovations are showcased at a daily scale. Through smartphones, TVs or computers, new happens before people eyes multiple times a minute.
New in the old days
Prior to internet and satellite communications, the novelty pace was slower. If you think of movies for an example, in theaters, the typical screening time would last few weeks. Customers would need to wait weeks to discover a new set of movies.
Many of the scientific discoveries were related in journals and conferences. Academic communities could update and debate in yearly conferences or throughout the year in monthly and quarterly journals.
Artistic creations were discovered locally, in specific neighborhoods, galleries, art schools, fairs, nightlife places, and presented in museums or through fine prints in books and catalogs.
In these past days, physical, local, production and its discovery by the physical, local, audience had a bound between them. With internet and global broadband communications, the relation between physicality and novelty decreased. Sharing, discovering and debating any kind of digital work has become almost instantaneous and global.
A curation need
With this ability to discover and share content in a matter of seconds or minutes, the hunt for new references, be them recent or old, is an absolute one. While in the old days, discovery was limited by the physical ability to access a content, nowadays, the main limit is the viewing time.
Rankings, lists of reviews, main pages algorithms, provide hints towards which of the digital references to discover. New references can be pursued over many places, digital catalogs, from work or home, without any need for being at the right place at the right time.
Without these boundaries, discovering the best content, as in a classic one or a more personal one, becomes a matter of list checking. Either in bulk or iteratively, users build lists of references and consume them. If not, algorithms do it for them, providing each viewer with its own best new content.
Viral propagation
As things are, users share together their finds. The new of yesterday for User A, becomes the new of tomorrow for User B. Viral propagation over social networks polarizes audience attention to some references and in a way provides users with a meta-list of references.
Why is this list “meta” ? because it is not a list per se, it is a list that builds itself over users in time. Each user builds his or her own list, made of the content he or she discovered through references. Experience in other words.
Although there is an undeniable large choice of content, art trends and formats, even when the digital platforms record large amount of new localized daily content, there is a limited number of meaningful references.
All references are not equal in interest and quality, and from an user perspective, every new discovery comes in addition to previous ones, diminishing further in time their potential novelty.
Due to the ability to discover a massive number of meaningful references in a short timeframe, be it weeks or months, the trend inverses itself : with time passing by and their content consumption growing, users struggle at finding novelty although there are more and more new contents available.
Art movements
In film genres, there is the “meta” one. Metacinema introduces a movie about a movie. Where in a classical movie, you follow the story of characters, in metacinema you follow actors openly playing characters. French movie, Le Mépris by Jean-Luc Godard is a good metacinema example.
It seems that nowadays, art movements build themselves recursively, on top of each others. In painting, faux naif represents hand-painted scenes inspired by video gaming ; in music, vaporwave, trap, countless metal and electronic styles exist through iterative specialization.
The video game industry provides maybe one of the most interesting recursive media creation. Developers build games. Players record their playthroughs and diffuse them over internet. Influencers record themselves watching the playthroughs. Second level influencers, record themselves watching and commenting over influencers watching playthroughs, and, as of March 2023, so on.
Timewise, one hour of watching time, staid one hour of watching time. No matter the level of recursivity, time value didn’t change. The sheer produced content is undeniably new at the time of its publishing, but may not provide any novelty or added experience in regards to its original source. In a way, iterating doesn’t mean creating.
Has Cinema ended ?
Iteration between art pieces is not new. Many books were derived from songs, many movies were derived from books, and songs were derived from movies. While digital users base and demand grow, some industries seem to suffer from answering demand while still assessing creation over iterations.
In 2022, the ten highest grossing films were all sequels. Even the one non american movie making it to the list, The Battle at Lake Changjin II, is a sequel. Checking back from 2012, at least 5 movies over the top ten are sequels each years.
Same goes for video games, in 2022, in the US, out of ten best selling games, ten are sequels or derived versions from main licenses.
That means mainstream culture is made of iterated references. As years pass, the chance for new, as in purely original, references to access the mainstream audience seems to grow slimmer. At some point, the global culture may be flattened out to only few single references, and few of their iterations.
Conclusion
As digital users can discover almost any content, at any time, the hunt for new references, new information, increased dramatically in the past years, as showcased by internet bandwidth usage. It was estimated that in 2022, 65% of global usage was dedicated to video streaming platforms, at a time where concerns rise about ecological effects from digital consumption.
Moreover and as depicted above, there is a potential risk at impacting novelty by simply over consuming digital content. Novelty goes two ways, the one in your eyes, and the one in the publishers one : watching Movie 2, may lead publishers to create Movie 3 and so on. At some point over consuming may just mean consuming at all. Digital consumption is everywhere in our daily habits and may need a wider consideration to be improved, that is, to be used more wisely.
Maybe art should consider new ways to prevail the hunt for novelty by not considering it. Anti-new design principles could be defined to escape marketing based constraints. Enforcing original creations another to open up listings to new themes, stories and heroes.
What are your thoughts ? Are you a newgoer ?
Read my other articles : https://medium.com/@dupamine
