social media vs art
I have been thinking a LOT about the relationship between social media and art. If you follow me on instagram, you’ll know I have a lot of posts, often my story is 10 slides of photos of things I’ve found interest or beauty in. I enjoy photography of many kinds, and enjoy sharing what I see in the world. This year one of my new year’s goals was to really seriously evaluate my relationship with my phone. For me, this looks like deleting social media apps from my phone - I now check instagram and Facebook on the web browser. It’s awful, and keeps me from being on there too long. Recently I had a brief period of having instagram downloaded. I went back to posting on my story, and actually found a lot of enjoyment in scrolling through reels.
Here are some thoughts - you know the deal here, these are raw, inconclusive, unpolished.
Social media addiction keeping us from our artistic practice
We all love to escape into our phones to avoid discomfort. Practice is incredibly uncomfortable, it’s confronting, it takes brain power, it’s emotional, can be frustrating, we measure our worth with how well it goes. Instagram provides convenience in the reward of dopamine to your brain - you don’t have to work for it. This relationship isn’t particularly complicated, I don’t think. We know our phone addictions are bad, and there are a million ways of dealing with this - turn your phone to greyscale, set timers, leave your phone in another room, etc etc. This is the tip of the iceberg for me, in my relationship with social media and art.
Recently I have enjoyed changing the way I consume social media. I consciously choose to watch instagram reels - I call it mindful instagram time - where I actively engage in the content, think about the ideas. I engage with creative videos and not with “influencing”, I talk about what I see with Clarke, and I find I get ideas, inspiration, and creative boosts. This feels like one step towards aligning social media with my ideals - connection and a place for sharing ideas, but not a replacement for in-person community and art.
2. Is posting photos on instagram art?
I think this is a much more interesting and complicated dynamic. One of the times when I redownloaded instagram this year, I saw that they had changed the format of profile pages to make the photos appear as portrait rather than squares. This made me SO angry. Where squares are neutral - a square photo could be of an animal, a landscape, a person, a building or an object, portrait photos = people. It’s like how if you post a photo of a person on IG it’s destined to get almost twice as many likes as a picture of a landscape. I think this is kind of what is going wrong in our world. We are SO obsessed with ourselves, and now instagram is encouraging this obsession with people over everything else in the world. Not to be dramatic, but I think this is the beginning of the end for art. This was the first trigger that suggested instagram is not the place for art. I want to believe that when I post photos I take of my daily life on my story that I do that because I want to share how I see the world, AKA art. But is that really true? Or do I want to manipulate how people see me - do I want to create an image of myself and my values and my life, so that other people can admire me for it? I don’t think I can honestly say it is ONLY the former.
I have been trying to differentiate between my desire to be perceived - and ideally perceived in a particular way (artistic, thoughtful, attractive, successful, fun, funny) and my desire to share art. Is that, to some extent what art is about? Trying to be understood, to be seen for the version of yourself you see yourself as? But there should be a truth to art - one that I think social media is not completely compatible with. Even when we try to be “raw” and “authentic” on social media, is there always a level of illusion, either by the exclusion of parts of the truth, or exaggeration of the truth?
3. How much does art need to be shared? Are there ways to share art that are more fulfilling for everyone involved?
Don’t get me wrong - there is definitely incredible art on instagram. Videos of people dancing, incredible photos, paintings, creative video editing, fashion etc. But I think for things to be viewed as art requires a certain type of engagement from the viewer - a type of focus many of us don’t have when we spend time with social media. The way that social media is depleting not only our attention span but the convenience of dopamine is limiting our ability to be uncomfortable, which many experiences of art are. Art galleries challenge you to engage with art in a slow, thoughtful way, and your feet hurt. Symphony concerts are long and boring, and we struggle to sit still with no distractions for extended periods of time. I often don’t feel like leaving the house when I have tickets booked for a gig. It’s cold outside, or I’m tired, or don’t want to socialise. Staying home and watching Netflix is easier, more comfortable. Ironically, it was a video on instagram I saw that said something about how being annoyed is the price of community - and I think it extends to art as well which is, of course, intrinsically linked to community
