Thursday, June 25, 2009

Art for a millenium

Artist and journalist Jonathon Keats has created the longest story ever told for Opium Magazine. Merely nine words long, the story has been printed in such a way that only long term exposure of the magazine cover to ultra violet light will reveal each word over the course of 1000 years.

Keats's work is a reaction to the quick-click publishing and consumption that dominates the internet and contemporary culture at large. That this work has captured so much attention, along with the slow food movement and the resurgence of craft (ie Etsy), tells me that people may be exhausted by the current speed of living.

Among my pet peeves about the fast and the furious are people who fail to read emails carefully before hitting 'Reply All', and friends who won't read my longer blog entries. Slowing down is desirable but, as a generation brought up on video games, I suspect that only heart disease and other byproducts of our lifestyle will force us to operate at a more leisurely pace.

1 comment:

Flocons said...

Quite the opposite. Heart disease will only show us that we have less time than we thought... and we will therefore increase our paces accordingly.