The Cultural Dissolve

The Internet offers a dilemma to the culture wars. It is both an instrument of preservation and destruction. ISALTA advances Living Traditions in the Arts, preserving the past and promoting the present, evidencing the emergency of new traditions.

But cultural tolerance that once formed the basis for exchange of and understanding of differences, is yielding to cultural dissolve and cultural obliteration. This appears to be occuring within and outside of cultures. Cultural dissolve occurs by the gradual transformation of a culture into something totally different. This actually a natural process that occurs over Time as cultures evolve, but now through the rigorous application of dialectical process, cultural dissolve can serve to manipulate dominant practices and render them impotent and irrelevant. Thus a phenomenon such as HipHop can replace aand transform the previous popular music culture. This latest transformation has been so complete as to completely destroy the fabric of the music business culture in terms of CD distribution of musical materials.

Some see this as an ominous future force, the end of history:

History is ending. I mean, we are to be the generation that witnesses the revelation of the purpose of the cosmos. History is the shock wave of the eschaton. History is the shock wave of eschatology, and what this means for those of us who will live through this transition into hyperspace, is that we will be privileged to see the greatest release of compressed change probably since the birth of the universe. The twentieth century is the shudder that announces the approaching cataracts of time over which our species and the destiny of this planet is about to be swept. (Terence McKenna. Re-Evolution)

McKenna continues:

The emphasis in house music and rave culture on physiologically compatible rhythms and this sort of thing is really the rediscovery of the art of natural magic with sound, that sound, properly understood, especially percussive sound, can actually change neurological states, and large groups of people getting together in the presence of this kind of music are creating a telepathic community of bonding that hopefully will be strong enough that it can carry the vision out into the mainstream of society. I think that the youth culture that is emerging in the nineties is an end of the millenium culture that is actually summing up Western civilization and pointing us in an entirely different direction, that we're going to arrive in the third millenium, in the middle of an archaic revival, which will mean a revival of these physiologically empowering rhythm signatures, a new art, a new social vision, a new relationship to nature, to feminism, to ego. All of these things are taking hold, and not a moment too soon. (Ibid.)

For McKenna, cultural dissolve appears to be cultural transformation and the disappearance of Western values, institutions, and art. Albeit, this appears to be written a decade ago, and perhaps the context of technological connections, extensions, and exchange might temper the millenium madeness that consumed us then.

But the most important agent of cultural dissolve is globalization, a political and corporate ideology that is being implemented to deliberately erase boundaries and create a vast class entirely dependent on corporate suppliers for survival, either for employment, goods and materials, and food. It is difficult to understand why this value is being promoted and thrust upon the world as a fait accompli. This is an old idea, Wendell Willke's One World, anticipated the United Nations as a best seller in 1943. But Willke would be astonished by today's version which has economic fangs from governments and corporations that transcend such documents as constitutions and rule of law within national boundaries. At the heart of globalization is the dissolution of boundaries and transformation of cultures by absorption.

I am particularly attracted to what this means for us as artists. Technology is erasing the boundaries and distinctions among the arts, and process moves art and artistic production more and more to a less materialistic, process-based arts making. The cultural dissolve is extended in the dissolution of traditional arts into a radically different stance, still undergoing change and transformation.

What does it mean to compose, collaborate, perform, and connect beyond boundaries and time through these digital media? The technology we are working on is the technology of ourselves as Pirsig described in Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.