A good piece of visual art says something important before the culture is ready for a word version. This perception is something appearing faintly on the horizon. Everyone can see it but few can understand what it means or foretells. A visual artist sees it subconsciously, and this vision flows through to the media of stone, paint, pigment or pixels.
Were you with me until I threw in the last one, pixels? The
word “pixels” comes from combining “picture” and “elements.” What a fine
neologism. On the computer screen, they are fleeting, but far reaching. A pixel
created on my computer can be viewed around the world in an instant.
Digital imaging is to the fine art world what the printing
press was to the written word around 1500AD. The printing press introduced multiple
copies, the key to increasing human understanding.
Allow yourself this fantasy. Imagine yourself running a
bookshop in 1500. You deal with a handful of book creators and another handful
of book buyers. If you are successful, it’s a cozy little enterprise. You deal
in books but your real product is scarcity. Your world is a handful of people,
on the supply side and on the consumer side.
Now, a guy rolls a hand cart into your shop, filled with
books! He’s got 50 books and they are all the same book!
What does this do to your marketing strategy? Your business
is no longer elite to elite, it’s from one author to the masses. You wonder, are
there 50 people who can appreciate a book, or, even read in your community? Who
are they? What are they like? Will they appreciate owning a book that’s owned
by 49 other people? A book goes from an isolating thing to a connecting thing. What
do you say to the guy who spent five years copying a manuscript?