Steven Holtzman says throw away those 19th-century notions of creativity.
Steven Holtzman looks at humans as mechanisms, a series of neural electrochemical impulses, not unlike the zeros and ones of digital technology. In his book Digital Mantras, Holtzman used this human-machine parallel to find a spiritual connection in technology. With a PhD in computer science, a background in both Eastern and Western philosophy, and successful forays into experimental music, Holtzman is well positioned to push digital media toward greater meaning. Yet his ideas aren't the isolated musings of a pure academic. Holtzman's been around the Valley for 15 years, and his current post is president and CEO of Perspecta, a company that develops search tools for navigating through 3-D visual information spaces. Wired caught up with the fast-talking entrepreneur and asked him how digital media is reshaping our lives.
Wired: Can machines produce art as good as people produce art?
Holtzman: The question should be, Can people create art with machines that is as good as art created with-out machines? The whole thing is a partner-ship. At least until we have created entirely autonomous artificial intelligences.
A lot of artists feel apprehensive about using the medium of computers for their art.
To me, the idea of not using a computer would seem alien. What we're trying to do is express something about the times we live in. Digital technology is a big part of that.
So the artist of the future is a technologist.
Mastering technology is only part of what it means to be an artist in the 21st century. The other hurdle is mastering creative expression, so that art has something substantial to say. Expression has been the one constant among artists from the Stone Age until now. The only thing that has changed is the technology. Today, developing your own custom software is no different than learning to master oil paints. Frankly, it's a lot easier.
Skeptics will say that digital artists don't have the same aesthetic vigorousness as the traditional great masters.
The future will not be dominated by any of these rare individuals who create masterpieces. What's really exciting about the digital medium is that everyone's going to have a computer. Everyone's going to have access. What everyone won't have is the new way of thinking - the ability to immerse yourself in a very fast and fragmented world, and absorb what's going on around you as a unified whole.
What are these digital sensory experiences of the future going to be like?
They are already being created in research labs - elaborate virtual worlds powered with half a million dollars' worth of reality engines. Ten years from now, we'll experience the same on the Web, and it will really knock our socks off.
Ten years is a long time to wait.
Even with all the chip power, we're not there technically. Plus, we need the expressive framework whereby the artist creating these worlds has mastered the medium. Intel's about to come out with new 3-D chips, but the coders and the artists have barely begun to figure it all out.
Will we have fewer deep thinkers in the future because people no longer have the attention span to read someone like Henry James?
Kids who grow up in information spaces using nonlinear tools like Perspecta, and those brought up on MTV's subsecond splices, perhaps won't know how to use a pen to write a story from A to B. But they will have the skills to do 10 things at once and create something where people will say, "Holy shit, that's amazing!" Is this less "deep"? Only in the dimension of traditional linear logic.
So we have a lot to thank MTV for.
One of the interesting aspects of the MTV generation is that for the first time, we felt our senses were being bombarded. MTV gave us a taste of what our potential might be for absorbing intense sensory experiences. The same goes for the digital condition. We'll completely immerse ourselves in virtual worlds, and these rich, multisensory communal experiences will push our brains to leverage functions we've never used before.
Doesn't real life do that already?
There are experiences in real life that are extremely intense, whether it's from being in an accident, making love, or anything where fractions of a second become far more intense than normal. But in virtual worlds, the artist can control the environment for an extended period of time. From this you get unnatural intensity.
What do you mean by "making a spiritual connection with technology"?
People fear digital technology because they presume it's going to take them to a nonspiritual, totally commercial life. But there is nothing inherent in technology that makes it incompatible with spiritual or artistic objectives. It's a matter of how long a new technology is seen as alien. Generation after generation, parents have said, "Jeez, what is that junk my kids are listening to? It's noise." But by the next generation, it's accepted. We've reached this turning point with computers. They are no longer these alien beasts introduced 40 years ago, but an integrated part of our cultural and spiritual lives.
Are there any machines that are sacred?
Those that live and think. None qualify yet.
