2018 was the year of extreme personalisation. 2019 will be the year of collectivist pluralisation. Personal data will be aggregated around communities of shared interest, education will evolve around crowdsourced knowledge and select groups of citizens will be making societal decisions. And all of this data-driven sharing, crowdsourcing and collaboration will have a big effect on the arts.
Independent production of art will move to interdependent practices. Artists will engage with each other within and across arts to enrich and enhance each other’s works. They will realise that collaboration amplifies their niche audiences and diversifies their offers.
In creative writing, ghost-writing will decline, and fictional collaboration will rise. Collaborative novels will be standard in all bookshops. Literary agents will pursue strategic pairing of high-profile figures with famous writers to drive profitability. The Japanese renga approach (where one poet builds on the other poet’s stanza) will be strong in poetry communities and propagated via social media internationally.
In music, almost no hit will be credited to a single artist. Most popular songs will be a collaboration between DJ/hip-hop producers and famous guest stars. Singers, musicians and music ensembles will combine to present joint concerts and international tours. Lawyers, who have expertise in copyright, licensing and profit-sharing, will be more in demand than composers or lyricists. Social media platforms will allow performers to livestream virtual reality experiences straight to their followers. Music festivals that don’t offer this will be passé.
Private theatre will emerge in tourist destinations, with no divisions between local actors and foreign spectators, and will provide a new way to experience authenticity. In addition, immersive theatre experiences will happen on a regular basis in schools and village halls with locally-produced props, bringing communities together. The success of amateur competitions and TV shows that include members of the public rather than celebrities means more variations and remakes of popular reality television programmes. With cameras and phones collecting every move and thought of each contestant, most popular shows will turn into telethons that raise money for the public-vote prize.
Positive interdependence will be actively built up to ensure financial sustainability in niche art circles. Poets will work together with dancers to co-produce dancepoems. Dancers will co-create their choreography with musicians. Artists will challenge each other’s skills by augmenting their joint piece organically and involving online viewers in the experience.
While in the past, collaborations were separated in time and space, 2019 will see live-streamed and impromptu co-creations in the moment. Nighttime television hosts will be instrumental in inviting guests who don’t know each other to create a duet in front of live audiences. Fans will value and pay more for being part of the collaboration process than owning its product.
Multimedia representation of art that engages all senses, and therefore more actively involves spectators, will be the norm. The entertainment industry will merge with retail to bring people together around a favourite artist and product. Virtual-reality centres that offer 5D experiences will open in cities and replace outdated amusement parks. Museums will enhance their exhibitions with “hyper-reality” experiences.
Art ownership will no longer be an elitist activity, with many more museums and national galleries offering art lending services. Ekphrastic art, in which one artist responds to the art of the other, will increase in popularity. Joint exhibitions and book launches will profile collaborative efforts, bringing together eclectic audiences.
The result of all this will be the beginning of an era of art that is more participatory, more diverse and therefore truly “pluralised”.
Natalia Kucirkova is a senior research associate at UCL Institute of Education
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
