Art in the Age of the Algorithm
Social media is an aspect of modernity that is becoming increasingly hard to escape. Just when I thought I was standing my ground against Instagram and Facebook stories, resisting the new craze, WhatsApp stories where introduced; and this time I could not simply log out. As an artist you are always looking for opportunities to showcase your work, to get your name out, and to reach audiences in as many ways as possible. Social media is an incredible way to do just that. In a sense social media is an equaliser of all artists before all audiences. You no longer need some grande corporation to validate your work for it to reach masses, any kind of artist, from the most niche and alternative, to the most mainstream, can have direct access to the kind of audience that would appreciate exactly what they have to offer. Nothing could be better for the budding artist.
That being said, as someone who has spent a lot of time on social media over the years, I have seen many an artist struggle with the pressure of having to keep a consistent social media presence. From world famous pop stars to lesser known authors, artists are struggling to keep up with the demands of maintaining the attention of an audience who’s attention span is becoming shorter by the passing day. As an artist myself I have hopped between consistently using stories to advertise my concerts; and being very lowkey, and absent from social media for weeks at a time. In all of that I still struggle to find a balance.
I cannot deny that social media has allowed me to reach places that I could not have dreamed of from my little corner of the planet, that social media is the reason that I was invited to be interviewed on a Brazilian radio station, and invited to participate in a German talk show, or that I am able to be inspired by the work of my filmmaker friend in Tanzania. But I also cannot ignore the fact that social media snuffed out my early creative leanings, and inhibits my imagination
Of the reasons that I personally took a step back from social media, the first was: time. Time is a resource that is spread across 24 hours in a day. While in another context I might argue that time is a man-made construct, I recognise that we live in a reality where we all agree that our lives exist within a framework of a limited number of hours within a day; therefore how we spend that time is a choice that affects every facet of our lives. The amount of time that I was spending on social media was taking away from time that would have been better spent in silence, creating, imagining, learning, studying, simply being. The artist thrives in those moments of ‘’simply being’’, without those moments the greatest of inspirations would not ‘’be’’, and yet, I found social media snuffing those moments out. I found social media consuming every idle moment that I had, engulfing the spaces between moments, the empty space within which creative ideas might otherwise manifest.
Many famous pop stars have spoken out about how physically and emotionally taxing it is to stay active on social media, how there is a sense to which the performance does not end. They step off the stage and have to maintain their relevance to their audience by continuing the perpetual performance of their lives on social media. For artists still working to establish themselves the level of activity that is required to feed the algorithmic machine is close to a full-time job. Every mundane activity is an opportunity for content, and the ability to concentrate on one thing -an important skill for the mastering of any artistic discipline- is eroded.
Most worrying of all, the algorithms of social media dictate what gets noticed and what does not. Independent artists find themselves spending so much time trying to crack the algorithmic code, curating their posts to match what has been proven to gain the most traction, and in the process often losing touch with their own originality and authenticity.
It is clear that the advent of social media has revolutionised the way that we consume art, it has allowed us access to art that might have otherwise been restricted to its physical location, it has made it possible for artists to represent themselves and to grow their own audience independently. However, for all the time and energy it takes to stay consistent on social media for most artists there are strikingly few returns.
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