A substitute for the spiritual plane theists believed existed outside of the physical realm of the body, the ‘net was a distinctly human dream realized through technology, says Margaret Wertheim, author of 1999’s The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space From Dante to the Internet.

As this realm of minds and souls was demystified thanks to modern science and Enlightenment philosophy, so was heaven essentially debunked as a part of consensually perceived reality after the middle ages. Wertheim’s book explores this theme as it relates the human desire to separate mind and body, arguing that the modern populous are substituting traditional religion for the promise of a higher digital realm.

Published over a decade ago, her book argues that surfers had found a place for the soul online. The connected Internet – at least as it looked back in ‘99 – presented itself as a believable metaphor for New Jerusalem.

Like God’s heaven, anyone could gain entry – regardless of skin, sex or creed. As heaven promised communion with lost loved ones as well as strangers, users found a space online that promised an end to social alienation with a magnificently efficient new method of communication. The afterlife’s promise of the fountain of knowledge gushed forth vast waves of data at the click of a button. Online dating and primitive social networking provided freedom from the sins and weaknesses of the body.

Ultimately, the afterlife represented an infinite, boundless space where all of the above (and more) could be accessed to your heart’s content.

All of this brought – and for now, continues to bring – calm to humankind’s struggle to locate the non-physical self in the modern world. Though the image is idealized (I’m sure heaven has no equivalent for 4chan or donkey porn), thinking of the younger cyberspace as a modern realization of religious medieval dreams is a convincing argument.

But the Internet is changing.

September’s Wired sees Chris Anderson preaching about an end to the World Wide Web. Mobile apps, online software, social media and independent services – everything but the Web – are enjoying a steady and apparently unstoppable rise in popularity. Sooner or later, argues Anderson, we might not be using the Web at all. Tailor-made, deliberately restrictive applications that connect us to specific streams of information will come to replace the wide open, serendipitous freedom of the cyberspace we’ve all grown up with.

If Anderson’s doom and gloom prophesy comes true – at least for the majority of web users – we’ll be looking at a vastly different information economy in the very near future. And unlike the open gates of digital heaven, indiscriminately open to all and with vast pools of data, the new Internet will be a closed space. The vast openness and freedom that was desired so much in the afterlife would be lost in the digital life.

Entry to the new Internet’s services already comes at a cost. Users must sacrifice their anonymity on Facebook so that advertisers have detailed data about potential customers. Twitter gives communication itself a limit – just 140 characters. iTunes places restrictions on how we use our entertainment media, in spite of our rights as owners. Xbox Live allows us to game with friends as if in the same room – if we’re willing to part with a hefty annual fee.

Willheim argued that humankind conceived of cyberspace in order to facilitate the modern need for a spiritual afterlife. What happens if cyberspace fails to represent that need? What if the Internet becomes a closed off arena of lost potential, sacrificing its status as a limitless space where surfers can browse in boundless freedom?

If at least we accept that the Internet is a space that fulfils a certain need for a sense of spiritual belonging – a desire to feel distinctly human – then something must be done to ensure that this freedom isn’t lost. Substitute the “soul” to mean “humanity”, and Willheim’s argument doesn’t seem so far fetched.

Willheim calls the cybernaut or web surfer “an idealized being, a creature of the ether” (24). They are “angels” through their purged anonymity and their ability to tinker with the fabric of their existence. As both the crowd and composition of digital heaven, these cybernaut angels have the ability and responsibility to affect their surroundings.

Numberless and capable, we can do the same. Start a blog. Contribute to a website. Inspire innovation and change on the Internet. Stop supporting the propagation of closed spaces. Advocate for a place to expand dialogue, spread new information and revel in our interconnectivity.

If we want to maintain a cyberculture that lives up to the dream of a boundless realm of human discourse, Internet enthusiasts will have to work to sustain serendipity, discovery and innovation online. A closed Internet offers none of this.

It’s up to the angels to shape their own domain.

The Internet is a mass-democratizing force that has transformed hegemonically-controlled, formerly private industries into participant-reliant, open-sourced communes. As Wired’s sage Chris Anderson sums up, “The Internet democratized publishing, broadcasting, and communications, and the consequence was a massive increase in the range of both the participation and participants in everything digital – the long tail of bits”.
Anderson’s article, “Atoms Are the New Bits” (Feb 2010), anticipates a new industrial revolution that lies just on our doorsteps. Thanks to the increasingly open availability of the tools of mechanical preproduction, says the Wired EIC, the power of entrepreneureal invention lies within suprisingly close grasping distance.
The next industrial revolution starts, of course, on our laptops and in our social networks. Like today’s bedroom game developers, paperback writers and musicians, tomorrow’s great engineering will be done from the creative comforts of our computers. Creating your own action figure, MP3 player, gadget, or even car, is now quite possible for someone with entrepreneureal ambition.

Simply patent a product, design it using a free tool like Google’s SketchUp, crank out a prototype on a $1000 MakerBot 3D printer and then outsource production to a factory in China (or the US, if your purse strings are looser and ethical standards tighter).

Naturally, it’s not as simple as the product being made for you without intense personal effort, fresh ideas and signficant know-how about engineering and design – but the simplicity of creating a professionally competitive product from the comfort of your laptop truly is awe-inspiring.

What the article really represents for me, though, is a rallying call for the laptop creativity that has been possible for years now.

Granted, I’ll never make my own car – I don’t even have a driver’s license yet, for peat’s sake – but I’m more than capable of trying my hand at more artisically diverse areas of amateruism. Being brutally honest, I think the only thing that’s stopped me from designing my own videogame, recording my own album or just plain writing my first novel is a lack of ambition and a surplus of laziness. What’s your excuse?

While free tools like Blender and the aforementioned Google SketchUp enable us to design technological prototypes – if we have sufficient knowledge of the science and art of preproduction – tools for the creation of music, websites or videogames (Audacity, WordPress and Adventure Game Studio, to respectively name a paltry few) offer enough tutorialising to be mastered by a person with only marginal knowledge of the technical eccentricities of each medium.

I suppose the only other factor holding me back – aside from the previously discussed lack of general resolve – is the sense that I won’t be able to accomplish either A) Something beyond amateur quality or B) Something that hasn’t already, in essence, been done before.

It’s this latter point that has my mind at its most brainstormy. Beyond focusing on the democratized nature of new creative tools, “Atoms Are the New Bits” also focuses further on the democracy of the idea process itself. Rather than just restricting the creative process to a single individual – the bedroom developer – the Internet makes it possible to connect with other like-minded inventors – or just interested parties – in order to crowd-source the creation of an artistic product into a collective effort.

Inevitably, point of anxiety “A” (the fear of creating something of merely amater quality) becomes greatly reduced if quality control can be enhanced through democratic evaluation and teamwork.

The independent videogame development community has done this for years – as evidenced in the mod community (Counter-Strike, anyone?) and in various titles produced by virtual studios. By virtual, I refer to bedroom developers that collaborate online from different physical locations, putting together a team-made product without actually sharing an office.

But there are still key differences between many solo bedroom developers, and virtual studios.

Zombie Cow Studios’ Dan Marshall, who put out the brilliant point-and-clicker Time, Gentlemen Please! last year, used the amateur-friendly free software suite Adventure Game Studio to put together his polished gem.
Meanwhile, virtual studios tend to use tools designed more for those with significant know-how about game development. The previously virtual Unknown Worlds could only put together Natural Selection, the critically acclaimed original Half-Life‘s multiplayer mod, with team members formally educated in coding, 3D design, artwork and sound engineering.

I think that there’s a gap here that’s just waiting to be filled. Solo bedroom developers could work with other enthusiasts – or just straight-up fans – to put together crowd-sourced games. Sure, to some extent, this is already being done – case in point, Toronto’s Artsy Games Incubator.

But what about involving an entire community in the creation of a game – and not just those with an interest in games development, however amateur? Why not find more ways to involve consumers in the creation of their gaming products?

Why design a game all by yourself, when you could enlist the help of your friends?

With the incredible network capabilities afforded by social media, this is truly possible today. And your friends don’t even need to care about videogames.

Threadless allows anyone to put their own art on t-shirts, to be sold cheaply on their website, creating a democratic environment for fashion. Joe Average, who never dreamed of making his own t-shirt – nor thought that he wanted to – can now participate in an activity that was previously closed off to him.

Videogames, today’s fastest growing popular medium, are just waiting for such mass-enabling of involvement.
The creative elements of a game could be crowd-sourced in a similiar way. As Threadless (or car company Local Motors, profiled in the Wired piece) has proved, democratic involvement through the Internet is a great way to let potential consumers do your work for you. Cynics might call this opportunistic slavery. I think of it more politically – why wouldn’t game-purchasers want to tell you exactly what they want to get out of a product?
Game developers could ask for character design submissions for a game’s principal avatars. They could crowd-source sound effects, or voice acting, by asking for audio submissions from the community.

Working in the opposite direction, a game’s assets could be shared online – textures, skins, etc – and then a game could be comprised solely of user-created levels.

All that any of this takes is a forum… but a more interactive, user-friendly website that caters to separate game elements could surely be devised too; something that allows for more than just discussion, but active participation in the creative process.

Naturally, some of this is starting to sound a lot like Little Big Planet. But I’m thinking of something alltogether more appealing to the average gaming fan – the one who wants to participate in a few creative parts of game development, but not get their hands dirty. Face it, if you’re a LBP owner, chances are you haven’t actually had the patience to put together a quality level in your own time (perhaps that’s just me). But wouldn’t you love to give your ideas to the person who does?

The rising popularity of videogame website Giant Bomb has made me keenly aware of a phenomenon that exists uniquely in the medium of Internet content. Giant Bomb – like many other popular sites today – is a site that focuses on community-generated content. Users submit content for gamewikis , upload screenshots and do just about everything, except for video reviews (which are created by the sites editorial members), that corresponds with their virtual hobby.

It’s an approach that combines and borrows the primary elements of Wikipedia and Gamefaqs, essentially fostering content that is supported extensively by users. Users who submit frequently enough can get onto a “top users” board, garnering a little street cred and the respect of their fellow user friends.

With such a user-centric style, Giant Bomb’s approach is one that puts community at the top of the pedestal. Users’ submissions aren’t relegated to the dungeons of forum land. Posts aren’t reduced to a “user blogs” section, as we’ve see on sites like 1Up andGamespot . User submissions are as essential to the site as content created by paid staff. Users, unlike the journalists that created the website, submit content not as a way to make a living, though. They do it out of

But how fair is it for a site’s primary content to be created by unpaid contributors, while publishers and site staff bring in the money?

Some might say that this approach, if taken to far, could step on some unethical ground.

Now, community-generated content is hardly a new thing. Wikipedia, one of the most popular sources of information in the world, is put together entirely by regular people who submit content. But Wikimedia is a non-profit organization. The website doesn’t sell ad space.

Users therefore don’t feel slighted to have their content displayed in a free, public space, where business and profit-building are not a factor.

When money and advertising are involved though, things get complicated. I think of adverts as a transaction of money – if I were to host ads on Society Eye, I would be making money off of readers, which I consider a transaction from you to me. Which doesn’t sound fair. Advertising on websites is a transaction of virtual dollars. After all, when advertisers pay to put their ads on a site, they can reasonably expect to recoup their expense in the form of sales as a direct result of said ad.

Information websites that do host ads, then, are out there to make money out of readers. Which is more than fair if the site creators are sacrificing their time – like with a real job – to create content for us to consume. We ought to pay for the product in some way, so “advertising dollars” is a suitable exchange, compared to paying money to view content. The economy of web journalism is based on this. We expect to see ads in exchange for information.

But what if the information is essentially our communal creation in the first place? Surely this is an ethical dilemma to be faced in the near future, as more and more websites put community on the same pedestal that sites like Giant Bomb do.

Giants like Youtube or College Humour are very guilty of this; the ethics of viewing communal content at the exchange of virtual dollars always been my problem with the sites. Apart from a few original, site-created videos, these sites are comprised of videos submitted by users. Sure, our virtual dollars are going towards the maintenance and upkeep of the sites, to allow the community to participate in the phenomenon in the first place – but the real tension is that these sites are businesses, and many users are unaware of this fact.

This slave-community phenomenon is strongly reflected in blog culture. Gawker sites like Kotaku and Gizmodo are placing increasing emphasis on the importance of user comments. A “star” system implemented freshly this year gives prominence to comments by users proven to be intelligent and articulate. As a result, often the quality of the sites’ comments is as good as the content of the blog articles themselves. Readers like me, then, will read a blog article and then scour the comments for even better insights and opinions about a given topic. Comments are a part of the blog – no longer an ambivalent add-on that functions to appease the rants of attention-seeking plebs. Just like the user-generated content on Giant Bomb orWikipedia, the blog commenting community serves as an important additional layer of information that we as consume as readers.

As journalism tries to find a way to make money off of their audience, the Internet and its communities are growing. Readers want their information to be quick and comprehensive: something that understaffed websites can’t compete with. If the trend of user-generated content continues, therefore, it’s likely we’ll see even more websites relying on their readership to fill in the blanks.

It’s vital that sites don’t take advantage of their users’ contributions to content. To do that, they’ll have to find ways to pay their users back for their efforts.

David Bowie. Boy George. Eddie Izzard. Quentin Crisp. Nicky Wire. Antony Hegarty. Most of these men are household names in the United Kingdom. And they all have one thing in common: they’re ‘gender benders’. Whether it’s by style, mannerism or personality, they as androgynous symbols challenge the gendered norms assigned to society.

Regardless of their eccentricities, they’re respected artists and creative types, the kind of celebrities regarded as forward-thinking example-setters.

I’ve called them ‘gender benders’ to give them a vague group label—but their reasons for transgressing expected performative roles are far from synonymous.

Manic Street Preachers bassist Nicky Wire, for example, simply enjoys wearing dresses on stage because they remind him of his mother, who he is very close to.

Comedian Eddie Izzard dresses in drag during stand-up routines, simply calling himself “a lesbian trapped in a man’s body” rather than identifying with any fixed orientation.

And Bowie – who has referred to himself both as “bisexual” and a “closet heterosexual” – used androgyny as a device for social change and creative expression.

None of these men are freak-show attractions. They’re just people. In the UK, the media accepts such celebrities – because they’re talented singers, actors, and artists.

Canada just doesn’t have this.

Popular celebrities in our country are rigidly on either side of the line: homosexual or straight. There’s no ambivalence.

The Canadian characters that do push boundaries are either kept to the side or presented in a box with a familiar label. Transgendered folk singer Rae Spoon – well, have you even heard of him? And Peaches, though outspoken about her open mentality towards sexual orientation, is packaged more as a titty-sucking shock-value pornstar than a talented artist.

But why is this? While Canada has a proud artistic culture, the creative side of its personality is overshadowed by the consumerist conservatism of the States – where Janet Jackson can’t flash a bit of boobie and androgyny is to be mocked, not accepted; where labels are expected on people just like products on a shelf.

In the same way that your average Canadian pays more attention to the MTV Video Awards than the Polaris Prize, too many eyes are diverted away from the freedom of expression we could have in Canada.

It’s important for pop culture to not only give these figures a stage, but to present sexually ambivalent individuals as a welcome part of our society.

Originally published October 23, 2009 in Blueprint Magazine.

Mention the word “network” to any gamer, and lan parties, voice chat and multiplayer deathmatches are the first things that typically come to mind.

Amazingly, a microphone headset isn’t the only way to converse with the outside world. Networking, you see, can also comprise the simple act of connecting with other like-minded people face-to-face.

Enter Gamercamp, a new event that aims to educate and inspire Toronto’s indie games community through discussions and demonstrations of all things videogames.

Organized by Mark Rabo and Jaime Woo, the event features speakers such as flash-based ninja game N creators Mare Sheppard and Raigan Burns and game-a-week developer Michael Todd. Later in the day, gamers can “network” the old-fashioned way during an evening of freeplay at the Replay Arcade Museum. All in all, it looks to be a great way to interact with Toronto’s blossoming indie games community.

Mark took time to answer some questions about the event for Society Eye. Lucky you!

Is this the first gaming-orientated event that you’ve organized or been involved in? Why are you organizing it?

Yeah it is our first gaming event. Jaime and I are just two gaming nerds who wanted to be part of the community. We also work in creative fields and are very much interested in all aspects of creativity so it’s been alot of fun putting together something like Gamercamp.

What qualities do you think it takes to make a good community for indie gaming enthusiasts and developers?

Accessibility is the most important I believe. It’s what ensures the community keeps growing. Events and gatherings need to feel open and friendly and not cliquey and elitist. From what I’ve experienced so far, Toronto has done this very well with events like Artcade at CanZine held earlier in November.

Toronto is host to a very active gaming scene, with gatherings and organizations like the IGDA, the Hand Eye Society and TOJAM. What will Gamercamp bring to the table?

Absolutely, the gaming community here in Toronto is extremely energetic and passionate. From the start we wanted to create something that contributed and didn’t compete with something already out there. We saw there was not much talk specifically about the art, creativity and history of gaming so we formed Gamercamp around those three areas. And these things have never been more relevant than right now. As in the ’80s, development and distribution tools are in the hands of individuals again in the form of platforms like the iPhone, XBLA and PSN. Early games were hardware constrained and had to be fun because the graphics alone sure weren’t enough to keep your attention. Similarly these modern platforms have constraints that also require designers to distill down to the fun bits. There’s something really beautiful about a game so simple you can’t believe you didn’t think of it but so fun you can’t believe you’re still playing it at three in the morning.

It isn’t just Toronto’s indie gaming scene that is building steam. Big developers like Rockstar and the upcoming Ubisoft office add to the hype. How can the indie and professional scenes work together to raise Toronto’s profile as a gaming mecca?

All gaming careers start with one person and some curiosity. The current console games are so epic in scope that many kids look at them and get discouraged about game design; it feels out of reach. But there’s a huge community of game makers here in Toronto that are working in very small teams on super fun and simple games. Many of them like Metanet with N and N+; Queasy Games with Everyday Shooter; and most recently Capybara with Critter Crunch on the PSN have achieved considerable commercial success. The key is to reach the upcoming generation who are interested in games and show them that it all starts small.

With regards to the big developers, they see the talent in Toronto and realize this is a great pool of talent they can hire their next waves game creators from. For indie developers, they provide the resources to realize those big, epic “next-gen” game visions. It can be a very symbtiotic relationship if everyone appreciates the importance of everyone else.

“Bedroom” game developers can often be quite independent and insular. How important is it for them to reach out to fellow creative types and what can Gamercamp do to facilitate that?

Extremely important of course. No one can be expert in all the skills required to make a game: art, sound, programming, marketing, etc. You can make a game on your own but joining forces can greatly benefit the quality of your game (and be a lot more fun). We designed Gamercamp to have a really relaxed and open atmosphere where people would feel comfortable meeting and connecting with each other. And the open-stage demos where game designers will be showing their games in progress to get audience feedback add to the tone that we’re all here to learn and grow.

Thanks for your time Mark!

Gamercamp starts at 1 p.m. on November 21 at Lower Ossington Theatre and costs $15.

King Charles

At first it looks like this long-haired-and-beardy chap has got a Devendra Banhart thing going on, but then he plugs in an electric guitar and gets all rock epic on our faces. For some reason, he reminds me of Prince. That is always a good thing.

View “Time of Eternity”  video here (sorry, no embedding allowed – but this song is amazing)

Local Natives

Label mates with last week’s Mumford and Sons as well as popular dance rockers White Lies, Local Natives like their Fleet Foxes chanting and shoe-gazing pastoral. Between you and me, they’re not actually British (they’re from LA), but they’re only signed in the UK right now. They will be playing in Toronto on Nov. 24 at El Mocambo if you want to see some post-colonial pop in action.

Jeremy Warmsley

Warmsley has a good chance of breaking into the mainstream with poppy numbers like “Dirty Blue Jeans”, but the kid’s got more depth to him. Elsewhere, like on “Loose My Cool”, he comes across like a more sanguine Of Montreal. Or on other tracks he’ll break out the 808 and sound (and look) like a techno tinged Graham Coxon.

(Spoiler alert for Quention Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds in effect)

Eli Weisel’s Night is the archetypal holocaust novel. It was the first account of its kind that presented a narrative of the experience of the Jews living in Nazi-occupied Europe. As such, its influence over the succeeding stories that have become a part of the wider narrative surrounding the genocide is immeasurably vast.

With any archetypal narrative, the succession of media that follows tends to either directly continue the semantics established by the founding narrator, or consciously diverge from said pattern.

Radu Mihaileanu’s Train of Life, a French comedy from 1998, and Quentin Tarantinos’ latest blockbuster Inglourious Basterds (2009) both take the latter route. In doing this, not only do they diverge from the popular narrative, but also from the undeniable facts of history. They are fantasies, but their escapist, idealized storytelling doesn’t just serve to pose “What if?”. Instead, they reflect back on the reality of the holocaust as we know it, and allow us to question the very archetype that Weisel established in Night.

The primary narrative pattern that both films diverge from is that of the characterization of Europeans Jews as passive, helpless victims.

The Night narrative begins with them being unaware – almost blissfully ignorant – or their impending fates as they live in their villages, then ghettos. They submit to authority when it rears its face, allowing themselves to be subordinated by the flash of a gun and the tenor of an authoritative Nazi officer. Like cattle, they are pushed into trains in bulk, and shipped off to their manufactured deaths. If the holocaust was a death machine, in Night, the Jews are swept helplessly off of their feet and placed on a conveyor belt.

Each movies responds to this passive stereotype in a different way.

In Inglourious Basterds, the Jews are given ability to protect themselves. Where the power of the weapon instilled fear in the Jews of Night, the Jewish American soldiers – and most importantly the European Jew Shosanna – reverse the Nazi dominance by possessing weapons of death themselves.

And with these weapons – whether its a baseball bat, a carving knife or a Tommy gun, the Jews enact vengeance, reversing the Nazi power of persecution. Brad Pitt’s character Aldo Raine and his team of Basterds mark the Nazis with a symbol just as Night‘s Jews were marked with the Star of David. But the imagined Nazi mark is permanent – a swastika carved into their foreheads.

The Jews of Inglourious Basterds are no longer burnt alive; instead, it is the Germans who are turned into cinders and mass executed by a firing squad. Shosanna burns her theatre down, trapping the congregation of high German authorities inside while the Basterds gun down anything still moving. A metaphor of public atrocity in a private space.

By the film’s end, the Jews have not only reversed the Nazi persecution: they have won the war, killing Hitler, Goebbels and the rest of the Nazi death machine.

In Train of Life, a group of Jews escape from persecution by posing as a fake concentration camp train, compete with pretend prisoners and Jews in Nazi disguises.

Rather than staying put in their village to await their fate, this movie’s Jews cooperate as a group and out-smart the Nazis (rather than out-brawn them, as in Inglourious Basterds).

Train of Life‘s Jews reverse the power of the Holocaust by placing structures of selection and difference-making in their own hands. They separate into groups – Nazis, older rabbis, lovers, communists – and much of the film’s tension comes from the internal problems of the group as a whole – even taking the Nazi’s ability to be the “enemy” out of their hands.

The film’s sad ending – where we see the protagonist Schlomo in a concentration camp, revealing that the narrative was simply a fun fantasy in his mind – serves to show the impossibility of evading persecution.

In these movies, the Jews become active in their fates, instead of passively accepting death.

Both films have faced criticism. Inglourious Basterds can be seen by many as insensitive, boasting of an American superiority: i.e., if the Jews had been ‘Americanized’, they surely would have fought back and the holocaust could have been avoided.

Likewise, some have criticized Train of Life of trying to find humour in atrocity.

However, both films are fantasies, and make this very clear. They carry no pretense that their events ever actually took place, nor that they could have been realized. The Jews (and the Gypsies) didn’t escape Germany by train. They didn’t enact revenge and kill Hitler.

By showing us the Jews in an active role in a fantasy setting, the films show the sad facts to us: that the Jews didn’t escape, because they couldn’t. They didn’t fight back (at least not to the extremes Tarantino imagined), because they couldn’t.

For those that look at the Jews’ passivity in the face of annihilation with disdain and disbelief, failing to sympathize with Night‘s helpless Jews, Tarantino and Mihaileanu ask us: what else could they do?

I’m talking about modern visual art, in this case – as I think we can agree that pretty much every person has some appreciation for some form of art, whether it is movies, music or literature.

And when it comes to modern art – paintings, sculpture, etc – I tend to find myself situated somewhere in the middle of this range of endearment.

Modern art, or popular conceptions of it at least, is epitomized by its movement away from classical modes of visual representation. Moving through cubism (Picasso), surrealism (Dali), and likely a multitude of other artistic modes that I’m entirely ignorant of, things have steadily moved away from art as a representation of beauty into art as a self-reflexive study of its own capabilities of expression.

When your average pleb (like me) thinks of contemporary art, then, they toss up images of bleak minimalism, pop art and abstract blocks of colour.

Artists like Peter Halley,

“Six prisons in color”, 2004

Or Theo van Doesburg,

“Counter Composition V”, 1924

Or Joseph Beuys.

“Fat Chair”, 1964

If I were to tell you that Halley’s artwork is inspired by Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and the hyper-real, well, things might get a bit more interesting. Likewise, if I were to tell you that Theo van Doesburg was also a talented impressionist portrait painter, it might make his other art seem a little more expertly crafted.

But ultimately in these examples, a sentiment permeates many of  us along the lines of: “Oh, I could have probably done that myself.” Though expressive once a context is provided for us and we are given the tools for analysis, this art doesn’t smack of the talent required to paint a Mona Lisa or sculpt a Venus de Milo.

Not to discredit the art or the artists themselves, of course. The examination of the essentials of form and colour in visual art can be fascinating. The problem that contemporary art faces, though, is that not enough people share this sentiment.

What modern art can do to combat this derisive attitude is give more attention to the contemporary artists who are changing the way we can think about the medium – and doing it in a completely mind-blowing way.

Tom Deininger is one such person. The image below looks like an extremely detailed – perhaps photoshopped – collage made into the countenance of Marilyn Monroe. Take a look at it and then watch this video.

“Marilyn Monroe”, 2001

Evidently, Deininger has taken household objects like wires, broken electronics and jewelry and used them to create a stunning sculpture when viewed from the right angle. He’s a trash artist.

Willard Wigan is another artist who is dramatically shifting our conception of human ability for expression. He creates microscopic figures and objects within a fairly unconventional canvas: needle heads and eyes. I use the term microscopic quite literally – see for yourself:

“Statue of Liberty”, 2007

This  interview explains how Wigan creates his incredible work, and provides interesting biographical details that explain why he creates this art in the first place.

(It also has some of the funniest news quotes I’ve seen in a long time. Wigan on sculpting his miniature masterpieces: “It’s misery.” On an accident while creating an Alice in Wonderland in the eye of a needle: “I think I inhaled her.”)

Wigan’s unbelievable art conveys a subtle message: that even amazing things can come in small forms. I find this especially pertinent in the “bigger is better” mentality that seems to exist in the West. His art implies that what the eye can’t see can still be beautiful – a nice message to bring into our lives, no?

Elsewhere, astounding modern art is found in the most unlikely of places: the science lab.

Lars Bech’s art (below) resembles the abstract expressionist art that we’ve come to ignore through oversaturation in the past century. The twist is that it isn’t a painting: this is a photograph of a chemical compound.

“Doxorubin in methanol and dimethylbenzenesulfonic acid (80x)”, 1996

This astounds me because of the artist’s ability to capture the beauty that evades us in the world. He engages our appreciation of what the world holds that we can’t seem to see by ourselves.

Too often, people use art as a way of simplifying the world around them. Or, rather, it is poor art that does this for them.

Art is best used in order to show how complex, incredible, and truly overwhelming the world is. It shouldn’t simplify, summarize or reduce the world as we know it.

As we see in artists and visionaries like Deininger and Wigan, good modern art revels in the world’s complexity – showing that even the simple things in life can be complicated.

For modern art to stay relevant to the masses, it has to amaze them.

The Agitator

Rapping spitfire lines like “We can’t afford to hesitate, now it’s the time to agitate”, The Agitator remind me a bit of Death from Above 1979 if they were British and only had a drumset. Definitely worth checking out if you want to hear something oddly paradoxical, i.e. epically minimalist.

Mumford and Sons

With their bluegrass banjo twang, Mumford and Sons certainly have an interesting sound for a UK band. But they really make it work by nestling into familiar pop territory, emulating the epic Brit rock we all love – eventually sounding like Damien Rice but with bigger balls. Quickly starting to sell out their UK shows, it’s safe to say Mumford and co. have a lot of good music in store for us.

Alan Pownall

Heading up a line-up of new talent at the Royal Albert Hall during London’s Music Week is Alan Pownall, who sounds like a poppier version of our own Royal Wood. Pownall supported popular singer Adele on her nationwide tour and is set to release a debut album next year.

Check out his acoustic cover of Kanye’s “Love Lockdown” (below) for something pretty special.

At 23 years old, I’ve grown up with one major interest, and one major disinterest.

I’ve always loved videogames. And I’ve never liked sports.

As a toddler, you were more likely to find me orchestrating massive toy battles in my room than tossing the pigskin with poppa. At junior school, the only ‘plays’ I put together were on the stage, not on the field. And my teenage years found me catching up with the net’s bountiful centuries of downloadable music instead of catching soccer balls in net.

My disinterest in sports has undoubtedly resulted in the current state of mental, physical and social retardation I suffer from. And I’ll admit it’s in these areas where I see sports having its most beneficial impact on society.

On the fields and playgrounds, kids learn valuable skills to prepare them for the big scary world. Things like teamwork, leadership, goal-centric thinking and conflict resolution. The mere act of cooperating with teammates to get a ball in the back of a net, against a series of problems and opposing forces, is a carefully coordinated training ground for real life.

There’s also something all-together more subtle that sports can teach us: the thrill of doing something unexpected and unique in order to succeed. If this isn’t a microcosmic version of the kind of knack required to succeed in career, love life, finance, etc, then I don’t know what is. If sports can be such an applicable metaphor, then it must be considered art. This is what creativity’s all about, after all – doing something new.

So, I’ll admit – I’m deficient in many of these skills because I’m deficient at sports. But I’d argue that many adults with an high interest in sports are guilty of even worse: of forgetting the fundamentals of what makes sports relevant in the first place.

At the gym, with its legion of television sets, my brain is bombarded by more useless sports data than one could fathom.

Scores from every sports match-up across the country! Viewer polls to predict game outcomes! Carson Palmer’s total passing yards!

When made into a barren set of statistics, sports becomes a bastardized version of itself. I’d like to say that sports fanatics just consume this data as a buffer to actually watching something in action, but that’s just not true: this useless trivia simply over-floods the sports media they enjoy watching.

By losing sight of the fundamental qualities that sports can bring out in people, fans become so far removed from what is actually of any importance in sports – and any relevant link to their lives is severed. It may shock sports fans to have their first love called “art” – but it’s true, if art is just a way for symbols to reference reality.

As a gamer, it angers me when these peoples’ attitude towards games are assimilated by this ridiculous obsession with statistics and “battlefield” data. Turning sports into nothing more than a glorified competition.

It leads to such annoyances as online gamers bragging about their kill/death ratio on Xbox Live. It fuels the “console war” flames where anti-aliasing and bump-mapping are all that matter. It encourages Soulja Boy to record videos of himself “wooping homeboys”.

Most horrendously, it leads to this guy.