Information, the Internet, and Education.

I'm sitting here at 2:20 AM, lazing about as I browse the Internet, realizing the seductive - perilous, even - nature of content.

That is to say: we find ourselves in an age where opinions, media, art - entertainment - is available in gross quantities (numerically and repulsively gross) never before imagined. I can easily lose myself in entire afternoons spent, one after the other, non-selectively feeding off the vast streams of information pouring out of the global system. Poring over entire ecosystems of wikipedia entries, examining the output of a single youtube figure, simply perched at twitter.com/#home continuously refreshing the figurative timestream of minutiae.

But what does this mean? I was raised to believe that education meant learning more about what is. As a youth, posted on the couch - legs crossed, neck bent - I perused the Worldbook Encyclopedia, egged on in my erudition by eager parents. I was told that knowing more about my world would render me better-equipped to engage with it.

But that was a different era; a time when information was scarce, valuable. I had entire classroom sessions about the Dewey Decimal System; we were inculcated with the view of library qua gateway to the world, where a handful of rooms - curated and organized by hand - served as world-by-proxy: the sum total of human knowledge and experience gathered, summed up, ordered and described. At such a time, it was quite possible to exhaust one's storehouse of information on any given topic: if I wanted to read about, say, the role of samurai in 19th-century Japan (and I did!), there were n books on said topic available to me. And n was often less than 15.

But were I a young lad in today's bazaar of inputs, I find a humanly inexhaustible resource. Simply googling "samurai" + "19th-century japan" returns over four hundred thousand page hits, from fanboyish (there's another word that didn't exist!) gushings to graduate-level research on primary sources. The new information generated and instantly available, on a daily basis, long outpaces my ability to take it in.

The ramifications of this are, to my mind, vast: acquiring more information is no longer a talent or skillset; anyone with a 5-year-old sidekick and a $50 data plan can do that. In this world of infinite content and global context, information is cheap: what is highly valuable is the skill of adjudicating between streams of content. What is pertinent - what is credible?

And, most importantly: how can this information be repurposed? Were I to simply become a living repository of, say, humanity's knowledge as pertains to a subgenre of early-2000s electronic music, or Civil War reenacting, or a certain type of cross-stitching technique, this is insufficient raison d'etre. Where does this information go? The $64,000 question is - to what end is this knowledge being directed?

Whether we do it through a twitter account, wordpress blog (sorry, blogspot...), youtube channel, indie music distribution, or other mode of expression, the word of the age is productivity. To use a business-centric buzzword: what is the value added to the end consumer by my step in the process? This is why we see old-world names like Virgin Megastores and Fat Beats rapidly disappearing: if animals roam free in the streets, then why go to a zoo? If information is widely and freely accessible in the internet, why go through a middleman?

The metaphor provides its own answer: Because a zoo tiger is a beautiful, serene creature, while a street tiger is a terrifying beast. Zoos provide stable, credible, curated environments for interacting with animals that would otherwise tear one's head off. This explains why blogs have evolved into the tastemakers of our time: whereas before the local snobby record store would provide an auteur's-eye-view of "the scene," now Nah Right, Pitchfork, and that cool girl from school's twitter feed do so.

(1) People need guidance.

but

(2) People don't like paying money.

And so we have replaced the MSRP mark-up of Virgin with the ease of an RSS feed coupled with the cost-free nature of a bittorrent client.

This is not without ramifications. And the most obvious, in my eyes, is that those of us who are "wired-in" (to a certain degree) are rapidly becoming information zombies - shambling through the streets groaning "information.... informationnnnn..."

With such vast quantities of input, and much of it even checking in at a high quality, it is far too easy for us to become consumers only. I could spend evenings, days, weeks even just arming myself with information, paralyzed by the sheer volume, carried away like a hapless duckling in the surge of a fire hose (just go with the metaphor for now), and never even think to begin production. Both for the reason that, with so much content already existing in the wild, my two cents have fallen victim to massive inflation, as well as for the reason of it being simply easier to continue my unabated consumption rather than shift gears into the mode of critical assessment, energetic production, and - and this is key in the modern age of information - self-promotion.

The latter, perhaps, is a fitting coda to this screed: promotion. Marketing. Getting it - whatever it may be - into the right hands.

In the old days (which I am, likely, glorifying), with information comparatively scarce, promotion was as simple as announcing existence to the world. If a niche was filled, if new (or, more likely, new to this audience) information was made available, its debut was as simple as providing access and letting a target demographic know about it. But now, with a surfeit of information, promotion has become far more complex: no matter what type of music, writing, video work, or other content one is creating, there are already people out there who have created something similar. Better. More well-liked. More established.

Promotion now is not just announcing existence; it must convey superiority. If the target audience's desire is already being fed by a media outlet, then advertising must convince that audience that this information, this version of what-I-already-have is better. More like what-I-want than what-I-already-have is.

Hm.

movement

"The entire body of my earlier work reflects a movement towards Jesus Christ. In 2002, I consecrated my work to Jesus Christ. This did not involve a denunciation of works that reflected the journey. It was rather a statement that from then on I would write directly for Jesus Christ. I would write works about salvation, as opposed to alienation.

- Anne Rice, author of Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned, and others.

The Responsibility of Christians in Art.

[A talk originally presented during Café a Dieu, at The Golden Center, on 04.04.2009.]

The first personal encounter with art that I can recall comes from the age of ten, when my sister and I attended a class taught by a professional artist from our church. Once a week, we would pick up our sketchbooks and shoeboxes full of art supplies, be packed up in the back of our minivan, and dropped off at a church classroom. There, Mrs. Barrett would teach us about perspective, colors, or shading, then turn us loose, pencils and oil paints in hand. Our parents, as they arrived to pick us up, were be greeted by arms filled with paintings and sketches, the fruits of our labors and their monthly tuition checks.

Even now, returning home, I still occasionally come across sketchbooks filled with my youthful handiwork. Browsing through the artwork, I often wonder what my mother must have thought, every week, as her son returned bearing page after page of lovingly, painstakingly, and poorly drawn STAR WARS spaceships.

My mother has preserved sketchbooks that are literally filled, cover to cover, with illustrations of X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and the occasional attempt to illustrate the Battle of the Death Star. And, let me tell you: what I lacked in aesthetic skill, I more than made up for in productivity.

By high school, I had begun to regard these drawings with a hint of embarrassment. It wasn’t that I had grown artistically; but I had grown ashamed of my youthful enthusiasm for Luke Skywalker. Recalling my younger artistic streak, I would wonder what could possibly have motivated my parents to store such pitiful things away so carefully.

Reflecting back now, I think I’ve begun to understand why my parents saved those drawings. It’s not that my art - in either content or execution - was of any aesthetic value. But they are still dear to them because of what they represent: memories of me running up to my mom after class, bearing my latest work, filled with the childish joy and simple pride of spending my youthful reserves of skill and energy to produce something just for her. And, while my mother has never been a STAR WARS fanatic, her love for me transformed my interests and delight into her own. For this reason, I think, my mother finds twofold pleasure in that artwork: first, as a symbol of her importance to me; and, second, as a genuine representation of me as I was at the time; my childhood interests and passions.

I suspect that the work of a Christian Artist is best performed when it stems from similar desires, turned towards God: beyond displays of ability, or the production of aesthetically stunning works, the Christian who finds herself engaged in Art is engaged in the same pursuit as that child painting, singing, or dancing for his loving parents: we are conveying, to God, His unequalled significance to us; and we are producing work that brings its audience into an honest encounter with the truth of our love and passions.

I. To convey to God our unequalled enjoyment of Him.

These may sound vague: what does it mean to tell God that He is of unequalled importance to us?

The first answer that springs to mind comes from the Protestant and Catholic catechisms, which open by addressing the goals of human existence: in the Reformed Church’s Westminster Shorter Catechism, the first question is asked, What is the chief end of man?, and this answer provided: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. Similarly, the Second Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church begins with a prologue that trumpets that “The Life of Man” has as its purpose “To Know and Love God”.

To Know God; to Glorify Him; to enjoy Him; to Love Him. If these are the primary ends for which we, as Christians, believe we have been created, how do we pursue them? How do we, limited, weak, fragile human beings, bring Glory to an almighty God?

In 1^st Peter Chapter 2, Verse 9, the apostle writes that “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, so that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Receiving the love and care of a vast and intimate God uniquely enables us to bring Him glory by proclaiming in His presence our joy at having seen ourselves “called out of darkness, into His wonderful light”. We were once guilty of an infinitely terrible crime, and faced with an infinite punishment, the only escape from which comes by an infinite grace, which, having been received, evokes in us infinite gratitude and joy.

And, in just the same way that my youthful dedication to my parents led me to hand them the fruits of my artistic labor – poorly executed, but faithfully offered – our infinite gratitude to God finds its expression in faithfully handing Him the poor fruits of our lives: our paintings and poems, songs and dances. In every facet of our selves, including the artistic, it is right to find ourselves desiring, first and foremost, to bring God praise, by demonstrating the quality and abundance of our lives in Him. As we begin to understand what it really means to be saved by grace, this desire to respond in joyful gratitude begins to push out all the other competing desires and patrons clamoring for our attention and service.

But, there is an objection that can be raised to all this; after all, it may sound troubling to limit the scope of our artistic expression simply to those things which bring God glory. After all, why can’t we let art be free of such external constraints, let it simply be “art for art’s sake”?

Well, for one thing, love, even as it brings freedom, also necessitates limits. Any mutual love imposes on the lives of those whom it touches; but it is a joyful imposition! Yes, Love limits us; it limits us in our impatience, when we desire to withhold forgiveness; It restrains us in our jealousy, in our boasting, in our pride, and in our anger. Love, when truly tasted, makes us long to stare into its depths and lose sight of everything else as we contemplate and adore the object of our love.

II. To provide audiences an honest encounter with the truth we find surrounding us.

And also, by saying that our art should bring God glory, I don’t simply mean that the truths we convey have to be uniformly pleasant.

A natural part of becoming a Christian is that a man gradually finds himself peering into two worlds at once: the world that is “real-at-the-moment”, and the world of “actual reality.” The world of the moment is the world of suffering, of distance, of sin; but, being brought more and more sharply into focus as we grow more familiar with God, is the world as it actually was intended to be: a world of peace, of intimacy, of healing and loving unity.

This is what I mean by saying that it the second goal of the Christian Artist to provide the audience with an honest encounter of truth: God’s revelation of Himself – at once intimately personal and immensely large-scale – provides the Christian with two points of view, both of which serve the artist as inspiration. To limit the scope of artistic revelation to one or another of these viewpoints rings false: while our hope is sure and our faith secure, to claim that we can distill our experience of Christ into feel-good, pastel-colored images of serenity and passivity is a dramatic oversimplification. If we do so, we create kitsch, a shallow sentimentality that is the opposite of Good Art, because it has no connection to the complex experiences and dreams of the audiences we invite to partake in the artistic experience with us.

The opposite oversimplification – presenting the dire state of sin, while withholding a sense of overpowering hope – is equally poor art, for it is also untrue. As Christians, for whom “in all things, we are more than conquerors, because of Christ who loved us” (Rom. 8:37), it is disingenuous to pretend that our eternal well-being can be jeopardized by the passing and momentary ills of this world.

We Christians have space to discuss both despair and hope precisely because our hope can be counted on to endure. In the Christian life, there is room for both the sad truth of the fallen world as well as the glad tidings of the redemption that is beginning to shine through its cracks. After all, without death, resurrection is meaningless; but, without resurrection, death is simply a cold, inevitable end-of-story. So it is necessary to present, in our every creative work, the full trajectory of the Gospel, never shrinking from honestly portraying the total story of fallenness and redemption; but always hinting at glimpses of the Hope to overcome the despair, and the Comforter who seeks us out in our loneliness.

Art expresses the truth, hope, and passion that we have found, or want to find, in the world around us. At age 10, I found my passion in STAR WARS; and my art reflected that. But now, for today, and tomorrow, and increasingly as the days pass, that passion is focused on the being and character of God. And I hope that the work of my hands can come to daily reflect that focused passion more and more.

Once, I drew pictures of spaceships, and happily presented the results of my work to my parents. Today, right now, we are all creating, not just as artists, but as humans going about our daily lives. I pray that we can, one day, happily present the results to our Heavenly Father.

Children Bearing Gifts: the Relationship of Christians to Art.

Children Bearing Gifts: the Relationship of Christians to Art.

Originally given at Café a Dieu, 04.04.2009,

at The Golden Center, St. Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale.

The first personal encounter with art that I can recall comes from the age of ten, when my sister and I attended a class taught by a professional artist from our church. Once a week, we would pick up our sketchbooks and shoeboxes full of art supplies, be packed up in the back of our minivan, and dropped off at a church classroom. There, Mrs. Barrett would teach us about perspective, colors, or shading, then turn us loose, pencils and oil paints in hand. Our parents, as they arrived to pick us up, were be greeted by arms filled with paintings and sketches, the fruits of our labors and their monthly tuition checks.

Even now, returning home, I still occasionally come across sketchbooks filled with my youthful handiwork. Browsing through the artwork, I often wonder what my mother must have thought, every week, as her son returned bearing page after page of lovingly, painstakingly, and poorly drawn STAR WARS spaceships.

My mother has preserved sketchbooks that are literally filled, cover to cover, with illustrations of X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and the occasional attempt to illustrate the Battle of the Death Star. And, let me tell you: what I lacked in aesthetic skill, I more than made up for in productivity.

By high school, I had begun to regard these drawings with a hint of embarrassment. It wasn’t that I had grown artistically; but I had grown ashamed of my youthful enthusiasm for Luke Skywalker. Recalling my younger artistic streak, I would wonder what could possibly have motivated my parents to store such pitiful things away so carefully.

Reflecting back now, I think I’ve begun to understand why my parents saved those drawings. It’s not that my art - in either content or execution - was of any aesthetic value. But they are still dear to them because of what they represent: memories of me running up to my mom after class, bearing my latest work, filled with the childish joy and simple pride of spending my youthful reserves of skill and energy to produce something just for her. And, while my mother has never been a STAR WARS fanatic, her love for me transformed my interests and delight into her own. For this reason, I think, my mother finds twofold pleasure in that artwork: first, as a symbol of her importance to me; and, second, as a genuine representation of me as I was at the time; my childhood interests and passions.

I suspect that the work of a Christian Artist is best performed when it stems from similar desires, turned towards God: beyond displays of ability, or the production of aesthetically stunning works, the Christian who finds herself engaged in Art is engaged in the same pursuit as that child painting, singing, or dancing for his loving parents: we are conveying, to God, His unequalled significance to us; and we are producing work that brings its audience into an honest encounter with the truth of our love and passions.

I. To convey to God our unequalled enjoyment of Him.

These may sound vague: what does it mean to tell God that He is of unequalled importance to us?

The first answer that springs to mind comes from the Protestant and Catholic catechisms, which open by addressing the goals of human existence: in the Reformed Church’s Westminster Shorter Catechism, the first question is asked, What is the chief end of man?, and this answer provided: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. Similarly, the Second Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church begins with a prologue that trumpets that “The Life of Man” has as its purpose “To Know and Love God”.

To Know God; to Glorify Him; to enjoy Him; to Love Him. If these are the primary ends for which we, as Christians, believe we have been created, how do we pursue them? How do we, limited, weak, fragile human beings, bring Glory to an almighty God?

In 1^st Peter Chapter 2, Verse 9, the apostle writes that “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, so that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Receiving the love and care of a vast and intimate God uniquely enables us to bring Him glory by proclaiming in His presence our joy at having seen ourselves “called out of darkness, into His wonderful light”. We were once guilty of an infinitely terrible crime, and faced with an infinite punishment, the only escape from which comes by an infinite grace, which, having been received, evokes in us infinite gratitude and joy.

And, in just the same way that my youthful dedication to my parents led me to hand them the fruits of my artistic labor – poorly executed, but faithfully offered – our infinite gratitude to God finds its expression in faithfully handing Him the poor fruits of our lives: our paintings and poems, songs and dances. In every facet of our selves, including the artistic, it is right to find ourselves desiring, first and foremost, to bring God praise, by demonstrating the quality and abundance of our lives in Him. As we begin to understand what it really means to be saved by grace, this desire to respond in joyful gratitude begins to push out all the other competing desires and patrons clamoring for our attention and service.

But, there is an objection that can be raised to all this; after all, it may sound troubling to limit the scope of our artistic expression simply to those things which bring God glory. After all, why can’t we let art be free of such external constraints, let it simply be “art for art’s sake”?

Well, for one thing, love, even as it brings freedom, also necessitates limits. Any mutual love imposes on the lives of those whom it touches; but it is a joyful imposition! Yes, Love limits us; it limits us in our impatience, when we desire to withhold forgiveness; It restrains us in our jealousy, in our boasting, in our pride, and in our anger. Love, when truly tasted, makes us long to stare into its depths and lose sight of everything else as we contemplate and adore the object of our love.

II. To provide audiences an honest encounter with the truth we find surrounding us.

And also, by saying that our art should bring God glory, I don’t simply mean that the truths we convey have to be uniformly pleasant.

A natural part of becoming a Christian is that a man gradually finds himself peering into two worlds at once: the world that is “real-at-the-moment”, and the world of “actual reality.” The world of the moment is the world of suffering, of distance, of sin; but, being brought more and more sharply into focus as we grow more familiar with God, is the world as it actually was intended to be: a world of peace, of intimacy, of healing and loving unity.

This is what I mean by saying that it the second goal of the Christian Artist to provide the audience with an honest encounter of truth: God’s revelation of Himself – at once intimately personal and immensely large-scale – provides the Christian with two points of view, both of which serve the artist as inspiration. To limit the scope of artistic revelation to one or another of these viewpoints rings false: while our hope is sure and our faith secure, to claim that we can distill our experience of Christ into feel-good, pastel-colored images of serenity and passivity is a dramatic oversimplification. If we do so, we create kitsch, a shallow sentimentality that is the opposite of Good Art, because it has no connection to the complex experiences and dreams of the audiences we invite to partake in the artistic experience with us.

The opposite oversimplification – presenting the dire state of sin, while withholding a sense of overpowering hope – is equally poor art, for it is also untrue. As Christians, for whom “in all things, we are more than conquerors, because of Christ who loved us” (Rom. 8:37), it is disingenuous to pretend that our eternal well-being can be jeopardized by the passing and momentary ills of this world.

We Christians have space to discuss both despair and hope precisely because our hope can be counted on to endure. In the Christian life, there is room for both the sad truth of the fallen world as well as the glad tidings of the redemption that is beginning to shine through its cracks. After all, without death, resurrection is meaningless; but, without resurrection, death is simply a cold, inevitable end-of-story. So it is necessary to present, in our every creative work, the full trajectory of the Gospel, never shrinking from honestly portraying the total story of fallenness and redemption; but always hinting at glimpses of the Hope to overcome the despair, and the Comforter who seeks us out in our loneliness.

Art expresses the truth, hope, and passion that we have found, or want to find, in the world around us. At age 10, I found my passion in STAR WARS; and my art reflected that. But now, for today, and tomorrow, and increasingly as the days pass, that passion is focused on the being and character of God. And I hope that the work of my hands can come to daily reflect that focused passion more and more.

Once, I drew pictures of spaceships, and happily presented the results of my work to my parents. Today, right now, we are all creating, not just as artists, but as humans going about our daily lives. I pray that we can, one day, happily present the results to our Heavenly Father.