Art & The Network

It’s never been this easy. You can make something right now, press a button, and have a million eyes on your work without leaving the house. This is great. I think it’s way better than what we used to have, the external barriers have broken down and we have way more room for creativity and discovery.

We used to have so many barriers about where you lived, who you knew, going through institutions and those who already had power. And you could only find art if you were lucky. Museum nearby, artists live close, etc. Now you don’t need to ask permission, and you can see 100 new artworks in 30 minutes on Instagram.

But people who love art need to be mindful. This new shift can create more opportunity for beauty and meaning to be shared, for people to make a living doing what they love, but it can also rob the juice of what makes art worthwhile.

The shift toward accessibility and opportunity is powered heavily by social networks. Many have found their audiences and their people through sharing on these spaces. It’s a wonderful thing.

The issue arises when you consider the nature of how you experience things on social platforms. It is not a good place on shortform to spend time experiencing art or creating things with Instagram being their final exhibition room. It is a good place to discover and form connections, but not for an artist to make the central goal for their art nor for the audience to make instagram their museum. It’s too short.

It’s like speed dating vs. finding actual love.

I’d argue that this world of short marketing bits and 60 second stories doesn’t sufficiently fill the role of longer, deeper pieces. It’s more of a place of discovery, not nourishment. Staying solely in this shallow ecosystem, both as the artist and the audience is not ideal.

For the actual artist, it means that you create things on very shortened timelines and depth. Whereas I had dreams of creating films and writing books, as a result of the immediate market I saw, I shifted toward writing 60 second scripts and making videos that truly, in my eyes, offered no novel perspective or insights or even beauty, but my focus subconscious shifted toward creating something that would switch cuts and have trending audio rather than creating something that really said something. What happened within the span of a day was not much. Whereas beautiful stories unravel over weeks, years. Let ideas, let stories develop, rather than rushing it all.

For audiences, this translates into consuming fragmented bursts of information that rarely stick. Long-form content like books, films, and deep projects offers transformative experiences, but these are increasingly overshadowed by ephemeral reels and posts. You press a like button, but you don’t get to love it the way you love a movie, or a painting. It’s why people go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa instead of looking at a picture of it on Google. You rarely hear people pointing to specific TikToks and saying it changed their life. It may be the accumulation of that person’s work, but the effect of a single piece usually gets drowned out by everything else you see in that 45 minute block of scrolling. On the other hand, reading a life-changing book, a film, a lecture, because these pieces go deeper and we have more time to digest them. Most of the time you don’t binge 100 books back to back, or 100 movies. But 100 instagram reels, that’s like 40 minutes. Some may be interesting, educational even, but they don’t stick.

On the contrary, often it feels as though one’s been robbed of their time by short things. Why? Because the shortness of it, followed by another, and another, simply jerks your mind into ephemeral moments of excitement, a one-hit version of the awe that you experience with a work of art, then quickly covers up the last with another. This is why even the best short pieces feel unsatisfactory.

So I think if the importance of the social network gains too much weight in the artists or the audience’s mind, If social media is the primary place where you “experience art” both in terms of sharing and seeing it, it creates a very shallow form of existence. The artist constantly feels the need to “put something out”, and the audience constantly, often mindlessly, “consumes” the content. And in day to day life, it means you operate on a very shallow field of existence. Your thoughts are elementary, you are jerked by little stimuli and jokes and reels, as opposed to contemplating complex, meaningful ideas from the books you read, or spending a lot of time coming up with projects to work on that are truly ambitious. This shallow mode of operation permeates life itself. Constant exposure to surface-level stimuli dulls our capacity for deep thought and meaningful action. Instead of pursuing ambitious, complex projects, we’re caught in a loop of elementary ideas and fleeting distractions. Yet, the greatest achievements demand time, focus, and a willingness to go deeper than others dare to. Because the greatest feats take time. You discover unknown treasures by going deeper than anyone else dares to go. And at this point in time, that number is few. This is why you don’t see people pointing to a TikTok and saying it changed their life. What’s your favorite TikTok? What’s your favorite Instagram post? YouTube videos are more likely because they are longer generally. But a book, a lecture, a movie, an exhibition, these things offer transformative experiences. Because there is intimacy, time spent, focus, no other reels next to it distracting you. And they go into more depth.

That is what we need. We need more of those experiences where you feel the world expand, you feel not alone, you see a new way forward. But you don’t really get those experiences on Instagram. You only find the people who may offer it to you, but it’s not the space to soak in the work.

Notice that the prescription doesn’t require you to leave the internet or cut out all “shallow” endeavors, as visibility is a key part of creating a working, successful project. But it needs to help the real work succeed, rather than steal critical energy from it, focusing on making a good post instead of good work.

The spaces should be used as a tool to find the people for your art, not the final exhibition. The goal should not be likes and engagements, but to create a meaningful contribution and find the people who’d love it.

But if 30seconds of you piques their interest, and they wish to explore, and all you have are other 30 second videos, all you have done is amused them for a bit. The only true value of these things are to bridge a stranger to an audience to a true supporter of the deep works you’ve produced.

I’m not arguing that these networks are bad, or that content is inherently stupid, or that these places should be abandoned. I think this development in our world is a marvelous increase in connectivity in the way telephones and railroads and airplanes changed things. All I’m pointing out is that in order to reap the true benefits, to preserve the function and beauty of art/creativity as the producer and the enjoyer, to be mindful of these influences, and not to sacrifice too much depth for visibility.

There need to be these greater, deeper works at your foundation as an artist or entrepreneur or worker that an audience can explore and be enriched by. This is where the fruits of creative labor (in the form of money and fulfillment) are found. And to do that, you need this mode of long-term, focused, committed thinking and work. So how do you cultivate depth in this current state of affairs?

- Carve Out Deep Work Time: Dedicate continuous, uninterrupted sessions to meaningful work or practice. These hours, free from distractions, are where breakthroughs happen.

- Create Strong Constraints: Limit engagement with shallow, peripheral activities like social media, emails, and notifications. Set clear boundaries on when and how long you interact with these platforms.

- Pursue Long-Term Projects: Channel your core efforts into deep, unique endeavors. Whether it’s writing a book, developing a design project, or launching an entrepreneurial venture, these projects will have the greatest impact on the world—and on your own fulfillment.

The artist must treat long work, solitary time, and silence as sacred. Though these short bursts of engagement, these efforts of marketing and daily posts and quick nuggets of art can be momentarily exciting, commercially rewarding, and a place of discovery, It all goes to naught without the deep, concentrated work that the artist creates for the world.

It is the artist’s duty to preserve this space and depth. Both for the artist and the enjoyer. And as an enthusiastic audience, you must go deeper as well. Do not rely on algorithms and give 30 seconds each to 1000 people. The connection, depth, enrichment we seek is found through dedicating time and focus toward the art that speaks most to our soul. We must create deeper, meaningful, longer works so that we can be truly transformed rather than distracted or amused.