The process of artistic creation differs depending on which way we face in time. If the subject is in the past then the art is reflective and based on interpretation. If it’s in the present then the art is based on perception – it is sensually and intellectually direct – and deals with actions and only the most immediate of consequences. The third alternative is art which is based on the future. Depicting the future is about possibilities, building possible worlds with the tools and materials from the past and present.

Each of these distinctions I have made has a relationship with the others, for example art based in the past might be didactic and strive to influence the present and the future. The way that the present is perceived can be influenced greatly by our experiences or our hopes. Art set in the future, however, is at once clearer and more remote; clearer in that the basis of its ideas can only be rooted in the past and present but more remote in the sense of it being reducibly true. The future is the one that intrigues me the most.

Two recent experiences have set me thinking on this. Firstly, I went to an exhibition of work by Basim Magdy at the Arnolfini in Bristol. It consisted of a mixture of film and canvas and a mixture of overlaying social and moral implications on past events and actual visual forecasts of the future. The result was stimulating but a little off the mark because of the remoteness in understanding the future possibility the artist has chosen. We need to be able to comprehend why, to see the thread that takes us from the present to the image. We need the thread of truth to carry us there. Although the message applied to the past events helped carry me there to a certain extent (with some large assumptions on my part) it didn’t leave me satisfied because I wasn’t convinced enough of its truth and the necessity or plausibility of it leading to the imagined eventuality.

The second experience I have had along these lines is reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Embarrassingly, I have never read it before, even though, like any philosophy student, I’m a sucker for future-world literature. Having a vague idea of its premise I expected it to be rather grim like the work it is most commonly associated with, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Surprisingly, I found it funny! The dark sense of humour that prevails certainly helps carry the ideas it develops. It is an acknowledgement of how ridiculous it is to predict, with any accuracy, tomorrow’s world. The trouble that faces artists is that in order to be understood and accepted, and therefore to be effective, we need the accuracy of detail. The result of Brave New World is that the details help illuminate a wider and more general ‘how’. The ‘could’ that is created equally opens up to us our own possible ‘coulds’ following the same over-arching ideas. And the humour encourages us to do so. A hurdle with Nineteen Eighty-Four is its seriousness; it comes across as prophetic in the first instance when, dare I say it, I doubt Orwell was really implying that such unfettered surveillance and manipulation is going to happen. I think it more likely that Orwell perceives it as logically possible but extremely unlikely to occur to such an extent, but that the horror of the possibility is a positive influence to encourage the reader to be more vigilant.

A measure of future-based art’s success is when it feeds your own ideas of how the world is going to be. One of the main messages of Brave New World is the trade-off between freedom and stability – world controllers prevent the population from knowing or feeling anything beyond what is needed for society to function in order to ensure maximum economic efficiency. Huxley’s vision is darkly hilarious but it raises an important idea: two things highly valued in the modern world, freedom and peace, aren’t natural bedfellows. This is exacerbated as the world becomes more populated and as resources dwindle. The larger our collective consumptive power the more there is a need to control it in order to ensure peace and happiness. So although I certainly wouldn’t wish for Huxley’s extreme, I can appreciate the rationale that growing curbs on our freedom might be in our interests.

I find Huxley’s vision more plausible than Orwell’s too. No matter how conditioned people are by those in power there are still impulses that need serving. To impose enough fear and pressure to suppress these impulses requires total power. But where is the mid-point? What stages lead to such a case? Orwell’s world is scary but I feel like in modernity we regularly counter-act and modify surveillance and manipulation techniques when we recognise them as over-stepping the mark and going further than what is in our interests. In other words, we are acutely aware of when our impulses are being suppressed and have an equal impulse to react accordingly. Huxley recognises this and leaves us with an openly available choice. Orwell is warning us of irreversible diminishing choice. Both, however, stimulate meaningful and relevant debate about who we are and how we wish to live.

My vision of the future… I can imagine the world radically changing if nuclear fusion is mastered as an energy source. Everything would be electric. Screens would dominate our lives and every surface. Travel would be cheap, easy and readily available. Every function and object of our lives would be connected and informed. Physical boundaries would become more and more meaningless. The enemies of society would be more and more faceless. The urban and the rural would become hyper-real compared to now – as cities become increasingly unnatural environments to reside in we will compensate by investing in nature as a leisure commodity to counter-balance it. Our communities would become wider but more relevant to who we are as individuals. Close relationships will be less intense but more frequent and goal-orientated. Behind a veil of technology, divisions once based on race, gender and sexuality will lose their footing with the blurring of definitions created by augmented reality. Creativity will be heightened by the greater volume of experiences and resources and the opportunity to create strong sub-cultures and sub-genres…

…I could go on for a while! My personal vision is surprisingly optimistic. Maybe I’ll change my view entirely after the next dystopian novel I read!

This month's favourites:
   Heavy Heart, Keepsake
   Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
   My Cousin Vinny (1992)