06 December 2005

Creative vision

Picasso, Mozart, Frank Lloyd Wright, Coco Chanel, Charles Chaplin and Walt Disney. Rabindranath Tagore, Raja Ravi Verma, Pandit Ravi Shankar and Satyajit Ray. These people have shaped our lives by creating art, music, architecture, poetry, fashion and film. They are icons in their own right and will be remembered for generations. We have all learnt from them and still appreciate their genius.

However, in a culture where children are growing up with digital art and re-mixed music, with newer and newer tools developed for desktop art and garage music, where exactly is our creativity heading? Is the paintbrush and the human voice being replaced by the mouse and the computer keyboard? Are we looking at a brave new world of technology where poetry and music and art will be generated by computers or similar digital machines? Would human creativity no longer produce art?

And, what is going to happen to the indigenous art and music and creativity India is so famous for? Will there be no audience for these? Which artist among us is shaping the creative vision of our generation?

2 comments:

Astrid said...

I guess it depends from person to person, but I still like to read, go to art-exhibits, works of great architecture, and so on, and I am young?

And my brother designs computer-games and I must say that is quite an artistic endeavor as well and takes great creative skill, so I think new forms of art will just appear in future times and I don't think creativity among people will ever end, it will just expose itself in different ways than in the past.

Biswajit said...

First of all, thank you for visiting my blog. It always delights me to find visitors and comments to my posts. Alas, there aren’t too many of them. So, your comment was even more delightful.

Yes, you’re right Astrid, the tools for creativity are changing and will change further as the years go by. And, I need to accept this. I was merely commenting on the role that human beings will play in the process of creating art, music, literature, etc. You know, the push-button versus the paint-on-canvas argument. I guess the same argument can be used for the camera versus the painting. So, you’ve got me there.

I was also showing a concern for two things: First, indigenous art, which I believe are like our DNA and gives meaning to our culture. And second, the concern for leaders or the icons; people we can look up to for direction and the future.