By Jim Chandler
Opinion:
Disneyland's new house of the future imagines how art will be chosen and
displayed in future homes. Imagine a time in the not to distant future where
electricity will be so plentiful and inexpensive that one will be able to
mount large LCD and Plasma displays on every wall in your home.
A table in their dining room of the imagination also contains four embedded
touch screens, perhaps 36 inches across, where children can draw and paint
by running their fingers across the panels. The art is ephemeral but the
child can save something and send it to a printer if the artwork is
especially interesting.
Other than reimagining child art and crafts as being free of materials like
crayons, pastels and watercolor paint, how else do the designs of the Disney
"House of Innovation" imagine the ways art will be viewed and appreciated?
The multitudes of flat panel displays that cover every wall in the Disney
house are actually meant to display art. The idea and meaning of art would
change, the art that is displayed in the House of Innovation is "Great Art",
reproduced art that is recognizable and resides currently in museums. The
art is displayed in a highly pixilated state and only in the color gamut
available in an RGB digital screen.
One could argue that individuals might create digital art in one or another
application software products and display them on the screens in one¹s home.
One could argue that this approach to art and decorative art is not much
removed from having prints and other reproductions of "Great Art" on the
walls of one's home.
Of course by institutionalizing reproduced art as the art of choice for
people wealthy enough to support living artists and their work, people
wealthy enough to purchase multiples of large flat screen monitors. These
are the same people today have the resources to purchase and support living
artists creating original paintings and sculpture.
So, Disney's vision for the future of art is for a future dominated by
low-resolution "popular" paintings in limited color gamuts and what does
one get in exchange for accepting this? The artwork changes depending on who
is in the room conforming to the individual's taste. The art can also be
programmed to simply rotate through a series of images altering every few
minutes.
It is primarily the threat to living artists that I object to in this vision
of the future. Art that is unique, original and suitable to a home's
personality is far and away the choice I would propose as most appropriate.
A vision of the future that I would characterize as limiting, restricted and
backward looking is not up to Disney's best standards. Art should have a
higher purpose than signaling one's tastes in historical art to one's
guests.
I give a thumb's down to Disney's "House of Innovation", not just to the
attitude towards decorative art and to the methods and materials it seems to
recommend for children¹s arts and crafts. I also object to the total lack of
focus, the planners seemed to begin by asking, "what technology can we
showcase and how can we create absolute convenience?". The question that
should have been asked is "what is the house of the future intended to
accomplish?", answers might have included, providing a place for family
cohesion and interaction or nurturing community with friends and neighbors.
Answers to either of these two suggestions or many others would have
produced a projected home of significantly different layouts and schemes.
Disney¹s "House of Innovation" is a disappointment in the depiction of
visual arts and in the imagination of what a home should accomplish for the
people dwelling in it.
|
