Streamers, Broadcasters, Publishers, Venues, Developers, I have a humble request.
Let me enjoy the culture I choose to watch, read, and enjoy. Allow me to truly engage with it, to lose myself in it. I implore you. To fall into another world, a character’s life, is vital. Do not interrupt me, dragging me kicking and screaming back in to the real world. Obnoxious advertisements and insincere sponsors, the richest producers brainwashing the masses directly when in the throes of emotional engagement. Aggravating progress reports, constantly demanding progress. How long is left? You’re 60% of the way through! Good job slogging, you’re almost done! Indulge me in choice and total surrender to the art. When I lose myself to fiction I wish to be alone and so together with the creator and their work.
One complete, permit me to peruse the errata, the titles, the credits. (Hell, offer me the choice to watch the introduction, what a novel thought.) Grant me your favour to revel in the climax without badgering me that I am almost done, wouldn’t I just like to quit, I’ve seen all that there is to see here. Offer me license to relax in the denouement, considering what I have experienced, without recommending the very same in streamlined form, without demanding I take action to recommend my own experience to others, without prompting me reading and listening statistics that I could push up if I just tried a smidge harder, without compelling me to continue consuming. Trust me with agency to make my own choices, even if that choice is to sit for a moment in silent contemplation.
A future…
The national gallery. A patron like all others walks in. They drop a penny in the donation box, and take their place at a free spot in front of the gallery wall. From the right, the paintings are brought in, pulled by a cable along the railing fixed midway up the walls. Each painting is visible in its majesty, right before the patron, the full might of a portrait in force. For a few seconds. Then the painting trundles on and the patron’s neighbour to the left bears witness to the canvas.
Each patron need not move, not change viewing angles, not do anything that would jeopardise their perfectly choreographed experience of the gallery. Facial recognition and eye tracking sensors at head height ensure that no patron risks being bored by subpar works. Any paintings that fail to capture the attention of the visitors are swiftly removed from rotation, and an optimal speed for those paintings selected for the public is maintained at all times.
As they witness the art, their smart lens interfaces checks off for them each work from the master list of human art, making it easy to get through the right paintings in the most efficient way. The motors on the painting rails are engineered to be as silent as possible, making it easier for the gallery-goers to hear to summaries of their casts (silent gaps removed and at twice speed, of course).
Once a patron has seen all the works on offer, they can leave their spot to the next visitor to enter, a free flowing tide back and forth, ensuring there is always a space for people to be in proximity to some art. Before they step out of the gallery, the local net sends the address of the next recommended gallery to the patron’s lenses. A bookmark to the gallery’s netspace is also deposited, in case the patron wishes to download a (rights protected and sponsored) image file to apply to their home’s frame.
The art consumption system is perfect and in every way superior to the galleries of old. No-one wants to get tired moving around a gallery, unsure of what they’re meant to be interpreting, nervous about which artists are the right ones to spend time on, confused by which winding path they should take to best maximise their time, bored by metaphors and subjects that are too abstract to parse. With the consumption system, all the galleries, museums, and displayers of culture can maximise throughput in a way humanity had never before known.
Today, more people have been in front of painting, sculptures, and performance than ever before in the history of human civilisation. And no-one has had to endure enjoyment for generations.