We could live forever

An unquestionable benefit of the pandemic for me has been the increased use of the internet by art galleries to deliver talks, by Zoom (of course). This week I have enjoyed a ‘visit’ to the Ben Uri gallery in London for a talk about artist Gustave Metzger, who I think I have come across before, but learnt a lot more about. It has to be said that maybe Metzger didn’t leave a huge legacy, since he largely developed, in the 1960s, something called auto-destructive art, a classic post-modernist form. Ben Uri are producing a series of talks about his work, and I hope to tap in to most of them. I also paid a ‘visit’ to the National Gallery today for a talk on Art and Technology. This quickly ran through some of the new realities which are engaging artists—virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), extended reality (ER) and Boris reality (BR) - no hang on a sec, I made the last one up. As an artist, I think I may have missed the boat in developing such things in my own work, but not to worry, it’s quite enough to catch up with one’s own ouvre after long gaps thanks to the intrusion of politics. I still find VR amazing, it has to be said. I once went to an exhibition at Somerset House featuring work by Bjork on VR and every time I spun round there she was, sometimes in the flesh (so to speak) and then turning into a jetstream of colour. I would hate to think what the combination of VR and LSD would do to somebody approaching 70, or any age for that matter. It won’t be long before these Zoom talks are delivered in a VR format. Virtual reality for virtual audiences. Soon we’ll wonder why we have to die.