HOW - Looking back 2 years from today would already bring us a masquerade of superhero/SciFi movies, from Star Wars to Spiderman to Bat-Superman, we’ve been watching the same characters since the 90s, but why are they back? If you are one who is interested in the WHAT of it, you probably live in a cave.
WHEN - Would One Direction be so phenomenal had they appeared in the early 2000s shortly after Backstreet Boys and Westlife? No, the industry waited for the younger sisters to enter puberty, and when the time came, they gave them their own backstreet boys to die for.
HOW - Honestly now, would you really like the songs of Lady Gaga by itself? If, say, she looks like a normal person?
WHEN - Why do movies about national heroes appear suspiciously in time with their nearing centennial death/birth anniversaries?
But I am meddling with popular culture. In the serious art front, we have come to realize that modern art (modern music in my case) is now a barren land where committed serious "artists" have nothing but the rusty debris of the past to recycle. In modern music, the 50s - 60s saw the destruction of the very foundation on which music stood. The elemental parameters from pitch, timbre, rhythm, even performance have been exaggerated to the extremes that succeeding generation of composers have nothing new to offer anymore. "WHATelse?” is the question we ask upon entering the 21st century. But is it the right question?
All the things today that made an impact on us are designed by the HOW + WHEN formula; HOW being the attitude, personality, and appearance with which you express your art/beliefs, and WHEN being the time in which you should express your art/beliefs, when everyone is listening because of relevant current issues. It does not matter WHAT you say, therefore there is NOTHING new being said. Why? Is it because science and technology are the ones providing the NEW everyday, that we can hardly take in the hysteria of new innovations? Do we consequently seek comfort in the familiar we find in art?
There is a time in history when Man achieved a greater understanding of the universe and his life because technology and art were holding hands together on it’s way up. Most people call it the Renaissance, I call it “It’s about time for that to happen again, now more than ever!” It is undoubted that science today has made drastic advances, but the changes are yet to be external and apparent. Artists on the other hand should never lose hope, for the unfolding of a new time has never failed to bring forth new stories to tell. It is only when art fails to move forward with science that a New Renaissance will never take place in our lifetime. If it really doesn’t, everyone born after 1999 are in grave danger.