#digitalistic

[eng78art]

Remake of my old drawing, Digitalistic

[tgthr]

The Digital Materialism

My parents were materialists; they had no choice to be anything else. Music came in the form of vinyl and later cassette tapes, movies on VHS and photographs that captured vivid or forgotten memories. These physical objects were important. Each one connected to an emotion;  a symbiotic relationship.

Things are different now. The majority of us now place all of these things online - we share all of these things with our 'friends'. In one way becoming more detached from them yet in other ways becoming more materialistic; digitalistic even. How many of us would delete our Facebook account - permanently? I mean, no logging in again and suddenly everything is back to normal deleting. I mean DELETING. Deleting your Facebook would be like setting fire to your house. All those 'things' would be destroyed and you'd be forced to start again.

The British artist Michael Landy destroyed every one of his possessions in Break Down and he described the feeling he had afterwards as 'a rush'. In a way, we are now able to do the same online with the click of a few buttons. Not many of us would dream of submitting ourselves to such a thing.

But do we not feel like starting again sometimes? We start new relationships, we start new jobs, we make new friends. These in essence are all new starts to your life - they invigorate us. They challenge us.

Now, this post isn't about advising you to delete your Facebook account; it's about thinking about the importance we place on our digital belongings compared to physical ones. Things that don't really exist - and is that a good thing? When you die will you leave your children a .zip file? I think the internet is a beautiful thing but the more we can do online that makes a difference offline the better. Why would i make a dating app? To help people meet other people in the flesh and hopefully be happy; together.