Real world renaissance

There’s an analogue renaissance unfolding at the moment. 

People are combing op shops for DVDs to watch over subscribing to another streaming service, buying records with their lyric sheets and poster art, picking up handcrafts over doomscrolling. 

Alongside this, there is this growing trend towards ‘whimsymaxxing’: often lo-fi playfulness, bringing creativity and colour to everyday life things–from bedazzling phone cases, to adding sprinkles to the morning coffee. 

Some people have pointed to it as a bit of a cultural swing, a nostalgic response to minimalism and mass-produced goods. Yes, it’s a marketing trend, and yes, some of it is no doubt being done for appearances rather than for joy in the process. 

But amongst it I’ve been struck by the creativity: watercolour paintings, hand-built pottery, paper chains and felt garlands. All of it human and bearing the mark of human hands. 

It will be interesting to see what the market churn does with this next-what the next retail cycles will create. Will the things come with the rhinestones already on, will mass-produced products be designed to look a little more organic? Will these things sell well? Or, will people still be looking to purchase kits and attend wonderful local workshops to do it themselves? 

Some people are speaking out about how the abundance of AI-generated content is driving them the other direction, more open to the imperfect and low-tech, high humanity. Gig posters drawn with ballpoint or crayon. Authenticity is a word of this moment, and online content that seems to be really capturing people is all about authenticity and originality-real voices, from real people. 

Last year, Manatū Taonga: the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, published ‘Culture in the Digital Age’, a briefing which aims to look to 2040, to see what’s ahead for New Zealand. Key themes were rapid technological development, lagging legislation and governance, social cohesion, misinformation, and the unprecedented expansion of generative AI. 

The whole briefing is really interesting, (a bit unsettling!) and also pretty long. One of my favourite parts is the four future scenarios that the team developed. 

You can find them here, from p. 26. 

Here’s a quote from scenario one: 

‘There is also a growing Disconnect movement that emphasises human creation and connection in the face of rapidly developing “noisy” digital technologies, leading to ‘unplugged’ alternative communities.’ p. 28.

And another, from scenario two:

‘With limited access to reliable online spaces, many New Zealanders turn back to localised, community-based storytelling and brick-and-mortar learning. Oral traditions, print media, cultural institutions and in-person gatherings become more trusted sources of information.’ p. 30. 

The scenarios are an exercise in imagination and futuring, and so remain to be seen, but they’re well-researched, fleshed out and explained well. They feel really relevant. When we look at history, we see most fast or strong movement in one way usually has a sort of response or resistance that follows close behind. 

I reckon we could think of what’s happening at the moment as a bit of a real-world renaissance. 

What never fails to surprise and inspire me is the way that humans want and need one another. Even as algorithms, social media, and climate crisis isolate us, we still reach for each other. We still want to be with one another kanohi ki te kanohi, and if we can’t be, we srill want to create things to reach out to one another. 

So, by the end of this story, I’ve pretty much shown my hand, but here it is anyway. I’m not sure that I’m ready to log all the way off or to unplug completely. 

Technology is super important for those of us with disabilities, and who may be far from family and friends, or who live in rural or isolated spots (and more!). Many creatives use it to create and enable their creative work, and to ease the overwhelming workload of having to be a one-(hu)man-band running every administrative, promotional, strategic task of being a small business (the list goes on!). 

A lot of my favourite creative work is stuff that was created online, and lives online. This is all important and essential mahi. I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, I’m trying to make sure that the way I use technology is putting me less in contact with robots and algorithms, and more in connection with real people on the other end of the screen, and with the real, physical world too. 

I don’t want AI to re-write my txts to my friends, or summarise the voice notes my family send me from the East Coast. I want to know that the music I listen to has been made by humans for humans (and not just harvested from their labour). I want my friend’s chaotic typos and my niece and nephew’s crayon drawings in the mail. I want the wonky clay bowl I made at a workshop up the road, and the crooked sketches I did with my best friend in that particular season of our lives. I want to play the harmonica badly for my friends’ birthdays and I want to write my overly-earnest poems about bugs that only I’m really into. 

I wanted to write this story for myself to figure out what I’ve been thinking about, and I wanted the too-much-punctuation that shows it’s my writing. I want it to be what it is. A little too long, a little rambly, hearty. So you know a human’s done it. 

Viva la renaissance, with its human fingerprints all over it. (Or, y’know, something like that.)

Written by: Dr. Aimee Anderson-O’Connor, Creative Waikato team member