The Art of the Future

“The future is yours (and your avatars’)”

One of my first ideas about the future is a childhood memory. President Bill Clinton came to Bucharest and said, “The future is yours”. The hope that we will change the future was instilled in many of us as we grew up.

In art, the future will belong, above all, to those of us who go to exhibitions or take part in performances that commonly involve public intervention. Art will become more political, more social and more anchored in everyday life. It will deal with topics that bring us together, consume us, divide us and sometimes force us to take to the streets in protest.

At the same time, the art of the future seems to transcend the limits of the idea of “ours”. People talk more and more often about the “metaverse”, a metauniverse, a meeting point of two worlds, one physical and one digital (in which we have been living since the pandemic). Since the advent of the Internet, man’s habits have gradually changed to the point where real lives can no longer be clearly distinguished from everyone’s digital presences. This has changed the art world to such an extent that we not only see the creative process in real time, but we also get to know, through Instagram or TikTok, what the artist is eating. Museums and galleries have begun selling works by artists such as Damien Hirst or Beeple as NFTs – crypto-art sold through a blockchain.

As far as artistic creations are concerned, they are frequently described as “immersive”, “multisensory” or “3D/4D/AR/VR”. Within the art world, multidisciplinarity has almost become a rule and although physical installations are still honoured as objects of fascination and contemplation, the art of the future will be both ours and the technology that creates algorithms – robots operating by means of Artificial Intelligence and taught to create art according to current aesthetic standards. Formally, these works have all the necessary elements to be considered works of art.

However far into the future we try to look, art will always turn towards us and will be a reflection of our identity, our needs and our way to interact with the world around. In essence, the future is ours… and our avatars’.