#peekabelle

(Image source: Mashable)

PEEKABELLE#17 (WRITTEN BY ISABEL WONG)

Every now and then, this question pops up in my head: what kind of things of our time will people in the future find interesting? Hairstyles we find stylish in our time yet will probably be regarded as vintage in 50 years time? Hoodies that are much loved by uni students nowadays? Iphones? Macbook Air that won't look smart anymore in 100 years time? The other day I got asked "what kind of artwork of our era will you see in a museum 100 years later?" and here is my answer:

Selfies. Although selfies do not in any way fit the category of artwork nowadays, we should be aware that the definition of art has been blurred for far too long that anything could be regarded as "art" if you wish.  Art works are eternal evidence of the existence of a time/ period. If one would like to pick the best item to represent the era we are living in, it's most likely to be selfies, at least I think so.

I believe selfies behaviour is one of the most remarkable phenomena of the time we are living in. It might not mean anything to us at the moment, but in 100 years time, historians might be able to figure out invaluable ideologies that only existed in our time embedded in the selfies. To wit, historians in the future might regard the time we are living in as a "Renaissance", a period where everybody was keen to participate in a cultural movement; a time where people sought to break conventions and turned to embrace individualism. One could interpret people who take selfies are more or less narcissistic or individualistic. In the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the rise of individualism was perceived as an improvement of human since it remarked a shift from qualitative to quantitative perception in Western Europe. Christianity was no longer the centre of everyone's lives, it occurred to the people at the time that their ideas and opinions mattered.

However, the same case could not be entirely applied to our era. Selfies could be a symbol of human glorification of individual opinions. But this kinda of glorification could be harmful to our era since everyone in our time values their opinions more than anyone else's. When opposite insights appear, they just stand up to defend their own viewpoints in the name of safeguarding freedom of speech. When a group of people who hold similar opinions come together, they might even give rise to tyranny of the majority just like what is happening now in the United States. Eventually two opposing camps might appear, namely pro-selfies camp and anti-selfies camp.

In the era where selfies dominate the majority of the social media platforms, people no longer go an extra mile to explore the beauty of nature as putting up selfies is the quickest way to grant them "likes" (or some might interpret the "likes" they get as popularity). Naturalism, a style that celebrates the idea of reviewing nature with open eyes, thus loses its appeal because most of the selfies enthusiasts apply different filters to make their selfies unnaturally 'likeable' with the help of ridiculous amount of apps. Photoshop is one of the photography editing software to support this argument.

All in all, I could see a lot of possibilities related to selfies: they could inspire art projects be they satirical or pure appreciation, they could be a critical agent for historians and scholars in 100 years to analyse social issues and ideologies of our era and they will definitely be one of the most interesting art styles of our era alongside with the apps and technologies that are developed due to the popularity of selfies.

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