Context is king
In the ‘Tuymans Experiment’, Luc Tuymans (widely hailed as one of the most important artists in the world – e.g. the Tate Modern’s description here, and the curators describing him in the first minute of the video above) decided to radically shift the context of his art.
He reproduced one of his most famous paintings on a wall in Antwerp, to see how people responded to it. Curators predicted 90% of passerbys would stop and contemplate. In fact, just 4% stopped. A painting that in a gallery makes close to 100% of people stop and think for a few minutes, and appreciate the art for the thoughts it made them explore and the new ways of seeing something that it gives them, was remarkably valueless when transposed from the art gallery walls to a street wall. Context turned a ‘million dollar’ picture with the power to influence people and the way they think, into a vulgar paint daub on an alleyway wall ignored by 96% of people passing by.
There are vast ramifications to this point; I would love to hear your suggestions in the comments below. When I watched this video this morning, here are some other stories just from today which my mind immediately made connections to. Some will be obvious, others obscure (because we share some context in common, but not all of it, so the value of some objects, in this case our ability to draw connections between them, will differ greatly):
- Seth Godin: Avoiding the Passion/Pop Gulf
- Uncivil Society: Filesharing Theology
- EuropeanStartups: The New Digital Divide – Building Web Services for the Mainstream
- Uncivil Society: From red light district to red charity
- Broadstuff: The involuntary redundancy of A list blog sites
For any investor or entrepreneur in the Web2.0 space, understanding and accurately recognising the different contexts is going to be key to positioning yourself inside, or outside, the growing dotcom bubble. I fear too many services get drunk on their popularity with geeks and fail to gain traction where it matters: with people who have never heard the term ‘Web 2.0′ – these are the people that make Google all its money, for all its popularity with nerds.
Related:
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