Marxy has an interesting post about the diminishing returns of cultural works, and points the finger at blogs. Basically the immediency and redundancy of newsblogs diminishes the the value of a piece of art, a band, or a film. And yet he didn't talk about how Movies used to have weeks of time in the theaters- but now movies make the bulk of their grosses on the opening weekend. You can't go see a film in a theater multiple times, since it is typically gone in 10 days.

One of the ideas I took from my Chinese art history class was the idea of static art as entertainment. What this means is that there is this tradition of the Chinese intelligentsia sitting in a peaceful room, drinking tea, and looking at a painting for hours on end. Seems very wise and profound? Perhaps, although their paintings were not constructed like ours. They were more like our graphic novels- on scrolls that extend for meters and meters, telling an involved tale. And even the paintings of landscapes which were intended to be hung on a wall and viewed all at once, did not use the tricks of perspective used in the west, and showed an involved environment with a great amount of detail. A traveler might be shown in the paining passing over a mountain, and they would be repeatedly depicted in different places on the mountain, showing each stage of the journey.

This method of viewing art, or Arting came to the west and sparked Cubism, and a whole host of post-modern ways of dealing with art. My point is that there are different ways of experiencing works, and the way that we might consume it now may not be the best way. So what if it is changing? In some ways recorded media is an aberration, and people's consumption is reverting back to the way it was before the invention of the phonograph or the printing press.