…And Video For All: Contemplating YouTube in the light of Marinetti’s approach to creativity

FUTURISM CONTEMPLATED

…And Video for all

Contemplating YouTube in the light of Marinetti’s approach to creativity

by Michael DISABATO

Marinetti’s ideology was geared toward the youth, he spent his adult life urging the future generations to understand his philosophy.

My generation (the 18 -25 demographic) has found a form of expression that might make Marinetti gleam with pride: YouTube. YouTube is an online website that allows users to make their own videos and post them on the Internet for others to see and enjoy. The videos are sometimes creative, sometimes banal, but they are usually an artistic expression of movement and passion.

For longer than one cares to remember, cinematic expression has been a read-only profession. In other words, as an observer, our only ability is to visually perceive what is going on without really being able to comment on its message. People had to accept what cinema powerhouses were putting out. A lot of the time it was just the things that futurism followers were bashing. Past similarities, worshipping of idiotic cultural norms, and only some movies “sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness.”

With YouTube, my generation has turned the read only media into a read write media. The youth is able to speak their voice in a creative and stimulating manner. Now, this is not to say that individuals are going on to YouTube and making futurist videos. It is more a commentary on the fact that people are able to use speed, technology, and movement to create art in a socially different way. Of course there are individuals who do not use this platform to progress art and thus futurist artists would look down upon this. But there are some that take what was used, and make it shocking to the public. People remix songs that break out of the norms of cinematic ideology. This is what futurism is about, the passion to find something new and destroy the old.

One can almost picture Marinetti and the other futurist artists sitting down to a computer and designing a captivating and disturbing video for the masses to see. Or instead of publishing his manifesto for others to read, Marinetti could publish a video on which he calls all of the expression-starved youth to amass videos that attack the older generations hatred of technology and loud noise. The list is endless because futurist would have a medium that the generation they were preaching too is obsessed with. What makes this even easier to imagine, is the Obama administration’s adaptation of streaming online videos to keep the nation up to date on his policies. The futurist even had a printing press during their reign, what would stop them from having a streaming video on YouTube every Sunday that kept the artistic nation up to date on their views.