the fine line between art and technology

My latest reading is “Culture Making,” an insightful look into scripture from a cultural point of view.  And by culture, I mean the most general sense of the word, or as the author (Andy Crouch) would put it, “what human beings make of the world.”  Crouch suggests that you and I were made to be culture-makers.  He suggests that the two key ingredients of good culture-making are creativity (bringing things into existence that did not exist before) and cultivation (knowing and caring for the space from which your materials for creating come).  And he suggests that you and I were made to be culture-makers as a function of our intrinsic relationship to God as his image-bearing representation on the earth that he created.

One thing he talks about is the nature of cultural change.  We know that culture changes; there are a ton of examples around us.  Let’s take movies, for example.  In the past 100 years, we’ve gone from black and white, silent, and projected on a big screen with average picture quality to millions of colors and sounds playing from your HD TV at home with sparkling, crystal-clear picture.  And that’s just scratching the surface.  We could talk about the advent of special effects, stunt doubles, animation, and the artistic elements of comedy, drama, and everything in between.

In the midst of our comtemporary culture possessing a myriad of problems, the church’s response has been a strong desire for revival and revolution.  We want to see Jesus enter the “dirty temples” in our culture, kick some ass, and take some names.  This seems to be the only solution we can see to the seemingly insurmountable social constructions that oppress and abuse the weak and needy among us, and perpatuate a tolerance and fancy for immorality.

And how does this translate for art and artists?  Let’s let Crouch answer…

“Culture watchers sometimes talk about the ’silver bullet’ theory of Christian influence – the dream that someday, someone will write ‘the perfect song’ that will, in four minutes of pure inspiration, bring about a wave of repentance and  conversion in our land.  This is treating a song like a device.  It is turning music into technology.  Christians are not the only ones who cherish this fantasy – advertisers of all sorts have mastered the art of transmuting music and art into the technology of persuasion.  In fact, it might not be too much to say that the four-minute pop song is itself a device, a technologically massaged tool for the delivery of pleasing or cathartic emotions” (59-60).

As a writer of songs about Jesus, I can see what the current landscape of my craft is, and I’m not too pleased.  To be honest, the word technology can, in my opinion, describe a good chunk of the songs out there.  It’s like we’ve reached the level of the generic 21st century hip-hop song: music stolen from another song which was stolen from another song, with lyrics and themes too repetitive and sterile to provide any new insight into the world.

For a long time, I’ve wondered why this is the case, and I think the quote above helps me to understand.  There must be a ridiculous amount of pressure on Christian musicians and writers to create something pleasing enough to its constituency to be bought and enjoyed.  Christians, as the consumers of Contemporary Christian Music (or CCM, for short) need their fair share of “pleasing and cathartic emotions,” and the artists must feel obligated to deliver, lest they run the risk of losing their livelihood and relevance among the only people who take them seriously as artists.

But I conclude by suggesting to you that I see three fundamental problems:

1. My generation has successfully turned music into a tool for addictive emotional manipulation, and artists into their drug dealers; there seems to be no difference among followers of Jesus.
2. As soon as an artist feels the pressure of having to make art that says a certain thing or evokes certain feelings, their vocation changes, from artists to scientists.  Their products are no longer art, but experiments, carefully controlled devices meant to elicit a certain response and deemed a failure if that desired response is not achieved.
3. Nobody in the CCM subculture (or the American church, for that matter) seems to think there’s a problem.  In fact, I would say that few even care.

At this point, I’m sad, confused, and intimidated.
My Question for God: How do you plan to wean a generation off its addiction to technology?  Who will you raise up to provide a reasonable alternative?