The Altar whispers:
“Make something worthy of mystery."
The Algorithm whispers:
“Make something worthy of clicks."
You are not a product.
You are not a metric.
You are not a spark for someone else’s machine.
You are the bearer of something slower.
Older.
Dangerous.
Holy.
IN our prologue we looked inward at how images shape identity. Now, we turn outward, to explore how artists themselves helped build the structures we now find ourselves living within.
Once upon a time, art answered only to the soul. It whispered from garrets, poured out in candlelight, or was sung from church lofts by the half-starved. Artists with nature as teacher enjoyed the primacy of personal experience and debated the transformation of ordinary life into spiritual revelation.
But in this our own time, especially the gilded, glowing art years from the 1980s through the digital turn, a strange new thing happened. The artist became the landlord.
And then, all too quietly, became the tenant again.
The Platform as Castle
Today, the castles are invisible, but their walls are higher.
Tech platforms--Google, Meta, Amazon--have taken the artist's blueprint and scaled it. Instead of fans, they have users. Instead of audiences, they have data profiles. Instead of legacy, they have lock-ins.
The tech titans extract attention the way kings once taxed grain. Private equity controls the venues where life itself plays out--health, housing, even burial.
AI model creators now own the tools of language, story, and thought. What once belonged to the scribe and the soul now belongs to servers and shareholders.
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And the Artist?
They are no longer the lords of the land--but the labourers. Caught between expression and extraction. Told to create, but fast. To post, but not pause. To serve the algorithm, not the altar.
And yet--the ghost of the old muse still walks the battlements. Still knocks on the gates. Still calls through the static:
“Remember what the art was for."
(FLM Week 1, August 2025)