Work of Art
Poem - by David John Barber
Everything about them seemed tremendous,
their stature, their science, their smugness,
until they stalked through the Louvre
and discovered art. Was it true we used
pigments, and print, and recorded sound
to tweak our brain chemistry? Because
they'd used magnetic fields to stir their brains,
running real time code for the same effect,
but the computations proved intractable.
So we read them manifestos. We said
everything was art. We said nothing
was art. We were all artists, we said
art made us sigh, it made us feel noble,
angry, want to buy things, defend the State.
We told them to take in a Broadway show.
They were so fresh and ripe for metaphors,
they listened to our stories like children,
like we knew something they had to know.
These days, creatives are at a premium,
fêted like princes and coaxed by critics
to squeeze out one more masterpiece.
Now works of art can be scored out of ten
by the effect they have on the brain.
A poem, for instance, might speculate
on the upshot of such technology
and the monetisation of artworks.
Watch the pointer swing across the dial.