The measurement of art – culture

In case the word has not got around: “Hellbound” from South Korea is currently the most successful series on Netflix worldwide. It is about evil sinners who are haunted by monsters, which is irrelevant. The news is mainly about the supposedly almost 70 million hours that it has been viewed so far. Sounds like a lot of time. On the other hand, Netflix has more than 200 million subscribers, and if each of them only watches 20 minutes, this figure is almost reached. While we’re at it, what happened to “Squid Game”? The series, which also comes from South Korea, broke all audience records in the fall. How can it be that it has already been overtaken by a series of monsters?

Depending on which period and which dates you look at, “Squid Game” and the previous front runner “Bridgerton” were still viewed more in absolute terms than “Hellbound”. It’s just “currently” the most successful Netflix series, and “currently” is a stretchable term. These numbers, which are constantly being circulated, can hardly be classified. Also because Netflix only recently changed the way it records the success of its content: Hours watched are now more important than views that may only last a few minutes. But actually it doesn’t matter how exactly that is determined. What counts is the media drum roll.

And then there are those responsible in Silicon Valley and their ideas about the behavior of the audience. One of the ideas that influence many corporate philosophies there is namely the following: Our desire does not belong to us, it is always the desire of others. You could also say: I would like to have what someone else has. This is what some philosophers and psychologists have already claimed, especially the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and the literature professor René Girard from Stanford, who died in 2015 and who in Silicon Valley has become a kind of pillar saint in the management floors of tech companies, which often smell slightly of incense sticks is where his works are interpreted and often esoterically exaggerated. Many decisions by companies like Netflix are therefore based on the assumption that people believe what everyone else wants must be good and desirable.

This is how the annual review of the music streaming platform Spotify works, which is currently being shared again on all social networks: These playlists with the supposed personal favorite songs of the year are a clever advertising coup that uses the collected user data, which was originally only intended for resale to advertisers. User profiles thus become digital advertising posters.

Open detailed view

The songs themselves, music, lyrics and artists, fade into the background. Main message: there is a new list or a most watched series. The work of art itself has become a minor matter in the age of its technical measurability. With consequences for the artists.

Not all filmmakers are thrilled for a long time when their works end up on streaming services, where they are advertised for a few weeks and then often quickly forgotten again. This is not only about a lot of money, but also about it. Scarlett Johansson sued Disney this year because they wanted to play their blockbuster “Black Widow” on the streaming service Disney Plus instead of just in the cinema as agreed. The parties reached an out-of-court settlement, probably on a not insignificant amount of millions. Duncan Jones, David Bowie’s son, was a directing sensation a few years ago: he mixed up the film festivals with the indie film “Moon” in 2009, followed by the clever thriller “Source Code” and the lavish film adaptation of the computer game “Warcraft”. Then in 2018 Jones landed his next film “Mute” on Netflix, where he went completely under. The compelling rhythm of the constantly new on these platforms attracts a lot of attention for a short time, but then makes the works disappear all the more mercilessly. Also because other exploitation channels such as DVDs and linear television no longer play a major role for films that would previously have been shown in the cinema.

This often unavoidable jamming of the content is due to the logic of the platforms, which reduce art and culture to a data set and impose a new order on works, which is almost only about one thing: the evaluation of the data collected for advertising purposes. What doesn’t fit in there hardly stands a chance. This logic, largely developed by Google, pervades practically all digital platforms.

What is not sufficiently rated, clicked and looked at, practically does not exist

In contrast to many other search engines, Google does not work with keywording, but assigns a value to everything based on factors such as number of hits and links. And on the potential for selling ads. The actual content of the websites and network content is of secondary importance. What counts is the usability in the intertwining of data processing and capitalism. It’s no longer just about a few websites: The Google algorithm and its countless relatives are rearranging the world, from the search engine to the Spotify profile, the Instagram story and the Facebook timeline to the map function, which almost megalomaniac Google Earth is called and where you can also see how well the baker on the corner and the hairdresser on the other side of the street were rated. The literary scholar Joseph Vogl, who has written several books on the subject, puts it this way: “Reality itself has taken on the character of an intrusive form of value.” What is not sufficiently rated, clicked and looked at, practically does not exist.

These lists and records have become such a valuable marketing tool because they let our attention go where corporations want it to go. Information was once a rare commodity, today there are more films, music, books, news and reviews than any single person could ever watch, hear and read. Tech companies have long recognized the attention of users as the new hard currency on the Internet, and so everything that was once neatly separated is now competing with each other: films, news, friendships, debates, music, and during Corona also parts the world of work. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings once said: “As Netflix, we compete for our customers’ time, our fields of competition therefore include Snapchat, Youtube, Sleep, etc.”

We try to fit everything into the attention and evaluation economy of these platforms. Films, series and songs are no longer relevant in this system because they show us the world as we did not know it or because they manage to move us. Success and thus alleged relevance has above all what is watched a lot and can be used; What prevails in the attention economy is not necessarily what is socially and artistically important, for example because it triggers a debate or redefines a genre. What is considered relevant is what is watched more than “Squid Game”. Some viewers recognized the South Korean series as a criticism of capitalism – but that was hardly the point in the reviews and discussions, instead it was always about the high number of viewers and things like the protection of minors. The decisive factor for success is above all the correct evaluation by algorithms and not that something is socially or artistically relevant.

In some cases, of course, that was always the case. The popular prevails, often quality too, and sometimes a work of art is simply lucky or hits a nerve. Movies, series and music are not necessarily bad because they are on a hit list or because they are viewed a lot. Probably nobody at Netflix expected that Korean series would go through the roof. Sometimes art still interferes. This is good news because it means that what defines art is beyond the power of these corporations.

What is new, however, is that the creation of such lists is often only about correlations with other data and no longer about causalities in the real world. Because to mean something, to have an aesthetic claim, to be critical, is no longer enough to get attention. It does not matter what could move the audience or what would be relevant to their living environment. What they call matters, literally.