A solar flare pass pass over the world ’s electronic media stores unclouded . electrical energy no longer flows . And a new dark geezerhood get down , along with a new form of storytelling . It ’s all chronicle in a strange art show from the future .
Artist Stephen Hendee ’s new show , Dark Age Era North America : The Ice Next Time , is on display in good order now at Las Vegas ’ Barrick Museum – but it ’s set in 2429 . It ’s a questioning fable report told in the signifier of a future exhibit in a North American history museum , exploring what pass off to storytelling in an era without electrical energy or books . As we discover in the company museum catalogue , most books are burned for fuel during the first few months of the global amnesia after the solar flares start . So an quondam kind of storytelling is revived – storytellers and actors who remember the old novel and movie of the pre - black Age make “ storytelling drops ” check with giant material banners publicize the narrative they ’ll tell . They travel from town to townspeople , far from the abandoned urban center , recreating science fabrication stories they once have intercourse . This is how Hendee describes it :
Storyteller ’s Drops ( 2035 - 2250 )
Before the pandemonium , most of the world ’s libraries and archives had been converted into digital formatting . Paper Scripture became antiquated and though care for by many , the yield and distribution of book edition had belittle to a drip and entirely give up more than a decade before the hoo-ha . It is obvious to us now during the result of 2026 , we misplace almost the entirety of human historical record . It was no small disaster that most print paper had already become rare , but compounding this trouble the electricity used to run all other informational archive both public and personal evaporate almost overnight . incognizant of the compass of the unfolding events anything that could be burned for warmth or preparation was used for endurance , including most of the remaining books and newspaper .
For as many who wandered looking just for nutrient and unobjectionable water there were as many in shock that their life story , location , and history had been erased . Individuals and then groups became recognize for their ability to remember and re - record the history of collective computer storage among the survivors . Traveling storytellers became an instrumental part of community life sentence . The arriver of those recite their personal and handed down retention was cope with with excitement and expectation .
Many fibber would travel with lightweight banner often painted with a lean of authors or write up they were keen to do . Sometimes these selections were an compartmentalisation of fragmental works , with others the oeuvre of specific author might be the stress , or single full treatment of lit that would be recited over many nights . Central meeting shoes became a societal hub of storytelling , medicine , shared communal cognition , and history .
I love the agency the generator ’ names and taradiddle title have been mutated over time , just the fashion they might if oral traditions took over and people ’s memories of the originals melt .
Hendee ’s show features a figure of puff from these fabricator drop , as well as the variety of costumes that actors and authority fatigue during the Dark Ages . Here ’s the description of some of these :
valet de chambre Outside the Field / Boogy Man / Death ( Burlap )
human race on the Road / Old Military Ghost ( Green )
Trickster/ Chaos & Plenty ( Orange/ Blue / Stripes )
The power is on ( 2127 )
Reconstructed example of disguise Dawn Worker ’s signal banner used to alert the presence of powered body structure or resource . Between 2110 and 2211 , the return of potential electrical contemporaries was kept secret to all but a score of scientists rivet on restoring electrical mightiness . The secrecy maintained was to avoid the public fear of returning to the digital civilization before the Fall and the associated mental disorderliness such as incurable beguilement , computer memory expiration , and mass sociopathological narcissism ( MSN ) . The public feeling at the time was that these scourges were cause by a dependence upon instantaneous digital access .
Read the full back report on the Dark Ages , and see more pic of Hendee ’s showhere , or visitStephen Hendee ’s website .
Futurism
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