Chapter 15 – Is The Blue Neon a museum?

What would you expect from visiting a museum/gallery/exhibit? I want to right away dismiss any potential misconstructions regarding these terms – assuming they all provide information, have a certain coherence in displaying artworks and are permeable environments, the difference between them relies solely on the possibility of acquiring a piece of work or not. Going forward, please allow me this digression and to use them interchangeably.

That being said, they probably all trigger a certain anticipation, a positive suspense at the mere mention of their names, envisioning a trip worth your trouble and your time. Even if this doesn’t turn out as a groundbreaking or life-changing experience, you would still remember it anyway. You can either be in the hunt for an awe moment (see chapters 6, 8 and 14) or in for simply satisfying your curiosity; it doesn’t really matter, as long as you leave the building with more questions than answers, you have progressed towards the realisation that you are the one giving meaning(s) to an artwork.

The tag accompanying a composition, or a guided visit, brings knowledge – sometimes biaised if we consider the subjectivity of history itself – yet nothing should tell you how to read the object in front of you, or even if you have to. Given your status as a subject in this relationship, you undoubtedly account for half of the interaction, so start considering yourself as the essence defining the museum experience. To paraphrase Nietzsche: if you gaze long into an artwork, the artwork also gazes into you. To put it bluntly, an artwork requires your time to exist, independently of its place of original display and its current surroundings. Fight to remain the master of your attention.

In all these aspects, The Blue Neon appears to level up with a museum. But I can perceive your scepticism: how wandering virtually this place could reproduce the physical interaction that a gallery offers. Simple, it doesn’t. At this stage of development, yours and ours, this universe is unable to adequately compensate for this lack of movement and lack of proper scale and depth; this might come in due time though, thanks to a democratisation of some technology on your side and our willingness to accept and onboard it.

How can you then not be disappointed by missing out on such an experience? Remember the three pillars of The Blue Neon: the limited number of artworks, their diversity and the immersive feature of the slow-looking. Equipped with these three companions, with myself, and with your willingness to discover, there is no place for failure. We have reached the last chapter of this first volume and I think it’s time to lift the mystery on the form that has hovered over you, the embodiment of our values: the wheel of art.

We will discuss further in the near future, probably in the next chapter.

Yours Sincerely,

BLUE