1979’s Disco Demolition Night: Art Authenticity, and Fear of Technology
Oil painting style digital artwork generated with Stable Diffusion depicting a figure resembling Joan of Arc at the stake. The figure, dressed in silver, wears over-ear headphones and uses a laptop with a blank screen. She extends her right hand towards vibrant orange flames, evoking the historic scene of martyrdom with a modern twist, inspired by lyrics from The Smiths' "Bigmouth Strikes Again referencing Joan of Arc and a melting Walkman. [Alt text by ALT Text Artist GPT]
Disco music was famous for introducing technological advances in music production, such as synthesizers and electric pianos. I guess those were among the reasons why people saw it as lacking the βauthenticityβ of early musical genres. Itβs hard to grasp the human concept of βauthenticityβ most people have in their psyche, I donβt believe there is any rationality in it, especially when it comes to discerning things that are deemed βauthenticβ versus things that are not. For me, this stems from a mysterious, probably instinctive, resistance in most peopleβs psyches to adopt new technologies or accept new scientific discoveries. It comes down to the internal confrontations between beliefs and reality: