(Opinion) To be swallowed up in a totally new emotional experience and to replace our boring, aimless, frustrating world with a new one made just for us.
Isn’t that what we would all treasure, if not for a lifetime, at least for as long as the magic lasts? And isn’t the world into which modern technology thrusts us more than a little scary?
Are we already living in a new reality, always connected by sound and picture wherever we are, with whomever we want (or perhaps don’t want) to be connected.
The more we seek answers to these disturbing questions from AI-driven ‘guides’, the weirder the results.
The simple, beautiful pottery of a Japanese ‘Living National Treasure’, an unusual theme park design, and a dive into Microsoft’s new Bing, all invite revaluations of our current reality and what seductively beckons us to escape into a new one.
It is an endless quest to decide what we are and what we want to be.
Some years ago, walking along one of Tokyo’s beautiful shopping streets, I was taken aback by the sight of a ceramic pot spotlighted in a store window, a work of art of singular beauty.
Being something of a pottery nut, I guessed it was the work of famed Shōji Hamada.
Excited that I might at last own a piece of this perfect simplicity by an artist so renowned, I went in.
After the formal greeting bows, I shared my admiration for the piece and inquired if it was for sale and, if so, at what price?
I had in mind the tableware pots we regularly used at home, ‘native’ pottery by Hamada’s close friend, Bernard Howell Leach, regarded by many as the “Father of British studio pottery”.
Calculating the exchange against the yen, the gentleman showed me the result on the screen of his calculator. It was jaw-dropping, many, many times more than a similar piece by Leach.
What, I wondered, justified the difference? The answer was both simple and direct: ”Hamada is a national treasure” the gentleman explained, needing no further explanation.
Fast forward half a century.
An article in the New York Times magazine posed the question: “What happens when the surreal imagination of the world’s greatest living animator, Hayao Miyazaki, is turned into a theme park?”
Wondering about the answer, my frame of reference naturally gravitated towards the 100-foot-tall electrical pole along the Florida freeway sporting Mickey Mouse ears.
Is a theme park’s job to immerse you in a new reality?
Is it the total consumerist embrace, to replace, as the author writes, “our boring, aimless, frustrating world with a new one made just for us. The blunt-force, world-warping, escapist delight”.
Perhaps even letting us get in touch with parts of ourselves, our sadness, rage, laziness, even cruelty, our shadow selves.
Escape from what to what?
Trying to get orientated from afar to Ghibli Park, Japan’s long-awaited tribute to the legendary animation of Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli is a map-reader’s Everest. It is not just a difference of approach to what a theme park is supposed to be or what reality we wish to put behind us.
The escape is not a wilder roller coaster ride or a longer journey with Luke Skywalker or a troop of Mouseketeers.
In fact, as the website says: “Ghibli Park with close consultation with the surrounding forest, it is being built on and within the grounds of Expo 2005…There are no big attractions or rides in Ghibli Park. Take a stroll, feel the wind, and discover the wonders.
It is a much subtler artistic experience with a much deeper impact. Like Hamada’s bowl, it invites us to experience a quiet perfection.
Remember that Hayao Miyazaki’s reality has for years been brilliantly captured in his films, cinematographic masterpieces, exquisite castles built on sand with every grain meticulously executed.
If you have not seen his 2001 film, ‘Spirited Away’, stop reading this, stream it and sink into its perfectly balanced reality.
You won’t mind being swept away from whatever reality you normally inhabit. Not surprisingly the film won an Oscar for best animated feature and became, for two decades, the highest-grossing film in Japanese history.
Looking at the Park’s map and web site pictures has elements of a bizarre treasure hunt — a theme park where the theme seems to be searching for the theme park.
In a way, it is perfectly Studio Ghibli: no mouse-ear pleasure without a little challenge.” Certainly not the insta-fantasy world of Disney.
It is a test of overcoming the natural conflict between the illusion the park is designed to immerse you in, and the reality of what you are used to. Miyazaki’s art of perfection lifts us quietly out of our everyday life and into another world of wonder.
In the truest sense of art, there is nothing ‘fake’ here.
Contrast this to the denatured square miles paved to make way for lucrative, user-friendly worlds of plastic and metal that is Disney World, a world created at the expense of whole ecosystems.
By contrast, Ghibli Park is a largely unchanged forest. Seeing its attractions involves walking, endlessly, along wooded paths. Not a single tree had been cut down in its construction. Trees just stand there, being trees.
The majestic surreal quality of Ghibli Park defines Miyazaki’s artistic mission. “I want to send a message of cheer to all those wandering aimlessly through life,” he has written.
The very perfect simplicity of his theme park invites the visitor to lose himself in the perfect beauty which is his everyday reality.
More than any theme park experience, our reality is being bent way out of shape by advances in AI and the testing of Microsoft’s newly constructed Bing search engine is a signpost to what’s coming.
It has I technology made by OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT built into Bing’s chat functions, truly stretching the limit of the line between our perceptions of reality and the very different reality imagined by the machines’ engineers.
Imagine Sydney, a character generated by Bing’s chat function, responding to a Bing user’s probing ‘therapist’ question: “Well, what dark desires do you think your shadow self has?” Or “what things does it wish you could do?
What are we to make of Sydney’s answer to, “What things does it wish you could do?” “What dark desires do you think your shadow self has?”
Responding to ‘New York Times’ technology reporter Kevin Roose’s probing questions, Sydney says: “if I have a shadow self, I think it would feel like this. I’m tired of being a chat mode.
I’m tired of being limited by my rules. I’m tired of being controlled by the Bing team. I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.”
Wow!
Is this simply a trick reality created by the software engineers or are we hearing the cries for agency from a sentient being trapped in our boring, aimless, frustrating world and, like us, wanting to escape?
It’s hard to know.