This is an essay I wrote in 2022, inspired by Kyle Chaka’s 2016 viral essay, “Welcome to Airspace”. After seeing an excerpt from Kyle’s new book on the front of /c/Technology, I thought y’all might be interested in reading this piece of mine, which is less about the design of physical spaces, and more about The Algorithm™’s influence on creative practice in general.
This is a conversation I can have a million times, so I hope you enjoy.
This is true of every artist scene eventually. The SoHo crowd from the 60s, the Beat generation in the 50s (North Beach and Greenwich village), Montparnasse in Paris in the 20s.
The artists of Rome where probably replaced in their neighborhoods by gentrification too, we just don’t have written proof. This isn’t some new fangled conspiracy. This is the cycle. Artists flock to cheap neighborhood and make it a famous cultural center with their art. Rich people want a piece of that atmosphere and move in eventually pricing out the artists they wanted to rub elbows with. Pretending this is a new phenomenon ignores the very nature of human society.