Scenius: Art Defined by the Social Experience

Brian Eno has been thinking in a new way about art and culture. Hired as curator of the Luminous Festival in Sydney, this month the city became a living canvas of music, light and performance. The Opera House sails were transformed with changing visual designs set to music. Eno said he has been experimenting with a new way cultural position for art, and has coined a new word, "Scenius," to describe it. Scenius is art tapping into the power of collective intelligence. Unlike the old "Genius" model of art created with via the special intelligence of one person, Eno is intrigued with the power of cumulative intelligence as a methold of creating a new idea or experience. (sound like crowdsourcing?)

Hasn't art always been about social engagement? Particularly public art? Or does art take on new powers when it can be shared collectively via social groups? Eno is known for creating the concept of "ambient music," yet I wonder if he has heard about the concept "ambient awareness?" Last September, NYTimes writer Clive Thompson wrote about social awareness as the feeling people have of engaging in a kind of omnipresent opinion... online. Thompson wrote:

"This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting."

I think Clive and Brian have some thinking in common.