I’m lying in my bed, phone in hand. With a mere swipe of my fingers, I have access to nearly every component of the literary, film, and musical canons. Not to mention the livestream of a church service that is physically taking place two thousand miles away. I can move from War and Peace to Abbey Road to Bill Johnson’s Bethel Church to Doug Wilson’s Christ Church in a matter of minutes.
The younger generation isn’t the sole sufferer of digital rot, though. Adults fall victim to mindless scrolling and frequently employ services that help them disengage from the physical world.
This is an exaggerated image, but it displays the potential contained within our modernized systems of streaming and their “content.” These systems have their benefits, and I don’t mean for my caricature to completely strip them of any merit. I love that bedridden church members can view services and still engage with their churches in a way that didn’t exist twenty years ago. Internet services like Reddit, YouTube, and streaming algorithms can expose audiences to creative works they might never have encountered otherwise. It can only take minutes to go from receiving a recommendation to engaging with it. There’s value to this unprecedented accessibility to art that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
It should also go without saying that this seamless consumption isn’t without downfalls. The idea that church is easily lumped in alongside pools of “content” is incredibly problematic, but I’ll have more on that in a moment. Books like The Anxious Generation have exposed the nasty effects that technology has on children. While books like these are immensely helpful in understanding younger generations, it’s also easy to point the finger at obvious brain rot. Terms like “skibidi toilet” and “L rizz” have become common vernacular amongst the younger generation and are naturally off-putting to many from older generations.
The younger generation isn’t the sole sufferer of digital rot, though. Adults fall victim to mindless scrolling and frequently employ services that help them disengage from the physical world. Day-to-day tasks like in-person shopping become obsolete as adults opt in to curbside pickup services and grocery delivery. Again, these services have their place, but we should be aware of the effects they have on us, no matter how microscopic they may appear.
An increasing reliance on digital micro-conveniences results in digitality becoming a powerhouse vehicle of mindless consumption and physical disengagement. As our culture endorses digital consumption in more facets of life, it inherently devalues the significance of physicalness. That has incredible implications on how society functions, including how we perceive the world of media and artistic expression.
The Bible is far from ambiguous on the importance of physicality. Regarding human physical presence, Paul writes, “But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come you” (1 Thes. 2:17-18). The author of Hebrews encourages the audience to “not [neglect] to meet together” (Heb. 10:25). The New Testament writers overwhelmingly support the idea that physicality matters.
God’s emphasis on details doesn’t stop at utility; he also places emphasis on beauty and aesthetics.
God is significantly more concerned with my physical attendance and presence in the body of the church than he is with how I listen to OK Computer, but I believe there’s an underlying principle that also extends to art. The Old Testament contains several examples of God’s concern for physicality in the created works that he commissions. The specific instructions that Noah received in building the ark (Genesis 6:14-16) point to a functional importance in the details. God’s emphasis on details doesn’t stop at utility; he also places emphasis on beauty and aesthetics. Exodus 25 includes God’s demands for the construction of the tabernacle. Constructed from gold, silver, scarlet yarn, and onyx, and filled with incense, God’s sanctuary is a physical expression of sensory beauty. God may not reside in art galleries the same way he did the tabernacle, but there’s an importance (admittedly lesser) to aesthetics and beauty that should not be ignored.
One of the ways that God reveals himself to man is through his creation (Rom. 1:20). As humans made in God’s image, it’s a part of our nature to create. We see this beyond what the mainstream would consider “artistic expression,” though. Architecture, culinary arts, cabinet construction, gardening, and freeway construction are all ways in which our God-given tendency to create is expressed. As we look at “media” in particular and how it should be understood physically, we need to ask whether anything is lost when it’s consumed digitally. Is there intrinsic merit to a vinyl spin versus a Spotify stream? While it’s far from being a moral issue, I do strongly believe that something is lost in the digitization of these forms. There are three specific areas where I find something to be gained through physical media and demeaned in the digital.
1) The Singularity of the Physical Object
When we choose to engage with physical media, we choose to engage with a physical object whose sole aim and matter is the art itself. My copy of Notes from Underground is simply that. As an object it serves no other inherent purpose than to be a composition of pages that includes the specific translation of the book and some accompanying commentary. If I want to read another book, or even another translation of the same book, I need to find and engage with another physical object.
This singularity helps to form a stronger connection between the consumer and the created work. I can clearly remember the yellowed pages of my copy of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. Its glossed cover and National Book Award stamp are impressed into my memory of the book. Looking at another form, I know exactly where my vinyl copy of Kind of Blue has skips and scratches. These physical idiosyncrasies help me to engage and remember the work more so than if I solely consumed it through an app on my phone.
2) The Experience
Retention and mental engagement is heightened when effort is required to pick something, and to physically enter the process of watching, reading, or listening to it.
Each artistic medium reaps experiential benefit in opting for physical engagement. This “heightened experience” varies from form to form, with some digital forms providing a very similar end-product to their physical counterpart, if not better in some cases (movie streaming vs. DVD). Other forms and services have larger disparities, such as the sound quality in a compressed Spotify stream vs. a CD. The film medium requires more expensive and high-end physical forms (Criterion collections, etc.) to truly achieve a heightened at-home experience, but a sort of physical experience can also exist in the form of viewing a film at a theater. Better yet, viewing a screening of the film on actual film. There’s a raw warmth that exists on a 33mm roll of film that can be lost in a digital rendering that gets compressed through a streaming service and displayed on a low-definition display.
The experience of physical media also allows for works to be experienced uninterrupted and isolated from the rest of the world. Streaming services and unpaid music services will frequently interrupt what-should-be-seamless experiences with ads. Getting an ad for a sweeper during the last shot of The Seventh Seal is not exactly how I imagine Bergman wanting his audience to experience the film.
One of the ultimate goals of physical media is to engage the consumer with the work in a way of greater intention. CD and vinyl create manual action on the part of the listener, as well as physical ritual and buy-in. Research shows that reading physical books leads to stronger retention. Retention and mental engagement is heightened when effort is required to pick something, and to physically enter the process of watching, reading, or listening to it.
I believe that this understanding of physicality is somewhat inherent to humans. Everyone has “seen” The Mona Lisa, yet many will travel to the Louvre to see it in person. On a larger scale, our desktop backgrounds are flooded with beautiful nature scenery, yet no one would dare argue that a stock image of the Grand Canyon compares to the real thing. Whether it be God’s creation or, on a lesser level, our own, humans seem to inherently understand that physical engagement with created works leads to a deeper and more intentional experience.
3) Curation and Collection
Physical media creates the opportunity for individuals to purchase and collect their favorite created works. There’s a significant financial element to collecting that can play out in various ways. Artists are supported through these forms, with book sales, and vinyl/CD sales being a vital part of how they achieve financial independence via their art.
My copy of Helplessness Blues isn’t just a record with music; it’s a reminder of a time where I was job-searching, working through a degree, and playing the record on a daily basis and finding catharsis within it.
On the consumer level, purchasing physical media creates investment. This buy-in can occur through the money spent, as well as the space taken, or anything else “given” in the process of adding a piece to a collection. This buy-in cultivates a thoughtful curation of works and (aside from some obsessed hoarders) means that one’s collection is something one cares about and has cultivated thoughtfully. I love that my vinyl shelves include albums that I’ve loved for years and can serve as a background documentation of my life. Seasons of my life have been soundtracked by albums. My copy of Helplessness Blues isn’t just a record with music; it’s a reminder of a time where I was job-searching, working through a degree, and playing the record on a daily basis and finding catharsis within it.
Collecting physical media also allows for one to truly “own” a piece in a particular state. VHS tapes can’t be altered by studio executives, artists can’t change mixes on CDs, and the government can’t change the words in already owned paperbacks. Physical copies are concrete in their content and can only be altered by some physical intrusion. In a world where each religious and political persuasion has censorship-prone extremists, physical media is a bulwark for free speech, expression, and documentation.
I recently looked through some of my now-deceased grandparents’ belongings. I could almost sense the impression that they left on their things. My grandfather has been gone for over seven years, but as I examined his bookshelves, I gained a look into his mind and interests. His bookmarks in the middle of a devotional, his notes in his Bibles, and the tattered covers of concordances were not meaningless. These types of connections are all around us, and we all form meaningful ties to physical things.
My aim isn’t for myself or others to become materialistic; it’s actually the opposite. I would contend that an overreliance on the digital feeds a consumerist mindset that devalues physical things that God wishes for us to engage with. The physical matters beyond media. The world we live in is one that God has placed us in and created for us to be connected to.
