Our Cultural Habits Are Changing

Read this article in French:
Comment les images et les vidéos façonnent-elles la culture mondiale ?

A scene from everyday life:

You go online.
You open a social media platform.
A photograph appears.
You look at it for a few seconds.
You scroll.
A video starts playing.
You watch part of it.
You scroll again.
Another image.
Another video.
An advertisement.
Another post.

In just a few minutes, you have encountered dozens of pieces of content.

But how many actually caught your attention?

This scene illustrates a transformation in our cultural habits.

In the digital world, images and videos play an increasingly prominent role. We move quickly from one piece of content to another, discovering information, events, artworks, and cultural practices, sometimes from the other side of the world.

The way we encounter culture is evolving.

In the past, discovering an artwork might have required visiting a gallery, a library, or a performance venue. Now, creations appear directly on our screens, even when we haven’t searched for them.

This circulation also changes our relationship with artworks.

A painting or sculpture can be discovered in seconds. A poem may appear between two videos. An artwork can appear alongside an advertisement or a news story. Algorithms often act as intermediaries, suggesting content to us.

In this flow, an artwork appears among many different kinds of content, sometimes without the information needed to place it in its artistic context. Our first impression is then formed in an environment different from the one for which it was created.

These changes also influence artistic practices.

Some artists take these habits into account when creating their works, exploring the possibilities of images, short videos, or combinations of text and images. Others focus instead on adapting how they present their creations to digital environments.

In this way, how we look at artworks can also influence how they are conceived and circulated.

But these transformations extend beyond individual practices.

An image or video can travel from one country to another, be shared, discussed, or reinterpreted. Some creations become shared cultural references, while others reach smaller communities.

Images and videos do more than change what we see. They also transform how we discover, create, and circulate global culture in all its diversity.

Our cultural habits are changing.

📚 All Micro-essays

This text is part of the Understanding Today’s Culture series, a chronicle of our global networked culture.

→ Return to the Micro-essays page

Explore Further

🟦 What Is Culture For in a Digital Society?

🟦 We Already Live in a Global Networked Culture

🟦 The Network Walker — Traversing Global Culture in the Algorithmic Age

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© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor