As a guarantee of cohesion and community spirit, collective entertainment maintains the permanence of the system. The “crystal palace” has given way to the “white cube”. The content of this globalized entertainment overlooks any local specificity. In the most generic way, the soft-space accommodates this substrate around which society is organized. In order to satisfy an ever-larger majority, the system highlights the content that best meets the expectations and desires of the audience. Thus, all individuals participate through their judgment in the aesthetic and political orientation of the whole. Consensus governs community experience.

 

Spectators are bound not only to enjoy collective entertainment, but also to perform and make everyday life content visible - and therefore valuable. Everyone’s life is exposed in the regulated and temperate environment of the soft-space, tirelessly playing the game of consensus. Life is no longer simply performed in society - it is also commodified and subjected to collective agreement.

 

Flattened and smoothed, the content results from a decision made algorithmically by the system. In real time, the collection of all the emotions and reactions of the spectators-producers contribute to the optimization of an outcome that can lead to consensus and harmony.

 

Even though the initial state offered various experiences, its successive iterations inevitably increased the audience satisfaction rate while standardizing their content. Flattened and sanitized, the criticism of collective experience has softened. Divergence has given way to consensus; multiplicity has become unicity.

Prizm, Prizm (FR), 2016