Art People Want Now: From Pretty Pictures to Shared Experiences
Some people are satisfied with art's craft and surface. A striking image, a perfectly balanced object, a song that's tight and in tune. With generative AI, this kind of art is now abundant and nearly frictionless to produce and consume. Beauty isn't obsolete - but it's a weak differentiator. But others are seeking something else entirely. To experience. To feel part of a moment. Even to co-create, however briefly, with the artist and with each other.
This post is inspired by discussions with Ralph Talmont about the impact of AI on art.
Quite a while ago, when discussing Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime song with an experienced composer (we disagreed on its relevance as an art), I realized that there are (at least) two ways people meet art today.
Some are satisfied with craft and surface. A striking image, a perfectly balanced object, a song that’s tight and in tune. With generative AI, this kind of art is now abundant and nearly frictionless to produce and consume. Beauty isn’t obsolete - but it’s a weak differentiator.
But others are seeking something else entirely. To experience. To feel part of a moment. Even to co-create, however briefly, with the artist and with each other.
Art theory has been moving this way for a long time. From John Dewey’s Art as Experience (almost a century ago!) to Nicolas Bourriaud’s “relational aesthetics,” which treats art as situations that structure human interaction. That direction also fits what behavioral research shows: people tend to derive more lasting satisfaction from experiences than from possessions.
The energy (and money) is shifting toward experience
Music noticed first. Think Peter Gabriel’s Secret World tour. Think Bobby McFerrin turning arenas into spontaneous choirs. Think David Byrne staging shows where the boundary between performers and audience dissolves. The shift is seen in numbers: YoY increases in attendances and gross revenues from live concerts continue even since pre-pandemic times.
But others noticed the trend as well. Marina Abramović building a work entirely out of presence and eye contact. Devon Rodriguez sketching strangers on the subway, where the art is the drawing and the human moment when it’s handed over. The Poetry Pharmacy prescribing poems for specific emotional needs.
The lesson is that experience scales across forms. If you can’t (or don’t want to) chase “magic,” you can still design “functional experiences”: encounters that reliably deliver a benefit: attention, reflection, connection, relief.
My bet: artists who don’t incorporate experience into their craft will struggle financially in the AI era. Many already are.
This shift matters for workplaces as well
Most companies still treat art as decoration: something to hang on a wall and forget (in that sense, Nano Banana model from Google is all they need). But there’s a opportunity in treating art as an event. A structured, repeatable moment that interrupts the workflow just enough to restore attention, build connection, and remind people they’re part of something human.
Arts-based interventions show these moments improve wellbeing, psychological safety, and even leadership capacity - especially when employees aren’t just spectators, but participants (check Antal’s and coworkers paper “Meaningful work and artistic interventions in organizations: Conceptual development and empirical exploration”). There you go: functional experience.
That’s the idea behind a project Art in a Place of Work by Fundacja Teatru Trans-Atlantyk: to bring artists into organizations not to deliver finished pieces, but to co-create experiences (newsletter link: https://artinaplaceofwork.substack.com/).
Why does this kind of art matter more than ever?
In a world where AI can generate flawless images, symphonies, even sculptures on demand, what’s becoming rare is being there together. Algorithms can’t replicate the slight hush that falls over a room when people lean in at the same time. They can’t simulate the awkward, tender moment when a colleague shares a line of poetry they wrote during a lunch break workshop. Or an insight on your own self-sabotaging activities inspired by a honest story of an artist about his/her own struggles.
For teams stretched by (often tech-driven) performance pressure, these moments are like small acts of re-humanization. Call it “team-building” or “creating culture” if you like, but look at what it actually rebuilds: trust, attention, and the social glue collaboration depends on. I don’t see it as a “nice to have.” I suspect it will be soon (through artist-in-residence programs or through other means) an operating requirement.