New Aesthetic Spectacle

Picture the scene: a stadium built in secret behind a labyrinthine shopping mall, filled with eager spectators clutching tickets authenticated by bar code and hologram.  As they take their seats around the oval, each finds a device embedded with lights - not only are they there to have an experience first hand but to create an experience for those watching over the telly by turning themselves into a human screen, pixel-glitched in ways that are physical as human bodies are physical - gaps for aisles and stairways.  

In the centre of the stadium, a metonymic representation of the city they themselves are in, glued over in faux newspaper, quoting broadly drawn phrases from a centuries old literary tradition, recombining constantly as the set comes to life, juxtaposing one half remembered referent with another.  What follows, shot half the time from an ariel point of view, is a tumblr equivalent of musical performance: choreography, costume and chorus pasted together into the ultimate three dimensional playlist.  The curation of imagery is as jumbled as if it had been outsourced to a bot - an octupus unfolds from a bus, athletes are kettled like protestors, branded billboards appear, Edwardians and Eric Idle and Bollywood dancing with morris men and nuns on rollerskates, like a technicolour yawn of Blairite-brand Cool Britannia.  

The Pixel is omnipresent - on spectators, on taxis, on pianos, on dancer's unitards.  It is there in shots of athletes' phones playing an electronic tickertape of thanks to family and friends.  It is there in all the pocket rectangles raised above heads as the participants both participate and record from an indeterminate viewpoint for future use - for future proof - for dissemination and finality.  It is a spectacle recorded from all possible angles, infinitely remixable; it is the London Olympics Closing Ceremony; it is the New Aesthetic writ large and televised.

And I say, in common with so many, what does this mean?