Slow it down
Blink and you’ll miss it—short-form content is all-pervasive, the time of provoking deep thoughts is slipping away. The late filmmaker David Lynch wasn’t thrilled, and for good reason. The modern attention economy has cranked up the pace, leaving little room for art that asks you to slow down and you know–think. If something doesn’t grab you in the first few seconds, then it’s dead on arrival.
Enter Isabel Garrett’s latest project: Coldplay’s “ALiEN HiTS/ALiEN RADiO” music video. In just four short weeks, Garret and her team worked with 27 collaborators worldwide to bring the dream to life. The six-minute nature-based video seamlessly transitions between early camcorder home movies, claymation, stop-frame animation in both real-world and painterly techniques, Ryan McGinley-esque footage, hand-drawn sketches, psychedelic video techniques, 70s sci-fi landscapes, surrealism, travel journaling, and finally, a Ghibli-esque forest scene. A variety of techniques sure to keep the viewer engrossed till the very end.
While it’s a visual triumph, it also highlights the creative squeeze of our hyper-paced digital world. Artists aren’t just making art—they’re fighting for attention. The pressure to entertain instantly means depth often gets sacrificed for spectacle. Lynch’s warning rings loud: if we don’t reclaim space for contemplation, creativity risks being reduced to an endless stream of flashy, bite-sized clips, no matter how quality they are.
It’s not just artists feeling the strain—audiences are, too. The constant barrage of rapid-fire content conditions us to crave speed over substance, making it harder to sit with ideas and absorb art on a deeper level. When was the last time you watched something without reaching for your phone? If imagination is to survive, we need to reclaim our focus.Can we still make space for slow, meaningful art in a world that demands instant gratification, or is deep imagination just another casualty of the scroll?
