Physical Media in the Age of AI

It has been a very busy couple of weeks.

That statement is evergreen, but for me, specifically, as an individual, it’s been slammed. It’s a blessing to be busy in a time when the value of human experience has never been lower, but it also makes it very hard to think - something I really like to do.

So when Friday’s schedule opened up, I took advantage. I saw some stores in LA - there are more people lining up for K-Beauty pop ups than you could imagine - and found some time to catch up with my good friend, Michael Abe. Our conversations are always sprawling but invigorating and sometimes it’s nice to have that kind of thing after spending all your time thinking about tangible processes and outcomes. It’s good for the brain.

We were talking a lot about the luxury consumer and what they’re actually buying right now - Prada, Miu Miu, The Row, anything from a Phoebe or Hedi disciple. I compare them to blue chip stocks; market uncertainty devalues volatility. Marni mohair is buying trend on margin.

What makes these brands “blue chips”? Stability, perceived intellectualism, demonstrated craft, etc. They’re safe bets, they are aesthetics that become trends, not trend chasers, and most importantly, they deliver a highly tactile experience through a product whose context in your life evolves over time, while the garment itself stays the same.

It’s pretty much the opposite of what a “generative” future promises - when Grok can turn any picture into any other picture for free and your parents don’t know what’s real anymore. We know Prada nylon is real and we know Miuccia and Raf are real. They will not be iterated or prompted or generated.

As AI became more prominent in our conversation, it brought me back to my post about AI’s emergence leading to artisanal and hand-made things coming into style. Think Visvim mud dye, etc. This is of course, a recession indicator - prioritization of “lasting value” and “function” over delicate knits and gossamer dresses. The emergence of vintage workwear and the luxury reproductions of it was the bellwether. The people yearn for the non-crypto mines.

But as I continued to yap, a new product category started to emerge as a clear and obvious trend - Physical Digital Media. Think BluRays, CDs, On-Disc Video Games. It’s easy to see they’ll be the new vinyl record. Once a laughing stock in the emergence of the portable mp3 player, Vinyl is now a niche status symbol worthy of collection and secondary markets. “Listening bars” with 5-figure sound systems are popping up in every art-driven neighborhood of every “cultural” city.

This concept is already being trafficked into the mainstream by the A24 corner of film through the “In the Criterion Closet” videos. If you haven’t seen them, it’s basically Complex’s Sneaker Shopping for people over 30. It’s a really fun way to connect with Hollywood personalities through a shared love of film as art, and not commercial product. It’s making the concept of owning physical movies cool.

There’s two factors that drive this - the aesthetic trend of post-9/11 but pre-Recession America and the fomenting distrust between media streaming companies and end users.

y2k has been back. The Don Toliver x Ed Hardy collab was one of the longest lines at ComplexCon. We’re doing low rise skinny jeans. You’re going to see TikTokers start breaking down the style of Entourage. It’s all happening.

AI feels like a similar technical apocalypse for a certain type of creative thinker. So naturally, the aesthetics of the time are coming back with it. The presumed beginning of another, albeit different, recession is another nail. $800 shirts have Rhinestones on them now. Swag is a flat circle.

“Industry” TV is peaking with shows like Hacks and The Studio bringing to light the realities of making something for a screen, the latter of which having an entire episode about the moral failure of AI generated movies. At the same time we see green screen slop flopping onto Bloopi+ only to learn it cost the GDP of a developing nation. Visual arts have also been threatened with streamer censorship as Nathan Fielder hilariously, but soberingly pointed out - episodes gone, messages changed. Scenes entirely deleted for the sake of “sensitive” topics.

Everything is borrowed now. With each passing technological convenience, we rob ourselves of the concept of ownership in exchange for subscriptions that promise more access but deliver less certainty and control. Spotify has devalued music and Netflix has devalued movies. We own very little. But ownership is a form of commitment. It’s a personal buy-in to a piece of art, technology, or functionality that you commit to use, maintain, and value in your own personal system. Nobody changes the oil in a rental car.

Much like couture, a BluRay can be a direct connection between the director and the viewer. Ryan Coogler is releasing multiple aspect ratios on Sinners - a feature unavailable to digital purchasers. Likewise, a song on a CD can’t be retroactively mixed, fixed, or edited. It’s a locked time capsule of a singular moment.

It’s not hard to foresee a future where authentic history is critical. Most peoples’ media literacy was already substandard, and now you have CEOs making editorial decisions, streamers going entirely unchecked by FCC regulations, and a general lack of attention and critical research in what you consume. Each “grok is this real?” tweet is one brick removed from the structure of academia. Something so subversive as a punk record or Lynch film or you know, an Oscar-winning documentary about the genocide in Gaza could find itself “lost” within governmental policies. Each home collection becomes a piece of our cultural library of record.

There’s not a brand strategy message to this one. But I think it’s an interesting conversation topic that requires more discussion and differing perspectives. I’ll probably write more about it in the future, but in the meantime, let me know what you think.

Open Concept Workplace is a Strategy & Collaborations Studio Based in Portland, OR. Right now it’s just composed of founder Corey Malley, who wrote the email you just read.

In need of some brand & cultural strategy? Want to do a collab that doesn’t suck? Let’s talk.