there is no relief to be had all buildings look the same not only in a city but across all large cities the modern city is an aesthetically transportable ideait is designed for us not to be able to tell the difference and the idea that skyscrapers because of their size and practical nature cannot have soul is obviously untruejust look at the new york streetscape with its abundance of art deco buildings as highrise apartments start edging out independent homes even residential areas start to look undifferentiated in my childhood i would never have thought that one day lowrise government colonies would evoke a sense of wistful nostalgia but today looking at these little pockets of bureaucratic dwellings with their type atype b kind of classification one is filled with a sense of appreciation here the standardised manages to preserve the local one is not lost in a sea of cubbyholes individual dwellings breathe and there is a sense of personal space each little cluster has a small park in front of it and the absence of lifts ensured that the buildings could never rise beyond the strength of ones legs the digital world takes it a step further now there is no texture to feel no depth to navigate everything resides in a single planethat of simulated abstraction the only thing that we can touch is the screen and that we do all the time in a futile attempt to penetrate its sensory unavailability the internet uses the vocabulary of the organic worldwe talk of streaming of the cloud we click on icons of dustbins and envelopes to approximate the physical world we manufacture sounds to give us a sense that our actions get some feedback that something real happens as a consequence of what we do but there is no escaping our search for beauty the digital realm has produced its own versionwe can edit crop add filters to images we can create digital art with the help of ai we still agonise over what font to use in our websites as new tools evolve it is very likely that our fluency in visual language will only grow perhaps the wheel will turn as the physical world loses its primacy from our consciousness we might seek more evidence of our being made of flesh and blood and seek joy from things of beauty already we can see a shift towards the organic the artisanal the slow as we rediscover the joy of savouring things in slow motion we look for beauty from our machines and seek meaning from the objects in our home a slew of interior decorators has sprung up to aid in this effort to make our living spaces speak for us the world might change in myriad ways but the reflexive search for beauty is one of the most compelling justifications for the human race santosh365gmailcom