what did bach look like

CNN posted a story on Tuesday called "What did Bach look like?" The article features a picture of what Bach might have looked like using computer generated technology. From this digital image a bust was created; this bust was displayed at Eisenach in an exhibition call "Bach Through the Mirror of Medicine."

The computer-based Bach bust seems like a mascot for irony. While it speaks of the current technological achievements, in both the sciences and arts, it also cries out to the traditional and classical: it is computerized iconography. Not only is Bach a symbol of the old-fashioned and classical in culture today, but busts are also a symbol of an old-fashioned art form. Creating this bust of Bach perpetuates his large-than-life icon status, yet humanizes him through facial reconstruction. The need to make a life-like bust today seems not only like morbid hero-worship, but also desperation, as the face of Baroque genius melds with twenty-first-century capabilities.

Why does an infusion of "technology" seem to make everything "cool?" When something isn't attracting enough attention or customers, then a .com is added, as if a digital mark is the new authority for what is or isn't. The internet is great for music, information, shopping, and creating new art, and we are in that age, yet there seems to be something rather "uncool" force digital ideas on objects just to make them so.

For example: I love that I can go to itunes or Naxos and listen to the Bach B Minor Mass, download the music, and take it with me on my ipod. I am also fascinated that we can take the shape of a deceased person's skull and virtually recreate his feature without photographs to go by. But why Bach?

The real question in not "why this was done," but "for whom." The answer to the "why" is "because we can." But who would want to see this? This does not change the way we hear his music, and it will probably not attract young listeners or influence another Bach revival. The bust was created for those already obsessed with Bach's biography and for those interested in the digital arts and sciences.