In 1930, Ludwig Wittgenstein had a presentiment of this evolution. In a passage from his notebooks, he speculated on the future of the arts. He began by imagining what it would be like to watch someone without their knowing it:
Nothing could be more remarkable than seeing someone who thinks himself unobserved engaged in some quite simple everyday activity. Let’s imagine a theater, the curtain goes up and we see someone alone in his room walking up and down, lighting a cigarette, seating himself, etc. so that suddenly we are observing a human being from outside in a way that ordinarily we can never observe ourselves; as if we were watching a chapter from a biography with our own eyes—surely this would be at once uncanny and wonderful. More wonderful than anything that a playwright could cause to be acted or spoken on the stage. We should be seeing life itself. But then we do see this every day and it makes not the slightest impression on us!
„Life itself.” Without the proper perspective, left simply at the level of existence, life has no import, no meaning.
They were touching unspoken things…
„jeden dzień jednego roku…” (1981)