There was a story in FastCompany last December about a company called uFlavor which will allow you to custom mix soft drinks both online and through their vending machines. You design everything from the exact percentage of each ingredient to the label on the bottle.

Since relatively small changes in ingredients can determine how you experience food flavors–what immediately pops, what lingers in the mouth–the granular control uFlavor offers with its ingredients can yield myriad results.

I was trying to figure out if there was some way technology could do the same for the arts, but I couldn’t quite imagine a way to do it. You really can’t try out different line readings for a play on a computer to determine which one is best because the subtleties each actor can bring to the performance are quite different. The same with dancers and singers.

Even though there are similarities in that subtle differences in food flavors and performances can vastly impact the perceived quality of the product, good performances are not so easily manipulated for manufacturing. It appears Baumol’s cost disease may maintain its hold on the performing arts a little bit longer short of performers being digitally manufactured a la the movie S1m0ne.

However, apparently programs like Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator have provided an opportunity for visual artists to evaluate choices. Even if they don’t use the software to produce an end product, I have been told by visual artists that they use them to vet their choices before they start painting/drawing/etc.

When I first heard this I became concerned that artists using this technique would lose their mastery of materials. I am sure a number of insights have come from things unintentionally mixing. Or when artists, frustrated that their materials won’t behave the way they want, have added a little bit of this and that with some occasionally rewarding results. There are also obviously differences between a computer screen and real life, but an experienced artist will allow for that.

But on further thought I realized that by providing artists a quick sense of the results, these programs gave artists much more time to experiment.

I mean, I am old enough that I started out writing on typewriters. Even though it may not seem that way all the time, the opportunity that word processors provided to edit, re-edit, re-order and incessantly revamp my words has made me a much better writer than I would have been had I had to continue to use a typewriter.

So as video and audio processing continues to improve, it may not be long before we start to see tools for playwrights/choreographers/actors/directors/designers to use to evaluate dialogue, choreography, blocking, line readings and how performers might interact with lighting and set design. It will certainly not be a perfect depiction of the real life results, but it may provide these people much more time to experiment extensively with ideas.