3. Characteristics of Futurism “Art movements are born out of the need for people to express their reactions to social, political and religious changes.” –Neal Mclaughlin Futurists thrived on the impressions of speed, noise, and machines, that had become a large part of the nineteenth-century cities. Futurism tried to express the energetic, dynamic, and violent quality of contemporary life, especially as embodied in the motion and force of modern machinery. Futurism also used stopped time to imply that motion is occurring.