Artists wear many hats in our society, and it's no surprise that their varied roles turn up in many different locations and applications on the Internet. Whether we examine the active online communities created by artists for their own purposes or explore the importance of art for business and the world at large, art has been a significant force behind the development of the network and within its daily functioning. The first section of this chapter looks at the activities and sites where artists are working and communicating on a daily basis.
Estimating the number of artists in the general population has been a hotly debated issue for years. While, for example, U.S. Department of Labor statistics place the number of working artists between 1 to 2 million or approximately 1% of the population, a 1988 Harris poll found numbers indicating that, for example, 30% of the population draws, paints, or engraves, 30% play a musical instrument, 51% have a serious involvement with photography, and so on. When the list is read completely, it would appear that very few people in this country are not involved with art. The Internet is a specialized community. One expects to see primarily technically oriented personnel here. However, it doesn't take much investigation to find that the mainframes contain massive amounts of disk space devoted to graphic image files. We find literary works and literary critique. There are repositories of sheet music and sound samples. Gophers devoted to crafts or theater exist. Finally, in the broadest sense, the emerging standards of graphical interface, and the many programs designed or being developed to support these standards, such as Mosaic, are in part dealing with the basic artistic issues of ways of seeing and ways of showing.
The community of artists on the Internet can be seen as four distinct groups, although any individual artist might be in one or all of these groups. Artists who are part of a specific discipline would be one of these major groupings. This would include, for example, fiber artists, ceramic artists, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, poets, light artists, painters, sculptors, and so on. What brings these people together is obviously their common interest in their media or styles. Traditionally these artists would converge either through local or regional organizations, exhibitions, magazine subscriptions, or interpersonal contacts with others in their field. What is unique to the Internet is the ability to readily target and access the world of people in a given field. Ceramicists are not necessarily listed in the phone book as such. I can't go to a town and easily determine where I might find cello players. Though we are not quite at this point with all areas of interest on the Internet either, in many fields it's possible to connect with others of similar background and interest quite directly. Whether by Usenet posting or mail list subscribing, artist users in a multitude of individualized areas are meeting online.
A second major grouping within the community of artists on the Internet can be viewed as artists involved with broader organizations or institutions that bring a diverse group of interests together. While in the previous example we looked at the branching out to all of the individual specialties, here we look at the ways that all of these groups come together. One example might be the Arts and Humanities department of a large university. Another example might be the Smithsonian, which maintains a wide range of programs and exhibits covering a broad range of disciplines. A significant example in this area is Arts Wire (artswire@tmn.com), which is an Internet based organization that has a membership made up of artists, art administrators, art organizations, and art activist groups. Arts Wire regularly publishes information about governmental activities that affect the arts, grants and job openings in the arts, art criticism, exhibitions, and more. Among other interesting and unique areas, they maintain a database of art material hazards. A group such as Arts Wire becomes a meeting place for all disciplines involved with the arts. Additionally, it becomes a potential political force for artists who otherwise may not have had the ability to network so readily. I would predict that as the Internet grows, we will see greater reliance on large scale, discipline focused sites that act as pointers to and connections with the diverse groupings which otherwise would be spread too thinly.
My third grouping includes almost all of us. It is the realm of people who enjoy the arts—the audience. There is already art for sale on the Internet. There are magazines for art appreciation. There are listings of events. And with the rapid expansion of the World Wide Web and Graphical Interface software, we see thousands of clip art images being used on both professional and amateur home pages.
The Internet is becoming not only a conveyer of arts media but an art media in and of itself. This newly emerging field that I term Internetic Art would certainly have to include OTIS at sunsite.unc.edu (pub/multimedia/pictures/OTIS) and other locations. This energetic group has for several years initiated a number of interactive art projects where participants may upload an image for others to download and manipulate, and then re-upload to await further stages of manipulation. OTIS recently was home to Synergy-Corpse, an online version of the favorite pastime of the early 20th-century avant garde where one person draws the head of a person and folds the paper to conceal it; the next person draws the torso and again folds the paper. This sort of visual game of "telephone" continues until a composite character is created. Here we see an Internet site that attracts people from my first grouping. It's within a site that is of the second grouping and because anyone can download and view and, in fact, participate, it brings in users from the present group I'm discussing.
Finally, my fourth grouping includes people who are conducting business that involves art. As mentioned earlier, presentations and other forms of advertising on the Internet are destined to be possibly the most significant online areas of business. Selling and presenting on the Internet will require more than just a good idea. Just as there is a qualitative difference between a home movie and a professionally produced television commercial, marketing on the Internet will require an artistic vision combined with an understanding of how information finds its way to the user. Front ends will be successful not only due to typical software issues regarding efficiency, organization of information, bandwidth, and so on, but also in large part based on their artistic cohesiveness and appeal. The entertainment industry itself will become part of the Internet. We already have ongoing informational and entertainment features such as Internet Talk Radio with popular programs like Professor Neon. (Info is available via Gopher at vortex.com.)
No comments:
Post a Comment