The herald of resource sharing

Update

This project seems to be bringing me straight to the zeitgeist of digital culture. Everywhere I look I can see a multitude of participants and 'users' all contributing to the web. But what is it that motivates individuals to engage in social media?

Is it for the 30 seconds of fame? Is it to make money? And how are people's motivations changing?

If we look at how our online habits have changed over the recent years, will we understand better where our online culture is going?

The Network society

I would like to quote the beginning of Daren Barney's Network Society to illustrate some important factors in this project:

I have included the whole first page of this thesis as it so eloquently opens the various subjects of the book into a conversation. I have also highlighted the particular moments that strike a chord with me and my project.

Like moths to a flame, ambitious minds seek out the spirit of their age. The project that is now well under way is purely that; an ambitious attempt for me to understand and challenge the 'spirit' with which this age will be historically remembered. An attempt to do such a thing is worthy to anyone at any moment in time, as it is a journey of discovery in the present. However, the current climate in which I have the opportunity to explore is rich with fascinating challenges and new perspectives. What is more I will become a product of the spirit of this age. As I take my first steps from being a student of the past into a practitioner of the future, I will mark my age. So this is a rare chance for me to survey the landscape with which I hope to cultivate in the future.

Barney gives spirit a complex of meanings with which to understand it by. His use of Weber's understanding of the spirit of capitalism gives spirit a practical historic being. I am learning that this project, which started as an attempt to look at how digital technology can influence culture, and more specifically, how networked social technology may be implemented to innovate performance practice, is revealing much more about my practice as an individual and how my immediate surroundings are influential to it. I am spending this project looking at various combining and often contradictory sources of information to gage the social practices of now. It is almost saddening to know that historically this may all be boiled down into a stock representative, a character with which future generations can settle their consciences with. I could guess it may well be a converse-wearing, shabby-chic fashionista, with white ear-phones plugging them into an introspective, narcissistic window of the world as they want to see it. This is, at least, how I see the spiritless of industrial capitalism as a being.

The book then goes on to open discussion on the network society, a theory of how one may read the spirit of the age of now. He also gives context to other examples where attempts have been made at identifying the essence of our climate, including post-industrialism, information society, post-fordism, post-modernism and globalization. The network society encompasses elements of all of these into its idea. Barney emphasises that the network society thesis is not the successor to these eras, but "...one star among these others in a constellation of relatively recent attempts to understand and characterise an evolving range of interrelated social, political, economic and cultural forces."

What this book questions is whether we can consider ourselves amidst a 'digital revolution. Have new information and communication technologies given birth to a new form of society, or do they reinforce and extend existing patterns and relationships?'

 This book has been a great tool in helping me look at the wider context my project can ring-fence. In a traditional thesis-style it gives a range of arguments that challenge and reinforce the case for the network society. However it concludes that it is too early to tell if this thesis is in fact substantial, and that only time will. Granted this book is considering global economics and industrial values, taking a distant look at society. This will no doubt help my perspective. But this project is the opposite. It must start with each individuals experience, giving an idea of the actual ground-climate is right now.

As this project and the research that must shape it leads me into new discoveries I am realising that simply looking at 'networks' or 'social media' is not an option. There is a broader conversation. I can look at how I see society engaging with social media tools and using computer-aided networks. I can then view how this is impacting the industries and cultural producers of the 20th century. I can then see some higher conversation that puts these observations into economic, or political significance. Above that there is a discourse of more global proportions.

Just as my research had to start close to my previous knowledge and understanding and gradually took wider steps to give me a clearer perspective, the project must start with a close relation to my own capacity and then, as I practically experience more, let it become something of larger scope and thus greater significance to my understanding.

Mind Map

I made this mind map on mind meister.

Guardian blog about theatre and technology

Maddy costa's blog in the Guardian about several pieces of theatre in progress that are engaging in new media and digital technology to help tell stories.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/nov/09/theatre-of-the-nerd

What you need to know about viral video and the law

tech-in-the-arts has released a publication looking at the legal issues around online video footage. Specifically concerned with arts marketing. This article raises some important issues about authorship, the public domain and the new social media landscape. Understandably the format is similar to that of an educational pamphlet and uses a combination of scenarios and diagrams to expand on issues surrounding video, copyright and artists contracts. Although the paper has a forward facing stance, first chronicling the industry complications with radio, then the effect video had on the Hollywood film industry, it seems to elude any potential levelling of the strict laws of the 20th century. Towards the end of the document a diagram basically suggests all who work in arts marketing to get as up to date with intellectual property law as possible and to refer to unions if in doubt. There is no massive pointer to any attempt at re-writing these out-dated forms of copyright laws, only a recognition of the constant threat of lawsuits hanging over any arts organisation of marketer who uses video inappropriately.

There is, however, some salvageable good in the concluding paragraphs:

In the first 10 years of the 21st century, we’ve seen technology profoundly change the entertainment industry, notably the music industry. Although mainstream musical artists are able to thrive without the record companies, it is doubtful that the performing arts as we know them would be able to survive without arts organizations. Performing art forms like theater, opera, and ballet, by nature, have needs that can only be fulfilled by a company that can bring performers and designers together and can provide them with performance space, sets, costumes, props, lights, and, of course, an audience, as well as the means to obtain these necessities through fundraising and marketing.

It is short-sighted not to see the success of the performers and other creators as intrinsically tied to the success of the arts organization. Performers and organizations both strive for the same goal: to bring high-quality art to audiences. With changes in technology comes a change in the way our audiences think about their relationship to art and how they want to experience it. The question is, will the performing arts industry change with its audiences?

There is obviously a recognition of the change that is happening, however I fear that the scope is so narrowly pointed at the 'audience' that they are missing the bigger picture. Many artists are using social media to perform much of the leg work that traditionally would have resided in the arts management's and organisation's realm. Musicians are producing straight to their audience, artists are forming collectives and finding spaces and funding through direct contact with their social networks and media. I can understand that this publication may well be directed to the already established arts organisations, but as a new generation of creatives look for a successful path, is it wise to feed them the same information?

What you need to know about viral video and the law

FUNNY: Why cats suck at social media

FUNNY: Why cats suck at social media

Lighten the mood a little!