Artists are a community's educators, its sources of inspiration, its cultural historians and record keepers. Traditionally, artists have played an important role in maintaining local culture through storytelling and other art forms. In our far-flung, minute-to-minute, urban-sprawl society, however, artistic work often seems completely divorced from daily life. Community members often view cultural institutions as luxury items and excursions to those institutions as mini-vacations to "high culture."
To combat this tendency, artists and arts organizations must strengthen their connections with local communities and one another, sharing resources, concerns and solutions. Technology can be a valuable tool in crossing barriers. It can recreate the communal, active art experience in an age when culture is often a passive, isolating experience. Given proper training and sufficient opportunity to share their wealth online, cultural workers and organizations can have a profound impact on both real and digital landscapes.
But telecommunications technologies often fall under a similar set of definitions; while few people deny the importance of access to a telephone in daily life, many see computers and the Internet as "gadgets" -- useful, yes, but not essential. Access to computers and the Internet, however, is becoming increasingly important to maintaining a certain quality of life. According to Larry Irving, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, by the year 2000, over 60% of jobs will require some level of computer proficiency. Furthermore, data from the Office of Management and Budget indicates that 75% of transactions between individuals and the federal government will be electronic. The ability to use Internet technologies becomes daily more integral to accessing civic, educational and personal opportunities.
People are flocking to computer networks not for a more convenient way to find stock quotes and movie reviews, but to send email to friends and relatives, to participate in discussions of issues, to express who they are on home pages. People come to the 'Net to participate and create,not to receive information passively. 'The Information Superhighway' is a misnomer. It's not about information; it's about community, participation, and creation.
--Amy Bruckman, MIT Media Lab
Access to technology also means access to good jobs, to research, to civic forums. Middle- and upper-class schools, libraries and homes are more and more frequently wired, but low-income neighborhoods rarely have the same access to telecommunications resources. This disparity is quickly resulting in the creation of an "information underclass" (to which a majority of artists are relegated). As long as we continue to regard access to technology as a luxury, we self-select the kind of world we're building online and the voices we will hear there.
The place of artists in this latest technological age is yet to be determined. However, artists can play a vitally important role in the emerging society, thanks to skills we already possess and apply in our work. With the shift from a manufacturing-based economy to an information-based one, we have the chance to reposition ourselves more centrally as information providers and interpreters.
--Jeff Gates, Open Studio NAG member
The online world is quickly becoming a digital marketplace, full of shopping malls and commercial content. For that reason, if for no other, the involvement of artists is central to its development and maintenance as a forum for free, creative expression. The time is ripe for the arts community, in its full and rich diversity, to contribute to the future of digital culture. Artists and audience members have an unmatched opportunity to obtain uncontrolled, unmoderated access to arts and culture.
Art online also has the tantalizing potential for universal accessibility. Through the magic of the Internet, a schoolgirl in Tokyo can download images by a graffiti artist in New York City. Through the equalizing forces of email, chat, or newsgroups, artists and organizations are only a click away from their listeners/readers/audiences; social barriers of specialization and education are dissolved. Communities thus have new opportunities for participation in and ownership of local cultural resources. But this is only true if those communities can access that digital connection -- and only if those artists and organizations have the tools and the impetus to put their work online.
