Digital Visions: Cult IT

Are the claims made for Digital Technology accurate? And if not, why is the arts world so anxious to embrace IT as the latest must-have fashion accessory?

Below is the Introduction to this provocative and well-informed pamphlet, and the PDF of the full pamphlet can be downloaded from the link below.

Introduction

In August 1998 a British GP using a local anaesthetic implanted a chip beneath the skin of cyberneticist Kevin Warwick. The chip will open doors for Professor Warwick at his Reading University office, and switch on his computer when he approaches it. Placed in his left forearm, it is held in a glass phial 250mm long and 60mm in diameter.(1)

Within Britain’s cultural milieux, there was no rush to acclaim this news. Still, information technology (IT) – for the purpose of this pamphlet, any combination of computers, telecommunications, consumer electronics and audio-visual content – is already under the skin of the British artist. Painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, architects, broadcasters, publishers, designers, craftsworkers, singers, actors, poets, museum and film directors: in all these professions, and also in creative industries like advertising, IT has son converts and enthusiasts. Indeed, the government’s Creative Industries Task Force, headed by culture minister Chris Smith, sees ‘maximising the opportunities’ of new technologies like IT as one of its ‘key issues for consideration’.(2)

Since Eduardo Paolozzi first feted it in the 1960’s, American electronics has fascinated a few of Europe’s artists. In the 1970’s, Roxy Music’s Brian Eno, for instance, played an international role in popularising the computerisation of music.(3) In recent years, however, visions of the future of the arts have become more and more digital in character. Overtly or covertly, the suggestions are that IT:

1. ushers in a new knowledge-based, networked society, in which the status of signs, symbols, intellectual creativity and the arts is enhanced
2. puts mainstream entrepreneurs and multinational corporations in the culture business – their screens need the attention of designers and, ultimately, of artists(4)
3. allows cultural production and the creative industries to become more entrepreneurial
4. fundamentally transforms the basic working materials of the arts: time, space, identity and play.(5)

In this pamphlet, I challenge the hold such visions have over the arts and creative industries. I do so by exploring what difference IT has made to business. I make no apology for this device, for Britain’s arts and cultural communities understand far too little about the practical use of IT in business.

Business remains the principal field of deployment of IT and supplies most of its high priests. While the arts have yet to make a fully fledged cult of IT, business has already done so. Still, IT is regarded as something that empowers the arts. Most of Britain’s 25,000 crafts firms have computers. More than 25,000 people employed in Britain’s digital-media sector generate $1billion in revenues, and may see their numbers rise to 80,000 over the next eight years.(6)

From digital film and television production houses in Soho, through computer-aided set design in the theatre, to youthful millionaire inventors of videogames in Manchester, the claims made for IT paint it as:

1. a commercial tool for ‘improving the productivity of the artist’. Here IT speeds the production of artefacts or their later sale on the market; it is a means of doing business
2. a creative tool that allows the artist to ‘capture… a portion of the creative process’. Here IT helps the artist to borrow from others, or directly originate change in the design and machining of media as varied as textiles, wood and metal
3. a provider of ‘forms of expression that were previously unavailable’ – in other words, a creative medium in its own right.(7)

Michael Dertouzos, director of MIT’s laboratory for computer science and one of America’s best writers about IT, argues that the ‘information marketplace’ will bring to art four distinct dynamics:

1. the simultaneous involvement of several senses and muscles – through visual and auditory immersion, haptic interactions (combining manipulation with touch sensing), temperature changes and controllable smells
2. advanced forms of interactivity with art – for both the individual art viewer and larger audiences
3. group play by audiences, both with the art and with other members of the audience
4. the democratisation of art: ‘Suddenly, all the world’s art will be available to all the world’s people.’ At the same time, ‘neophytes will also want to expose their creations to the global audience. The costs for mounting an exhibit on the web will be from 10 to 1000 times cheaper than today’s cost of renting a small gallery or exhibition hall.'(8)

To be fair, Dertouzous has his doubts about the popularity or critical success attending (2) and (3). Nevertheless, the benefits of IT to the arts are held to be far from accidental, but rather epochal.

IT is often regarded not as technology, but as politics, in the sense that it is held to be intrinsically democratic. Thus IT ‘can help citizens break the monopoly on their attention that has been enjoyed by the powers behind the broadcasting paradigm – the owners of television networks, newspaper syndicates, and publishing conglomorates.'(9) Similarly, IT is seen as a new ‘driver’ behind the revival of urban culture, as it erects new, virtual places in a counterpoint to the more familiar physical spaces beloved of architects.(10)

The argument for IT within the arts is not just political, however. For boosters of IT:

1. a ‘weightless’ economy highlights the value of manipulating signs, symbols and images(11)
2. in terms of demography, today’s cyber-youth have the cognititive faculties to do such manipulations in a style appropriate to the New Age
3. internet technology has accelerated the development and universalisation of IT, and so propelled the digitally savvy artist to pole position. Through corporate websites, IT can be said to force every company to lift the kimono, put on a show, and thus rely more on Britain’s animators and designers.

It’s very ironic. Just a decade ago, computers and IBM were still excoriated by most European artists as American and depersonalising. Today, by contrast, the interactivity of the internet is celebrated, and Britain’s artists flaunt their IT credentials wherever possible. To know about IT is to be home-based, yet global; it is to be ‘flexible’ at work and thus, we are led to believe, more autonomous in art. To know about IT is to add a spirited modern twist to the longstanding artistic drive to be chic in language, literature and dress sense. For artists, IT has become a must-have fashion accessory.

Even more bizarrely, a niche market of ‘digital artists’ has emerged. Never mind that an artistic disciplne like photography has taken more than a century to become accepted as such, or that many digital artists might be described as failed traditional artists. Nobody wants to challenge the sudden emergence of digital art. Yet such art exists in a feelgood ghetto of its own. It is rarely compared with other kinds of art, and still more rarely judged. As such, it bears vivid testimony to the prestige of IT in the arts.

My argument is that, if the affairs of business are anything to go by, much of this prestige is misplaced. There is real artistic potential in information technology, but today’s business cult of IT provides artists with little guidance on how to fulfil that potential.

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To open and download the PDF of the Full pamphlet click on this Cult IT link.