Ac/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016
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AC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 2016 Smart Culture: Impact of the Internet on Artistic Creation Focus: Use of New Digital Technologies at Cultural Festivals AC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 2016 Smart Culture: Impact of the Internet on Acción Cultural ArtisticAcción Cultural Creation Española Española www.accioncultural.es Focus: Use of New Digital Technologies at Cultural Festivals Acción Cultural Acción Cultural Española Española www.accioncultural.es Spain’s Public Agency Spain’s Public Agency for Cultural Action for Cultural Action www.accioncultural.es Spain’s Public Agency Spain’s Public Agency for Cultural Action for Cultural Action www.accioncultural.es ‘A more open, egalitarian, participatory, and sustainable culture is profoundly worth championing, but technology alone cannot bring it into being. Left to race along its current course, the new order will come increasingly to resemble the old, and may end up worse in many ways. But the future has not been decided.’ Astra Taylor, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (Metropolitan Books, 2014) Following the excellent reception of the first the often too much but never enough data. two editions of the AC/E Digital Culture Annual The chosen topics explore the pathways of the Report (2014 and 2015) – more than 5,000 copies new collaborative economy; analyse its impact of each have been distributed over the past two on artistic creation; examine the new space years – we are pleased to share with culture for interaction between people, machines and sector professionals the third edition, which sets industries; and explain the changes that have out to analyse the impact of new technologies taken place in markets and in how artworks are on artistic creation and their use at cultural produced and sold. festivals. One of the cross-cutting themes of this year’s AC/E, a public agency whose purpose is to report is the use of smart devices in artistic facilitate the promotion, development and creation. The Internet of Things is going to internationalisation of Spain’s creative and pervade many aspects of our lives, and culture culture sector, has teamed up with Dosdoce. is no exception. As well as benefitting industrial com, a private organisation specialised in processes, it has begun to yield visible results studies on adapting the sector to the digital in the field of artistic creation. An example environment, to analyse in the three editions is the wearable musical gloves mentioned by of the report the main technological trends Pepe Zapata in his article on the impact of the that cultural managers will need to bear in Internet on the performing arts, which allow mind in the coming years in order to have a musicians to interact with computers through better understanding of the impact of new gestures. Should we envisage a robot audience? technologies on their culture organisations. he wonders. To achieve this aim, the broad-ranging content Other themes enthusiastically analysed in this of the third edition of the report has been year’s report are the maturity of 3D printing, divided into two main sections to make it easier robotics, drones, augmented reality, new to read for the different audiences at which interfaces and the popularity of virtual reality it is aimed. ‘Smart Culture’ is the overarching devices. Their use is illustrated with many theme established by the Advisory Committee examples by Lara Sánchez Coterón in her in- of the AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016 depth analysis of new practices in videogames as a basis for choosing the six articles that make and by Montecarlo in his study on the new ways up the first part of this year’s edition. Just as of telling audiovisual stories in the digital age. the first report’s Focus dealt with the impact of the Internet on the performing arts (theatre, But it is not all technology. The report also deals opera, dance, ballet, etc.) and that of the second with issues such as the digital access gap, an edition analysed the use of new technologies in issue explored in Iván Martínez’s article on the the world of museums, for this third edition it emergence of Wikipedia. Mariana Santos takes a conducts a thorough analysis of the use of new different approach to a different rift – the digital technologies at some 50 Spanish and foreign gender gap – in her article on the impact of cultural festivals. the Internet on artistic creation and introduces readers to Chicas Poderosas, the community she Both sections of the AC/E Annual Report speak heads with the aim of closing it. of a hybrid realm halfway between technology and art; of blending between the physical and The economy of subscription is, as stated earlier, digital words; of vanishing boundaries between another theme that cuts across many of the industries; and of the use of smart analyses articles in the report. This phenomenon is not Smart Culture: Impact of the Internet on Artistic Creation of the Internet Impact Culture: Smart and algorithms to give value and meaning to alien to cultural enterprises, which, in some fields 4 INTRODUCTION such as content distribution, have pioneered achieve more spectacular results and broader the concept of culture as a service, headed by experiences for a lower cost by analysing digital startups such as Spotify and Netflix. In phenomena such as DIY and maker culture. his study on the art market, Pau Waelder shows us similar formulas adopted by enterprises that How is digital art marketed, made currently offer new forms of collecting art on profitable and disseminated in digital picture frames and define themselves as the subscription economy? the iTunes and Spotifys of art collecting. Pau Waelder’s article ‘The Art Market in the Age of Access’ begins with a survey of the history of Questions, answers and digital collecting, which began to catch on in a unanswered questions big way in the late 2010s. It examines the new that readers of this ways of collecting, exhibiting and selling digital year’s report will find art in the new economy; digital editions, market platforms for digital art and the contradictions The authors of this year’s annual report pose that can arise over the consideration of the various questions about the fascinating future artwork as a unique object. that digital culture holds in store: The analysis provides guidance on cloud Who is the stage creator nowadays? collecting and the implications of exhibiting art through streaming. It examines the various One of the most futuristic articles of the report, connected canvas technologies that allow us to Pepe Zapata’s, introduces readers to a world of consume art on demand and digital art. A survey automatons, drones and robots on stage that based on a number direct questions put to a leads the author to ask: who is the spectator group of artists concludes that most feel that now? This shift in roles is illustrated with many the art market does not have a significant impact examples of the new interactions between on their work. This article clearly advocates what spectator and spectacle that have been made the author calls the third art market and the possible by smartphones, drones, robots and all need to accept media art as a specific category. kinds of hybrid realities. Where are the limits in ‘How the Performing Arts are Changing in the videogame design? Digital Age’ stresses the blends of digital and real, and off and on, and speaks of the fading Lara Sánchez Coterón takes a twofold approach on Artistic Creation of the Internet Impact Culture: Smart of the boundaries between human, machine in ‘Videogame Design and Disruptive Praxis’ in and nature. It provides many examples such as order to analyse the influence of videogames the Body project which, to quote the author, and the meta-products that have emerged in ‘experiments with biointeraction between body other arts too, such as painting, as well as the and technology with the aid of light sensors that most innovative digital praxis for developing respond to the dancer’s biological functions’. new games that leads them to become artworks themselves. This author ends by analysing the digital processes needed to support these new Her detailed survey of the history and models models on the stage, which involve new of development and evolution of videogames forms of authorship, and calls for reflection includes self-hacking, mods and countergaming on the possible uses of digital technology and explains how videogames are redefining in the production of the performing arts to interaction with users through the use of sensors AC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 2016 5 and smart devices of the non-spectator as one old? Can we speak of a crisis in Wikipedia? What of the elements of the game – by establishing is an editatona? What organisations regulate the a new space for creation with ‘games that work and how have they evolved? are more contingent and open to players’ interpretation of them’, to quote the author. It These fascinating questions are asked in an makes interesting reading for anyone wishing to article on crowdsourcing and the challenges of understand the continuous reinvention of an art organising and regulating collaborative work. that was born digital and is growing digitally day The article ends with an important question by day. on the future of the encyclopaedia, which no doubt needs to make a huge effort to adapt to How to design a new human-centred more recent technological challenges, such as and smart style of journalism? the prevalence of mobile Internet access, and to close the digital access gap between the most Writing from a very personal approach, in ‘The underprivileged parts of the world, as well as the Impact of the Internet on Cultural Creation’, gender gap that exists today, as only one out of Mariana Santos, director of interactive at Fusion, every ten Wikipedians is a woman.