Modernism and After: (Vis Com)

Lecture 9: The Future

WEB 2.0

Netscape vs. Google

Netscape

• Sold as software

• Series of tools

• Browser: Allowing you to interact with information.

Google• Delivered as a service

• Database management

• Contained within a Browser: becoming integral to the information.

WEB 2.0

Amazon

• They allow customers to submit reviews.

• They publish customer ratings.

• They prioritise popular items.

• They build recommended lists and show you items related to your last purchase.

WEB 2.0

Amazon sold the same and was provided the same information as its rivals, but unlike its rivals it made better use of the internet.

The Wonders of Wikipedia

“An average of nearly two thousand English-Language articles are posted every day on every imaginable subject. That adds up to 730,000 new articles each year. When you factor in the average growth rate you can count on Wikipedia boasting more than 5 million articles by 2010, and that’s a conservative estimate.”(Tapscott and Williams 2007, p. 76)

O’Reilly’s summary.

• Services, not packaged software.

• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them.

• Trusting users as co-developers.

• Harnessing collective intelligence.

• Leveraging the long tail through customer service.

• Software above the level of a single device.

WEB 2.0

WEB 1.0

WEB 2.0

WEB 5.0WEB 9.0

“… the more vantage points from which a complex problem is seen, easier it becomes to solve.”

(Leadbeater 2008, p.72)

Lawrence Lessig has worked for a long time to try to preserve the internet as a site for free, shared information.

Business consultant Daniel Pink (2006) in his book A Whole New Mind argues that we are moving from the ‘Information Age to the Conceptual Age’ ‘in which people from all walks of life will succeed when they behave like artists who integrate left-brain with right-brain thinking. . .. Conceptual Age creators and empathizers integrate high-tech abilities with high-touch and high-concept abilities’ (Alexenberg, Mel (ed.) (2008) Educating Artists for the Future. Bristol: Intellect, p 12).

Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss sees the artist as ‘an intermediary, a catalyst between diverse fields of knowledge, ways of thinking, social models, and solution strategies based upon cooperation, communication, and interaction. Digital network culture not only changes modes of media production and distribution, but it transforms art from object making to art as processes of creating “immaterial” rhizome-like structures of remotely connected individuals in online communities. “Print and radio tell; stage and film show; cyberspace embodies”’ (Alexenberg, 2008, p. 15).

How can art draw on and link to the radical transformation through science and technology that are changing our ‘basic philosophical ideas about the nature of our physical world, time and space, the nature of life and intelligence, and the limits in our abilities to transform the world and humanity’? (ibid)

Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner (1999) has stated that artists have always needed spatial intelligence. In future, it is necessary for this intelligence ‘to be combined in multiple configurations with bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, naturalist, intrapersonal, interpersonal, spiritual, and existential intelligences’ (Alexenberg, 2008, p.12).

Douglas Gordon, Self-Portrait as Kurt Cobain,

as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe, 1996

Following Thomas Friedman (2000) in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Understanding GlobalisationAlexenberg suggests that ‘artists faced with the challenge of finding a healthy balance between preserving a sense of identity and community in an era of globalisation will need to learn to create artworks that combine pride in roots with an overview of the world as shared by others’ (Alexenberg, 2008, p 13).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVF_ghWPMk(Video based on ideas in the book)

• What can we learn from transcultural dialogues between arts practitioners and educators from countries such as India, China and so on?

• How do they approach and think about art in a way that challenges Western ways of practising art?

Drawing on computer scientist David Gelernter (1998) Alexenberg also argues that ‘artists will need to enter into the heart of the technology they are using to locate its inner beauty as a powerful source of their creativity.’ (ibid)

Aaron Marcus (graphic designer) advises students, ‘not to be so immersed in tools and techniques that they forget the larger issues of theory and practice, to expect the unexpected, to realize that help may come when most needed from unexpected sources, to facilitate people making smarter decisions faster, to think about other cultures and times, to conceptualize everything in a system of interrelated parts, to scan the horizon to discern future developments in knowledge-oriented communications, and to cultivate a terminology to quickly, efficiently, and successfully describe their work’ (Alexenberg, 2008, p 22).

• ‘Artists have a unique and totally freeway of understanding and analyzing society, and consequently of being engaged with it. … art can interact among all the diverse spheres of human activity that form society, and is thereby a generator for responsible transformation of society.’

• Artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, founder of Cittedellarte, a centre in Biella, Italy, ‘to inspire artists to produce responsible change in society through transdisciplinaryideas and creative projects’.Alexenberg, Mel (ed.) (2008) Educating Artists for the Future. Bristol: Intellect, p 12http://www.cittadellarte.it/

Future Me

• Create a self-portrait as you see yourself now, including your personal and creative talents and aspirations. How do these relate to broader cultural developments?

• Create a second self-portrait as you see yourself in five years …

• (The ‘portrait’ does not have to follow a conventional portrait format. It could be a map, a comic book character and so on.)

Matthew Barney Cremaster Cycle(1994-2002)

References

• Alexenberg, Mel (2008) Educating Artists for the Furture: Learning at the Intersections of art Science, Technology and Culture. Bristol, Intellect Ltd.

• Bello, Walden (2009) Climate and Capitalism in Copenhagen. In Foreign Policy in Focus, available at http://www.fpif.org/articles/climate_and_capitalism_in_copenhagen [accessed 22/03/2010]

• Leadbeater, C (2008) We-Think. London, Profile Books Ltd.• O’Reilly, Tim (2005) What is Web 2.0? Available at

http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html [accessed 22/03/2010]

• Tapscott, D and Anthony D. Williams. (2008) Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. London, Atlantic Books.