There is a fear among the established creative industries that the internet and the spread of creative technologies will have a disastrous effect on their business and that, as Andrew Keen put it in Press Pause Play:
…we may well be on the verse of a new dark age in cultural terms
I sometimes see this attitude when working with professional writers. There’s a lot of fear out there. These people worry that real artists will find it impossible to draw attention to their work when competing with under-accomplished amateurs. And they worry that an ocean of free mediocrity will educate people that they needn’t pay for art.
A 20th century thing
I disagree. Well, almost. I suspect the model of creative business as an ivory tower raised and commercialised by big business is becoming less and less viable. The necessary scarcity of art was created by the sheer difficulty and expense of production, distribution and marketing. Now anyone with an idea, a bit of initiative and an inclination to execute can create something amazing and share it.
The ocean metaphor is apt. Douglas Adams described it best:
…like any ocean, the digital one has streams and eddies and currents…
Streams and eddies and currents, fashions and trends and movements. Concentrations of quality and value. Some are fleeting like YouTube videos, others more durable like musicians who launch careers on social networks or writers who sell books by the thousand.
If they want to draw a living from their passion, artists ought to be concerned with producing the best work possible then convincing people to buy it. But I don’t see how that’s any different from the way it’s always been.
Writhing
Could we really descend into a writhing pit of mediocrity? Will we suffer a regress in the quality of artistic output? After all, art has always varied in quality and artists vary in skill and talent. Now the talented must share a platform with the talentless.
And there’s far too much material out there already. Certainly too much for one person to absorb. Art is competing with itself to capture your attention, but your attention is at a premium. There’s only three pints of space in your head. It’s necessary to select what we pay attention to. Our preferences, interests and needs all contribute to this decision but quality often wins. As long as there is competition in art and as long as there is too much of it out there, there will be a need to improve appeal to selection criteria. This means that there will always be positive pressure to improve quality.
Evolution
The magic happens when you consider that artists tend to learn and bounce ideas between one another and between their audience. An exchange of ideas is never one-sided. Inspiration is infectious and everyone benefits.
Democratisation of creative skills and technologies will allow more and more people to create work and share it. The more people that get involved the faster quality will grow as different skills, perspectives and techniques are made available. A bigger community of artists tend to have better skill in aggregate. When skilled artists get their work recognised a market opportunity is created. An artist who makes it a career can dedicate more time to getting better still. This is heredity. With the conditions of variation, selection and heredity we now find ourselves have an evolutionary process.
I predict that not only will we see a growth in quality as art evolves but we will also see a profusion of new niches and specialisms. We’ll see more world-class artists. Art will always get better and it is thanks to the spread of creativity.
The quality of art
There is a fear among the established creative industries that the internet and the spread of creative technologies will have a disastrous effect on their business and that, as Andrew Keen put it in Press Pause Play:
I sometimes see this attitude when working with professional writers. There’s a lot of fear out there. These people worry that real artists will find it impossible to draw attention to their work when competing with under-accomplished amateurs. And they worry that an ocean of free mediocrity will educate people that they needn’t pay for art.
A 20th century thing
I disagree. Well, almost. I suspect the model of creative business as an ivory tower raised and commercialised by big business is becoming less and less viable. The necessary scarcity of art was created by the sheer difficulty and expense of production, distribution and marketing. Now anyone with an idea, a bit of initiative and an inclination to execute can create something amazing and share it.
The ocean metaphor is apt. Douglas Adams1 described it best:
Streams and eddies and currents, fashions and trends and movements. Concentrations of quality and value. Some are fleeting like YouTube videos, others more durable like musicians who launch careers on social networks or writers who sell books by the thousand.
If they want to draw a living from their passion, artists ought to be concerned with producing the best work possible then convincing people to buy it. But I don’t see how that’s any different from the way it’s always been.
Writhing
Could we really descend into a writhing pit of mediocrity? Will we suffer a regress in the quality of artistic output? After all, art has always varied in quality2 and artists vary in skill and talent. Now the talented must share a platform with the talentless.
And there’s far too much material out there already. Certainly too much for one person to absorb. Art is competing with itself to capture your attention, but your attention is at a premium. There’s only three pints of space in your head. It’s necessary to select what we pay attention to. Our preferences, interests and needs all contribute to this decision but quality often wins. As long as there is competition in art and as long as there is too much of it out there, there will be a need to improve appeal to selection criteria. This means that there will always be positive pressure to improve quality.
Evolution
The magic happens when you consider that artists tend to learn and bounce ideas between one another and between their audience. An exchange of ideas is never one-sided. Inspiration is infectious and everyone benefits.
Democratisation of creative skills and technologies will allow more and more people to create work and share it. The more people that get involved the faster quality will grow as different skills, perspectives and techniques are made available. A bigger community of artists tend to have better skill in aggregate. When skilled artists get their work recognised a market opportunity is created. An artist who makes it a career can dedicate more time to getting better still. This is heredity. With the conditions of variation, selection and heredity we now find ourselves have an evolutionary process.
I predict that not only will we see a growth in quality as art evolves but we will also see a profusion of new niches and specialisms. We’ll see more world-class artists. Art will always get better and it is thanks to the spread of creativity.
What have we got to lose? - Douglas Adams. ↩
Whatever that means. Don’t shout at me! ↩