CHAPTER 21 — D.I.Y. and Digital Democratization
5-minute read
D.I.Y. culture
The terms for the distribution and presentation of creative output have fundamentally changed since the dawn of our century. The playing field is more level, but it’s also global — much bigger. You have to figure out how to tap into the audience that appreciates your work. You have to do it yourself: D.I.Y.
Origins
D.I.Y. has roots in the Arts and Crafts Movement of over a century ago. John Ruskin, an art and social critic,William Morris, a painter and textile designer, advocated a self-reliant rejection of mechanization. In place of the standardization of the Industrial Revolution, they championed a return to home-based craftwork.
By the 1970s, punk rockers and hip-hop artists were rejected by a highly centralized system of culture distribution in the music industry. So they subscribed to the D.I.Y. ethic to circumvent the corporate gatekeepers. They put on their own damn shows, made their own damn record labels, and promoted each other through photocopied fanzines. This inspired a D.I.Y. culture that has since spawned everything from a resurgence in house renovation to computer software development. A great historical examination of D.I.Y. is the film D.I.Y or DIE by Michael W. Dean. He has made it into an 8-part series available for free on YouTube, in proper D.I.Y. form.
Distributed vs. centralized culture
Jon Ippolito discusses the tension between distributed and centralized culture in his seminal title Canon Fodder: Why Distributed Culture Makes Academics Nervous. A large measure of what he identifies as distributed culture is D.I.Y. in origin, and further enables a D.I.Y. mindset. YouTube, Facebook, and Apple Computer all started as garage or dorm-room enterprises. LINUX and other open-source software deliberately invite collaboration among users. Wikis, such as the one that cradled this text, allow us to modify content so that it stays current. Creative Commons allows the licensing of work for share that acknowledges authorship. Some of these enterprises have indeed become more corporate and centralized over the years. Nevertheless, they have largely enabled artists like you to create and distribute work of a quality and scope that generations of artists preceding you would have sold their souls for.
One of these agents of distributed culture is Vimeo, a kind of YouTube for the thinking person. On Vimeo, you can find great D.I.Y. tutorials here and here. You’ll find D.I.Y. suggestions like how to create a smooth camera pan using a rubber band on your tripod grip. Here’s a blog post about creating a dolly shot using a skateboard. You’ll also find channels and groups where you can post your films. Unlike YouTube, where you are competing against endless cat vids, Vimeo can focus your work on an audience that is looking for what you do. Don’t get this wrong by the way.. YouTube is great for broadcasting, but Vimeo is great for a targeted and well-defined audience. This author uses both.
Digital Democratization
I don’t limit editions… My plan is to make these designs available rather than restrict the supply. It’s more like publishing than like gallery-based art marketing: We don’t feel that a book has lost anything because many people have read it. In fact, it becomes more valuable as it gains wide currency and influence. With the advent of 3D printing, this is the first moment in art history when sculpture can be, in this sense, published.
—Bathsheba Grossman 1
One of the consequences of distributed culture is the phenomenon known as digital democratization. Now, I’m no techno-utopianist, and digital democratization has its fair share of critics. For art and artists, digital democratization is a buzzword signifying that the means of accessing art is today available to more people in more places with more frequency than at any other time in the history of the world. By accessing art, we mean not only the availability of viewing it or hearing it. We also refer to the ability to make it. With GarageBand, everyone can be a musician. With iMovie and an iPhone, anyone can make a film. Click here, and on the Internet, you, too, can be Jackson Pollock.
Authenticity and scarcity
In the past, when an artist made a work, its singularity and authenticity guaranteed scarcity. We all know that, in a capitalist system, the law of supply and demand means that scarcity equals value. You might be a Flash Pollock in 2020. But as far as the conceptual framework for making drip paintings is concerned there’s only one Pollock. Some have even claimed his signature style can be authenticated through applications of chaos theory and fractal geometry.
So what exactly is the place of authenticity in a digitally democratic art-making environment? What is the place of quality? Intelligence? Are these elitist values superimposed from above, or do they emerge organically from the ground up? Does getting universal access to tools make everyone an artist? If everyone is already an artist, why study art?
Cloning and meaning
To see Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, you have to have access to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. If you’re a penniless student in Beijing it’s unlikely you do. Your only access is through the low-resolution lens of the image posted on their website. That issue began to be addressed in a joint project between the Prado Museum in Madrid and Google Earth. This made super high-definition reproductions of important works available online. Miguel Zugaza, the director of the Museum, waxes enthusiastic about the scholarly value of the project. However, he cautions that “we see a scientific dissection, although we won’t be able to contemplate the painting’s soul as we do in a direct contemplation of the work.” 2
Some have proposed that famous works of art can be digitally cloned to be housed in multiple museums. Is viewing the clone still an authentic experience, or does context change the meaning? If context and authenticity change the meaning of the work, are you still obligated to make arduous pilgrimages to the capitals of culture to experience that?
Transformations
For example: this author has seen Picasso’s Guernica twice. The first time it was housed at MoMA in New York. It was impressive; I was a little kid and remember feeling as if I could practically enter the painting. The second time, it had been returned to the Prado after the death of Francisco Franco, the dictator. The painting’s new home was an annex under armed guard and bullet-proof glass. In Spain, Guernica was — and remains — emblematic of a volatile political discourse. The painting was certainly not the same on my second encounter. Overpowering and intimate in New York, it felt fragile, distant, even emasculated, in its glass cage.
On the other hand, Jon Ippolito makes a strong case for the transformations that have occurred since the advent of the digital age.
Digitally speaking, everything is possible and anyone can do it. When stupid cad vids and Anémic Cinéma are uploaded side-by-side on YouTube, do they both have equal value and cultural significance? Is there an obligation on the part of the artist and the audience? In the Slow Web movement, there is a call for making and doing things that are worth our attention. But what are the criteria for that? If the internet should not be shit, exactly what are you, an artist, a cultural producer, supposed to do about that?
Digital democratization is a double-edged sword. It’s interesting to be dancing on the edge of it.