I’ve thought about the inherent differences between media (still, video, music) but not really about distribution or creation, which I’d like to look at today.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
An interesting difference is that in music and film, nobody tries to purchase the original. Everybody’s experience of the work is pretty much equal because no band or director in their right mind would sell the master tapes or the original footage. Visual art is a whole other ballgame, and that introduces the significance of buying power to bring the original work into your own home, which heavily influences what most galleries choose to show. (I admit I don’t have much insight into how galleries, where most emerging contemporary fine (high?) art is shown, are run, so this is speculation. Maybe the experience of going to a museum and buying a poster or postcard of a favorite piece is very similar to the experience of going to a concert/film and then buying the CD/DVD.)
Does the tradition of paintings being commissioned and bought by powerful, affluent people (more on this soon) explain why visual artists are so willing to let go of their originals? In this day and age, it is completely possible to make reproductions and sell those instead. Perhaps because of that tradition, reproductions are seen as worthless. Maybe this is why photography has had such a hard time being accepted as a valid visual art despite the fact that it is a visual form that requires skill, though I’m sure the one-button/crank shutter has contributed to that. (Some days, I think if releasing the shutter involved a series of contortionist movements, photography would’ve been accepted way sooner… if it’s difficult, it must be worthy!)
Donald Huebler, Variable Piece 70, and 101
Performance is not usually a big aspect of visual art (or considering the minimalists or people like Huebler, at least of documentary-based visual art), so it is not the act of making the music or showing the film in real time that viewers experience, but what? Really, what? I don’t quite know what to think. It’s interesting that visuals no longer have the power to draw people to a venue for a short period of time. Shows are up for a month or more usually, and galleries cannot charge admission like museums. Are galleries primarily for the general public, or for collectors and working and aspiring artists themselves? That is something I have never been clear on. I’d imagine it depends very much on the individual gallery, but I’d be interested to know of any general trends.
I think the reason for this is because of the prevalence of images everywhere. In newspapers, in magazines, on the net. It’s difficult to get people to pay to look at art and photography not because they don’t care about it but because there is just so much to look at period, whether there’s a charge or not. And let’s face it, whereas a film still or promo shot and a promo shot of a band is just a hook, a still from a show is the work itself. For an audience so accustomed to seeing photographs reproduced in publications, it is very difficult to convince them that there is value in seeing the original prints, because the average person, especially now, does not have much experience in seeing ad, editorial or art photography as an original when compared to their experiences of, say, seeing live bands.
(It’s really interesting that film has no equivalent original experience. The film that you see at home as well as in the theater is a reproduction. Maybe I just don’t know enough about film and DVD technology – maybe I will ask some film students their thoughts.)
Kodak Zi8 pocket video camera (is the still they chose telling or what?)
The prevalence of images also makes it difficult for people to know what to think when looking at a work. How is this any different than the thousand other things I see every day? But maybe this is no different than what occurs in music or film, though it will be very interesting to see what happens if and when sound and film become as accessible to the average person as photography is. Sound went through a similar process as photography when digital set ups based on the home computer became affordable. Studios are in trouble in much the same way that galleries are, since musicians could now choose to purchase a DAW and a MIDI controller, an USB audio interface and some microphones, and basically record their own albums. It’s still not as cheap as a DSLR, but it’s getting there. It will be interesting to see what happens to film when good DV cameras and gear become increasingly affordable.
Still though, it seems to me that the average consumer is much more interested in and has become much more technically proficient in photography than they are in sound or film. The sentimental value of snapshots in part fueled the digital camera revolution. Everyone is interested in having a camera in a way that just isn’t there with sound recorders or video cameras, though that looks to be changing. Will that change significantly as more and more people learn those skills and create media themselves rather than consuming what is made available by others, namely by large companies?
Propellorhead Reason audio software
Right now, pop music and popular film still both end up pretty much in the same place – in a concert hall or theater, of however different sizes – perhaps more generally in just rooms seen by an audience. But what is the pop version of visual art these days? Work hung in hotel rooms? Stuff you buy at Target? Stuff in cafes? Or more plausibly, the photographs hosted on social networking sites made by the public themselves? The word “democratic” does seem to describe this change then. I don’t buy this “internet junk heap” idea. To me, the web is still mostly unformed, and with better metadata information which will allow more precise searches for specific content, people will be able to find information easier than when they relied on a middleman.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for curators and editors. It’s funny how much we talk about death – the death of the CD, the death of the photo book, the death of everything good as we know it! But realistically, not everyone will want to spend hours searching for media. And some will simply be fans of a certain person with a certain taste. I think overall there will just be more diversity. You can search it out for yourself or you can look to editors and curators, who perhaps get a smaller piece of the pie than they did before, but what can you do. You can’t close Pandora’s box. If we try to cling to old ways, likely we’ll be SOL. Adapt or… die, as it were?
Some interesting times ahead. (The future looks like Ed Kashi’s take on multimedia?)
