Provides a brief summary of the development of the media arts, how the different art forms within the genre compare, and the challenges the media arts face. The second in a series of reports examining the state of the arts in America

Elizabeth Heneghan Ondaatje

Kevin F. McCarthy

English

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viiSUMMARYThe arts in America are entering a new era that will pose an array of challengesfor the arts community. The key to developing strategies to respond to thesechallenges is to understand how and why they are occurring. However, our cur-rent knowledge of the operation of the arts world and its underlying dynamics islimited.These limits are particularly pronounced with regard to the newest and mostdynamic component of the arts world: the media arts. Defined as art that isproduced using or combining film, video, and computers, the media arts en-compass a diverse array of artistic work that includes narrative, documentary,and experimental films; videos and digital products; and installation art usingmedia. The media arts differ from the more traditional performing, visual, andliterary arts in several respects. First, they lack the long history, well-establishedtraditions, and external visibility of other art forms. Second, they place a pre-mium on innovation and experimentation. Third, their creation and distribu-tion rely to a much greater extent on emerging information technologies.These features of the media arts make them particularly worthy of study both intheir own right and for the insights they may offer into the future challengesfacing the arts. This report examines the organizational features of the mediaarts, places them in the context of the broader arts environment, and identifiesthe major challenges they face.Our analysis indicates that media artists and arts organizations face many of thesame challenges that confront the arts world more generally: adapting tochanging patterns of audience demand, making an adequate living in anincreasingly competitive employment environment, adjusting to changes in thesystem of distribution of the arts, and securing financial resources in a morechallenging funding environment.Unlike the more traditional arts, however, the media arts bring a different set ofassets and liabilities to bear in dealing with these challenges. Consistent withtheir youth, the media arts abound with artistic vitality, a spirit of innovation, aviii From Celluloid to Cyberspacehistory of social activism, and far more aggressive use of new technology. Con-sistent with their internal focus, on the other hand, the media arts lack externalvisibility, a clear sense of self-identity, and an explicit understanding of theirrelationship to the wider society. If the media arts are to build on their specialassets in the changing environment of the future, they will need to addressthese liabilities.THE CHANGING ARTS ENVIRONMENTThe past 50 years have been a period of unprecedented change for the arts inAmerica. The arts world emerged from World War II sharply divided into non-profit and commercial sectors. The nonprofit sector, which concentrated on thelive performing arts and the display of visual arts in museums, was dominatedby a few elite institutions centered in major metropolitan areas, catering tolargely affluent, white audiences, and supported by a few major patrons of thearts. The commercial arts, on the other hand, which were largely concentratedin the recorded arts (film and music) and commercial publishing, providedpopular entertainment to much larger and more diversified audiences.The nonprofit sector grew dramatically over the next 30 years as a series ofinitiatives spawned an order of magnitude growth in the number and diversityof nonprofit arts institutions, audiences, artists, and funding. The commercialsector flourished as well by providing a growing variety of popular products toexpanding national and international markets. Continued technological ad-vances increased the sophistication and range of products produced and thecomplexity of means through which they were delivered.Recently, a new series of developments indicates that the arts world is shiftingagain. Both the nonprofit and commercial arts, for example, face increasingcompetition for their audiences. This change is affecting the public’s inclinationto participate in the arts as well as what they consume and how. Helped byrising incomes, changing lifestyles, and a leisure industry committed to provid-ing attractive options to a growing market, Americans have a wider array ofleisure-time options than ever before but less free time to exercise those op-tions. As a result, the ways in which Americans participate in the arts have beenchanging: Attendance at live performances has stabilized, an increasing fractionof people participate through the media, and consumers are increasingly favor-ing art forms and modes of participation that allow them to determine whatthey consume, when, where, and how.Despite the continuing difficulties that artists face in making a living from theirart, the number and diversity of individuals who identify themselves as artistshave been increasing. The role that artists are playing and the settings in whichthey work also appear to be broadening. As a result, both amateur and profes-Summary ixsional artists are playing increasingly important roles in supplying arts to theAmerican public.The commercial and nonprofit sectors also face increasing financial pressure—although for different reasons. In the commercial sector, both the risks and po-tential rewards from projects are soaring. Despite enormous payoffs fromblockbuster hits, fewer projects earn enough to cover their production, market-ing, and distribution costs. And after a decades-long expansion, the nonprofitsector also faces new financial pressures. These pressures are products ofdeclining levels and shifting sources of government funding and the increasingpractice of corporations and foundations to target their contributions. In re-sponse, the nonprofit arts sector has been driven to increase its earned rev-enues.In combination, these developments are reshaping the organizational ecologyof the arts world and blurring the traditional distinctions among sectors, disci-plines, and media. Instead of a sharp demarcation between a nonprofit sectorproducing the high arts and a for-profit sector producing mass entertainment,the arts world appears to be increasingly divided along the lines of small versuslarge organizations and those that cater to broad markets versus niche markets.Large organizations—both commercial and nonprofit—rely increasingly onmarketing campaigns and celebrity artists to attract the largest possible audi-ences and provide the greatest opportunities for associated marketing revenues.Small arts organizations, on the other hand, are becoming both more dynamicand more diverse and are targeting niche and specialized markets.Technology has played an important role in this process by spawning entirelynew art forms and reshaping how the arts are distributed. But these may onlybe the most obvious of technology’s effects on the arts. In addition, technologyis also affecting the size and character of the audience for the arts, how individ-uals experience the arts, the motivations and practices of artists, and even thesocial purposes of the arts.THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEDIA ARTSThese technological developments are particularly apparent in the media arts,which spring from technologies that have developed largely during the pastcentury. Throughout their brief history, the media arts have continually appliedand adapted new technologies for a variety of artistic purposes including story-telling (narrative), providing insight into the world as it exists (documentary),and offering new perspective for our perceptions of time, space, and motion aswell as exploring the properties of these tools (experimental work). The specificstyles used within these traditions have changed, however, as media artists havex From Celluloid to Cyberspaceadopted different technological tools (film, video, and, most recently, the com-puter) for their artistic purposes.Not surprisingly, given the focus of the media arts on artistic practice and inno-vation, those in the field have devoted relatively little attention to such struc-tural features as the size and characteristics of their audiences; the employmentand background characteristics of media artists; the number and types oforganizations that fund, produce, and distribute the media arts; and those fea-tures of the media arts that identify them as a distinctive arts genre. Thus, thegrowing literature on the media arts discusses aesthetics, interest in socialcommentary and change, artistic styles, and techniques but contains very littleempirical information on structural features. Although this situation is under-standable, it poses a real challenge for building a comprehensive assessment ofthe structural features of the media arts and how they compare with those ofthe performing, visual, and literary arts.STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF THE MEDIA ARTSAudiencesGaining access to wider audiences has been an ongoing objective of those in themedia arts and one they have often struggled to achieve. This situation may wellbe changing since the media arts seem better positioned than other art forms topursue opportunities afforded by the changing arts environment. The public’sincreasing reliance on the media and increasing familiarity with computers, forexample, are well suited to the media arts. Similarly, improvements in repro-duction and transmission technologies that enable individuals to enjoy thekinds of art that they want, when and where they want, should also benefit themedia arts. Indeed, the growing importance of broadband technology and theInternet in the production and distribution of the arts, the opening up of newmarkets for work that had largely been abandoned by traditional distributors(e.g., short films), and the possibility of direct exchanges between artists andtheir audiences should all provide consumers with better access to the mediaarts.How these developments will affect the specific media arts may in part dependupon how various intermediaries, e.g., distributors and critics, view the breadthof their market appeal. Of the three categories of media art, narrative workappears to have the broadest appeal—judging by the fact that almost two-thirdsof all Americans attend films annually and over 90 percent watch television. Incontrast, documentary and experimental work, for a variety of reasons, is morelikely to benefit from developments that appeal to specialized audiences. Theability of the media arts to take advantage of these opportunities, however, maywell depend on the public’s getting better information about and access to theSummary ximedia arts and on the attitudes of those in the media arts community towardcommercial success—something about which they have sometimes been am-bivalent.ArtistsAs is true of the arts in general, the number of media artists has been increasingand their backgrounds have been becoming more diverse. Several develop-ments have contributed to these trends. First, the emergence of computer-based work appears to have attracted a large number of new artists to the field.Second, declining costs of the technology used in the media arts have madework as a media artist more affordable. Third, the growth of university filmschools and media arts programs has provided training to a much greater num-ber of potential media artists. Finally, reduction of the traditional barriers tocollaboration between the commercial and independent sectors has expandedthe employment options of media artists.Although these developments provide increasing options for media artists, theyalso raise a series of policy and regulatory issues for the media arts, especiallywith regard to copyright laws and access to the Internet and other new distri-bution technologies. They also raise other important questions, such aswhether, given the proliferation of new work and new channels for distributingit, media artists will become increasingly dependent upon intermediaries tohelp overloaded audiences alert them to the voices they want to hear. Finally, ifthe market for media arts work becomes increasingly driven by economic im-pulse, how will it affect the content of the media arts, much of whose marketswill remain both small and highly specialized?OrganizationsMedia artists depend upon a host of intermediaries to help them obtain theresources they need to cover their expenses and produce their work as well as toarrange to have their finished products distributed, exhibited, and marketed.The challenges these processes present are germane to all artists, especiallythose who are just starting out or whose work is not yet recognized. However,they may be particularly acute for media artists for three reasons. First, mediaartists often work alone or with groups put together for a specific project andthus may lack the institutional resources available to other types of artists. Sec-ond, the market for media arts work is often highly specialized and, given itsrapidly changing nature, not well identified or established. Third, the distribu-tion process itself appears to be changing—as festivals for screening new workproliferate, and broadband technology, e-commerce, and digital technologyxii From Celluloid to Cyberspacelower distribution costs and enable commercial firms to enter the market prof-itably.Although these developments raise problems for the media arts, they also offernew opportunities. For these opportunities to be realized, however, severalissues will need to be resolved. Can effective business models be developed totranslate the promise of new distribution technologies into reality? Will theentry of commercial firms into the media arts market affect traditional nichemarket distributors? And will the new commercial distributors make the in-vestments needed to develop the supply of media arts content?FundingThe media arts, like the arts more generally, face a new and more challengingfunding environment. In this new environment, individual media artists mustcompete for a shrinking pool of grant funds and may have to rely more onearnings to support their work. Media arts organizations face similar pressuresto increase their earned revenues in the face of uncertain public funding and anincreasing tendency for corporations and foundations to channel their supportfor the arts through restricted categorical funding.These challenges may be particularly troublesome for media arts for severalreasons. First, government funding for the media arts, particularly NationalEndowment for the Arts (NEA) funding, has declined sharply. Although smallarts organizations (which most media arts organizations are) never received thelion’s share of government funding, they have traditionally been more heavilydependent upon government funds. Second, local government and corporationfunding for the arts appears to have favored larger organizations over smallerones—a pattern that puts media arts organizations at a disadvantage. Third,individual contributions, now the largest single source of arts funding, are oftentied to developing a sense of community among contributors—and the mediaarts field appears to lack basic information about its audiences. Finally, increas-ing attention by public and private funders alike has been focused on the publicbenefits of the arts and how their contributions can advance those benefits.CHALLENGES FACING THE MEDIA ARTSAlthough we cannot draw a definitive picture of the status of the media artstoday without better empirical data, our analysis highlights the artistic vitalityof the media arts, just as it underscores their lack of a clear sense of identity andexternal visibility. In addition, it identifies a series of challenges that the mediaarts face. These challenges fall into five areas: distribution, funding, under-Summary xiiistanding the public benefits of the arts, preservation, and developing a cleareridentity and greater visibility for the art form.As our discussion of organizational structure makes clear, several policy issuesconcerning the distribution of the media arts need to be addressed before thepromise of changes in this area can be realized. These include questions aboutcopyright regulations, determining artists’ share of revenues from their work,developing business models for the new distribution channels, and developingstrategies for the distribution of the new interactive media. The challenge forthe media arts community is to ensure that it has a voice in how these issues areresolved.The media arts also face a more demanding funding environment. Securingadequate funding appears to have become more difficult in part because ofdeclining funding levels (e.g., NEA grants) and in part because traditional fun-ders have changed their criteria for allocating funds. The challenge for those inthe media arts is both to increase funding levels and to diversify their fundingsources. Although increasing earnings may help alleviate this problem, it willnot solve it because, given the nature of their work, many media artists and theorganizations that support them must continue to rely on various forms ofcontribution and grant income.In recent years, increasing public concern has been expressed about how thearts in America advance the public interest. This concern is shared both by artspolicymakers and by public and private funders. Although segments of themedia arts community have at various times echoed this concern, it has not en-gaged the field as a whole. The challenge is to identify explicitly and documentthe public benefits of the media arts.Another challenge facing the media arts concerns preservation and technologi-cal obsolescence. Given the importance of experimentation in the media artsand their rapid adoption of technological innovation, they, unlike the otherarts, face a major issue of how to preserve works using formats, equipment, andcomputer code that may no longer be available.Finally, although the public is certainly familiar with film, video, and computers(the basic tools of media artists), it is not clear that people understand howmedia artists differ from their counterparts who work with these media. Indeed,judging from the literature and our discussions with individuals in the mediaarts field, there appear to be disputes among media artists themselves on howto define and describe their field. Without a sense of the media arts as a distinc-tive genre, funders may be less likely to provide programs for the media arts andthe public will be less aware of the media arts both as consumers and as poten-tial contributors. The challenge for people in the media arts is to develop both aclearer identity of and visibility for their field.xiv From Celluloid to CyberspaceRECOMMENDATIONSIn light of these challenges, we conclude with a set of recommendations. First,the media arts community needs to develop a clearer sense of identity andgreater public visibility for the media arts. Second, it needs to be more attunedand responsive to the policy context in which it operates. Third, it needs toaddress the lack of systematic information about the field as a whole—includ-ing its audiences, artists, organizations, and funding. Finally, both media artistsand organizations need to become more active in building greater publicinvolvement in their work.

From Celluloid to Cyberspace: The Media Arts and the Changing Arts World

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From Celluloid to Cyberspace: The Media Arts and the Changing Arts World

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