Art in the Cloud Revisited: Demystification of the Product

A couple months ago, before my last relapse and subsequent progress towards recovery, I wrote an essay published here entitled Art in the Cloud. While it contained the germs of several important ideas in whose merit I strongly believe, it also suffered several major shortcomings. Some people complained of the essay's vagueness, unsure of what tangible things I was advocating. Others outright dismissed the entire essay, suggesting that it was merely a collection of pompous declarations. A few people criticized the essay, suggesting that people do not want a more 'robust' connection to artists, they just want the music. Additionally, many asked of me, why should artists be sharing more information? Simply because they can?

Some of these points reflect a difference of opinion about what art is, can be, or should be and how it ought to be shared. Others more simply reflected my inability to write coherently at the time, my failure to clearly articulate my arguments. Hopefully now, after some time to reflect, and with greater brain capacity I will be better up to the task.

First, I would like to address my subject matter. I had intended to write solely on art, concentrating specifically on art music, as differentiated from entertainment. It was not, nor is it now within scope of the essay delve too deeply into the nature of this distinction, but it is important to establish, even if crudely, the subject matter at hand. I am fairly certain that there is no clear line that can be drawn, however it might be possible to articulate some of the qualities associated with art but not necessarily with entertainment.

My essay is concerned with art whose understanding goes deeper than simply the sensory experience of looking at it or listening to it. One can listen to a Britney Spears song, but there is not much to say about it beyond 'what it sounds like'. To the extent that there are deeper things to be said, they concern sociological phenomenon like the commodification of art as personal identity more than they concern engagement with an artistic tradition. Stravinsky's Firebird, on the other hand presents a creature whose understanding is greatly aided by knowledge of the harmonic structure, historical context, even simply by contemplating the elements of the work. I know that there is a continuum and do not cling to these distinctions dogmatically. However, it is works whose appreciation is skewed towards involving greater contemplation, knowledge, intelligence that I am addressing here.

What's the Point?

When I wrote Art in the Cloud, I had several nebulous points in mind, but failed to make any clear. Here I believe I can do better. Technology generally, but specifically the internet has reshaped our society. We are only first experiencing the consequential changes to the way information is shared, commerce is conducted, and intellectual property, if at all, is protected. I argue that these changes demand that artists change the nature of their interaction with the mass audience along several dimensions, and for several reasons. One is that the CD is nearly obsolete, and we no longer need to marry ourselves to its product cycle. Another cause for change, I believe, is that art ought to reflect the times in which it is created. As concerns these changes and the sharing of music, I believe most artists are embracing the crudest aspects of the new media, turning to Myspace to turn the sharing of music into an exercise in exhibitionist social networking, rather than taking cues from the open source movement and using the internet to share something more substantive than they ever could have without it.

First, concerning the compact disc. Just as the LP lifted constraints, allowing musicians to record longer songs, the internet too potentially changes the game, altering the dynamic between recording artist and audience. Still, few musicians have bothered to claim any degree of freedom from the product cycle of the CD. Many artists release individual tracks ahead of records on their Myspace pages. And many others post a track or two from live performances. But very few people have embraced the internet as the avenue of distribution, making it the primary focus, ahead of the album. To a large extent this is understandable; the product cycle of the CD provides a degree of structure that is useful and difficult to replace artificially. People regularly cling to vestiges of outmoded methods when they prove useful in the creative process. Writers regularly write distinct drafts even though computers allow for a continuous revision process. Still, I believe musicians collectively have yet to realize the potential to take ownership of the method of distribution. There are no longer any size, time, or logistical constraints in the distribution of music. More people can distribute more music on their own terms. Artists will have to turn their attention towards the creation of art to be distributed through the internet and not be so narrowly focused on the creating of albums and marketing them through the internet.

But in the scheme of things, this past point is minor when compared to the larger issue at hand. I was asked repeatedly, why must artists share more information, expose their process, just because the internet allows them to? I cannot honestly say that all artists must or will, but I feel confident in suggesting that many will, and that whether or not artists choose to participate in this new way of sharing information, it will necessarily be something that they will have to acknowledge. Art has always been reflective of its cultural surroundings. And when major technological shifts have altered cultures, they have always had multifaceted effects on artistic traditions, directly by altering the nature of the interaction of artist and audience, and indirectly by so radically altering the world that art must reflect these changes creatively. As concerns the internet, both these things are at play.

Above I briefly attempted to discuss one way in which the interaction between artist and audience has been altered. But there are others. By removing all logistical obstacles to the sharing of information, the internet not only makes it so that artists can share music in whatever quantities and at whatever times they want, but also allows them to share whatever text, video, and other supplementary information they want. As concerns an artist like John Coltrane, whose goal always seemed to be more to document a process than to produce a glowing nugget of perfection, the internet provides the ability to share all stages of the artistic process, all steps in thought and performance along a path. But still I haven't fully accounted for why it is that artists ought to expose the process to the audience, to their peers.

One of the internet's most notable effects across society has been the demystification of nearly everything. Our times are characterized by an unprecedented degree of transparency. Sure, an artist today can decide to ignore this, but even then, the decision in this climate to withhold transparency is a conscious rejection of what has become the norm, just as a college student must consciously decide not to join the Facebook. I do not suggest that artists should strive less for perfection, concentrating instead on the documentation of a process with no regard for where it leads. Rather, I contend that in a society characterized by open source software development and grand experiments in groupthink like Wikipedia, where embarrassing video exists of every politician in office and every teenager has immortalized some statement on a Livejournal that in years past might have ended a career, art no longer needs to maintain the illusion of perfection, of seemingly emerging from nowhere fully formed. I argue that the proper way to share art in times characterized by borderline exhibitionist transparency is to do it transparently. I have written a number of truly terrible essays on this web site, and will soon begin posting some truly terrible music as I attempt to swiftly rise towards a lofty goal while originating from a humble beginning. In the past, musicians were very careful about how they debuted, what information they shared, what the public was allowed to see. Today this runs contrary to the nature of our society.