reinvention

from bramilo.weblogs.com

Thirteen Pentium 100s decommissioned by the Australia Council arrived at Brown’s Mart in Darwin on 14 June 2001. These computers were allocated by Australia Council, through Scott O’Hara and the Community Cultural Development Board, to the Community-based Multimedia Program in Darwin that I’m overseeing as part of my Fellowship.

Current State of the Machines

Not all the Pentiums are functional; Scott said he’d send us a baker’s dozen so we can get about ten working. I’ve done a preliminary check on some of them but I’ll need to check each one to see what needs to be done to get as much of them working as possible. So far, I’ve determined that they came with the wrong keyboards (Scott warned me about this), so we’ll need to get PS/2 to DIN adapters (I’ve tried one and it works). We will probably need adapters for the mice as well. None of them have working operating systems, and none came with floppy drives and CD-ROM drives (which Scott also warned me about).

As at 27 June, I have managed to get one system running under Linux (Red Hat 6). I’ve had to scavenge a floppy drive from a dead Brown’s Mart PC and wire in my own spare CD-ROM drive to install the system but its running. I can do the same (that is, put in the floppy and CD-ROM drives) for each machine that I need to set up. I however plan to look at other distributions (versions) of Linux that I’ve found that supposedly need less RAM and hard drive space — these distributions may be better suited to the Ozco Pentiums than Red Hat 6.

By mid-July I intend to know the exact status of these machines and will know how many are functional from among the baker’s dozen.

Linux

I wasn’t concerned too much about the operating system as I intended to load Linux on them. Linux is more difficult to install and configure than Windows (but not that much harder, I think) but it is free so we won’t have to pay for licenses. Linux is also reputedly more stable than Windows so once it is set up properly, it will need less maintenance than Windows. Linux has graphic user interfaces as well (e.g. KDE and Gnome) and basic applications for Office functions (word processing, spreadsheet, etc.), image manipulation, programming, and Internet access.

As the Pentiums will most likely be used for Internet use, Internet and networking capabilities are important; Linux comes with Netscape and this will be sufficient for email, news reading, and web access. The Linux desktop is different to Windows or Mac ones but I think it won’t take too long for users (even novice ones) to get the basic hang of it; when it comes to Netscape, there’s little difference between the Linux and other versions anyway.

I also liked the idea of using Linux as a way of emphasising the “alternative” nature of my work, which I sometimes refer to as Low End and Feral Technology, or LEFT. Linux is open source, free, supported by millions of volunteers, runs on old machines well — things that Windows is not.

I am still open to the possibility that Linux may be too difficult for many users, especially those that are used to Windows or MacOS through their usage of these popular operating systems at school. If it proves too hard, I may need to ask Microsoft to sponsor licenses.

As for the floppies and CD-ROM drives, I’ll need them mainly to set up the machines — if they Pentiums are to be mainly Internet terminals, they will not really need floppy drives and CD-ROM drives. If users needed to access a floppy or CD-ROM, I can install them on a server and users can access these drives on that server through the network.

Where and How will these Pentiums be used?

The original plan for these Pentiums was to set them up at a venue that was accessible to community artists and members. The computers would be used mainly for basic office and Internet functions. It was also envisioned that the machines can be used in an Internet Cafe setting eventually — the Cafe will be part of the Community-based Multimedia Program and could probably be a component of the social enterprise area of my Fellowship.

I will need to get them running in the next few weeks. An immediate use for the machines — assuming I get them running in time — will be for the Darwin Fringe Festival in August. They will be set up in an Internet Cafe arrangement during selected gigs in Brown’s Mart’s courtyard.

Ken Conway, Brown’s Mart Executive Officer, and I have also requested the use of a space downstairs in Brown’s Mart to set up a pilot multimedia/Internet lab using the machines. The space is still occupied by another tenant but will be vacated soon. The idea is that the Pentiums (or some of them) will be set up in a network, probably with better multimedia-capable PCs, that will be available for use by artists who want to develop community-based multimedia projects. I will be co-maintaining the space while I work on some of my own projects. The space, however, will only be available for about six months so we need to find a longer-term home for the machines/system.

A long-term possibility is to use the machines in a broader program that I am currently organising: the it4cd program. it4cd stands for Information Technology for Community Development; it is a program that will offer Internet and IT access (and training) to unemployed people, specifically youth at risk, in the Darwin region, and which will deploy community-based multimedia strategies for cultural and economic advancement of unemployed young people.

I am still working on the it4cd idea and will promote it to Brown’s Mart Board, Centacare (the Catholic Church’s employment agency), Corrugated Iron Youth Arts, and Octa4 (the ISP I am placed with) as potential founding partners. I’ve broached the broad idea with Mario Trinidad, Centacare CEO, who was very interested — he is open to providing the venue for the computer network; we will be discussing it further when he returns from leave in late July. I’ve suggested the idea to Brown’s Mart Board who have agreed to it. Felino Molina, Octa4 Managing Director, is open to supporting a community Internet access project and we will discuss it more in the coming weeks. I will be talking to Susan Ditter, Executive Officer of Corrugated Iron, soon.

I will post the concept paper on it4cd on this web log as soon as its ready.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

I did a presentation for the Community Arts Association of South Australia’s Mid-Winter Thinktank on 29 June 2001, 10:30 - 11:00. The Thinktank was held in Adelaide, attended mainly by students of the Graduate Diploma in CCD. I did the presentation from Darwin using Netmeeting 3.

The topic of the forum is “What is Culture? What is a Culture?” I was asked to address the following: community, identity and culture in virtual communities. How do virtual communities represent themselves culturally. What is the impact of technologies on communities cultural identities?

My session started out as a text chat to demonstrate how online (synchronous) communication usually is (on IRC and other chat facilities). Then they showed my Powerpoint show (with Mark clicking the slides). After the text and the slides, I revealed my face and Julia Tymukas, who was chairing the session, made the point about starting with text first to show the big difference with having a face via video. I added that with text they would know less about me than with video, etc.

Screenshot by Mark Tranthim-Fryer

Questions raised and my responses

How can artists’ work be protected online? I mentioned that the Moral Rights legislation was recently passed and that the Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) had a lot of information on intellectual property and that they would be the best source of information on these matters.

How do we do CCD online? What arts activities or projects are possible? I said that I’ve been thinking and worrying about this as well, and that I have small projects or experiments regarding this question. I mentioned Darwin News as an example: Darwin News is an email list I run that’s based on the concept of news poetry (inspired by the mailing list of the same name out of Urbana, Illinois, USA). With Darwin News, Darwin poets (or citizen-poets) are invited to post poems about everyday things in Darwin, and discussion or debate is invited but all postings need to be in poetic form.

Are new technologies really socially beneficial? The inquirer pointed out that new technologies create social problems too, as with young people who spend too much time on the Net. I said that new technologies do bring problems but it also brings benefits; we need to determine how new technologies can be useful for us, especially as “shit happens online too” (as I typed on the whiteboard). I reminded people that we were able to survive without these new technologies only twenty or twenty five years ago. I also proposed my model of Community Computing as opposed to Personal Computing: I don’t want a computer in every home as this would tend to disrupt family life (based on my own experience); it would be better to have community computing facilities where people went to do what they needed.

Gap or Bridge? The inquirer pointed out that there’s a gap in communication on the Internet in terms of human contact; you need to hug people, have eye-to-eye contact, be together in a place, etc. I said that I see the Internet as a bridge between people who are far from each other. As an exile and migrant I had to maintain relationships with family and friends overseas through the post, the phone, and two-way radio — so I am used to remote relationships. The Internet provides me with better and cheaper tools to maintain such relationships, particularly through videoconferencing. There’s a theory that you need to see someone’s face for full communication to occur — with videoconferencing you are able to see someone’s face and hear them and while this is not the same as flesh-to-flesh encounters, it is a step forward. Nothing will replace face-to-face and flesh-to-flesh encounters but things like videoconferencing are a good alternative in some conditions.

Screenshot by Mark Tranthim-Fryer

Background

Georgie Davill contacted me on 19 April to ask if I can be on a panel for the Thinktank in case I was in Adelaide around June — I was supposed to attend an Adelaide Festival Artists Committee meeting sometime in June and Georgie was hoping it would be the same time as the Thinktank. I suggested to Georgie that I may not be in Adelaide at all in June-July and maybe she can consider having me as a virtual panelist, something similar to what I did for the “Education and Social Change Conference Online Workshop” in Sydney last year. Georgie asked for more detail on how it can be done and I emailed her some suggestions (specifically using iVisit for videoconferencing).

By 15 June Georgie agreed to doing the video conference. Mark Tranthim-Fryer, who project manages the CCD web site project, also came aboard around this time to help set up the videoconference. Ian Reed came aboard by 21 June; he suggested we use Netmeeting instead as they had successful experiences with it at Open Access College, Marsden, where Ian is a lecturer. I agreed to try out Netmeeting; Ian and I had a test session on Monday, 25 June, at around 10 am. This went very well (transmission-reception wise).

We then had another test session on Wednesday, 27 June, this time with the CAN people at the CAN office. We had the session at 5:30 pm (CST) and the conditions were not as good as the morning session with Ian but still tolerable (especially using text and the whiteboard). Ian reckoned it would be better on Friday morning (mornings are better, net traffic wise, we reckoned) but suggested I have my mobile with hands-free kit ready in case we needed to use that as the audio channel.

During the actual Thinktank session, conditions were better than the Wednesday test session but not as good as the morning session with Ian. I think Ian was on a better connection at his work place (maybe ISDN) and this may explain better response times. CAN was on, I believe, on a dial up phone connection like I was so the delay between transmissions was longer. Other than this problem, we had good conditions — I could see and hear them clearly enough and they could see and hear me well too — no reports of choppy or garbled audio.

I prepared a Flash movie for the text of my presentation, as well as a Powerpoint presentation as a backup in case there was a problem with the Flashmovie. I like the Flash movie because it was the first presentation I did using it, so it was a training/learning exercise for me. I had a Bach cello piece as a soundtrack (in MP3 format) which I liked and also the text snippets faded in and out. Unfortunately, I chose a blue tint for the text and it didn’t turn out that well on the video projector in Adelaide according to Mark who ran tests on it. So we had to use the Powerpoint. I gave Mark the URL for the Flash movie (http://www.octa4.net.au/bramilo/thinktank.htm) just in case people wanted to see it after the session.Mark said (in an email after the session) that it worked well and that there was good feedback and dialogue after my presentation. He also sent me screen capture images. Last, he suggested we continue discussing possibilities for developing videoconferencing for the CCD web site.

I think Netmeeting is a fine application and, with good connections and broader bandwidth, would be ideal for conferencing. One problem I have with it is that it only works on Windows. I will suggest that the CCD web site also offer iVisit — a free videoconferencing application for Windows and MacOS — as an alternative system. See my notes on using iVisit at Webcasting the Class of 76 and Videochatting the Folks back home.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

The Ozeculture: Getting it Online Conference was held at the Sofitel, Melbourne, on 13-14 June 2001. It was hosted by the Commonwealth Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA). I attended as a Northern Territory Delegate.

Sessions

Papers delivered at the Conference will be published on the Conference web site (http://www.acn.net.au/conference/). Below are brief descriptions of presentations.

13 June, Morning Presentations

Welcome

The Hon. Peter McGauran, Minister for the Arts and the Centenary of Federation, gave the welcome address and launched the Culture and Recreation Portal (http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au).

Beyond Borders - the digital challenge.

Jennifer Condon, National Informatics Director, Enterprise Ireland, spoke about a “Silicon Alley” project planned for the centre of Dublin — in the old Guiness Factory — that will house the most advanced information technology and new media enterprises, seeking to capitalise on Ireland’s content industries.

Kim Machan, Director, Multimedia Art Asia Pacific, provided artists’ perspectives on new media, including artists from the Asia-Pacific region. She played a Flash movie made by a Korean artist that questioned notions of interactivity and other supposed requirements for new media. She stressed that the artist should be central.

There’s no business like ebusiness

Gary Brennan, Policy Consultant, NSW Film and Television Office, talked about the “commodification of arts administration”; he showed the database application that several film organisations commonly utilised for project management as an example of this.

Vicky Sowry, Director, Media Resource Centre, and Chair of the Australian Network for Art and Technology, demonstrated members’ online databases as examples of how new technologies assist in arts management.

Brett Leavy, Director, Cyberdreaming, talked about how new media can benefit Indigenous communities and showed some projects of Cyberdreaming as examples.

13 June, Afternoon Discussion Groups

I attended the following discussion groups in the afternoon:

Interactive online music demonstration, by Seb Chan and Peter Mahony. A network “jamming” application was demonstrated at the session. The allows several users to build music tracks in real time by sequencing audio samples. The application has been developed for the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and will be targeted to secondary schools in NSW. It will be launched in October.

Talent Quest — what’s happening in the computer games industry in Australia, with: John DeMarghetti, CEO of Microforte; Julianne Lawson, Program Manager, Arts Queensland; Adam Lancman, President, Games Developers Association of Australia. The speakers gave an overview of the games industry and identified issues, particularly the different requirements for designing games and the lack of graphic artists in Australia who have those skills. A related issue was that of the trend of importing talent from overseas to fill the local gaps.

Keeping an even keel, by David Walker, producer, Lighthouse on the web. David Walker has been active over the years in deflating hype about the Internet. He still recommends “traditional” business models of starting small and building up from there. He also provided information on consumer behaviour and the characteristics of the Internet that militate against an “arts internet” or “entertainment internet”.

14 June, Morning Presentations

Exposure v Exploitation — intellectual property issues raised by digital technologies.

Liz O’Shea of DCITA gave an overview of the developments in the IP area, particularly what Government and the Department have been doing (e.g. Moral Rights legislation).

Robin Wright, Manager, Copyright and Digital Projects, Swinburne University, talked about changes in managing IP brought about by digital technologies, issues to do with balancing public interest and economic exploitation.

Vanessa Rouse, former Executive Director, Arena Theatre, talked about Arena’s experiences in digitising live performance product and issues to do with royalty management and different rights in theatre production.

Vivien Johnson, Senior Research Council Fellow, ANU, talked about the House of Aboriginality project and about the movement against violations of indigenous rights (intellectual property, as well as cultural).

Delia Browne, Executive Director of Arts Law Centre Australia, talked about the activities and services offered by Arts Law Centre as well as some of the issues to do with IP and digital media, including the lack of industry standards so far for determining fees for use of material.

Homegrown - building local cultural content in the era of the international electronic marketplace

John Rimmer, Chief Executive Officer, National Office for the Information Economy, discussed aspects of “Creative Industries”. He cited cultural issues for creative industries, including new employment models, skills deficits, and branding to the world. He also discussed factors for success in creative industries, including exploiting network effects, linking theory and practice, going beyond high art and low art. Also presented were factors for success in the digital economy, including moving from value-chain to value-network, and questioning if there is indeed a “digital content industry”. He outlined challenges facing creative industries, including the convergence of information, communications and broadband technologies. He then mapped out the way forward, including ways to gain competitive advantage, valuing different capabilities in value networks, developing infrastructure, and government’s role as an intelligent purchaser from creative industries.

Getting to know you - partnerships and relationships

The session was chaired by Cliff Smith, Regional Director, South Asia, Novell Inc, and Councillor, Australian Business Arts Foundation (ABAF). He described the good relationship Novell has built with the arts sector and described the role and benefits of ABAF in forging partnerships between the corporate sector and arts organisations.

Lynne Spender, Director, Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association, emphasised that there is a digital content industry (in response to John Rimmer’s assertion that these are only extensions of “root” industries).

Carolyn Guerin, former Director, Projects, Sausage Interactive, discussed experiences of artists working in software companies and emphasised the need for collaboration between artists and technical workers in producing digital content.

Will Berryman, Head of New Media, SBS, outlined SBS’s experiences in adopting new media and forging partnerships with the corporate sector, stressing that benefits from partnerships are not necessarily measured in monetary terms and that partnerships must serve arts/organisations purposes rather than being a way to service corporate needs alone.

14 June, Afternoon Discussion Groups

I attended the following discussion groups in the afternoon:

Two plus two equals five - success stories of collaboration between artists and information technology companies.

Dr. Nigel Helyer, new media artist and member of the New Media Arts Board, Australia Council, talked about his residency with Lake, a high tech company in Sydney specialising in audio equipment and products. He worked on a virtual reality system that was sound-based (three-dimensional sound) using Lake’s facilities, equipment, and working with their engineers. He wrote several patents arising from his residency.

Teresa Crea, Artistic Director, Doppio Parallelo, talked about Doppio’s partnership with Motorola (its Research and Development arm specifically). She described one of Doppio’s contributions to the partnership as being an observer of life and lifestyle (as this is what arts organisations are good at) which would then inform Motorola’s research and development activities.

The new venues - interactive spaces.

John McCormick, Director , Company in Space, talked about and demonstrated their work using digital technologies — specifically video conferencing and an application that animates graphics onscreen in real-time through a body suit that digitises motion and controls the animated characters.

Ross Gibson, Creative Director, Cinemedia’s Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), described the vision and plans for ACMI and presented historical insights into how the moving image. He also had an intriguing statement about navigation and hypertext: he claimed that 19th century arcades were the original hyperlinks.

David Stonier, Manager, Ticketed Events, Museum of Melbourne, talked about the “immersion cinema” system at the Museum; this system, one of few in the world, provides an interactive cinematic experience where viewers can determine the outcome of the story. The initial offerings at the Museum will be about a sci-fi like movie about journeying into the human body.

14 June, Concluding Session: How well is your website?

The concluding session had Steven Smith of United Focus, Will Berryman of SBS, a nd Kevin Sumption of AMOL putting up some websites — e.g. Australian Ballet, Arts Law Centre — on the screen and giving critiques of these sites.

New Media Samples

The Conference program has new media samples as transition or intermission devices. One sample was the famous Turbulence by John McCormack. There was no discussion about these samples.

New Media Exhibition

The Conference featured an exhibition of 18 new media products — film/computer animation, cd-roms, net art, and VR installations — curated by Cinemedia. The exhibition was in a dedicated space beside the main auditorium; delegates were able to view/use/test the various offerings. One highlight of the exhibition was “The WEDGE”, a “low-cost, walk-in Virtual Reality Theatre” developed at the ANU.

My Highlights

The following are things in the conference that were most memorable or significant for me:

I was inspired and envious of what Enterprise Ireland is planning for its own Silicon Alley. I thought it was admirable for the Irish government to invest millions of pounds in new media to take full advantage of its own as well as the world’s content. I was hoping there would be similar initiatives in Australia soon.

I enjoyed the workshop on Interactive music as I am (or would like to be) mainly a musician. The system demonstrated at the workshop was a beta version but it displayed a good framework for interactive electronic musicmaking. It is not the first such system; Rocketnetwork and Resrocket (a MIDI-version of Rocketnetwork) have virtual studios and facilities for online collaboration among musicians writing tracks (Resrocket may be hosted as part of the Powerhouse system because of its MIDI capabilities).

David Walker’s presentation was a big dose of reality. He emphasised that we will not have an Arts Internet or Entertainment Internet because it is not the nature of the medium (which is a “lean-forward, do things” medium rather than a “lie back, consume things” medium as television and other mass media are). He cites statistics on consumer behaviour that have been unchanged over several years: the Net is used mainly for email and searching for and getting information — this trend, he believes is not about to change. Walker also cited a study that there is no direct relationship between spending on IT and productivity; a few of us liked this statement of reality, partly because it reminds us that we were able to survive without much IT in the past and that IT will not solve all our problems.

Critique

I came to the Conference with too many expectations, perhaps, as I came away disappointed.

I thought the Conference promised a lot in terms of a wide range of topics and opportunities to discuss issues. There was indeed a range of topics but the themes of ecommerce and websites dominated and there was not much discussion at all (I felt being talked at for two days as there was not much time for substantial discussion and debate).

The Conference was supposed to be about Ozecuture (Australian e-culture), and getting it online. Most of the presentations had to be with the commercial aspects of cultural issues, and particularly some aspects of ecommerce such as marketing and selling artistic product online, and using online databases for membership management and other administrative purposes. Even assuming that the emphasis on business was justified (and it is not, but more about that later), I thought the conference did not provide an adequate representation of ebusiness. Ecommerce is only one aspect of ebusiness; others are customer relations management, business planning, enterprise management, supply chain management. I had expected discussions about ebusiness to go beyond ecommerce.

I also thought the the emphasis on websites as the main venue for ecommerce or as spaces for arts organisations was a bit narrow. There is more to the Internet, more to online culture than the web. While other online and new media technologies were demonstrated and discussed (particularly in the Exhibition space and in some presentations), I though that beginning the conference with launching a web site and ending it with a session on web sites, and having websites flashed so often within the main program, gave me the impression that web sites are the main vehicle for getting culture online. This is not necessarily true.

The most disappointing aspect, however, was the lack of spaces to discuss Australian culture online, to discuss the creation and development of Australian culture on the Internet — rather than representing the Internet as a repository of “content” and a market place. I would have enjoyed discussing how the Internet can, if at all, be a space to create art, or what the culture (or cultures) are of its cybercitizens (that is, what is the culture of virtual communities, for instance). I felt that the Internet was represented at the conference mainly as just another marketing and commercial vehicle, or a storage and exhibition area for art created in the real world — cyberspace has unique characteristics which determine the creation and development of culture within it, and this was not really discussed at the conference.

Acknowledgment

I attended the Conference with support from:

the Commonwealth Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts for my airfare;

artsNT, the Cultural Development Division of the NT Department of Arts and Museums, for funding my Conference registration and accommodation costs;

Brown’s Mart Community Arts for facilitating and administering support from DCITA and artsNT; and

the Community Cultural Development Board of the Australia Council, for my Fellowship, which covered my wages and other conference-related expenses

from bramilo.weblogs.com

I attended a two-day workshop on Developing Business Arts Partnerships for Multicultural Arts Organisations at the Australia Council building in Sydney on 28-29 May 2001. The workshop was hosted by the Policy, Communication and Planning section of Australia Council. I was invited by Cecelia Cmielewski to attend as one of two Northern Territory delegates (the other was Tegan Richardson, Multicultural Arts Officer).

The workshop is part of a program of the Australian Business Arts Foundation (ABAF) that seeks to assist cultural organisations develop partnerships with corporations. The workshop I attended was one adapted for multicultural arts organisations.

A Draft Manual — Developing Business Arts Partnerships: A Guide for the Cultural Sector — was provided to workshop participants. Quotes in this report come from that manual.

The workshop “sets out ways in which cultural organisations and corporations can form individual strategic partnerships through exchanging assets to the benefit of both parties.” The workshop uses and promotes the “Business Case Approach” in building strategic partnerships. It is an approach that is used in the corporate sector as best practice and the workshop seeks to encourage cultural organisations to use it as well.

The business case approach in the workshop is a combination of two approaches, which together form the foundation of the workshop:

* the business case approach, which “involves a strategic exchange between a corporation and a cultural organisation, in which each agrees to provide the other with the kinds of benefits that will assist the other to meet their business needs and achieve their business objectives.”
* the partnership approach “recognises that relationships and arrangements between business and the arts are likely to be most productive and beneficial to both parties when they are reciprocal, strategic, multifaceted, creative and flexible, and long-term.”

The workshop was divided into these major sections:

* The Business Case Approach to Business Arts Partnerships
* Building a Business Case for a Corporate Partnership: Using the Framework
* Researching and Selecting Prospective Good Fit Corporate Partners
* Preparing and Presenting Partnership Proposals
* Negotiating and Confirming Partnership Agreements
* Managing the Partnership Relationship

The workshop consisted of presentations from the workshop facilitator, group discussions, and role-playing toward the end (simulating approaches to corporations for partnership agreements). We were also required to study ten business cases prior to the workshop; these cases were used in the discussion groups and for the role-playing.

Memorable Points

The workshop offered many pointers for and issues with working toward partnerships with corporations. Rather than summarise them all, I will name a few that were more memorable or significant to me.

Cultural organisations are businesses too, although they are often subsidised through arts grants, and as such can and should use the business case and partnership approaches effectively.

Arts organisations are used to being in begging and subservient mode when dealing with the corporate sector. A partnership approach should engender a feeling of dealing with an organisation that can benefit from you as well, thus negating the need to feel inferior to corporations.

Partnerships can mean that assets or benefits exchanged are not necessarily monetary — that is, cultural organisations may not necessarily get funds from corporations, and that corporations do not necessarily get increased revenue out of a partnership. Benefits can be in kind and can be “intangible” (as in enhancing the image of a corporation through partnerships with arts organisations).

Cultural organisations need to be true to their nature and their mission even within a partnership with a corporation. Corporate partners must, for example, understand that a theatre company cannot have the corporate banner in front of the stage, or the logo on costumes, as this arrangement compromises the artistic integrity of the artistic product and the cultural organisation.

The challenge in building partnerships is finding a good fit between a cultural organisation and a corporation. One indicator of a good fit is compatibility of vision and mission, for example when a corporation that wants to enhance its reputation for ecological responsibility partners with an arts organisation involved in ecological concerns.

It costs to maintain partnerships: a senior staff member and a board member (or members) will be required to nurture the relationship. Sometimes the returns are smaller than just going for grants. You must decide if the cost of maintaining partnerships is worth the returns.

Cultural organisations do not have a monopoly on creativity and can’t offer it as a benefit they can exchange for other assets with a corporation. Corporations too have creative talent and can teach cultural organisations a thing or two about creativity.

Corporations are multicultural too and may be sympathetic to multicultural arts organisations offering partnerships.

Issues with the Workshop

While it was made clear that cultural organisations are businesses too, and that there is no need to feel subservient when dealing with corporations, I had a feeling (shared by others at the workshop) that the tendency to approach corporations as senior or superior “partners” (the tendency to kowtow or even to kiss corporate arse) was still strong. This was apparent in the role-playing where the characters playing the corporates seemed to be in a more powerful position and that those playing the cultural organisations always had to adjust to the demands of the corporates.

This may have been just force of habit emerging in the role-playing, but I think this had something to do with how the power relations between corporates and “culturals” was represented during the workshop: the framework was often what cultural organisations had to do to attract partners, so it felt like cultural organisations always needed something more. This may be natural as it was a workshop for cultural organisations; the workshops for corporates (if there are any) may be telling them how to woo cultural organisations, but I doubt that.

Cultural organisations then still appear to be poorer cousins in the relationship as explored during the workshop. I’m not sure why that is exactly but it is worth looking into further.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

I attended the ebusiness for the Cultural Sector Workshop held in Darwin on 13 May 2001. It was part of a national series of workshops sponsored by the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) and was facilitated by Steven Smith, a consultant commissioned by DCITA to develop and deliver the workshop.

The workshop is part of a national program called Ozeculture: ebusiness for the Cultural Sector. This program, according to the workshop Manual, is designed “to assist cultural organisations in Australia develop ebusiness strategies” and to help “…small and medium sized cultural organisations learn how their organisations might benefit from using the Internet in the conduct of their day to day business.” More information on the program and the web site is available at http://www.acn.net/ebusiness.

The workshop, however, focused on web site concerns as can be gleaned from the major chapters or sections of the workshop:

Why does a cultural organisation need a web site?
New business models in the digital age
Managing your web site
Planning a new or redeveloped site
Promoting your web site
Creating Cost Savings and Generating Revenue
Building the Site
On-going Evaluation and Maintenance
Resources

The Workshop is good, therefore, for arts organisations who wish to use web sites for some ebusiness activities, particularly if they wish to emulate standards for business web sites in other industries. The Workshop was good for presenting, in the main, contemporary models for building and developing business oriented web sites.

My problem is that I don’t think the Workshop adequately delivers on its promise to “assist cultural organisations in Australia develop ebusiness strategies.”

While web sites are important for cultural organisations, I don’t agree that it is the only and most important online tool for conducting ebusiness online — I said as much when I introduced myself at the beginning of the workshop. There are other technologies and tools on the Internet that must be considered when exploring “business models in the Digital Age”: email (still the number one killer application), chatting and conferencing, groupware, and other collaborative technologies that are not webbed can be as (if not more) useful in conducting ebusiness. The workshop would have been more accurately described or titled “web sites for ebusiness for the cultural sector.”

Also, even within the framework of looking at web sites as an ebusiness tool, the workshop limits or reduces the potential of the web to repository and/or ecommerce (i.e. marketing and selling) functions. It does not discuss the inherent “intercreative” character of the web: Tim Berners-Lee, the web’s inventor, said that he created the web to be an intercreative environment where users have the power to contribute and create content as well as consume it. Intercreativity is different to interactivity in that the latter merely provides some choices on where to click and go, but the substance has often been predetermined by the author or producer of the web page/site. Intercreativity means users can respond to content by producing their own content.

This intercreativity of the web seems well-suited to creative uses by the cultural sector and can be explored further. While the workshop was indeed designed to look at using the web for ebusiness, it does not follow that other creative or intercreative applications should be overlooked for ebusiness purposes: collaborative technologies and community building tools are intercreative mechanisms that are in fact used by some business web sites to develop customer relations and loyalty, as well as to channel feedback from the public that can inform better marketing and production, etc.

My impression, therefore, is that the Workshop and the program it comes from may not be tapping the specific characteristics, needs, and potentialities of the cultural sector as it looks as if it can delivered to any other business audience — and this is what may have happened: a program and workshop inspired by approaches to non-cultural sectors modified a little to suit notions of arts organisations as “small and medium sized” enterprises.

I am interested in a workshop that provides a wider overview of ebusiness possibilities for the cultural sector, one that considers a more complete range of technologies, and one that taps into the creative and intercreative elements of various technologies to enhance the creative and intercreative energies supposedly inherent in the sector for business purposes. Does such as workshop exist? Does such a business model exist? I don’t know and I don’t know how to create such things at this time, but I think it is a useful challenge.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

Note: This article is my second assignment for Net503: A Socio-technological Introduction to the Internet (part of the Internet Studies Program, Curtin University). I reproduce it here in all its imperfection (I didn’t get high marks for this one) as notes on the topic rather than polished piece.

Emerging Internet technologies foster new means of interaction through three “revolutions” described by Kitchin: they challenge traditional ideas concerning mass communication and the form of communication; help radically transform space-time relations and create new social spaces; and lead to a rethinking of concepts such as reality and nature. These cyberspatial challenges have brought about “new voices, new spaces, new categories” in the social, cultural, political, and economic realms, engendering means of interaction previously not possible (Kitchin 1998: 12).

There are a number of manifestations of emerging new means of interactions; these include: challenges to the traditional notions of identity and community; prospects for computer-mediated direct democracy and online political activity, and transformations in Internet-based political activity; the ascendancy of the Information Economy, Internet-facilitated globalisation of trade, and restructuring of economic organizations and employment effected by cyberspatial technologies. Below I discuss aspects of some changes fostered by Internet technologies, citing Kitchin’s comments but also drawing on other experiences, including my own.

Socio-cultural aspects

Cyberspatial technologies challenge traditional notions of identity and community by allowing if not encouraging self-construction and multiplicity of identities online, and by “providing new social spaces of interchange and cultural transmission.” (Kitchin 1998: 74).

Cyberspace provides a relatively high degree of anonymity for users of its technologies, especially in text-dominant virtual environments such as usenet groups, chat rooms, and MUDs and MOOs. Users are known and judged by their words principally, and their looks and accents matter little in such environments. Some users, facilitated by anonymity and the disembodied nature of cyberspaces, also do gender bending and role-playing. Identity in cyberspace can thus be “fluid, ephemeral and empowering because people can choose how they are represented. Users literally become the authors of their lives” (Kitchin 1998: 81).

Internet technologies, particularly chat applications, allow multiple interchanges to occur simultaneously – in Internet Relay Chat or Instant Messaging systems (e.g. ICQ) a user can have more than one conversation with different parties all at the same time – thus providing a “multitasking” platform for communication, perhaps even allowing multiple identities to take over separate simultaneous exchanges. While this can be simulated offline, as in having conversations on different topics with different people in a group or over two or more telephones, the effect is disconcerting or off-putting to other parties – the time lag and disembodiment in text-based online chatting environments is actually conducive to multiple engagements.

With the advent and growing popularity of audio and video modes of communication through applications such as Netmeeting, visit, ICQ, Yahoo! Chat and others, part of the anonymity and mystique of online communication is diminished – as faces, accents, and genders are obvious in audio-video encounters, playing with identities becomes more limited, and online communication perhaps becomes a simulation of traditional face-to-face communication.

Online or virtual communities can be considered as old as the Internet, depending on which definition of community is adopted. If it is accepted that communities can be formed on the bases of “interests and affinity, rather than the coincidence of locality” (Rheingold in Kitchin, 1998: 86) then usenet groups, mailing lists, chat rooms, can be considered communities. Kitchin cites views that “cyberspace allows the formation of ‘virtual (on-line) communities’ that are free of the constraints of place and based upon new modes of interaction and new forms of social relationships” (Kitchin 1998: 86).

Online communities are communities that are indeed based on interests and affinities, that are not place-based or time-zone bound – thus demonstrating one manifestation of cyberspatial challenge to notions of time-space – and that, for some such as Rheingold, can foster genuine community values that are disappearing from “real” or place-based communities; he envisions a “’global civil society’ with a shared consciousness: community will no longer be local but global” (in Kitchin 1998: 87).

Amy Jo Kim, author of Community building on the web, describes community as “a group of people with a shared interest, purpose, or goal, who get to know each other over time” (Kim 2000: 28). For her, the key part of her definition of community is the getting to know each other over time; toward this end, she espouses “nine timeless design strategies that characterize successful, sustainable communities” (Kim 2000: xiii). Part of the strategies is setting up “gathering places” for online communities using a variety of Internet technologies such as mailing lists, message boards, web sites, chat rooms, etc. I must also emphasise that community building for Kim is not only useful for altruistic or utopian reasons; she worked on commercial web sites’ community building programs (eg. AOL) too, anticipating the popularity of community building as a customer relations strategy that is evident today.

There are those, on the other hand, that don’t recognize online communities as “real communities.” In fact, Kitchin devotes much space in Cyberspace (Chapter 4) to criticisms of online communities. Once such critic is Sardar, who claims “communities are shaped … not by joining a group of people with common interests” and that “a cyber community is self-selecting, exactly what a real community is not.” Sardar’s position stems from his preferred construction of community – “shaped by a sense of belonging to a place, a geographical location, by shared values, by common struggles, by tradition and history of location — and because cyber communities do not fit his definition, cyber communities are therefore not real communities (Sardar in Kitchin, 1998: 88).

Whether online communities are real communities or not will be debated for a long time; the notion of “community” itself is being debated offline and will be debated for years to come. What is relevant to me, however, is that the Internet in fact allows groups of people separated by geographic space and time zones and other constraints – constraints that would normally disallow sustained interaction among them – are able to overcome these constraints to interact with relatively little expense, almost instantaneously, on shared (or a community of) interests. Bringing people to interact in such a fashion is not possible without Internet technologies.

Political aspects

Kitchin states “commentators are nearly all universally agreed that cyberspatial technologies have wide-scale implications for politics and polity. In one form or another, they are set to transform political structures and organizations, political campaigning, lobbying strategies, and voting patterns.” He identifies two possible cyberspatially-facilitated political developments predicted by some commentators: direct government could potentially replace representative government, and, the role of place-based political mobilization will rapidly diminish. (Kitchin 1998: 100-101).

Kitchin doubts, however, if these predicted big changes – direct democracy, non place-based political processes – will ever transpire. In relation to direct government, he states that “direct government as a concept is impractical and unlikely to work. Government is an extremely complicated system requiring complex systems of consultation, debate and understanding. In practice, most people will not want to understand these debates and partake in the political process, replacing elected, representative figures.” In relation to the diminishing relevance of place, he states: “people offline still have to live in the local, and will continue to be represented by the current democratic systems based within discrete geographical units.” (1998: 125). He also questions the supposed effect of the Internet as a “political modifier” because of its popular information dissemination capacity, stating that the Internet is just another source of information and a new way to send an opinion, and that most of the information on the net is trivial anyway (Kitchin 1998: 126)

Regardless of Kitchin’s (and others’) doubts about “political futures” of Internet technologies, I see invaluable advantages of these technologies to the political work and development of some sectors and for some purposes. Kitchin’s discussion, I feel, is about possibilities for mainstream and very big political changes; not all political work and change needs to be at such a universal level, and small changes are what bigger chances can build on.

So while other aspects of politics and polity are discussed by Kitchin (e.g. ownership, access, deviancy, etc.), I would like to discuss further the effect of Internet technologies on the transformation of political activity (albeit not necessarily at a big, mainstream, universal level) specifically in relation to the issue of virtual communities discussed in the previous section.

The Internet has certainly changed the way some political organizations are structured and how they work. Political organizations that are also based on communities (place-based and otherwise) use the Internet for communication, collaboration, and decision-making to great effect. They also make good use of the unique characteristic of the Internet as a non-broadcasting and interactive communication mode so that “propaganda” is not disseminated one-way but there are more opportunities for dialogue on political issues.

One personal experience I have of how issues of community and politics intersect online is my involvement with an international online community of Filipino activists and expatriates campaigning for Absentee Voting Rights for overseas Filipinos. One of the main affiliates of this movement is elagda, (http://www.elagda.org), or roughly translated to English, e-signature. elagda was formed during the political crises in the Philippines in early 2001 to coordinate Filipino expatriate involvement in the campaign to oust former President Estrada. After Estrada’s ouster, it shifted attention to absentee voting rights.

Elagda members and affiliate organizations are spread worldwide. They have circulated a common email petition directed at members of the Philippine Congress and Senate, they coordinate lobbying activities and suggest amendments to the Senate bill via email, they run numerous mailing lists on different interests, and they have chats (using Yahoo Messenger) every Monday and Thursday to assess and plan the campaign. They also have subcommittees working on specific concerns, one of which is researching e-voting technologies (one of the members’ research has turned up an Australian site about evoting: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~jjjacq/evote/en/evote_en.html).

I am sure there are other possibly more exciting examples of how cyberspatial technologies have provided new means of interaction for communities engaged in political activity. The breadth, scale, and speed of such political activity will not be possible without the Internet.

Economic aspects

Kitchin observes that Internet technologies have ushered in the “information economy,” where “processes of production, consumption and management are becoming increasingly reliant on ‘knowledge generation, information exchanges and information handling’” and where information is digital-based, managed through telematic infrastructures controlled by transnational corporations (Kitchin 1998: 130-131). Trends that signal the emergence and growing domination of the information economy are: globalisation of trade; office automation and back-offices; teleworking (and telecottages, teleports); and, gaining competitive advantage (Kitchin 1998. 135-143).

Changes brought about by the ascendancy of the information economy are: 1) organizational and employment restructuring, with corporate downsizing and polarization of the workforce between a core of highly-skilled information workers and the bulk consisting of unskilled and temporary labour, with the disappearance of middle-level management; 2) urban-regional restructuring, with the continued dominance of metropolitan areas with a concentration of telematic infrastructures, with some operations decentralized to peripheral areas to avail of lower rent, less transient labour force, etc.; and, 3) the emergence of soft- or cyber-cities, “whose infrastructure is increasingly becoming composed of cyberspatial connections and whose existing infrastructure is increasingly being monitored and controlled by computer networks,” in order to benefit from the globalisation of trade and to gain competitive advantage over other cities (Kitchin 1998: 144-157).

The information economy, or “new economy” as it is also referred to, has in fact transformed economic processes and structures, often to the disadvantage of the majority of economic stakeholders (i.e. workers and consumers). Kitchin’s asserts that cyberspatial technologies have been adopted “because they increase corporate profits by increasing productivity while reducing costs,” that changes brought by the information economy have “led to widening social and spatial divisions,” and that “transnational companies are run to make profits, not to make an egalitarian society”(Kitchin 1998: 160).

A particular aspect of the information economy was the emergence of businesses whose business was mainly information, and which existed principally in cyberspace (hence the term dot com). Many of these companies were financed by venture capitalists and some did not even have solid business models. Many of the smaller dot coms went out of business in the crash, including a high profile Australian company such as Spike. Out of that experience, some lessons have been identified, including: companies with longer bricks-and-mortar experience and who leveraged this experience, had a better chance in the new economy. A preferred approach then is the
clicks-and-bricks one, where offline and online strategies are both developed and pursued as part of a business model. One personal experience I’ve had with the changes in the new economy since the crash is that many dot coms that used to offer free services on the web have either folded or now charge for the services.

At any rate, while a lot of dot comers are licking their wounds, not everyone has given upon the new economy; some are looking at it more realistically. Michael Bloomberg, for instance, suggests that “I don’t think there is a new economy. I think there are new tools for the economy.” (Fast Company, March 2001, p.92)

New Forms, New Substance?

While the Internet has provided new and unique means of interaction, these cyberspatial technologies do not necessarily transform social relations substantially or fundamentally.

Kitchin says, “cyberspaces do offer new forms of communication and are new spaces of interaction but they are embodied spaces that are essentially extensions of real-world spaces, governed by the same cultural ideologies. Cyberspaces supplement rather than replace real-world activities.” (Kitchin 1998: 170)

So, while the Internet, on one hand, offers more than simulations of traditional forms of interaction, it is basically a simulation (an extension?) of traditional, real life.

References

Rob Kitchin, Cyberspace: The World in the Wires, John Wiley and Sons, England 1998.

Amy Jo Kim, Community Building on the Web, Peachpit Press, California 2000.

Fast Company, March 2001.

Christian Ramilo
Student Number 12292420