Thoughts of a Computer Artist
Vibeke Sorensen
School of Cinema-Television
University of Southern California
Prepared for the Symposium on
Innovation and the Information Environment
at the University of Oregon School of Law
Eugene, Oregon
November 3-4, 1995
Contents:
0. Preface and Background
1. What is Innovation?
2. Just what is the Information Environment?
3. What are some of the changes that new
technology brings to society and to artists?
4. What is the Market in the Information
Environment? Should the Internet be free?
5. What is Intellectual Property in the
arts in cyberspace and how do we protect it?
6. Information is Money is Power vs Information
is Education is Empowerment
0. Preface and Background
In 1971, I was an architecture student and musician living in Copenhagen,
Denmark. I found myself thinking about architecture as fluid experience
rather than static objects, and felt constrained by traditional materials
and was drawn to media studies. I had an idea for a kind of three-dimensional
painting that would come off the canvas and surround me, and move in response
to my movements the way a musician performs a musical instrument. It would
be a kind of interactive liquid architecture, realized through
real-time animation of computer models. I imagined that through the use
of telecommunications technology, there could be many artists spread around
the globe, interacting and performing in this common space, bringing
their own visual and cultural traditions to it. As the technology developed,
I grew closer and closer to realizing this dream. Along the way, I developed
parallel interests in video, electronic/computer music, and computer graphics,
as well as concerns for my own cultural heritage, feminism, environmental
issues and scientific visualization, and have produced numerous works dealing
with these processes and ideas.
From the beginning, it was clear to me that there would be an inevitable
integration of communications and information technologies, if for no other
reason than a sense that anything that provides accurate information faster,
will be desired by large numbers of people. Today, I find that the complexities,
concerns, and contradictions that arise from the intersection of digital
technology with its multi-media and social components, leads, like a 4-dimensional
spiral, back to fundamental questions of human nature. It seems that our
general, cultural thinking about social structures, for example, has until
recently been based on the maintenance of distinct and separate categories
of human behavior and interaction, based on obsolete assumptions and technologies
(ie. Marshall McLuhan's rear-view mirror concept). The extreme
depersonalization of 19th century industrial technology is giving way to
a more interdisciplinary, wholistic 21st century telecommunications-information
technology. While still fraught with dangerous uses and the potential for
isolation, there is great hope for its humanization due primarily to interactivity
and interconnectivity of its many users. This technology can respect individual
choice and provide a voice for the hopes and dreams of those previously
excluded.
Just as people encompass both personal and public physical identities and
communities, so their digital identities follow suit. But the social structures
evolving on the Internet, for example, are not inhibited by physical limitations
and structural separation, and take on completely new forms. The most interesting
(and problematic) to me include collective identities, collective memory,
constructed memory and constructed identity - such as individuals that never
could exist physically, some with genetic code and behaviors that act as
immortal, mutable agents. These agents can act on the psyches and bodies
of real people in physical realities and on digital creatures that inhabit
only cyberspace. How does one get a grip on these possibilities, and understand
non-physical behavior? What affect will it have on the economy and vice
versa? I don't have answers to all these questions, but I do have observations
and further questions based on the premise of this conference.
1. What is Innovation?
Innovation is the advancement of a discipline, finding new solutions to
problems, new paradigms for thinking about things, and change in the way
things are done. It implies the application of research to a body of knowledge,
and incorporates imagination, leaps, free thinking based on stored information.
It could even be that computers could assist in this process, being that
they are dynamic instruments with nearly perfect memories. For example,
process and time based art have already used computers to assist in the
creative process: text based algorithms for generation of poetry, branching
processes for the development of images, evolution based processes for sculpture
(present choices - artist chooses on the basis of esthetics, computer presents
more choices, etc). Moreover, synergy, the synthesis of other fields, the
intersection of seemingly unrelated disciplines, the ability to see unusual
relationships between seemingly unrelated fields and information, is to
me the basis of innovation.
2. Just what is the Information Environment?
First of all, there are qualities unique to digital media. They include
memory, computational prowess, high bandwidth data transfer, and high speed
data transformation. It affects most fields of science, commerce, engineering,
entertainment, and art. Being digital, they share a common structure and
language, and are part of a continuum rather than completely separate entities.
The most popular means for traversing this continuum is the Internet, particularly
the data dissemination structure referred to as the World Wide Web.
Being a public space, the Internet is an environment where innovative activity
can and does flourish, and the processes invoked are the mechanisms of change
in this space. Computers are powerful, dynamic instruments more
than just static recorders of data. Data changes quickly, and computers
give us a window into what things are changing, the speed of change and
how that change manifests itself. Since the information environment is both
global and local, data does not necessarily need representation through
proxy on the Internet. While humans have problems remembering details of
large, complex systems, the computer does not. It does this for us. On the
other hand, while it can translate data, it cannot interpret it. People
are needed to give meaning to data and change it into information.
The issue of scale is an important one. Our ability to comprehend global
events is very limited, but greatly improved through ethical use such things
as remote scientific sensing devices (ozone measurement and deforestation,
water and air pollution, earthquake, and other natural disaster monitoring).
Electronic instruments, as Marshall McLuhan stated almost 3 decades ago,
extend our central nervous systems, our perception of the world in and around
us. But our devices are very limited, they exclude things beyond their grasp.
Beware that you don't fall into the trap of thinking that data defines a
phenomenon or community. It does not. It is only a sample. With this warning,
my opinion is that the most important thing we can do with improved awareness
is to protect and nurture our extended environment, especially the fragile
ones such as our natural and human communities. Further, I feel that the
information environment in some way or other touches all of our environments,
and should not be seen as something separate - everything is connected and
is part of a continuum which potentially informs and affects our world -
for better or worse. It is up to humans to decide whether their activities
will be inclusive or exclusive, destructive or constructive. Our history
is to use technology mostly destructively, or with good intentions but with
destructive consequences. This is a danger which is very much a threat today.
We have to actively and ethically work against destructive forces and promote
constructive behavior. Censorship is not the answer in a democracy, but
free and open discussion and education is. As a vehicle for education (formal
and informal) and global, cultural discourse, all people regardless of class,
race, nationality, gender, etc, should have equal access to information
and opportunity provided on the Internet. Using the excuse of poverty to
exclude people is a cruel and outmoded weapon. We should be as enlightened
as we think we are and realize that helping others is helping ourselves.
The earth and all its creatures is one, it is our own body, our community,
our family, our home.
3. What are some of the changes that
new technology brings to society and to artists?
The internet connects individuals globally, primarily through text (content)
based computer systems, based on numerical information but also through
static and moving graphics. As global, digital telecommunications seamlessly
integrates into computer networks, the way in which we communicate on a
daily basis with people all over the world will radically change. We will
have real-time cellular video phones, where each person will be a reporter.
Journalism will change. Some will become editors, researchers and consumers
themselves, and some will return to trusting a specific editor, someone
who has a track record we trust to do the editing for us. These editors,
however, will have to win the respect of the user community rather than
being ordained as experts, since corroborating evidence through computer
searches will be easier than before, and feedback spreads like wildfire.
We will have many public access Cable News Networks on the Internet,
like discussion groups but with video and audio. But, just as images can
be easily captured and transmitted, so too, can they be easily and undetectably
altered. The most profound questions will have to do with truth...old questions
to artists and photographers, but ever more relevant today.
4. What is the Market in the Information
Environment? Should the Internet be free?
Expanded choices, in general, make for more responsive markets and ones
which will be as volatile as any fashion, and as fickle or loyal as any
group of human beings.
Data is shared amongst libraries, banks, private industry, private and public
science laboratories, universities, artists and art studios, individuals,
political parties, etc. What information is relevant to whom? And who should
be able to get it and for what fee? I feel strongly that it is in the interest
of everyone to provide equal access to everyone, and in so doing help those
with less to achieve it. But as my colleague, artist Jane Veeder pointed
out, "the '90's is an era of small minded, self interest." (from
a telephone conversation 10-15-95) I feel that the Internet should remain
free to those who cannot pay for it, and Jane feels that people who can
afford it should pay for it, and those who can't shouldn't have to. She
suggested having IRS data linked to fees for Internet use, so that a sliding
scale can be worked out for US users. This way, people with low incomes
would not pay anything and as people's income increases, so do their fees.
This is a good idea, but I would prefer a global solution, especially since
there are no international boundaries (yet) on the network. Perhaps this
would mean infrastructure support from the World Bank, or the United Nations.
On a national level, I feel that access to the network should be like access
to public roads, schools, libraries, courts, etc. and should be considered
vital to survival. A possible scenario: global infrastructure (satellite
technology) paid for by the World Bank or UN, with downlinks and backbones
of regional networks paid for by individual countries through taxes, and
local hookups paid for through local taxes (organized by libraries) and
private sources. It's sort of like shortwave radio, where anybody can broadcast
and send (from a public or private/commercial entity), and everybody can
receive for free. The waves themselves are public and should not be privatized.
One can still do commercial work, it's just that important public work -
such as informing people of impending natural disaster, social issues like
elections, riots, wars, etc. - can continue independent of commercial pressures.
If it means paying some taxes, so what? We're the richest country in the
world, we can afford it. Moreover, there is in fact a public, and
there are still public spaces and public interests, and
they, including a public Internet, should be vigorously protected so that
democracy can flourish. The sign of a strong democracy, to me, is one which
allows and supports free and open discussion, and embraces the right to
express divergent views on principle. One reason why the Internet is so
popular is because it is free and open. That's why it is so interesting.
It is imagination that people want to see most, and you can't always correlate
money with that. Often, the most imaginative people are the ones with the
least resources. So, restricting use of the net to those who can pay for
it will make it much less interesting, much less democratic, and much less
popular.
Just as we have private businesses on our public roads, we already have
private concerns on the network. The World Wide Web is the hottest advertising
medium of the '90's. But there are differences between commodities in cyberspace
and those in physical space. Goods and services take on new forms. We have
access to libraries of information, images from satellites and image banks,
interactive television, interactive games on the network, edutainment, long
distance, interactive studios for the creation of artwork for publication,
design services for the creation of web pages, etc. How do we charge for
what we provide? By hits? Or should we give things away for free? Do the
images available on the network belong to the public? Is our private web
page public? Is it mostly advertising for something else, the real thing,
a physical product sent to your home after you enter your VISA number? How
do we protect data on computers we don't want people to have access to?
My answer to the last question is simple: take the data off of the server
if you don't want it on the net. Finally, what rights and protections do
we have for our work that is on the net?
5. What is Intellectual Property in the
arts in cyberspace and how do we protect it?
Some artists feel that the Internet is a public space and that art on the
network should be considered public art. This also means, to some, that
all material is in the public domain and is free to be used by others. They
feel that artists should not put work out there that they would feel badly
about if copied and distributed. I feel that putting artwork on the network
is putting it in the electronic town square for everyone to view
for free. But that does not mean that advertising agencies, for example,
should be able to take that work and exploit it without permission and proper
credit. I, myself, have put a great deal of my work on the net to make it
easier for people doing research on me and my work to get the information.
I am more interested in better representation of me and my work than protecting
a currently impossible to protect copyright. However, I have included the
copyright notice as a formality - because there is no alternative that deals
with my rights on the network. Something like: it is permissible to copy
for personal (non-commercial) use as long as the proper credits are included.
It is desktop mass publication and distribution, but it reaches primarily
Internet users. In this environment, I would have a dilemma about asking
people to pay for it, especially if they are just looking. Theoretically,
the value of artwork goes down if everyone has it for free. But giving away
computer software makes a bigger market for that software. And with art,
fortune follows fame, working more or less the same way.
Generally, the market for computer art has been problematic, since no one
knows what the original is. Is it a list of 0's and 1's? Is it the program
that created an image or the first experience of the artwork? And what about
the ideas, sensations, and thoughts that created the art or constitutes
the experience of the artwork? Are they the same? Is there a breakdown of
distinctions between the artist, the artwork and audience? Between process
and product? Is the idea the most important thing? If so, can you copyright
an idea? Digital art obsolesces the notion of the original. It fundamentally
dematerializes art and is not really about objects anymore (although there
will always be people who want to make objects using computers). It is something
else, especially if it never leaves the realm of the computer. There is
a continuum between all measurable phenomena and all media using digital
processes. In the realm of the computer, everything can be translated into
something else, and those forms can be "things" we have never
seen before. If it mutates over time like a movie or a piece of music, is
it a performance? And if you or someone you don't know can freeze an algorithmic
process at any point and make a printout or milled object, who is the author
or artist? Art is about change and transformation, and is partly process.
On the Internet, the users or audience are part of that process and part
of that artwork. The original is the experience, and everyone has their
own, original artwork in their mind.
6. Information is Money is Power vs Information
is Education is Empowerment
If money is power, then information is money is power. Hits on a Web page
could translate into money. Should the more popular sites get more money,
or should they get less per hit since the volume is so high? When commerce
is based on exchange of information, such as statistics and market data,
then the information itself is the commodity. When this information takes
the form of text, an image, or sound, these are also commodities. This seems
appealing, especially when I see my ideas and artwork propagated through
other people, who often gain financially as a result. I would like a tag
on that information so that even if I don't get income as a result, at least
I would get credit. On the other hand, I worry about the tendency to hoard
anything worth money, in this case information. We should be less selfish
and more generous, and empathize with those who have less. It is noble and
good, improves lives and makes for a healthier, friendlier community. As
an artist/professor, I feel that the benefits to the individual are greater
when the entire population (a collection of individuals, after all) is raised
up, as through public education. Information educates and empowers, and
in an egalitarian democracy, all should have equal access to information
and opportunity regardless of income. The idea that information should be
hoarded strikes me as regressive, and reminds me of when only rich people
could get an education, when all schools were private and minorities were
excluded. Just as the informed worker is more valuable and can do more,
so, too, a smarter public earns and consumes more. From a purely economic
standpoint, it seems that education is good for business. It is also ethical.
And ethics, the most important human quality, should guide us as we navigate
this digi-incognita, this expanding universe created in reflection
of human thought.
Vibeke Sorensen
October 17, 1995
email: vibeke@usc.edu
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