What happens when equipment vendor meets artist

Artists and techies bonded at Digital World, realizing they need each other to take interactive multimedia projects out of the programmer’s garage and into the artist’s garret. But can this collaboration drive new media into the museums and stores without increased support for artists from computer companies?

Judging from the applause every time speakers at Digital World said existing interactive products were “boring,” multimedia clearly has not transcended existing art forms. In fact, multimedia producers and creators of interactive experiences seem to be stuck, staring out the rear view window: they keep trying to “repurpose” the content from movies, television, video games and even books, and to copy the design paradigms established for these media as well.

IT HAS TO BE NEW

How can that be? The answer involves issues of access — to people, content and equipment.

According to the three artists who sat on the “New Media and Art” panel at Digital World — Abbe Don, Rick Smolan and Michael Century — the conference itself went a long way toward removing one of the major stumbling blocks: access to people. “The clear message at Digital World,” says Don, creator of interactive art installations that allow the viewer to become a participant in the event, “is that technical experts and artists must collaborate in this new medium to create an experience in the same way they have for years in the music and film industries. We will see more interesting projects as that joint effort increases.”

Now acquiring interesting content is no small feat, but it’s not an insurmountable problem — especially for artists who have worked in video or print. Both Don and Smolan, for example, have adapted early creations to different media, adding levels of interactivity unavailable to them prior to working with new technologies. Century, in collaboration with poet Vivian Darroch, created an original performance called Quartet for a Solo Pianist using digital technology as his chosen medium.

Artists also have access to copyright-free audio and video through clip media houses, and to a surplus of images that have made their way into the public domain. If you want to “repurpose” Batman or Dracula, however, you’re going to have some big problems today. Legislation and intellectual property laws have not caught up with the digital world (see “Does ‘Digital’ Equal ‘Free’?” p. 34).

EQUIPMENT IS THE REAL HURDLE

The real hurdle for artists is access to equipment. Creative institutions such as the Banff Centre, which encourage artists to experiment with new technology and allow them to keep copyrights to their work, are few. In fact, the Canadian-based center is one of only four such institutes in North America; the other three are in Canada as well.

The nonprofit Banff Centre, which receives funding from the Canadian government, the private sector and industry, founded its Media Arts division in 1988 with the stated mission of “addressing the convergence between the arts, technology and science in a rapidly changing technological environment.” Banff trains traditional artists in how new tools can be applied in their arts, according to Century, programming director for the institute.

Trading precious rights. Banff supplies all the tools to create new media in an artist’s community without demanding the creator give up rights to the work. But artists must be invited or accepted to attend the Banff Centre, and even then attendance is limited. So where do artists turn when they want access to equipment for experimentation? The computer companies. But, the Digital World panelists forewarned, they may be trading their precious intellectual property rights in exchange for a computer and some software.

As far as Don is concerned, companies such as Apple Computer still don’t get it. They either control the creator or own the work, treating commissioned artists as if they were third-party software developers, producing tools or user interfaces that the company can later sell under its own name, or as outside contractors who relinquish rights to the actual fruits of their creativity. Either scenario could not be less descriptive of an artist’s relationship to his or her tools and work.

A new model. “As a creator I fall in the cracks,” says Don, who believes if she were indeed a software developer she’d have no problem getting unfettered access to cheap and/or free equipment. “I’m not important enough to say, ‘Hey, I’m developing this stuff, and I need x, y and z,’ and on the other hand, I can’t just sign Apple’s contract agreements, which expect me to give up everything in exchange for use of the technology. I genuinely believe that we need to develop a different kind of model separate from third-party developers and different from contractor agreements.”

WHAT HAVE YOU GOT THAT I AIN’T GOT?

One possible compromise for artists who find it necessary to work with computer companies seeking full rights is to suggest they co-own the work, or at least parts of it. Smolan, for example, had the original concept for the Day in the Life series of coffee-table photo books.

Smolan is now producing From Alice to Ocean: Alone Across the Outback, also a large-format coffee-table book, the chronicle of one woman’s year-long journey on camel through the aboriginal lands of Australia. Buyers will find a free PhotoCD disc when they unwrap the book, containing hundreds of additional photographs as well as spoken narrative both by Smolan and by the book’s subject, Robyn Davidson.

To produce the book, Smolan needed access to both Kodak and Apple technology, so he proposed the two companies sponsor the project. As sponsors they agreed to cover the creative costs of designing and manufacturing the CDs for Smolan’s book, if he would give them the rights to manufacture an equal number of discs for their own use — for promotional purposes and as a bundled item with Apple’s upcoming Macintosh LC with a PhotoCD-capable drive built in.

For Smolan, this is a win-win situation. The technology allows him to extend the confines of traditional print publishing to provide “branches” of information on particular photos, groups of people or locations, plus hundreds of additional images in a PhotoCD format. Apple gains access to a new distribution medium for its products, possibly tickling the fancy of the home computer market. Kodak gets access to a good reason for people to buy its new PhotoCD player.

“I’m not sure the disc will ever replace the book,” says Smolan. “The fact that the book’s sitting there on the coffee table means easier access, but if 60,000 people get a copy of the book with the CDs bundled with it, then I have raised the awareness of more people about this technology than an interactive CD-ROM publisher who sells 3,000 copies of a title.”

THE STREET VALUE OF AWARENESS

But is raising awareness enough? If the idea is finally to bring about some interesting multimedia titles and interactive experiences, with a market for this stuff to follow, artists must be free to discover the new possibilities in performance inherent in this technology without having to sell their souls to corporate sponsors. They must be free to use whatever technologies they need in order to serve the creative process.

Some will say, “No one’s making them take money or equipment from corporate sponsors.” But it’s important to remember that the equipment required to design interactive products is incredibly expensive. Successful, high-profile entertainment artists like Lily Tomlin and Shelley Duvall can afford the technology or have the clout to induce someone to provide it for them. But most artists do not. Short of a new Medici family or acceptance at a Banff Centre, the equipment vendors provide artists with no other choice.

No choice at all. And no other choice is no choice at all. An artistic medium cannot even be born, let alone survive, if its only role is to serve us yesterday’s content with some minor repackaging. Thus artists and innovators — not technology innovators, but those who innovate with media — must have access to the technology “so that they can shape the new medium with content and techniques first unimagined by its inventors,” as Century explains. And unless there are plans for a dozen more creative centers like Banff on the drawing boards, computer companies hold the key.

These companies must open their relationships with artists and create a new model, as Don said, for handling the people who are going to take their tools, and a brand-new medium, to its next level. These artists are excited; they have ideas; they don’t understand or want to hear about technological limitations.

Negotiations between artists and companies must become more fluid — perhaps a bit more like a waltz than a slam dance in the pit. In the meantime, artists looking for access to equipment had better make sure they have a bargaining chip — something the computer companies want — to keep their work from being co-opted for the sake of publicity, or locked up in some research lab. Their ability to do so is likely to determine the direction, and ultimate success, of new media in art.

Janice Maloney