Culture and commerce meet during lively CCOP briefing session in Toronto

Culture met commerce at a recent briefing event held in Toronto for senior Canadian Heritage officials and organized by the Canadian Film Centre, with the end result that some producers in the audience left expressing concern that too much focus was being placed on artist rather than audience. At the McLuhan International Festival of the Future, a gathering of about 40 CFC Habit@t students, government regulators, new media producers and funding agency representatives heard three very different panel presentations exploring interactive new media, with a focus on the role of audiences in art, and moving beyond the web/television convergence model. The panels were kickstarted on October 14 with a presentation by Gorbet Design outlining their Power to the People (P2P) project, with an exploration of how the initiative fit into thinking about the audience as medium. P2P is an installation consisting of a marquee of light bulbs that can be turned on and off individually using a switches mounted to a control board. The installation is currently on the roof of the Drake Hotel in Toronto, and the light switches on a panel across from the building on Queen Street West. The presentation saw a lively exchange of ideas as session participants debated the arrogance or not of using participants in public art as a medium to create art, and whether the audience for the piece was being considered at all in the process. As one audience member suggested, "there is something arrogant about pointing to yourself as someone who paints with the minds and spirit of your audience." The following morning saw a similar debate arise over the much-praised murmur public art installation. The project uses publicly placed signs to guide people using mobile phones to call a number and hear a story about a particular location. The stories are curated by the murmur artists, and the session was intended to explore the theme of "relational culture." As in the previous session, however, there were doubts expressed that the new media project truly involved the audience, or whether the audience served as passive listeners. While commercial considerations were raised the previous day, they came to the fore during the murmur discussion. Several participants, including Decode Entertainment Inc. director of marketing Jacqueline Nwame, attempted to explore whether the project or something similar could be put afoot on commercial terms. Some participants felt frustrated that the discussion focused too much on art, and not enough on interactivity and the potential to create viable business models. Nwame, who served as an "agent provacateur" during the second session, expressed her admiration for the project, and stressed her support for artistic endeavours. While saying she hoped the head of the Canadian Culture Online program, Ted Bairstow, who was in attendance, would continue to support artistic projects, she also expressed frustration that the topic didn’t turn to business considerations. "I kept harping about one thing, which was that no one was thinking about the significance of the audience. I think, from an audience point of view, that the audience is everything. Nothing gets made without the audience in question. And, I think I brought up some points about the differences between art, culture, and utility. To my whole point of view, art is art. It’s a common carry, it’s a point of view from the point of view of the artist. And, it’s always the artists’ point of view, and that I respect incredibly, but you can’t critique art and then say art is culture." She adds: "It was a big bone of contention with me in the sense that, coming from a commercial point of view, we make nothing without a point of view of our audience. Our target audience is always clear. Once a target audience is clear, whether you’re dealing with television, whether you’re dealing with film, whether you’re dealing with new media materials, you have to decide who your core base is. And then, from your core base, there’s always these secondary and third, fourth tiered audiences that will come with that. But, it really seemed to me that no one was focused on, well, who are we doing this for and why? And, that was something I found really to be interesting. Second of all, I was very big on talking about the commercialization of the projects, and I pointed out all of the things that I see going on globally, and how that could be interpreted and added to another layer of making projects more viable. But, I had the feeling that we were really there to talk about culture and art and not about commercialization." But, she says, the presentations – focused on art and not culture as they were – were nonetheless crucial, both for the industry participants, and for attendees from government and funding bodies to hear. "I hope they take out that experimentation is incredibly crucial at this stage, and I hope that they take out that their continued commitment to supporting such endeavours (is critical). Sincerely, we’re at a point where the government’s currently reevaluating its position on a variety of programs. I think these programs are key and very important to reaching out to the Canadian public in a way that’s relevant to not just the younger generation, but to a wider audience." A third panel was presented on the second day that raised fewer questions as the audience was given a glimpse into SNAP Media’s Instant Star project, Smiley Guys Studio’s Odd Job Jack, Sulake Labs’ Habbo Hotel, and the Pax Warrior project. A presentation was also made by mqube’s Vincent Estick about his company’s mobile content.

Culture and commerce meet during lively CCOP briefing session in Toronto

Broadcast | October 29, 2004

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