Art Has Value

> The second is a world where every piece of art is an advertisement. Every video, every picture, every song is no longer the expression of the artist, but rather a vessel used to promote a product. Artists will lose their free expression in exchange for advertising space.

I disagree with these two worlds. I'm a "digital artist" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeA5A_g8EHQ). I'm not famous, and I make no money at it. Yet my drive to create art has never been stronger. This is the case with many artists I know. They make no money, and yet it is their passion. They work side jobs to support themselves. If anything, the difficulty to survive is a filter.

The second vision has not come true either. Nothing would be more disgusting to many artists than to turn their passions into an advertisement. We find other ways to pay the bills, even if it means working jobs we would rather not work so we can create our art. I believe the probability your art will be used for advertisements is MUCH higher once you've "made it."

All that said, I support the mission of this project, though I don't subscribe to the dystopian view of the future of the arts.

Which is quite the conundrum, coz we all want professional artists to exist I'd assume. I'd even like to be one one day.

If you have a plan I hope I see it. There's more chance of that if you make the plan freely reproducible of course.

I highly recommend Cory Doctorow's quick read "Information Doesn't Want to be Free" and particularly his metaphor of the dandelion vs mammals for what I think is the right general direction for artists in an age of instant reproducibility.

That's a rather unfortunate choice of words. :P

Joking aside, I feel like two issues are being conflated here.

Art does have value, but translating that value into monetary results for artists is an age old problem, and not one that has suddenly propped up due to the accessibility of art. Art has been a trade funded by patrons, a past-time for the wealthy, a public service funded by the government, a religious service funded by the Church, a consumer item and increasingly as of recent, a free service in exchange for advertising/analytics.

In all these forms, artists have been concerned about either their freedom of expression, their livelihoods or both.

Monetizing art has always been difficult, and just because it has value doesn't mean people care enough to pay for the real stuff... they'll settle for what is available, familiar and fills the gap (one of a bajillion examples: The Monkees).

Many things have value, research into climate change or lung cancer, space exploration, winter-prepping your garden... it doesn't mean that people (a) will pay for it (b) can pay for it.

If people didn't share fire we'd all still be living in caves.

I've got a theatre degree along with my software degree. I've been acting, on and off, for over 20 years now.

Art isn't going anywhere. The availability of art isn't diminishing. There are still paintings that are tens of thousands of dollars in galleries. There are still plays that are hundreds of dollars to attend. There are still sculptures that take months and are commissioned for gobs of money. Video games and movies are still produced and rake in millions of dollars. There are still wanderers, dreamers, creators. People still make music, draw pictures, evoke Shakespeare, and dance, without needing to put a "value" on it or having anything to do with advertisements. My last visit to the Louvre was far more packed than my visit 5 years prior.

From what I can tell, the writer is confusing products in an artistic medium, for art; songs created for the sake of sales, films created for the sake of sales, illustrations for the purpose of sales, paintings for mass consumption, and so on. Art has been around for thousands of years of human civilization. Art is an inspiration for products. The value for art has always been in the eyes of the beholder. If someone is willing to pay $10,000 for a shoe in a frame, then that's the value of the art because it doesn't need to have any other value. The value for artistic products, which can be easily replicated, which can be easily disseminated, which can be easily procured, seems to be more in line with what the author is talking about.

Money and art have always had an interesting relationship but they are not as intertwined as this piece seems to want you to think.

Art is still safe as far as I know. Again, while I applaud the general mission that the statement is trying to make, I don't agree with it being about art, or being a problem with art.

To illustrate, I've taken the statements about art and replaced them with an appropriate version of product. It gets a bit more to the point and is, in my opinion, a more interesting and accurate piece.

> The rise of the digital age has had a very interesting effect on products. Products have become increasingly easier to replicate. ... The digital nature of media and the speed of transfer has done damage to the value that we once held for products.

> When we can easily download these products for free (sometimes illegally) their value is diminished. The audience begins to feel entitled to the product and the producer's efforts are taken for granted.

> It could be argued that modern techniques have lowered the amount of time and effort that is needed to create digital products, but should the value of a craft be placed on the hours spent creating it or on the captivation it provides the audience?

> At Rebil, we feel that the value of products are found in the latter. If a product can provoke thoughtfulness or provide enjoyment to the audience, then it has value.

> The ease of digital reproduction does not lessen the effects that products can have on the audience. Therefore, the value of a product should not be gauged by its accessibility. This is especially important in an age where everything is increasingly accessible.

> If we continue to value products based on the ease at which we can procure it, we will soon find ourselves in one of two possible futures.

> The first is a world where producers abandon their craft because they are no longer able to make a living. This future definitely hurts the quality of human life and the fulfillment and enlightenment that we gain from products.

> The second is a world where every product is an advertisement. Every video, every picture, every song is no longer the expression of the producer, but rather a vessel used to promote a product. Producers will lose their free expression in exchange for advertising space.

> We hope that a third world is what will emerge. We hope to reinstill the value that is being lost in digital products. We hope to combat the hijacking of products by advertising.

> We hope that you will join us.

------------

The first is a world where artists abandon their craft because they are no longer able to make a living. This future definitely hurts the quality of human life and the fulfillment and enlightenment that we gain from the arts.

------------

This has always been the case though. Most of the masterpieces from the renaissance come from artists who, from almost the start, were exceedingly well financed.

The best artists of the day, as with today, were intertwined with big money. You had some artists who from the start were taken in by De Medici and groomed to be great, others who went to work at art shops doing reproductions or small commissions and then those trying to make a living by themselves, many of whom I imagine could not create the art they wanted to because they couldn't support themselves on it.

Not to mention many of the masters were compromised in what they could and couldn't do with a commissioned piece. This would similarly apply to musicians through the ages, as big composers received big commissions and budgets while others, who wanted to play music, had to go do something else to bring in their support funds.

Beneath the above quoted passage seems to be a belief that all artists who want to create art should be able to earn a living from it, which isn't true and never has been.

The commissioning of art in some ways has changed and in others has not. Hugely talented painters, sculptors and even photographers still receive commissioned work and can now diversify their income by gaining a name for themselves and offering their works to the public. On the flip side, there are many talented artists who will not get work, or recognition, and will have to find another way to fund their lives.

Music as an art form has changed. It's not royalty or nobility or similar commissioning grand pieces to commemorate wars or other historical moments to be played for their friends in private performances for orchestras.

Now it's large record labels doing the commissioning. What we are seeing in the world of music, however, is huge sums of money going toward manufactured, formulaic "popular" music that is created solely to derive a profit. Many musicians who want to create music as art are struggling and will continue to do so. Music, as an art form, is a profit deriving product industry now.

That is why music as such a form has been devalued. The vast majority of successful music now is not opening people's minds, or creating a message, or drawing a picture through sound waves, it is catchy, repetitive beats that are consumed rather passively with little thought involved. It sells well, therefore it is what is published.

At the same time, orchestras across the world are closing up shop as they can no longer keep themselves running financially. The future of music as an art form, I would conclude, is certainly in jeopardy.

------------

The second is a world where every piece of art is an advertisement. Every video, every picture, every song is no longer the expression of the artist, but rather a vessel used to promote a product. Artists will lose their free expression in exchange for advertising space.

------------

Again, this has been similar going back through history. Many of the great classical masterpieces of painting and sculpture are a combination of church propaganda and a status symbol for those who commissioned it. The statute of David, for example, was a propaganda piece created to embellish the values of the Florentine republic.

Many of these pieces are also not an expression of the artist but what the artist produced under the direction of those who commissioned it. Michelangelo's Bacchus, for example, did not adhere to the expectations of the commissioner and ended up being sold off and put in someone's courtyard.

------------

We hope that a third world is what will emerge. We hope to reinstill the value that is being lost in digital art. We hope to combat the hijacking of art by advertising.

------------

First of all, I believe you have to separate entertainment and art. Most of the music and videos produced and put on the internet are entertainment, not art. A piece of EDM is there to entertain, not to engage. The vast majority of popular videos on the internet are cats, people doing stupid things, etc. they're not art.

If you separate entertainment and art, both of which are now being done in the digital realm, then the outlook appears different. Entertainment will continue along the same path it has already trod - producing more and more of that which markets well and receives good feedback from test audiences. "Viral" videos and images, laced with advertisement, will continue to seize the day in the entertainment realm.

Art, real art done for art's sake, is not under such threat though. Digital art is currently going through what photography as an art form previously went through - it's not being valued highly and largely ridiculed as an art form due to the apparent ease of it when compared with the traditional arts of painting and sculpture.

That will likely change though. Art created to capture people's imagination, to get people to think, to create a message, etc. will continue unabated so long as some people still want to commission it, or to visit art markets and buy a unique painting for themselves, and so on.

It will continue unabated because the market for these things is small and has remained so. The vast, overwhelming majority of people do not care whatsoever about art in any of its forms. The vast, overwhelming majority of people going to the Louvre, or the MMA in NYC, or wherever are not going to appreciate the art, they are going there to get a picture with a popular piece so they can show people they've been there. Go to the Louvre and you'll see - a crowd flocked around the Mona Lisa taking pictures and selfies who then, after they have the snap they want, tread through the rest of the museum for the sake of doing so and then leave.

Art for the sake of art is a small niche, it has largely been so and will remain so. Transforming digital art from its current status into that of the kind appreciated in small galleries or shows by that small niche who actually appreciate art is the challenge. Making such a such an easily reproduced art form financially valuable will be difficult. How does an art buyer appreciate a piece of digital art they've bought? As a background on their computer? As a picture in a folder they sometimes look at?

The answer will almost certainly lie, if it's to be financially feasible to derive a living from, in its creation being in the digital realm but the purchased product being in the physical realm.

The crud of the entertainment industry should largely be disregarded when discussing the two.