When we think of the term ‘business models’ in connection to contemporary art, many of us presenting primarily within visual arts networks tend to think of firstly eking out a living from part-time and casual jobs to support our practice, and then more optimistically, festival curators and producers, famous art dealers, institutional collectors, and public commissions – a distribution model that reveals the prevailing influence of visual arts discourse on live-art and much of what used to be called new-media art practice.
But visual arts business models are only one branch of a much larger information and value ecology through which our work can circulate, and from which we can derive returns that will enable us to survive and prosper as artists. Other artforms and genres have their own business models that may or may not be relevant to the type of work we do, and the conditions within which we want to present it in: consider independent film making, live and recorded sound/music, theatre and dance, literature and poetry.
Image: George Poonkhin Khut, Heart Library Video Portraits 2009. Used with permission of the artist.
One thing is clear: all of these business models supporting these art forms are being transformed, challenged or subverted by the internet; the increasing power and pervasiveness of computing devices; and the power of ‘free’ data duplication, storage and transmission. Music downloading and blog-writing are the most obvious example of how these technologies are reshaping creative practice. Chris Anderson’s (2009) book “Free: The Future of a radical price” provides an excellent analysis of the impact of these changes on the music and book publishing industries (amongst others), and the successful new business models and concepts that have been emerged from this transformation.
For artists working primarily with digital and computational media, recent changes in the funding-climate (consider the situation for media-arts in Spain and The Netherlands) and the continuing challenges that digital artworks present for collectors, should provide reason enough to start exploring new business models through which we can continue respective creative practices.
In addition to how these technologies are transforming traditional art-form business models, what is even more interesting is how new internet-based business and distribution models are giving rise to entirely new domains for creative arts engagement. Popular poetic and generative mobile art ‘apps’ like Opertoon’s “Strange Rain” (Loyer, 2010) and “Bloom”, “Air” and “Trope” by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers (2009) demonstrate vividly how our use of computers is being transformed – to encompass forms of intimate, contemplative, aesthetic interactions in public and private spaces that until recently have been the exclusive domain to gallery-based installation art or desktop based web art (for example, while waiting for a bus or train, while having a bath, cooking dinner, walking etc.). Mobile computing devices like phones and tablets provide more than a means for presenting work: they create opportunities for the exploration of new places for the presentation of interactive and generative artworks, away from the constraints of the home-office or lounge room entertainment system. USB and wireless connectivity to these devices open the way for creative third-party hardware add-ons and hacks that can radically alter the nature of the experience (you don’t need to look at the phone, just use its processing abilities…). The business models these apps use differ radically from traditional gallery and festival models, and apps are often given away free, as part of a much bigger business plan, that places value on time that people invest in interacting with these products, and the data these interactions and/or purchases can provide re market demographics etc.
The other side to this proliferation computationally mediated (and mostly screen-based) experiences, is the growing interest for more ‘authentic’, physically-intense, transformative or extreme forms of interaction: i.e. outdoor adventuring, slow-food, salsa dancing, yoga, life-coaching, book clubs, choirs, community gardening etc.
In “Design Driven Innovation: Changing the rules of competition by radically innovating what things mean” Roberto Verganti (2009) presents an approach to design innovation that differentiates between incremental and radical “game-changing” changes in meaning and technology. Verganti describes innovative products like Apple’s iPod, Nintendo’s Wii system, and Artemide’s Metamorfosi lighting system, as projects that combined technological innovations with an exploration of the new meanings these technologies could support. Nintendo’s Wii system took advantage of MEMS accelerometers innovations in cost and size, to re imagine computer gaming as a physically active form of interaction suitable for the whole family – this wasn’t just an incremental improvement on existing gaming technologies, but an innovation in what this type of interaction could mean for all sorts of people: from a sedentary game for young people good at using their thumbs to a platform that could be used by parents and grandparents as well.
As artists interested in the exploration and transformation of meanings and values via human-technology interactions, we can do much more than simply providing content for mobile apps: we have an opportunity to cultivate entirely new domains of aesthetic experience and social practice supported by mobile/pervasive computing technologies, beyond traditional presentation contexts (concert hall, gallery etc.). The challenge then is to formulate appropriate business models, that harness these meanings and technological possibilities in ways that will support us to continue of practice sustainably.
George Poonkhin Khut
George Poonkhin Khut makes interactive art and tutors in interaction design and human-centered design research at UTS. He is currently an ANAT Synapse artist in residence at the Children’s Hospital Westmead Kids Rehab Centre, (with Dr Angie Morrow) researching and developing biofeedback pain and stress management devices for children undergoing painful recurrent clinical procedures
References
ANDERSON, C. 2009. Free : the future of a radical price New York, Hyperion.
ENO, B. & CHILVERS, P. 2009. Generative Music: Bloom, Trope & Air (Creative apps for the iPhone and iPod touch) [Online]. Generative Music. Available: http://www.generativemusic.com/ [Accessed July 24 2011].
LOYER, E. 2010. Strange Rain for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch [Online]. Opertoon. Available: http://opertoon.com/2010/11/strange-rain-for-ipad-iphone-ipod-touch/ [Accessed July 24 2011].
VERGANTI, R. 2009. Design-driven innovation: changing the rules of competition by radically innovating what things mean, Boston, Massachusetts, Harvard Business Press.
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