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the network of creatives

Every day, new websites pop up from nowhere, constantly aggregating information.  Expansion makes for a very interesting effect on the internet communities, as well as the physical communities that exist in real life.  Virtual identity becomes intertwined with reality.

There are both benefits and drawbacks for artists from this active sharing of information.  Beneficial, because it opens their audience to the world to expansive networks of people seeking creatives, and creatives looking for inspiration.  But more and more it dawns on me that perhaps somewhere in the line, identity takes a toll.  Creatives must try even harder to be more expansive, more selective with their work, as variation only causes the loss of personal identity.  Yet it creates an entire new identity altogether.

Websites like Tumblr among other blog sites seem to enable people to blog about anything, compiling image and text in any way they want, without the character limits, and constructing their own personal identity based upon the art that they view and share.  More and more I stumble upon websites that simply compile massive amounts of artwork.  Most of it is “pop” art, seeing as that there really isn’t much traditional painting or traditional art being made, and it’s being driven to spread through the internet.  I’ve seen the same artwork in several of these web compilations.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot on web privacy and the creation of web communities based upon the sharing of information, so it’s caught my attention that there is so much happening, and the rate of how much is “happening” is increasing exponentially over time.  It’s incredible how much information our minds are taking as we continue to absorb information from the world, as well as contribute and add to the amount of information there is on the web.

More after the jump

Disclaimer: you might be all TL;DR, but if you’re interested in this kind of stuff… uh… it might be interesting?

Behance network, DeviantArt, Flickr, Youtube, Vimeo: some of the few starting points for creatives to spread their artwork upon the Internet communities and networks.  It’s developed so fast that we as Internet users consume so much more information now than ever.  More people are enabled by technology, allowing for an expansion in the field of video arts, and the importance of information design (ie. graphic design/web design) is much more than ever.  How much are paintbrushes, paint, texture tools and canvasses on the web?  It’s all free online, right?

Well, nothing is free… so who pays, and with what?  Communities pay.  Communities pay with their time and information investment to help maintain an environment that houses people willing to work for the same objective.  It’s in real life too isn’t it?  Yes.

Let me bring up a great example of an internet community that invests its time for the better of the entire community.  My girlfriend is a major investor in the community: ONTD_StarTrek.

Living upon the LiveJournal platform, the virtual community originally was based upon the idea of ONTD, or “Oh No They Didn’t,” which is currently the largest LiveJournal community, collaboratively posting about celebrities as well as community members’ experiences with celebrities.  ONTD_StarTrek, obviously, is about the story, and celebrities of StarTrek, fueled by the latest movie release, which was an incredible success.

Since then, members have collaborated to amass information about their celebrities, including “party posts,” in which users (often spend an entire day to) create photo montages, Photoshopped creations on their favorite celebrities (often called “Macros” which is the equivalent of the 4chan coined internet “Meme”), express their love for the community, television series and sometimes, completely unrelated information.

So, going back to the idea of identity: ONTD_STARTREK has created their own identity based upon the American science fiction series, and furthermore, many of its die-hard contributors have adopted the identity for their real life selves, dressing up like the characters, as well as meeting in real life to discuss the series, and plan events and other meetings for its community members.

Okay, so what does this have to do with the artist?  The actors have incredibly benefited from the community it seems.  With a virtual collaborative fanbase (unlike musical bands, which performances require physical listeners to be completely successful), not only the actors of the movie, but also the television show, directors, writers, among all the other contributors suddenly have a community that inherits their identities as their own communities.  Obviously, they have all benefited from this mutuality of this social composite.  And yet, the actors become further watched, inviting even more physical and virtual followers, and also the loss of identity, as social media seems to take away their privacy, and replace it with skewed, admiral views from all around them.

Now, of course actors have had a long history of having this problem, especially with paparazzi following the most famous ones everywhere, but examining why it occurred: the invention of the movie theater enabled millions of viewers worldwide to learn about them.  Just like the Internet today, we have expanded this effect to all those who use the internet, and all the information that can be shared upon it.  Now, in addition to actors, artists of other kinds, politicians, and companies all are under this social drivechain.

Snapshot of a section of http://jblyth.com/blog_11.html (NSFW)

The looming question is, how will you create your identity in this identity-sharing world?  How will you control your own information, what will you let influence you, and how do we adapt as a social collective to “survive?”

\Thanks for reading this far!