Arts in an Age of Technology

“NYFA’s online database, NYFA Source, is the largest searchable resource of grants, services, and publications for artists in all disciplines nationwide. If you’re seeking funding, residencies, or specialized information, it’s the definitive place to search – and it’s free. Yet many artists don’t utilize the breadth of information it offers, or are unaware of it altogether.”

Since many artists don’t know about it, I figured I would help NYFA out and let people know. NYFA, by the way, is the NY Foundation for the Arts. While many of their activities are understandably focussed on NY, their grant database is rather extensive and instructions for its use are good.

For those that are interested, there is a page where a NYFA staff member responds to comments about NYFA Source.

This month’s issue of NYFA Current also discusses health care for artists. This article is New York City specific, but does discuss what one city hospital is doing to make care affordable for artists. A similar program might be worth advocating for in other cities.

I came across this article on the Chronicle of Higher Education website discussing how students at the University of Texas-Austin have created “Swarmcasting” software that allows people to essentially run their own Internet television station. Seems to me it might present a possibility for organizations to broadcast their performances some day.

How to make money off it, I am not quite certain at this point. I imagine though that as since your digital cable line is the same one that delivers your highspeed cable modem, being able to watch broadcast over the internet on your 60 inch television isn’t that far off. Perhaps one day you will be able to choose between watching A Raisin in the Sun performed at Arena Stage for $60 or performed by the high school down the street for $5.

For those who are worried about piracy and reproduction of performances diluting their ability to get people to pay to view their work, the way the software delivers its product is unwieldly for use in filesharing networks. The software authors believe movies and audio distribution may take a form similar to the one they are creating in the future because of this hindering aspect.

It is hard to tell how exactly our dreams of the future will be executed. I came across this blog entry which recounts a speech made by President Lyndon Johnson when he signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The president seems rather prescient outlining his vision for the future since he describes what we know today as the Internet.

It bears mentioning that two years later on October 29, 1969, the first electronic message was sent over ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet. According to some accounts I read, Johnson set aside money in the 1968-69 Federal Budget to fund a project that emerged as ARPANET.

Alas, as visionary as he was, Johnson didn’t live long enough to see his dream really come into its own as it did when it surged into public life in the 1990s. If I am visionary about this application of technology for the dissemination of the arts, I hope I am around to see some of it. Though on the other hand, I am sure Johnson is happier not knowing that his vision is also the medium by which vast amounts of pornography is also available. I may be happier not seeing it, too.

One of the plusses about working for a university is that your position is more generally secure than comparable ones in other arts organizations. On the other hand, I have quite a few people working for me on a regular basis who aren’t in a funded position looking to their job for some degree of support.

In some cases, it is worse being part of a state funded institution because no one thinks you need donations. Because you are competing for government funding, it is rather difficult to cultivate one person from whom you can make an ask since there are legislators, governors and levels of college administrators who all get a say in how much you end up getting.

In my case, it is even worse. Today I had to make a pitch before faculty and staff as to why the priorities in my strategic plan action items deserve funding. They in turn get to vote on whether my suggestions get to be college priorities.

My problems are twofold:

1- There were only two people I counted at the assembly who weren’t pitching their own action plans. Thus I was talking to people who were going to vote for their own priorities. There wasn’t anyone in the room that there was any chance of convincing.

2- There were people there pitching to fund life altering programs like getting enough staffing to enable the rural poor to attend college. Even though I was looking to do rather worthy things, the least of which was to get the office clerk reclassified so that she is paid properly for the responsibilities she has been handling for 15 years, I couldn’t help but think my requests were frivolous.

Recalling that I had read something similar in Artsjournal.com’s “Is There a Better Case for the Arts” discussion, I hopped over there. It was pretty much the exact same story, an arts person went before a city council to ask for funding immediately after a group trying to reduce infant mortality rates.

Theatre Communication Group’s Executive Director, Ben Cameron, address this:

…pitting the arts against other causes IS a trap. For a healthy society, it should be a both/and and not an either/or. Many of the past questionnaires ask us to prioritize how we spend money–e.g. which is more important between infant mortality and the arts–rather than asking us to describe those characteristics that comprise a healthy society. If we could look at the latter, there would be room and a necessity of a creative approach to policy–one that seeks to promote a more holistic sense of national health in which the arts MUST be counted–rather than the traps of competing causes.

Going back and reading that won’t make me any more likely to be funded, but for me it provides a view of the world to advocate and work toward shaping.

Ever on the look out for harbingers of change that may some day translate into problems or solutions for me, I have been following articles about the demise of Rock radio stations of late. A recent article in the NY Times has chronicled how the new rock format has disappeared from the largest radio markets in the country these last few months. At this point, NYC and Philly (and people are keeping on eye on LA) don’t have a new/alternative rock station because the Arbitron ratings were dropping and the station owners decided to change formats.

Now having lived in the NYC and Philly areas, I wasn’t an avid listener to either station. (I feel compelled at this juncture to make a shout out to listener supported WXPN in Philly) It is what has happened since that has aroused my interest.

When I said that NYC and Philly didn’t have new/alternative rock stations, I was sort of misstating the situation. It is more truthful to say they both don’t have terrestrial stations with that format.

The old crew from Y100 in Philly is now broadcasting over the internet from their bedrooms essentially at Y100Rocks.com They are scrambling to get funding to keep their shows streaming. Despite being out of work DJs with no physical radio station, they have attracted some fairly significant names to play a concert so they can make money and stay on the air. (I don’t believe they are a non-profit so it isn’t a fundraiser per se.)

In NYC, Viacom/Infinity took a different tack and moved their alternative rock programming to the internet at KRock2. I think KRock was a little smarter because they get to keep a segment of their listenership which they can now advertise to visually instead of just aurally because you have to go to their webpage to listen in.

The other reason is because I am thinking that internet/satellite radio is going to be the next phase of music delivery. iTunes provides you with the ability to buy music you already listen to, but the new stuff is gonna come from someone programming a mix.

FM may not even get the chance to become AM and have to find a format like talk radio to fill the airwaves because no one will be using AM/FM radio wave receivers anymore. This isn’t a matter of deciding you can afford to lose some of your customers to a competitor. This driving people to another delivery mode where there is no chance of them hitting the scan button and deciding to listen to your station again.

I can see has bits of this story makes it a metaphor for the arts in some respects and I will probably explore them in future entries.

There is another tale of possible unintentional self-sabotage in this story. Two of Y100s morning DJs left the station and were under a 6 month non-compete clause. However, a court just handed down a preliminary ruling that since the station changed formats the DJs can work in the market before the 6 months has elapsed because Radio One doesn’t own a competing Rock format station in Philly anymore.