Music and the "Gift Economy" 4: Personal Versus Impersonal Transactions

Previous posts in this series:
Music and the "Gift Economy" 1: An Introduction
Music and the "Gift Economy" 2: Examples
Music and the "Gift Economy" 3: Commons, Copyright, and Radical Politics

The relationship aspect of gift economies is, depending on whose viewpoint, either its strength or its weakness. Gift economies are either good because they encourage (or force) people into social relationships, or they are bad (or at least limiting) because they get bogged down by these relationships.

Before I explore the practicality of gift economies and the arts, let me highlight some of the discussions about market economies versus gift economies. There are trade-offs with each. Even if we use a hybrid system, which many people suggest is the only option, it still helps us to understand the strengths and limitations of each to know how to best utilize each.

... gift economies are fundamentally relational. A large part of the purpose of the gift is to establish and further relations between persons and groups. Part of what makes this possible, as Marcel Mauss points out in his wonderful Essai sur le Don (in English, The Gift), is that gifts demand reciprocation. ...

The relational nature of the gift economy is both its strength and its constraint. It both establishes relationship and requires relationship. On the other hand, the market economy works on the principle of even exchange. Every transaction is complete in itself, balanced, leaving the participants free of each other.

The gift economy is free in terms of money, of course, but constrained by the qualities and requirements of human social relationships. The market economy requires a constant flow of goods or money from the individual, a flow which may be difficult or impossible to produce, but it leaves the individual free to engage or not to engage. In this way, the two systems offer contrasting models of “free” and freedom. "Some Experiments in Art as Gift." Sal Randolph. March, 2003.

Gifts can establish a relationship that then switches to a market economy.

Mauss was interested in how we make society where it didn’t exist before. Hence we offer gifts on first dates or on diplomatic missions to foreign powers. How do we push the limits of society outwards? For him money and markets were intrinsic to this process. Hence giving personalized valuables could be considered to be an exchange of money objects if we operate with a broader definition than one based on impersonal currencies and focus rather on the function of their transfer, the extension of society beyond the local level. This helps to explain his claim that “the great economic revolutions are monetary in nature” (Fournier 2006: 212), meaning that they push us into unknown reaches of society and require new money forms and practices to bridge the gap. The combination of neoliberal globalization and the digital revolution has led to a rapid expansion of money, markets and telecommunications, all reinforcing each other in a process that has extended society beyond its national form, making it much more unequal and unstable in the process. "On commoditization: exchange in the human economy." Keith Hart. The Memory Bank. 8/10/08.

Freedom is often cited as a justification for market economies:

Classical liberals promoted markets as a means towards greater individual freedom as a corrective to the arbitrary social inequality of the Old Regime....

According to writers as varied as John Locke and Karl Marx, ours is an age of money, a transitional phase in the history of humanity. Seen in this light, capitalism’s historical mission is to bring cheap commodities to the masses and break down the insularity of traditional communities before being replaced by a more just society. "On commoditization: exchange in the human economy." Keith Hart. The Memory Bank. 8/10/08.

... I like many aspects of capitalism; I like the freedom, the dynamism, the creativity it unleashes. I would never, ever, want to do away with the market as the primary engine of productivity. "Capitalism, the Commons, and Divine Right." Peter Barnes speaking to the E. F. Schumacher Society, October 2003.

The values which shape exchanges in a commodity culture have to do with personal expression, freedom, social mobility, the escape from constraints and limitations, the enabling of new "possibilities". We sometimes refer to such fantasies as escapism or social experimentation; they are closely associated with the patterns of "transformation" and "plentitude" which Grant McCracken has documented. The fantasies which animate the exchange of gifts are often nostalgic, having to do with the reassertion of traditional values, the strengthening of social ties, the acceptance of mutual obligations, and the comfort of operating within familiar social patterns. "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Four): Thinking Through the Gift Economy." Henry Jenkins. Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 2/18/09.

According to the study's author, Jean-Sébastien Marcoux (HEC Montréal), many researchers romanticize gift-giving. "They praise it for humanizing market relationships, for making the market meaningful, and for providing an escape from the commodifying logic of capitalist exchanges," Marcoux writes. ...

"People use the market to free themselves from the straitjacket of social expectations—from the sense of indebtedness and emotional oppression—which constrains them in their reciprocity relations inside the gift economy," Marcoux concludes. "The Dark Side Of Gifts: Feeling Indebted May Drive People To The Marketplace," ScienceDaily, 6/17/09.

Gifts often come with a real or at least perceived sense of obligation and the need to reciprocate.

Thus in the tribal economy, when a clan or tribe (or the members of such) gives away its surplus, the recipient group or individual is forced to eventually give back, say the next year, at least as much, or they will loose relative prestige. What such a gift economy does however is create a community of obligations and reciprocity, unlike the market-based mechanisms, where ‘equal is traded with equal’, and every transaction stands alone. "The intersubjectivity of P2P: the The Gift Economy vs. Communal Shareholding," P2P Foundation, 7/28/10.

[According to Mauss] societies based on the exchange of the gift impose three positive obligations on members:

1. The obligation to give (you can’t not give)

2. The obligation to receive (you cannot refuse to receive)

3. The obligation to return (you must return that which is given)
"The Gift – Mauss, Bataille, Hyde, and Derrida." Erik W. Davis. Freeebay, 6/18/10.

... there is a tendency to romanticize the idea of the gift. It’s easy to imagine that a world based on an exchange of gifts would be better, more humanistic, more intimate, even more beautiful. This notion is not entirely false, but it leaves out the problematics of the gift. Think of receiving a gift that you don’t want. Or the sense of obligation that an excessive gift can engender. Think of wanting or needing something but having to wait to find out if or when it might be given to you. There’s a dependency, and a loss of control inherent in the gift situation. If your relationship with those around you is going well, you may receive everything you need, materially and emotionally—but what if it doesn’t go well? What about the coercion inherent in the need to please others to receive what you need for your survival? "Some Experiments in Art as Gift." Sal Randolph, March 2003.

I don’t mean to demonize "gift economies" by inverting their moral valuation, but I do want to emphasize that people who grew up in gift economies don’t mind getting out of them all that much. It can actually be tremendously rewarding to buy a honkin’ big piece of meat from someone who you will never meet again, take it back to your hotel room, and eat the entire thing by yourself, completely alone. "Gift economies suck (except ours)," Savage Minds, 8/10/10.

Because the exchange of goods within a gift economy brings with it social expectations, not all gifts can be accepted. In that sense, there are goods and services which literally can not be given away, because even in the absence of an explicit value proposition, consumers are wary of hidden obligations, unstated motives, or hidden interests which come smuggled inside the gift, much like the classic myth of the Trojan Horse. "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Four): Thinking Through the Gift Economy." Henry Jenkins. Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 2/18/09.

Lewis Hyde, known for his book The Gift, written in 1983, now acknowledges some shortcomings with the concept.

There is a hidden problem in the gift book: much gift exchange takes place is communities with a strong sense of in-group and out-group. Gift giving may be a wonderful thing, but what if you happen to be in the out-group? What if all the scientists are men and they don’t share their data with the women? "Lewis Hyde, author of Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership," Creative Commons, 8/27/10.

Andrew Swenson, Director of Marketing at Concordia University, offers this solution to the primary problem of the gift economy:

I’m suggesting that in order to have a true “give-win” situation that demands no reciprocation, we must remove all economic considerations from collaboration.

This would mean that after a gift has occurred in a collaborative partnership, both parties must forget the transaction occurred entirely. It must be as if the donee has inherited something: the donor has died and the beneficiaries are free to act as they wish with their new resources.

This is the only way that a gift can escape the moral confines of the gift economy. "The Economy of Collaboration 3.0," wordpost.org, 1/14/10.

Even as they facilitate quicker transactions, market economies are not totally without a human component.

The moral economy describes the set of social norms and mutual understandings which make it possible for two parties to do business with each other. In some cases, the moral economy holds in check the aggressive pursuit of short term self interest in favor of decisions which preserve long term social relations between participants. In a small scale economy, for example, a local dealer is unlikely to "cheat" a customer because they need to count on continued trade with this person over an extended period of time and thus need to build up their reputation within this community.

The measure of a moral economy is the degree to which participants trust each other to hold up their end of these implicit agreements. When there is a sudden and dramatic shift in the economic or technological infrastructure, as has occured with the introduction of digital media, it can create a crisis in the "moral economy," diminishing the level of trust within participating parties, and perhaps even wearing away the mechanisms which insure the legitimacy of economic exchanges. At such times, we can see all involved making bids for legitimation, that is proposing new models or frameworks through which parties may reach a understanding of what should provide the basis for fair and meaningful interactions. "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Three): The Gift Economy and Commodity Culture." Henry Jenkins. Confessions of an Aca/Fan,2/16/09.

In these times of change, we may be looking for alternative economies, but we understand the concept of the market economy and have reasons to continue using it.

It’s hard not to be a consumer. It’s what we are most of the time. There’s work, where we earn the money, and there’s non-work, where we spend the money. Most of our time is spent either servicing others as consumers or being serviced as consumers. In its vectoralist form, commodity culture has evolved a sophisticated way of treating us as its consumers. It’s all about crafting an image and a brand for a commodity that makes it appear as something more than a mere thing. The thing—be it a T-shirt or a carton of orange juice—is the support for an experience, mediated by a brand and an image that makes us feel special, that makes us feel unique. "Copyright, Copyleft, Copygift." McKenzie Wark in Meanland, 7/28/10. First published in Meanjin Vol 69:1 2010.

Market economies also work well when there are distances or complex exchanges to deal with. Money, credit cards, and the like allow you to negotiate with strangers and to individualize your purchases, thus giving you unlimited flexibility. (Some people feel the Internet has erased distance and complexity barriers by setting up networks and commons among people who have never met and live thousands of miles from each other. Therefore, they foresee a time when gift economies can function globally. I will address this in another blog post in this series.) The big problem (which leads to my next blog post) is that the market economy doesn't know what to do with activities that aren't monetizable.

Money is the blood of our economic system; it shouldn’t be the soul. Humans have needs and desires that can’t be met by exchanging dollars. These needs include connection to family and community, closeness to nature, and meaning in life. A twenty-first-century economic system must address these needs, too. Capitalism 3.0 Peter Barnes. 2006.

This brings me to the next blog post, the heart of this series: Music and the "Gift Economy" 5: Supporting Artists.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

An Overview of Transmedia

In this series of three blog posts, I started with The Rise of the "Creative Thing," (i.e., a conceptual project that can involve music, theater, graphic arts, textiles, food ... whatever).

I ended the next post, Collaborating on "Creative Things," with a discussion of music and theater.

As an extension of that I want to discuss transmedia, a concept currently trendy in some circles, particularly in film, video, and games. While music hasn't been a significant part of transmedia so far, I feel this grander form of cross-media is at least worth a mention. There are whole sites devoted to transmedia, so I'm not going to duplicate what they do. This post merely serves as an introduction.

Let's start with the Wikipedia explanation.

In Transmedia storytelling, content becomes invasive and permeates fully the audience's lifestyle. A transmedia project develops storytelling across multiple forms of media in order to have different "entry points" in the story; entry-points with a unique and independent lifespan but with a definite role in the big narrative scheme.

According to Wikipedia, Marsha Kinder first coined the word in 1991 and then Henry Jenkins popularized it in his 2003 Technology Review article and 2006 book Convergence Culture. Here's his definition:

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. "Transmedia Storytelling 101," Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 3/22/07.

He goes on to talk about synergy, complex fictional worlds, different media for different audiences, the need for each media contribution to stand alone, collective intelligence, and more. If you want to understand transmedia, his article is a good place to start. Then you can move on to these, where he covers the topic in even more depth:

Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling (Well, Two Actually. Five More on Friday)

The Remaining Four Principles of Transmedia Storytelling

And here's a visual of Jenkin's seven transmedia principles.

Jenkins isn't the only person defining transmedia. To some, it's basically what Disney as been doing for decades (i.e., creating characters and incorporating them in everything from film, TV, books, products, theme parks). To others, it must involve significant audience participation. Gary Hayes writes a great piece on why it's hard to know what transmedia represents.

Transmedia like a black hole in the universe it tries to describe sucks in everything that has come before (cross media, 360, social media, augmented reality, pervasive gaming and so on). "What makes the perfect Transmedia Producer?...," Personalize Media, 5/25/10.

Here are a variety of attempts to explain transmedia.

According to Behnami Karbassi, there are three types of transmedia.

We've whittled it down to a three-fold explanation:

1) franchise transmedia: extending a story world across media

2) marketing transmedia: stories that support another brand or transmedia

3) native transmedia: stories intended to weave across media from their inception

The holy grail for us is, of course, native transmedia, but both funders and audiences have to change their thinking before it is widely created and accepted.

The key element that is shared across any definition is story (and the world that this story creates). Applying this essential narrative base to the right media for the right audience is our formula for creating compelling transmedia. "Behnam Karbassi - Transmedia world-building," Boing Boing, 6/16/10.

Christy Dena says there are four approaches:

Transmedia Concept: designed to be transmedia at the concept stage

Transmedia Project: multiple media platforms make up one transmedia project

Transmedia Transformation: changing an existing mono-media property into transmedia

Transmedia (Franchise): Multiple mono-medium projects

"YSA Creating a You Suck At Transmedia Website," You Suck at Transmedia, 6/16/10.

She has also put together a helpful list of various subsets of "cross-media" to help everyone sort out what is what.

One of the better articles on how transmedia is different than cross-media comes from Brooke Thompson.

What differentiates the two, and also fully separates them from multiple media, is the degree of interdependence in their relationships. In cross-media, the various platforms in use may be closely related and one piece may rely upon another for meaning, but that dependence is not returned. In transmedia, the platforms are strongly linked. While one piece may be digestible by itself, it is meant to be viewed as a part of a larger whole and, as such, the meaning changes for both it and the other pieces if they are left unseen or viewed individually. "Towards a definition of transmedia…," GiantMice, 4/16/10.

Thompson's diagrams are quite helpful. And here are other articles illustrating transmedia via diagrams:

Types of Transmedia

WTF is Transmedia?

Where Is Our Transmedia Mozart?

TranSocialMedia Story Telling Workshop Sheet

TranSocialMedia Play, Experience & Alternate Reality Design

Another useful resource is this video, What is Transmedia?

Transmedia projects are complex, which Jenkins acknowledges:

Because transmedia storytelling requires a high degree of coordination across the different media sectors, it has so far worked best either in independent projects where the same artist shapes the story across all of the media involved or in projects where strong collaboration (or co-creation) is encouraged across the different divisions of the same company. "Transmedia Storytelling 101," Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 3/22/07.

To give you some idea of the level of planning that goes into transmedia projects, here are these articles by Robert Pratten.

Moving Filmmakers to a Transmedia Business Model

A 5-stage Development Process for Transmedia Projects

Transmedia: 5-Steps to Selecting the Right Platforms

Transmedia Documentation

Transmedia Workflow

Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started (ADDED 7/13/10)

Given the level of complexity, it's not surprising that transmedia projects can be expensive to pull off, which would seem to suggest that many can only be accomplished by big organizations with deep pockets. Notes Maureen McHugh:

Making a transmedia project, like making a movie, can be expensive. We often do video and audio recordings. Streaming requires bandwidth. Websites have to be designed. Email and phone calls to thousands are expensive. Creating events and experiences in cities is also expensive. A project can easily run to the low seven figures. That’s a million dollars. Chump change in the movie industry, but not something you find lying around in the couch cushions. To raise that kind of money we need to reach a pretty large audience, but making transmedia narrative dependent on puzzles eliminates a vast percentage—probably the majority of that audience. "A New Frontier in Storytelling," MimeFeed, 4/28/10.

Here are some specific transmedia projects:

Groundbreaking Transmedia Project Built Around the Audience' Social Activities

Developing a Transmedia Project

Jurassic Park Slope Production Blog

Transmedia Narrative Ecosystems & Experience Cultivation

For on-going transmedia coverage, here are some websites:

Culture Hacker

You Suck at Transmedia

Transmedia Storyteller

And another resource:
Transmedia Narratives DDB

Here's a huge list:
Transmedia Resources (ADDED 12/9/10)

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Participatory Art Is Revolutionary

In my last post (But Is It Art?) I wrote about how technology enables more people to make music. And I have done blog posts on fan involvement and audience participation. The reason I think all of this is relevant is that some are touting a wealth of opportunities for musicians today because the Internet allows them more direct access to fans than in the past. But I have been pointing out that this concept is still based on the idea that there are artists and there are fans.

But what about a world where there are only artists, and no fans? If we are going to anticipate the future of the music business, we need to think about this possible scenario. And based on what I have seen in terms of audience participation both at shows and online, artists who provide the most opportunities for engagement seem to do well. I've been taking it a step further to suggest that not only might you want to provide ways for fans to interact with the music and the artists, you may want to provide ways for the audiences to feel creative themselves.

Now I want to go into the subject even deeper because while these ideas have been an on-going discussion within some circles, they haven't filtered out to all who potentially might be affected. There are two different aspects to the topic. One is "everyone is an artist," which involves providing tools to enable creativity. The other is participatory art, which has traditionally involved a high level of social interaction. In this particular blog post, I'll focus more participatory art.

It's not a new concept. People have been talking about it for quite some time, particularly as a counter to the idea that art is to be created by a professional elite.

This paper by G.S. Evans explores the concept in depth and begins with the idea that an artistic elite has not been the norm over the course human evolution.

This alienation from art is a relatively recent phenomenon. As we shall see, the making of art was a central part of people's lives for most of human history--that is, until the relatively recent advent of a capitalist, commodity-based culture in Europe and North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At that time the emphasis in art shifted from participants, who could satisfy their own artistic needs, to specialists, who demanded a paying, non-participating audience to buy their 'products'. Essentially, the art-commodity came to replace participatory-art in most people's lives, and art increasingly became a source of alienation. ...

We live in a society where art is primarily a commodity, something people buy instead of make. Consequently, very few people are actively involved in making art. Because of this general lack of participation, many find it difficult to believe that societies have existed in which literally everybody sang, danced and made their own crafts, all on a daily basis.

Evans extensively covers the history of the arts and how societal and economic conditions transformed them from something everyone did to something mostly done by professionals. There is far too much in the paper to quote, but this is particularly relevant in light of the direct-to-fan discussions dominating music right now.

A radical monopoly [as distinguished from a commercial monopoly] occurs when pre-recorded music as a product comes to replace the making of music in society; in other words, people stop making music themselves and start buying pre-recorded music instead. A further aspect of a radical monopoly is that it becomes an entrenched and structural part of society. People who only listen to music and do not make it for themselves, for example, will normally put on pre- recorded music, no matter what the situation, rather than make their own. This is partially because of conditioned habit, but also because they will no longer be capable of making music among themselves. In addition, the radical monopoly will set up modes of performance that are exclusive to it and will push more personal modes out of style, i.e., make people like or relate to them less and less. "ART ALIENATED: An Essay on the Decline of Participatory-Art."

The idea that "everyone is an artist" has been something of a radical approach during the 20th century. There are political and economic ramifications in giving more people control over their arts experiences. Rather than excluding people for lack of talent/experience/resources, they are included as part of a community. In a paper discussing arts participation among Bay Area immigrant communities, Pia Moriarty explains the dynamics of participatory arts using a church choir model. It has considerable relevance to music because (1) church is THE live music experience for many people and (2) she points out how participatory music strengthens those community bonds. Imagine if secular musicians incorporated some of the same techniques.

Most church choirs are composed of volunteers from the congregation. This is key: the singers are already members and have entry and identity in the larger life-world. Their singing is an expression and deepening of a shared cultural goal, to pray together. To that end they are given a lot of support: physical space, a defined role in the rituals, and perhaps even microphones, songbooks, and instruments. The cultural life of the worshipping community moves forward together, and it carries the singers with it as full members. The line between audience and artistic actors is blurred, overlapping, and permeable; this is typical in participatory arts. The choir practices; it rehearses, but more importantly it engages socially as practicing singers. People learn as they go, but they are already within a living social context....

With our church choir, “audience development” means that we all learn to sing better together. The community that invites us to develop artistically is the same community that provides entry, actively recruiting us as members in a diversified web of reciprocal relationships. ...

Participatory art’s membership approach shortens the distance between “who pays” and “who plays,” and so it can develop past the self-limitations of exclusively patronage or sponsorship models. ...

At a time when non-profit arts organizations are particularly vulnerable to the economy’s protracted woes, the participatory model of “informal,” “folk,” “amateur,” or “unincorporated” artistic production is vibrant and resilient. Participatory arts offer a working alternative for non-profits that will always struggle to survive when they are forced to compete on the terms of a commercial arts model. "Participatory Arts: The Stranger Brings a Gift."

What is bringing participatory art back so prominently now is the connectivity that the Internet facilitates.

The internet with all its manifestations is transforming participatory culture, shifting its orientation from the object to the subject and more recently from subject to data. Ideas are no longer collated in sections or categories but tags. The archive has transformed into a ‘cloud’. Participatory dependent internet art is expanding exponentially. Server-side programming enables a cross-cultural, cross-language, cross-border collaboration where the ‘location’ of the artwork is accessible on demand. The reproducible copy of internet based work is one and the same as the original, albeit perhaps, as only a fragment of the dynamic whole. "Thoughts on Participatory Art," by Yiannis Colakides & Helene Black, NeMe, 6/26/09.

Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch, says:

Systems such as Wikipedia, Flickr, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Hunch and various parts of the open source movement are based around small contributory systems, bodies of work in which there are incremental improvements by multiple contributors, or exposing small actions that would be insignificant in isolation, but are meaningful in the aggregate. These types of software and platforms are specifically designed for conversation and contribution. That is the point. There is no final product such as a book, movie, song or album. "Participatory media and why I love it (and must defend it)," Caterina.net, 1/19/10.

A number of people make the distinction between interactivity and participation. This distinction is also very relevant as musicians hope to engage fans and audiences. Some websites deliver interactivity to fans, but don't include the more creative, more social aspects of participatory art.

At this stage, I also find it important to differentiate between participatory art practices and the much broader term "interaction," wherein the relations established between the members of the audience or between them and the art objects are much more passive and formal (usually directed by certain formal instructions, given by the artists, that are to be followed during the exhibitions).

... I want to reflect particularly on the most recent shift of the artists’ focus: from dealing with objects and installations towards dealing with subjects and enabling their participation in art activities." "Participatory Art," Springerin, 2/2006

The author, Suzana Milevska, goes on to cite the five levels of art participation suggested by Alan Brown.

Inventive Arts Participation engages the mind, body and spirit in an act of artistic creation that is unique and idiosyncratic, regardless of skill level.

Interpretive Arts Participation is a creative act of self-expression that brings alive and adds value to pre-existing works of art, either individually or collaboratively.

Curatorial Arts Participation is the creative act of purposefully selecting, organizing and collecting art to the satisfaction of one’s own artistic sensibility.

Observational Arts Participation encompasses arts experiences that you select or consent to, motivated by some expectation of value.

Ambient Arts Participation involves experiencing art, consciously or unconsciously, that you did not select. "The Five Modes of Arts Participation," The Artful Manager, 9/14/05.

Here's another essay on the subject: Interaction vs Participation.

In a previous blog post, "Elements of Music Participation," I explored some ways to create music projects which facilitate participation by a wide variety of people with different skill sets. Henry Jenkins, one of the most important voices writing about the future of media and entertainment, gives his definition of participatory culture.

For the moment, let's define participatory culture as one:
1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2. With strong support for creating and sharing one's creations with others
3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
4. Where members believe that their contributions matter
5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created).

Not every member must contribute, but all must believe they are free to contribute when ready and that what they contribute will be appropriately valued. "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Part One)," Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 10/20/06.

Jenkins also goes on to make a distinction between interactivity and participatory culture.

Interactivity is a property of the technology, while participation is a property of culture. Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways. A focus on expanding access to new technologies carries us only so far if we do not also foster the skills and cultural knowledge necessary to deploy those tools toward our own ends.

Another resource on the topic of participatory art can be found here: "Participation & Participatory Platforms." This article mentions the origin of "happenings" which became popular in the 1960s. Flash mobs and Burning Man could be considered descendants of "happenings." Here's a more recent example of a participatory Burning Man-like event.

A caravan of 19 such trucks were arranged inside a vast indoor garage on the waterfront of a desolate Brooklyn neighborhood. Nothing was for sale, and you needed to bring your own food & beverages.

The key here is that the event was participatory, meaning you didn’t go simply to passively view art, you were invited to experience it.

Yet, what made this particular event so fascinating was the many inventive ways each participant completely transformed their truck from something empty and uninspiring into great fun. All I could think was how the next time I see a box truck out on the street, it might be one used here. "Lost Horizon Night Market: Party in a Box Truck," reactions, 1/17/10.

For all my discussions on participatory art and audience participation, I'm not saying that it is necessarily preferable to take down the walls between artists and fans. There are especially talented individuals who I would like to see have enough financial support in some fashion to be able to devote as much time to their creativity as possible.

Rather, what I am trying to do is to prepare the music world for what I see happening anyway. The concept of a passive fan, who happily pays money to buy whatever the musician puts out, be that music, performance, art object, or personal interaction, seems to be changing. When fans start getting more attention for themselves by what they are personally doing rather than what they are buying or who they are associating with, they tend to find their own self-expression and creativity preferable to what they can purchase from someone else.

There can still be a role for the artist in all of this, but it often involves having the artist give up some degree of ownership of the creativity. Here's one artist's take.

Patricia Reed: I’m also interested in the ways in which such participatory modes of working subvert the branding strategies of institutions by way of clearly identifiable authors and names. ... In participatory practice, it is perhaps the artist who initiates something in the form of an object, idea, interaction, etc., but unleashes it to the influence of the many for further manipulation, engagement, etc. So the artist is the one who “proposes” or instigates certain processes but the authorship is ultimately obscured—it occupies this important space of the “co-,” where a work is partially made with and not by. ...

Perhaps it’s useful to look at the distinctions in the notion of authorship involved in participatory practice that expands this “artist-as-proposer” we’re discussing. To propose or initiate something is vastly different than to author something. It’s the first step in a process—obviously an important step, but one in a potentially long road. It’s the launching of an idea—and a “hosting” of that idea throughout a process. Crucial, however, to this notion of “hosting” is equally the capacity to “un-host”—for a conventional host assumes situational authority. What I mean by “un-hosting” is not to relinquish authority completely within a group dynamic, but to view the process as a partiality—that is, both being and not being a “host” simultaneously. Throughout the process of un-hosting a certain degree of control (not all) is dispersed and it is precisely that dispersion of “control” that blurs conventional notions of authorship. "What Is a Participatory Practice?" Fillip 8, Fall 2008.

Game developers and other designers of multimedia think like this because user engagement is their goal.

For the artist, this means giving up traditional notions of authorial control. “I’m a writer, but I’ve discovered that sometimes writing has to take a backseat to gameplay to ensure people have the most fun,” comments David Varela, who helped create the successful alternate reality game Xi, designed to promote Sony’s PlayStation Home. ...

“In my work, people spend 30% of the time playing and 70% socialising. We should be facilitating that social experience,” says Lance Weiler. "Participatory Storytelling: A Thousand Authors in Search of a Character," jawbone.tv, 11/11/09.

Nina Simon makes a particularly good distinction between inviting the public to design a project and designing a project that invites their participation.

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice?

1. Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. The exhibit opens. It looks like a traditional exhibit.
2. Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation. The exhibit is dynamic and changes somewhat in response to visitors' actions.

The answer (for me) is both. But the difference between the two examples teases out a problem in differentiating "participatory design" from "design for participation." In the first case, you are making the design process participatory. In the second, you make the product participatory. "Participatory Design Vs. Design for Participation: Exploring the Difference," Museum 2.0, 4/7/09.

Simon's distinction gets at the heart of what is happening in music among those hoping to engage their fans. Some are letting the fans create the product, while others are letting them participate in something that has already been at least partially developed.

The reason I have been exploring this to such a degree is that I feel if popular music doesn't at least participate in this conversation, it's going to be outside the wider artist community. Certainly many artists in other fields are talking about ways to generate income for themselves, so I'm not suggesting that music is unique in its discussion of developing careers that involve sales. But I'd like to see more conceptualization about the future of music beyond what is currently being discussed at music conferences and online. The 1,000 True Fans and Tribes models, where the artist is the core surrounded by adoring fans, may not remain the norm. As Evans points out:

For the most successful of the art-specialists this hero worship has made it possible to sell millions of dollars worth of their art-commodities on name power alone, and gained them large and loyal followings that would do a head-of-state or television evangelist proud.

... the prevailing belief is that legitimate art is produced solely by art-specialists and anybody else's efforts are secondary at best. This belief becomes, then, an essentially self-perpetuating definition of art, namely that art is what art-specialists produce.

The underlying assumption is that this vast number of artistic non-participants will have their artistic needs met, not by actually making art themselves, but rather by consuming the products of the art-specialists. ...

All of this is the logical result of a commodity culture. If participatory art was a part of our everyday lives, large numbers of people would be actively involved in the making of art. This, however, would severely limit the potential sales of art-commodities and the celebrity status of the specialist. "ART ALIENATED: An Essay on the Decline of Participatory-Art."

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE, 3/19/10
"SXSW: LaDiDa iPhone App Lets Anyone With a Voice Make Music in Seconds"

Here's a video of Henry Jenkins talking about participatory culture and how most creators do it to share rather than as a way to make money.



UPDATE 9/10/10
Here you can find a long discussion about whether or not DJs and mash-up producers are artists.

Some DJs rebel actively against legal and commercial institutions, while others simply avoid them as a matter of course; in both cases, these factors have helped to break down the artificial distinction between artists and audience. As UK-based musician Matt Wand told me: “I can’t draw the line, I definitely don’t draw the line – he’s artist, she’s audience – I can’t do that at all." "Aram Sinnreich: ‘Mashed Up: Music, Technology, and the Rise of Configurable Culture’ - Book Excerpt," Truthdig, 8/27/10.