Artworld's Reaction to Citizen Art: not like Science and DIYscience

Considering the tradition of the highly-regarded place of science in society and the venerated scientific method, it is surprising that the ScienceWorld has deigned to notice Citizen Science and DIYscience efforts. Initially, the reaction of science may have generally been to dismiss citizen science, however, in many cases, perspectives shifted to wondering how to collaborate with citizen science efforts and how low-cost world-wide accessible Internet models could help to crowdsource study participants, data analysis, and other aspects of studies. The ecosystem became a continuum ranging from institutional science ('high science') to the individual n=1 quantified self experimenter ('citizen science as the venture capital arm (e.g.; starter, feeder, interest-surfacer) of science').(More)

Now the advent of new media has democratized the tools for art production. It is much easier for individuals to express themselves creatively in many different digital art venues and genres. Some of the tools that facilitate individual and collaborative creativity include Garage Band, SoundCloud, Pinterest, the Spore creature creator, blogs, Twitter, and virtual worlds. It is therefore timely to ask about the ArtWorld's (e.g.; insiders: artists, museums, critics) potential reaction to Citizen Art. As opposed the ScienceWorld's reaction to Citizen Science, the ArtWorld's reaction to Citizen Art could be much more complex. This is because art has been, and may always be something contentious. Key questions remain unsettled and even more pronounced with new media and digital art:

• what is art? 
• who can do art? 
• who can determine what is art? 
• what is the consecration process for art? 
• what is the societal and political role of art? what is the role of art as critique (of art, society, politics, etc.)? 
• is art autonomous from society? 
• what does the commercialization of art mean? 

Precisely because it is art, and not science, the acceptance of Citizen Art by the ArtWorld is much more nuanced than the tangible and quantitative nature of science, including Citizen Science, that makes results demonstrable. What is at stake is also more nebulous, although some new genres of digital art like SciArt, itself a mix of science and art, may be earlier to be acknowledged by the ArtWorld. (More)

Pluralist Narratives in Digital Art and Philosophy

Much of contemporary human endeavor involves both art and technology. Objects are both technologized and aesthetically designed. Apple forever changed the expectation of high-quality technology and design in objects. Information visualization, 3-D printing, personal data, video games, and de novo biological design (e.g.; proteins, other molecules, synthetic biology) are some examples of the strong linkage between technology and aesthetic design.

Artists, scientists, and individuals alike are exploring these new venues of information, software, personal data, biology, and virtual reality for discovery and creative expression. Online tools facilitate the process and compress the required learning curves for proficiency.

As a result, there is a shift away from the institutional production of knowledge to include the more democratized production of art, science, technology, objects, and knowledge by individuals and crowds. This helps to enact change at three levels: a greater range of interesting and useful objects and technologies coming into existence; more fulfillment and expression of human creative potential; and new kinds of knowledge and meaning-making narratives about the world.

What are the Next Media for Art?

Any prominent societal ‘currency’ is taken up by artists (and technologists and engineers) as an experimental medium. "Every culture will use the maximum level of technology available to it to make art" - Scott Draves, Generative Artist.

Recent societal currencies of prominence and dominance have included technology, information, biology, and raw data. All have been taken up by artists, scientists, laypersons, and other practitioners through the ease of widely available Internet-based tools (Examples in Figure 1).

Figure 1: Digital Art, InfoViz, BioArt, DataArt

The question would obviously arise as to ‘What are the next media for art?’ (e.g.; the continually new New Media). One way to answer is to prognosticate upcoming societal currencies. Some advancing societal currencies could be 3D printing feedstock (already starting to be exploited as an artistic medium), and pink goo – having more granularity and diversity of categories in synthetic biology.