Het boek E-cultuur is vanaf nu, per artikel, te downloaden in PDF formaat. In deze post vind u het boek: Mapping E-culture.
De individuele artikelen in volgorde zoals verschenen in de Virtueel Platform publicatie E-culture uit 2009 zijn omgezet naar PDF en voorzien van Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 licentie. Deze licentie dient ten alle tijden te worden vermeld wanneer een los artikel wordt overgenomen.
Alle drie de publicaties (Mapping E-culture, Navigating E-culture en Walled Garden) zijn beschikbaar om te downloaden via de URL virtueelplatform.nl/boekecultuur. Om een indruk te krijgen van Mapping E-culture is de introductie van Floor van Spaendonck hieronder te lezen, in het Engels.
Introduction 'Mapping E-culture'
Floor van Spaendonck
In 2008 the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science officially designated a sector for e-culture and selected and institution to take on the role of supporting this sector. The task fell to Virtueel Platform. In the meantime Virtueel Platform is laying the basis for the sector institute and this publication can be seen as part of this process. The articles are a first attempt to contextualise a number of developments in the field and make them more visible.
Assumptions and questions relating to e-culture were the trigger for publishing a book about the state of the art. These questions include: what is e-culture? Can we talk of a new, stand-alone arts discipline that touches upon all the other disciplines? Or is the implementation of new media culture, digital and electronic arts a temporary phenomenon and will we understand it in ten years' time? Is e-culture the driving force behind technological innovation in the broader arts sector and does e-culture serve social innovation? What does e-culture include? Games? What about science, industry, the health sector? In short, there is clearly a need to examine the importance of e-culture, who is taking part in it and what the state of play is. We asked four 'hands-n experts' to write about some of these issues. E-culture spans several arts disciplines, overlaps with various social sectors and also has its own sector. To map the current situation we chose four areas to focus upon: education, culture, industry and media culture.
E-culture in relation to cultural policy and funding has long been a focus of Virtueel Platform. Eric Kluitenberg, a media theorist with a long track record of programming projects, festivals and debates about media culture in De Balie, writes about media labs in the changing media landscape and makes a plea for more production funding.
Emilie Randoe, an expert on higher education in the new media sector, and until recently directorof the Institute for Informatics, the Institute for Interactive Media and het Media Lab at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, University of Applied Sciences, maps the education field. What role does education see itself playing and to what extent is a Communication and Multimedia Design training related to e-culture? There is a clear need for the education system to meet the needs of the professional media sector and recently the dialogue between the two has taken on a more structured, official form. Steps and developments that contribute to the professionalisation of the sector.
Other developments that indicate professionalisation are to be found in the game industry. This industry is now recognised as a new industry on its own terms. As well as game companies, studies, consultative bodies, the first steps have been taken to organise the profession, with the Dutch Games Association (DGA). The DGA was set up in 2008 to represent the interests of the industry at large.
Games and e-culture overlap and the development in the game industry contribute towards the development of e-culture, both on a technical level and in terms of professionalisation. Antoinette Hoes, an expert on online media and communication, and founder of Leylines bv, is in a good position to observe these links and analyse their potential.
In a broader perspective is the link between e-culture and the 'creative industry' as a whole. This link offers many opportunities for developing innovation in the broader cultural sector. The non-profit mentality of artists and arts institututions is often at odds with the commercial approach of industry but in terms of content there are many commonalities. Experiments, content and research from the arts field is extremely valuable for industry, while industry offers large numbers of high standard applications which reach a wide audience, and this is also very valuable.
What of the term ‘e-culture’ itself? Is e-culture merely a fashionable term for policy makers to bandy about? Is it used in practice and what does it mean? Govcom was given the task of researching the extent to which this term is used, and by whom. This book opens with the results.
The broad context of e-culture is at the same time a challenge: the number of issues to cover is too vast to do justice to the theme. In selecting a number of issues to examine we came up with two areas that are currently developing in the Netherlands: practice-based research and new business models. In themselves these are broad issues. Practice-based research in relation to the cultural sector is another way of raising the issue of what research is and where it can be carried out. The new media sector is constantly researching new tools, services, formats, rights issues, social contexts, and so on. In some fields the recognition of this work is growing, and the relationship between research carried out in the cultural or media sector with academic research is growing gradually closer: social sciences, computer studies, communication and media, are but a few of the fields in which research links can be made. The recognition of new media as a key economic sector has grown over the past years, but rhetoric about creative industries often fails to look at how different actors in the sector are actually working in practice. In the section on new business models Klaas Kuitenbrouwer examines issues of open content and e-culture.
There is still a lack of quantitative and qualitative data about the Dutch e-culture sector.
Whilst Virtueel Platform is at the beginning of mapping activities in the Netherlands, it has also been involved in a number of recent mapping projects of other countries. Countries that have been singled out by the government as key centres for cooperation in the future, including China, Brazil and the Middle East. Book one closes with stories of how these countries are developing their own e-culture and in some cases the ways in which Dutch cultural organisations can work with or learn from them.
V2_ has worked in China with the academic sector on a grand scale and in a very centralised way, very much in contrast to the practical, open and decentralised Dutch approach, which is based on small-scale projects and flexibility. Nat Muller's tour of the Middle East, where she works as an independent curator, emphasizes the value of media culture on a political and social level, mentioning for example the way in which new media circumvent problems of mobility. Bronac Ferran was commissioned by SICA in 2008 to map the digital media sector there. Ferran’s overview of this mapping project explains a great deal about the country, its needs and the way it is developing. Her analysis will be instrumental in bringing about further cooperation. One of the people she writes about is renowned singer and former Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil. He sees the country as a laboratory for the future. An attractive prospect for cooperation.
The foreign surveys that have been carried out, and are referred to in this section, are useful to various audiences. The context, specific information and indexes of certain regions will offer the e-culture sector a better overview as well as link up activities. In addition they are useful to policy makers in search of arguments to support future activities, as well as finding links between plans and examining the added value of financial support. For foreign partners the surveys offer an opportunity to put on paper and collate their experiences, rendering their activities more visible and defining the issues they would like to deal with.
The importance of working at an international level, exchange and cooperation forms the basis of this section and would appear self-evident. The international surveys do not so much provide a legitimation of such exchange but rather seek depth, continuity and sustainability in relation to these activities. Their value is clear and they will be continued.