The contemporary artist and Internet
I am the links that I'm spinning
"I think, therefore I am." said
Rene Descartes about human consciousness. He didn't think about animals
and especially insects...
Internet is
an unique event in Art History. It is not just a library and not just a
shopping mall. Internet is a way to connect people to people, to make easier
building relationships with people at a distance. For the contemporary
artist, Internet is becoming an inescapable communication tool.
Words and pictures : history and prehistory
Many people think that Internet is only words, still words. Civilization
of writing! The fight for references is raging...
But from a holistic point of view, we have to think of not only the word
but the color pictograph, too - as well as sound and animation. With
each of those elements the message becomes not only more complex but
richer, fuller and easier to understand. Giving the websites within the
Internet a certain look or fashion that is driven by changing technology.
For an Internet more human : the contemporary artist and the art professionals
There is a lot of things to do in business and Internet, that is to
say in order to do an Internet more human in the relationship between
the art professionals and the artists. So we are going to expose you
just below some essential points about business and art. These 95 theses
come from the following website: www.cluetrain.com
95 THESES for the contemporary artist doing
business with Internet
01. Markets are conversations.
02. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
03. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted
in a human voice.
04. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting
arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural,
uncontrived.
05. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
06. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were
simply not possible in the era of mass media.
07. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
08. In both internetworked markets and among intranet worked employees,
people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
09. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of
social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized.
Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better
information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for
corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.
12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies
do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they
tell everyone.
13. What's happening to markets is also happening among employees. A
metaphysical construct called "The Company" is the only thing
standing between the two.
14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked
conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow,
flat, literally inhuman.
15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of
business -the sound of mission statements and brochures- will seem as
contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony
show, are no longer speaking to anyone.
17. Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used
to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.
18. Companies that don't realize their markets are now networked person-to-person,
getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing
their best opportunity.
19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they
blow it, it could be their last chance.
20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.
21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously.
They need to get a sense of humor.
22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the
corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility,
straight talk, and a genuine point of view.
23. Companies attempting to "position" themselves need to take
a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually
cares about.
24. Bombastic boasts -"We are positioned to become the preeminent
provider of XYZ"- do not constitute a position.
25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the
people with whom they hope to create relationships.
26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply
afraid of their markets.
27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they
build walls to keep markets at bay.
28. Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might
see what's really going on inside the company.
29. Elvis said it best: "We can't go on together with suspicious
minds."
30. Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the breakup
is inevitable and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart markets
are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.
31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge
workers can change employers over lunch. Your own "downsizing initiatives" taught
us to ask the question: "Loyalty? What's that?"
32. Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.
33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can't
be "picked up" at some tony conference.
34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of
their communities.
35. But first, they must belong to a community.
36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.
37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have
no market.
38. Human communities are based on discourse -on human speech about human
concerns.
39. The community of discourse is the market.
40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.
41. Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red
herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their
own market and workforce.
42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other
directly inside the company -and not just about rules and regulations,
boardroom directives, bottom lines.
43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets.
But only when the conditions are right.
44. Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies
and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to
ignore.
45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built
bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far
more valuable: an intranet worked corporate conversation.
46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word.
Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.
47. While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on
open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to
resist the urge to "improve" or control these networked conversations.
48. When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic
rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like
the conversation of the networked marketplace.
49. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully
understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders
could be handed down from on high.
50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for
hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.
51. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce
bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.
52. Paranoia kills conversation. That's its point. But lack of open conversation
kills companies.
53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One
with the market.
54. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably,
the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and
control.
55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken.
Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge
workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.
56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking
the same language. They recognize each other's voices.
57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to
happen sooner.
58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ,
then very few companies have yet wised up.
59. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online
perceive companies as little more than quaint legal fictions that are
actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.
60. This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.
61. Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk to
is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that
rings false -and often is.
62. Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to
participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.
63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk
to you.
64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies,
your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the
4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking
any substance.
65. We're also the workers who make your companies go. We want to talk
to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into
a script.
66. As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our
information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports
and third-hand market research studies to introduce us to each other?
67. As markets, as workers, we wonder why you're not listening. You seem
to be speaking a different language.
68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around -in the press,
at your conferences- what's that got to do with us?
69. Maybe you're impressing your investors. Maybe you're impressing Wall
Street. You're not impressing us.
70. If you don't impress us, your investors are going to take a bath.
Don't they understand this? If they did, they wouldn't let you talk that
way.
71. Your tired notions of "the market" make our eyes glaze
over. We don't recognize ourselves in your projections -perhaps because
we know we're already elsewhere.
72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating
it.
73. You're invited, but it's our world. Take your shoes off at the door.
If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!
74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.
75. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something
interesting for a change.
76. We've got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better
service. Stuff we'd be willing to pay for. Got a minute?
77. You're too busy "doing business" to answer our email? Oh
gosh, sorry, gee, we'll come back later. Maybe.
78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.
79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement,
join the party.
80. Don't worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it's not
the only thing on your mind.
81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional
and boring? What else can we talk about?
82. Your product broke. Why? We'd like to ask the guy who made it. Your
corporate strategy makes no sense. We'd like to have a chat with your
CEO. What do you mean she's not in?
83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one
reporter from The Wall Street Journal.
84. We know some people from your company. They're pretty cool online.
Do you have any more like that you're hiding? Can they come out and play?
85. When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you
didn't have such a tight rein on "your people" maybe they'd
be among the people we'd turn to.
86. When we're not busy being your "target market," many of
us are your people. We'd rather be talking to friends online than watching
the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million
dollar web site. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing's
job.
87. We'd like it if you got what's going on here. That'd be real nice.
But it would be a big mistake to think we're holding our breath.
88. We have better things to do than worry about whether you'll change
in time to get our business. Business is only a part of our lives. It
seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
89. We have real power and we know it. If you don't quite see the light,
some other outfit will come along that's more attentive, more interesting,
more fun to play with.
90. Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting
than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly
more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we've been seeing.
91. Our allegiance is to ourselves -our friends, our new allies and acquaintances,
even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world,
also have no future.
92. Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can't they
hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.
93. We're both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that
separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they're
really just an annoyance. We know they're coming down. We're going to
work from both sides to take them down.
94. To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused,
may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have
better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.
95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching.
But we are not waiting
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