Taking advantage of the downturn
Keynote speech at the Brighton Web Awards 2008
Date: 27/11/2008
Venue: All Saints Church, Hove
Article
Coming as I do from North of the Downs, from the unimaginably backward village of Hurstpierpoint, I am somewhat frightened at the prospect of giving advice to Brighton because it is well known that Brighton only exists for two reasons: first to indulge itself and, secondly, to speed through the intervening countryside and suburbia, without disembarking anywhere on the way, to proffer its advice to the stick-in-the-muds of London. But as we face recession, perhaps I will be forgiven for encouraging us all to curb our self indulgence and focus on some big questions.
Barely had the recording industry escaped from the thrall of novelty, aspiring in the 1920s to recording full length symphonies, when it was almost obliterated by the economic depression triggered by the Wall Street Crash; yet within half as much time again, under the dictatorial power of Toscanini, it was a bulwark of global culture. At the same period, between 1900 and 1950 the film industry grew more steadily, less affected by economic decline and less interested in using the profits of its more popular products to subsidise the creation of an archive of high culture. Television followed cinema but with higher penetration and a more hybrid agenda, particularly in the area of state broadcasting where the poor were expected to subsidise the high culture of the rich; and, meanwhile, advertising grew steadily but the graph of its performance almost immediately shadowed that of the economy.
And then came this. So what kind of people are we? Are we money-grabbers, honest work-a-day media producers, journeymen, cultural curators and creators, or are we Shelly's unacknowledged legislators of the world?
I am not saying that any of us should be any of these things in particular but an economic down-turn is the right time to make us focus because it makes us do what we have put off, either because of the pressure of work or because the job of self recognition is just too difficult. Now, with less work and a greater need for focus, is precisely the time to ask the big questions, such as: Why am I here? and Where am I going? It's the time to face up to the reality of existence: there's no harm in making a profit but don't pretend it's art; and there's no harm doing art but don't lose money by accident. Economic depressions are severe critics of elusion.
Up until now, the world of the internet, which I will now learn to call the world of multimedia, has been very muddled in its identity and outlook. I'm sure I've told you before about the discussion I had in 1990 with Howard Rheingold, the founder of the world's first democratic, as opposed to military or academic, digital network, the WELL in San Francisco: Howard said the internet would be a paradise for anarchists, I said it would be a paradise for capitalists. We were both wrong, it's been a playground for people who can't make up their minds.
I think there is one big question and, nesting inside it, the kernel question:
- The big question is, are we a broadcaster or a publisher? Are we making specific products for specific markets or are we making scatter gun products for undefined markets? We should not be confused by the medium we are working in: it could easily be argued that niche television channels are publishers whereas multiple section Sunday newspapers are actually broadcasters, expecting most of their product not to be consumer by purchasers. It is my contention that too much multimedia has been created under the assumption that it is some kind of broadcasting, that somehow the important messages will stick, particularly if the art college kids have been at it, running rings round the marketing department with their aesthetic preciousness.
- Inside that is the kernel question; is our organisation, commercial, or not-for-profit, run by the mission or is it run by the arts lobby? Do we think that our web site exists to sell products or display information which matches our mission, or is it the play pen for media types who think they are only one rung down from being in television and need to expand their portfolio? The tradition of public sector broadcasting and trade union restrictive practices has no place in the rapidly evolving commercial multi media sector. If those responsible for carrying out our mission, propagandists, the sales team, are not in control of our multimedia creators then the structure is wrong.
And here, while we're thinking about television, is another home truth: quite opposite to Gresham's law that bad money drives out good money, in the multimedia future good product will drive out bad product; with millions of hours of high quality repeats the days of mediocre day-time television and Radio Two clone commercial stations will soon be over. If you can only make mediocre product, don't bother. And if you want to make good product, remember that making multi media is much more like making a film than writing a novel; there are very few films where every last task has been undertaken by a single person. The blog may make you feel good and pictures of the children for granny are a mighty fine social development but the idea that anybody can make anything is a piece of flower power rhetoric. It's obvious to most of us, or it should have been, even before the awesome self indulgence of blogging, that most people can't write good English; and the shorter the word count the more difficult becomes the writing. The cost of good prose is rising and, of course, the cost of digital images is falling which fits in with a global agenda where messages should, as far as possible, be divorced from language, but just because the technology is getting better and cheaper doesn't mean that the pictures are. The classic idea is that words and images and the way they are assembled, sequenced, collaged, stacked, exist to convey the authorial intention; so that's one part of the brief; but the second part is to ask whether the author has a clear enough intention which the technologies can be employed to convey.
Now this is my final point: the problem of the authorial intention in what academics call a 'post modern' world is that nothing means anything definite, that we must, above all, be careful not to make false claims for our understanding of images or words. Now that may be all well and good in the world of Layotard and Derida where the game is the predominant metaphor but, believe me, postmodernist deliberate ambiguity or, what we might call, boastfully ostentatious self deprecation - yes, it's a paradox! - this cultural reluctance to draw any kind of a conclusion about anything, is no way to sell stuff. The brand is in direct conflict with the zeitgeist of such multi layered irony and self referential hi-jinx that everybody has forgotten what the original point was. It seems to me that the recent antipathy to syntax, composition, clear communication and the primacy of conveying authorial intention is a piece of cultural fraud as toxic as the financial instruments whose lack of tunefulness has brought us to near ruin. For years, nobody shouted when the king had no clothes, when the banks had no money and when our culture had no purpose.
It's all over now. There is an absolutely iron link between the clear communication that makes money and makes great art; innovation is the ability to understand the rules you are breaking. We really can be creative and profitable at the same time; but that requires a degree of self discipline and the renunciation of self indulgence. One of the icons of our time is the gym but if we make the mistake of going there to see and to be seen rather than to develop muscle, we are wasting an opportunity; as in life, so in art.