Page 134 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet134the most banal to profound reflections; self-pub- lish their texts, music, videos and photos; generate viral memes, plagiarise as a matter of principle, share, republish, and intervene; open virtual galleries, independent record companies and design, ecotechnology and food businesses; play and create videogames simultaneously; and write novels in instalments of 144 characters posted on Twitter. They produce highly complex videos as part of online videogames with other gamers. They work from the boundaries of various disciplines: they make pieces of sculpture with neuroscientists; together with astronomers and physicians construct and send into orbit civic satellites imbued with music and kinetic poetry; produce choreographies clothed in sensors that make live animation with dancers from the other side of the world; and organise mass hackathons, edit-a-thons, programarathons and makerthons.A key factor in professionalization in networks is users’ awareness of their role as consumers and as producers.How do we come to grips with the overwhelm- ing quantity and diversity of creative output? How are we to understand these new forms of authorship? What form does a contemporary artwork take and how can it be distinguished from a work generated by the audience?What exhibition spaces should be built? What production chains are taking shape? And, of course, under what budget item can we fit all this, to which we have not even had time to give a name?The questions are old ones, and the answersare still uncertain. The models that give us the most clues to finding the answers are located in the United States, Europe and Asia – countries which, unlike Mexico, have a tradition of technological production that facilitates our understanding of prosumption and are more willing to take to create new schemes for sus- tainable cultural production that I often find in three aspects to be implemented in our practice: increased participation as an instrument for creation and production, big data as a resource or raw material, and monetisation of content as a basis for economic models based on building values obtained through sharing (the sharing economy,5 sharism6).These aspects materialise through a simple action: sharing.Sharing is an everyday act on the networks and calls for production chains that require new economic models. What new challenges dothese phenomena entail in our work as cultural managers? What strategies must we devise to avoid lagging behind in the adoption and under- standing of the digital, in order to incorporate the creative and critical utilisation of digital technology on time?Participatory creationParticipatory creation is becoming increasingly accepted by artists and creative people, who are establishing new concepts of authorship that are very different to the traditional ones. Prominent artists such as Aaron Holbin,7 George Lucas8The transgressive power of sharing