Page 135 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2015135and Ridley Scott9 are producing artistic projects with increased participation which function as models for new forms of artistic and cultural production that are still underestimated in Latin American countries. Digital narrative in our countries is still conceived as books or videos in electronic format; works generated from data seem very technical; code programmers are not regarded as artists; videogames are viewed as leisure programmes, expanded literature as failed experiments, and transmedia performing arts as light shows, etc.Digital technology is transforming the technical, formal and aesthetic languages of each of the artistic disciplines.I believe that this backwardness stems from dissociating the technological from the human, from regarding digital as a complementary discipline. In Mexico we have progressed by viewing digital as a tool for disseminating and preserving heritage, and we now face a new challenge: digital technology is transforming the technical, formal and aesthetic languages of each of the artistic disciplines and, therefore, of the country’s cultural output. Most of the digital and technological pieces most widely recognised by the community fall into two variants that are extremes similar to those of the pre-digital world: popular entertainmentis produced through YouTube vloggers such as Yuya,10 Werevertumorro11 and Colibritany,12 among others, or in artistic projects involving an aesthetic and formal pursuit that appeal toa specialised audience, such as the microstories of Alberto Chimal,13 El Hombre de Tweed14 and hybrid artists such as Gilberto Esparza,15 Marcela Armas16 and Ariel Guzik.17The recent creation of Conaculta’s Centro de Cultura Digital in Mexico has made it possible to open new institutional spaces which foster the critical and creative adoption of technology through a programme that ranges from literacy to specialisation. The programme is based on reflection on the progress of new forms of cultural production that spring from our daily relationship with the digital media. It chiefly supports the production and dissemination of a broad range of work executed by producers of digital culture who are not regarded institution- ally as artists: programmers, creators, designers, producers of authored videogames, writers of poetry and expanded literature, event organisers and narrators who work with data, DJs, VJs, entrepreneurs of publishing and record com- panies and developers of cultural applications, among others.At CCD, we attempt to replicate a network logic in which the production and exhibition of culture is not one-way – that is, culture is not taken to the other; rather, culture is made with the other; a space where we recognise each other as consumers and producers simultaneously. As a young institution, we began by accepting that few young Mexicans are populating the Internet with content that reflects the wealth, originality and prevalence of our culture – which is why we are developing a collaborative platform entitled güiquimí,18 an archive for content in the form of text, audio, stills and video footageGrace Quintanilla