Creative Identity Theft: Issues for Artists in Collaborative Online Environments.

One of the most significant challenges to the development of a 'new media art' has been the question of ownership and its relationship to authority and authorship in online environments. Whilst this has been broadly true in relation to all areas of what we have come to call the 'cultural industries', the argument here is about how this differs and goes far more directly to the heart of the fine artist's conception of themselves and their work. Unlike music, where the rights of an artist to be rewarded for their work (often in reality a record company), or the breach of copyright through unauthorised distribution of music reflects the existing business models in these areas, the fine art experience opens new questions about what constitutes production, authorship and completion. This is especially true where the artist is seeking to use the 'new media' characteristics of the Internet, the potential for sharing and developing an art work through the participation of a user community.
This paper firstly discusses the qualities of online activity in relation to what is 'new' in 'new media', and examines the continued use of the technologies by artists to simply redress long standing disputes with the distribution models and editorial practices of 'old media'. It then seeks to identify the features of new technologies that distinguishes them from 'old media', principally the opportunities for interaction in real time, for collaboration, of skill sharing, of a wider audience that encounters work for reasons other than the contemplation of artistic work and the nature of proprietary technologies in themselves. These latter have rarely been developed specifically for artists, and often reflect the values and aims of the companies that generate them, presenting ethical and creative problems for artists who use them.
The difficulty for the artist is how to respond to this 'new' environment, given that it often runs counter to the training and practice of fine art, with its overwhelming emphasis on individual expression for the interest of gallery visitors. The difficulties artists encounter when their will and vision is not the main source of content or interest clearly creates a struggle about their relevance to the work that is produced, and often bruising encounters with technologists and user communities result. Acceding control to potential users to develop or reconfigure the data is fraught with issues from security to censorship, and often strikes directly at the intentions of artists seeking to engage in this way, and yet this is part of the online experience. For artists who identify themselves with their work as personal statement, this becomes a critical tension.
This paper draws on research at the Visualisation Research Unit (VRU) at the School of Art, Birmingham City University, and its collaboration with Eastside Projects, a new gallery located in Birmingham, on the Arts Council funded project 'EP:VV' (Eastside Projects: Virtual & Visualized). The development of an online gallery that reflects and resembles the physical space at an avant-garde gallery like Eastside and consistent with the content produced in it has thrown up important questions about the way in which arts experiences can be reproduced in the online space. The issues over how to create and curate art works that use the nature of the technologies, or represent them without simply creating 3D copies have led to difficult issues about why artists create work and who it is for in the online context.