Appreciation Practices Among Digital Creatives
Research question: How do creatives in digital media (especially digital art, film and interactive media) negotiate partly shared and partly opposing ways of judging and appreciating their own and others material?
Background: The means for production and distribution for digital media are today available to almost each and everyone. This is true for visual art, film, games as well as interactive media (e.g. flash productions and web sites). Non-professional creatives can also reach an audience with their material. The conditions for creative work are changing, and material produced by both professionals and laypersons is shared and transformed by several creatives in interaction and cooperation with each other. There is now an opportunity to multiple interpretations of creations, and it is not obvious that people with professional authority has preferential right of interpretation. This can, however, also lead to a need for professional creatives to fortify and justify their authority and trained professional knowledge. It is likely that creatives from different schools and traditions have different ideals when judging and appreciating a particular material. This leads to a multitude of different appreciation practices among both professionals and laypersons. The variation in Internet usage, design and art training, traditions and conditions in the Baltic region, despite the geographical proximity, makes this region particularly interesting to study.
Purpose: Based on theories of professional vision, this project aims at clarifying variants and invariants in appreciation practices among creatives who work in digital media in the Baltic region. We therefore plan to cover both laypersons and professionals with different backgrounds in training and traditions in the region.
Method: The project focuses on three domains of digital creativity: digital art, film and interactive media. Our participants come from several countries in the Baltic region, and this will provide a variation in formal training, traditions, and conditions.