SECOND INTERNATIONAL HARVARD CONFERENCE ON INTERNET & SOCIETY  may 26-29, 1998

Losing My Artesian: Students Debate the Role of the Internet in the Arts World by Sarah A. Rodgriguez All interviews for this article were conducted through email. Interviewees comprised Harvard undergraduates who have contributed in some way to the College's artistic community. Cambridge, 1998—When the "Information Superhighway" (the title used to sell the Internet not too many years ago) first burst onto the scene, people responded with feverish enthusiasm. Many of their dreams for information sources previously only dreamed of have come true. Information of almost any kind, shape, size or form is available on the World Wide Web. Printed news is called up with the click of a mouse. Stock prices and sports scores are updated instantly on certain Web sites. Unfortunately, many of the fears that people had about such a faceless information source have also become a reality. The Net has gone forth and multiplied so quickly that keeping track of potential problems has been a challenge for everyone. The anonymity that comes with surfing and creating sites arouses many legal and ethical arguments—particularly about subject matter like art, where the ownership rules are blurred. "Stealing" images and sounds for another site without the owner's permission is now a common practice among 'Net surfers. Perhaps the "secret identity" appeal of Net-surfing encourages a lapse in moral standards and honesty. But one particular question remains: has the anonymity of the Internet affected the world of the arts? According to Emily A. Allen, Harvard College '97, most definitely. "There's a question of the mass production/mass availability of art making 'art' less than what it used to be," she writes via email. "There is perhaps a bourgeois ideal that is lost when 'art' is changed to suit the tastes of the masses versus the educated elite. You can think about the pervasiveness of porn on the Net if this is in fact the case as an indication of the baseness of the 'art' that is proliferated via the Net." Elaine Yu, '99, adds that she believes it has become "harder to drum up support for art endeavors [with] too much publicity about porn on the Net." The distinction between what Allen dubs the "educated" and the "bourgeois" arts is particularly prevalent in the field of literature. Scott Brown, Harvard College '98, complains that "there are no respected online literary magazines. Sure, there's plenty of fiction published over the Net, but it's almost uniformly terrible, and most of it is clumsy erotica. I'm sure there are some well-respected lit-sites out there, but it will be a long time before anyone takes them seriously." Anyway, Allen notes, "There will always be those who choose Hustler over The New Yorker." Not everyone, however, feels that the quality of literature on the Net is low overall. "Hypertext fiction is already thriving at Brown [University]," writes Benjamin Lytal, Harvard College '01. "As a medium for weird interactive art experiments, [the Internet is] really the best. I expect a lot of science-meets-art organic experiment things to be increasingly interesting." Yu agrees about the new artistic endeavors that have sprung forth, courtesy of the Web. She explains, "I have a friend who did an interesting project involving us sending him emails and him printing them out and assembling them into some sort of art piece for a class of his." The field of music has been affected by the Internet just as much as literature, if not more. "The Internet has made it much easier to get music without paying for it," writes Ruth Murray, Harvard College '01. "Songs downloaded off the Net aren't CD quality, but they're good enough that some people might buy less music because they can download what they want. I personally am happy about this because of my low budget, but it probably reduces the amount of money that musicians can make from their songs and thus makes it more difficult to be a full time musician." But despite the compromise in quality that Internet arts may suffer as compared to the mass marketed or museum-quality item, many people reap the benefits of convenience. "I can look up the Boston Symphony Orchestra schedule for the entire season [on the Internet] and pick what concerts I might like to see," Daniel Garvey, Harvard College '98, remarks by email. In addition, Web sites such as MovieLink give Net surfers movie times, places, and even the option of purchasing tickets right then and there. Murray, too, agrees that universal access and convenience are good selling points. "The ability to download wallpaper or screen savers of art prints, for example, allows wider distribution of images without diminishing the value of seeing the works in person, and I don't think that using art for these purposes belittles it. The point of using an art print for wallpaper is to be able to look at a worthwhile image while using the computer." This, however, brings to mind the popular fear that people will sacrifice the older, clumsier forms of art in favor of the newer, sharper and more easily-accessible versions. While many argue that traditional forms of art, from painting and sculpting to writing literature and writing music, will never die, others fear that they will eventually perish due to their antiquity. "Nowadays, people would rather sit in their windowless rooms surfing the Net—where it's much harder to find 'quality' art—instead of visiting their local museum," observes Yu. "It's a shame." Opinions on the Internet's role in the art world vary greatly from person to person. And why shouldn't they? The Web is still a relatively new form of communication, much less lifestyle. "When people our age feel like the Internet has been hijacked by the corporate world, it's hard for a grassroots art page to get off the ground," laments Brown. Whether it's due to distaste for big business or fear of anonymous thieves, mindsets about the Net will probably not be changed anytime soon. But what about opinions on the Web, especially in regard to the arts? With all of its legal problems and faceless threats, has the Internet become a fertile ground for exchange and debate of art-related issues? Nick Davis, Harvard College '99, likes to believe so. "One thing that I think the Internet makes possible is that it provides a forum unlike any other for numerous people all over the world to post their reactions to a given movie or book or album, etc. I think that if people feel like their opinions can be broadcast over the Web, they may be more invested in articulating an opinion to be broadcast, so maybe they think about art a little more analytically and spend more time processing their reactions, which is probably good for art - to have a more analytical audience." The World Wide Web, developing open minds and comprehensive artistic critiques? The Internet, sparking the death of generalization? It very well could happen. Look for it in a Web site near you. Sarah A. Rodriguez is a member of the Harvard College Class of 1999.