We're inspired by a roving storytelling studio that uses dance and choreography to unite us.
Image via The School of Narrative Dance website.
Ancient Traditions, Contemporary Technology
Although many artists and culture bearers lament the advent of digital technologies, their ascendance trumpets a return to ancient storytelling traditions that were disrupted by the printing press. Online stories are subject to interpretation and are transformed through personalization and participation. The story is enlivened.
If stories are our original means of communicating complex ideas, entertaining ourselves and connecting with one another, armed with access to the internet, the artist/culture bearer has the power to change the world. The mutability of the digital story lends itself to egalitarianism, because it’s owned by all and its meanings are myriad.
“Storytelling” is now a buzzword in marketing, public relations and advertising, but to be truly effective it has to do much more than just sell something. If it’s not artful, it won’t resonate authentically. Modern storytelling is a collision of new media and ancient tradition that is most effectively commanded by the artist, who is skilled at challenging us to look at the world in new ways. The artists helps us to helps us reach others by examining ourselves.
Photo by WÆRK
STEAM Links Tuesday: Math + Baking at The Bakery on Bergen
A bakery in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights neighborhood takes a delicious approach to math tutoring. Math + Baking classes challenge kids to approach both disciplines in enjoyable new ways.
Is Hipster Culture Bad for the Future of the Arts?
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Is hipster culture detrimental to the arts sector?
In spite of its significant contributions to contemporary creativity – the transformation in the ways we think about and consume food and drink, technologies that have turbocharged social activism – the hipster generation has done remarkably little to empower professional artists. After 20 years after the culture wars of the 1990s, too many arts and cultural organizations are forced to run on fumes in the name of passion. The arts and culture sector remains tethered to the limiting grant funding apparatus that inhibits financial operations, and therefore prohibits both opportunities for expansion and the ability to offer competitive wages. Technological advances have led to an increase in art production, but it's incredibly difficult to make and sustain a living as an artist because of the parasitic nature of the contemporary audience (everyone wants art, but no one wants to pay for it. Everyone enjoys art, but few appreciate the work that goes into its production).
A generation that prides itself on advancing a sharing economy and congratulates itself on valuing experiences over things, has not used its penchant for innovation to elevate the arts and culture - the ultimate in shared experiences.
Popular culture is largely reductive these days. Writers are recapping television shows after they air instead of creating more meaningful original content. Successful films from decades past are half-heartedly rebooted for contemporary audiences. Design trends are direct, sometimes ironic, rehashes of items from previous eras. We need to encourage artistic innovation that is not driven solely by immediate return on investment or number of unique visitors.
Are hipsters too concerned with using art to curate their own images to truly empower the arts sector?
The technology sector advocates for its workers to “fail better". It's only fair that artists should be provided with the same allowances...to "draft better”.
Friday Food for Thought
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Game Changers: Sum of Us
We're inspired by an inclusive movement of workers, shareholders and consumers, working to tip the corporate balance in favor of people over profit.
Image via the Sum of Us Facebook page
It's Critical
In the recent past, traditional liberal arts education was merely undervalued. Today it’s being attacked outright, as the prioritization of applied approaches to education gain prominence in academic and economic dialogues. Contemporary wisdom dictates that our youth should be directed toward STEM fields, but we at WÆRK believe that the dearth of the critical thinking, which is the fruit of a liberal arts education, is creating a crisis.
Using social media as a megaphone, anyone can broadcast his or her opinion to the world. Too frequently, these often critical opinions are neither mediated by deep contemplation nor empathetic consideration. Broad context is often ignored, due to the rapid pace of online communication and unfamiliarity with bridging ideas that is nurtured through training in critical thought. People “don’t read the comments” because they know that base, anonymous criticism drags dialogue into the gutter. Online trolls may assault the ego, but they destroy the development of fecund conversations and communities.
As we face an increasing glut of information, the critical thinking education that is viewed as so disposable will, in fact, be more relevant than ever. A background in critical thinking can help us weed through crap to find quality. It may provide a checks and balances system for the increasingly unfettered digital economy, by encouraging wholesale consideration before judgments are made. It may, invigorated by intertextuality online and off, encourage a richness of culture and conversation.
Photo by WÆRK
STEAM Links Tuesday: Tate Sensorium
Image via the Tate IK Prize website
"The experience encourages a new approach to interpreting artworks, using technology to stimulate the senses, triggering both memory and imagination."
"Creative" Doesn't Cut It
Artists and culture bearers, I think it’s time to revise the lexicon; “creative” just doesn’t cut it anymore. The language of creative economies advanced by Richard Florida, and widely adopted by the tech sector, runs roughshod over the relevance of artists and culture bearers and suppresses their influence.
These “new” creative industries are thriving financially, while the traditional creative industries are witnessing the devaluation of artistic skills and the disappearance of professional opportunities. There is an inverse relationship between the declining viability of careers in the arts and culture in major U.S. cities and the increase in artistic references (often without attribution or context) in the marketplace.
We must find the means to articulate the necessity of the artist and the culture bearer in the marketplace, our communities and our individual lives. We must innovate broadly to create opportunities for these highly-skilled professionals. We must develop language to elevate issues relevant to artists and culture bearers, so they don’t get lost in the shuffle of the creative economies.
WÆRK uses the term “artisanal creative” to refer to artists and culture bearers, but we’d love to hear your suggestions. Please share them in the comments.
Photo by WÆRK
Friday Food for Thought
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