Improving Tech Literacy in Artistic Spaces?

[kringle]

hello my fellow melons, kringle here.

something i've been thinking about recently is how most artists interface with current web design and technlogy. for interacting on the web we often rely on starter projects like cara, bluesky, or sheezy.art to interact with eachother in non-toxic spaces, but often have little initiative to create our own space on the web. when things fall off or fall through i often see my art friends flop around, waiting for the next big thing that we can all hop onto, instead of creating their own community infrastructure.

and while i know many artists out there are good at making use of free programs like pureref, and resources the internet has to offer, i know a good chunk more will shell out like ten-quintillion bucks for some niche adobe suite thing because they don't know how to do file management or basic research. or use blender.

so, does anybody here have any ideas on how we could help educate our fellow artists? Whether it be simple stuff like resources they could be using on the small web, or more intensive stuff, like self hosting things they might need. 

no pressure for any like, one correct answer! just opening a dialog that i've been having with myself for a few days

[rolypolyphonic]

... but often have little initiative to create our own space on the web. when things fall off or fall through i often see my art friends flop around, waiting for the next big thing that we can all hop onto, instead of creating their own community infrastructure.

I feel this is often the consequence of people getting used to the 'social media' climate where the 'point' of posting is to get more engagement. A corporate social media flubs something major, people migrate to where everyone else is going but all they really do is post and maybe give a cursory browse to the home feed but come crawling back to the big places when they don't get instant feedback. A lot of art websites become wastelands on the sole basis that there's barely anybody there, and the people who are there aren't really a 'community' per se that interacts or are unified by a particular goal/theme, and are just looking for a place where they get engagement the fastest.

Not that it's necessarily 'shallow' to want attention for your works but in many cases people seem to think of the 'platform' as a mythical thing charged to do the work for them, neglecting that the users themselves are the platform.

With that said, the difficulty of just creating one's own community is that it takes a lot of effort, and people who aren't really good at injecting activity into a pre-existing space are going to struggle doing so with their own attempt from scratch. They'd have to have some angle to entice others to participate in it, and typically one that a bigger service isn't already providing. To be fair, there are many small art-focused communities (Discord servers, Fediverse instances, even this forum), but they tend to appeal to particular niches who are already 'in the know' so to speak.

One gripe I have with a lot of social media, even art-focused ones, is that they're restricted in what you can post, relative to say, DeviantArt. DA's gone to the dumpsters since Eclipse reared its apocalyptic head but I will always say that the ability to upload multimedia, to cleanly organise them into folders, and to write without a character limit can be fundamental to presenting your work as an artist (and I imagine it what appeals to people who make their own websites for their work).

The 'microblog' format and modern app feel of Cara and Bluesky clearly serve the Twitter crowd but I feel like the restrictions of the format make it so that the sharing and engagement of art is constrained to 'oooh pretty picture, reblog'. With forums like MelonLand, the forum format is really geared for posting and discussing topics, as opposed to being art-centric per se. I think as a result a lot of artists get dissatisfied even if they do end up getting a lot of 'engagement' online because a lot of that engagement comes in the form of mere 'metrics' and comments about the aesthetics of their work, but not necessarily the meaning of it. A lot of audiences aren't interested in anything but aesthetics, and even in the best case scenarios the platforms themselves are often too constrained to let more creators really go in-depth about things they could give for other people to care about. At least, not without spreading their work across a gorbillion different platforms, and most people just aren't willing to jump from place to place just to see what one particular guy they follow online is doing/making.

And I think we live in an age where people who are acclimated to conventional social media are used to this form of Posteing that even if a hypothetical website that lets you post with more flexibility without the need to DIY everything (and some websites like that still exist), it's an uphill battle to have it get any traction. So I feel there's somewhat of a divide between people whose experience with posting art is just Pretty Pictures And Getting Metrics (and I specify posting art, not making art, because I feel many people who make art without taking 'clout' as their primary motivator still often end up in the metrics game when they get online out of a lack of better options) and people who are driven off to no-man's-lands because they need the flexibility of actually getting to expound on their work. Personally, it's a problem that I don't think making new platforms for is really going to solve, because the issue isn't really just with a lack of good platforms but with the way people themselves engage with what platforms already exist.

[kringle]

With that said, the difficulty of just creating one's own community is that it takes a lot of effort, and people who aren't really good at injecting activity into a pre-existing space are going to struggle doing so with their own attempt from scratch. They'd have to have some angle to entice others to participate in it, and typically one that a bigger service isn't already providing. To be fair, there are many small art-focused communities (Discord servers, Fediverse instances, even this forum), but they tend to appeal to particular niches who are already 'in the know' so to speak.

yes this is more so what i mean. i don't think community building is by any means easy but there are a lot of different ways to do it besides having all ur mates hop in a discord, and those avenues are being explored by people who know about them. i'm just hoping to get more people to, well, know!

and the conversation of artists relationship to modern social media platforms has been expanded upon at length it feels like, i want to clarify that while theres deff a lot of nuance and discussion to be had about how artists relate to their audience/the viewer what i'm mainly hoping to discuss is facilitating relationships with other artists. or just how to facilitate creative collaboration in general. i agree that posting art on the internet should be more than just post image -> farm clicks but it's also that modern social media platforms are a like, panopticon-esque hellscapes that sucks out all levels of nuance.  like how could we encourage and educate people to find ways to have those more nuanced discussions

Personally, it's a problem that I don't think making new platforms for is really going to solve, because the issue isn't really just with a lack of good platforms but with the way people themselves engage with what platforms already exist.

yeah i agree, which i guess is why i said how artists 'currently' interface. i dont think the answer to everyone's problems is some shiny new website that magically fixes everything, a general attitude shift is deff needed. but also on the same vein it feels like there are a lot of spaces or tools online that the average person just isn't knowledgeable abt. (idk maybe i have a skewed perspective from knowing to many techy people)


i'm lucky to be in a place where i have a good amount of art friends who will invite me to projects or clue me in on what they're working on, which both motivates me and pushes me artistically, but these discussions are happening on platforms that exploit us and could even potentially collapse altogether. but it's hard to get someone to understand why that's concerning when they don't even think about the fact there are alternatives in the first place 


i guess now that im typing this all out an underline concern of mine is how we often aren't in control of the tools we use to build community and solidarity online, even (and especially) when those communities are at risk. have a lot to think abt


but yeah, sorry if this is a bit rambly and went nowhere, ty for responding to my thread!