Research: Reflections
Reflections on Communications Networks, Public/Intimate space and Community Arts
Today we have people carrying around mobile phones, texting and chatting. The intimacy of communications networks increasingly invades public spaces. Will community arts facilitators be able to ignore this other space which insinuates itself into everything we do, yet we cannot see or touch?
At some level it is not a question of whether or not communications networks are going to be a tool we use to develop artwork in our communities. Rather, we might ask ourselves as cultural development practitioners, How are we going to bring these communications networks into our work at the local community level? and How are we going to bring meaning into this system, which has the potential to striate and isolate members of the communities in which we work?
Further, as technologists and communications network developers it is not a question of whether or not we will fund or develop cultural projects with our technology. Rather, we might consider what the alternative might be if we do not participate in our local community and consider our culture and identity as integral parts of our networks. What might this information society be without culture?
If the Internet or other communications networks only increase social exclusion and if using this medium in community arts practice puts a barrier between the artists and the community, then how can we promote such work? On the other hand, if the internet is a tool to reduce isolation and if community arts projects are a means to developing social cohesion, then such projects which bring these two benefits together have great potential.
View examples of projects which bring together community, arts and the internet.
"The uses of mobile phones, email and chat rooms help strengthen relationships and give people unprecedented access to communities of interest. But what will be the effect on face-to-face relationships at neighbourhood level? If the technologies stimulate connections between people who have something in common, does this imply fewer serendipitous encounters, less diversity, and less social capital? Do we retreat in cliques within the virtual equivalent of gated houses and condominiums - the contact lists on our mobiles functioning as electronic barriers to new encounters and cross-cultural experience? Or do these new technologies provide new opportunities for the creation of links at the local level? Does this mean the 'loss of community', and if so, does it matter? This conference will draw on academic and practitioner expertise to explore such issues in a policy context."
Community and Mobility: Living with the technologies of remote communication
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/conference_021003.shtml