COMMON LAB MANUAL
STATE OF THE ARTS - DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERES

​Text: Sotirios Bahtstezis

Given that the financial contribution of cultural and creative enterprises to the economy and the number of employees are significant, Common Lab's State of the Arts addressed crucial issues having to do with the ways in which the arts adapt or react to the challenges of the creation of a digital public sphere.
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The emergence and existence of a digital public sphere has been the subject of intense theoretical discussion and numerous empirical studies. Scholars have sought to determine whether and to what extent an Internet equivalent or substitute for the "old" public sphere has developed, and whether there are changes from its original theoretical formulation by Habermas (1968/1989) to more modern environments that include an ecology of the media and especially the Internet. The new media pose new theoretical, methodological and practical challenges in the creation of a digital public sphere, especially in terms of its possibilities, but also its limitations, i.e. issues of equality of participation and universal access. Will there be a place on the Internet to set up a public sphere that brings together arguments, positions, defences, and consensus proposals? Or is the Internet a place of fragmentation where it is impossible to articulate the demands and interests of a collective nature?

The pandemic goes along with an infodemic, which according to WHO, consists of "too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak". With growing digitisation, the recent pandemic has cemented the outbreak of "false news", in particular, in social media. Although social media have been heralded as bearers of a more democratic global community, they are also the main source of mis-information, misguidance and manipulation. Historian Yuval Noah Harari has pointed out a parallel between our time and Gutenberg’s printing revolution that marked the passage from societies of orality to societies of the print. According to Harari, the majority of information provided in these early modern days were not scientific or philosophical, but ill-informed, personal opinions and hate speeches to be found in DIY printed pamphlets. The murderous 16th and 17th century witch hunting was fueled across Europe by such nonsense. Fake news seems to be the childhood disease of a society in a state of transition between media.

The externally imposed pause of cultural offerings during 2020-21 brought, somewhat hastily, artists, institutions and audiences in touch with a constitutional condition of our world, which was eloquently described by media theorist Marshall McLuhan already since the mid 1960s with the statement: "that the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium". The pioneering thinker opened the discussion to a philosophical overview of media, according to which any practice based on the technology of mediation of a lived experience, including both its intellectual and emotional content, can be regarded as "medium".

Which are the possible positive and negative developments that follow the arts' somehow imposed transition to the digital? The new media make clear the shift of all forms of communication including the arts to a condition of perpetual and continuous mediation (remediation) of content, which in turn forms personal identities and collective communities. The media — old or new, analogue or digital, in the cloud or somewhere on earth — determine our situation (Kittler). 

How should we define the new relationship of the artwork with terms such as "digital", "hyper-text", "interactive", "simulated", "virtual" and "networked"? More specifically, how do the so-called "live arts" —theatre, performance, installation art, based on the physical presence of the spectator or the various participatory, interactive and "dialogical" forms of artistic practice— deal with the absence of physical presence on stage? Are there alternative formats, beyond the (often) inadequate documentation of live events and the online presentation of exhibitions and other events? In addition to today’s digital tools, the relationship between work and artist has changed radically by changing the corresponding artistic and curatorial practices, so that one can refer to terms such as augmented authorship (online symposium, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and House of Electronic Arts, Basel, May 2021).

In the context of a cognitive capitalism, new parameters of production and diffusion of artistic work are formed which are open-ended, process-oriented and network-based, such as hardware, software, wetware, that is, the real intellectual work, and finally netware, that is, the network, without which there can be no intellectual work (Moulier-Boutang). What is the new role of museums and art institutions in the current context? Also, in what ways did participatory art forms and social practices influence the formation of what was once called the "public"? In what ways do exhibition practices that are redefined as "rituals" (exhibition Down to Earth, Berlin) change the broader modernist framework of exhibition practice known as the "exhibitionary complex", a term coined by Tony Bennett? In what ways does media theory influence the practices of artists and the expectations of viewers / co-creators of the work of art? Is the transition to digital a triumph of resilience and art innovation or a defeat? And, finally, what is the definition of artistic means in the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution? 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
About Common Lab
​Background
Timeline

ACTIVITIES RATIONALE 
​Tale of X Cities & media competences for community building
State of the Arts & the digital public spheres

KEY THEORETICAL CONCEPTS
​Social innovation through art
​Art for social change
​Post-industrial design
Cultural and creative industries
Bibliography

CASE STUDY: TALE OF X CITIES
​About the case study
​Tale of X Cities key results & findings
​Lessons learned & recommendations 
Model project flow
​Media productions as evaluation tool
​Digital events and communication formats