Leonardo

Leonardo, Vol. 17, No. I, pp. 4~8, 1984. Printed in Great Britain. 0024-094X/84 $3.00+0.00 PergamonPress Ltd. THE NEW MEDIA AS CONTEXTS FOR CREATIVITY* Anthony Smith** I. We have learned a great deal during the past fifteen years concerning the constraints that accompany the spread of new media, broadly defined as distributive systems. Both cassette and cable television failed to materialize when the most elevated social optimism surrounded them, but later took off to serve a set of more humdrum social needs. We have discovered that the mere availability of interactive two-way communication does not lead to a renewal of democracy or create a demand for hardware; real change cannot be generated by electronic equipment. The new media present familiar material through novel devices; as they establish themselves they may influence a social value or alter some deep-rooted aspect of society if there exists a general unconscious desire for this. Social expectationsoptimistic and pessimistic-have been revised downward as each new communications hardware emerged. One has only to contrast the hopes surrounding cable TV when it began ten years ago and today, after the publication of the Sloan Commission report, 'On the Cable' [1]. However, each of the new media of the present century eventually brought a new set of creative professions and broadened the aesthetic or informative experience of the audience. All helped to reshape the economic context within which journalists, storytellers, musicians, and plastic artists function. There is a relationship between the takeoff of a new distribution system and the rise or recognition of a need to express material in a new way. During the first decade or two of a new medium's establishment the creative element-the new genre-that emerges cannot be attributed to the technology. For exampl~,t.o.saythat the novel was the result ofthe Stanhope all-metal pnntmg press would be absurd. Nonetheless, there is a connection between a technology and its content, and the content in time influences the growth and capitalization of the technology. Moreover, this is inescapably connected with prevai~ing aesthetic theories and political ideas, which themselves Influence both the conceptions behind the technology and the conceptions behind the content. Let us take the example of impressionist painting. Its arrival as a style in the late nineteenth century was related to new ideas concerning optics as well as beliefs of artists about the devel.opmen.tof re~lism. Its development also had a great deal to do with the mvennon ofscrew-top paints, which enabled artists to take ~ b~oad ra~ge of colours right into the landscape they were pamtmg. Artists began to register the phenomenon of colour in a way different from painting that was studio-bound. Th.ey. were influenc~d by the presence of a new public for PaI?tIng and .changIng perceptions of the artist's position in society. The hnks between an enabling technology and a genre or style are based on complex mutual causation that is easier to perceiv.eat the early stages of a medium's development, when all of the Influences are in flux. 'Abridgement of apaper preparedfor the 1980AnnualConference of the International Conference of Communications, Ottawa, Canada. "Director, BritishFilm Institute, 127CharingCross Road, London WC2H OEA, U.K. Cable, like several media before it, suffered a false start. In the !960s cab~e. st~mulated discus.sion of interactive democracy, the new politics of community action, and 'talking back'. Non~th.eless, the medium was stillborn. Money was lost. Predictions were proved wrong. Today in the 1980smost people do not have interactive telecommunication devices in their homes, except in Columbus, Ohio, and Higashi, Tkoma, and a few other cities where some thousands of people possess, at large expense, a strange and unnecessary extra button or two. The cable is indeed developing as a deliverer of films, a substitute for the cinema. It is still too soon to say whether this willbe enough to turn cable into a mass medium in many countries. Cable is a partially delivered promise at present. Other new media have not yet progressed that far. The leap a new medium must make to embed itself in the culture...