New Art for a new Generation: building a new artistic paradigm.

Part 1: The iGen­er­a­tion revolution

There is change in the air, change that is shak­ing up the way we see and live in our world, every­where I go the early adap­tors are see­ing and feel­ing it. They feel it in the mar­ket place they feel it in the polit­i­cal arena and they feel it in their hearts. While some have been quick to adapt oth­ers are pro­ceed­ing slowly and many oth­ers are let­ting fear blind them.

Old net­works new life

The fun­da­men­tal basis for this change is the con­tin­ual open­ings for inter­ac­tion and con­ver­sa­tion brought by the inter­net. As recent as two years ago or in many cases a year ago inter­ac­tive choices were still lim­ited, and avail­able choices to expand our net­works, to find the prod­ucts that fit our needs, were just begin­ning to be avail­able. Face­book, and MySpace were not seen as any­thing else than a place for kids, the con­cept of a “Social Net­work” was just begin­ning to take shape.

As I write this every­thing is chang­ing almost by the day. Face­book in par­tic­u­lar has become THE place to net­work, blogs are replac­ing or at the least com­pli­ment­ing sta­tic web sites. Mini-blogs like Twit­ter linked together through RSS feeds pro­vide real time ways to stay con­nected with our own net­work. Old school one way adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing is almost dead replaced by inter­ac­tive real­time conversations.

Age­less iGen­er­a­tion re-combining and creating

These changes have all been spurred by what has been called the iGen­er­a­tion, ini­tially thought to be lim­ited to the twenty and 30 some­things who cut their teeth on com­put­ers and the inter­net. Their dig­i­tal lit­er­acy opened the doors of curios­ity and while we were say­ing that the web would result in greater iso­la­tion they were busy dis­cov­er­ing new and faster ways to become con­nected. They taught us faster ways to find and get information…reliable infor­ma­tion. As result con­sumers now use the web to do com­par­a­tive prod­uct research to make their buy­ing deci­sions. The mass mar­ket approach to com­merce is all but dead replaced by an ever increas­ing abil­ity to find the per­fect buyer and to retain that buyer by build­ing a rela­tion­ship with her through two way con­ver­sa­tion and com­mu­nity build­ing. Con­se­quently, the iGen­er­a­tion can be defined as any­one of any age who rec­og­nizes and uses the new inter­ac­tiv­ity to cre­ate and main­tain con­nec­tions, to start and con­tinue conversations

So what does all of this have to do with Art? It has every­thing because fail­ure to adapt to these changes by hang­ing on to out­moded beliefs will lead to a dis­ap­pear­ance of art as we know it. Art as a cul­tural lens, as a source of renewal and inspi­ra­tion, as a source of pas­sion and shar­ing could change for­ever. On the other hand, recog­ni­tion and embrace of this evo­lu­tion could raise the role of art in our cul­ture to new heights by uncov­er­ing new ways for artists to thrive and share their art.

In short the changes brought about the iGen­er­a­tion are:

• Per­sonal con­nec­tion is highly valued
• Many to many con­ver­sa­tion is val­ued over one or two way communication
• Com­mu­nity is val­ued as a way of enhanc­ing mouth to mouth prod­uct research
• Locally made and sold goods will hold a higher posi­tion than non-local goods
• Envi­ron­men­tally friendly goods and pro­duc­tion meth­ods will be a decid­ing criteria
• Busi­nesses will need to demon­strate social consciousness
• There must be mul­ti­ple ways of doing business
• While price point will be impor­tant the buy­ing deci­sion will be based more on con­nec­tion and value than on price.

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