🚀 go-pugleaf

>Looking at the situation from my current perspective I notice that there is not
>much involvement by artists and people with arts backgrounds in electronic
>communications in general.
...
>I suspect that if they tried it they'd like it.

You might think this, but try to imagine the case where they did not.

This topic was discussed two years ago in the human-nets-digest (which since
appears to have died).  At that time I was living with a daughter of two 
artists.  Her father is the art chairman at Claremont and her mother is a 
distinguished artist in her own right.

There are certainly some performance artists like Laurie Anderson who
use computers, but you should see her film "Home of the Brave."  The
artistic community does not think as scientists and engineers do.  The
basic values they have differ considerably, but they they might use some
of the same technological means toward their ends: self-expression.
Yes, many are Extremely fearful of our technology (part of the
expression in "Home").  Others adopt the technology wholeheartedly (my
near in-laws would call the "Commercial Artists" ;-).  Much of the
artistic community wants to defie labelling and categorization (part of
the harm of modern science).  Just when you think you understand some
people art, they purposefully dodge and change their opinions.  This is
their way.

Well, what can you do?  Well, not much right now.  Teleconferencing and
mail systems are too crude for some of the visual arts.  Many artists
are NOT verbal people, flaming would only force them further into
burrows and Hobbit holes.  If you could add visual and audio media this
would be a start (Imagine Picasso using RCS to save "Girl before
a Mirror?").

You can certainly show ACM/SIGGRAPH slides and video tapes, but this is
the commercial art world and strictly visual (like MTV).  You can let
them play with things like Macs (also helpful, but not enough).  By all
means, do not brow-beat.  It only reinforces some of their negative
views of technology.  Play it by ear.  Don't force the particular use of
an application, I saw Scott Kim do some fun things with applications
beyond what was intended (in terms of animation).

--eugene miya 			Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH

I saw this work, by making a presentation for a high school art enrichment
class, a group of people with whom I normally couldn't communicate much at
all, being a math major with no art talent.

Two friends and I set the class down with three Amiga 1000's, showed them
how to get started, then set them loose with Deluxe Paint.  Kids that had
never touched a computer before were doing commercial quality work (some of
them ;-) within 40 minutes, and were unabashedly enthusiastic.

So, I suggest getting the proper hardware and software tools to let them do
what they know how to do (art) until they are comfortable touching a computer,
then ...lure... them into trying your communications package once the initial
"If I touch it, I'll break it" anxiety has been overcome.

Only problem is ever getting your computers back, once they find out how nice
it is to do art on them.  ;-)

Kent Paul Dolan

Some possible explanations (with absolutely no data to back them up) on 
limited use of electronic communications by artists:

 1) inexperience with equipment, as was hypothesized,
 2) inexperience with written media (do scriptwriters react differently?),
 3) inexperience reading electronically-authored compositions or 
     non-face-to-face communication in general,
 4) lack of peer interest,
 5) inadequacy of electronic media for describing graphical topics,
 6) social prejudice against things/people electronic
 7) inadequate productivity improvement (related to #1).

I find only explanation #5 directly related to the parties being artists.

Mark D. Grover 		Advanced Decision Systems

There are artists on the WELL, at least:
John Cage; Jennifer Hall; Stephen Moore; Fred Truck, Jim Rosenberg, 
and I have all done pieces on the Art Com Electronic Network (acen) 
on the WELL.  Acen was started by Carl Loeffler, the director of Art 
Com (a San Francisco based artists' video; artists' books; performance 
art distributor)  Acen participated in Planetary Network, an artists' 
networking piece which was part of the Biennale of Venice last summer. 
 
I know many other artists who are interested in networking or in using
computers in other ways - artists who are doing exciting, meaningful.
good work.  Unfortunately, most of them barely make ends meet working
part time jobs.  They don't have access to computers at their jobs,
and they can't afford to buy even a used computer - a good example of 
the widening gap between the  "information rich" and the "information poor".
 
Artists who teach at Universities *could* use computers/Usenet, but 
University art departments are notoriously conservative.  Artists who 
are University professors tend to be sculptors or painters who *are* 
threatened by new mediums.  In their defense, the lack of graphics 
capability in current networking systems is a valid deterrent to artists 
whose work is wholly visual.  Networking is more likely to appeal to 
artists, like myself, whose work is text and information oriented.
 
Judy Malloy.

This is a well-known phenomena - documented in "Zen and the Art of 
Motorcycle Maintenance" [by Robert Pirsig -- Dave]

The above mentioned book examines the "fear, distaste, distrust,
whatever" that some people have to using technology.
I don't recall any concrete ideas for combating it, but the
book is useful.

I'd suggest an extremely easy tutorial that slowly shows the
interesting things that can be done with the bulletin.  It sounds
like the people you want to hook with not be lured with logic, grab
them with the fun and challenge (but make it non-threatening)

Hope it helps.

	Katherine

Kent Paul Dolan writes:

>Two friends and I set the class down with three Amiga 1000's, showed them
>how to get started, then set them loose with Deluxe Paint.  Kids that had
>never touched a computer before were doing commercial quality work (some of
>them ;-) within 40 minutes, and were unabashedly enthusiastic.

Funny you should bring this up.

Nancy Blachman, my officemate, and several others just took some Mac's
to a meeting to interest young girls in computers and other things hi
tech (gross over simplification here), and they did not receive the same
enthusiasm.  This was in San Jose.  Maybe it was their age, maybe
something derived from those gender/sex difference studies, they don't
know.  It wasn't because the Macs were black and white, things like that.

 --eugene miya 			NASA Ames Research Center

Katherine A Lato mentions "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
in a recent posting about how to get people to use communications
systems...

In my high school (Foxborough MA) the two "computer science" teachers 
lured teenagers into the computer classes by having them visit the
computer room during their free study periods.  They had single player
and multiplayer computer games setup for them.  Many students would
willingly take the computer courses because they had been introduced
to it as being fun.  Some of them were rather disappointed later that
computers can also mean frustrating work, but at least they can now
form rational opinions about computers and what they represent.

I have spent some years tutoring and advising people with technical
and nontechnical backgrounds here at BU, at my high school, and at the
various jobs I have held.  It has never been my opinion that everyone
should be a hacker, but I feel it is important that people should 
have some small exposure to the innards of computers in order to better
appreciate the outtards (sic).  The place to do this is in high school
or even before, not in college.  As a non medical major I have not been
required to take Biology or any other lab science at BU.  But I was 
required to take that sort of thing in high school so now I can read
magazine articles about cancer, AIDS, and whatnot with a reasonable
level of comprehension.  The same philosophy should be applied to
computer education.  The average citizen does not need to know the
specific differences between Emacs and XEDIT, but it would be nice if
s/he at least knew the difference between an editor and a compiler.
Just as I know the difference between a virus and a bacteria from 
10th grade Biology.

Computer education for children is making good progress.  While it seems
that computer illiteracy today is an insurmountable problem, the next 
30 years will show a tremendous drop in "computer illiteracy", as the
next generation of users (and software) matures.

gordon@bu-cs.bu.edu writes:

>Computer education for children is making good progress.  While it seems
>that computer illiteracy today is an insurmountable problem, the next 
>30 years will show a tremendous drop in "computer illiteracy", as the
>next generation of users (and software) matures.

I have two daughters, in sixth and ninth grades, and naturally I want to 
give them as good a head start as I can.  I have an IBM PC at home, and 
they both can navigate through WordStar enough to write papers, short 
stories, notes for school, letters, etc.  I was thinking of offering them 
a "summer school" course in more advanced computing.  I'd planned on giving 
them an introduction to C, which I figured would go a long ways towards 
explaining the difference between an editor and a compiler...

I'd be interested in any comments or suggestions on such a plan, especially 
any ideas on the "best" way to teach kids a language like C.  (I had thought 
of teaching them BASIC, but heard that it could cause permanent brain 
damage...)

I figured I'd try to build a spelling checker with them, which would teach 
something about databases, files, i/o, etc., and leave them with a tool that 
they could sorely use.

Matthew McClure 	    International Technology Development Corporation