Impulse

Today, the digital mothership has landed. Increased computing power and easier rendering engines have made it feasible to create my little film entirely on the computer. But wait, there’s more! Macromedia/Adobe Flash removes the tedium of cartoon animation. Digital cameras and photo software allow endless manipulation of images and the ability to print at home - the art of photography has never been more approachable or more flexible. Video cameras are commonplace as is decent video editing software, making filming a short films feasible and full features approachable. Music and sound editing software have already created an explosion of new music. More than all that, the internet has created numerous forums for people to share their creations, learning techniques from each other as well as developing a sense of what people react to.

And kids are growing up in this environment. (Imagine!) Much has been made of the netgen demographic - kids brought up with an internet connection, for whom instant messaging a friend in Europe is as routine as teenagers telephoning next door was decades ago. It’s not entirely about communication, though: think of the possibilities for creative expression with the tools we have in abundance today. In the world these kids are growing up in, you can create just about anything you want — cool pictures, movies, songs, animations — easily anytime you want. You can share your work with friends and see what they’ve done. In their world, you’ve always been able to do this.

The opportunity for creative expression for kids nowadays is massive — more than any time in history. Are we therefore raising a generation of full of artists — possibly creating another artistic renaissance?

Don’t believe me? Take a look at Duality. This Star Wars fan film looks as good as anything coming out of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic. It was made by two high school kids on a single mac — five years ago. Now watch Ryan vs Dorkman, another Star Wars flick. Again, made by high school kids back in ‘03. Look through ieve’s photos on Flickr and realize she’s only been taking photos for 1 year.

Now, look through DeviantArt, a treasure chest of creative work. DeviantArt is a forum for sharing artwork of all kinds — photography, illustration, crafts, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, animation, just to name a few. Though it’s open to all, it’s primarily populated by the 13-20 crowd. They have forums and blogs that allow members to cheer each other on, offer suggestions, learn from and challenge each other. It’s a huge, virtual art collective. And it’s working. Just spend some time perusing the site and you’ll see the little communities that have come up, their discussions, and the artwork that inspires and is generated by them.

Now, you can make the argument that making it easier to make art means it’s easier to create mediocrity. Absolutely true, and I think, irrelevant. Firstly, think about 20 years from now when these kids are adults — having grown up with artistic tools at their disposal, the average person will be much more trained, and practiced, than the average person today. I think the quality of mediocrity in 20 years will be much better than mediocrity today.

Secondly, good work always finds a way to bubble to the top. People have been making crap for millennia, but on the whole, we’ve forgotten it. All we remember is Mozart, van Gogh, and Chaplin. People actively seek out good work and recommend it to their friends.

The internet is excellent at accelerating this. The very core of google’s ranking algorithm is essentially a popularity index based on how often sites are recommended by others. Flickr is researching the concept of “interestingness”. Just about every web site has ranking information. “Today’s Favorites” is right there on DeviantArt’s home page. More and more online forums are using reputation systems where you can quickly find the members who have the most highly rated works or critiques.

Blogs, too help people find the good stuff. It’s the most common use for blogs: they are essentially quality filters, authors recommending interesting sites or works to their readers — find one blog you like, and you’ll find a lot of others. Boingboing.net, one of the most active blogs on the net (see their stats) is exactly this: a coolness filter for a particular aesthetic.

Add this all up and you’ve got plenty of ways for a few good works to float to the top of an ocean of uninteresting stuff.

So you’ll have a generation raised in a creative world — where creative customization and expression are habit — with plenty of tools to easily create anything they want, many forums for sharing and learning from each other (and again, a generation that’s as used to online discussion as they are talking on a phone), and plenty of ways to find the best of the best. Sounds like a bunch of old wood, sitting on sawdust, drenched in gasoline, on a hot dry day. I’m excited to see what happens.

What do you think?