Damon L. Baker
Krannert Art Museum, College of Fine & Applied Arts |
Digital Artists as Technology Entrepreneurs
This research proposes to study the entrepreneurial behavior of digital artists. The nature of the digital medium presents a problem for artists hoping to enter the traditional system of museum and gallery display and sale of their works: a digital artwork is transported and displayed differently than a physical work like a painting or sculpture would be; and the infinitely reproducible form of a digital work poses questions of ownership. As well, the significant specialized technical skills require for a practitioner to enter into the field are difficult to acquire through traditional means. This often leads artists to invent the genre of art they wish to practice as they go along, carving out new niches and making opportunities for themselves as changes in the technology they use modifies the cultural landscape in which their work is situated. We hypothesize that these characteristics of digital media force the digital artist into thinking – and behaving – like an entrepreneur. We take Dees’ concept of social entrepreneurship as our starting point in conceptualizing the entrepreneurial artists. By identifying and analyzing entrepreneurial behavior in digital artists through an ethnographic study of the praxis of working digital artists, we hope to broaden both the scope of entrepreneurial research and the definition of social entrepreneurship.
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