Beyond Productivity Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity (2003) / Chapter Skim
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8. Supporting Work in Information Technology and Creative Practices
8. Supporting Work in Information Technology and Creative Practices
Pages 197-234
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From page 197... ...
What commercial organizations support ITCP in other ways and for other reasons? · What governmental and other non-profit organizations support ITCP work?
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From page 198... ...
See Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, 2000, Making IT Better: Expanding Information Technology Research to Meet Society's Needs, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 4Artists have their own vision and agenda, which often does not coincide with what someone else wants or needs to have made at a given point in time.
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From page 199... ...
, which are comparatively open to ITCP; and the observation that information technology research programs have provided limited and largely incidental support to date. There are no consistent data that support a precise analysis of relevant funding in the United States, let alone across countries.7 Major foreign-based activities that focus on ITCP appear to be components of national or regional leadership strategies abroad (often seen as competitive responses to U.S.
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SOURCES OF FUNDS Absent detailed data specific to ITCP,9 the funding potential for ITCP can be appreciated by examining the historic bases of funding for work in the arts, computer science, and other elements of IT R&D.~° Typical arts Arts funding is dwarfed by the funding for computer science and other IT-relevant research as one committee member put it, there is grants are in the "mysticism and longing on We part of artists when it comes to scientific funding." Typical arts grants are in the low five figures (using low five figures; data sets that begin at the $10,000 level) ; typical computer science grants are in the six figures.
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See National Endowment for the Arts and National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, 2002, "State Arts Agency Funding and Grant Making," National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, Washington, D.C., February. i5National Endowment for the Arts and National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, 2002, "State Arts Agency Funding and Grant Making." lain 1999, "state legislatures appropriated about $400 million in funding for the arts, while local governments spent in excess of $800 million." See National Endowment for the Arts, Center for Arts and Culture, 2001, America's Cultural Capital: Recommendations for Structuring the Federal Role, Art, Culture, and National Agenda series, Center for the Arts and Culture, Washington, D.C.
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Fecleral Funcling for the Arts The National Enclowments Most of the federal government's art spending—which exceeded Public arts $1.5 billion in 2001 supports major national organizations, which in turn award funding to other organizations and artists and cover their support in the own operating costs. Major national organizations include the NEA (and its organizational sister, the National Endowment for the Hu Uni Ed S a es inanities)
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24National Endowment for the Arts, [undated] , "NEA Fact Sheet: NEA at a Glance2001." Available online at |
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Moreover, the principle has become increasingly attractive to European countries during the past decade or so.29 The amount of support generated for the arts through tax incentives is generally not included in statistics on government funding for the arts, for, as a previously cited paper points out, "foregone revenues" are "notoriously difficult to measure precisely."30 Nevertheless, that paper reports that according to "the best estimates, indi26National Endowment for the Humanities, 2002, "Summary of Fiscal Year 2003 Budget Request." Available online at |
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Funcling by Private Philanthropy Funding for artistic endeavors is available from individuals, foundations large and small, and corporations in that orders and all shaped by tax policy.35 In addition to conventional arts support from corporations, Mere is at least some corporate support specifically for ITCP in academia. For example, the Media Lab at MIT receives about 80 percent of its funding from corporations, which provide support as members of a consortium that shares interests in any intellectual property arising from the Media Lab's activities.
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Consequently, private foundations' share of all private giving to the arts increased from less than 30 percent to about 35 percent.38 enclowments The economic downturn of 2001-2002, compounded by extraordinary demands for resources arising from the terrorist attacks of September and diminishing 11, 2001, appears to have constrained available resources, shrinking endowments and programs among established foundations and d~ minishing capacity for personal philanthropy.39 capacity for As one might guess, the allocation of grant dollars is concentrated in particular areas of the United States. In a 1998 study conducted by personal the Foundation Center, five states New York, California, Texas, Min nesota, and Michigan and the District of Columbia received about 54 philanthropy percent of art dollars and 52 percent of grants.40 The same report showed a decrease in the share of grant dollars controlled by the top 50 recipients, which declined from 32.1 percent (or 7.9 percent of all arts grants)
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From page 207... ...
For example, the Ford Foundation's Education, Media, Arts and Culture program recently initiated the New Directions/ New Donors for the Arts program, committing $42.5 million in challenge grants to 28 arts and cultural institutions and nearly quadrupling the foundation's annual arts appropriations.47 Foundation grants seem to be a significant source of support for generating, as well as providing access to, works of art, often emphasizing the value of art and cultural activities in building and strengthening communities. The AT&T Foundation, for example, emphasizes support for projects that "promote artistic expression or create net4~"The disproportionate concentration of support among a relatively few recipients characterizes foundation funding in many fields.
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For example, the Media Arts program of the lerome Foundation, which supports artists in New York City and Minnesota, focuses on providing grants to risky projects by individual emerging artists.50 Many of the resources provided by private foundations for individual artists are channeled through non-profit intermediaries that are focused on a specific domain. Consider the Warhol Foundation as an example.
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Among larger foundations, there appears to be some recognition of the importance of promoting creativity and expanding the uses of IT, but such foundations are just beginning to embrace IT as a theme.53 53See Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, 1998, Advancing the Public Interest Through Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) , White Paper, available online at |
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Corporate interactions are an important element of how those departments do business (e.g., personnel Interactions, consultancies, job placement for students and graduates, and so on) .55 Hence computer scientists often emerge from their education with a relatively positive view of corporations as employers and sources of support, whereas artists will generally not have comparable experiences as an integral part of their education.
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Fecleral Funcling for Information Technology Research It is well-known that the federal government has a long history of supporting IT research, which is largely computer science research (including computer engineering) plus some in sister fields such as electrical engineering.
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60Derived from National Science and Technology Council, 2002, Strengthening National, Homeland, and Economic Security: Networking and Information Technology Research and Development, FY 2003 Supplement to the President's Budget, July, the annual compendium of federally funded computer science research programs known informally as the "Blue Book." 6iNSF has begun to experiment with support for larger computer science research projects. The early 2000s have witnessed intensive reexamination of program emphases at DARPA, with significant changes in its support for computer science research beginning to unfold but uncertain as of this writing.
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Accordingly, ITCP work increases overall funding requirements on the arts side by introducing a need for hardware 62See |
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Even ITCP work of distinction, which has been recognized and awarded prizes, often meets that fate when 64Computer scientists, in turn, tend to complain that research funding budgets, by aggregating support for research per se with support for infrastructure, which often benefits other kinds of scientists, overstates what is available to them. Estate and regional economic development that features local investment in networking infrastructure can help educational and cultural institutions.
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Large-scale digital conversion is likely to incur significant financial costs, which most non-profits are not in a position to absorb.67 67See commissioned papers of the Art, Technology, and Intellectual Property project of the American Assembly, available online at |
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The early DARPA, mentioned above, is an oft cited example of grant makers willing to fund risky endeavors; the Information Sciences Program of a mid-20th-century sister agency, the Of rea es Office of Naval Research, just happened to be led by an individual 9 with strong arts interests, which had some effect on funding direc tions. A tendency toward risk aversion among grant makers can mili concern for ~TCP late against movement into new areas or new types of work processes.
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The IT elements have engendered mixed reactions among traditional arts funders, just as arts elements have perplexed traditional computer science funders. Risk aversion also arises among foundations.
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and the Digital Libraries Initiative (mentioned above) , featured strong internal champions at NSF, who worked with the relevant research communities; the third, Information Technology Re search (ITR)
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Also, with the possible exception of support from a research center, individual grants tend to provide only partial support for a computer science researcher or an artist. As a result, professionals who depend on grant support work to develop abased on Norman Metzger and Richard Zare, 1999, "Interdisciplinary Research, "From Belief to Reality," Science 283: 642-643.
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On the arts side, private philanthropic collaborations have already begun to nurture ITCP. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation has joined forces with the Ford Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts in exploring relevant issues.
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73The National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture ( |
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Other questions include the follow74The challenges of combining funding among private foundations and between NSF and private foundations are outlined in the CSTB white paper Advancing the Public Interest Through Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI)
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Mark Schuster, Informing Cultural Policy: The Research and Information Infrastructure, Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research, Center for Urban Policy Re search Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey. 77A consortium of foundations moved to address this practical problem by under writing the Center for Art and Culture (see |
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McCarthy and Elizabeth Heneghan Ondaatje, 2002, From Celluloid to Cyberspace: The Media Arts and the Changing Arts World, RAND, Santa Monica, Calif. 8°Public support for the arts among the nations of the world is almost as old as civilization itself.
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From page 226... ...
However, though constrained by available data sources, a comparison of direct government arts funding suggests a huge variation per capita, ranging from $6 in the United States to $46 in Canada and $85 in Germany. Data derived from National Endowment for the Arts, 2000, International Data on Government Spending on the Arts, Research Division Note #74, available online at |
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high-technology leadership.86 The German method for directing public funds to the arts is much more decentralized. Indeed, the German federal government has been described as "effectively barred" from cultural activities, a response to earlier times when government-supported cultural activities were used 86IRCAM's efforts to combine high modernist musical experimentalism with technology transfer to the French IT sector were fraught with contradictions and confusion, according to one ethnographic study.
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For example, the Canadian government's main means of supporting Me work of individual artists and arts organizations is the Canada Council for the Arts, which was created by an act of Parliament in 1957 and was funded initially by a $50 million endowment to "ensure the Council's complete independence of the government."89 Currently, however, in addition to support from various endowments, donations, and bequests, Me council receives the majority of its funding from Parliament in the form of an annual appropriation. ~ 2000-2001, the Canada Council made awards and grants amounting to $117 million;90 in April 2002, the council and the National Research Council (NRC)
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In 2002, the Association for Corporate Support of the Arts (Mecenat) broadened its definition of an arts event in the context of authorizing tax-deductible contributions to include media arts.95 92Meisel and Van Loon, 1987, "Cultivating the Bushgarden," p.
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97As of this writing the CANARIE project, e-content, is soliciting requests for projects that emphasize "cultural research, development and applications in areas such as architecture and design, film and video, 3D graphics, net and web art, digital music, digital photography, game design, graphic design, human/computer interface, and copyright/rights management tools; and feasibility studies, including consumer research/ testing of broadband cultural products and the monetization of content." See |
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See Canada's Leadership in Information and Communications Technologies, available online at |
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The IST Programme had a working budget of 3.6 billion euros (1998-2002) to achieve its goal of supporting IT research "within a single and integrated programme that reflects the convergence of information processing, communication, and media i05See A New System for Promoting Science and Technology in Japan, available online at |
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The RADICAL consortium three European media arts and cultural organizations engaged in a 2-year project issued a manifesto in fuly 2002 urging non-market support for transdisciplinary ITCP activity. Its recommendation that "specific support mechanisms be implemented to promote cross-disciplinary research platforms which explicitly include media arts and cultural organizations and creative practitioner-researchers," in the context of the rest of the document, raises questions about the depth and durability of official support for ITCP in Europe.~4 ii°See "Background" at |
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· Sofia, Bulgaria: InterSpace Media Arts Center. Funding was used to support new-media projects and to showcase projects generated by the media lab in an effort to foster sustainable growth in the independent artistic scene in Bulgaria and to encourage artistic experimentation with new media.
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