 A Guide to Good Practice in Collaborative Working Methods and New Media Tools Creation Chapter 4 - Creative / Technology Synergy in Research and Development for the Information Society Technologies Programme Technology and the arts Technology has always played an important part in the arts. Even some of the earliest forms of art music, dance, painting, sculpture involved technology in some form to create instruments, colours for paints and dresses, tools and methods to transform wood and stone. In the design arts, such as architecture and industrial design, technology and art go hand in hand. New methods and materials open the way for new structural possibilities, for buildings that not only look different but also create new environments in which human activities of all sorts can take place. This was as true of the Parthenon in Athens as it is of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa. New materials, such as plastics, enable products to be lighter, tougher, more colourful. Technology can create entirely new possibilities for artists to communicate with the public. The camera enabled first photography, and then film and television, to become vehicles for popular culture to be disseminated on a global scale. Communication between the technologist and the artist is a two-way street. Often technology is well-known in the industry for which it was created, but is less well-known in other sectors, whether industrial or cultural. The potential of a technology for use in artistic expression may not be at all evident to the technologist, who is unaware of the barriers the artist finds in existing materials or methods. Once the artist has seen that potential, s/he may suggest changes to the technology that in turn open new commercial possibilities for the technologist. The interactivity that computers enable opened the possibility of taking games to a new dimension. In turn the game developers showed a need for better colour and definition in computer displays, and better sound facilities, which once developed led to expanded use of such "multimedia" computers in other applications. Creative technology and the entertainment industry The ability to cheaply reproduce and distribute art that has developed over the last two hundred years has enabled an industry to develop around the artist that was impossible in earlier periods. These industries have affected the furniture maker and potter as much as the actor and author. The mass entertainment industry is the most important development. The recording and film/TV industries enabled people to obtain entertainment whenever and wherever they wanted, but they also created new jobs and great wealth in doing it. Part of that economic development lay in related technical industries that provided specialist products and services. Film processing, camera development, electronic products for viewing and listening all added to the success of the modern entertainment industry. The communication channels created also led to the rise of the advertising industry, particularly TV advertising. While the means of access, such as TV sets and record players, became both cheaper and technically better, the creation of the material became more industrialised and centralised. The investment required to create films and TV programmes increased, in part because high quality material raised expectations and demand for top quality grew. Recently there has been a shift in the economics of mass entertainment, or at least a potential shift. It has taken some time for the value of computers in entertainment to be recognised, and longer for the cost/benefit ratio to reach a level where the possibility of a disruptive shift has become evident. The place of RTD in innovation RTD (research, technological development and demonstration) is an early stage in the development of new products and services. In the past it has not been applied in all industries; its main home has been in industries that depend on scientific and engineering expertise, such as manufacturing, chemicals, transport, etc. RTD has not been a well-organised activity in general in the arts. RTD helps achieve the progress that, it is generally accepted, advanced economies need if their citizens are to lead happy, healthy and productive lives. There are four principal directions in which RTD can help progress in a market economy: 1. Identify how technology can create innovation and improvement; The methods of RTD apply as much to art as to other sectors. This is recognised by the entertainment industry, which invests in new technology on a large scale. Indeed the pattern of mergers in the entertainment industry, which led to consumer electronics companies like Sony integrating vertically and acquiring entertainment companies, is evidence of the trend. Technology in itself has little appeal. New products and services, whether they are intended for use in business, public service or by the individual consumer, have to either be an improvement or satisfy some previously unmet need (innovation). The improvement or innovation will fail if it is not accepted by the group at which it is aimed. This failure may be due to price; it may be that the inventor or developer has misjudged the requirements; or it may be that the product or service is poorly designed. Price failures may be very complex. The demand for the product may exist, but not at a price that is acceptable to the producers compared with the rate of return they can achieve on other investments. The price may be acceptable to the consumer, but the service may require an investment in time that the consumer is not prepared to make. Investment in RTD can help answer these questions and avoid wasted investment in unwanted products. The reason RTD has not played an important role in the creative side of the entertainment business and in art outside of the mass entertainment market, so far, is probably that failure or success has been seen to lie in the art itself rather than in the technology used. Theatre critics do not usually fault a play on its use of lighting or special effects, but rather on the acting or the script. The role the computer is beginning to play in the arts, and in particular the growing role of new media and related technologies, may change all that. While video games are judged to a large extent on the quality of the game play, the "script", they also need to be up-to-date as regards quality of graphics, sound and speed of execution. The same is true of art or advertising websites, where artistic quality is given short shrift if the time to load a page is too long. Public funding of RTD and the European Union Framework programmes Economists see RTD as a major factor in the success or failure of growth in advanced economies. There are a number of reasons for this. If an organisation creates a more effective mousetrap (for want of a better example), then the manufacturers and distributors of older mousetraps will soon be laying off workers. But RTD also leads to innovative products that may replace others through consumers substituting their use of time. TV certainly led to a reduction in the time consumers spent on other leisure activities, as videogames have done more recently. Successful RTD leads to the generation of value through the licensing of the technological knowledge itself. The citizens of advanced countries expect public services to be comparable with those in other countries; if they are not they will change the government to one that will improve them. The complexity of services such as health and education means that to advance, they need to carry out RTD as much as commercial service companies. By comparing the level of spending on RTD in different economies, European governments have come to the conclusion that at both national and regional levels European companies are failing to invest enough in RTD. Their response has been to increase funding of public programmes of RTD in particular subject areas. The European Union has over the last fifteen or so years developed a mechanism for funding continent-level RTD programmes through what are known as Framework Programmes. These are renewed every four years, with a new set of priorities and activities. At present the fifth Framework Programme is finishing and the sixth beginning. The majority of the action in the programmes consists of consortia of organisations from different countries putting forward proposals for RTD projects that are competitively evaluated, and the winners receive a 50% grant towards the cost of the project. In practice not all costs are recoverable (notably that of preparing proposals), so the funding meets less than 50% of costs in most cases. In addition the administrative load on the project can be high compared with a self-funded project, which also lowers the value of the support. On the other hand it can be expensive to get funding from venture capitalists, banks or other sources and the researchers may not then own all their results. The interface between the programme and the organisations putting projects together is complex and bureaucratic. The Commission issues "calls for proposals" at approximately six-monthly intervals, with a set of guidelines on the areas considered to be of priority and details of how to put a proposal together and the criteria for evaluation. The proposals are then evaluated by external experts, and the Commission and proposers of approved projects then negotiate a contract. The time from the issue of the call to the start of a project is of the order of twelve months. During the execution of the project there is monitoring and review of progress and projects have to provide detailed justification for all costs claimed. The processes involved are difficult for small companies to understand and can be very time consuming. In the past the arts have not played a large part in the projects funded. Two major explanations for this situation can be put forward. First, the programmes have in the past been directed mainly at traditional industries or at high-tech industries. Secondly, the aim was primarily to keep industry competitive rather than to aim at broader economic objectives such as increasing employment and improving life. The idea of the "new economy" and the impact of shifts in demand between different sectors led in the late 90s to a different emphasis in the RTD programmes, away from technology for technology's sake to the efficient application of technology. The programmes were also oriented to support for other Community policies in areas such as health and education. As a result there was a re-orientation from a situation where the only justification for expenditure on art and entertainment that was acceptable for public funding was cultural, to one where the importance of the sector as an employer was recognised, as was the value added to innovation by creative people. The Framework Programme experience The fifth Framework Programme explicitly recognised the possibility of RTD focussing on artistic expression. In earlier programmes there had been projects that dealt with multimedia software and hardware that could be used for artistic work, particularly in design, but the focus had been on developing products, on standardisation and on industrial exploitation. Support for the production of artistic works had been covered in programmes such as MEDIA (training, production projects, distribution and promotion) run by the cultural side of the European Commission (DG for Education and Culture). The Framework Programmes are organised around priority areas and in the fifth programme the main areas were: a) quality of life and management of living resources, The new media RTD was covered in the Information Society part of the programme, which in turn was divided in the main into four areas: a) systems and services for the citizen, In addition there were work areas with a special focus that changed as the programme evolved (cross-programme actions). Recently (in late 2001) a special focus area was devoted to technology platforms for cultural and arts creative. The objectives for projects were: "To develop future generic platforms and tools for improving creative expression and facilitating access to inspirational material for artistic and cultural content creation. Applications include creative work in media production, cultural assets exploitation, artistic design, and facilitate contemporary arts and performance. Work will take advantage of and develop technologies for virtual, augmented and mixed realities, new displays, and multisensory and multimodal interfaces. Proposals should address medium- to long-term exploratory work with an emphasis on the discovery of novel ways to master traditional and new media, novel forms of creative and artistic expression, and novel forms of content, ultimately leading to a new 'digital' expression." (The wording is typical of this type of document). The results of this call have not yet been published (they are still being evaluated), so the success of projects chosen is not currently available for this specific action. Information about the projects that have been accepted and their progress and results is not easily accessible. In principal the main source of information is the CORDIS website (<www.cordis.lu>) of the Community Research and Development Information Service. A database of all projects is held there and it is certainly the first place to look. However, it takes some time for information to appear and there is not a great deal of detail about projects. The names of projects found there can be entered into a web search engine to discover further information from sites belonging to the project or its participants, or on secondary sites associated with the programme, such as the El.pub website (<www.elpub.org>) that the INFORM project publishes. Some older projects (from earlier programmes), which have registered results, can be found on PROSOMA (<www.prosoma.lu>). A search on the word "artist" finds 14 projects (from the 1997-1998 period), which include: ARTIST Bringing video games to life "A new tool for virtual reality and games development reduces the cost and time-to-market for high quality animation products." CATS Computer aided theatrical score "The CATS project is intended to develop a cost-effective, interactive, 3D multimedia system aimed at rationalizing and completely renewing the pre-production and production processes of all sorts of performances in the theatrical, television, cinema and advertising industries." MATCH Multimedia authoring environment for children "MATCH (Multimedia Authoring environmenT for Children) is a microworld-oriented tool, especially designed for children between ages 8-14. It is a powerful, user-friendly, unified, transparent and open-ended environment capable of providing the student, the teacher and the developer with authoring, multimedia, networking and collaboration facilities." eRENA Electronic arenas for culture, performance, art and entertainment "eRENA (Electronic Arenas for Culture, Performance, Art and Entertainment) focusses on inhabited information spaces to support new forms of cultural experience, spanning arts, performance and entertainment. We refer to these kinds of spaces as electronic arenas. In eRENA, long-term research is channelled into a range of 'spatial technologies', especially multi-user virtual environments, coupled to new forms of artistic content and an understanding of social interaction." COSEPPA Co-operative server for exalting and promoting plastic arts "COSEPPA demonstrates the feasibility of a commercially viable electronic platform directly managed by individual artists to promote and trade their artworks. COSEPPA is implementing a pilot for the electronic commerce and trading of artworks with the objective of fostering co-operation between individual artists." VISCITY Architectural visualisation of the Edinburgh old town "VISCITY uses HPCN to generate animated sequences of buildings using a computer model commissioned by Edinburgh Old Town Renewal Trust (EOTRT), an Edinburgh-based organisation with conservation interests in the Old Town. The resulting images are life-like and therefore believable and appealing to an audience." BESTMM Methods and tools to improve software quality for multimedia products "BESTMM is dedicated to best practice in multimedia production. Although the project is initiated by the objective of software quality improvement, the topic covers the larger field of optimisation of the overall process of multimedia production, in terms of methods and tools." The list gives a fair idea of the types of projects that were being undertaken. There are projects concerned with the tools and methods required to create productions in new media. There are projects to support artistic development in special groups such as children and the handicapped. Projects support the workflow in professional artistic and entertainment environments, together with standardisation, distribution and other commercial aspects. There are projects that are concerned with cultural heritage, as a source of professional artistic inspiration, as part of the educational process, and for public interest and consumption in tourist and other situations. Projects in the fifth framework programme have followed similar lines and a search of CORDIS shows projects that include: ATELIER "To develop an understanding of how materials in different media and the built environment can be interwoven with technology to create an inspirational learning environment; To develop architectural design principles for an open configurable physical space in support of inspiration and learning." ENREVI "The ENREVI project proposes new development for the enhancement of real-time video of real scenes with real-time rendering of 3D objects. Emphasis is put on economically affordable solutions." ESTAGE "In adapting the new and advanced basic technology for information repositories available through the results of the FP5 project IRAIA, the objective of this proposal on take-up addresses a new service for archiving, publishing, and disseminating puppetry productions." CHARISMATIC "will develop essential technologies enabling theatrical (audience group) enjoyment of high fidelity virtual environments, populated by intelligent virtual humans. The project aims to boost introduction of advanced image and display technology in Europe's cultural heritage and associated tourist industries, and thereby stimulate growth in those industries." EASYCRAFT "[T]he EASYCRAFT e-commerce platform for SMEs in the craft sector Ö will constitute a virtual collaborative environment supporting the complete value chain and introducing regional craft business communities to the global digital economy." TIM - main objective is "to offer to visually impaired children of various levels of psychomotor development the possibility to play computer games in an autonomous way. TIM proposes to develop an adapting tool allowing Ö design [of] high quality computer games using a tactile and audio interface from existing contents." RIMM "The sophisticated motor skills developed over many years by an instrumentalist will be applied to the control of high performance computers and software - a technological development of an acoustic instrument to produce a hyper-instrument, enabled by new technologies and controlled by multi-parametric human interaction." PAPERLESS "will design and evaluate an advanced animation environment based on the combination of user-friendly software tools integrated with an innovative interaction device." VISIONS "aims at developing a multi-platform Virtual Reality software product dedicated to the virtual prototyping and authoring of various forms of stories. The virtual prototype of a story will be used for its full-life management, from the authoring to the production phases." Conclusions The entry of the computer and digital content into the realm of art and entertainment is creating new links between the artist and the technologist. The funding of this interaction can come partly from public funding of RTD projects. The European Union programmes are one of the sources of such funding and are extending this funding to a wide range of artistic areas. Is this sufficient to keep European artists competitive in new media with their counterparts in the US and other countries? The large media companies in Europe - organisations like the TV companies and media organisations - are well represented in the programme. The new media research departments that have grown up in universities and research organisations like Frauenhofer (Germany) and INRIA (France) are also evident. Technical media companies from either the software side or publishing, such as Giunti Multimedia (Italy), play an important part. The group that is poorly represented is the small creative companies, and indeed individuals, who are at the heart of some of the smaller scale artistic enterprises that often create the most innovative projects. The administrative burden of taking part in the programme is definitely a barrier to micro-enterprises taking part, as it is to organisations that require limited funding, but quickly. This is not only a problem for the European Commission; the member states have the same problems, as do some private financing initiatives. What is required is a change from the attitude that "This is public money, so every cent has to be carefully accounted for," which is defensible when the multimillion-euro projects of large corporations, publicly funded research organisations and universities are concerned, to something closer to "Here is a strictly limited pot of money, do what you have proposed with it," accounted on a result basis rather than bean counting. The Commission has discussed this approach but has never actually found a way to implement it. Is the next Framework Programme likely to achieve this? Unfortunately the signs are not good. The sixth programme aims to move away from small projects to large ones. There is a move to encourage the organisers of large projects and networks to involve a flexible collection of smaller organisations under the umbrella of their project. The small organisations would change as the project progressed. However, it is not clear how the transparency necessary to make this work will be guaranteed, nor who will bear the administrative costs within the project that this participation turnover will inevitably entail. It may be that some new players need to emerge. One or two creative ateliers, with support from national governments, industry and private funding, could form a strong enough base to put projects together that would attract Commission funding. They would form a counter-weight to the powerful national technical R&D groups. Like those groups, they should be able over time to spin off independent entities that are self-sustaining. In the US, such groups have tended to start up in technical organisations, for example the MIT Media Lab, which have easier access to industrial funding. Perhaps in Europe there is sufficient artistic impetus for independent development. The question is, where will the money come from? G.Stephenson - continue to CH 5: Project Management: the second key to trust and success in creative projects - return to the table of contents |
