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Dr Tony Mhonda Art Zone
A rich cultural and artistic life exists in cyberspace. Although visual art may be a small part of the internet’s vast array of information, many artists in the developed world and those isolated by distance and geography have made the internet their virtual gallery.
Given Zimbabwe lacks professionally run art galleries to cater for the thousands of artists in the multitude of artistic media and the numerous creative arts graduates in the half dozen or so universities and polytechnics now visible in the country, as well as those intuitive artists in the rural areas, a suitable alternative to market ones work would be the internet.
Today many professional artists with access to computers are going on line to display their work and to market themselves.
Museums and galleries are connecting to the internet to display digitised collections.
However, in order to achieve this, artists along with everyone else, need to understand the internet’s potential and open up to its possibilities for new art forms, new modes of marketing, new channels for networking and personal expression.
But what exactly is the internet?
The internet computer system originated in the early 1970s when the US government’s Department of Defence needed a long distance communication system capable of exchanging data simultaneously and securely over a worldwide matrix By the 1980s it became a tool for scientific research, linking the National Science Foundation’s research and development networks worldwide.
Since then, the net has had a huge surge of efficacy and expansion. The rate of growth in the last quarter of 1994 for the entire internet system was 66 percent commercial and 33 percent organisational. By 1995 there were 30 million users recorded on the net, and an estimated one billion who expected to be linked by the turn of the century in 2000.
For artists in Zimbabwe, Springstone Art Gallery, in Avondale, run by Michelina Andreucci, was the first cyber gallery in the country that launched 145 contemporary Zimbabwean sculptors and their images across the internet worldwide in the mid-1990s, so successful was the site that ZimTrade and many trade organisations in the Sadc and G15 country membership used it as an example and training tool. Part of the internet’s vast appeal is its decentralisation. No one owns it, and no one controls it.
All members and associates join on equal footing, and what sets you or your organisation apart is defined by the substance and quality of your communication or post and the superiority of your product.
One example of the internet’s egalitarian access is the World Wide Web, a system of links designed to simplify access to options on the internet.
The most popular applications or functions central to net life are e-mail, information browsing, research news groups, and lately blogs and Facebook.
E-mail (electronic mail) is the internet’s postal system; here a user can send electronic letters to anyone in the world with an e-mail address.
Due to its ease of management and speed, e-mail has become one of the internet’s most popular applications, despite the latter-day applications of Skype, Twitter, etc. still to take root and spread in Zimbabwe.
For artists, learning about addresses and sites is more than just learning the language of computers; it is about understanding the Net Anatomy through the language. Most languages for internet application divide addresses by category or location.
Other applications sometimes called servers have their own specific addressing systems. Mosaic sites also known as websites, use a URL (Universal Resource Language) address prefix “Http; //”.
The World Wide Web runs on a server application called http (hypertext transfer protocol), therefore the “http” prefix indicates to the user that it is a website.
For artists there is no easy way to comprehend the net’s vastness. Language is being developed practically and consistently on a daily basis in order to articulate and execute the functions within this new electronic media called cyberspace.
The most practical way to learn is to spend time with a knowledgeable colleague and discover the vast potential in cyberspace today by surfing various art sites and discourses in your area of interest.
The world over artists along with everyone else, are still experimenting and getting to know and understand the internet’s potential and opening up to its possibilities for new art forms, marketing, networking and personal expression.
It is also important to know how safe and secure you and your work are, which of course is verbal fodder for another installation of Art Zone.
For now, understanding the internet’s functionality is the first step that artists must take in order for them to exploit the internet as a valuable artist’s tool for education, promotion, marketing and research.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Post-Modern Art Theory and a Doctorate in Business Administration( DBA) in Post-Colonial Art and Heritage Studies. He holds a Law and Art Diploma from Georgetown University, Washington DC, and worked with WALA (Washington Area Lawyers Association). He worked as an intern in Psychology of Art and Remedial Art Therapy at the Lafayette School of Art Therapy for the Mentally Handicapped Children, in New Orleans, USA. He also studied law and photography at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC, USA. He is a practising artist, art critic, author, designer and corporate image consultant.
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