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Virtual Clusters: Creative Industries in the Digital Realm

Virtual Clusters

As technology powers the new global networked economy, it also puts new demands on corporate and private endeavours. For many years, strains such as these have been successfully controlled with the formation of industry clusters: a method of optimising production by localising into regional agglomerations.

Like organisms in a biosphere, these companies feed off each other’s knowledge and talents… They compete, often vigorously, for market share, employees and resources. However, they also rely on each other. Acting together, these companies generate skills in and knowledge of their particular sector… The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. (Witzler 2001)

By grouping together in this way, businesses achieve a kind of critical mass wherein they benefit from optimal competitive conditions and information trade: integral prerequisites for growth and innovation. With the continual acceleration of globalisation and the progressive movement from markets to networks – substituting property rights for access rights (Rifkin 2001 p43), atoms for bits (Negroponte); clustering is no longer enough.

The complement to this local clustering is to use the structure of the networked economy to create new online ‘business ecosystems’ (Moore, 1997, p.11) or virtual clusters. As Preissl (2003 p.2) states, “The globalisation of companies and markets and the specific requirements of innovation processes require the expansion of cluster concepts towards virtual dimensions.” This is particularly true in fields that are concentrated about fast moving technologies such as that of multimedia and computer generated imagery or CGI. In these fields, the Internet is often used to set up virtual clusters that consist of many different affiliate companies and community web sites. This enables companies to spark new ideas via information trade and to keep in touch with the consumers; many of who are active participants within the wider creative milieux surrounding the virtual cluster.

One such virtual cluster is the ‘deviantART cluster’ that I will refer to throughout this essay. Centred around the emergent field of digital art – imagery created wholly through the use of computers; this cluster provides involved companies with enormous amounts of feedback and other resources, both realised and potential. With ties to online-studies universities, industry leaders in software and imagery production and an extensive creative milieu of artists and critics, the deviantART cluster resembles a virtual ‘Silicon Valley’. Consisting of approximately nine leading community sites, hundreds of supplementary communities and independent professionals’ websites, and a broad range of software development companies (see fig 1), “The resulting cluster uses interaction as the constitutive element of clusters, not location.” (Preissl (2003, p3). With enough users on deviantART alone to dwarf the inner-city population of Amsterdam, and a user growth rate that continually exceeds infrastructure supply, this interaction has created an easily accessible, international milieu of staggering proportions. What’s more is that it is an accurate reflection of the most advanced of present web technologies as well as an icon of interdisciplinary collaborative achievement.

Networking and Technology as a Catalyst

Without constant input and exchange there can be no innovation; something often sponsored by the clashing of different ideas. In many ways technology acts as a catalyst within the creative industries by providing the networking ‘firepower’ for information and cultural exchange to enhance the creative flow.

From dramatically changing business and political climates to grammatically changing spelling and sentence structures, particularly via short message service (SMS) texting, the Internet and wireless technologies are already transforming the world‘s countries and cultures in unprecedented ways…catapulting millions of consumers into the network society irrespective of decades-old last-mile problems. (Rao 2002 p10)

Global networking with such open access (even for the developing world that Rao speaks of) promotes the celebration of cultural diversity and functions as a forum for experimental movements, therefore stimulating change and growth within the creative industries and preventing cultural stagnancy. It’s no surprise then that the Internet, the largest and most powerful active network, has such a profound effect, providing opportunities for collaboration and information exchange on a previously unimagined scale. In this way, “Information technology can be seen as an enabler which is essential for efficient functioning of co-operation schemes between distant entities” (Priessl 2003, p3). Put simply: Wide networks such as the Internet make international organisation run as smoothly as local ventures.

For the creative practitioner, this has an enormous effect on the way they live and work. No longer limited to the market and resources around them, someone in the most remote location now has access to and all the advantages of the global network. They are able to work for companies and to collaborate with others half the world away without travel or great expense. What’s more is that with new networking technologies a plethora of activities can not only be organised, but actually carried-out simultaneously despite distance between locations. Being able to work in this way, as though working side-by-side, is an enormous aid for global collaborators. Also technological infrastructure now provided by the Internet enables these collaborations to go far beyond ‘multi-media’ and to form hybrid media in their own rights such as web design or computer animation. Because of this advancement in technology, people are able to create truly interdisciplinary enterprises based solely in cyber-space, a potential that will surely continue to grow as the web moves past it’s ‘nomadic’ stage (Businessline 2000). With increased access to and awareness of widespread collaborations, more and more creative practitioners are getting involved; making such projects a formidable new force within the industry.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration

The creative industries are fundamentally interdisciplinary. That is, most activities which are performed in the realm of the creative industries demand the use of multiple sub-sectors of the industry or ‘disciplines’. Because of this, interdisciplinary collaboration - working in teams of people who’s creative specialties differ - plays a large role in any work one does within the creative industries. The reason for this is quite simple: as Leadbeater states “Creativity stems from the interaction of a diversity of viewpoints, disciplines and outlooks, in which ideas are abducted from one area and transplanted to another.” (2000, p239-240) and the results of such interaction can be quite dynamic. When many artists from a diverse range of creative industries fields or disciplines work together in order to harness their individual ideas and combine them into alternative representations and applications, the resulting outcomes far exceed what could have been achieved by the sum of individuals. Indeed, as was mentioned earlier, the outcomes of such enterprises can be extraordinarily dynamic, sometimes warranting entirely new classifications of media or creating what has come to be called ‘convergent’ products.

Such a product is one that supersedes its individual classification as an item of media, telecommunications or computing. As Barr states, “These formerly discrete functions have now tended to come together… in a process called convergence” (2000 p22). An excellent example of convergent activity and also interdisciplinary collaboration can be seen in the craft of ‘skinning’. Skinning is an art form that emerged with the advent of Internet community groups of graphic designers, artists and coders collaborating with software developers (such as deviantART with Nullsoft) to create the ability to customise the look and feel of a computer program. The product of this merger is one that is being adopted even by software giant Microsoft’s Windows operating system in order to customise the way each user’s personal computer interacts with them.

Individualisation and Customisation

The consumer demand for individualised products and services that appeared during the early 1970’s and has continued to grow rapidly over the past thirty years is one that was dismissed at first as unrealistic. Twenty years later, argues Pine, it was the new frontier; “Today, it is the new imperative for businesses”(Pine 2003 p5). From the cut and colour of your clothes to the language on your letterhead and everything in between, Stan Davis’s ‘Mass Customization’ (“Future Perfect” 1987) and the emerging ‘DiY (Do it Yourself) Culture’ has replaced the crumbling ethos of the industrial age where you could have any colour car you liked (as long as it was black).

The growing availability of knowledge combined with improved individual capabilities for processing and sharing information, is raising the expectations of citizens – there is a growing tendency among people to expect tailor-made, customised responses. (European Commission 2003)

In no other region is this expectation as evident as in digital technologies.

It can be no surprise that customisation and DiY culture, of which skinning is a noteworthy embodiment, is particularly advanced in the digital media such as the Internet. Wether it be deciding what your ‘Homepage’ is or completely customising the way your computer and web browser function; individualisation and customisation are becoming so common in the virtual realm they are often taken for granted. Examples of the spread of this digital mass customisation can be seen in the colour choices and various user icons available to users of Microsoft’s Windows XP: an operating system that registers and calls it’s users by name.

The main reason mass customisation has taken so strongly to digital media, particularly web media, is because of its inherent accessibility to relevant data. Since the skins or themes that change the appearance of software are so simple to display and distribute on the net, the range is extensive beyond count; deviantART alone has over 12000 skins and themes to choose from for hundreds of applications.

This enables Internet users to ‘aestheticise’ their computers, essentially allowing them to choose the way they interact with the Internet and thus the rest of the world. To use the example quoted by Nagaraj in Businessline (2002) “If you are a football fanatic as well as a car buff, you can use the football theme when you are interested in football, and when you feel like checking out the latest news and views on cars, you just switch the skin to cars.” In this way, Florida’s view of the creative class can be seen in all who individualise their digital workspace; “…a fundamental characteristic of life today is that we strive to create out own identities. It is this creation and re-creation of the self, often in ways that reflect our creativity, that is a key feature of the creative ethos” (2002, p7). Inevitably, this demand for personalised software has also spread into the realm of promotion and advertising, spawning things such as ‘The Hulk skin for Windows Media Player’ or ‘The Lord of the Rings theme for Windows’ therefore transforming, for some, what were once hobbies into paying jobs.

Conclusion

With the ever-increasing rise of the creative class and advances is networking technology; the creative industries are expanding into the virtual realm as new virtual clusters subsequently emerge to foster and support the widest range of global collaborations ever staged. As this happens, convergence, individualisation and customisation have found a perfectly flexible media in which to blossom and expand globally across the networks of the world. From the way your operating system looks today, to the ways your computer will interact with you and the rest of the world tomorrow; the creative industries have hit the virtual realm with great impact. Where things go from here is anyone’s guess.

Bibliography

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