{"id":346,"date":"2019-05-06T05:22:08","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T21:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/?p=346"},"modified":"2019-05-06T05:22:08","modified_gmt":"2019-05-05T21:22:08","slug":"social-media-a-complete-toolkit-for-the-success-of-visual-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/2019\/05\/06\/social-media-a-complete-toolkit-for-the-success-of-visual-artists\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media: A complete toolkit for the success of visual artists."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Abstract: <\/strong>For this conference paper, I have chosen the stream of social media to analyze how artists can succeed digitally. I will discuss about the three tools that artists can use to have an impact on social media: knowledge, community and promotion. Social media can help in the learning process of the artist through engagement, shares and tutorials. \u00a0The communities created though social networks are crucial entry points for a better advancement of the artist. Furthermore, I will also talk about how the artist can go in a proper promotion of his work on more art oriented social network platforms. Through this discussion, I will also highlight issues that visual artists can come across during their promotional process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art theorists, dealers and museum curators are believed to exhibit the necessary expertise acquired through lifelong learning and experience, and these traditional gatekeepers have declared what constitutes as \u2018good\u2019 versus \u2018bad\u2019 art. However, new media platforms have allowed for a participatory culture which appears to be challenging the top-down art evaluations (Arora & Vermeylen, 2011).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media regroups several online platforms\nwhich are linked to each other. Each platform has several common features that\nforms part of the day to day routines of each individual. The world is connected\nand people nowadays have the capacity to create their digital footprint.\nEveryone is visible and is willing to be part of a bigger community. When it\ncomes to artists, this visibility generated by social media becomes crucial.\nSocial media has an important impact on the success of any artist. Social media\ncan be considered as a tool kit to become popular. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are 3 main tools that will help the\nvisual artists develop and succeed: Knowledge, communities and promotion. For\nmany independent productions, fan engagement on social media remains a way in\nwhich content creators can create awareness about their work through directly\ninteracting with fandom (Chin, 2016). Therefore, the goal for an artist to\nsucceed is to seduce existing online art communities to create his own fandom.\nAll the communities, in social media, have the ability to judge whether an\nartist is worth following. Each likes count, thus the artist needs to become\nmore than just an artist. The key is to become a good content creator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With globalization, learning has become\neasier. People have access to large amount of information and can go beyond\nideas of their own cultures. Within the structure of social media, individuals\nare also able to share their knowledge in any field of interest. This knowledge\nis then discussed, argued, updated or remediated. Participatory culture has\ncreated an accelerated process for learning things, because content is\navailable at any time and in different forms. Agim Poshka (citing Shirky &\nPink, 2014) refers to \u201cthe great spare time revolution\u201d, he affirms that before\nsharing required people to be in the same place at the same time and that\nnowadays, sharing ideas can happen anytime, anywhere. Whether they are poking\nthrough Twitter streams on Smartphone\u2019s before the morning bell rings, reading\nblog entries on iPads while sitting in waiting rooms, or extending\nconversations started on e-conferences on laptops while unwinding after a long\nday of work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, these social media platforms can\nsurely contribute to an artist development. Pinterest, for example, is an open\nspace for discoveries. The pins are distributed in various themes for a better\nsearch experience. Each pin leads to useful websites across the web. The fact\nthat all information is already gathered together, under the same theme,\ndecreases research work and optimizes the amount of time for learning.\nPinterest is also very visual, hence, very adequate for visual artists since\nthey tend to be sensitive to image. The search process and learning, therefore,\nbecomes straightforward. Visual data provide an essential entry point into the\nphenomenology of platform vernaculars that captures their storytelling\ncapacities, affective rhythms, and publics, beyond engagement metrics or purely\ntextual content which are easier to analyze at scale (Pearce et al., 2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apart from the facilities of research on\nsocial network, there is also the aspect of learning for free. Pages like DRAWING PENCILS<\/a> on Facebook offers lots of\nvideo step by step tutorials. On the page, each tutorials showcases the artist,\nVeri Apriyatno, specialized in pencil drawing. Apriyatno regularly posts his\nartworks in the photo gallery and promotes other artist\u2019s work. He also posts\nvideos of other artists that influences him. There is a large amount of drawing\ntechniques being displayed on the page and the artist is really willing to\ncontribute his skills to his audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Communities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being part of a community online will help the\nartist forge, its interest and influences. These interconnected Internet\ntechnologies allow new opportunities for user participation and collaboration\nsimply because they are implemented across so many technological devices and\nused in such a variety of ways… artists can present new projects, they also\nmay become collaborators and managers (Garland, 2013). Through the\nparticipation process, the artist can assess his work. Any artist can post his\nartwork in art groups and get feedback though comments. The feedbacks will help\nthe artist to adjust himself with the critics of his community.  A good example is, the fluid art movement on\nFacebook. Fluid art is basically a style where the artist plays with and\ncombine fluids to create patterns on canvas. In private groups, artists discuss\nabout techniques and trends affiliated to fluid art. There are often beginners\nwho post photos of their work in progress to get tips from other members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Communities in social media is a great process\nfor the development of an artists. It brings new perspectives to the artist and\noften give highlights for new updates. Artists can keep in touch with new\ntrends and inspiring events only by going through their different online\ncommunities. Moreover, online communities act like a collective library with\ndifferent entry points who can bring the artist to new spaces. Audiences are\nviewed as active participants who \u201cwork for the text\u201d (Milner, 2009) and are\nwilling to labor freely for non-monetary gains such as social connections with\nother fans and deeper engagement with the texts themselves (as cited in Massanari,2014).\nIt brings all the whole concept of participatory culture into action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Promotion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After going through his learning process, the\nartist is then ready to act as a content creator online. His aim must be to\nunderstand all the features of social media; it can help him in the promotion\nof his work. This is where storytelling comes into action. The goal in\npromotions is to create the audience engagement. All social networks sites are\nframed for continuous promotion. Artist can easily post their artworks on\nInstagram to become popular. However, several social media only give artists\nopportunity to post their work as amateurs without any involvement with\nprofessional networks. Yet, there are also specialized social networks that are\nframed for visual artists who seeks to pursue an art career. These networks can\neasily connect with popular social media network to enhance the visibility of\nthe artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, Behance.net, is made for artists\nwho are ready to promote themselves as professional. The website is linked to\nvarious platforms and tools that will forge the artist\u2019s career. The artist can\ncreate his own visual portfolio according to his visual art field, talk about\nhis art and connect to other artists. Two interesting aspect of Behance are its\nCreative tools, and School and organization pages. The creative tool page,\npromotes a variety of software for visual artist to enhance their creativity\nand learn about graphic designing. The school and organization pages connect\nthe future professional artist to join art schools\u2019 networks and follow student\nportfolios. Behance is really a professional guide for future visual artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After setting his professional network visual\nartist will still have to establish a social network plan to increase his\nvisibility. Online sharing opens up new social possibilities, new kinds of\nnetworks and new forms of distributed creativity and collaboration (Meikle,\n2016). As a good content creator an artist need to be aware of the features\nthat would help him succeed on social media. Since social media are very\nvisual, it is already an advantage for artists. The point is to know on which\nfeature to lay attention in order to get the audience engagement. Instagram is\none of the most powerful visual social media worldwide and is surely adequate\nfor a visual artist promotion. It minimizes the amount of text in order to\nfocus the attention on images. The platform also has the collaborative and\nparticipation features crucial for a good promotion and engagement. Shares,\nlikes and comments are the three elements which can create a big change for\nvisual artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storytelling is the shutter button for the\npublic engagement. An artist should be able to tell a story through the\ndifferent social network platforms. It involves creating a new corpus of\nextensive stories that move beyond traditional storytelling and demand new\nterms of user participation as well as analysis (Schiller, 2018). Artists need\nto know how to give a different narrative to each aspect of their art. It is\nalso important to address the right platform.  Each social media platform has several unique\nfeatures. Visual artist should know how to deal with those unique features with\ntheir creativity. Before sharing his narrative, the artist should think about\nhis online identity and understand what to showcase online for a good\npromotion. A good transmedia framework for an artist can be: video tutorial on\nYouTube, posting his artwork on Instagram, creating a fan page on Facebook in\norder to share and discuss about latest art trends and promote offline\nexposition events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Issues<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media can act as tool kit for artists\nbut it also has limitations.  It is\nimportant that all artists understand the weakness of learning, collaborating\nand sharing on social networks. Firstly, in communities with a large number of\nmembers the effect that each individual has on the user profile is only a small\nportion of the collective community feedback. As the number of community\nmembers increases the collective profile tends to represent what is of interest\nto the community as a whole (Nanas et al., 2011).  Groups in social media tend to become one\nentity which merge acknowledging one common interest. This collaborative\nprocess can become a difficulty for artists who rely most of the time on social\nmedia for learning. Communities offer a large amount of information that often\nfocus on popular trends. If artists are really willing to go through a deeper\nlearning, they will still have to go through a filtering process. On Facebook,\ninformation can easily be filtered through tags however the relevance of the\ninformation may differ from the user\u2019s expectations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, UCC may have begun as a grassroots\nmovement not focused on monetary rewards, but monetization of UCC has been a\ngrowing trend (OECD, 2007). Promoting a work online may not lead to\nmonetization. If an artist is really willing to get paid by organizations or\nbrands, he should learn where to direct his work and know the preferences of\ncompanies, in order to see if it fits the artist\u2019s vision. The loss of\nuniqueness may also become an issue for the artist. When trying to create\ncontent online, artists may be influenced by trends in order to go viral and\nforgetting about their long term aims. \nOn the other side, artists can also copy other artists without any\nfurther remediation and this lack of creativity is surely not powerful enough\nfor an audience who longs for update and creativity. Copying other works may\nalso lead to copyright infringement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To conclude, Visual art is very dominant\nonline. It is clear that social media is a tool kit for promotion, learning and\ncollaboration. However, these online platforms can easily become saturated due\nto the large flow of information and the fact that a large amount of people\ngoes through process of promotion in the same field. Just like when looking for\na job, a visual artist needs to make the right choice and be continuously\ncreative in order to have a greater impact online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arora, P., & Vermeylen, F. (2011). THE END\nOF THE ART CONNOISSEUR? EXPERTS AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN THE VISUAL ARTS IN\nTHE DIGITAL AGE [Ebook]. Retrieved from https:\/\/www-tandfonline-com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/1369118X.2012.687392?scroll=top&needAccess=true<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chin, B. (2016). Social media, promotional\nculture, and participatory fandom. Public Relations and Participatory Culture:\nFandom, Social Media and Community Engagement [Ebook]. Retrieved from http:\/\/file:\/\/\/C:\/Users\/user\/Downloads\/TindallNatalieT_2016_2SocialMediaPromotion_PublicRelationsAndPar.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Massanari, A. L. (2014). Participatory\nCulture, Community, and Play. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang US. Retrieved May\n5, 2019, from https:\/\/www.peterlang.com\/view\/title\/22651<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meikle, G. (2016). Social Media\u202f:\nCommunication, Sharing and Visibility. New York: Routledge. Retrieved from\nRetrieved from http:\/\/search.ebscohost.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au\/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1166174&site=ehost-live<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nanas, N et al. (2011). Collective Information\nFiltering for Web Observatories. In P. Francq (Ed.), Collaborative Search and\nCommunities of Interest: Trends in Knowledge Sharing and Assessment (pp.\n164-181). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018\/978-1-61520-841-8.ch008<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OECD. (2007). Participative Web and\nUser-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking. Retrieved from https:\/\/doi-org.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au\/10.1787\/9789264037472-en<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pearce, W. (2018). Visual cross-platform\nanalysis: digital methods to research social media images [Ebook]. Retrieved\nfrom https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/1369118X.2018.1486871?scroll=top&needAccess=true<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poshka, A. (2014). Digital Culture and Social\nMedia versus the Traditional Education [Ebook]. Retrieved from http:\/\/nowadays.home.pl\/JECS\/data\/documents\/JECS=201=20=282014=29=20201-205.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schiller, M. (2018). Transmedia Storytelling:\nNew Practices and Audiences. In Christie I. & Van den Oever A. (Eds.),\nStories (pp. 97-108). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/j.ctv5rf6vf.10?refreqid=excelsior%3A09b431f294b5bdc2e3bcb00deba8e3be&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abstract: For this conference paper, I have chosen the stream of social media to analyze how artists can succeed digitally. I will discuss about the three tools that artists can use to have an impact on social media: knowledge, community and promotion. Social media can help in the learning process of the artist through engagement,… Continue reading Social media: A complete toolkit for the success of visual artists.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[122,65,121,21,120],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social","tag-knowledge","tag-online-communities","tag-promotion","tag-social-media","tag-visual-artist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":506,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Curtin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}