The Application

Some of you have asked, probably just to be polite, about the details of my [potential] collaborative research project. I will spare you the methodology/collaboration details, but thought I'd at least share here the project description and outcomes with you. If I get funding, you'll know what the heck I'm doing this summer. If I don't, you'll understand the profound loss the world will suffer. In either case, we'll all know in a couple weeks.

Everyone’s a Critic:
An Examination of the Blogosphere’s Influence on Arts Criticism

The purpose of this project is to explore the scope and reach of a relatively new phenomenon—blogging—as it relates to the arts, particularly performance criticism, and in turn to relate that understanding to a public’s connection to arts criticism, and art appreciation.

The last several years have seen a profound shift in arts criticism. Traditional media, faced with a dwindling consumer base and increased competition, has shifted to an emphasis on online news. In tandem, they have eliminated critics from their staffs, often relying on freelancers or beat reporters to cover specialized fields. Simultaneously, the advent of the blogosphere has created an explosion of online arts content, creating even more competition for the attention of the arts-loving—or arts-indifferent—public. In contrast to traditional media outlets, art blogs are maintained by professional writers such as journalists and critics employed by major media, as well as amateur writers, arts enthusiasts, and even performers. This new outlet has produced a range of texts, from mainstream to cutting-edge, from sophisticated research to raw enthusiasm. But in all cases, the immediacy and unfiltered medium of blogs has changed writing about the arts, and possibly the arts themselves.

This summer I propose to investigate the effects that blogs have on the arts: the possibility of a new audience, a more intimate connection between artist and the public, a change in revenue streams (concert attendance, ticket sales, fine art purchases, and so on), and perhaps most significantly, the potential for democratization of the historically rarified field of criticism. Traditionally, the perch of a critic has been a lofty one, looking down on his [sic] public, explaining to the masses what to like and what to dismiss: essentially the critic tells the public what is worth knowing. The sheer volume of information available on blogs has the potential not only to reach a greater audience, but to reach a different audience, as readers of a specific blog genre stumble on a blog outside their normal sphere of interest. Because more people likely read blogs than listen to classical music or visit a modern art museum, it is possible that arts blogs, written by professionals and amateurs alike, have changed or can change the dynamic between the critic and the public. If the image of the remote, all-knowing critic is replaced by the approachable immediacy of a blogger, does that approachability rub off on the subject (in this case, Art)? Is a public with more access to information, from a wider variety of sources, more likely to engage with Art? Can, in fact, blogs bring people and Art together?

Specifically, this project will explore 1) the relationship between arts blogs, performers, the public, and critics, in an attempt to gauge whether that relationship has evolved as blogs have become more prevalent, and if that change has had an effect on the arts themselves; 2) the potential of this relationship to stimulate the public’s interest in the arts, and how that interest can be measured; 3) blogs’ effect on performers, audiences, and others who might otherwise have limited access to arts criticism, as measured by interviews with artists, arts administrators, and educators, and 4) blogs’ influence on traditional criticism, through comparative studies of criticism written for newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

Project Background:
This project is inspired, in part, by the work of Alex Ross, music critic at The New Yorker and author of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award winner, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century. Ross began his own blog in 2005 while writing his book. In his blog, also titled The Rest Is Noise, he provides analysis of others’ work, provides exhaustive bibliographies, and links to other critics’ and performers’ blogs. In a New Yorker article about blogging, he argues that blogs, particularly blogs by artists, give voice to a part of culture that might not otherwise have one. For example, writing of classical pianist Jeremy Denk’s blog, Think Denk, Ross notes, “this is a voice that, effectively, could never have been heard before the advent of the Internet: sophisticated on the one hand, informal on the other, immediate in impact. Blogs such as this put a human face on an alien culture.”*

While Ross’s work attempts to encompass the world of classical music, my approach will be more local. Using the vibrant arts scene of the Twin Cities as a case study, I will explore the issues specific to this community, finding parallels and contradictions with other communities, based on established blogs in those communities. I will focus specifically on classical music blogs, using blogs about theater and visual art as yet another point of comparison. This cross-referencing is an attempt to understand how blogs influence arts communities at specific points, and what the implications are for the arts more generally.

Project Outcomes:
To explore the relationship between arts blogs, critics, performers and the public, and to understand the implications of that relationship on art and society, I will:

1. Establish a theoretical framework to guide more practical questions. How is taste defined, and who defines it? How do power and prestige affect a critic’s work and an audience’s response to that work?
2. Develop a case study based on a local arts community. Who are the traditional critics? Who is blogging about like subjects? What is the public’s response and interaction with the critics, performers, and bloggers? Is there dialogue? Has there been a change in the “product”?
3. Create a project blog, allowing for the possibility that the process can mimic the research. As the researchers contribute to the blog, how does this transparency affect the research? Does the presence of other voices—those commenting to the blog—affect the research, or even the initial questions posed by the research?
4. Compile interviews with performers, critics, bloggers, and arts administrators and educators. The data from these interviews will include the interviewees’ awareness of blogs written about their specific fields, the changes these blogs may bring to their fields, and their response to those changes.
5. Write a paper summarizing the results of the research. This project will be both an end unto itself, for possible presentation at NCUR 2009, as well as valuable preparation for graduate studies in music and a Fulbright application to study at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg in 2009.

*Ross, Alex. “The Well-Tempered Web.” The New Yorker, 22 Oct. 2007 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/22/071022fa_fact_ross