Why Doesnt Googles Selfie Arts and Culture Work in Canada

Artists and Large Tech: A Cautionary Note

News · June ix, 2020

In that location is no dubiousness our world is more digitally connected than e'er before. Access to the internet, and the information it provides, has get a crucial lifeline, peculiarly as we adapt to public wellness protocols in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. For meliorate or worse, we are as well discovering new ways of sharing our work and experiencing art in alternative formats online. We are speedily learning what works and what doesn't, and sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference.

Tech giants similar Apple tree, Google, Netflix, and Facebook offer a wider global accessibility for sharing and consuming creative content, while reducing barriers like cost and location. They are increasingly finding new means to develop and market the availability of that content, but artists are non always compensated for those uses. As nosotros all know, gratuitous oftentimes comes at a cost to someone, and with Large Tech companies, there is really no such thing as "free".

Google Arts & Culture (GAC), launched in 2011 as the Google Art Project, is a platform featuring ultra high-resolution reproductions of artworks and cultural artifacts from over ii,000 museums and cultural institutions world-wide. The platform allows viewers to zoom deeply into an artwork to see the tiniest of details. You tin can create your own digital gallery of your favorite artworks, chosen from different public collections around the globe (as shown in the example provided). For some artworks, you lot can use Google Street View to run into works installed in an exhibition, or you lot can use an app for an augmented reality experience, whereby you lot can see what that piece of work would expect similar in your own dwelling house.

We tin can now feel public fine art collections in new and exciting ways, only that does non come without its issues. The images that are posted are very loftier resolution, which goes against standard practise when sharing images online. The sharper the paradigm, the easier it is to copy and mass produce, which tin damage artists' livelihoods and reputations. We generally advocate for as much protection as possible, and we recommend when images are shared online, that they be done so at a resolution of 72 dpi, that watermarks be placed on images if possible, and that a copyright notice be placed in proximity to the image, to offer greater security for those images.

One of the expected benefits of the platform was that information technology would increment attendance at museums and galleries, and traffic to their websites. Nonetheless, one of the criticisms of GAC is that information technology competes with museums for a web audition.  For example, when you search for a specific artwork (and you're well-nigh probable using Google's search engine to do that), it often drives traffic to GAC rather than the museum or collection where the work resides. Try it: do a Google search of The Starry Night, and yous'll meet the way GAC is marketed with a huge epitome of the work is dramatically different from other links in the listing.

This near certainly happened with the #ArtSelfie project, where people are encouraged to take a selfie photo, and the GAC app will match you with your doppelganger from a famous portrait. The artist and museum proper name are credited, merely it'south far more likely that sharing these images drives more traffic to GAC than anywhere else. In that location are plenty of valid reasons not to permit your work to be used this manner, from privacy issues to the lack of diversity and racial bias evident in the images bachelor to choose from – which is too a trouble of museum portrait collections, in general.

Another key concern is the lack of transparency of Google's total intentions when artworks are shared in this mode, and the exclusion of artists from sharing in the profits of the monetization of content through advertising. Google's parent company Alphabet made rather a lot of money presently after launching that app. Every bit William Deresiewicz writes:

"The truth is that digitization has not really demonetized the arts. Someone has been making coin, only that someone isn't artists: For those who are counting the clicks and selling the resulting information, "free content" is a aureate mine. Silicon Valley in full general, and the tech giants in particular—higher up all, Google, Facebook, and Amazon—have engineered a vast and ongoing transfer of wealth, on the order of tens of billions of dollars a year,  from creators to distributors, from artists to Big Tech…"

Google does non pay institutions to participate in GAC and they sign a license for use direct with them, rather than artists. Some participating institutions pay artists to participate through a sublicense, but the rates are often far lower than they should be because the type of utilize, and the parties involved. For inclusion in a project like this, Section B.8.2 of the CARFAC-RAAV Minimum Recommended Fee Schedule could be used as the basis for developing a long-term license. The electric current rate would exist a minimum of $464/twelvemonth, and that seems low considering the profits made on content. Commercial rates should exist used because the works are posted on a platform hosted past Google, a corporation now worth over $one Trillion USD. Information technology might be a free service, but Google and other tech giants are reaping significant fiscal benefit from free access to creative content.

Fortunately, well-nigh Canadian cultural institutions are not participating in GAC. With over ii,000 institutions involved in the project world-wide, just 30 are Canadian, and very few of them are art galleries that have contributed images of contemporary Canadian art. The Canada Council Art Bank is by far the well-nigh active contributor, with respect to posts of contemporary Canadian art, and we have been in contact with them and other Arts Service Organizations, near how to create best practices for considering involvement and development of new digital tools and technologies for sharing art in public collections. It is critical that artists be consulted as these tools are developed, every bit they will be used to share artists' work to a wider audition.

Every bit culture continues to integrate with Big Tech, there are, of course other considerations we must brand in regards to engaging with these companies–considerations that employ to artists, just extend far beyond the cultural sector. Nosotros know that companies like Google, Facebook, and others offer "free" services, but in return nosotros, as users, offer substantial data that is used non only to track, just to predict, our behaviour. This data is commoditized to the enrichment of Big Tech, and to the benefit of companies purchasing this information for the purpose of designing and targeting advertisement, and gaining a deeper agreement of how we think and behave. The centralization of this information grows alongside the centralization of wealth and power, and we are concerned that arts and civilization may, however inadvertently, be accelerating these outcomes. Nosotros practise not want to see an arts sector dominated past whatever one institution or company, and we fear that past engaging with these "costless" opportunities, we may exist turning over much more than copyright to Google, or to others players in Large Tech. Indeed, issues of copyright and licensing play out alongside transgressions of privacy, and ever growing reaches of surveillance over our personal behaviours, business, commerce, relationships, and other domains we likely never intended to reveal to one of the world's biggest and virtually powerful corporations.

Artists hold the unique position, and possibly even the responsibility, of monitoring, analyzing, and reflecting on the evolution of culture, while putting forth new perspectives and possibilities that very frequently autumn exterior of the mainstream. Participating in programs from Google or from other Big Tech players puts at risk the very independence required for artists to inspire critical thinking, and to ultimately button back and foster a spirit of resistance against dangerous global superpowers, be they in the digital space, or otherwise.

Nosotros appreciate that institutions who participate in sharing content on these platforms do information technology because they want to make their collections more discoverable and accessible. Google's intentions are far less honourable, every bit we've seen through the development of Google Books. We therefore exercise non believe participation in GAC is in the best interests of artists, museums, or other cultural institutions. Nosotros want to see technological advancements that allow greater access to creative content – merely artists must be part of the procedure.

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Source: https://www.carfac.ca/news/2020/06/09/artists-and-big-tech-a-cautionary-note/

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