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Why are techies so averse to funding the arts?

As the guilded age came to a close in the 1900s, railroad barons, industrialists and banking kingpins put money into the arts in order to launder their image and legacies. We see no such thing today. Why is that?

I’m an independent film producer in NYC who has previously acted in Hollywood studio films and sold screenplays. I’m also extremely online. I have found that wealthy techies, in general, have little to zero interest in investing in culture. This has been a source of frustration considering the large percentage of new money that comes from the sector.

I’m not alone in feeling this way: I have a friend who raises money for a non-profit theater in Boston, another who owns an art gallery in Manhattan, and another who recently retired at the LA Opera. All have said not to bother with anyone in tech. This has always bummed me out given that I genuinely believed with all of my heart and soul that the internet was going to usher in a new golden age of art, culture, and entertainment. (Yes, I was naive as a kid in the 00s.)

Art and culture can truly only thrive on patronage, especially in times of deep income inequality. Yet there are no Medicis in 2023. So what’s missing here? Where is the disconnect?

absentthereaper ,
@absentthereaper@lemmygrad.ml avatar

The disconnect is that heads haven’t started rolling yet, I imagine.

JBonLemmy OP , (edited )

I worry that the apathy doesn’t come from a lack of fear of accountability, but a genuine contempt for humanity. The enshittification of the internet we are currently experiencing is deeply anti-human.

I met a wealthy YCombinator guy at a friend’s wedding. He told me he was having Midjourney create a portrait of himself and his wife because “AI art doesn’t have the imperfections of the human touch.” Now, I’m no snob: I specialize in thrillers, crime, horror, and comedy, but I was still genuinely baffled and nauseated by this attitude. Another tech guy I met at a nightclub who runs a Linktree clone told me “Film and TV is over.” But what does that mean? The future is algorithmic UGC and AI generated TikTok videos filtered through his app? How is that guy and his junk product worth 40 million dollars in VC funding but a real movie or TV show is worthless? I don’t get it.

absentthereaper ,
@absentthereaper@lemmygrad.ml avatar

“AI art doesn’t have the imperfections of the human touch.”

This statement alone deeply offends me; holy shit. What the average techbro would rate as ‘the imperfection of the human touch’ is the performance. I dig generative art for bases to build off of, GANs as ‘a tool in the toolbox rather than the whole entree’; but what the actual fuck is the point of art if there’s no true ‘human’ input? “Anti-human” is probably right overall.

captainlezbian ,

It offends me because holy shit how do you claim to be a tech person and not understand the flaws of your technology. AI likely can’t get perfect. If you want a perfect representation of yourself and your wife you can hire a photographer.

razza856 ,

this reminds me of a programmer who once told me that writers “input strings”

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.world avatar

“AI art doesn’t have the imperfections of the human touch.”

Except when it gives people six fingers and shit lol

SJ_Zero ,
@SJ_Zero@lemmy.fbxl.net avatar

In the 1900s, culture was considered a common good. In 2023, all culture is to be torn down to build utopia. Rich folks who want to build a legacy end up sticking their fingers into politics and science instead of art and culture.

That being said, the Internet did usher in a new golden age of art, culture, and entertainment. It’s just that it came from the bottom up rather than from the top down. There’s an unlimited amount of cool stuff being created every day, but smaller scale projects funded by regular people.

imrichyouknow ,
@imrichyouknow@sh.itjust.works avatar

As someone who’s in the tech space I would say I’m very influenced by materialism. Arts don’t do much. Not that I don’t enjoy operas or paintings, but it’s not something would make feel like there is a new world as technology would.

floofloof ,

Technology these days tends all to have the same flavour, because the tech bros behind it tend unreflectively to share the same kind of outlook on the world. Sometimes engineers can be overly confident that they are dealing with the most important things, but the unexamined outlooks and philosophies by which they live end up shaping our world through the technologies they implement.

As someone working in tech who studied arts and continues to be active in the arts, the experiences in life that have transformed how I perceive and understand the world have never come from technology, but often from arts. Arts can change your perceptions, can open you up to ways of perceiving that you didn’t know were there, and can reveal that your assumptions about the world were just assumptions.

That’s not to say that technology can’t be innovative and world-changing. A number of technologies around today have the potential to transform society, but the ways in which they can transform it will be dictated not just by the technologies but by the people who realize them. I don’t think it has always been the case that technologists are uninterested in the arts, but I suspect it’s no coincidence that today’s crop of tech leaders are both uninterested in the arts and conspicuously blinkered in their vision.

MercuryUprising ,

A lot of what you mention is pretty accurate. Take the internet and websites. I made a website a year ago for my portfolio.

It doesn’t have a landing page, its purposely difficult to navigate and I used zero seo when designing it. I showed it to the CTO at the company I worked at and he thought it was great, but every other person at the company was saying the website is shit, I dont know how to use it.

Its literally just a menu, which has clickable menu links at the bottom in case you’re really that dim. But because it involves hunting and clicking instead of just scrolling downwards mindlessly its “wrong.” These same people see nothing wrong with ad copy laden seo articles.

I haven’t changed my website and instead moved from working in tech to working in the arts full time now. I’m sorry, but IT people mostly fucking suck and they’re just never going to appreciate anything that doesn’t fit their parameters of tolerance.

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.world avatar

As a hard materialist, I don’t see art as separate from materialism. What art does is materially express immaterial things - a good piece of art isn’t just an image or description of events, it’s an idea or concept that has been made into a material form.

Art isn’t just a description of the world. The point of art is to change it.

Curious_Canid , (edited )
@Curious_Canid@lemmy.world avatar

Too many universities have transformed what used to be broad liberal arts programs with technical majors into narrow vocational programs. The focus now is on training to get a job and make lots of money. Interest in anything outside of that is discouraged in all kinds of ways.

I think some of this is the result of conservative attempts to eliminate critical thinking skills from the educational system. More of it is a side-effect of the more limited opportunities offered by our late-stage capitalist economy.

I have a computer science degree, but I studied anthropolgy, literature, and history as well. It pains me to see all of that devalued and ignored.

wizzor ,

I think you’re on to something.

I studied in a university which also had a famous art department. I tried taking courses on the art programme’s aide, but they didn’t take me - all courses required the 10 month basic arts studies to participate.

I think some mingling would benefit both the artists and the techies. Steve Jobs famously studied calligraphy, and later made apple the mainstay of digital art, so it can be profitable too.

Curious_Canid ,
@Curious_Canid@lemmy.world avatar

This is my personal experience. Feel free to skip it.

I was lucky in a number of ways. I started college about two years before the first computer boom hit, but I was already an experienced (if self-trained) programmer. Instead of spacing the programming courses out over four years I took them all in two semesters. That left me with a lot of elective hours to fill.

I had been an avid reader since kindergarten, with major interests in science fiction and fantasy. That lead me to take courses in history and medieval literature. Those lead me to anthropology, which was a world-changing experience for me.

The professors I studied under, outside of my major, were generally pleased, if a little puzzled, to have a technical geek in their classes. To everyone’s surprise, I turned out to be a very good student in those areas. After the first few classes I was encouraged to take graduate level seminars, which I really enjoyed. I was still treated as a bit of an oddity, but I got a lot of support.

By the time I graduated with a B.A. in Computer Science, I had also earned minors in Anthropology, English, and Medieval Studies. If I could have stayed for another semester I would have had Anthropology as major and added History as a minor.

That was one of the best times of my life. And it certainly expanded my perception of the world. In retrospect, my Computer Science classes were probably the least important thing I did in college. Studying multiple disciplines forced me to understand different ways of thinking and different sets of values. That has served me very well in the years since, both professionally and personally. I am also happier because of it.

I wish everyone had the opportunities I did. I think we short-change students by feeding them bulk information and telling them that is what an education should be. The most important thing anyone can get from an education is the ability to continue to learn.

tourist ,
@tourist@community.destinovate.com avatar

Because arts don’t indoctrinate the youth with messages business moguls like and control, education does.

JBonLemmy OP ,

It’s funny you mention that, because there is one new patron in tech who is making waves in NYC: Peter Thiel. The catch is, of course, that everything he finances goes through his ideological filter. And he’s not being particularly generous either.

Thiel has put money into a series of small zines, a youth focused film festival, a small production company, a few very popular podcasts, and a feature film that just went to Cannes. None of it has made him any money because the target audience of edgy, sexy, artsy 20 somethings have rejected the technofeudalistic dogma that these works promote.

There was certainly a brief reactionary wave where young artists in LA and NYC rebelled against liberals for Covid restrictions and “corporate wokeness”, but other than the occasional use of slurs, it never materialized beyond aesthetics and all but ended when Roe V Wade was overturned.

tourist ,
@tourist@community.destinovate.com avatar

Lol I’m sorry what, this guy really spent his money on an anti woke film festival? Has he ever even been to a film festival? The whole point is wokeness. Really curious to see what Atlas Shrugged esque films he’s financed, so I can make sure I run away from all the major plot points when they happen in real life.

JBonLemmy OP ,

Yeah, I was invited by the queer Black kid who ran it. He ODd on the last night of the fest. Grim stuff. buzzfeednews.com/…/peter-thiel-anti-woke-film-fes…

captainlezbian ,

I kinda love that a techno feudalist is stingily trying to flip as counterculture of an art form as zines. Like the only currently running not explicitly anarchist zine I know is curated leatherdykery.

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.world avatar

Art hadn’t been properly commodified yet because the technology for mass produced art didn’t exist. They still needed artisans and artists, so they had to fund the arts if they wanted to see any created. They didn’t appreciate art more, per se, but they saw it as fundamentally different from other widgets.

This is no longer the case. With the advent of photography, film, digital information, and of course the internet we now see profitable “art” without any need to fund it with philanthropy. Aside from one-off public works projects they can fund by stealing public funds, they can only imagine art through the lens of profitability and have no understanding of the amount of free time and energy that has gone into creating so much of the art that exists today.

There is no Medicis in 2023. Instead you get Marvel.

z3n0x ,
@z3n0x@feddit.de avatar

Now I want a marvel/Medici crossover!

vzq ,

Bang on.

Whenever I see people ask whether “AI will replace artists” I am forced to confront the fact that to the tech set everything is just a product and the only value is what you can get for it when you sell it.

treadful ,
@treadful@lemmy.zip avatar

Sure sounds like you’re talking about just another set of C-levels and VCs. Not exactly what I would call “techies.”

AkumaFoxwell ,
@AkumaFoxwell@feddit.de avatar

A big chunk of techies are furries. And oh boy do they commission a lot of art.

redditcunts ,

Because they will continue exist throughout even without investment. And for the price is not valuable to drop more money. You know what’s valuable for poor people? Money and that’s what STEM brings. Why the fuck would I pay tens of thousands of dollars to set someone up to get in line for unemployment or other form of financial assistance?

hellskis ,

Most people don’t really respect the patron model of arts funding anymore. The more prominent view is: if you can’t make money as an artist, you’ve failed and should quit. The market is seen as the ultimate arbiter of value. Why mess with it?

I think it’s something like that.

lythandas ,

I don’t think that’s completely true. For instance, one of France richest man, François Pinault actually owns a very large collection and hosted a large exhibition in Paris at the Bourse de Commerce. It’s not only him, Bernard Arnault, actually the richest man in the world also made a lot of things for art, craftmanship etc… Of course, like you said it’s mainly investment and “art-washing”. I don’t know how much this thing is going for more modest patrons, but I guess they act on their own levels, locally.

poVoq ,
@poVoq@slrpnk.net avatar

Maybe not the answer you are looking for but I am happy that philantrophically minded tech people rather seem to prioritize vaccinating children in Africa or conserving nature.

More specifically I also think it might have to do with the fact that most techies grew up finding movies very uninteresting. So why would they put money into an stale art form that just doesn’t interest them?

Jenga ,

Where are you getting the ‘fact’ that most technies find movies uninteresting? Seems completely out of left field

poVoq ,
@poVoq@slrpnk.net avatar

They might be into certain fandoms (Star Trek etc.), but it is very clear to me that compared to the rest of the population tech minded people spend significantly less time watching movies or TV shows (especially if you count Anime as a different art form). Ask a typical techie if they even own a TV and they will probably say no.

TheBananaKing ,

Art is a product, artistry is a trade. Like, y’know, hot dogs and hot dog vendors.

I like hot dogs. They’re tasty. I’m glad that people take up hot dog vending for a living, so that I can buy one off them when I feel like it. They make the rent, I get lunch. Seems fair.

But as lefty and public-service minded as I am, I don’t feel they’re a basic need that society needs to subsidise. They’re a nice-to-have optional extra that people can buy when they want, with a market niche for virtually any price point. I don’t think hotdog vending is a calling or a virtue, particularly, even if you find it particularly satisfying.

Put that next to curing cancer or producing clean energy, and yeah no sorry your hotdog stand can succeed or fail on its own income, it can come dead last in the queue for charitable or state subsidy.

monobot ,

I like that this question is generating resoonses.

My opinion, as a “techie” (although not even close to rich one) with a lot of aritists among friens, is that the resson is the same as to why artists don’t contribute to open source software.

We don’t have the knowledge to understand it, and my feeling is that most art is created for other artists. Whenever I go to some new exhibition, it is utterly borring if none of my educated artist friends are not with me to explain me why is something interesting and how. Also, why something else is utterly shit.

Artist world is not doing nearly enough to educate non artists and help us understand what is being created.

Also, looks like you don’t count games, music, movies and who knows what else as art.

Unseeliefae ,

If we are counting video games as art, then there have been plenty of rich techies over the past 2 decades who have spent millions out of pocket trying to create their own version of “The Next World of Warcraft Plus Call of Duty Except Better”.

We don’t usually hear about video games funded and created by rich tech people though, because their game projects rarely make it to launch (due to the fact that video game development is actually much more challenging than it looks).

monobot , (edited )

As any other art. Not every painting is good art, not every paining deserves admiring.

Mozart was just good entertainer for the rich people, but we consider him great artist now (as we should), I don’t see difference with games.

Problem is that some artists would like to be paid to make stuff only they (and their small community) likes.

While I agree that kind of art should exist, and we should have society in which it is possible… I do think it can not be a rule.

I have stuff I like to do and think those are more important for society than my actual work, but I know no one want to pay for it.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

This is a great discussion, with a lot of good responses.

Without being an authority on the subject, my impression is that people who become wealthy tend to want to create something that will live on after their death that they’ll be remembered for. What that thing is is likely influenced by societal opinions of the time and the individual person’s interests and passions.

Art has long been one of the things that lives on after someone has died, but with the industrial revolution in the 1800s, industry and automation became another avenue for people to make a lasting legacy. Combine that with the tendency for people who are successful in current technology endeavors to be less adept or interested at personal expression, it’s not surprising that they would lean towards more practical legacies.

It’s not 100% though. Bill Gates, for instance, donates a lot to the arts, even though his pet projects are things like eradicating malaria.

MetroIsntAMetro ,

Bill Gates is mostly doing that to hide away his legacy of being a horrible human that strived to crush open source though

StalinIsMaiWaifu ,
@StalinIsMaiWaifu@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Tbh so were Carnegie and Nobel

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