Is it possible to crowdsource art?
The answer depends on:
• The various levels of artistic issues, the basic two being creation and creativity!
• The kind of required collaboration as crowdsourcing is basically a form of production enabled by Internet tools, whatever the Web pseudo-version 1.0, 2.0 or the future 3.0;
• The domain, as some expressions are more propitious than others for collective contributions, while various modes are currently used in the processes which lead to a unique performance… For example, when a symphonic orchestra interprets a composer's masterpiece, musicians, led by a conductor, play in rhythm music sheets written by a solitary artist.
In free and democratic countries, mass shows bear suspicious relents, definitely linked to practices commonly used by totalitarian regimes. Meetings where thousands of individuals are compelled to parade are not artistic pieces but political propaganda. What about inaugural and closing ceremonies for big events like the Olympic Games, the Big Bowl and other championships? The actors who take part have freely decided to play for money and under the authority of a scenarist. These shows are kinds of hypes launching big business entertainment.
What is crowdsourcing in Arts?
The basic and fundamental principles of crowdsourcing are:
• Freedom of contribution;
• Creativity opened to each one;
• Communitarian authoring;
• Common production: this point excludes the example of the orchestra performance from a type of crowdsourcing because each musician has his own music sheet;
• No authoritative members… even there is a validation committee.
There are more risks for crowsourced works to be not significant in Arts. Inherently, any artist delivers pieces which are singular specimens characterizing their author and bearing the mark of his style. Clearly, information perceived by the audience might be a flat signal when it is the result of a process stacking quantities of information coming from multiple sources. It is exactly the principle of stack filtering in signal processing!
Figure: Principle of Stck Filtering
In arts, the risk of non-originality is over-amplified for a crowdsourced works.
Writing 2.0
Using Web 2.0 tools to write a text is easy. The real issues are the targeted collaborative books! What usage would fit to literary works?
In terms of collective authoring, many practices are efficient for most of genres. They concern:
• Tasks distribution
• Production and delivery processes
• Rules for style and syntax
• Scenario rules fixing:
- The characters,
- The settings, etc.
• Corrections and re-writing.
Is crowdsourcing a valuable mode for literature? If we consider that the whole world of any fiction inherits from its writer, then, crowdsourcing means both dilution and enrichment. Restricting our discussion to the relation between contributors and characters, a crowdsourced novel would introduce kinds of spaghettis plates and a cacophony for the reader's perception. What would become the narrator in a crowdsourced book? He will loose his personality as crowdsource means large, open and hardly-controlled groups of contributors.
Will the frame keep its logics when individual creativity would be erased by successive contributions.
Crowdsourcing has proved its efficiency in the development of encyclopedias like Wikipedia where it is possible to enrich an article with successive contribution. Other models apply better to fiction and story writing.