Smaller information sharing groups
First we are not so interested in environments that deploy huge databases to recommend from. This agency seems to work when a large amount of products (music, movies, websites) is evaluated through people's ratings, and selections can be recommended from equal valuations. More difficult it is to use agent software and networked intelligence to mediate between more abstract data concerning cultural concepts, the visualization of these and more general the ideas and notions of a (not necessarily large) group of creative specialists.

Individuals rely on the network they build up over years, the literature they read, exhibitions they visit, travels they make, colleagues they meet and are introduced to when they speak out in public -- with their work. One can imagine the true benefits of networked computer enhanced communication to evaluate and recommend specialized expertise and interests in the arts.

To build (S,M,L) communities, dedicated to the maintenance of cultural heritage and/or to the research and development of cultural production, we need to create on line environments for real time and asynchronous communication, production and presentation/distribution. A true privileged/public space in which access to information is traded against information: feed to be fed.

Communities can emerge around themes, projects, concepts, societal request even -- they can be temporal or sustainable, they can be international or local, they can be productive or reflective, they can be highly undirected or goal-oriented. They are not 'newsgroups', they are not 'mailing lists', they are not 'MUDs', they are not some private circle around an extremely productive or communicative individual, they are not on-line-only: at best they contain some elements of all of these forms of gathering and communication, without the pitfalls of information overload, debilitation of discourse, unrestricted public access.

To me as an artist with a strong information media interest my orientation towards the distribution of knowledge and creativity, the research of 'artificial' creativity, the empowerment of individual production and the enhancement of communicational possibilities are major issues. 'Art will change information' is only too obvious. 'We are the media' comes close to one truth of the information era. (JK)

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