Deserted Cities of the Web

I don't recall precisely when I got my first Goldstar modem to link my Mac to the various worlds beyond my home town. The World Wide Web did not yet exist. But there were communities forming, via chat rooms on America Online (AOL) and I was exploring them. It was a year or two before the WWW emerged, accessible first with Mosaic, then later that year with Netscape. The online networking giant was only a fledgling then with a million members or less when I first took the name ennyman as my handle.

What I do recall is how invigorating it all was. There were chat rooms for everything, from writing and art to favorite authors, music, politics of all stripes, cars, history interests of all types, and on and on.

I taught a few writing "classes" in a chat room there where people typed "clap clap clap clap" at the end. I also did research on the series of articles I authored for The Senior Reporter exploring the issue of doctor assisted suicide.

Essentially, these forums enabled the development of short term or long term communities of people from anywhere in the world, if connected to the Web. One of these "communities" that I participated in included a former member of the '60's psychedelic band Strawberry Alarm Clock. I forget now the theme that gave our group coherence, remembering only that we existed for a space of time.

The internet as we know it today has fostered innumerable numbers of such communities over the years. Sometime around eight years ago I became part of a Ning community that shared art. The site became a means of not only seeing the work of artists in other countries but fodder for blog content.

Social media platforms like Facebook advanced the sense of community possibilities as well.  After our 2011 Red Interactive show as part of Phantom Galleries - Superior, John Heino and I created a Red Interactive "community" on Facebook in which friends and participants were encouraged to share art and photography featuring the site's red theme. Red Interactive had a lot of energy initially, but over time though carried forward by the initial momentum this energy subsided and the center of the community dissipated.

About three years ago Twin Ports Arts Align was formed here in the Twin Ports with more ambitious aims. The local nature of this online community included face-to-face meetings on a regular basis. But what I have noticed is the recent slacking off in participation, and the feeling I get is that another community is evaporating.

The internet has often been compared to the Wild West and the metaphor seems to hold. There were territories to be settled, rules laid out, and an influx of people driven by different passions, whether to
explore the unknown, or to make money through commercial endeavors, or to meet people and start anew. And like the West, there are ghost towns everywhere, places where a community once thrived and now all that is left are abandoned homesteads.

While listening to an old Cream CD the song "Deserted Cities of the Heart" was playing and I couldn't help but think of all these deserted communities on the web. According to Forrester research the web is changing yet again. The big buzz in recent years is around the idea of content. "Content is king" seemed to be some kind of Holy Grail in the realm of marketing your goods and services. However, making content is so easy today that we have a problem. There's far more content than there is demand for it. In other words, as one B2B marketing spokesperson notes, "the supply of content is growing, but the demand is static."

Is this what happened to all those communities? Initially they promise something but to what end? When it is easy to belong, it is equally easy to disengage.

Maybe an online town comes and goes because the reason for its existence is unclear.

Or maybe there's something happening but many of the community members would rather lurk than contribute. I mean, we live in a culture where the actors are few and the fans are many. Have television, theater and sporting events turned us into a nation of passive viewers as opposed to active players? Then it should come as no surprise when the same thing happens online, for the cyber-world simply mirrors what is taking place in our "real" world.

Just making an attempt to articulate a few thoughts that were passing through my head this past week. What do you think?

Is Organizing Artists Something Akin to Herding Cats?

I remember the first time I saw a ghost town. In second grade my grandparents took me across the country by train to see my aunt, uncle and cousins in Nevada. I got out of school for three weeks and it made memories for a lifetime.

As the railroad wove its way along the side of a mountain, grandma pointed down into the deep gulch below and said, "Look, Eddie. It's a ghost town."

I'd seen enough Westerns on television to know what a ghost town was. This one was essentially a settlement of abandoned houses. It didn't have a saloon or main street or any kind of town feel. But whoever these settlers were, they had evidently built these wooden shack homes in close proximity like this for some purpose. Perhaps there had been a mine down in there. Or maybe it had been for safety. A little community had sprung up, but now lay abandoned... and for a very long time. The Old West is littered with such forgotten communities.

When America Online came along, I began to notice a similar phenomenon. Little communities would form around common interests. It might be writing, or philosophy, or whatever. People were excited to be finding new friends with mutual passions. But the community required very little commitment, and you didn't need to build a house to reside there. You just participated.

I was part of a writers group, and later part of a large community of creative people with 60's connections, including one member of the band Strawberry Alarm Clock, the psychedelic rock band who produced the 1967 pop hit "Incense and Peppermints."

Once the World Wide Web came along in 1994, many of these groups migrated to the brave new cyberworld of web pages, leaving their usergroups behind.

But the urge to form communities is a strong one, and before long there was every kind of group once more, only in a new setting. Writers, poets, artists, philosophers, stock market speculators and gamblers, all reaching out, forming online villages, or in some cases entire online worlds. But like the ghost towns of the Old West, things change and all that's left are remnants of evidence that something had once been there that is no more.

I have been in a number of such groups these past two decades, at AOL, through Ning, and in other circles. I watch and listen and make an effort to contribute something of value, and share my art... but the communities seem to devolve as quickly as they emerged. And it happens so very fast.

For some reason theater groups have a different kind of life span than some of the artist networks I've seen. Maybe it's because performing theater is already by default something you do with other people. And by nature it is usually rooted in the real world with people who are already embedded in a larger community.  (I'll throw in a plug here for some folks doing community theater in Superior. The first really big show, Sealed For Freshness, will be opening September 4.)

Where I'm gingerly attempting to go here is to ask if Twin Ports Arts Align will become another online ghost town. Twin Ports Arts Align is a bi-product of our social media phenomenon. I've found it exceedingly useful as a tool for sharing some of what I have seen happening in the local arts community. Much of what is happening has been missed by the media. And a lot of it is even missed by TPAA. (In point of fact, there are some very strong, connected groups of artists here and there, especially in the ceramics underground.)

My experience with another group I was part of for seven years is that choosing to contribute, rather than just lurking, everyone is enriched and the giver doubly-so.

So I for one hope this network of Twin Ports arts enthusiasts continues to thrive. Few of us like being herded or corralled, but when there is real value in a community and real needs are being met, others will want to be a part of it... and we're all enriched.