Virtueel Platform

What’s this thing called e-culture?

How digital media is creating a new cultural arena and prompts us to rethink arts and cultural policy. A Dutch perspective. By Michiel Schwarz (2004)

Digital media and information technologies have not only changed our world, they have also changed the way we see that world. And that world is increasingly a mediated world, where media are our milieu. Not surprisingly then that Internet and so-called ‘new media’ are altering the fields of arts and culture in fundamental ways. Digital media have not only made in-roads in the way visual artists, musicians, designers, film makers and other cultural practitioners work, they have created a new context. The digital domain has given rise to a new cultural arena.
Digital media and the Internet are transforming the cultural sector (and thus cultural politics) as they are opening the doors to new forms of artistic expression, creating different roles for cultural institutions and placing audiences increasingly centre-stage. In other words, digital media are changing what we used to call ‘culture’.

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