Day 7 of Seven: Draw Your Days!

bicycle. good meeting. cleaning up. drawing blood. closing my account. enjoying the friday. grilled steak + bean salad. one fine friday. the end. fine!

:::

notes on participatory culture (4):

When I checked this link today, 61 links are listed (with some more pics without links). That means at least 61 individuals have been drawing their days for seven days, which means 61 x 7 = 427 pictures were created in the last one week. I spent around 30 minutes to draw each, so it means more than 200 hours were spent.

We can assume that doing art is a form of individual expression and being able to express is a rewarding activity in itself. Thus we can say that free labor is actually rewarded. Still, expressing oneself collectively needs more than just willingness to express.

Back to my questions earlier. With so much production of content, who get a capital gain? What are the motivation and the incentive for this free labor?

I can say that participating in collective expression of art is a pleasurable labor of love. But what is the source of this pleasurable labor? Of this intrinsic motivation?

My just-a-little-bit-more-than-preliminary observation leads me to some thoughts (these shouldn’t be perceived as final, though):
- the gain is not located within individual, but within the network and not in the form of financial gain, but social capital
- network of production not only provides a space for productive participation (a force/driver to produce) but also a space to consumption of art (to gain audience) and to even generate audience beyond the network (multiple effects)
- for art producer, one of some measures (of value) is the size of audience, and here the network is a readily available pool of audience
- free/unpaid labor is being seen as having outcomes — e.g. artwork itself is an outcome.
- certain activity is being seen as having intrinsic values — e.g. development of skills, self-development
- by producing collectively in the network (and networks of network), producers can eliminating steps for gaining appreciations and reviews/critiques (in traditional ones, should publish or exhibit before being reviewed)
- by producing and (online) publishing collectively, an individual eliminates some personal barriers (shy personality, don’t want to be narcissist, not sure about the quality) that might hinder someone to show his/her artwork to public
- experiencing the flow of collective expression (artwork), how artwork flows from one hand to the network and beyond, flow experience is an incentive in itself.

Turning to online collective activities such as Seven: Draw Your Days! will enrich our understanding of how intrinsic motivation is cultivated and how the forms of art activities themselves are influencing new forms of labor and participatory culture. If we do not simply want to “go with the flow” as the forces of capitalism channel our enjoyment, our fun, our labors of love, and our intrinsic motivation into a profit stream for others, then we need to understand that collective cultural/art activities are not just fun and individual expression, that their methods for cultivating flow experiences and intrinsic motivation, while certainly enjoyable, are also transforming the world of work beyond merely production and consumption.