Technology, Arts and Entertainment

Introduction and Survey. Technology plays an important role in many cultural activities, especially in entertainment and in the fine and popular arts.

In cultural activities related to technical media several transformations—‘‘mediamorphoses’’— can be distinguished. In the graphic mediamorphosis of early modern times, messages and communications were transformed into print and music into notations; later, in the second half of the eighteenth century, chemical and mechanical mediamorphosis stored visual or aural realities. With photography, film, the wax cylinder, and audio disks, only recording and playback were required. It was no longer necessary to add a symbolic intermediate stage as in writing, printing, or musical notation. Laborious ‘‘true to nature’’ painting was largely replaced by the camera.

In the next stage, the electronic mediamorphosis of the first half of the twentieth century, different codes of communication were translated into electronic codes; the storage and playback of visual images and of sound played a dominant role with electronic recording replacing acoustical recording. With digitization in the 1980s, this development gained fresh momentum in a digital mediamorphosis. Electronic media for storing information were combined with digital computers, which provided increased storage and networking.

With digital codification it became easier not only to reproduce ‘‘reality’’ but also to create ‘‘new realities’’—computer-animated images for example. As a consequence, the difference between ‘‘pure’’ and ‘‘applied’’ art has become smaller and a new definition of art will soon be required. Whereas in the entertainment industry there has been a trend towards mergers and concentration, self-employment has likewise increased since the early 1980s. Together with large, expensive sound, film or TV studios, digitization has made the rise of small ‘‘bedroom productions’’ studios possible in which inexpensive audio or video productions can be made in a professional manner.

These activities described previously often interfere with copyright laws. Copyright has always been at war with technology because technical change often challenged intellectual property regulations and the accepted notions of authorship. New technologies of reproduction such as the photocopier or the video cassette have made it increasingly difficult for copyright holders to control the copying and distribution of their intellectual property; digital technology has added another dimension to this.

Works in digital form are easy to copy and to distribute via the Internet; illegal use is difficult to detect and to prove. In line with this, the self-understanding of many modern artists equipped with scanners and samplers has changed significantly. They do not regard themselves any longer as ‘‘original geniuses’’ but as processors of information or manipulators of discovered material; a DJ’s criterion for expertise is his skill in collating existing materials. There is a host of lawsuits pending on breaches of copyright, and in many cases pragmatic compromise arrangements have been made by giving licenses at the cost of a share of royalties.