Online Culture

You wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is check the time and the notifications you received overnight. Maybe you scroll through Instagram. You read an article on Facebook and share it, so your followers can read it as well. You share a nice event with the person on your list who likes art – maybe you will attend it together. When you get there, you find the Artsens newspaper. You browse it and it stirs your interest. You notice that it is issue number 5, so you scan the QR code to access the online versions of all the other issues. 

Whether or not you fall into the routine I have just described, online culture definitely makes its presence felt in your life. From the personal to the professional level, the internet has managed to bring us closer, especially during the current pandemic. It has been an anchor, a bridge, a source of information and, last but not least, a medium of expression for many people.

The truth is that many artists use the online environment to shape their personality and reach a wider audience. They interact with their followers on different social networks; their portfolios are available on personal websites, not to mention the many art and culture magazines whose articles are just a click away.

In addition to being an engine for promoting and popularising art, the online environment can be a source in itself – clay made of bytes that can turn into a work of art if moulded by the right hands. For artists who choose to use it in this way, it is a colour palette with which they create “paintings” that go beyond the purely visual dimension and cross the boundaries to the sensory, maybe even interactive sphere.

As our society keeps growing, digitalisation is becoming more and more present. Consequently, it is but natural for it to make its place in the art world, offering the artist different means of expression that come with the typical dynamism of the online environment. Moreover, new paths are opened for the artist. Audiences made up of generations who grew up surrounded by technology and online culture will find it much easier to appreciate such works, a good introduction to the art world that often seems unattainable to the uninitiated.

When it comes to this topic, we have two major landmarks at our disposal: online culture and Online Culture. The former refers to the well-known online environment, which has become an artifice in our everyday life and without which many of our habits would be completely different. The latter encompasses the cultural universe that arises in the online sphere both by promoting art and artists and by creating art with the material provided online. The two concepts exist and develop harmoniously, leading to the popularisation of art among the public.