Web.La.Radia: Social, Economic, and Political Aspects of Music and Digital Media

This article addresses the sociological, economical, and political relationships between electronic media art and its modes of production and dissemination. The core of the text is based on a series of quotes from recent literature on the subject of digital media art and music making on the World Wide Web. I begin with some basic definitions of technology and the media in the 20th century, and then go on to apply simple sociological principles to an analysis of the infrastructure and the use of digital tools in the arts. The next section investigates the political economy of the new media, applying these same principles to the Web as a platform for creating and delivering music. Finally, I refer back to La Radia, the 1930s Italian futurist dream of radio as a free and decentralized “people’s” medium, as described in the Futurist Manifesto (Marinetti and Masnata 1933), as a point of comparison with the current state of the Web. While I take a critical stance toward many uses of the Web, I do not wish to be considered a “WebLuddite”; I use the Web daily, and it is a major component of my research in computer music. I am concerned, however, by several trends that I see in the Web culture and by the expectations of its future, and I feel that it is necessary to draw attention to them.