Elisenda Ardevol, Gemma San Cornelio, Edgar Gomez-Cruz and Antoni Roig have presented a paper in the Media Anthropology Network workshop: the rewards of media, EASA, 2010, Maynooth, 24/08/2010 – 27/08/2010
Abstract
In the context of cultural production coming up from the so-called New Media environment a set of changes regarding creative processes are taking place. These changes point out to the implication of audiences, fans and amateurs in new ways of interrelation with the media industry. There are two opposite main discourses regarding this fact: the first one underlines the importance of creativity in the current economy and the second one criticizes the instrumentalization of media users’ engagement from the point of view of labour conditions in these sectors. Our proposal aims to explore the creative practices of new media regarding their productive and labour aspects, but also the aesthetic pleasure and affective rewards involved in such experiences. This paper wants to approach motivations and rewards from a practice theory perspective, which fundamentally means that motivations are constitutive of situaded practices (not only intrinsec or extrinsec motivations of the subject). The paper is based on our current research carried out through different case studies: locative media art projects, videogame players, collaborative film production and amateur photographers. For the sake of brevity, we will centre our presentation to the last case.