D.I.Y. Culture

I just read a good article from the New York Times about D.I.Y. (do it yourself) culture. I think the author brings up a lot of good points about the way in which artistic culture still exists despite the globalization media has caused. The internet really helps (and sometimes hinders) creativity, such as music and art, but I think the article made some good points. It discusses the way culture is changing in the present time via internet and other medias; any person can find a "culture," that tickles their fancy, or even create their own cultural bricolage.

Here are a few paragraphs from the article, which you can read here:

Partly the problem with globalization has always been that the term, culturally speaking, is so vague... What’s new is the power available to wide swaths of the populace, thanks above all to cheap travel and the Web, to become actors in the production and dissemination of culture, not simply consumers.

A generation or more ago, aside from what people did in their home or from what’s roughly called folk or outsider art, culture was generally thought of as something handed down from on high, which the public received. The common denominator of popular culture — which these days encompasses so many things that you could even include all sorts of high culture — seems to have just intensified the need people now feel to distinguish themselves from it. And global technology has made this easier by providing countless individuals, microcultures and larger groups and movements with cheap and convenient means to preserve and disseminate themselves.

Hollywood and Broadway, the major museums and art fairs and biennials and galleries, buildings designed by celebrity architects and the music business are all the traditional focus of big media, and they tell us a lot about ourselves. They constitute our cultural firmament, the constellation of our stars. But scientists say most of the universe is composed not of stars but of dark matter.

It is the powerful but invisible force that exists everywhere and requires some leap of imagination on our part, some effort, to identify.

Most culture is dark matter.

-g.