I doubt anyone in the US is happy with our current funding system for the arts. Artists don’t get paid. Museums rely on increasingly scant funds from the government and shrinking donations from wealthy benefactors and corporations to run their programs. We feel impoverished in a time where there are more people producing great work than ever before. That’s not right.
A plausible solution to at least some of these problems broke this week when e-flux announced its bid for the domain suffix .art. Word came on the heels of news that The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has decided to open up a full list of new domain endings. Should e-flux win this Top Level Domain bid, they not only promise a company that will be run under the supervision of a committee of experts comprising of art historians, artists and curators, but pledge to return 10% of revenues generated by the service in the form of grants and funding for underfunded art institutions, organizations, and projects.
That’s a big deal. e-flux is asking that we all show our support by leaving a recommendation on ICANN’s site, and I recommend readers do this. As a community, I believe it’s in our best interest to pursue all avenues that could provide significant funding to the arts in the future. Many others seem to think the same; the comments seem mostly split between support e-flux’s application for .art and Life Covenant Church’s application for .church.
That’s a good sign, because some of .art applicants make me very nervous. From a list of 10 applicants, Aremi Group S.A., a company located in Luxembourg, has already applied for .ART and DOT ART trademarks within the European Union. They have also set up a website that gives the impression they already manage the domain. .Art Registry, Inc., another contender, is an anonymous company registered in the Cayman Islands. Merchant Law Group LLP is a law firm that says it’s “able to respond to the needs of individuals and large corporations alike by focusing creativity, lateral thinking, and finding solutions.” It’s unclear what their experience in art or managing domains is, beyond having the $185,000 application fee.
e-flux’s strongest competition will come from competitors who can demonstrate the ability to sell the domain. Dadotart Inc, the LLC of deviantART, tops this list; the website currently hosts 19 million users. Top Level Design LLC, a venture created by the founders of AboutUS, SnapNames and ICANNWiki, may also prove steep competition due to their experience handling domain names: the firm has already applied for nine more top-level domains, and ICANNWiki is sponsored by ICANN, Eustar (the operators of .biz and .us), and Verisign (the operators of .com, .net, and .gov), among others. e-flux’s esteem within the art world may not carry over so well in this context, though they’ve brought on veteran registry operators OpenRegistry, responsible for .be and .eu, to manage the technical aspects.
All this said, it’s hard to know whether the domain suffix will ultimately hold any influence. Many of us thought .biz was going to transform the URL business, and we all know how well that went. As of 2011, there are 2.1 million .biz domains, a tiny fraction of the 95.5 million .com domains or even 9.3 million .org domains. .Art might be a different story. This time around ICANN will introduce 500 new domains, increasing the number of gTLDs from 324 to 824, so it seems likely that the way we think of url suffixes will have to change.
Whoever it goes to, a .Art top-level domain will be a license to print money. Of the contenders, only e-flux are proposing to spend any of that money on supporting art. If you’d rather send your money to e-flux than the Cayman Islands, you should leave a comment on the ICANN website letting them know how you feel.
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e-flux need to release more details of their plans for the TLD. I guess the essence is to sell on domains, so cost? eligibility?. It also needs to be open to a global audience as it’s the internet.
If you feel like reading through their public application, you can see what they’ve said. http://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/540
Nothing about cost, but Eligibility is aimed primarily at e-flux’s existing customer base:
20.e: 1) Eligibility
Strict eligibility requirements should allow the Applicant to build awareness among the members of the art community and the Internet community at large that the .art gTLD exists, that the domain names registered under .art and the content provided on the websites to which those domain names point are in fact related to art. This way, the Applicant would provide an incentive for other members of the art community to use domain names in this extension.
At a later stage, in addition to the Applicant and⁄or its subsidiaries, members of the art community will possibly be entitled to register domain names in .art. That is to say, one of the main eligibility criteria will be that the interested party wishing to register a domain name in the .art TLD is, directly or indirectly, a professional or semi-professional member of the art community.
The initial registrants of the domain will be primarily art museums, art centers and galleries, publishing houses and publications, schools and academies of art, research and fellowship institutes and programs, public and private collections, funding organizations and NGOs, residency programs and international exhibitions such as biennials—in essence, the entities that bear the most responsibility and are most visible to art audiences.
This plan has the potential to remove the heartbreak, uncertainty, and awe of a question that has long plagued artists and especially the public: “Is it art?”
“I may not know much about art but I know what’s on the .art domain.”
“Yeah it’s just a urinal but I saw it on .art so what are ya gonna do?”
The internet eliminated gatekeepers, at least it was starting to, and now E-Flux wants to be the uber-gatekeeper for “art.”
E-Flux completely buys into, and is trying to sell us on, the hype that the net is about to undergo a paradigm shift based on these new domains and that people will change their search habits to, say, only look on .food for something to eat and on .car for wheels. To win its application it tries to scare us that the philistines will take over art if you don’t vote for E-flux.
The beauty of art on the net is it’s spread around sites like .fm, .com, even .biz. E-Flux has the potential with this scheme to be the new Facebook of art (you have to be on it to play). It is already Facebook-like in its maintenance of an exclusive mailing list.
.art under E-Flux also has the worrisome potential to become a place of knee-jerk left orthodoxy: trolls, wingnuts, and future urinal-appropriators need not apply.
What are the alternatives? One of the above-mentioned business entities wins .art, turning it into a tacky, profit-oriented no-go zone for anyone with a creative bone, and art continues to thrive in a decentralized way.
Moody raises some interesting points. But although there is certainly art on non .com sites it’s fair to say it’s spread pretty thin. Or at least the novelty of the extension is often part of the “experience” of the work/site. Related, would love to see a comprensive list of non .com art projects/sites (besides dump.fm and netstyl.es [which I just checked redirects to a tumblr, lulz]).
As far as gatekeeping is concerned, it is going to happen one way or another. Which is totally unfortunate. But I for one would MUCH rather have e-flux manage it than http://www.deviantart.com/. Even if it still ends up being a failure.
And regardless of domain extension, art can and will continue to experiment/thrive in a decentralized way. I doubt e-flux (or any of the applicants) have the power to stop that.
There is plenty/masses of art outside the .com TLD. Most artists I can think of don’t use .com.
The key difference is all existing TLD are country specific or have open eligibility, and the proposed new ones have gatekeepers with their own rules (such as the existing .edu specifically reserved for USA educational institutions or .mil for USA military).
I’m not debating the crappiness of the gatekeeping scenario. It sucks. Majorly. However it would appear that we are beyond the ability to control that now.
Relative to the number of artists on .com’s, I doubt that. However, like I said, I’d love to see a list. Even off the top of ppl’s heads.
Thankfully someone already made a list: http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Artists/
why is e-flux the better of the two?
deviantart does a lot of good work for a lot of artists and this would be an extension of that.
I wonder to what extent museums will actually move over to the new extension. If you’ve had MoMA.org for 15-20 years what’s the incentive to change? I can see .art having much more appeal in Europe, where a lot of the institutions use their country’s suffix.
I agree that e-flux is almost certainly the best of an otherwise bad lot of applicants. But don’t be so sure that the for-profit business will “return the revenues generated by the service in the form of grants and funding” and will spend “the majority of that money on supporting art.” The way I read the application, they are talking about donating 10%. And not 10% of revenues; 10% of profits.
Updated the post.
One alternative is e-flux donate .art freely back to the people. No one should decide what art or .art is. Exactly the way .com is now.
.art being free does not preclude e-flux.art from pursuing their stated aims and curatorial strategies, in much the same way they do already with e-flux.com. And it allows other global art voices to decide content or funding strategies.
The above article is misleading, it says ” Of the contenders, only e-flux are proposing to spend the majority of that money on supporting art.” On e-flux’s actual application they say
” Applicant’s commitment to the community is further expressed by its intention to donate at least 10% of its operating profits to one or more art-related projects.”
I think its time for some real transparency from e-flux.
I’ll update the post. e-flux says on their website that a “substantial part of the revenues generated by this service will be returned to the art community in a form of grants and funding for underfunded art institutions, organizations and projects.” and I misread that.
http://f.art
Dear all, we are not planning to curate the art domain, should we get to develop it. Not sure why people assume we would do that. What is important is not to sell name space indiscriminately only to maximize profits, and to prevent speculators from registering names that belong to other organizations and individuals. Applications for name spaces will indeed be reviewed, primarily to make sure that only Paddy Johnson will be able to register PaddyJohnson.art or only the Brooklyn Museum can get BrooklynMuseum.artPeople who work at e-flux are artists and writers, just like yourself. We are not politicians or businessmen, and do not employ deceptive logic. Its very important that there is some solidarity in the artistic community, and that we trust our fellow practitioners. If we can’t manage that, our community will always be prey to the rich and powerful of this world, who will just continue milking it for money, creativity, gentrification, social prestige or whatever it is they want to get from artists.Lastly, the gold rush is not guaranteed: most domains other than .com have failed to earn much money. However if the art domain becomes popular, this could create a significant source of independent funding for art at a time when such resources are rapidly disappearing world wide. We will do our best to realize this.
Sincerely,
Anton Vidokle
e-flux
Anton, it’s misleading to say, as you do in your pitch, that “the structure of the internet is about to shift in such a way that most information pertaining to food will be found in a .food domain, while most information on cars will likely be found in a .car domain, and so forth.” Many commentators have argued that the new top level domains are a scam or sham — extortion of well-capitalized companies by ICANN — that will have no significant effect on people’s search habits.
I’d just point out that even if deviantart’s current owners’ hearts are in the right place, eventually they’ll either sell it or die. The same is true of e-flux; but I have greater confidence that the owners of e-flux will have the intention, foresight, and competence to ensure that when the original crew are gone, control will pass to others possessing similar qualifications.
There is a fundamental error in the suggestion that e-flux would manage the .art domain with a superior hand to that of deviantART or even some of the overtly commercial applicants for the .art gTLD. With 22 million registered members and 60 million unique monthly visits and serving over 2.5 billion pageviews of art a month, deviantART actually understands the scale of the matter and understands how to effectively use the Internet with the arts. It has produced a worldwide proletarian revolution of participation in the visual arts. The majority of its traffic and members are non-U.S.. It spans the cultures of every nation. E-flux could continue to diminish the artists on deviantART and claim for itself a plan to support the arts with the revenues from the .art gTLD, but in fact: deviantART sponsors every artist in Artists Alley at Comic Con International; in fact deviantART has a grants program and provides scholarships; in fact the deviantART community is a rich resource to the entire world of practicing artists, arts education and the nurturing of those with interest in the arts; and in fact deviantART is free for any artist, any art organization and any person to use – – and they do – – to connect to the arts in over 4,500 categories. There is no historical precedent for this. It is the power of the Internet to aggregate people with like interests. DeviantART started this process 12 years ago, organically and authentically. It is likely it would contribute essential knowledge, purpose and reach to any .art gTLD effort. To turn the application process into an either/or exercise is completely unnecessary.
I work at deviantART.
I am excited to see how different applicants handle or attempt to handle resolutions with other applicants. Some applicants, I think, should be ruled out on general principle. I understand that E-Flux is a large, respectable, and innovative group that will certainly have a lot of useful activity on .ART given a responsible and fair .ART manager, but I think I can remain confident that dA and Dadotart, Inc. will be the primary manager because of their unique experience with user interface, their experience with the widest varieties of art and users, and their proven track record of living up to the spirit of innovation, communities, and the arts.
An important factor here is that dadotart’s stated intent does not include turning all .ART domains into a deviantArt site or service. As I stated before, I believe that E-Flux will have plenty of useful operating room within .ART domains with dA managing it.
Hey Martin,
Why did you delete all your comments? They were good.
Response 1):
Martin John Callanan wrote, in response to manbartlett:
There is plenty/masses of art outside the .com TLD. Most artists I can think of don’t use .com. The key difference is all existing TLD are country specific or have open eligibility, and the proposed new ones have gatekeepers with their own rules (such as the existing .edu specifically reserved for USA educational institutions or .mil for USA military).
Response 2): Martin John Callanan wrote, in response to manbartlett:Thankfully someone already made a list: http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Artists/
Because they are part of a conversation – temporary – not something worthy of indefinite preservation.
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