#nancy baym

[fanhackers]

How Technology Has Transformed, And Complicated, Music Fandom: Interview With Nancy Baym

Author of "Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences and the Intimate Work of Connection," Nancy Baym offers her insight on how technology has altered historical power structures in the music business and transformed what it means to be a music fan.

Here's a really interesting interview with Nancy Baym, who markets herself as an internet researcher these days but has a history of really interesting and groundbreaking work on fandom. This is about her new book, Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences and the Intimate Work of Connection, which looks at how technology has changed the intimate emotional interactions between musicians and their fans.

[girlhoodandothercults]

 “Increasingly, part of the job of artists is to foster and sustain ongoing interaction with a community of individual fans. Artists must balance their audiences’ need to connect with them and with one another with their own economic and social needs”

This short piece brings up a lot of questions I like about the labour involved for an artist to maintain a relationship with their fan community.

What does it mean to “connect with fans”? How to artists do it? What do they get out of it? How might they feel about it?

In the context of hyper service-orientated late stage capitalism managing emotions and relationships are key to lots of the work we do, but rarely acknowledged as labour. 

[rocketsams]

"When we communicate about digital media, we are communicating about ourselves. As we represent these unfamiliar interpersonal tools through our words, stories, metaphors, and images, we collectively negotiate what interpersonal relationships are and what we want them to be."

Nancy Baym, Personal Connections in the Digital Age (p. 23)

[whitmanifesto]

Digital media aren't saving or running us. They aren't reinventing us. But they are changing the ways we relate to others and ourselves in countless, pervasive ways.

Nancy Baym, Personal Connections in the Digital Age 2010

[inls697-blog]

Communities, Relationships and Industries: Creating Contexts Through Tumblr

Nancy Baym discussed the potential of new technologies in terms of communication. These new connections are making it easier to make communities that are not simply based on locational issues.

Baym argues that online communities are almost as good, if not as good as IRL communities. I think that the online community of Tumblarians is similar to a real-life librarian community, and in whatever ways it is lacking it makes up for with unique attributes. For example, the community is not restricted to a singular location. The Tumblarian community spans across several countries and thus creates a unique environment.

[alexandrasinger-blog]

Virtual Space - a poem

Assignment: Explore the quality of virtual space. What does it look like, feel like, sound like? How do you feel when you are in it? Research virtual space in one or more of the following ways: Write about it in prose or poetry, draw it or create a digital image about it, choreograph a dance the evokes it, or take a photo of it, make a video about it, or create a mash up about it. Really sit with the notion of that space you are in when you are neither really here nor really there and see what bubbles up.

  It feels a lot different than reality I am confident, surrounded, and comforted It feels as though I've always been this strong But this world and that world are not One in the same So, I ask, if these worlds are two different How do I travel to and from? I do not travel I transcend my essence Through a computer screen Through a cellphone To reach the other essences experiencing that same virtual space That we meet in everyday

I do NOT pride myself on writing poetry or any very special prose, but this just sort of spilled out when I was thinking about myself in relation to the virtual word. The two thoughts that kept coming back to me were: 1. The confidence that I feel behind a screen doesn't even compare to the lack of confidence I feel in reality 2. The idea that we, and our physical bodies stay behind computer screens, but our essence, or the idea of us, very easily transcends through a computer screen into the virtual world to then represent your literal "presence" there. 

I really get my brain going a lot when I think about the virtual world and try to compare it to reality. It's just a very complicated thing to break down despite the fact that it's presence in my life is exactly the same as my real, physical life. And then, terms like "real" arise - I just slipped and did it in the previous sentence - and I take a step back. So, is the 'me' on Facebook not a real me? Is the Tumblr 'me' not the real me? The only thing that I can deduce is that the 'me' I portray on social media is that of the ULTIMATE me - the me that I wish I was.

I'm sorry, once I start get started on this reality vs. virtual space thing I really start to lose myself. It's amazing how something we are a part of every single day is so hard for us to explain and break down.

As you can probably gather, I am really excited to read the chapter about identity from the Baym book!

[forthisclassimtaking-blog]

Response to chapter 1: Personal Connections in the Digital Age by Nancy K. Baym

        Chapter one talks about the various new forms of personal connection today mentioning some comparisons from back in the day. It also looks at how quickly we can communicate when were not in person, and the differences of technological communication versus face to face interactions. It was interesting to look at a study of something so close to home and relevant. In most classes growing up you learn primarily about things that have already happened that you can’t really do much about. You can have an opinion about history but it doesn’t get you very far. Reading this chapter is practically like reading an outsiders study on my every day life. It felt personal. My connections, which I never thought to be weird, are in fact vastly different from the connections of my parents. I am 20 years old and do most of my communicating VIA cell phone or online social networking site. Even one of my best friends from high school in Okinawa, Japan who is in the Marines texts me instead of writing letters. (Theres an app for that). 

I wonder which of my friends would still be around if we could easily send a text every so often. Probably half of them. I’m not really one to put in too much effort either. I started a life here in Boston and when I’m here I become to involved in that life that I sometimes forget to send that “Hey thinking about you, hope all is well” text. But sooner or later it gets sent, a post is made on someones facebook wall, and BAM .. we’re still friends. Three (almost four ) years out of high school I have retained almost all of my closest friends. I don’t think that many people can say that who were in high school before the internet and Web 2.0 era. 

It is scary to think that people can be one person on the internet and a completely different person off of it. The person might not even exist. That was a fact that Baym pointed out, and it made me think of my sister who is involved with online dating. She is a bit of a space cadet and my mother is concerned she might find someone online who isn’t an actual person. This is something my sister would do. But not because she’s a space cadet per-say, this could really happen to any one of us. I have tons of friends on OKcupid who face this very real fear every time they meet up with someone new. Even I have four different tumblrs and you would never know which ones are mine and which ones aren’t, they are all for different interests. For all you know you might already follow one of my other tumblrs but not know it. Do we really know who we are following? And thats another thing that irks me... “following”. What a weird concept. Twenty years ago if I had fifty seven people following me, I’d have a serious problem. Now-a-days I tell “oh you have instagram?! Follow me!”, I was excited when I hit fifty followers. Words have completely changed meaning, the world itself is changing so fast that its hard for even us young kids to keep up, never mind people like my mother. She still can’t wrap her head around the idea that an email might be from a hacker instead of a person. She just opens anything that comes and then I have to go and fix her email or make her a new one. 

The connections never stop. We are in constant contact. I have one friend who lives in NYC, we went to high school together and our conversations rarely start with “hey”, we normally jump right into it and continue on with out conversation even if we haven't talked in a day or so. Our connection never closes. 

        It’s a scary thought, we’re almost stuck in this place where the connection is always open. Sometimes I just want it all to stop. I want to throw my iphone in the T tracks so I can stop this crazy addiction to instagram and what used to be a facebook addiction is now turning into a twitter addiction. But I can’t. Because I’ll miss the email from my professor telling us class is canceled, or i’ll miss the call from my mom, i’ll miss a text from my friend in the marines for the next five years. I’ll miss my girlfriend telling me she wishes I was cuddling with her while she’s laying in bed, one floor above me in the room to the left. But I just love those texts, they’re so damn cute... 

Until Next Time .. 

- Vee 

[snippetsandlinks]