Who this site is for (or, For whom this site is)
Art+Culture is for anyone who enjoys, makes, or supports art of any kind—painters, dancers, writers, museums, organizations, festivals, film lovers, gallery goers, theater dwellers, actors, musicians, composers, symphony season ticket holders, indie music junkies, djs, etc. Art+Culture joyfully mixes high and low, performer and audience, artist and viewer.
There are many ways into Art+Culture, a variety of ways to express yourself.
How Art + Culture is different than artist portfolio sites
Art+Culture is much more than not just a portfolio site—it is a place to play, to sprawl across the disciplines, to discover, explore, and to express the breadth of your practice and taste. Can you have a portfolio here? Yes, by all means—and we have excellent tools to manage it, whether your portfolio consists of images, video, audio, text, or any combination thereof.
But unlike other portfolio sites, we are a platform for you to converse with other artists and enjoyers. Here's what makes our site so different:
There are two ways to do this. One, browse the site. When you come upon an artist or movement or theme you like, click on "Add/Modify Connection" above the headshot and that artist, movement, or theme will appear in your Cloud.
Or: Open your Connections tab and select "Edit connections." At that point, you can search for artists or browse movements and select them.
Connecting as an Artist versus Connecting an Enjoyer
Perhaps your poetry—or dance or pottery or painting—is like the work of another artist: in that case, you would connect as an artist. But perhaps your work is nothing like that of another artist but you enjoy that artist's work: in that case, you'd connect as an enjoyer. This allows you to inflect your relationship to other artists with a bit of nuance.
How do Connections work? I didn't choose all these artists.
Behind the scenes, the Art+Culture algorithm finds connections between you and the rest of the system. This Connections algorithm, then, exceeds your work and your taste, making connections across the system to find artists, movements, and members that are similar, in some way, to you. These Connections are what we refer to as "A+C Connections."
It is a work in progress. We are perpetually working to refine the algorithm, to make it smarter.
Why you might not see yourself in the Cloud of your favorite artists, movements, or themes
If too many names appear in a given Cloud, that Cloud is rendered illegible. There is therefore a limit of @ 32 names at any given time. Hit refresh and your name will appear at some point. And you can always find yourself in the Connections tab.
The difference between a Theme and a Tag
Themes refer to certain concepts and attributes that Art+Culture has defined. These themes help link artists to artists and movements to movements, to forge lateral connections across disciplines. While we try to keep the set of themes stable, it is nonetheless an ever growing set.
Tags are user defined. As more users join the site and more tags enter the play, tags, like themes, will begin to inflect the connections across disciplines.
After I've joined, can I put myself in as an artist by clicking "add an artist"?
There are two ways for artists to represent themselves on A+C.
A+C Tips for galleries, festivals, venues, presses
How do I showcase the work of my artists?
Join as your gallery. Then, click "add artist" and you can add your artists to the system. Then, add media to that artist's portfolio. You will be the only one who can control the profile of that artist (but anyone can add media to that artist's portfolio).
How do I get the artists in my gallery into my Cloud? First, those artists need to be part of the system if they're not there already. Add them as artists by clicking on "add an artist" in the upper right corner of the page.
Once all the artists you want in your Cloud are on the site, go to those pages and "connect to" them—and they'll be in your Cloud.