Multimedia Monitor, March 1996

To underscore the need to develop talent for multimedia production, I interviewed Stewart McBride, president of United Digital Artists, an international New York-based new media talent agency representing 400 artists (photographers, designers, videographers, and developers), programmers, and consultants. Stewart studied at Princeton, Oxford, and Stanford and worked as a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist for the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, and the International Herald Tribune in Paris. (In fact, we concluded that we must have been eating lunch at some of the same places in the mid 1980s, since at that time, we both worked just down the street from each other in a suburb of Paris called Neuilly sur Seine.) Stewart also made documentary films and, in 1991, helped Eastman Kodak Company and Apple Computer create the center for creative imaging in Camden, Maine the world's first digital art and learning center.

MB: I am hearing comments at this conference to the effect that there are a lot of products being shown, but the quality is not what one might hope. What is your take on this?

SM: Aesthetically, most of the products are pretty disappointing. Most developers and publishers don't seemed sufficiently inspired to do more than throw new technology at old publishing problems. They are simply re-treading material we've seen for years. We have yet to see a real multimedia masterpiece. What we are all waiting for is the "Citizen Kane" of multimedia. The fact is that we are not yet in the age of the multimedia talkies. Our industry is pre- "Birth of the Nation." Multimedia these days is still in the filmed stage play era. We are repackaging the same old stuff with the flash of new technology, rather than discovering the revolutionary potential of this new art form. In fact, it won't be the tool makers that will lead us into the promised land of multimedia. Only artists can pioneer the way.

MB: Where do your agency and new media training schools come in?

SM: Through UDA's new media schools, we're trying to bring real artists into the multimedia business. Today, the industry is truly putting the cart before the horse. Technology and new tools are wonderful, but what is really going to breathe life into multimedia is the infusion of creative talent, vision, and grand artistic ideas. The bottom line is that the computer is no more inspired than Rembrandt's brushes. What multimedia needs now is more Rembrandts not more brushes.

I hate the high-tech lexicon which categorizes artists as "content-providers" who "re-purpose" old material. That's what you get when the focus is on the technology. We need to be on the frontier, prospecting for answers to such vital questions as: "What is multimedia? What does it do well that we cannot do with older media?" If you can't add value to a novel by putting it on CD-ROM or the Internet, then why bother? Finding new media's unique role in art and communication should be our mission.

In the early days of desktop publishing, when the Mac and Pagemaker turned every person into a designer in their own minds, we saw a lot of horrible design. Today, publishers like to think of their multimedia finger-painting as high art. The truth is that we've got a long way to go. Forget the information superhighway; multimedia is in the days before paved roads. Artists are the creative life blood of the multimedia industry. We need to encourage all these "new media garage bands" that are springing up around the world in the hands of talented kids who live on credit, answer their own phones, and don't get much sleep. It's that creative bunch that our agency represents.

MB: What sort of education do you provide in your schools in New York and San Francisco? What is the profile of your students?

SM: We're not simply teaching software, we're teaching the creative process of taking an idea from storyboard to shrink-wrap, from design concept to final product. About half of our students are sent by their companies. The other half are individual artists. We can train anyone to take on the bread and butter multimedia jobs and work as, say, Photoshop or Director jocks. I personally enjoy, however, putting the new tools in the hands of already talented artists be they graphic designers, filmmakers or opera directors. They, in turn, bring the richness of their own experience and creative vision to multimedia.

MB: What do you see as our biggest challenge in this industry?

SM: As I said earlier, we can't rely exclusively on technology to lead us into the future. Creativity and artistic vision are paramount. Talent and content should be the heart and soul the meat and potatoes of the multimedia industry. The problem is that the industry has forgotten about the main course and is focused on a diet of fluffy, high-tech desserts. Believe me, the sugar high is running out.

MB: With all this focus on art, how do you teach your budding artists to work on-time, on-budget?

SM: We always tell them "real artists ship on time." Creativity in multimedia is no different from any other art form. Great art is usually created by working within certain constraints, whether it's the brittleness of the stone you're carving or the size of your movie budget or the pre-Christmas shipping date of your CD-ROM title. It's about coming up with creative solutions that are appropriate to resources, limitations, and challenges facing you. Depending on the circumstances, the most artistic solution might be to construct a cathedral or it might be a bungalow.

For more information about United Digital Artists' agency and new media/Internet schools in New York and San Francisco, please call 800/22PIXEL (29th Floor, 153 East 53 Street, New York NY 10022, 212/339-3819, fax 212/777-7222. e-mail: [email protected]).

To Coverage of Milia '96
To Multimedia and Digital Commentary Online