Society6 is an interesting initiative, trying to bring artists together with funding supporters, but in a way that avoids a too direct link between the art and the money as well as the negative effects of the power law and the crowding out by ‘average taste’.

Excerpt from an interview with the co-founder Justin Wills, from the absolutely stunning blog, Brain Pickings.

“Many people experience art as a final product. Generally the artist’s process is largely hidden from the viewer and, frankly, this is one of the reasons many people think creating art is simply a talent and not a labor or learned skill. We really wanted to bring art lovers and supporters into the process. That’s why we created the Studio feature of society6. Supporters and peers experience the virtual studio of the artist, where an artist can share their process as well as the end result. If they experience the development of the artist and their work, we believe that everyone will increase their appreciation for both.

Previously, we worked on an online platform that helped companies use crowdsourcing to improve their products and services. What we learned from this experience has been quite helpful in designing society6 and led us to take this approach to curation.

The benefits of involving everyone in the curation of the work is that it expands the audience and increases their emotional connection to the art and the artist. The challenge lies in keeping it merit-based and not just a popularity contest. The most popular stuff tends to stay popular and the things that appeal to the broadest audience dominate. We have worked to avoid this issue when building our system.

Our Charts are one example of how we have tried to solve this — they show Top Studios only show within the last 7 days, so there is decay to the promotions they receive. At the end of the day, you won’t stay on the Charts unless you are continuing to contribute good work.

Secondly, when it came to the grants system, we wanted to make sure we harnessed the community to help filter the grant applicants without this becoming the deciding factor in who is awarded the grant. Community nominations create the finalist list, but ultimately the grant-giver selects from this list to make the award. It’s about balancing the use of a system with an individual point of view in order to achieve a fair and manageable result.”