Looking to the future: the experience of forecasting in the field of art

In the middle of the twentieth century, there is a need to develop methods of sociocultural forecasting in order to construct future management. Forecasting is widely used in the economic, social, political, and cultural spheres. Culture represent one of the essential components of the spiritual life of society. Therefore, forecasting in this area can make a significant contribution to identifying trends and priorities in the development of the processes of creating and mastering art by people, training and educating creative youth, preserving and popularizing artifacts of culture. This article describes an experiment able to identify ideas about perspective directions of development of the artistic environment soon and to allocate the most typical expectations of rising generation of intellectual elite of the socio-cultural situation, described in the creative essay. By clustering algorithms and automatic feature extraction methods, the task was realized. The experiment was attended by students of artistic areas (socio-cultural activities, art history, cultural studies) - the “creators” and non-artistic - “consumers” (political science, sociology, journalism, metallurgy, applied computer science). Total 430 texts were used in the study. An analysis of the results of the algorithm led to the following conclusions. The texts of the students of the group of “creators” included reflections on the questions that the process of artistic creation, the structure and functions of the institutions for the preservation and popularization of cultural heritage would remain unchanged. At the same time, in the texts of the second group - “consumers”, it was possible to find clearer and more interesting images of future cultural institutions and artistic practices, as well as products of creative activity. The results obtained are related to the fact that the interest of the second group of students is associated with increased reflexivity. Such results do not indicate the limitations of the “creators”, but only emphasize the need to study the artistic tastes, needs and aesthetic expectations of the “consumers”, the growth of dialogue and the culture of creative complicity (participation) between these two groups of people. Also, in creative works, it was possible to find exhibition projects that made a serious impression on students and became significant for the cultural environment of the city. After detailed study of these data we can understand what characteristics and levels of the organization must have the events that can in the long run have a serious impact on the cultural life of the city.

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