There is something delightfully subversive about this piece directed at Google (whose corporate motto, might I remind you is "do no evil," or something like that). Not to mention the totally bitchin site.
I am no fan of Jackson Pollock. His work has always left me scratching my head (I am more of a Kline/Rothko guy). So I must confess a twisted sort of glee that a site like this exists. And the fact that it exists is one of the things that is so great the internet. If you want to look at digital technology as something that changes the way that we look at and consume culture, this small, simple, site is a great example.
Lets look at Pollock first. When confronted with a Pollock drip painting, a couple of words come to mind: frenetic, energetic, active (or maybe more along the lines of "my kid cold do that"). His canvases tended to be huge. He worked standing up. He used his whole body, he recorded his movements. His works were a visual sign of the performance that was the creation of the piece. They were larger than life because you could bring whatever interpretation to them that you wanted and monumental in their layers upon layers of thick splattered, crusted paint.
Now, what does this website have in common with a Jackson Pollock? You will probably interact with this site sitting down. What you make will be no bigger than the computer screen that you are looking at. Instead of using your whole body, you will use the simple flit of a mouse, or even drag of a finger to spread pixels that have no weight of their own. At the press of the button, you can make the whole thing disappear.
So where is the connection?
Pollock, while not the first or the only artist to take painting into the abstract expressionist realm, has been one of the most controversial. His place in art history is pretty much assured, both as a rogue as well as a trailblazer, but his work still offers a high barrier of entry for the viewer. He transformed the way that we look at paintings, what we thought painting was all about, and that is still uncomfortable.
Digital Media, New Media, is also uncomfortable. It changes the way that we look at, interact with, and view our culture. I don't want to make the claim that the website referenced above yields content of the historical or aesthetic gravitas as a traditional Jackson Pollock painting, but it can change the way that we look at New Media. It can also add a layer of appreciation to traditional mediums. New Media, if it is about anything, is about dialogue and interactivity. If this allows for appreciating Pollock more, and thinking about new ways to create at the same time, what more can you ask?
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.-John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything
If you haven't seen it yet WIRED has a great article on the way that the internet and technology has changed the business of buying and selling. It is without a doubt a great read, with interesting thoughts throughout. I can't help but think about how this applies to the arts in this digital age. The section under the heading of The Economics of Abundance echoes some of the ideas that I have been tossing around in my head for awhile and have heard other folks discuss. Last week's TWIT (yes I am that type of geek) is mostly a talk with the musician Jonathan Coulton (for those of you who are John Hodgman fans he is the musician on The Areas of My Expertise. An unbelievably funny yet almost completely undigestable "book?").
Coulton talks around some of the same high points that the WIRED article addresses, but makes it a little more specific to the arts industry (he doesn't really get going until about 45 mins. into the podcast). The most fascinating part is when he talks about how the internet has allowed him to not have to be popular amongst huge groups of people (he calls it Aerosmith sized crowds).He makes the distinction between large audiences and the "right audience." The right audience doesn't need a big distribution company to market to them, the internet does the job. And then, as if shunning fame (but not necessarily fortune) isn't enough, he goes on to detail how he finds these audiences by essentially giving away his creative work (that is free as in Beer). He runs a store from his site that sells all manner of things (including music should you have old fashioned ideas about compensating artists for their labors). He is not the only one who has found the right audience to appreciate his brand of creation.
Radiohead made waves last year with giving the user the option of payments and seemed to score big with the idea. And then there is Corey Doctorow, who puts all of his books online for free under a Creative Commons license....the examples go on and on. What does this mean for visual artists? Is there a tapping into the "free" market that can happen in a way that provides viewers with enough of an aesthetic experience (both qualitatively as well as quantitatively) so that an audience is formed and the cream rises to the top? Art wants to be free. It wants as many eyeballs as possible and as many brains as possible coming together to experience and emote. The internet might be fulfilling the great Warholian ideal of everybody's 15 minutes of fame, it just might not take such huge numbers, and in the age of YouTube gaffs and LOLCATS, is there truly wisdom in the crowds?
For those of you in the area, the MOMA has a great tech meets art show up now. A couple of these artists and their pieces have been making the internet rounds for a while now, but it is nice to see them getting some institutional love. The site is pretty cool as well, chock full of folks I am sure you will read about at some point on these humble pages.....
Technology is the 800 pound gorilla in the room whenever I want to create anything. What software, hardware, tool, repository of knowledge, how-to, etc...can I download, buy, use, access, refer to, etc...that will make the process easier, faster, cheaper, different, more useful, etc...? Invariably, after a quick search of the trusty tubes, there is always something that I find that will make the process easier. And yet, I am likely to still go about things the old fashioned way (as a printmaker, that usually means heading to a litho-stone or an etching plate or a block of wood). Even though technology shows me that there are easier ways to do things (or that the process could be completely automated for me), and usually gives me ideas that I will use, it also shows me that anyone can achieve the same ends using the same means. As I mentioned earlier, one of the values that the internet can't subvert and reproduce endlessly is originality or uniqueness. I am not the only person to notice this phenomenon. There are a number of subcultures that have decided that the internet is about empowering our individual creative minds and not about creating uniformity. Below is a roundup of like-minded Luddites who shun the easiest and fastest and make use of the net for dissemination (or maybe just amassing fame or fortune).
How to make just about everything.
The softer side of the web.
The meat market.
Not a trend I get, but undeniably awesome.
What I want to talk about in this blogspace is the aesthetics of technology (or the technology of aesthetics) or maybe the art of the digital world (and the world of digital art) or maybe the just how computers are changing the world of art (or some combination of the above, or not). But occasionally I like to post ideas that affect the above mentioned. I ran across this article on BoingBoing a couple of weeks back and have been thinking about it ever since in the context of its impact on the world of art. It would be easy to look at this and turn away with disdain that any discussion of art and economy is distasteful and debasing to the "art." But what Mr. Kelly is talking about is the inherent value of things in this digital age. I find it comforting that some of these inherent values have not only been present in art from the beginning, but will continue even in the midst of this digital revolution.
There can be no doubt that we are spending more and more of our lives online, connected, or plugged in. As a society we are moving more and more of our "real world" activities into the virtual sphere (food gathering, looking for a mate, socializing with the fellas, finding true companionship, bettering yourself and those around you) but what does the space that all of these places inhabit look like? Where do all of the societies and groups that are formed on the internet come together to drink their bad coffee and set up their folding chairs? Perhaps one of the empowering aspects of the web is that it empowers each user to create their own space depending on their own tastes or their software. But as more and more of our daily mundanity moves to the virtual realms, our visual culture will also. Music and movies have been consumed for quite a while now via the web (both legally and otherwise), so it is just a matter of time before the internet, or our virtual reality if you will, becomes our everyday spot for visual culture.
So, the question must be asked; What will it look like? CAIDA and Akamai show us what all the information that flows along the wires looks like. But the substance of the internet is more than just empty information.
There are any number of visualizers available to let us zero in on either our own internet experience, or even what the internet looks like around a particular topic, or even better (this is so fabulous it is beyond description). but if we are really trying to make this space our new home, information just isn't going to cut it. We are aesthetic creatures. If we are going to live on the internet, who are the aestheticians, and the artists who make the experience richer? I hope this blog will help answer those questions as we go along. Below are a collection of five works to consider:
This is not in English, but the site is pretty easy to navigate. Click around and try it out. It is a fascinating take on the usefulness (but ultimately coldness) of Google maps, and the nuances of what makes a space unique.
Mark Napier has been a pioneer in net/art and has some pretty cool stuff on his site. This one (especially the "grass" option) has a particularly peaceful aesthetic to it.
File this one under signs of the times.
I can't help but want to make up my own story about what is going on here.
This one is just to freak you out and make me seem sort of hard core.