At the Brooklyn Museum, up until the middle of July, is a show that is decidedly not digital (sans a single video piece). The artist Takashi Murakami’s high color-key paintings and sculptures are inspired and influenced by Japanese manga and video games like Katamari-Damacy. To quote the review that appeared in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Murakami's work asks "questions of art and commerce, high and low, public brand and private expression, mass production and exquisite craft."
What makes this work interesting in the larger conversation about digital art and how it relates to culture today is that Murakami is standing in the gap between more traditional media and works that are being made using the most cutting edge technologies. By doing this he is asking some of the same questions that new media artists are asking, yet by using more traditional mediums he does not have to overcome the barriers of entry for the viewer that many new media artists have to deal with. Murakami is just one of a number of artists who are being inspired by technology and finding it fruitful to explore themes and issues that are becoming more and more relevant to society using more traditional techniques.
Valery Grancher’s exists between the traditional and the digital by bringing the icons of the computer world onto canvases. She does this by slowing down the process of making the icon, thereby asking the viewer to look at it as more than a placeholder on a screen, but also as a cultural object. However, because of the inherent clinical quality of the images she chooses to depict, Grancher’s paintings seem to stop short of asking us to examine these in any real critical context.
Another more nuanced way of examining the crossover of the digital and analog worlds, is created by the art collective made up of Eva and Franco Mattes. Their series of prints, the 13 Most Beautiful Avatars (from Second Life), offer a view into the digital world from the analog perspective that sheds light on both realms. By creating “portraits” of a set avatars and hanging them in a real world gallery (as well as being displayed in a Second Life gallery) they are presenting the viewer with a whole chorus of questions about the aesthetics of beauty (as well as questions about synthetic beauty), the personhood of avatars, authorship of artworks (they did not create the avatars, they simply made a “screenshot” of them) and the list goes on.
A third artist who is standing in the gap of the traditional and digital artwork is Casey Reas. Known as a groundbreaking digital artist, the prints and objects that he produces as evidence of the software pieces he creates act almost as archeological remains from some other reality.
What these artists are showing us, either intentionally or not, is what digital art needs to become fully understood: the knowledge that the methods of consuming and appreciating new media works are different from traditional media.
The new media artist has to completely rethink the relationship between the work and the viewer. A traditional painting is viewed and interacted with completely differently than a totally immersive environment, or a telematically controlled piece of software or a virtual game-type piece. The new media artist has to re-teach the audience that it can be more than just the audience. That participation, interaction, and applied thought are necessary to complete the works. New media pieces are coming from a different aesthetic reality, one where motion and interaction and participation are essential.
The artists mentioned above are reaching out via traditional methods, leading viewers towards a different art aesthetic. As digital art and new media works become more prevalent, the newness of the digital medium will wear off and audiences capable of switching between the two types of art will develop, creating a rich dialogue between virtual realities and more concrete ones.
Earlier I posted an article by Kevin Kelley that, among other things, called out the internet as a big copy machine. He states that, at its core, this trait is an intrinsic part of this newest form of information technology. Case in point: I have now twice posted links to Mr. Kelley's article, one pointing directly to the article, the other pointing at my post pointing directly to the article. How many times can you copy something before you start to get distortions? How can artists use this innate ability to their advantage, and when they do, what will it say about the work they are doing?
Anders Weberg is taking this trait and raising some interesting questions about where online art exists and by extension who owns it (or for that matter, whether or not digital works can really be owned by any one person). In summary, Mr. Weberg is releasing his video/sound pieces via a torrent and allowing their continued existence to be in the hands of the swarm being that is at the core of the internet. As soon as one individual seeds the torrent, he deletes all evidence that the project existed. The "art" only exists in the tubes that are the internet, or on some anonymous torrenter's hard drive.
The thing that gets me excited about what Weberg is doing is that he seems to be approaching the idea of his videos with the internet in mind, and not as an afterthought. By disseminating his work in this manner, he forces you to question the value of it as well as the aesthetics of it. He is allowing anything to happen to it once it enters into the wild. Should someone change it or add to it, or damage it or mislabel it, all goes into the thought process, and ultimately becomes an intrinsic element of the work.
And as if that weren't enough, he is also including the relatively new mobile capabilities of some of the most recent hardware as well. By uploading a series of videos that function as small travel narratives, and making them available in formats that are usable on portable media players, he is creating the ability to "travel" to a place at the same time you are on the move somewhere else.
The thing that Weberg has going for him is that he is working in a format (video) that is very easily disseminated as well as consumed via the net. So from this angle, the engagement of the viewer is limited. However, by combining the possibility of harnessing the collective mind to not only distribute, but also to potentially change or even destroy the works, he is using the net as an extra element in his pieces. The technology is superseding the role of simple vehicle, and becoming an active participant in the piece. And, since the net is made up of billions of people behind the terminals, the opportunities for community consumed, experienced, and created (or destroyed) work is finally an option.
So it turns out that Vito Acconci doesn't know that he has a virtual doppelganger running around in Second Life. Mr. Acconci was here yesterday to give a lecture and meet with some of us graduate students and said some really interesting things about space and how we interact/exist within it. The question was posed to him whether he felt that cyberspace (or the internet or virtual spaces) offers the same opportunities for interaction that real spaces do. He responded by citing the Elastic Mind show at the MOMA as evidence of artists/designers thinking in that direction, but ultimately said two things: it would have to be done by people younger than him and the interface would have to change (read improve) for it to be effective.
The really interesting thing about Acconci and his inclusion in this blog is that ideologically he fits right in with artists who want to create experiences that are of a visceral nature in the virtual world. He recounted how he "left art behind" to focus on forms of expression that were more directly involved in the everyday life of people in ways that traditional art couldn't or wouldn't, whichever the case may be ( I encourage you to look at some of his early works and writings about them to see that as a performance artist he was always involved in "spaces" and how people interact with the spaces he created in galleries).
He came to the conclusion that architecture was the most fulfilling thing that he could do by building a structure that people could come into and inhabit. Which brings me to the digital art part of this post. Vito Acconci, were he born today, would be a digital artist. The ultimate fulfillment, the completion of his arc of reaching people via creating environments that allowed them to exist and empowered them, would be found in a completely virtual environment. No limitations. Just complete immersion from every angle and every sense while allowing for individual creativity and expression.
I asked Vito as we were leaving if he was aware of the aforementioned second-life staged piece and how he felt about what was intended as a piece that commented on public and private space and proximity being reproduced in an environment where proximity and public/private issues are still evolving. He seemed excited about the idea that the piece existed, and wants me to send him a link to it. I think that allows me to refer to him heretofore as "my buddy Vito."
Internet art seems kludgy. There I have said it. The interfaces don't allow me to live with the works, to make them a part of my everyday life. So, I am always on the lookout for ideas and technologies that will make that divide seem less evident. I offer you a couple of steps in that direction:
Look out Neo, here we come.
Will Second Life ever make it to our first life?
I meant to post this a while ago, but lost track of it, so here it is at last. The implications are pretty huge for new HCI's and all new ways to jack into the net.
And finally a little hands on interfacing to bring us back to the here and now.
If these guys all come together at some point, then who knows, maybe we will be our own robot overlords....
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?