This essay doesn’t explore the ideas I presented nearly enough, but it’s still pretty solid and useful in the ideas and artists I drew together. If you are interested in further reading I would point you in the direction of http://www.amandawasielewski.com/writing.htm, I used several of her very interesting essays.
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The arrival of the world wide web and its accelerated permeation into our media, culture and daily life has changed things so suddenly that we have barely time to consider collectively about what it means for human development. As an artist and witness to this cultural shift, perhaps the most fascinating influence has been on the way we represent ourselves, and the possibilities it creates for artists and the presentation of work. Though not immediately related, as part of the network of information flowing in every direction across the connected earth, both the artwork and the identity as profile, website, blog, are subject to the same limitations of transmission, the curious concept of simulated space and the resistance from the established ‘old’ media in various forms. The different forms of information communication, artworks, messages, video, music, data, are jumbled together with the erratic viewing patterns of the average internet user. They also frequently cross paths as social media becomes a key platform for distribution of all forms of creative output and the discussion surrounding it, both high and low-brow. The relationship works both ways, with artists ‘crowdsourcing’ work, soliciting contributions from the online public to create artworks.
Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia (Caillois, 1935), used the term ‘psychasthenia’ to describe how the relationship between the self and the space we exist in can be disrupted. He did so by comparing it to insect camouflage, some of which does not appear to protect the insect from harm, some markings in fact causing them greater danger. He posited that they experienced a ‘depersonalisation by assimilation into space’ in a way that humans can too- blurring the distinction between the self and the space until they merge and one is absorbed by the space, losing any sense of identity.
In terms of rigorous scientific process, and with the development of biological and psychological theory in the intervening years, Caillois’ text is outdated. However as an ambitious piece of theory on the human mind and it’s sense of itself, it has a new and provoking relevance with the arrival of the internet. Here, we have the perfect example of the abstract but no less engrossing space in which a person could lose themselves through depersonalisation. The best example of this is the social media profile, Facebook the most common. Users are invited to share thoughts, tastes and aspirations with friends and acquaintances through a limited profile. The sum of a person is reduced to a series of photographs, lists of interests, films and books, and a chronological stream of shared content. The identity is in many ways stifled.
In this environment it seems very possible to experience the kind of depersonalisation that Caillois described- here the user is one person amongst a ceaseless flood of predictable information. Patterns of behaviour and taste, the banality of existence becomes pronounced in the form of a Facebook live feed. At the same time as this dizzying sense of scale, we experience the alienation of communicating whilst alone, Baudrillard’s “astronaut in a bubble” from The Ecstasy of Communication (1988). We are detached from the stream of living, of occurrence happening before us, our profile is part of the furniture, something the eyes of another blankly skip over in the quest for the next distraction. Amanda Wasielewski (2010, pp27) states: “The Twitter feed and the Facebook status update are indicative of the suspension of life in lieu of representing life.” It is the paradox of the network of individuals, alone, together.
In this way, then, we experience a kind of “disorder of spatial perception”, in that we are presented with a simulated space with no real life equivalent, despite language used to suggest otherwise- the chat ‘room’, browser ‘window’, online ‘forum’. The function of these concepts is in common with the physical equivalent, but these spaces don’t actually exist, except as strings of code transmitted globally, so we have this curious experience of existing in an intangible space which the brain struggles to rationalise in the moment, and resorts to perceiving as another real world space- the ‘disorder’.
This homogenisation of output can be observed in creative areas online, too, if not in the upper echelons of the art world, then in the flickrs and tumblrs of amateur designers and musicians, as evidenced by the popularity and pervasiveness of the mashup, the remix, the collage of found media to create something new. Many of these sources will have been commercially successful songs and images themselves, chosen partly to ensure the success of the new creation through familiarity to the audience. The creator is suddenly and unknowingly colluding in the power of commercial media, and all the unseen wheels of corporate interest as much as creative that go to manufacture the modern commercially successful musician or designer.
Another fundamental feature and influence of the online identity or artwork is its position as part of an unfathomably vast network. So vast, we are compelled to ‘surrender to the ecstasy of communication’, the luminous eyes which project into our private spaces. The way we allow broadcast mediums and the internet to invade our lives and minds is unparalleled. Art, as part of that network, is now reaching us at home, in bed, on the sofa, and this is drastically different to the experience in a gallery setting.
In a gallery a work is given context and validation as a ‘proper’ piece of art, a saleable physical object with a value. It is surrounded by other artworks, curated in a neutral environment without distraction. This is a luxury which is mainly relinquished online- even a curated online exhibition on a carefully designed website cannot control the exact process of the viewer. (Barthes’ Death of the Author perfectly represented) They can swap between windows and do any number of things which might affect their individual experience of the piece, the mindset they have when they approach it, the associations they might make, which aren’t present in a physical gallery space. There is no obligation to look at the piece for more than a microsecond and infinite opportunities to revisit. The colours of the screen might be calibrated incorrectly, or the screen too small. They must conceive new ways of adapting to the situation.
The internet as a medium also brings a change in definition of the piece. In an online exhibition, the intangible digital image, as the thing displayed in its proper context, becomes what Vierkant (2010) terms an “image-object”, as important as a physical piece of art, but now liable to infinite reproduction. It has no physical value, and every reproduction is of equal status to the original. It can be easily distributed with or without the permission of the artist and the details of the original creator are easily separated as it traverses blogs and articles. Lack of consequence and the desire to claim ownership and acclaim from an image by sharing it mean that in many thousands of personal blogs particularly, authors are unscrupulous in the crediting of artworks.
The ease with which creative works can be appropriated has lead to a swathe of flawed legislation attempts and much critical discourse on what should be done to protect the author, and what rights they have as creators. Many of the ‘old media’ giants of film, music and press treat the internet with fear and contempt, hoping to prevent its progress in order to protect financial interests rather than attempt to embrace it- their protestations appear increasingly unreasonable. Since the arrival of widespread internet access the tide has irrevocably turned on the old, inefficient systems of distribution which favoured the corporation, and the creative individual is beginning to find means of income online where the old media claimed was only indiscriminate ‘theft’ of content. US comedian Louis CK is a recent success story, independently offering a live show download for $5 without DRM, against the advice of distribution companies. It has now earned him a million dollars.
All of these implications mean the work which has made most successful use of the internet as a medium so far is the interactive piece, which requires the viewer’s contribution and implicit involvement in the work. This taps into a movement which has become popular in recent years- the idea of ‘crowdsourcing’. Jeff Howe introduced the term in 2006 to refer to the idea of someone making an open call for help or submissions from the public to aid a project. The idea is that if the audience is big enough, menial tasks can be completed efficiently with a small effort from many, and members with specialist skills can be located more easily than through traditional methods. The work is completed for free on the basis that the participant sees the value of the project in some form or in the hope of renumeration if their creation is selected by a company fielding submissions.
This is a business model which deserves criticism in many instances for devaluing the skilled labour of creation- those not selected by a company in whatever capacity receive no reward for their work, in opposition to the traditional commission model where a company employ a creative on the basis of past work and pay them whether the outcome is used or not. The internet facilitates this devaluation by the volume of labourers connects- there will always be someone available to complete the work to a reasonable standard for less, the downside (for the creative) of a global network.
One of the most successful (and less exploitative) examples of crowdsourcing is the project Learning To Love You More, a collaboration between Miranda July, Harrell Fletcher, Yuri Ono and members of the public worldwide. It comprised a website and a series of exhibitions of work made by the public in response to assignments given by the artists. The assignments were instructions such as, “Make an exhibition of the art in your parent’s house” and “Feel the news”, and the project attracted 8000 participants during its 7 year duration. In their own words, “the prescriptive nature of these assignments was intended to guide people towards their own experience.”
The success of the project in attracting participants stemmed from a combination of the tasks requiring just enough effort to feel a sense of achievement, and their charm in encouraging the participant to do something out of the ordinary in aid of a greater cause. There is also a degree of exhibitionism involved, with the participant knowingly having a captive audience for their submission through the involvement of the artists.
Amanda Wasielewski (2010, pp12) suggested that despite the voluntary nature of the projects, “The underlying exploitation here is similar to the exploitation that occurs on Web 2.0 sites generally.” That is, the artists compelled members of the public to generate free content which was then presented as a project authored by the artists. I disagree; I don’t think the project could have been more sensitive in its desire to invoke reflection in the participant and to benefit further than just the exhibition of something they produced. Realistically there will be few, if any, artworks of any form which genuinely and tangibly change someone’s life: invoking the participant to view and approach the minutiae of existence slightly differently, more positively, as this project endeavoured to, is perhaps the best an artist can hope for. This, coupled with the sense of earnest community the project developed, the documentation of the tiny variations within the banal, make this project a beautiful reflection of human experience both in real life and and online.
Learning to Love You More represents many of the benefits of the internet and the positive involvement it can have in peoples’ lives, far from the cynical interpretations of our reaction to intangible space and unlimited communication posited by Caillois and Baudrillard. Both interpretations keenly distance the simulated world of the internet from the real one, but the reality is less defined. Though the online world we navigate is conceptually one we struggle to comprehend, it is still one where people are broadly ‘themselves’- an extension of real life. Though there are of course many opportunities for a user to fabricate an online persona, in the burgeoning sector of social medias such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, the majority of users will share their real name, a small photograph and a description of themselves. (Indeed, Facebook requires accounts to be genuine, though this is hard to enforce.) The user has control over what aspect of themselves they project, so we see a kind of ‘edited’ reality, but it is by no means a fiction and is, pragmatically speaking, just a development of the ways we project idealised versions of ourselves in real life: appearance, the company we keep, where and what we spend time on.
Having established that our presence on social media does not appear to be motivated by escapism, it is easier to see the internet and the way we have colonised a lot of it as simply an extension of our real-life behaviours. Learning to Love You More invited the user to share something about their life, to reacknowledge the specialness of existence- the self-affirmation that can be found in the commonality of shared experience juxtaposed with the entirely unique experience of every person in existence.
Twitter, at its best, serves as a simple way to share brief pieces of information, humour, opinion and other media, to generate discussion, and mainly to pass the time a little faster. It is a social leveller, with celebrities who might have been portrayed as inaccessible by old media now sharing parts of their lives just the same as friends and colleagues. The tired trope spun by the media of its use purely to inform the world of what you had for breakfast is not really true- mundane tweeters don’t get followers. Overall there is nothing radically different here from the ‘old media’ equivalent of phoning a friend to share a joke, or the content of regular conversation- except now these can also be shared with friends who live abroad or simply likeminded strangers. Fundamentally, humans enjoy sharing things, and services like Twitter and Tumblr, which have so far broadly resisted the lure of intrusive but lucrative advertising, and share a vaguely liberal sensibility opposing censorship (including SOPA, the law currently passing through American Congress which seeks to censor sites without due process and has attracted the opposition of the majority of internet users) means they are pretty benign services to employ.
Another respect in which social media may appeal to us is the need to find our place in society, to find a community of like-minded individuals in which we can feel accepted and validated. Twitter, Tumblr and Last.fm allow the user to make connections with strangers based on common ground- the endless chain of links woven between people, their output, and other people, facilitate a journey which allows loose communities to form based around any interest imaginable, and to enrich their lives in the knowledge that whatever they think, someone somewhere will fervently agree. In this way the notion of identity is perhaps strengthened by the increased presence.
The theory that a Facebook profile is the homogenisation of personality, as suggested by Merrin- “What one hopes will add to one’s distinction only adds to one’s depersonalisation: how many images of friends posing with drinks are there already on Facebook?”1 - holds merit, but again does not take into consideration its relation to real world behaviour. Exactitudes, an ongoing project by Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek, presents a collection of portraits of people grouped by every conceivable demographic, exposing the uniform we all adopt, knowingly or not. A truly unique individual is either fantastically rare or nonexistent. We might be uncomfortable in this knowledge, but Exactitudes illustrates that we are guilty of it in real life just as online, and so while a social media profile does inevitably limit how well we can express ourselves, more so than in real life, it is still not a flaw peculiar to online representation that should necessitate rejection of the medium.
The internet, despite its growing artist subculture and new avenues of exploration, (or perhaps because of) is yet to become an established medium. There are a number of differences which will have to be adapted to or accepted before we can expect to see a market for ‘internet art’ like other media. Stallabrass (2010, pp165) notes, “Art history— in the paradox of an art history of the contemporary— is still one of the necessary conduits through which works must pass as they move through the market and into the security of the museum.” The internet embodies the opposite of values the established art holds dear- it is uncensored, egalitarian in the way media is deemed ‘successful’- based on pageviews, not the opinions of a few commentators, and lots of it is free to consume, severely limiting its interest to the profit-hungry art world. It is the arena of the everyman, free of the exclusivity of conventional markets, at least in theory.
It lacks a conventional means of exhibition, it defies categorization and most of its pieces lack an inherent value because they have no physical form. If the art world continues in its current form there is unlikely to be any place for internet art in the mainstream because it can’t be monetized. It also removes the sense of mystery and grandeur a piece exhibited in a gallery can infer through solemn display and reputation- online it has to compete for attention with memes, lolcats, videos of baby sloths, every kind of lowbrow entertainment. It also suffers insignificance amongst the volume of output generated online, which is far greater than that of the insular and selective art world.
Internet art perhaps has more in common with other online movements than the mainstream art world- the Open-source movement, promoting free distribution and open development of software and electronics amongst other applications, and the Creative Commons organization which seeks to resolve the middle ground between maintaining ownership of an image and freedom of distribution.
With internet access in the Western world rapidly approaching the inescapable, it seems impossible that the traditional art world will be able to continue rejecting Internet Art indefinitely. Increasing numbers of artists are addressing the medium and responding through it, and the internet is concurrently changing consumer attitudes to the value of media and forcing media industries to change their dated systems of profit and distribution. We have experienced alternative methods of distribution through the internet which are fairer and cheaper for artist and consumer and don’t need corporate representation at all, and that movement is gaining momentum. The individual is at the heart of this, the online identity now the primary distributor of art and media.
Art will surely not escape this global reevaluation as artists expand to all forms of digital production. For the moment, internet art exists on the fringe of culture, waiting patiently to be accepted by the mainstream art world, but in the near future the notion of art history and the market may be forced to adjust just as much in order to survive in the digital world. As for the online identity- it will surely become more prominent as everything evolves around it. We only risk losing ourselves if we lose sight of what is real. If our media profile is sterile, it is immaterial. It is just a means of reaching new, imagined spaces, we are safe as long as it is the not the goal. And the wealth of knowledge instantly available with the internet means the notion of a knowledge specialist is moving towards obsoletion. Instead we have moved into an age of curation of knowledge, and art, by the individual.
