Internet Art

            I really like the first sentence of Anne Marie Schleiner’s “Fluidities and Oppositions among Curators, Filter Feeders, and Future Artists” which is “Artists of the future may not know that they are artists.”  Which I think is already the case of our present day and art forms.  A gamer (as she mentions) may not know that they are an artist in a sense but they are, they can upload game clips or record interactions and display them much like a painting in a gallery.  It is something they created and take pride in.  This also makes me think of the film Professor Phil Solomon here at CU.  He has several films that use only footage from the Grand Theft Auto series.  He isn’t necessarily a gamer, but it shows that incredible art can be created from something not usually associated with art.  With the introduction of the new gaming systems (“next gen”) they have recording software built in that will automatically record clips, this takes Schleiner’s sentence to the extreme in that the person playing literally does not know they are creating art.  It is almost accidental art which is an interesting concept to think about, if the person doesn’t know they are creating art are they still creating it?  They are creating it yes but can it be identified as art if it was intended.  Something to think about.

            I also find the idea of collaboration in Schleiner’s writing interesting.  It seems like it is something that has become more and more prominent with the advent of internet art.  You don’t see collaboration between baroque painters (as far as I know) but now you can find works pretty commonly that have been contributed to by several people.  It even is becoming pretty common in the music industry, it was usually just rap and hip hop that featured large amounts of collaboration but now other bands of different genres are doing it more as well.  I think it has to do with the ease of being able to share, send and work on projects between people with the internet.  It just keeps getting easier as well with google drive sharing and cloud storage. 

Digital Narrative

My Body works in the way of an autobiography but it is very introspective, at the same time there is a use of illustration and several branch offs within the main narrative. The Six Sex Scenes seem to be simply stories in different pages, the titles vary in placement but for the most part it seems uniform and familiar. Distance, is a sort of photo-book or link story in an abstract way, each click only gives a bit of information but manages to tell a narrative. Red Riding Hood, to me is like those click adventure games, it depends on what you click and if you can find the thing you are looking on for the story to progress.

            These net artists blur the distinction between autobiography and fiction by being incredibly detailed so much so that it seems as if they are creating a new story and a new identity.  Also, the addition of illustrations, sound or pictures creates more of a fiction feel rather than a drab autobiography that skims the details and simply tells it how it is.

            The link strategy, the most closed was distance the other three works however seems to branch in several directions.  To me, the links are distracting, I think it may almost be a tired medium.  When it comes to games people want several options and narratives however when I was reading these stories I didn’t like the feeling I got that I would have to click through everything go backwards and click again, I felt like I was missing some things which I did not like.

            I cannot think of any specific other narratives that do similar things however I do remember when the youtube choose your own adventure type deals began to pop up.  Which, are pretty similar to the redridinghood work.

            In each of these narratives, in Jacksons piece, when she recalls very fine details about her childhood I began to doubt the authenticity of the memories, I felt them to be more fictional than real. In Distance, it seems that Laporta is playing a character however I felt none of it felt all that real, simply because each picture was of a different person, it didn't give off the sense that it was a cohesive story about one person but rather several people. The frame story of redridinghood gives a good look at how over time things may have changed but it also is a familiar story that most everyone knows.  It creates a common interest foundation that anyone can interact with to learn the new story.

            I think that the distinction of literature vs visual becomes arbitrary in electronic environments.  When these sort of things just began at the advent of the style of link stories and what not, it could be split into categories.  However, the term mixed media came around and that is how I see these works, I no longer view them as one distinct genre.   Now, I see them as a conglomerate, a lot of parts working together towards the whole. 

Blog Post 1

Blog Post 1:

I actually read Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in relation to film theory some time ago.  He brings up points that do still have meaning during our era, mostly the form of plagiarism and even re-appropriation.  Benjamin’s example of the statue of Venus illustrates the idea of appropriation perfectly, “Venus…stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura” (Benjamin 5).  Benjamin argues that aura is the unique characteristic that never leaves a piece of work, however, I would argue that now in the digital age this no longer applies.  A piece can be altered and reproduced in infinite ways now and through such alterations can lose its aura, its defining characteristics or underlying feeling that the piece gives off. Even just looking at a work in the digital space seems to alter the aura or render it hidden. For example, look at the Mona Lisa in a museum, its aura is there and intact. Now pull up google image search and look up Mona Lisa. There is rows and rows of it, reproduced into infinity and each one lacks the aura, the feeling, of the original work.

            Another line from Benjamin I find interesting is, “Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work” (Benjamin 5).  What this means is one piece of art could be like a church relic and another a piece in a museum.  In the modern age, this can be seen as more of underground art vs. traditional art.  People still strive to put their work into museums but then there are the “cult” artists that either publish solely online or in un-traditional mediums like street art.  Although now the two merge somewhat, street art is cult like but at the same time is exhibitionist at its core, it is put straight into the public space for everyone to see.  So with the advent of the digital world and evolving art forms, cult vs. exhibition begins to merge.

            Bush’s article I found to be enlightening on the ideas that he presented of future technology. The part on the camera “certainly progress in photography is not going to stop” (Bush 4).  Rather than use a long quote or paraphrasing I would just like to look at the paragraph starting with the line quoted.  It is interesting to see that back then although he had some notion of what would be in the future, what we actually have is way past what he though.  He still mentions film and square frames.  Instead we have digital and wide frames and anything in between.  Photography has progressed incredibly far, now there is gopros and google glass similar to what he described but far surpassing his predictions.  The web allows for sharing of millions of photos and no need for film. It is interesting to think that technology progressed so much faster than even a scientist of that time could comprehend or predict.

            In a similar vein, “Ideas are beginning to appear for equation transformers, which will rearrange the relationship expressed by an equation in accordance with strict and rather advanced logic” (Bush 11).   Bush speaks of computers here but only in the sense of them being mathematical.  Now, we can use computers for far more things and in the scope of this class, art.  Big data and data visualization is one example I can think of.  The digital art world has surpassed data as being only figures that can be used for equations or intel.  Now, it is used to create beautiful works of art and even art that is more informative than the data itself.  Not only that but there are endless ways to create and present the data.  Something that Bush probably did not foresee, the use of data and science to create art.