Net Art – part 2

 

midnight

 

I want to continue my exploration of Net Art this week, because the more I search, the more startling and fascinating individuals and collectives I found attempting to utilise the internet for artist purposes.

I’ll start with this quote I found from Joachim Blank, an internet curator:

The "Internet myth" is the result of a massive
self-referentiality of our media landscape. Unlimited
communication in a yet unknown conglomerate made of
machines, cables and people. The exclusive networld of
cyberpunks, scientists and artists has been superseded by
the thirst for information of the industrialized mass
consumption. Nevertheless, the cultural "stylistic howlers"
of communication in data networks continue to exist not only
in the underground.

Artistic projects, strategy projects, discussion forums and
autonomous network structures within the vast Internet, but
remote from the glossy, dust-free surfaces, show interesting
beginnings for an alternative use of this medium.

He goes on in length to distinguish Netart (I’ll start using one word to describe it as a specific category) and art on the net, i.e art made in the non-digital world, for the non-digital world , that is simply accessible on the web.

However, netart differs from art on the net. Art on the net
is mostly nothing more than the documentation of art which
is not created on the net, but rather outside it and, in
terms of content, does not establish any relationship to the
net. Netart functions only on the net and picks out the net
or the "netmyth" as a theme. It often deals with structural
concepts: A group or an individual designs a system that can
be expanded by other people. Along with that is the idea
that the collaboration of a number of people will become the
condition for the development of an overall system.

For me this all rings true, in several ways. As an art school graduate I am aware of the different forms artistic expression can take, and how, historically, it has adopted and adapted different media in order to do evolve and remain relevant.

In other words, it seems inevitable to me that the internet, web 2.0 and digital media like apps and software will create a flurry of artistic endeavours.

What has surprised me is how early some of this art came about, pre-dating 2.0, in the late nineties.

I’ve hit something of a wall trying to find some newer, innovative ways of art making for the web. keep me posted if you find anything.

On a final note, I delved into the links provided by Olia Lialina, whom I mentioned last post and seems to be a trail blazer. She does a lot of political work based on victims of war and the site Victim’s Symptom hosts a broad range of interesting collaborative works, working with the viewer as much as the artist. WDWTW (who did what to who?) is a great project, an extendion of Olia’s work that I mentioned, My Boyfriend Came Back From the War, that collects interesting adaptions of her original work into disperate narratives.

Net Art

net art by Olia Lialina, 1996

What does Web 2.0 mean for art?

When I say that, I mean many forms of artistic expression. So what happens to the artist with this medium?

There seem to be the obvious benefits of ease of exposure and networking. Most major artists have websites and blogs. Myspace has become a great tool for musicians to create a digital source for fans and connecting to other countries. Never before, it seems, has it been so easy to find art and music from any place in the world. And then there is net art.

I want to know what the class thinks of the internet’s role in creating art.

Firstly, I have found an artist’s blog that I think is absolutely perfect. The design, interaction and content is amazing in its simplicity and aesthetic. It’s called Blu and it showcases the drawings and film art of Blu in an interactive scrapbook design. Some of you may be familiar with the stop-motion street art which is mind blowing!

This is a great example of an artist, or artists, that have not only used the internet to increase exposure but also gain initial fame with the internet. A really wonderful site.

Net Artists

I have started to discover some really amazing art which uses the internet as its primary medium. These are artists that create their art solely for the internet, using web based software. It is fascinating! It tends to be interactive, to an extent, and very clever!

I started by looking at the very early online net artists of the late nineties, such as Russian Olia Lialina. These early artists were very low-fi, but still really fun. Her works some universe and My Boyfriend Came Back from the War are really interesting.

Alot of her work can be found on Pages From the Middle of Nowhere, an incredible online ‘museum’.

Net art explores the consequences, possibilities and detriments of the internet in various abstract ways. An example is English artist Heath Bunting, who’s Own, Be Owned or Remain invisible addresses commercialisation of the internet. His page irational.org has links to a variety of similar art.

I’d like to know if anyone else has found some interesting ways to utilise web software for artistic purposes.

That’s the beginnings of Net Art, and I shall delve further and see what I can uncover. I think I’ve found a topic I can cling to!

Charlie Brooker is Funny, So Are Vampires

Ok, I’d like to talk about my new favourite blogger. Well, my first favourite blogger. Charlie Brooker.

His posts on the Guardian are hilarious and intellectual, and his most recent post might help everyone think about their writing. He makes a point about writers’ competition on a forum such as the web. How do you get noticed? and How do you keep up writing?

I know that distraction is one key factor in my productivity, and attempting to write and research for a blob while distraction is only a new tab away. It’s driving me insane, the will power I must muster to not bring that arrow over to the Jon Stewart Daily Show bookmark I have conveniently placed at the centre of my bookmark bar, between Facebook and Women’s Weekly Cookbooks.

Can I really depend on myself to productively write and edit on a digital forum when I have a backlog of Charlie Brooker to read?!

On that note, he wrote a very funny critique of Twilight and vampires in modern fiction worth reading.

Another recent post of Brooker’s links to our last lecture, regarding identity, defamation and Facebook. He makes some interesting and points similar to Sarah. He starts:

‘One of the chief joys of the internet is the way it has liberated millions of anonymous hecklers, strikingly few of whom had hitherto risked sharing their coruscating views in public because people tended to yawn, or ask them to shut up, or physically attack them.’

I tend to think, for the most part, that the internet is large and complicated enough to drown out these lunatic voices. But it is a worry that given the impersonal barrier offered, people can so easily loose a few ethical points on their score card. And, of course, that barrier doesn’t stop the usual predators, becoming the impetus for Facebook’s ‘panic button’.

Diagrams and Letters

Typical Feelings Man from thediagram.com

But First…

While combing the internet on a quest to uncover outrageous news coverage and interesting examples of internet journalism, I got bored. Allot of buzz about Labor’s flailing campaign, both sides of the political aligned media establishments agreeing things were getting farcical.

Two very interesting posts, however. Firstly on The Age‘s site I had the displeasure of reading this rather vitriolic commentary of Bill Henson’s lecture at the Melbourne Arts Fair by Michael Coulter. He goes on to accuse Henson of immorality, double standards and arrogance. I was not at the lecture, and have only read segments online and from articles such as this. But I fail to see any arrogance in Henson’s defence of himself that I have gleaned or heard of.

The commentator surely had an axe to grind and then tries to display objectivity with this:

‘Let’s be clear that Henson’s ability is not in doubt. His use of light is superb, as is his ability to create a mood of intimacy and revelation. Morally, though, he has revealed himself to be a void.’

Did you cut and paste that from Wikipedia, Michael?

This is great: Fake, from Crikey as Fake Andrew Bolt got into seeming trouble with a fake twitter account. Its really quite funny, let me know your thoughts, as this is an interesting example of internet commentary, of a kind, and its use of social media.

And Then…

As I said, after these, I got bored.

I made a deal with myself. I would allow myself to do some fiction reading, but I would do it online, goddamn it!

And found some wonderful literary fiction sites. I came across them via the links of some of my favourite literary journals’ websites, such as Going Down Swinging.

Firstly there is Diagram, an online journal of stories, poetry and…schematics. Random schematics, it’s great! And it has a really wonderfully, pared back aesthetic:

It’s an online journal from the US that is simple and interesting. I am still getting through some of the fiction, which seems pretty standard for this sort of thing, some good, some not. I found the poetry very good.

Inspired by this find I decided to seek out Timothy McSweeney’s, Author Dave Eggars‘ site representing his many publications such as True Believers and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. Eggars’ simple style and investigation of the mundane is clear throughout the site, even from other contributors. I particularly like ‘Open Letters to People or Entities Who are Unlikely to Respond‘.

This is not to everyone’s taste, and I know of some valid complaints about Eggars and his publications, but I find it personally to be a good read.

Let me know of any interesting online ways to collect and display good fiction and poetry and remember to use that helpful chart to determine your man’s eye clues.

I’ve Never Written a Blog Before

Sometimes I really must throw myself forcefully and blindly into a thing to gain an understanding of it. It comes more easily to some. It has been the same in my attempts to understand and utilise the world of digital media and the web. I wonder sometimes if I lack engagement, or simply have an abundance of distraction.

What distractions, you ask? You could argue I’m being forced to find new forms of interest thanks to the flood of mindless and shamelessly transparent stuff that passes for television and Print news.

List of things not at all suitable for distraction:

• Endless repeats of Two and Half Men (or as I prefer to call it, Let’s Kick the Shit Out of the Modern Idea of Male Identity and Leave it Bruised and Battered on the Cultural Floor)
• The Coles Hour…I mean Master Chef. Really? Cooking?
• The re-birth of Hey Hey It’s Saturday. Good Grief! Not even a thought to creating a new vomit inducing variety show for seniors?

For me television as a form of entertainment died with the advent of something:

The option to download or buy the DVD of decent shows that would otherwise be shown on Ten at 1.15am without advertising (yay, digital)

Then there’s the News. The Age last week featured a front page story on Julia Gillard’s sister, and the editorial of the Australian couldn’t have more of an agenda if it was owned by a biased, arch-conservative media mogul lacking any scrupels or ethics…oh. I find it increasingly difficult to rely on Australian news media for anything informative.

It’s possible that I have run out of good old-fashioned distraction.

Time to Get Started: taking to technology like my grandmother sips her scotch.

I will admit, I take to technology much like I did to drinking alcohol: slowly at first, but once I did, there was no stopping me; come Saturday morning I’m skipping down Nicholson Street without pants, a testament to the consistant success of alcohol in making me stupid.

I don’t think web-based media will make me stupid, however. Well, not yet.

So replace ‘alcohol’ with web-based media, and ‘stupidity’ with an increasing acceptance of the future and potential of digital communication, and you have my self-appointed task. Ok, I may have been drinking when I came up with that analogy, but I promise I’m sincere.

In tackling this task – that is, maintaining this blog – as with the course itself, I am definitely, though not profoundly, stepping out of my comfortable zone. Use of Web content is not foreign to me but I will admit I have not been as engaged in thorough use of the medium like many of my friends have. Regardless, I am yet to have the internet as a cornerstone of my intellectual and social life.

But, I am convinced of four things:

1. That the web – and digital media as a whole – is a profound part of the future of publishing, journalism, entertainment and communication.

2. That we need not fear the disintegration of reliable print and news companies to the oceans of individuals lending all manner of lunacy and incompetency into the role of reporting in an open forum (I suspect reliable sources will organically form as the new media grow and reputations and resource find a home). Although I have no idea about good business models.

3. That I will find something entirely enjoyable and lastingly beneficial in my new embrace of all this.

4. It is possible I am wrong about everything I’ve just said.

I thought a good place to start my new embrace of digital media would be to analyse journalism on the web, and its effect on and difference to mainstream media. This is as good a place as any  considering until now news websites have been my first benefit from the internet. I may change my mind at some point, but let’s start there.

Superficial impressions

Can I say I’ve never understood the need for a broadsheet format for newspapers.

Digital news surely is a practical format for delivering content.

I’ve started by visiting two sites I know about:

the Australian Crikey and the American Slate. Hopefully I can seek out the more unusual and mad sites in later blogs, as well as the sites of pre-existing print newspapers.

The first thing that greets me on Crikey is an article titled Fake Fielding: Hey Hey I better get some election policies

I don’t know what’s funnier, making fun of Hey Hey or Stephen Fielding.

Slate delivered one article worth noting regarding Wikileaks and its affect on journalistic endeavour.

‘I didn’t think it was possible, but Julian Assange has now done it: By releasing 92,000 documents full of Afghanistan intelligence onto the laptops of an unsuspecting public, the founder of Wikileaks has finally made an ironclad case for the mainstream media.’

Although I’m not sure I share the same faith as the author in the ability of some news organisations to offer objective interpretation and contexts for leaked information. I would like to hear some thoughts.

Personally I think whistle-blowing alone cannot make informative news. My other impressions of Slate are of it’s concerted Leftist (Ah, I hate the terms Left and Right) slant, for lack of a better word. I tend to be wary of either political extreme when it comes to journalism and commentary. But, again, I may be proven wrong.

Well, this post is late, and probably not written in the appropriate form, so perhaps in the end I am part Ludite, part lazy. But hopefully not too cynical towards a digital forum. Unless it mistakes Hey Hey it’s Saturday for a valuable thematic concern.

Let my new life online begin. I’ll be running down my proverbial Nicholson Street with my proverbial pants down, drunk with digital enlightenment in no time.