Course title: Net Art / criticism
Course code: DESI 1054
This essay attempts to describe what art does and to define what Net Art is. It highlights art’s historical characteristic of moving the borders of what the establishment and society see as acceptable and then moves on to decipher the muddle around Net Art existence and its acceptance. It suggests that not only are there identifiable differences between tradition art and Net Art presentation but also a difference in how they are constructed, owned and sold.
Before answering the question directly it is important to examine what Net Art is – how it has been defined. Literally speaking it means any art on the net. In this purist sense then we can see it certainly exists in the myriad of galleries present on the web. Taking a looser definition of the term, net art exists in the design and structure of websites themselves and in the games and ideas that reside in them.
Net Art is difficult to define, it can centre on the interaction between the user and the piece, and it can use new, metaphoric and differentiating content. It can also use web technology as a mode of expression instead of a canvas or the structural material of sculpture; it can be irritating for the user - deliberately so; express a virtual reality, be political, reflect itself, be experimental and exciting and Net Art can also be both more difficult and easier than traditional art to sell or promote.
Epistemology – the theory of knowledge; sees art as a vehicle by which it can travel from the artist to the viewer. Aristotle and Plato saw art as representing artist’s knowledge. There are problems with knowledge being passed in this matter however, because the artist may not understand the character they are representing, the subject being represented could be from a novel, based on a poem and we don’t know if the author of the novel understood the character in the poem, let alone if the artist understood the character in the novel from the poem. What effect does the audience in tern have on interpreting correctly, the outcome of the work?
But do the Net artists of today have to evoke an appropriate response to their representation? Do they need to be aware of subjective and objective influences or understand the needs of a specific and general audience and try not to alienate? What they must do is continue what their predecessors have done - to challenge the boundaries which we currently use to understand what art is.
Historically speaking art has always done this. Manet’s Olympia (1863) for example, for the first time represented Venus facing the audience – showing her purchasable body with cold detachment. Here, Manet has invented the modern nude which created a scandal at the Salon of 1865. He challenged the status quo by changing the way art mimics the world around us and the institutions of art eventually had to draw a line around him and include this approach within their accepted realm.
The Mona Lisa’s smile left open-ended its cause. This left the viewer with an ambiguity and reason to speculate, and took the onus away from the artist to explain; to fully represent. In another way an artist can leave the title more open. Portrait of an unknown mother is less prescribed than Virgin Mary for example. The Mona Lisa, Sassoon [1] suggests, ‘can be regarded as one stage in the development of Western art towards the emancipation of the artist – and hence of the viewer.
In the 1960s, artists like Liechtenstein and Warhol put the line between design and art and art in design in a flux. Damien Hurst is not as deliberate today; he states that he’s not trying to say anything and therefore his work is fully open to interpretation by the viewer and dissolves him from any responsibility to represent. His display of pills in ‘Pharmacy’ for example, and the array of animals in formaldehyde, for me, represents and provokes feelings that make me question our society now, in the present. It is important to see the artist and art therefore as a construct of the time in which he / she / it lives.
Essentially, Net Art is both connected to the context in which it sits, its time in history, and seek to break out from it. As described in more detail below and by way of example of Net Art’s seat in the now of artistic evolution, its emergence has made us challenge the value given to its pieces and altered who gives them their value. The value may no longer be provided by the same people that value traditional art nor is it given it for same reason. The materials used to manufacture a piece, in Net Art’s case, the technology, may alone pedestal it to fame; no longer relying purely on its aesthetics or the provocation it passes to the audience to get there. But ultimately Net Art still does what traditional art has done over time. It provides a representation of knowledge; endeavours to be if not understood by the audience, evoking questions from it, and seeks an opinion of its aesthetic.
Being tasked with writing an essay about the existence of Net Art indicates, at least, a current interest in it by a group of associated individuals, such as our tutors and some students. That in itself does not address its acceptance either by the established art community or society as a whole.
Put Net Art into search engine such as Google and you get, as with most searches, a mixture of related and totally unrelated results. The number of related sites that are returned does strengthen the argument that Net Art at least exists. If what has become the ear of the web – the search engine - returns Net Art subject matter woven into a multitude of sites, it becomes very difficult to for a counter argument to suggest that it doesn’t exist. This question centres not on its existence per se, but on its acceptance, and moreover its acceptance by whom?
By way of background, Josephine Berry, Deputy Editor, Mute, writing for Tate ONLINE believes Net Art has started to move away from its radical and defiant beginnings, losing its ‘ghetto character’, and into ‘mainstream culture’. Even if she is right, this does not necessarily mean it has been accepted by the art establishment however. Is there something about Net Art that makes it more acceptable for society therefore and less so for the institutions of art? Does this in part define where Net Art is - something new - but not yet accepted by the elite? I argue that the abundance of Net Art results in Google; the number of existing links sites such as netzwissenschaft.de and review sites of net art such as www.netartreview.net that are found in those results; and Net Art’s apparent lack of exhibition space in the museums and galleries (which are after all the front windows of the art establishment) is further evidence that they are playing catch-up with everyone else.
As far as answering whether established artists are using the web as a new medium, I could find no reference to it or examples of it. This, I am sure, is more down to my lack of contemporary art knowledge as opposed to there not being any, but, picking Damien Hurst and Tracey Emin and finding only a video from Tracey suggests to me that non-net artists would prefer the dividing lines to remain up.
Perhaps established artists prefer the media they are familiar with, to keep within their comfort zone. Is learning to use a new web technology as daunting to them as it appears to anyone else; would it be too time consuming even if they had that drive and therefore be a bad commercial decision to endeavor to learn?
There doesn’t seem to be reluctance from established artists to showcase their work online, but, perhaps they are even further behind the art establishment’s reluctance to accept Net Art as a viable art medium and as I’ve suggested prefer to sit in their, now accepted, art sphere? Perhaps they are now as much part of the establishment they once tried to change and if so when will Net Art be the same?
A move by the Tate to team up with MOMA New York in providing an online retail site where the public is offered art is an attempt by the Tate to project itself as an advocator of art on the net but not necessarily of Net Art. It suggests that the establishment has accepted that showcasing art and its subsequent purchase is no longer controlled by them in the conventional manner - via museums and galleries and through commissions and auction sales for example.
Firstly, it is very difficult to make a distinction between the example given of gallery art and Net Art on the web if we take the literal definitions found in the background of this essay. It is also a challenge to imagine what other art on the net exists that does not fit into the classification Net Art. As suggested earlier, design on the web could fall into this category.
According to Berry, Net Art emerged in the early 1990s and challenged the ‘nepotism, materialism and aesthetic conformity of the gallery / museum/ publishing power complex’. Stemming from Eastern Europe, artists were able to publish internationally being seen for the first time as global and not defined by national boundaries or needing ‘institutional endorsement’. Berry suggests that ‘anyone, anywhere’ can become an artist with a potentially massive audience.
If this is the case, we can return to our definition of Net Art and suggest that all art on the net can be included in this classification. This idea is strengthen by the Net Artist’s impetus to break from the classification and labelling by the establishment. In turn however I suggest that a new elite of Net Artists has already risen on the net, forced to label and classify themselves, in order to make a distinction between them and other art found in this medium. Arguably, by saying that they are different from the establishment alone, they fall into the trap of classifying themselves. It is also impossible to produce art on the net without using web technologies; therefore I also argue that rather than being more free to express themselves, Net Artists are as restricted as traditional artists have been by their materials.
What is different about Net Art and why are the galleries and museums having to acknowledge a public demand for this new medium by showcasing it? Well firstly, it is an artistic expression hosted on the internet and this gives the artist an opportunity to invite us to engage in individual interaction with the piece in a way that video and photography haven’t been able to do before. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, we are more likely, as the whole population, to pay for a modem to surf the super-highway than buy a ticket to a gallery. This doesn’t mean we are going to jump straight onto the virtual galleries on the net nor seek out the pieces of Net Art that reside in it, but, it is easier to stumble across a piece of Net Art on the web than to be thrown out of a gallery without a ticket! I need to catch the train and tube for the gallery but needn’t get dressed for Net Art. I labour the point; essentially Net Art’s success is a lot to do with access.
Net Art provides a problem for museums such as the Tate who have only recently come to accommodate Photography. That work, Matthew Fuller writing for Tate ONLINE says, has been ‘visually pleasurable, minutely disciplined, singular and valuable’. For power and indeed the work to remain in the institution, a move must be made now to buy it, thus avoiding an archival lack in the future, he continues.
Fuller exemplifies the work of Hammond, a member of the artist’s group Mongrel who copied the Tate’s official website and switched its content. Another example rhizome.org is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1996 to provide an online platform for the global new media art community. They see their role as ‘supporting the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways’.
Over the last few years, Fuller writes, art institutions have showcased Net Art, but only that, showcased it. Attempts like http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/ where, in the Tate’s case, you’ll find reviews, links and a critic of Net Art, are merely an attempt to project itself as an advocator of Net Art superficially. The first new medium since video has left the critics trying to reassure themselves that they could safely wait 100 years before the nets, like film, become a more respectable art form Fuller suggests.
Fuller says that Net Art provides, ‘legitimation, a range of vocabularies, theoretical tools for thinking though and making work, and importantly, access to other audiences and participants’. rhizome.org for example includes commissions, email discussions, publications and events.
Fuller continues by saying that the net enables artists to be part of a group that produces ‘clusters of data’ and no individual has therefore full control over the outcome. An example of this can be seen at agoraxchange.net. It encourages participants to answer questions prompting them to make decisions about a game design. During the process they are asked to explore political alternatives to the present global order by accommodating four initial decrees. This challenges the present conventions for awarding nationality and wealth in the game and in doing so we question those conventions in our present. Whilst conventional artists have worked together, on the net this can be done over national borders, indeed in different time zones and include hundreds of individual artists. It makes me question whether open source web development could also slip into this category because those same workflow parameters exist!
http://www.blessed-bandwidth.net/ takes a very different subject matter as it acts as a space for visitors to reflect on religion and its role in a world that is often divided by faith. The site juxtaposes real and virtual worlds and encourages visitors to consider how these worlds might overlap and merge. Net Art then provokes thought in the viewer as traditional art has but can also create a space in which these ideas can be shared with others. Not so easy in a gallery!
The Virus Valentine - http://www.vi-con.net/ took Net Art to a new dimension. It introduced a pair of separate lover Viruses, Yazna and ++ to a computer via a Visual Basic Script attachment. They then search for each other. The title of their project was Vi-Con, which is the error message displayed on Italian T9 mobile phones when Ti Amo (I love you) is attempted as a text message. Unlike most computer viruses, Yazna (female) and ++ (male) are illogical and harmless; but like many lovers, they engage in elaborate games. ++ will lay in wait for Yazna in the Temporary Files folder and Yazna, when she gets to the host computer, will look for ++. He may have already fled via the contacts in your Microsoft Outlook Address Book however before she arrives.
In another example of the variety of Net Art, a recent spoof car advert circulated on the web, shows a suicide bomber detonating inside one of Volkswagen’s cars. The public are of course saved by the incredible robust shell of the famous German car whilst the bomber dies safely inside. Volkswagen had to quickly distance themselves from the spoof not only because of its sick connotations but also because of its professional presentation. This obviously highly skillful and technical work highlights the spectrum of media, the variety of disciplines of Net Artists and also creative opportunity the Net Art platform provides.
The ‘Balance Bar’, created by collcoll.com is another great example of taking the creative opportunity the net provides. It plugs into your browser and claims it will allow any user to editorialise any web page. collcoll.com developed it because they say ‘of the increasing need to "balance" the one-sided and isolated worldview that much of our media sources produce’. In addition, they want us to use their tool because they say web users insolate themselves inside their own particular opinion and with this segregation come fragmentation of discourse and a misunderstanding of alternate points of view.Net Art, for me, is multi-disciplined and in its scope can include static non-web based art, showcased in an online gallery. Along the spectrum of methods of net expression colorbot.com’s basic experiments sit easily against the interactive game style sites of play-create.com or yugop.com. However others will see these as games and the next view them as great design examples or even a computer code masterpiece. Art has always demanded the involvement of both artist and audience and Net Art continues to do so.
Berry is less inclusive; she finishes by saying ‘Net Art explores “virtuality” in its true sense; not the drift of disembodied avatars through computer-generated space, but the convergence of social and technological forces in a constantly unfolding horizon of possibility’.
Fuller concludes that Net Art will ‘provide new visions for the reconfiguration of the networks and the museum’. Clearly Net Art appears to be accepted better by the online public and the artist communities it represents, than the pundits, institutions and to some degree established artists that have until now controlled the accessibility, classification and the value of art.
I believe the process by which Net Art is created and represented, the groups involved and the life span of the piece challenges the institutions ability to purchase and present using traditional methods.
If the art establishment were responsible for what is labelled as good art, the emergence of Net Art places its acceptance squarely on the shoulders of us, the users of the web. This means that unlike in Opera, where Mozart’s work remains viewed by many as genius and Puccini’s as tat, initially unaccepted Net Art, may well be accepted by the masses, followed by the unwilling establishment. The web has the potential of turning processes on their head and we may see power shift completely away from the traditional / institutional and very much into the realm of the individual.