Paste your essay iPost-analog art & Post-internet art: unzipping art from the digital realm.
Towards the late mid-late 20th century a crucial shift in thinking occurred, a phenomenon which accelerated a boom in contemporary arts and painting in particular, an explosion of new media and digital technologies.1 Alongside a rise in contemporaneous mass culture and media in western Europe and Northern America, there was an emergence of many contemporary and progressive artists who became critically engaged with the matter.2 This case study will approach and attempt to decipher the key changes that have occurred as a result of technologies and new media which have emerged, and its discourse with modern/contemporary art in the information age.
The information age is defined as an era in human history in which humanity shifted from the traditional commerce used in the industrial age, in an age where the economy is largely based on information computerisation after the development of the digital revolution.3 The largest contributing factors which shall be explored in this essay are as follows. Naturally, the most prominent invention of the information age is that of the internet, especially at the turn of the millennium with the change in design and use of internet 2.0. The other key factor is that of software, especially computer painting programs4 along with influences and components such as video games, films and other elements of popular culture.
Within our new technological paradigm, how can artists assimilate and adapt to the raging tides of social media and the democratization of “creativity”. How has the increase of freedoms and openness in culture, changed our ideals of self-identification and representation, where visibility has faced an inflection of anxiety of being overseen? How can we collect, experience and study arts applications that pre-empted our current mass tools, when a shift in formats & platforms can make the past unreadable.5
The internet has allowed the masses to gain instant access to a goldmine of information, for the art world this manifests as an online gallery of reproductions. Taking a new-marxist point of view, historically, art was a capitalist luxury of the bourgousie, yet due to advancements in technology, through the age of mechanical reproduction, art production was made easily accessable to the lower classes, the proletariet are able to then sieze control. In Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin states “the art of the proletariat after its assumption of power or about the art of a classless society would have less bearing on these demands than theses about the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production.” There are paralells that can be drawn between the accessibility which came with the proletariat art, with that of the internet users of today, anyone can create, like or share a post, shaping a shift of power from the once exlusive framework of networking only accessable by most tech-savvie pre Web 2.0.
Internet 2.0 or Web 2.0 is the term used to describe the World Wide Webs websites which have the capability and functions which revolve around the notion of being able to allow user-generated content, interoperability and simply ease of use for the page's general demographic or 'end users'. The introduction of the internet 2.0 does not have any technical updates to hardware etc, but instead refers to a development of the pages created, the ability to like, comment and share content created by the users6. This allowed people to use websites to interact and collaborate with one another, mainly amongst social media networks, creating content for a virtual community. As opposed to the limited passive browsing previously provided.
This introduction of file sharing changed what was just a new medium to something which was truly a mass medium, creating a deeper and more widespread network spanning across cultures, making way for far greater opportunities of distribution of works, along with heterogeneous political and corporate realities7. Within our current art climate, there is a fairly extensive amount of debate and confusion around art which is engaged with the internet, or if this sort of category is even credible8. The validity of such a category or sort of art, can be comprehensible due to the sheer amount digital technology has become entwined into every facet of our daily lives, whether being through smart-phones, giving us an almost ubiquitous, 24/7 on-line connectivity, or through the heavily chained structures of surveillance and data-sifting algorithms redefining the concepts of what is viewed as public or private content. This rapid change has altered a change in nearly every cultural activity, within the contemporary art world this has led onto some hastily coined catchphrases including “the new aesthetic” and “post-internet art”.9
“Originally conceived as an alternative social field where art and everyday life were merged… net.art may seem threatened by its own success – that is, likely to cede a degree of its freewheeling, antiestablishment spirit as it is further brought into the institutional fold.”10
Rachel Greene, “Web Work: A history of internet art,” Artforum 38, no. 9 (2000): 162-67
The quote stated above was written over a decade and a half ago, published by art critic and writer Rachel Greene, within the conclusion in her article for Artforum. At the time of the article, new media arts and internet art where “in a midst of a rapid and dramatic deflation11”. Leaving a dubious future for internet art within the art world, in hindsight, the progression of internet art is not as certain as it may have seemed.
Within the first decade of internet art, a problem quickly appeared, museums & galleries were unsuccessful at accommodating the rise in internet based and virtual practices, into the conventional art spaces, despite efforts to curate pioneering, progressive and forward thinking exhibitions, the majority consisted of awkwardly placed screens sequestered within the dimmed lights of so called “media lounges12”, commissioned projects which felt distanced and disconnected from the wider museum programmes, or lonely desktop computers placed within desolate rooms to a timid audience afraid to utilise or touch the piece within the traditional setting. As a result, many artists who created work focussed on the internet felt a sense of frustration at how their work was being accepted by the institutions. Generally speaking how the greater art world would take to internet art still remained a question at the beginning of the twenty first century, or even what effects the internet would have on culture as a whole13.
As time progressed, as did the generations of artists, one of the prominent figures is Cory Arcangel. Cory Arcangel's works explore a critical dialogue between pop culture and technology, through the use of appropriation. Arcangel is best known for his ability to hack and rework outmoded or obsolete gaming and computer systems of the 70s & 80s. In 2002, just after leaving university, Arcangel released and uploaded a video piece which included an open-source code (allowing the original code to become redistributed and altered) to his personal website. The file/piece was titled Super Mario Clouds. (See Figure 1)
Super Mario Clouds, is a hacked or in his words a “reverse-engineered” Nintendo games cartridge, reworked so that the audio and majority of the iconic visual elements such as the scrolling grassy knoll, bouncing mushrooms and instantly recognisable protagonist. Leaving only the white 8-bit clouds to scroll across the blue sky. Initially for Arcangel, the piece was intended to be shared amongst his peers and whomever was interested in also reworking 8 bit Nintendo cartridges. However the piece soon gained an amount of critical attention, one year later, Super Mario Clouds was shown at Team Gallery in New York, the work was shown using a multichannel video projection, executed live from the visible tweaked Nintendo NES gaming platform. The following year the same configuration was shown in the 2004 Whitney Biennial – this ushered a generation of artists who were not just apt in the use of new media and video, but also grown up surrounded by personal computers, video games14 and instinctively adept use of the internet. A generation who have been classed by the newly coined phrase, “internet native” or “internet aware” as stated by Arcangel15.
In Arcangel's essay “coming soon: ebay blogs paypal the internet” the works of his peers and early collaborators the multi media trio known as Paper Rad, consisting of Ben Jones and siblings; Jacob & Jessica Ciocci, all of which being artists and musicians. Situating their works within the format of their website Paperrad.org, which went live in 2001. The page consists of a range of music and visual imagery, beginning with an animated tapestry of vibrant rave-like cartoons and graphics, similar to that of the zine aesthetics of DIY artists and internet users of the 90s16. The works of Paper Rad soon evolved to encompass more mediums including, videos, installations, live performances, MIDI files and books, all off which worked around the central hub of the website, rapidly appealing to a mass international audience. The unmistakeable style and progressive approach on media circulation placed the group within two major boats, that of 90s sub cultures and network of the web. Arcangel states that due to Paper Rad's “refusal to distinguish between hierarchies of distribution eventually led them to infiltrate nearly every level of popular culture” whilst, concurrently “led to their work slipping out of the art historical discussion” due to the art world's “limited amount of patience for practices that colour outside the lines of its own dialogue.”17
In comment to Greene's proposed future of unavoidable choice between internet arts institutionalization or continuing its underground existence, Arcangel and Paper Rad's works show this was a premature statement. Internet art's future would take it to a far wider audience and more importantly disperse its legacy into an eclectic range of practices: open-source shared material, gallery installations, live performances, talks and publications. Super Mario Clouds and paperrad.org were able to rapidly assume the pattern of the multi-platform approach to internet art, becoming the main archetype for internet based art in the 2000s. This enabled the genre to navigate through the contemporary art world, in forms of established mediums such as, sculpture, performance, video installations and photography18.
Amidst the years of 2007 – 2009, amongst the circles of the art world, a new term was emerging, “Post Internet”. A term first coined by artist, curator,writer and media theorist, Marisa Olsen. This term has been received critically, with many creating their own terms in an attempt to group this evergrowing collection of works. Firstly it must be understood that the term “Post Internet” does not signifly the end of the internet, but rather a change of the internet, the term serving as shorthand for this change.19 As a generalisation, the expertise of web design and the growth of social media deminished the technical nature of network computing, altering the internet from being a specialised field for only the most tech-savvie and technologically minded, to a mainstream world for the most technologically minded, yet also for grandmas, children, buisness people, sports fans, artists, it became for everyone.
This brought a change in what we mean when we say “art on the internet”, this is where the term “Post Internet art” comes into play. At this point no matter who you were, you would/do have to come into contact with the internet. As an artist dealing with the internet may take various paths, some choose to use the internet as a medium in the sense of formal aesthetics (glitch art, .gifs, etc) others use its functionality as a distribution platform, a catalyst for altering and re-channeling work, a phenomenon which artist Oliver Laric called “versions” and Seth Price named “Dispersion”.
Whether artists intent to or even want to have their works shown on the internet, enevitably it will in some way be cast into the internet world. This is a future in which Rachel Greene would have never forseen for internet art. Contemporary art, as a category was/is involuntarily having to deal with the new rise with distribution context, at least recognising the matter.
Acknowledging the internet for contemporary artists, does not mean that artists should start creating hypertext poetry and cat memes,rather that somewhere within the work's
framework, there holds an element of an understanding of what the internet does/is doing to the work, whether be through distribution of the work, how it may devalue or revalue it.
“Post Internet art leaves the internet world. It goes to the art world and mutates itself to correspond to the conventions of the art world. It is art world art about the Internet. A deeper goal, though, is that as the work mutates from the conventions of the Internet to the conventions of art, the work catalyzes the conventions of art to mutate to those of the Internet.”
Gene Mchugh, 29/12/2009
During an interview interview which took place between Regine Debatty and Marisa Olsen in March 2008, Olsen implys that, on one hand that internet art is becoming accepted in mainstream art, yet on the other suggests contemporary art is becoming more “internet”.
In the interview Olsen is questioned about her work as a curator, more specifically on how she deals with new media art pieces, and what challenges of curating and exhibiting new media art are. In response Olsen states there is an exciting turn for new media art, in respect of the art world and in within the context of “traditional media”. Comparing how previously there was an importance in seperate shows, discussions and teachings of new media, as opposed to the current climate where the two are co-mingled, where “some people no longer even know new media when they see it”. There seems to be no need to deffrienciate anymore between art that is created with or without using technology, considering everything is a form of technology. In her conclusion to the interview Olsen states that there is an importance “to address the impact of the internet on culture at large, and this can be done well on networks but can and should also exist offline.”
In 2006, during a group interview conducted by Lauren Cornell for Time Out magazine, Olsen speaks of her works as not being “on the internet” but “after the internet”. In the early stages of Internet art, pre web 2.0, the internet was not nearly an assililated and intwined into everyday life as today, emails, blogs, ebay and other social networking sites clearly having an impact on popular culture. Cornell inquires whether any of these platforms played a role within Olsen's work as an artist. Within her response Olsen states shes is “online nearly 24/7”, leading her to create works that highlight the comupulsive consumption of the internet today.
Olsen's piece, American Idol Audition Training Blog (see fig. ) manifests in the internet blog format. Like the title states, the project follows Olsen's 3 month documentation of her attempt at becoming a contestant on the mainstream American TV show.
“This series is an extension of my interests in the cultural history of technology and narrativity, including questions of authorship, storytelling formats, the rhetoric of the image, and the impacts of technologies upon social relationships. These interests are specifically located within an investigation of the nature of the contemporary art world. Borrowing from the lexicon of the music world, the projects ask ironic questions about the relationship between being a pop star and being an art star, which is more generally a question about the relationship between fame & talent.”20
Marisa Olsen, http://rhizome.org/art/artbase/artwork/marisas-american-idol-audition-training-blog/
The didactic name was chosen to maximise search engine results, this prevailed. The site grew icreasingly popular due to hundred of other would be contestants “Googling American Idol Audition Tips/Songs/etc”, soon after thes site was featured on the New York Times. Olsen used this online popularity from a largly non-art audience, to create polls, inviting the viewers to help her choose audition songs, hairstyles, outfits etc. It is important to understand that the project was running cocurrently to the 2004 US Presidential elections, Olsen's campaign was created as a way to play off the discrepancy in the number of young Americans voting in association with the game show, yet ignoring the govermental elections. Olsens aim was to highlight general stereotypes of “fame, beauty, and talent”, delving into the polititcs behind the show. Simulataniously indulging in yet critiquing media culture.
Olsen's piece can draw parrallels to post-modernist ways of thinking, especially that of Jean Baudrillard and his theories of hyperreality. Hyperreality is a state created through society's use of simulacra, a representation simulating the real. Through creating this persona to audition with, a persona built up from illusions of how the perfect auditionee should sing, look and behave, an illusion spawned from the medias representations of pop stars. This can be said for most members of our society who utilise social media, a platform built from essentially portraying biased opionions or character traits of a person, ultimately creating a slippage between the real and the fictional.
Andy Warhol was an artist who utilised hyperreality greatly within his practice, blurring reality and representation. Warhol's iconic screenprints Campbell's Soup Cans 1962 and works involving Coca Cola and other items of commerce were created to envoke the audience to question or rethink the world around them. These screenprints were intended to blur the boundaries between high art and consumerism, collapsing the confines of art and mass media into an all encompassing visual culture. Warhol's piece from the same year, Gold Marilyn, created in comment of the death of Marilyn Monroe, emphasizes how celebrities of the time live on as icons. How personas can be manufatured, commodified and consumed like products. The same can be said about Olsen's fictional portrayal of herself on American Idol.
Returning to the interview, Cornell raises an important question: “Does Internet Art need to take place online?” To which Olsen replies, “No”. Olsen catagorises her own works as being less “on” the internet but rather, art which is made “after” the internet. Describing her work as “the yield of the compulsive surfing and downloading… directly derived from materials on the internet or from my activity on the internet.” In Olsen's eyes post internet art does not have to manifest itself on the internet, just aslong as the works relate and critically explore issues that arise from modern omnipresent internet usage.
Relating back to the internet art of Cory Arcangel and Paper Rad, during a March 2006 interview with Cory Arcangel and brussels-based curator Karen Verschooren, Arcangel makes a key point/prediction about the future of internet art.
“[…] you can't just put a computer with a browser thats pointing to a website, You have to somehow acknownledge that it is in a gallery, for better or worse. Video, I think, started to do that […] Paper Rad for example presented a huge sculpture, based on animated gifs. It wasn't necessarily internet art anymore, but it was art that could only exist because the internet exists. That is definitely some kind of solution […] That is what is going to happen I think. It is not going to be pure strict internet art, it's going to be art that exists because of the internet or is influenced by the internet or there was research on the internet.”
Verschroon counters Arcangel's statement by saying “thats nearly everything in art. Almost all contemporary art is influenced by the fact that we live in a networked society.” to which Arcangel responds “it is going to be seamlessly intergrated into everything else. Which is what it should be.” finishing by saying that pure internet art should be something which remains online. Arcangel implies that “the art needs to change to fit the gallery, instead of the gallery needs to change to fit the art”.
New York based art critic Gene Mchugh, agreed however viewed the stategy as not quite so simple. The following quote examines and contextualises the aims and purpose of post Internet art.
“Post internet art does not just bend itself to work as “art”, it also changes ones conceptions of “art”. Working within the confines of the white cube are not necessarily always limited to artists. By playing with the history of what has been marked as “Art” and successully entering into that dialogue, these artists are changing what one thinks of as “Art” in the same way that Daniel Buren, Micheal Asher or earlier artists like Jasper Johns or (of course) Marcel Duchamp worked within the gallery to change what could be shown in the gallery and thus be reflecteted upon as “art”.
Mchugh implies that Post internet art, does not only metamorphosise to become atune with the art world, yet changes what the art world is, what its conceptions are, much like the great avant-garde artists of the 20th century. Changing the enviroments in which we view these objects/images, developing a discourse between the two, post internet artists work in a manner that is akin with artists such as Johns and Rauschenberg, working as ontological thinkers, philosophers.
An artist who has reached the upper echelons of the art world is Ryan Trecartin, whose practice is formed around language, more specifically the language of the internet. Trecartins works take the form of video and installation, the aesthetic achieved is a fast cutting, frantic, audacious yet esoteric amalgamation of characters and narrative, creating works as a collaborative effort. Featuring a “post drag” cast playing gender ambuiguous roles.
“Contemporary art or artists alone have never been a main catalyst for me to want to make art. I’ve been more inspired by how language is used—in culture generally, whether in casual conversation or various forms of media—or by music, TV, dance, and movies…I never think about disentangling moments from my cumulative experience of culture that may have influenced me the most… it means more in its blended entirety than it does a series of key experiences or authors.”
Regarding Warhol: sixty artists, fifty years. New York : The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven : Distributed by Yale University Press. 2012. p. 204
In an interview with Cindy Sherman, Trecartin discusses his practice as a filmmaker, he states that during the process of creation “it’s important to me that the traditional director-actor hierarchy disappear into the work.” seeing authorship as “a fluid space and collaboration as an inherent, connective reality.” This fusion of minds gives the works a pastiche narrative, which an audience would find incredibly hard to follow from beginning to end, the works however are not meant to function with standardised cinematics. The works are ideal to be shown within the enviroment of a gallery, in the world and language of the contemporary art world, where audiences pass by and view a piece for a couple of minuites, deciding whether to further engage or move on.
Any ever : Ryan Trecartin. New York : Skira Rizzoli Publications in association with Elizabeth Dee. 2011.
Marshall Mcluhan – The medium is the message
light bulb –
"In a sense, painting has always existed in relation to technology, when the term is understood in its broad definition as the practical application of specialized knowledge: the brush, the compass, the camera obscura, photography, or the inkjet printer."
art historian Alex Bacon
Abstract illusionism is an art movement which has played a large role within the influences upon artists in the information age, especially in the world of post-analog painting. A term coined in a 1967 essay for Artforum by the art historian and critic, Barbara Rose21. Rose wrote the essay in a period for which contemporary arts (painting in particular) was undergoing a huge amount of change, however it would not be until an entire decade later that these works would reach its attainment. Even so, many artists dismissed the movement and many involved abandoned it. In 1978, at the New Museum, Marcia Tucker curated her distinguished show, “Bad” Painting, during a time in which conceptual art was just beginning its impressions on the academic and gallery circles. New York at this time was undergoing a financial issue, the city were crumbling away, park benches and subways were ridden with a new graffiti called Wild Style. By the 90s New York was prospering however the works and thesis's of Rose and Tucker remained rather unseen22.
In our current climate, many artists are now reviving the movement of abstract illusionism, but “with different aims and sensibilities, a generation that is creating a new painting”23 one of the most prominent is the works of Trudy Benson.
The works of Benson and many of her peers seek inspiration from wide array of external image sources: Adobe Photoshop, MS Paint, graffiti, video games and many other digital/ artificially sourced images. More so than any other generation, these artist have grown up in a digital native lifestyle, living lives intwined with the information age, leaving the challenge of whether to keep the rising tide of new images at bay or to embrace it.24
In an age where flatness encompasses the majority of images we see, it would seem a natural direction to critically oppose this phenomenon. “After abstraction dispensed with formal content in Minimalism, the only conceptual wall remaining between it and representation was pictorial depth.25” With the formalist writer Clement Greenberg championing the ideas of flatness, it is apparent in our digital age that flatness is yet another visual idea, similar to perspective.
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