3: net.art
Developments in technology have shaped the art world for thousands of years. Concrete. The arch. Oil Paint. Photography. The computer. The internet. Art history is littered with examples of technology’s impact on art and society. Each century sees art change in light of such developments. Yet net.art is something different than the advancements of previous generations. It is by definition both medium and museum. It is tool and technique. It is concept and communication.
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The internet is an extraordinary thing.
I made my first website in 1996. http://www.voicenet.com/~melachri/steph.html It doesn’t exist anymore. At some point in time, my dad switched from a local ISP to Verizon Fios.
And there went my website…
It was made with Microsoft Paint. A portrait of a girl that somewhat resembled me, age 10, spray painting “Hello” on a brick wall. A static image, not the interactive play of http://graffiti.playdo.com/. It did not require fancy tools. I have no concept of Adobe programs. I simply introduced myself to the world in a way only a 10 year old could—my age, grade, interests, and siblings—made with the spray can and text tools of Paint.
The site developed further when I participated in a web camp for kids—all digital, from our own homes. They mailed us software, organized chat rooms, and assigned weekly tasks. By the end of the camp, I had a five-page website with an “About Me” page and links to my favorite websites.
Fifteen years later, I have three blogs. Which I tweak in html because I want to be able to manipulate each item individually. I cannot be limited by four standard picture sizes. My blog width is 681 pixels—why would I display pictures that are 640 pixels wide?
But is a website net.art? Not all net.art are websites. Not all websites are net.art.
Sounds like a tricky logic problem with overlapping sets.
Sometimes the Internet is a vehicle for disseminating art.
Other times, it is the medium, the tool, the subject matter, and the distribution.
In Dear Photograph, art is found in interplay. A photo within a photo, enhanced a caption, viewed by millions around the world. Each image might be considered art, but the compiling of images, the request for submissions, the caption, the reblogs, likes, and comments—those aspects are just as important. The net.art is not complete without each component.
Taylor Jones began this project as a web-based work less than one year ago. He stumbled upon a picture of his brother sitting at the kitchen table. Ironically, his brother was sitting in the same seat at that exact moment. Begin picture within a picture.
At the time, Jones worked for Blackberry in the social media department. He quickly realized this was a worldwide net.art project waiting to happen. Jones only displayed six of his pictures in the initial site and, in the vein of Post Secret, asked for viewers to enter the art in participation.
The concept of photo within a photo was not new. It was the interactive display, the call for participation that flattened the world and brought people together in nostalgia. Unlike a traditional gallery or museum setting, each individual photo/caption displayed on Dear Photograph has a built-in venue for interaction. Comment, like, reblog. It is this viewer participation that fulfills the meaning.
Yet the website as a whole, viewed as net.art, is also interactive. Create and submit—What photo will you select? What memory will you revisit? And what will you say about it?
While the site is interactive, Jones selects one submission to post each day. His daily preferences are not bound by linear or non-linear modes. Each additional entry to the net.art is a node of information that can spiderweb indefinitely. Various modern and postmodern questions find themselves part of the dialogue in Dear Photograph, along with current events. SOPA, we’ve got that covered. Self-portrait. Ancestry. History. Progress. But each photo relies on duplicity, collage, time, history, and interaction with text to communicate. Like the work of dada, cubism, surrealism, and many postmodern artists, “cultural fragments assembled and juxtaposed to create references to life through sensory and representative associations.” A mixed reality. The multiplicity of the scene, arranged ever so carefully but still showing incoherencies—the passage of time. Coupled with reflective text. A longing. A wish. A remembrance.
Even the font is reminiscent of an old typewriter. The simple white platform lets the art speak, highlighting the visual, illuminated by the written, and embraced by the populous.
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The site is not even a year old. I wonder what the relationship is between internet years and human years. It seems like internet years pass even faster than dog year. Yet the site received 20,000 hits daily last month. And visitors submit 20 images a day. There is a cultural desire to go back to a time before Photoshop. A crude, primitive, simple life. When yearbook collages were done with paper and scissors.
The art is personal.
The art is collective.
The personal draws us in, pulls us to our own memories, our own experiences, our own longings.
And allows us to share.
Dear Dear Photograph,
You make me miss printed photos. You remind me of childhood experiences. You strike a chord for yellowed photographs covered in fingerprints. Covered in love.
You connect me with people around the world. Our commonalities. Our hopes, desires, and longings.
You make me ache for a history, living in a land that changes daily. A land where my oldest pictures are not even five years old. Not the land of my childhood, of my heritage. Just a land of my sojourn.
Stephanie
Assignment: Critique of one Net artwork using the following five prompts to guide the essay, in which the Internet is the medium of the artwork, and to consider the nature of Net Art and interactive aesthetics. In what ways does the artist use the Internet as the medium of his or her art? Is the art static, dynamic, or interactive? Is the Net art linear or nonlinear? Discuss the central visual metaphor or concept of the Net artwork that is evident in the choices of colors, typography, textures, layout, images, navigation, interactivity, and participatory features. Discuss the Net artwork in terms of its social, political, environmental, and/or personal relevance.
References:
"Web Work: A History of Internet Art" by Rachel Greene (2000, May) in Artforum, 38(9), 162-169 & 190
"Ten Myths of Internet Art" by J. Ippolito (2002) in Leonardo: Art, Science, & Technology, 35(5), 485-498.
https://elearning.psu.edu/courses/aed811/sites/edu.courses.aed811/files/content/811_netart.pdf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jan/04/dear-photograph-pictures-travel-time
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/01/06/dear-photograph_n_1188938.html?ref=uk-culture#s591447
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/09/dear-photograph.html
