Trebor ScholzDepartment of Media Studytrebor@thing.netCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0

Art & The Social Web

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Prelude

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Zefrank at TED talkshttp://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/86

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Pre-history of the artist as context provider

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Marcel Duchamp: a work is made entirely by those who look at it or read it and who make it survive by their accolades or even their condemnation.

Marcel Duchamp in a letter of 1956 to Jean Mayoux (published in his book La Liberté une et divisible: Textes critiques et politiques, Ussel, 1979).

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(1952)

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Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Electronic Café» devised for the 1984 for Olympic Games in Los Angeles

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(1985)

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/exhibitions/lesimmateriaux/Les Immateriaux, Jean Lytoard

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Net Art

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Do-It-Yourself Creativity, Broken Code, Quirky Design,Conceptual, move from low-low-tech to more

programming-intensive work

Internet grew from “nothing” to “everything”

1994-today:

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http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/11

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/12

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/13

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/14

"There is a Larry (Page) behind every algorithm."

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http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/16

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/17

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/18

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/19

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/20

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/21

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/22

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/23

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/24

http://www.technart.fr/NetArtHistory/http://tinyurl.com/2vycjwSyndicate Art+Tech event mailing list

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http://www.yhchang.com/THE_STRUGGLE_CONTINUES.html

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Question:

What is the artist-as-context-provider paradigm?

How does it contribute to civic engagement?

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Context: The Participatory Turn

consumer

user/customizer

participant

producer

1980s 1990s 2004 2006

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Currently, there is much advocacy for cultural practices that demand a particular involvement on the part of the audience, creating situations in which art projects are co-produced.

People interact with networked computer systems and artifacts evolve out of experimental relationships between several people.

The model of the cultural context provider:

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We (Jackie and Natalie) are the initiators and coordinators rather than the absolute authors. User participation and contributions make up the fundamental core of the work that needs to be done.

http://www.agoraxchange.net

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http://www.ntticc.or.jp/Exhibition/2006/ConnectingWorld/artist.html

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http://www.ikatun.com/institute/infinitelysmallthings/

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The model of the well-informed expert advances to that of the cultural editor who channels the perspectives of other cultural producers.

Artist as Theorist

Artist as Curator Artist as Educator

Artist as Facilitator

Today, artists can generate platforms such as mailing lists, and websites. They can independently organize exhibitions to circulate their ideas and set up platforms from which they can interact with an audience.

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Now, her practice includes facilitating events, screenings, temporary discursive situations, writing/publishing, symposia, conferences, talks, research, the creation of open archives, and mailing lists. In media art many cultural context providers function in various registers including that of the curator.

The media art curator is not exclusively the ‘middle person’ between artists and museums or galleries anymore. Curators do not merely organize exhibitions and edit, filter and arrange museum collections.

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Art on Platforms

The 1990s were dominated by art on networks and celebration of communication via internet, 2000-s are marked by the development of platform-based art trends and cultural currents.

“From Art on Networks to Art on Platforms” by Olga Goriunova, Alexei Shulgin:

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From Art on Networks to Art on Platforms by Olga Goriunova, Alexei Shulgin

What is a platform?[S]omething in between a content management system, online web site, library, and a club ... A platform is a website organized in a special way: as a relatively simple database with artefacts, or a more complex portal built around the database.

-Runme.org-Udaff.com (self-identified counter-cultural writing)-Micromusic.net

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Platforms:

fostering creat ivi ty, detect ing, discovering, defining, shaping the field, contribut ing to i t s development , contribut ing to the materializa t ion of a par t icular artistic trend

udaff.com changed language and crea t ed a new literature genre (literature for men)

often no grants as quick responses to artistic trends are needed and grants cycles are slow. Usually platforms are driven by enthusiasts who work for free.

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50.000 visitors a day, 700.000 pages

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http://metavid.ucsc.edu/

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Michael Mandiberg’sReal Cost Firefox plugin

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http://www.geuzen.org/cgi-bin/shmoogle/shmoogle_form.cgi

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http://meineigenheim.org/dumpster/

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Call it a winter sale. Jim and Mary Walker are selling snow on eBay. Starting bids were holding steady Friday at 99 cents for samples from "Blizzard I and Blizzard II."

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Public/Net/Media artists can become context

providers, assisting communities, collecting their

stories, soliciting their opinions on politics and

social justice, and building the online archives and

interfaces that will make this data available across

social, cultural and economic boundaries.

-Sharon Daniels

http://dc-mrg.english.ucsb.edu/conference/2002/documents/sharon_daniel.html

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http://chrisbarr.net47

http://interruptions.org/48

He reviews everything from sweet potato baby food to Giorgio Agamben's book State of Emergency.These are the reviews of Kevin Killian who is a San Francisco-based poet, novelist, critic, and playwright. His texts are not really reviews. They are autobiographical pieces of fiction. Killian uses Amazon.com as a platform for his writing practice- a place with an immediate broad readership.

Kevin Killian: 1525 reviews(as of January 7th, 2006)

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http://www.ntticc.or.jp/Exhibition/2006/ConnectingWorld/artist.html

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Distributed Creativity, Self Expression, & Customization

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http://www.deviantart.com/

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http://www.imaginationcubed.com/LaunchPage

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Mashups

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Video: Sunday, Bloody Sunday

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Artists as Tool Makers

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http://www.blinksandbuttons.net/buttons_en.html59

http://www.popularitydialer.com/

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http://www.personal-kyoto.org/62

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Meta-Markets is an online stock market for trading shares of socially networked creative products such as YouTube videos, Delicious bookmarks, blogs, or social network profiles. In NYSE or NASDAQ people trade shares of companies. In Meta-Markets people trade shares of bookmarks, profiles, videos, or blogs. Just like companies, socially networked products have ever growing values. When product owners issue their shares in Meta-Markets, they raise capital – today play capital, but tomorrow real capital. With Meta-Markets we aim to help people to retain the value of their immaterial labor in social web services. I am cutting short here, please get more information on the web site.

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Vcasts: Get your own TV show, on the Net

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Video: LonelyGirl152nd most subscribed show on YouTube

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Narrative is co-constructed by the hundreds of comments

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http://www.jumpcut.com/

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Kate Modern

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Questions

Why do artists wear many hats?

Can everybody contribute to culture, get creative, and express themselves?

Who gets the credit for the work of contributors? What is the quality of the outcome?

Is creativity dead online in today’s platform context, in which people hardly play around with code themselves?

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