“In light of …our fast-changing cultural landscape, I would say that the media artists who are doing installation work are at the forefront of those formulating a medium which impact in the future will be comparable to that of cinema in the not-so-distant past… The combination of the three things (immersivity, movement and experiential art) should be the basis of the next mass medium and the cultural expression of a society looking to mark it's entry into the 21st century." (Clay Shirky)
Golan Levin says in his TED lecture “there’s still a lack of understanding about what it could mean to be an artist who uses the materials of their own day, which I think artists are obliged to do – to really explore the expressive potential of the new tools that we have.” Levin’s ‘The Interstitial Fragment Processor’ allows people to explore the negative shapes that they create, where Mehmet Akten’s ‘Body Paint’ allows people to paint in technicolour using gestures in front of a screen.
Golan Levin, ‘The Interstitial Fragment Processor’(2007)
Mehmet Akten,’Body Paint’(2009)
"Golan Levin's work combines equal measures of the whimsical, the provocative, and the sublime in a wide variety of online, installation and performance media."
Onedotzero
“Combining traditional design methods and aesthetics with programmatic design, generative systems and natural human-computer interaction; [Akten] seeks to create emotional and memorable experiences.” blazetheshow.com..."
"...In light of the Internet boom, the way our brains work are changing. Our attention spans are shortening, it has been well documented. The Internet is changing everything about the way we learn and take in information. If our attention spans are shortening, maybe artist’s blurbs will become obscelete. If we are to stay true to our own interests, perhaps that should not matter. If a gallery were to take away all the titles, artist names and artist blurbs, which pieces would still be the most effective or interesting?
We are now used to having everything at our fingertips and we are more demanding than ever. “Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles” (Nicholas Carr) Maybe we have something to gain by playing to this short attention span culture, and we can hone and perfect art that’s immediacy is spot on, while viewers will only visit work that is worthy of their increasingly precious time.
Maybe our data overload is making us increasingly aware of our position. Google Earth begins with the image of the world hung in the sky, detached and separate from everything else. And we have exhausted every inch of it, there is no ‘terrain incognita’ because every part has been photographed and stitched together for our viewing pleasure. In the space of a few seconds you can go from blandly gazing at Egypt's pyramids to the Grand Canyon.
And this is the way that we are viewing our friendships and the world around us, everything that has always been real. I confess to finding it easier to read from my computer screen than from a page in a book because I know that it is more likely to be concise, filtered down to what I need to know. This framing of nature is becoming our world. The gallery space is just another frame. If an artist has taken the time to put it together it must be worth our attention for at least 30 seconds.
If our friendships are being boxed into this same frame, perhaps lying down in an installation with our friends is one of the few ‘real’ experiences to have with them, as opposed to Bourriaud’s ‘communication superhighways’, He warns that they “…threaten to become the only possible thoroughfare from a point to another in the human world… Before long, it will not be possible to maintain human relationships with people outside these trading areas… The social bond has turned into a standardized artifact.” Surely sharing the experience of an art work is better than his coffee idea; ‘a symbolic form of contemporary human relations “you are looking for shared warmth and the comforting feeling of wellbeing for two? So try our coffee..” The gallery may not be as wholesome and devoid of capitalist values as he would like but it’s a start. “The work of art is a “social form” capable of producing positive human relationships."(Claire Bishop)
I think ‘event culture’ has sprung from the idea that “anything that cannot be marketed will eventually vanish”. Not that I am championing paintings that go for sale at millions of pounds, on the contrary, the art that is ephemeral but provides an experience is worth much more to many more people and could be a whole new better way of reaching the public.
The way the Internet has changed the way we think is that it has given a voice to anyone with an Internet connection – each individual can now have a Facebook, twitter, blog, YouTube channel – to express their views. Everything is editable. Wikipedia is a source for information but it is user built, and relies on every day people’s input to make it work. Clay Shirky in ‘cognitive surplus’ tells the story of a little girl looking behind the television, asking where the mouse is. ”The girl’s explanation has become my motto for what we might imagine from our newly connected world: we’re looking for the mouse… Everywhere, a reader or a viewer or a patient or a citizen has been locked out of creating and sharing, or has been served up passive or canned experience, and we’re asking ‘if we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen? I’m betting the answer is yes, or could be yes, if we give one another the opportunity to participate and reward one another for trying.”
And so if every website has a place for us, so should an art gallery. We no longer want to be served up this ‘passive or canned experience’; we want to leave our mark on it, even if it only lasts as long as the gallery is there – or as long as that site is fashionable.
Still from Videogrid by Ross Phillips, Design Museum, 2008
I think it’s easy to see why Bourriaud has been criticized for such a ‘peace and love’ attitude. It’s charming, the idea of everyone having an equal voice, of everyone being a part of something. Charming, but not impossible. “What matters most now is our imaginations. The opportunity before us, individually and collectively, is enormous; what we do with it will be determined largely by how well we are able to imagine and reward public creativity, participation, and sharing.”(Clay Shirky)
We are entering a time when the public is becoming increasingly aware of information. Data visualization and information art is on the rise and I believe we are entering a time where a nostalgia for reality is driving our artworks. Look at ‘hipsters’, often art students, using the Hipstamatic App on their iPhones to create a vintage feel, a nostalgia for real Polaroid photographs. Even advertising is experiencing a fad for the appeal of the ‘real’. If northern, ‘ordinary’ people are trying to sell you something to the sound of a bright sounding ukulele, it must be good.
I think art can go either way, either embrace the medium of the internet and information matrix, immediacy, the demands of our ‘double tap’ society or rebel and create works that are static, contemplative, obscure and deliberately exclusive. Maybe that is what post-relationalism is?"
Theodora Sutton 2011
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