reading response

1) I suppose that it feels right to have some form of a curator involved in the exhibiting of online art. This, however, does not have to pertain to the traditional and more controlling role that the curator takes on in say a museum or a gallery. I believe that because of the eclectic nature of online art shows that the curator may take on the role of simply online liaison, that they can simply invite others to contribute to a project and wait on the work to arrive. A couple examples of this would be my own project yoguy.info, in which I have made use of a Tumblr template and created a hub for users and viewers to contribute video works of any kind. All works are accepted but all that had to exist was the place for those works to go… kind of like Kevin Costners Field of Dreams, "if you build it they will come. Another really interesting example of this looser kind of online curation would be Krystal Souths QR Art show at the Portland Art Museum in which she invited a number of online artists to take images from the Museums online archive and re-work them or re-mix them to make newer works that would then be put to an online place (her website) and then made into QR codes that would be installed along side the original artworks. Being a part of this project was pretty fun and exciting as many of the artist involved were no-bodies while others were maybe more well known. This same kind of thing happened with YoGuy and I believe that these models of curation are interesting contrasts to Lichty's traditional models. I do think that many online artists and users will believe in the traditions of curation but mostly because those  directions are safer and more likely to create commercial properties to online artworks. An attribute that i think is neither bad nor good… really it all depends on the work, the only problem is falling into bad pigeons holes. One such example would be the recent USB show that took place in France and that the only Female artist involved was my friend Frieda-raye Green. A very intense discussion took place over this show and I think was justified as we should be weary of the future of art and online art, that it is meant to be a more levelling platform and not a continuing hierarchy. 

In Class Response

1) Cory Arch Angel, Drei Klavierstucke op. 11, 2009

Drei Klavierstuke is a recreation of Arnold Schoenberg’s 1909 op. 11 Drei Klavierstücke (aka Three Piano Pieces) made by editing together videos of cats playing pianos downloaded from Youtube. Schoenberg’s Op11 is often considered the first piece of “atonal” music, or music to completely break from traditional western harmony which means it’s not written in a “key”. Below you will find the three videos (one for each piano piece), a technical description & the score.

2)

- The artwork is decidedly social because of its use of uploaded content by a vast array of contributing users from all over the world. By combining all these eclectic sources, Arcangel creates a fresh and very complex interpretation of a famous composure that was created 100years prior. The audience is integrated by their inherent understanding of youtube's interface and as users. That through their playing of the video's and sharing of the video's one may create multiple interpretations of the unseemingly epic videos. 

- The work demonstrates a blue between public and private by appropriating the various users cat videos that may have been originally made for their own personal reasons; to share with family, friends, etc. Arcangel breaks this boundary of the personal by giving the videos a cold and concise role in the 100year old composure, taking placeless private locations and putting them into the context of art and potentially giving the videos a wider spread of viewership

- The work comments on social media as a cultural phenomenon by showing the vast and almost unlimited array of content that is available on the internet. That through social media, the world is able to upload their lives and upload their private moments that maybe more clever users - such as Arcangel - may rework and turn into something potentially more beautiful. If anything, Drei Klavierstuke is a work of art that could only exist with the exponential growth of social media and the Internet.

D_Hanes_Sitmap_Si Nae Kim_Genisis_2012

Artist's Online Project Review_Ed Fornieles

In Kate Raynes-Goldies' 2010 essay: Aliases, Creeping, and Wall Cleaning: Understanding Privacy in the Age of Facebook she discusses at length the kind of complications that can arise out of the encouraging of certain types of behaviours while simultaneously discouraging others. She states that on Facebook, "users are suppose to be their "true" selves, interact with "real" friends and respect the privacy of others…" while simultaneously are suppose to submit and agree to the stipulations of the Facebook Inc. goal, which to have full and unrestrained access to personal information over the Internet.(1) However, some users developed forms of "subversive behaviours [that] demonstrate[d] that participants were quite aware that Facebook Inc's highly touted privacy controls are easily circumvented…" and artist Ed Fornieles is exactly that kind of user.

Ed Fornieles is a London based, UK artist who uses Facebook as a source for developing elaborate plot lines and character developments using real-life information from the websites other users. In one of his more elaborate undertakings, Dorm Daze (2011) was a Facebook specific sitcom. The sitcom involved 35 different characters made from collected (or "scalped"(2) as he calls it) information that was off of Americana users in California. Each of these "characters" were then allocated to various friends of the artist, each friend/user was then instructed to "inhabit" these character profiles and transform into them via online exchanges between each other and the artist. The result was an "incredible dialogue… always, between our experience of fiction and our experience of reality."(3) Later this dialogue was culminated with a video work, as well as an installation at Carlos/Ishikawa gallery in London, 2011. Like Raynes-Goldies example of the subversive user, Fornieles' Facebook Sitcom undermines the assumptions of authenticity on the internet and exploits a non-traditional platform for story telling and narrative building in a chaotic collapse of both physical and digital realities.

What at first seems like a bizarre version of Gossip Girls quickly turns into a complex and accurate representation of Facebook user ship. A user ship that, when looked at through this particular gaze, seems insular, self-absorbed and ludicrous in a kind of unsettling and home-hitting way. Maybe this needs a bit more unfolding, what I mean to suggest is that it could be possible that the people that Fornieles appropriated his information from do not actually speak, act or use Facebook in the same way that he represents them. However, if one is to look at Facebook user ship and nothing else then one will notice the needy, seedy and narcissistic qualities of user behaviour. This is especially true in regards to frequent and committed user ship, which is exactly the kind of users that Facebook and most Internet giants would like to see overwhelm and homogenize our last and possibly most sacred playground.

Notes: 

1) Kate Raynes- Goldies', Aliases, Creeping, and Wall Cleaning: Understanding Privacy in the Age of Facebook, 2010

2) Ed Fornieles, Ways Beyond the Internet at the 2012 DLD Conference, www.dld-conference.com, 2012

3) Ed Fornieles, in conversation with Joanne McNeil: Artist Profile, Rhizome.org, Spring 2012