A Digital Revolution?

A DIGITAL ‘REVOLUTION’?

The Incursion of Digital Media into the Field of Art

Lily Ackroyd-Willoughby

A DIGITAL ‘REVOLUTION’?

The Incursion of Digital Media into the Field of Art

Lily Ackroyd-Willoughby

This thesis has a dual format. A bound copy accompanies this digital version.

It was once only possible to read text in a traditional book format. With the advent of digital technology, platforms and tools have been expanded and we can now read online – with hypertext, on digital devices and in this instance, even as a digital simulation of a physical book. The message, the intention, and in the case of this thesis, the content, however, all remain the same.

Superficial change and fundamental continuity illustrates the argument of this thesis.

Table of contents

9 Introduction

12

1: The Activation of the User and Audience

23

2: The Institution

34

3: Artistic Production and the Birth of the Prosumer

44

Conclusion

47 Appendix 59

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Chris Taylor, and Nick Thuston for supporting me throughout this project.

In 2006 Time Magazine published its annual Person of The Year issue. On the cover was not the customary figure, idea, event or object. In this issue Time gave the award to YOU: Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.1 (Fig:1) From its first public introduction in the early 1990s, to its widespread and popular use in the mid-2000s, digital media and the Internet has been hailed by many as inciting a ‘digital democracy’ and a societal revolution. There is now an overwhelming focus on the activation, interaction and empowerment of the average user, the ‘YOU’ Time celebrated. The early 2000s saw the inception of Web 2.0, a social rather than a technical development in Internet use from where this ‘cult of the user’ originated.

With Web 2.0, the user no longer passively viewed content but was able to interact and self-publish on an array of new platforms. From social networking channels, remixes, wikis, blogs, webs applications to video and image sharing sites, this interactive development in Internet culture is a prime example of the socially remedial platforms that digital technology is seen to facilitate. Writing in Times’ 2006 Person of the Year issue, Lev Grossman, encapsulated this opinion:

The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter…It’s really a revolution…It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.2 1 Andreen Keen, The Cult of the Amateur (London: Nicholas Breadley Publishing, 2007) p.28.

2 Lev Grossman, ‘You – Yes, You are TIME’s person of the Year,’ Time Magazine, 168 (2006) http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570810,00.html [accessed Jan 2014]

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Introduction

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This shift into today’s Information or Digital Age has introduced a vast array of new tools and phenomena into all areas of life, including the field of art. A widespread euphoria marked the early response to the digital’s incursion in the early 1990s, but with over a decade’s experience of a habitual digital presence, opinion is now more divided. Grossman’s above statement by no means rings true for all, and there is much to be said against it. While on the surface the way we view, produce and display information, images and content has changed it is still debatable whether a ‘revolution’ or a fundamental change in society’s structures has taken place. Focusing on the field of art, this thesis will discuss from a philosophical and theoretical standpoint, the ethical and social effects that digital media has, or has in theory, caused within this discipline. Interaction, participation and collaboration have become the watchwords for today’s digitally mediated culture, and this ethos has deeply affected the spectator’s, artist’s and the institution’s relationship with the viewing, production and display of art. This does not mean that the power structures and exclusivity of the art world has been surpassed, or that art is now based along newly democratic and egalitarian lines. The digital ‘revolution’ remains only as an ideal and is not realized in practice. Superficially, the tools, points of contact and design may have been altered by the widespread use of digital technologies. But like the dual format of this thesis, where it was once only possible to read it in a traditional book format, one can now read it online – with hypertext, on digital devices and in this instance, even as a digital simulation of a physical book. This does not mean that the base frameworks of society have not remained the same.

The message, the ideologies, the purpose of things and in the case of this thesis, the content, all remain the same regardless of their new digital contexts.

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The Internet has created a veritable cult of the user. The traditional positions of the passive consumer and active producer seem to be completely overhauled in our digital age. Digital interfaces are inherently interactive. As opposed to the mono-directional modes of communication emplaced by traditional media (television and radio) user-friendly computer interfaces necessarily allow the user to simultaneously consume and produce information. Users are thereby activated, and their input has become catered for to an unheard of degree by many Internet-based programs and born-digital industries. Contributing to the social shaping of the Internet, the early open-source movement emerged as a means for the public to add to the Internet’s infrastructure. Based on the open accessibility of information, users collectively contribute their ideas and innovations to produce, design and improve new and existing software.

Online encyclopedia, Wikipedia is similarly structured around the shared contributions from a vast group of users. Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can create, add to, and publish information, without editorial control. Numerous social media and content sharing platforms exist nowadays like YouTube, Flickr and Sound Cloud that give users unlimited storage and plenty of tools to organize, customize, and broadcast their media, opinions, and thoughts.1 As Ed Shedd of Deloitte observed in 2006, this trend instigated by digital media suggests that ‘users will be empowered and have greater influence.’2 But is this really the case?

It can be argued that digital media has incited a societal revolution and caused a decided break from the past. According to Lev Grossman, by using digital technology, the public is ‘seizing the reins of the global media, founding and framing the new digital democracy [and]…beating 1 Lev Manovich, ‘The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Consumption to Mass Cultural Production?’ Critical Enquiry, 35 (2009) 2 Peter Feuilherade, ‘Digital media: empowering users,’ BBC News (2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4781590.stm [accessed 1 February 2014]

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1: The Activation of the User and Audience

3 Lev Grossman, ‘You – Yes, You are TIME’s person of the Year,’ Time Magazine, 168 (2006) http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570810,00.html [accessed Jan 2014] 4 The phrase ‘digital commons’ refers to the perceived idea of the Internet as a space where people can share information freely.

5 Brent L. Pickett, ‘Foucault and the Politics of Resistance,’ in Polity, 28 (1996) p. 447

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the pros at their own game.’3 Such developments have had far reaching influences that have been felt no less in the art world than anywhere else. These priorities have proved instrumental for many art practices that emerged at the same time as the Internet. A key example in this shift towards audience activation is participatory art, particularly a specific brand of it – Relational Aesthetics. Coming into view alongside the beginning of mainstream Internet use in the early 1990s, ‘Relational Aesthetics’ was a term coined by theorist Nicolas Bourriaud to describe a trend he saw within a group of socially engaged artists. Characteristic of relational art is a focus on the audience and their interaction within a given setting.

Relational artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is emblematic of this celebration of the audience. Tiravanija’s pieces often take the form of situations, platforms and spaces where the audience shares food and conversation. The works are initiated by and depend on the presence of an active audience. The role of the user or audience seems to have been altered in society and in the art world where new priorities and structures are being exercised.

Many advocates of digital democracy and of Relational Aesthetics view these changes as being more democratic, resistant to power structures and subversive of conventional hierarchies. The situation, however, is not quite so clear-cut. Platforms and tools for users might have undoubtedly increased, but the base frameworks of power structures are still upheld.

Hegemonic relations and forms of control prevail on the Internet and in relational works. This thesis contends that they neither herald a total upheaval of convention, nor a digital commons.4

In understanding what power structures are and how they might be resisted, Foucault’s theories are invaluable. In order to ascertain whether digital technology and Relational Aesthetics have had a reformative effect in both the art world and the larger social sphere, we must judge whether they have resisted the prevailing hegemonic and traditional structures.

According to Foucault’s theory, the existent power structures of Western Civilization are based on dichotomies and binary logic. 5Categories such as active and passive, and even artist and audience seem inevitable and are naturalized. Yet these classifications are highly constructed and are used to legitimatize power structures. Binaries are imbalanced where one

6 Michel Foucault, ‘Classifying’ in ‘The Order of Things’ (London: Routledge, 1970) pp.125-132 7 Mark Rappolt, ‘Rirkrit Tiravanija Interview,’ Art Review Asia (2013) http://artreview.com/features/november_2013_feature_rirkrit_tiravanija/ [accessed Jan 2014]

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category within the dichotomy is always favoured and the lesser has the marginalized status of an ‘Other.’6 The conventional relationship between the artist and audience upholds the former as genius originator and owner of the intellectual property of the artwork. The latter is traditionally a spectator who passively views the artwork in front of them and receives the preordained meaning dictated by the artist. Such binaries are based around categories of exclusion and privilege, and maintain hierarchical divisions. This then describes the structures that advocates of the Internet and Relational Aesthetics state have been subverted and undermined by these new practices. Foucault elaborates that it is the productive transgression and blurring of these binaries that allows those who have been excluded, to be recognized.

Explicit in the claims of those who argue for Internet democracy, as well as for Relational Aesthetics’ ethical stance, is the critique of institutional discourse and the interrogation of systems of hegemonic control.

By activating the audience through participatory works, relational artists intend to reconfigure the limitations of institutional space, blur distinctions between artist and audience, permitting the latter to become co-authors.

Tiravanija, in a recent interview for Art Review’s ‘Power 100’ issue, spoke out against the power of the institution and the art world. ‘Art today is for the many insiders […] we believe too much in power,’ and his works aim to remedy this.7 The Internet, too, is seen as a free arena that necessarily breaks down limitations outlined by the authorities and governing powers.

Suggested by both practices is the introduction of more de-centralized, networked systems, rather than rigid top-down hierarchies. In theory, diverse groups, rather than small elitist circles can come together in relational works and in online platforms with a DIY attitude, collaboratively working towards a shared knowledge. Strict roles are destabilized, limitations are undermined and traditional systems are purportedly questioned.

At the heart of the argument for Relational Aesthetics’ and the Internet’s resistant, democratic stance is their networked structure. Theoretically, the organization of both these social mediums is horizontal, and structured along egalitarian lines, without managerial control. In one of Tiravanija’s early pieces, Untitled (Free) (1992) (Fig: 2,3) the artist constructed a canteen-like set up within 303 Gallery, New York. Tiravanija cooked Thai soup for visitors who were free to sit down on trestle tables and

8 Manuel Castells, The Internet Galaxy: reflections on the Internet, business and society, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p.2.

9 G. Deleuze and F. Guatarri, A Thousand Plateus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, (London: Athlone Press, 1988) p. 7 Dawsonera ebook 10 Castells, p.1.

11 Deleuze and Gautarri, p.7.

12 Castells, p.2.

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interact with each other. The situation was flexible and open ended.

There was no linear relationship between artwork and audience, or artist and viewer and there was little distinction as to who was responsible for producing the work itself. This is an example of the liberating and empowering network structures that such artists propose. The Internet is similarly based around more open and less prescribed structures. Castells tells us that for the first time it allowed the possibility for the interaction ‘of many to many, in a chosen time, on a global scale.’8 Since these platforms are built around connecting people, the championing of these open horizontal structures as being ripe with potentially remedial social outcomes is inevitable. At first glance both structures appear to adhere to Giles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s theory of the rhizomatic ideal.

Long before the advent of digital culture, Deleuze and Guattari elaborated in ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ a compelling description of a pluralistic networked system, the rhizome. As the authors state, ‘a rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles.’9 Thus a rhizome is a network system where ‘any point can be connected to any other, and must be,’10 and where exclusive arenas cannot exist. Within a rhizomatic system there is no domineering or universal language. Instead, it is based on the simultaneous connection of many to many and on multiplicity. Everything feeds off each other, resulting in a ‘throng of dialects, patois, [and] slangs.’11 This rhizome structure is a utopian concept but is useful as a comparative point. As shall be elaborated, in contrast to this idealistic rhizome system, the network systems that relational art and the Internet follow are still structured around varying degrees of control, authority, and division. Castells tells us that these networked systems are no more or less democratic than other top-down hierarchies.12 Demarcations between rankings of authority, as found in conventional hierarchies, may not be the network’s guiding principle, but control can still be implemented through them in less obvious ways. As

13 Manovich 14 Maria Lind, ‘The Collaborative Turn,’ http://doublesession.net/indexhibitv070e/files/lindthecollaborativeturn.pdf pp.193-194 15 Lind, p.194 16 Claire Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,’ http://www.marginalutility.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Claire-Bishop_Antagonism-and-Relational-Aesthetics.pdf p. 51

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Lev Manovich adds, ‘all businesses in the age of globalization had to become adaptable, mobile, flexible, and ready to break up and regroup,’ in other words governing bodies follow networked systems themselves.13 While collaborative, looser organizational models might have signaled a resistance to rigid hierarchical organizations in the past, nowadays network systems are used by the power structures themselves - by businesses, Internet conglomerates and government organizations. In order to ascertain whether digital media have caused a significant degree of change within society and the art world in particular, we must first remember that our context and power structures are also updating.

Digital media’s activation and empowerment of the audience or user may not herald such a significant social upheaval as first anticipated.

The freedoms and powers given to users of the Internet and relational works are limited within controlled parameters. Taking Tiravanija’s practice as an example, it is useful to examine Christian Kravanga’s set of definitions to pinpoint the regimented nature of the artist’s work. Concerning Kravanga’s terms for practices that involve human interaction - works that are classed as ‘participatory practice’, ‘working with others’ and ‘interactive activities’ still pertain to pre-ordained structures set out by the artist.14 According to Kravanga, Tirvanija is an artist ‘working with others,’ and therefore part of a group of ‘sozio-chics’ where the audience is cynically used by the artist. It could be argued that his works are also participatory and interactive. Participatory art still presumes a difference between artist and viewer where the latter is involved in scenarios pre-fabricated by the artist. Interactive art also allows for a focus on audience response, but where the structure of the work itself is already rigidly fixed.15 Claire Bishop talks of the current trend in galleries, like Bourriaud’s Palais de Tokyo, to show relational art as part of studio experiments, works in progress and laboratories for creation.16 Like the paradigms for experimentation in scientific laboratories, while results will vary, they are predicted according to a tight set of variables.

During Tiravanija’s show Fear Eats the Soul (2011) (Fig: 4,5) at

17 Andrew Russeth, ‘The Fall of Relational Aesthetics,’ , The New York Observer. 15 September 2011 18 Lev Manovich, ‘The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Consumption to Mass Cultural Production?’ in Critical Enquiry , 35 (2009) 19 Manovich 20 Manovich

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Gavin Brown’s enterprise the artist established a space where Brown could park his car. During the show two visitors, on seeing that the keys were left inside, commandeered the car and took it for a short ride. Gavin Brown later addressed the artists saying, ‘I quote you as you exited the car: “We thought it was part of the interactivity.’ - Is this Disney?”17 This comparison, however, is quite apt. Tiravanija’s work has a ‘do as you please’ ethic and appears to permit the viewer to customize their experience of the work, rather than having meaning disseminating from and explained solely by the artist. Like Disney’s productions, though, his works are a cartoon - an approximation of the truth where utopian make-believe can happen, but only under the auspices of the artist’s hand. This incident, while perhaps facile, shows that these viewers transgressed a boundary by stealing Brown’s car. This was a limitation imposed, and not dissolved, by Tirvanija’s practice and the institution he showed in.

As with Tirvanija’s work, it is commonly thought that to customize an experience, making it one’s own, is to exercise a degree of power. In the ‘customization’ by the two visitors of Tiravanija’s work at Gavin Brown enterprise, a level of control can still be involved. De Certeau has said that operations like customization are ‘tactical’ moves made by the public to combat and challenge the ‘strategies’ emplaced by institutions.18 For example, governments and corporations might dictate the city’s layout, signage and driving regulations, but an individual moves through the city tactically by taking shortcuts, choosing favourite routes, or wandering aimlessly.19 In today’s culture the relationship between strategies and tactics is becoming closer and more blurred. Like Tiravanija’s work, many businesses, online institutions and social media outlets actively encourage users to customize and activate their services to make them their own.20 For many users it may seem that institutional strategies and controls have been destabilized, empowering the user and thereby feeding into the cult of the audience. What it actually means, is that the strategies of institutions and companies have become more tactical and more subversive. As Manovich explains, ‘in short, people’s cultural tactics [are] turned into

21 Manovich 22 Bishop, p.54.

23 Manovich 24 Lind, p.192.

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strategies now sold to them.’21 Both digital media and relational art feeds into this cult of the user and audience where both permit the public increased room to manoeuver in a seemingly liberal space. Yet such freedoms are only granted within tight parameters since order and control are still imposed.

The shift from a goods industry to a service and information-based economy instigated by the birth of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, was an important context for Relational Aesthetics. Many relational artists literally provide services and experiences for audiences, rather than creating saleable objects for display. Tiravanija serves the audience food, relational artist Christine Hill offered visitors back and shoulder massages, and later established a functional second-hand shop, Volksboutique at Documenta X (1997).22 Explicit in this service-based and collaborative practice is the rejection of the relations of commodification. Similarly, online companies like Facebook and Twitter promote themselves as services for their users, free of charge and the direct exchange of goods. This forms part of both practices’ ethical and democratic standpoint. However, what relational art seems to ignore, and what Facebook et al capitalize upon, is that the direct exchange of capital is not the only way through which power and assets can be augmented. Social networking companies like Facebook appear to be a service in which users are given the wherewithal to create their own communities, where the breadth of user control and freedom is expanded. Yet the user’s ‘meaningful’ and ‘empowering’ relationships formed on the site do not serve the purposes of the public, but of the company itself. (They do so through advertising, selling user data to marketing companies and selling add-on services).23 Though de-materialized, it is the user’s interactions and the exchange of information that is employed as profitable currency. This can also be said of Relational Aesthetics. Stephen Wright argues that Tiravanija’s work reproduces the very same class-based power relations he purportedly resists.24 Tiravanija’s artworks are literally made from the audience who co-produce the situation or experience. It is obviously the artist, however, who is solely accredited for the work. The audiences’ interactions are undertaken freely and voluntarily, but as on Facebook, it is a form of immaterial labour

25 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital,’ http://econ.tau.ac.il/papers/publicf/Zeltzer1.pdf p.47 26 Lind, p.188.

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nonetheless. Rather than simply empowering its viewers or users, works such as those by Tiravanija undeniably secure social and cultural capital for the artist and institutions that show them. Bordieu explains that the conversion of objects into money, and vice-versa, form just one part of an expanded idea of the exchange economy. While both forms are translatable into monetary gains, a person’s social status, or their social and cultural capital, still forms part of the dominant hegemonic system.25 Both social networking sites and Tiravanija’s practice benefit from these more immaterial forms of exchange and capital. While it is less surprising to find companies and businesses harnessing such forms of labour, both Tiravanija and these sites still purport to empower their public. New tools, platforms and experiences are provided for users and visitors. But since both lack a self-reflexive criticality, what is left is a not a change, but a confirmation of hegemonic systems.

Communication is key to both relational art and digital interfaces.

Interaction and connectivity within previously closed off arenas, and the creation of heterogeneous, productive relations are said to be instigated through these media. This is central to their democratic and ethical rhetoric. Using the rhizome again as an ideal comparison it is demonstrated that relational art and the Internet are based, not upon increased heterogeneity and inclusion, but on degrees of homogeneity and exclusion. Both appear to propose that increased interaction and connectivity that alone constitute an ethical and democratic ‘revolution’. Less attention seems to be paid as to who is interacting, how and what the quality of these interactions are. Democratic and more liberal forms do not just involve the ability to speak freely, but also include the capacity for that voice to have an effect. As in Deleuze’s and Guattari’s rhizomatic ideal, and in Chantel Mouffe’s observations about the nature of democracy itself, there must be an ‘antagonistic pluralism’ if truly free arenas are to be realized.26 If this were to be created there would be no universals, or meta-narratives dictating a binary logic and law of exclusion. There is, however, little evidence to suggest that Tiravanija and Facebook achieve this: in both critics have noted a deferral to a homogenous consensus of the centre and a reflection of specific social groups and localities.

Facebook was first created to facilitate connections between Harvard students, where its founder Mark Zuckerberg studied at the time.

Literally a face book, it originally acted as a catalogue of student profiles,

303 Gallery ... became a place for sharing, jocularity and frank talk. I had an amazing run of talks with art dealers. Once I ate with Paula Cooper who recounted a long, complicated bit of professional gossip. Another day, Lisa Spelman related in hilarious detail a story of intrigue about a fellow dealer trying, unsuccessfully, to woo one of her artists. About a week later I ate with David Zwirner. I bumped into him on the street and he said, ‘nothing’s going right today let’s go to Rirkrit’s.’ We did and he talked about a lack of excitement in the New York art world.29

Again employing Deleuze’s and Guattari’s rhizomatic model, Tirvanija’s piece contains a ‘throng’ of interactions and networking individuals, but it is by no means composed of ‘many dialects.’ Although this cannot be taken as fact for all his pieces, Saltz’ comments are paradigmatic of the issues pertaining to Tiravanija’s ‘ethical’ and interactive practice. His soup kitchen was primarily used by a homogenous and elitist group of art critics, dealers and insiders. Like Facebook, those interacting are already part of a socially specific and localized group. With this consensus of the centre there is little space for heterogeneity, and those made ‘Other’ to the ‘ivory tower’30 are disproportionately recognized. In both Tiravanija’s work 27 E.J Westlake, ‘Friend me if you Facebook: Generation Y and Performative Surveillance’ in TDR 52 (2008) p.24.

28 E. J. Westlake, p. 24.

29 Bishop, p.67.

30 Lind, p.188.

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with networks limited to classmates on similar courses or in the same dorms. Although in theory Facebook allows users to connect with others globally, in practice interactions on the site are still locally determined and socially specific.27 Users are permitted to register with a school or work email address from which similar networks of people are suggested.

Users’ information is only viewable in varying degrees to those who are ‘friends’, ‘friends of friends’ or those in networks specific to schools, jobs, interests or region.28 Rather than connect those who might not normally interact, Facebook does so only for homogenous groups of people.

Consensus is pervasive, rather than engendering productive agonism or pluralism. It is the same for those who take part in relational works. Reviewing Tiravanija’a Untitled (Free) (1992) at 303 Gallery in New York, critic Jerry Saltz recounted,

31

Lind, p.188.

32 Alexander Provan, ‘Touch Screens’ Artforum (March 2013) p.128 33 Claire Bishop, ‘Digital Divide,’ Artforum (September 2012) http://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201207&id=31944 [accessed 25 October 2013] p.4

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and Facebook, conviviality bordering on ‘frivolous interaction’31 if often enacted, not a productive antagonism.

The trend for activation, interaction and collaboration - renewed and emphasized by the Internet and taken up by Relational Aesthetics may not be as inherently democratic or as challenging as first may seem.

It must be remembered that freedom and accessibility cannot originate from the technology or practice itself, but is entirely dependent on context and process. It is the way we use and implement such social practices that allows an art form or technology to open up previously exclusive and closed arenas - not their very fact of being. Media theorist, Arnold Flusser believed that if technology were to realize its democratic and liberating potential, we would have to reprogram - not the digital media itself - but us, as users.32 It is only then that we may be able to engage with technology and ourselves in the socialized production of information.

Both practices do have potential to effect real change and effective immanent resistance. What both lack, however, is an all-important self-reflexive criticality and true recognition of their privileged place within the identical institutional power structures they supposedly liberate.

New tools and platforms for discussion and interaction have been made available through digital media and by relational works. The quality of experiences enacted in these sites, however, does not point outside of prevailing institutional systems. Both expand opportunities for the public, but only within the parameters of hegemonic control and never incite real resistance or change. The empowerment of the audience, user and public remains more of a posture, or for online companies a marketing strategy.

As Bishop comments, ‘at its most utopian, the digital revolution opens up a new dematerialized, de-authored, and unmarketable reality of collective culture.’33 And as demonstrated, these outcomes and the ‘revolution’ itself remain at a utopian stage with no rupture or change to the hegemonic system. As has been demonstrated, within the art world and in society, the incursion of digital media has not produced a revolution, but rather a continuity and reproduction of dominant and institutional power relations.

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In the preceding chapter the activation of the user and audience via digital technologies and public empowerment has been examined. According to some we have entered a new age of ‘e-democracy.’1 While this has been found to be highly problematic, the role of the institution in the ‘digital revolution’ is also pertinent. Digital media has been found by many to neutralize institutional control from the top-down, effectively opening up museums and galleries. Writing in 1994, Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian Institute, forecast the impact digital that technologies would have on art institutions. In her eyes, this was a period of great change.

According to Broun, until recently institutions have caused art to become ‘estranged from society, too remote, presided over by a kind of priesthood of ‘those in the know,’ inaccessible to all those but the initiated.’2 Museums, galleries and international biennial and triennials are, according to Carol Duncan, ideologically motivated spaces and artifacts of power.3 Art institutions are the arbiters of what is considered art and non-art, or good and bad art for the masses. As such they are based upon demarcations between inclusion and exclusion, and the binary structures that Foucault attached to all hegemonic systems.4 The early 1990s, however, witnessed the Internet’s popular inception with the introduction of ‘easy-to-use’ graphic browsers,5 and many saw this as inaugurating a digital commons.

1 Anon, ‘The Road to E-Democracy,’ The Economist, 16 February 2008 http://www.economist.com/ node/10638222 [accessed January 2014] 2 Broun, p.2 3 Carol Duncan, Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship, eds. I. Rarp and S. D. Levine, Exhibiting Cultures,(Washington, Smithsonian Institute Press: 1991) 4 Brent L. Pickett, ‘Foucault and the Politics of Resistance’ in Polity, 28 (1996) p. 447 5 Manovich, Lev, ‘The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Consumption to Mass Cultural Production?’ Critical Enquiry, 35 (2009)

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2: The Institution

6 Broun, p. 3 7 Broun, p. 7 8 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction, (London: Penguin Group, 2008) p. 5.

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Since Broun’s forecast on the cusp of the digitization of culture, euphoria surrounding new media seems to have gone unabated. In this ‘new age’ what we are supposedly witnessing is a transgression of these divisions, where ‘barriers everywhere are blurring and breaking down.’6 Within the art world, many see digital media as synonymous with an unprecedented degree of accessibility and pluralism, where the meta-narrative of institutions and governing bodies are challenged. However, this is to wrongly assume that the democratic project of new media advocates is not so much a constructed rhetoric as an institutional discourse on power. It would also ignore the fact that institutions themselves have promoted this narrative and the ‘cult of the audience’ as part of their projected ethos. While public empowerment is supposedly affected by new digital tools such as Google Art Project, the ‘trickle-down’ culture7 of the art world, albeit now digitally infused, is still upheld by institutional influence and not separated from past hierarchies. What we are witnessing is an adapted continuance and the increased importance of institutional influence on today’s digital culture.

The digitization of the image is thought by many as a means of escaping institutions, or indeed any exhibition space, thereby setting the image free. With little difference between original and copy, digital image files would seem to upset the narrative of originality and authenticity that institutions espouse. Together with their ability to be quickly disseminated online over great distances, digital images for some, threaten the institution as a physical location where the distribution and display of original artworks are controlled. The genealogy of this opinion originates from Walter Benjamin’s theory on the mechanical reproduction of art works, first published in 1936. Though speaking about mechanical, rather than the digital reproduction of images, Benjamin’s assertions have influenced those who place a democratic project within the digitization of arts and culture. According to Benjamin, the ‘here and now’ of an original artwork constitutes the idea of its abstract genuineness.8 Uniqueness and originality are what allow the artwork to be authoritative and part of an institutional tradition. However, as Benjamin argues, the technological reproduction of the artwork does something to our relationship with the original. As its singularity is threatened, its ‘aura’ shrinks and its authority is reduced. The

9 Benjamin, p.26 10 Boris Groys, Going Public ( Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010) p.91 11 Groys, Going Public, p.84

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more the social significance of the artwork diminishes, the more it diverges with the mainstream - the masses and the ‘critical and pleasure-seeking stances of the public.’9 The artwork no longer exists solely within a gallery space, but also in people’s homes, on TV, on computer screens and other digital devices. It is for this reason that Benjamin classed the technological reproduction of artworks as revolutionary and political phenomena. The digitization of images would seem to take these notions further: not only can digital images be distributed at unprecedented speeds and distances but the image displayed on digital devices is something else entirely from the original, it is interactive. Not only can you enlarge sections of digital images, as one could with photographic reproductions, but with software like Google Art Project a whole range of resources and tools can be used to manipulate the image. It can be argued therefore, that the loss of ‘aura’ and institutional authority surrounding the original artwork could be reduced to a larger extent by digital imaging, placing it more firmly within the control of the public.

This is not so, however. Such a conclusion would assume, as Benjamin did, that the technological reproduction was almost exactly the same as the original, and not an original thing in itself. Boris Groys has noted that ‘in the world of digitized images we are dealing only with originals.’10 Behind every digital image is its image file composed of digital code and this data is invisible to the naked eye. The digital image that we see on our screens is therefore a visualization or enactment of this original data or file. Digitization gives the impression that all we are dealing with are copies that circulate freely and multiply within information networks. The sanctity of the original may be seen to have been obliterated by digitization, but as Groys notes, the original is very much still there. It is only that the code that the images originate from is invisible, but still existing in the space behind the image inside the computer.11 Not only this, but each time the digital code is visualized in an image on our screens, it is a unique performance. Each visualization differs according to the particular code and the quality of hardware or software being employed. The degree of material correspondence between original and copy that Benjamin assumes cannot be guaranteed by digital reproductions. Each digital image is not a copy, but an original in its own right. Moreover, each image

12 Groys, Going Public, p.86 13 Groys, Going Public, p.86 14 Duncan, p. 90 15 Brain Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Berkley, Calif; London: University of California Press, 1999) p. 14 Google ebook 16 Doherty, p.14 17 Doherty, p.7

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file is assigned an address and specific online location, and does not circulate as freely as people may wish to think.12 As Groys states, ‘they are placed somewhere, territorialized, inscribed into a certain topology.’13 Digital images therefore, like the physical works of art within traditional institutions, are not only originals, but are highly context dependent and subject to a particular discourse. As shall be elaborated, the domain of digital technologies is by no means a neutral context. Platforms on which one can access art, its works and resources, may have increased, but these tools are simply an extension of institutional power and hegemonic discourse.

Museums and galleries are often thought of as ritualistic spaces where certain sets of beliefs are enacted. It is a site where specific laws, roles and control are opaquely imposed and where ideology can be deployed.14 Now that one can view entire collections of artworks on purely online platforms, independence from this institutional influence is supposedly achieved. Accessing digital images of artworks on the Internet and other contemporary means of communication is seen as a free space where their dissemination can circulate anonymously and without curatorial or regulatory control. However, these online platforms are as neutral a context for viewing art, as Doherty’s ‘White Cube’ gallery space is.15 The term elaborated by Doherty describes the space of the contemporary art gallery complete with its blank white walls and clean and seemingly neutral aesthetic. Yet this ideal space is still a ritual and ideologically laden context.16 In much the same way, the image on the Internet is meant to exist in a free domain and be able to ‘take its own life’17 without institutional or ideological restrictions. As in a ‘White Cube’ gallery online digital images are still ‘framed’ within selective contexts, tailored to specific narratives and are by no means independent.

Power structures are present in language itself, in the questions we pose and the answers we formulate. Groys explains that human life

18 Boris Groys, Google: Words Beyond Grammar, (Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011) p.16 19 Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, trans Alan Bass in Postmodernsim: Foundational Essays ed. by edited by Victor E. Taylor, Charles E. Winquist (New York: Routledge, 1998) pp.504 – 506.

20 As seen in first hand research, conducted January 2014

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can be described as a prolonged dialogue with the world – we interrogate it and it interrogates us. Nowadays, rather than religion or in books, it is through Google searches that we predominantly continue this dialogue.

The questions we type into Google’s search bar, and the answers we pose in blogs, articles and on Facebook, are necessarily based on certain philosophical presuppositions.18 Naturalized ways of thinking and pervasive assumptions shape what we believe are legitimate questions and responses, and are integrated within the very vocabulary and grammar of our language. Derrida tells us that its formation and use is far from being a universal or natural phenomenon. Language is a construct, complete with fabricated laws and hierarchies.19

Google is a language-based software. The user has to enter a word or combination of words from which Google’s search engine provides answers in the form of a set of contexts in which these words feature most often, or which other users have previously found useful. Many argue that the ability to search for images and texts relating to art on Google allows art to become more accessible, more of a freer domain, and diffuses the centralized controls of institutions. Those who would not normally visit a gallery can learn about art without having to enter the exclusive gallery spaces, and access to artworks that fall outside the canon of ‘significant’ art can be achieved. For those perhaps who cannot utilize institutions increased familiarity with artworks and access is facilitated by the use of digital media. Base frameworks of power, however, are not destabilized. As Google adheres to the normative use of language it therefore literally deals in the language of power. For real change or freedom to be enacted, how we use language and pose questions have to be re-formulated. It is no coincidence that if one searches ‘art’ on Google, institutions such as Tate feature within the topmost listings.20 Search results are based on what previous users have selected, ranked most highly and have deemed most trustworthy. In order for Google to resist the dominant discourse surrounding the eminence of institutions, it would have to expose and reverse the assumptions and learned behaviours that are culturally instilled within its users. Rather than challenging the dominance of institutional influence, Google reflects a consensus of public opinion in

21 Groys, Google: Words Beyond Grammar, p.16.

22 Eli Pariser, ‘Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee weighs in: “There’s danger in the filter bubble’ in The Filter Bubble, 16 June 2011 http://www.thefilterbubble.com/web-inventor-tim-berners-lee-weighs-in-theresdanger-in-the-filter-bubble [accessed 15 January 2014] 23 Pariser 24 Pariser

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its favour and reinforces the institutions’ importance as an authoritative arbiter in the field of art.

The Google search engine is neither objective nor neutral. Google can be seen as partaking in a struggle for truth, democracy and a ‘utopian’ ideal of the free flow of information.’21 But the results it produces and the information it offers is highly subjective, and as Google dominates the field of web aggregation, the user is almost entirely beholden to the results it provides. Like Doherty’s ‘White Cube’ gallery, the viewing of artworks, images and resources on online platforms seems to be enacted in a neutral space and at the discretion of the user. Nonetheless ideological underpinnings are very much at work; it is only that they are implemented in less obvious and more opaque ways. Internet search engines ‘get to know you,’22 and companies like Google and Facebook automatically customize your search results and news feed. Using algorithms, or ideological frames to process your previous searches, email contacts, locations and other factors, these Internet conglomerates coerce users into what Internet activist, Eli Pariser terms ‘filter bubbles.’23 Users end up being isolated within their own intellectual circles and have little or no exposure to conflicting or alternative viewpoints.24 It is unlikely, therefore, that a diverse public will access information, sites and images within the category of art without an active and pre-existing interest. Rather than an infinite and open network, the Internet, dominated by search engines ensures that users remain locked in looped trajectories and insular circles dictated by pre-existing interests and social categories. Google’s PageRank algorithm that selects resources and information for personalized results is a principle that is nothing new. Like the exclusive nature of the art world, it keeps those already with knowledge and experience of art up to date with the most popular information and suggestions for related searches. It also keeps those not within this social circle excluded and inadvertently discouraged from entering it. Far from promoting a more egalitarian approach to the distribution of resources, the intersection of art and the Internet in many ways reinforces the closed circles and privileged groups that art institutions also establish.

It started when a small group of us who were passionate about art got together to think about how we might use our technology to help museums make their art more accessible—not just to regular museum-goers…but to a whole new set of people.26

A greater accessibility in a practical sense, but also in social terms is therefore aimed for - where an excluded social group can be included. The project’s new features are the means to achieve this. Through resources such as the ‘Make Your Collection’ function, or the ‘Look like an Expert’ and ‘DIY’ feature, the activated visitor, in terms of traditional artistic spectatorship, is made a power user.27 The limitations, controls and rules of the physical gallery and institutional spaces are thereby implicitly reduced. Through the empowerment of the viewer via the proliferation of digital platforms, many have argued that we are witnessing a breakdown in the canon of high art,28 and Google Art Project is seen to contribute towards this. Rather than passively viewing the selection of artworks chosen for display in a particular institution, visitors on Google Art Project 25 Zeynep Inanoglu, ‘Google Art Project: Democratizing Art,’ in Digital Publishing and Mobile Technologies, 15th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (2011) http://yunus.hacettepe.edu. tr/~umutal/publications/elpub2011.pdf [accessed 5 January 2014] 26 Amit Sood, ‘Explore Museums and Great Works of Art’ in Google’s Official Blog, http://googleblog. blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/explore-museums-and-great-works-of-art.html [accessed January 2014] 27 In terms of computing, a power user is here referred in terms of being a user who is given the ability to use advanced features of a program, above and beyond the powers of the average person.

28 Broun, p. 3

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The expansion of digital and tools platforms in the field of art do not necessarily result in its democratization, or the decline of institutional influence. Real change to the status quo can only be affected if one speaks outside of the given language and subvert the normative structures on which power rests. Rather than facilitate immanent and institutional critique, what the intersection of digital media and art seems to result in is simply an increased vocabulary for those who are already conversant with its language. Google’s recent initiative – the Google Art Project, is no exception. This is an online platform where the public can access high-resolution images of artworks from the collections of partner museums. It offers users a wide range of expanded tools and features that promise to democratize art.25 The projects director, Amit Sood, explained the initiative’s ethos:

29 As seen in first hand research on Google Art Project, conducted in January 2014.

30 Jori Finkel, ‘LACMA, Getty among 134 museums joining Google’s art site in The Los Angeles Times,’ (2012) http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2012/04/lacma-getty-sfmoma-among-134-museumsjoining-googles-art-site.html [accessed January 2014] 31 As seen in first hand research on Google Art Project, conducted in January 2014.

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can create their own collections, and ‘user galleries.’ Visitors’ perspectives and comments can be pinned to their selected artworks and voiced on forums, and the collections are easily shared publically on social media outlets. This quick dissemination of plural perspectives appears to challenge the singular institutional canon of art, and allow for completely democratic contexts for the display of artworks. However, such features are still framed by institutional influence.

Google’s Art Project also allows the visitor to view a painting selected from each institution in ‘gigapixel’ quality – capturing more detail than the naked eye can perceive. While this tool is useful for close examination of artworks, the act of selecting one particular image that is deemed most important on the institution’s part is a telling process. The selection of these gigapixel images publically promotes the ideals, priorities and ideologies of the institutions involved. Not selected via public voting, the selection process, together with the final choice of the gigapixel artworks represents more continuity than change in the imbalanced and exclusive nature of art world hierarchy. If we are to look at the selection of gigapixel images a Western and gendered bias is glaringly apparent – a trope that the traditional canon of high art also shares. Out of forty-two images, only one female painter, Louise Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun, and her portrait of Marie Antoinette in the Palace at Versailles, has been selected for the gigapixel accolade.29 Rather than challenging the traditional canon of art with its parade of ‘Old Masters’ and singularly male membership, Google Art Project seems only to have confirmed it.

At its debut in 2011, the Project did come under criticism for this mainly Western representation. According to Diana Skarr, head of partnerships for the project, this bias was to be rectified: ‘for round two, we really wanted to balance regional museums with those that are more nationally or globally recognized.’30 In the revised selection of gigapixel images there were no ‘modern’ or contemporary representatives from non-Western origins. The most recent gigapixel image of an artwork by a non-Western artist is an embroidered silk textile from the 17th century, owned by The Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar.31 The Project’s gigapixel

32 Nancy Procter, ‘The Google Art Project: A new Generation of Museums on the Web?’ in Curator: the Museums Journal, 52 (2011) http://www.curatorjournal.org/the-google-art-project-a-new-generationof-museums-on-the-web/ [accessed January 2014] 33

Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur (London: Nicholas Breadley Publishing, 2007) p.3.

34 Keen, p.3.

35 Arts Council Survey, ‘Consuming digital arts: understanding of and engagement with arts in the digital arena amongst the general public,’ April 2009, http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/Consuming-digital-arts.pdf [accessed 5 January 2014] p.25.

36 Arts Council Survey, p.25.

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feature reproduces the biased categorisation of Western artists pioneering the vanguard of modern art, to the exclusion of other important and contemporary non-Western artists. Just like the educational resources available on Google Art Project, or even the use of digital technologies in the galleries themselves, the site’s added features only represent and reinforce a deferral to traditional and authoritative institutional discourse.

Nancy Proctor, head of Mobile Strategy at the Smithsonian Institute, stated that online platforms provide new contexts for art, breaking down the canon of high art and institutions.32 Yet these online programs are not ‘new’ or resistant arenas. Sites like Google Art Project are simply complimentary extensions of the very same institutional frameworks, it is just that the power structures have updated themselves and found new platforms.

Rather than producing a pluralistic democracy this focus on interaction and the cult of the audience has instead lead to a cacophony of user content where, paradoxically, the need for institutional mediation has increased. According to those like Andrew Keen, a digital media entrepreneur and Silicon Valley insider, this mass propagation of public opinion ends up creating not a new commons but ‘an endless digital forest of mediocrity.’33 Every comment posted on forums, opinion sections and even online discussions opened by institutions, according to Keen are ‘just another person’s version of the truth… every fiction is just another person’s version of the facts.’34 And indeed, the public has put forward this issue: according to the result of a 2009 Arts Council’s survey, ‘Consuming Digital Arts,’ many individuals said they were worried about the legitimacy and quality of most online content.35 Furthermore, the survey noted that as the Internet often lacks the kind of editorial control exerted in the live space, people felt more comfortable on websites that are clearly hosted by institutions they know and trust - for example, ‘http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk.’36 The current enthusiasm for audience and user participation

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initiated by digital technologies, rather than relaxing the influence institutions have over art, has instead increased their importance as arbiters of legitimate content.

The Internet, then, is a technology that compliments and reinforces institutions authority and power within the field of art. Digital media and online platforms are not neutral spaces, and viewing art online still incurs the ideological frameworks and selection processes existent in institutions.

The Internet has provided the user with an unprecedented number of platforms on which art can be viewed, interacted with and learned about.

Access and familiarity with art will therefore have been increased to some degree for of the public. However, what is seen on these online platforms, software programs and websites is simply instilled and integrated with the same discourses and principles of selection and exclusion that prevails within the institutions themselves. Canonistic and hegemonic narratives are fed through these digital platforms, and are embedded in the Google searches we input, in the sites we choose to visit and in us as users.

These online platforms do have the potential to affect change by implementing systems that run on newly introduced structures. A digital commons, however, is not realized and remains part of the rhetoric espoused by institutions that have invested in an online presence and by Internet conglomerates. Digital technology does not change the ideological frameworks or the status quo of the art world - rather it reflects and reproduces its systems.

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Living in an age of digital media means grappling with revised notions of creativity, authorship and agency. So far, this thesis has examined the cult of the audience and user in relation to our interaction with artworks and institutions. But what of artistic and cultural production itself? Groys has commented that a pressing question within the digital age is, ‘who is this artist, and how can he or she be distinguished from a non-artist – if such a distinction is possible?’1 In recent years we have witnessed the activation of the average user and an explosion of user-generated content on the Internet through free web platforms and widely available software programs.

This has led to the traditional roles of producer and consumer becoming blurred - digital technology has given birth to a new cultural operator, the prosumer.2 This amalgamation of the traditional roles of producer and consumer describes the numerous everyday users of computer interfaces who are prolific in their output.3 The passive consumer has been activated and as Groys tells us, we now live in a culture of mass production, rather than mass consumption.4 These revised and evolving production paradigms have affected all areas of culture, from the music industry, journalism, academia and undeniably within the realm of artistic production.

The rise of prosumer output raises many questions within the field of art. There are new forms of material available on the Internet and with it the introduction of new and expanded methods of production. Indeed many artists and prosumers are re-mixing, sampling and recycling online content from similar Internet sources and in similar ways. An expanded sense of 1 Boris Groys, Going Public (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010) p.103 2 Jakob Schillinger, ‘The Prosumer Version,’ Flash Art 280 (2011) http://www.flashartonline.com/interno. php?pagina=articolo_det&id_art=761&det=ok&title=THE-PROSUMER-VERSION [accessed 20 October 2013] 3 Schillnger 4 Groys, Going Public, p. 98

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3: Artistic production and the Birth of the Prosumer

5 Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011) p.7 6 Anon, ‘Meme Definition’ Oxford Dictionaries http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english

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what creativity and art production might entail is being proposed and certain institutional convictions in art have also been thrown into question.

The traditional categorization of art being a specialized profession, together with the institutional pillars of originality, authenticity and ownership, are being re-examined through the use of these new technologies. The user has been activated and given new creative tools and platforms. It still remains to be seen whether an empowerment and an opening up of art world exclusivity necessarily follows. While new modes of production have undoubtedly proliferated, what this chapter will examine is whether the incursion of the digital signals more of a continuity or rupture within the field of artistic production.

The ubiquity of digital media, as with the widespread adoption of any new technology, has impacted in many ways on artistic endeavour.

New ways of working with computers, the Internet and the appearance phenomena specific to the digital have added to changing conceptions of creativity. Faced with so much available material on the Internet, artists and everyday users of digital technology have begun to negotiate and process large quantities of information in similar manners. Operations such as re-mixing, sampling, copying, plagiarizing and reprocessing already existing content are key to these ‘prosumption’ methods that many users and contemporary artists, subscribe to. Writer and poet Kenneth Goldsmith in his book Uncreative Writing explains that creating something from nothing is no longer an imperative for artistic production, but is also something impossible to achieve.5 By mimicking the computer’s operations, many contemporary artists and poets are simply cutting and pasting, dragging and dropping, and sampling others’ content to create works. In one of Matthias Fritsch’s works, he posted a short video, Kneecam 1 (Technoviking) (2006) (Fig: 6), onto the popular video sharing site, YouTube. It went viral and resulted in a plethora of user-generated ‘video responses’ where other users imitated or sampled the original video and uploaded their own versions. Fritsch then collected these unsolicited videos and made a Techno Viking Archive (2006) (Fig: 7) out of them, presenting them as his own body of work.

The artist and prosumer harness such processes of sampling and imitation. Internet memes are an action, idea or behaviour that spreads or goes viral in a given culture. They can take the form of hashtags, images, videos or websites or even a word or misspelling.6 Spreading within web-

meme [accessed 20 January 2014] 7 Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing, p.7 8 Roland Barthes, ‘Death of the Author,’ in Tbook http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_ authorbarthes.pdf [accessed 20 October 2013] p.4 9 Schillinger 10

Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing, p. 6

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sites, social networks and blogs, many prosumers will add to the meme, remixing and sampling their own versions and adding to the particular phenomenon. ‘Planking,’ for example, is a meme where people are photographed lying down, in and on top of unusual places. The many different user-generated versions are then circulated on social media sites and Internet culture blogs. Both artists and prosumers have become programers of information, where the idea of what constitutes creativity is being revised.

Such expanded paradigms are not completely new. Pastiche, appropriation, sampling and detournement have always been a part of artistic production. Conventional notions of originality and replication have been re-examined since Duchamp’s readymades and Picabia’s mechanical drawings.7 In terms of theory, Barthes states that the concept of the artist as creator is dead and that originality is a fabrication, where everything is ‘a tissue of many quotations drawn from a thousand sources.’ 8 The Pictures Generation of artists in the 1970s and 1980s also employed appropriation as an artistic procedure to critique stoic notions of originality and authorship.9 In a digital age the difference is perhaps that these operations have been multiplied, exaggerated and re-articulated by contemporary artists and the general populace. Regarding contemporary literary pastiche and appropriation, Kenneth Goldsmith explains that ‘having to retype or hand copy an entire book on a typewriter is one thing; cutting and pasting an entire book with three keystrokes – select all/ copy/ paste – is another.’10 These new ideas about what creativity and cultural production might be, suggest an increased openness and room for manoeuver in the digital age. Whereas appropriation art of the 1980s still adhered to notions of ownership, the Internet is supposedly based on a collective ideal of sharing – everything is for the taking and everyone has the tools and software to create. But does this mean that the art world – or the possibility of being considered an artist has become ‘open source’? In other words, while ideas of creativity are changing rapidly, the question remains whether these artists and prosumers are challenging the fundamentally

11 Lev Manovich, ‘The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Consumption to Mass Cultural Production?’ in Critical Enquiry , 35 (2009) 12 Manovich 13 Manovich Manovich

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exclusive nature of the art world.

Lev Manovich has proposed that this replacement of mass consumption of 20th century commercial culture, by the mass production of cultural material by early 21st century users, is not necessarily a progressive development.11 While many celebrate the activation of the user and their production, it does not follow that changes to existing restrictive frameworks has been implemented. Traditional Western art institutions, art markets and capitalist economies are naturally based upon set notions of property and ownership. Original and authentic works are the legal and intellectual property of the artist. Appropriation, multiple-authorship, sharing, plagiarism and re-mixing contradict these constructed and established ideas of ownership. De Certeau in his text The Practice of Everyday Life sets up categories that are helpful in analyzing the nature of these new production procedures. He differentiates between ‘strategies’ implemented by institutions and power structures, and the ‘tactics’ used by people in their everyday lives.12 In terms of the ‘tactics’ of prosumer culture, an example might be the remixing and sampling of a popular music track which is then uploaded onto file-sharing sites like Youtube. The average user’s prosumption methods appear to be tactical moves that allow the strategies of powerful music industries to be subverted and challenged by the general public. Remix, and customization for example, in de Certeau’s view are resistant moves within a vernacular culture. Such operations implement an immanent critique – to take something ‘original’, ‘authentic’ and intellectually owned by someone else and reconfigure it into something different. As previously explained however, de Certeau’s arguments cannot be translated or transposed completely intact into our current digital age. In many ways sites like Youtube, Flickr, Google, Wikipedia and Tumblr are digital institutions in themselves, which actively encourage remixing and sampling of all types of information. Internet conglomerates allow you to customize home pages and design layouts, and Youtube capitalizes upon viral videos and the many video responses they elicit.

All profit from increased traffic to their sites.13 The activation of the user and the production methods implemented by many artists and prosumers form part of this DIY culture that the institutions and born-digital industries

14 Groys, Going Public, p.104 15 Domenico Quaranta, ‘My Life Without Technoviking: An Interview with Matthias Fritsch,’ in Rhizome, (2013) http://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/dec/5/interview-matthias-fritsch/ [accessed January 2014]

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are actually facilitating and exploiting. It is not that the tactics of the remix have succeeded, it is simply that hegemonic strategies have become tactical and more subversive.

The production or prosumption methods of the average user do not in themselves constitute an institutional critique. But do the sheer numbers of prosumers and quantity of material being created and shared signal an increased openness in artistic production? The public’s activation and their prolific creative output in many ways suggests that art as a professional, and therefore limited and exclusive field, is being broken down. The desire for art to be de-professionalized, in other words, is the desire for art to cease being a specific and rarefied form of endeavour.

In Groys’ words, it is hoped that a public currently consisting of predominantly non-artists, will become one in which everyone produces art14.

File-sharing and hosting sites allow users to circulate cultural material, providing a level of visibility that perhaps was not available before. Undoubtedly these sites provide new platforms for amateur cultural producers, however, a distinction between professional and prosumer content remains possible. What fundamentally divides prosumer and professional artistic content is the context in which it is shown and intended for. While many artists like Matthias Fritsch present their artworks on popular prosumer sites they also show in institutions – Technoviking Archive, for example, was exhibited in the Nancyhalle Institute, in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2009 (Fig: 8).15 Many may notice an equivalence between purely online exhibitions, such as artist Harm van den Dorpel’s constantly updating show, ‘Disassociations’ (2013-ongoing), and other hosting sites that contain cultural content such as Flickr. Access to these online institutions is still limited, however. There is often an entry fee to access the site and exhibition, and the artworks shown are chosen on a selected basis. As Jacob Schillinger notes, the Internet and art institution are both archives, but ones that run according to fundamentally opposing principles. The prosumer operates within and addresses the arena of mass culture. The Internet has no selection principle. Anything can be uploaded and so user-generated content is often similar and is made to be consumed and replaced by an ever-increasing stream of information. In contrast, the artist’s work addresses the archive of the art institution and artworks are selected and saved. Innovation, rather than homogeneity is valued as it

16 Schillinger 17 Groys, Going Public, p. 117 18 Groys, Going Public, p. 117 19 Groys, Going Public, p. 104

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collects difference. 16 The institution is thus a highly exclusive system. Artworks by artists like Fritsch are fundamentally different from the prosumer material circulating on sites like YouTube as they are intended for different contexts. Though tentative moves have been made to open up the world of art production, the institution still remains the arbiter of what is amateur or professional work.

Dictated by institutional influence, the distinction between amateur and professional categories remains intact within digital culture. The sheer numbers of users producing or prosuming cultural content partly adds to this division. Instead of signaling a new state of open access in terms of artistic production, the multitude of users uploading, and sharing content actually confirms its prosumer and amateur status. This is the art of low, rather than high visibility. Groys explains that with this cultural shift from mass consumption, to mass production of content in the early 21st century, the degree of engagement will alter as well. Previously a chosen circle of individuals produced texts and images that were seen by millions of people, but now millions of prosumers are creating content for spectators who have little time to read or see them.17 Groys exclaims, ‘today everybody writes texts and posts images – but who has enough time to read them? Nobody, obviously – or only a small circle of likeminded co-authors, acquaintances, and relatives at the very most.’18 In contrast to the Internet, the physical art institution maintains a selection principle and choses a privileged few to be shown to a wider audience. Those artists that are selected to show in museums and galleries are therefore addressing fundamentally different contexts to prosumers. Theirs is the art of high visibility, of strong signs, whereas the average user uploading content on Internet sites produces weak signs and material of low visibility. The idea of art, as an elitist arena and a specific form of knowledge that could have been revised by the incursion of digital media has not been realized.

While Joseph Beuys’ maxim ‘everyone is an artist,’19 has not entirely come about, it is perhaps true that some ground has been gained - digital technologies have expanded tools, options and production methods for artists and prosumers alike. This does not mean that there is an end to specialization within the field of art. Expertise and access to particular networks and institutions are still required to gain professional status. As prosumers

20 Schillinger 21 Ben Luke, ‘Web Intrigue,’ The Art Newspaper, February 2014, p.51.

22 Anon, ‘Oliver Laric: versions,’ MIT List Visual Arts Centre (2013) http://listart.mit.edu/node/986#.UwoZrF66-NU [accessed 20 January 2014]

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and artists are addressing fundamentally different contexts and cultural spaces, demarcations between amateurs and professionals are still very much upheld by, and dependent on, the cultural gatekeeper that is the institution.

If the distinction between prosumers and professionals is accepted, the ideal of horizontal and egalitarian modes of sharing is broken.

The ethics of those artists, like Fritsch and also Oliver Laric, who use and sample prosumer material can be thrown into a problematic light. The act of appropriation is not in itself an unethical mode of production; it is a valid form of artistic creation. A group of artists working in the 1970s and 1980s, which included Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine, appropriated well known images to implement an institutional critique and undermine stoic conventions relating to the creation of art. Cindy Sherman’s re-staging of Hollywood-like scenes and Sherrie Levine’s photographing reproduced images of famous well-known artworks asserted that every original and authentic artwork was actually a copy. Institutional pillars and discourse were thereby challenged from within. More recently, artists that sample, select or remix content often relating to Internet culture and generated by prosumers, adhere to an inverse premise – that every copy can be an original.20 This paradigm - that every prosumer produced YouTube video, image, soundtrack or text can be an original artwork, may seem to signal an opening up and democratization of artistic production. But as Attilia Fattori Franchini, curator of the Opening Times website, noted, ‘empowering the artist has been one of the features of the digital revolution,’ but not necessarily that of the amateur prosumer.21 If one remembers that there is still a division between the artist and the anonymous YouTube account holder, or that the prosumer and artist address different frameworks, the above claim can only ever exist symbolically.

Laric’s use of vernacular prosumer material is a response to the cultural shift introduced in the Information Age. According to a recent press release for his 2013 exhibition at MIT ListVisual Arts Centre, the artist escapes from common categorizations and frameworks by proposing how original and copy, event and document, and thing and thought are flattened, all becoming information in digital space.22 His piece Touch my Body (Green Screen Version) (2008) (Fig: 9) is based on the music

23 ‘OS.XXI: Art’s Digital Future,’ The Graduate Center, CUNY, 13th February 2013

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video by Mariah Carey. Laric modified the original version so that Carey performs in front of a green screen background. Taking this simple act of appropriation further, he ‘outsources’ to a network of users. The complete piece consists of a collection of versions by different prosumers who are able to use the green screen to insert their own elements (Fig: 10,11). This work runs in a similar vein to Fritsch’s prosumer-made Technoviking Archive, where the work is crowd or outsourced to a group of everyday users. These artists do not necessarily claim that their works herald a more open art world but their practices are concerned with much more than solely commenting on prosumer culture. Yet their production paradigms in relation to new, digital working practices are problematic. If every copy were original, and if the difference between them was ‘flattened,’ as Laric asserts, artistic practice and the production of things called ‘art’ would cease being something specific. The presence of these institutionally-recognized and exhibited figures, however, negates this assertion, making it a purely symbolic posture.

It is notable that on viewing both Laric’s and prosumers’ versions of the video on the artist’s website, most prosumer versions have expired and been taken down due to copyright infringement, with only a couple being viewable alongside Laric’s ‘original.’ This is testament to the imbalanced levels of protection and privilege attached to temporary prosumer culture and the institutionally recognized space of the professional artist.

Virginia Rutledge also notes that the use of prosumer content can take on a slightly exploitative angle. As stated in the panel discussion ‘Arts Digital Future,’ chaired by Claire Bishop, Rutledge comments that many contemporary artists’ re-mixing of user-content, far from being a suggestion of equivalence between the artist and prosumers, simply due to such content being free and available. Rather, access to other material is often archived or protected by copyright, as with Hollywood film footage.23 Their use of amateur content, therefore, only goes to prove the artists’ privileged position. These works are dependent on their creator’s classification as institutionally-recognized artists, distinguishing them from the surfeit of prosumer content on the Internet. In their lack of comment on their own position within the institution, they thereby confirm, rather than challenge elitist, institutional structures through their lack of self-reflexive criticality.

One can work within a system and oppose it at the same time, but only if there is a self-referential awareness of this conflict.

The incursion of the digital into the arena of art has introduced a

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vast array of diverse phenomena. These new tools, platforms, production methods and cultural figures form only the changing surface of the art world. The underlying structures have actually remained the same. New tools like the image editing software Adobe Photoshop or YouTube allow expert and amateur users to process and produce new and existing cultural content. The birth of the activated consumer has led to broad sections of society producing cultural material to an unprecedented degree.

These digital developments, as with the introduction of any new technology, have expanded notions of creativity and artistic practice. This does not mean that divisions between popularly produced prosumer content and institutionally-recognized artistic material have flattened and collapsed.

Demarcations still very much exist, and are reinforced by many contemporary artists’ use of vernacular material. Without citation of the prosumer’s role within the production of the work, or without a self-reflexive criticality of the artist’s privileged position within institutions, works by artists such as Fritsch and Laric do not make the art world ‘open source.’ Digital technology has not instigated a ‘digital revolution,’ a fundamental change or critique of the institution and hegemony. Instead, what we are witnessing in the art world is a steady continuity and reproduction of traditional and pre-digital age structures.

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This thesis has investigated the ‘digital revolution’ supposedly incited in our Information Age. Focusing on the field of art, questions have been directed at the publics’ activation and empowerment. A distinction has been drawn between superficial changes in society and the fundamental continuity of its power structures. Digital and Internet culture is a constantly evolving and fluctuating sphere and significant changes have occurred in the tools and processes we employ to produce and consume information.

These new platforms have increased public accessibility and familiarity with the field of art, but have not revised its fundamentally exclusive and limiting frameworks. It is not the technology itself that can create change, but our social use of such media and, as discussed, the discourse of power is still very much exercised through these digital platforms.

The ideal of a digital commons as a horizontally-organised space that permits people to freely share opinions, images and information, has not been realized. Viewing images on the Internet is an equally ideologically laden arena as the art institution, and many galleries’ and museums’ influential online presence reinforces this. The boom in mass cultural production with the introduction of the prosumer has reinforced, and not dissolved the distinction between amateur and professional production.

Nowadays creativity means many new things. But it is still the professional artist that has the protection and privilege of institutional backing, while the user’s content is subject to the ephemerality and low visibility of the Internet. The new digital tools and platforms that form the changing accessibility of art and culture do have the potential to affect real change to society’s underlying structures. As considered, this e-democracy1 has not yet materialised. In the rapidly changing nature of digital culture, it remains to be seen whether new technological developments will yield societal 1 Anon, ‘The Road to E-Democracy,’ The Economist, 16 February 2008 http://www.economist.com/ node/10638222 [accessed January 2014]

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Conclusion

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change within the near future. Resistance to hegemonic systems and the ‘ivory tower’2 of the art world has not yet seen tangible results, but with a more considered social use of technology moves towards a digital commons within art and culture might be achieved.

2 Maria Lind, The Collaborative Turn, http://doublesession.net/indexhibitv070e/files/lindthecollaborativeturn.pdf , p.188.

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Appendix

Fig. 1: Time Magazine, ‘Person of the Year Issue: YOU,’ December 2006 http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20061225,00.html [accessed January 2014]

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49 / 64 Fig. 2: Rirkrit Tiravanija, ‘Untitled (Free)’ 1992, 303 Gallery, New York. http://archinect.com/ features/article/81071956/aftershock-1-architectural-consumers-in-the-experience-economy [accessed January 2014]

Fig. 3: Rirkrit Tiravanija, ‘Untitled (Free)’ 1992, 303 Gallery, New York. http:// www.teknemedia.net/magazine_detail.html?mId=7599 [accessed January 2014]

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51 / 64 Fig. 4: Rirkrit Tiravanija, ‘Fear Eats the Soul’ 2011, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York. http://artobserved.com/2011/03/ao-on-site-new-york-rirkrit-tiravanija-fear-eatsthe-soul-opening-at-gavin-browns-enterprise-saturday-march-5-show-runs-throughapril-16-2011/ [accessed January

Fig. 5: Rirkrit Tiravanija, ‘Fear Eats the Soul’ 2011, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York. http://www.vulture.com/2011/03/jerry_saltz_on_gavin_browns_in.html [accessed January 2014]

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53 / 64 Fig. 6: Still from ‘Kneecam 1 (Technoviking)’ Matthias Fritsch, 2000, YouTube. ‘http://www.vulture.com/2011/03/jerry_saltz_on_gavin_browns_in.html [accessed January 2014]

Fig. 7: Still from ‘Techno Viking Archive’ Matthias Fritsch, 2000,Vimeo. http://vimeo.com/20786994 [accessed January 2014]

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55 / 64 Fig. 8: Matthias Fritsch, ‘The Technoviking Archive’ 2009, Nancyhalle Institute, Karlsruhe, Germany. http://www.hfg-karlsruhe.de/~mfritsch/works/installation/technoviking-archiv/technoviking-archive.html [accessed January 2014]

Fig. 9: Still from ‘Touch My Body’ (Greenscreen version), Oliver Laric, 2008, Vimeo. http://oliverlaric.com/touchmybody.htm [accessed January 2014]

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57 / 64 Fig. 10: Still from ‘Tach Mai Badi’ Anon, 2008,YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=7-hl4vXhi2A [accessed January 2014]

Fig. 11: Still from ‘Touch My Body Remix’ Anon, 2008,YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=aEm8UXNaXxk [accessed January 2014]

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Books Benjamin, Walter, The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction, (London: Penguin Group, 2008) Bourriaud, Nicolas, Postproduction (New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2002) Bourriaud, Nicolas Relational Aesthetics (France: Les Preesses du Reel, 1998) Castells, Manuel,The Internet Galaxy: reflections on the Internet, business and society, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) De Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life (California: University of California Press, 1988) Derrida, Jacques, Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences trans Alan Bass in Postmodernism: Foundational Essays ed. by Victor E. Taylor, Charles E. Winquist (New York: Routledge, 1998) Duncan, Carol Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship, eds. I. Rarp and S. D. Levine, Exhibiting Cultures, (Washington, Smithsonian Institute Press: 1991) Foucault, Michel, ‘Classifying’ in The Order of Things (London: Routledge, 1970) Goldsmith, Kenneth, Uncreative Writing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011) Groys, Boris, Art Power (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008)

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