An Embassy

journal
» August 2010 FREE
Cultivated Xerox
»»Tue Jun 29, 2010 8:46 am
OMG, the modern soothsayer of useless and infinite wisdom
also known as the world wide web has turned 28 and in that
time has managed to revolutionise contemporary modes of
living beyond even science fiction's wildest dreams, providing
a new, multilateral society that welcomes all and rejects none.
Always open, predominantly free and essentially virtual, this
temporally existent world lies seemingly submissive at
everyone’s fingertips, an enticing Eden of instant gratification
that flourishes within the newly acquired concentration spans
and desires of 21st century culture users. In the realm of
artistic practice, the internet contains within itself and solely is
an amazing compound of (re)searchable material and self-
publication, available 24 hours a day and played out to an
audience of infinite scope. Things are easy, life is cheap and
creativity is universal. But can this state of affairs really allow
for the magical utopia of perfection it overtly suggests, or is a
creative apocalypse looming on the horizon?
George Kaplan
»»Wed Jun 30, 2010 8:23 pm
I don't think I understand the question, could you rephrase it?
'Always open'?
'Predominantly free'?
'Essentially virtual'?
'Temporally existent'?
'Instant gratification'?
Can you qualify these statements? Do you think this is a
greater revolution than, say, the Gutenberg press? Do you not
think the 'creative apocalypse' was already instigated by the
anyone-can-do-it attitude of D.I.Y. culture or even the
evolution of the middle class and the concept of leisure? Take
'noise' music for example, where talent, skill or any sort of
aesthetic judgement are rendered redundant and all you need
is spare time and a disposable income.
»»http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.
htm
»»http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_
pictures/8259533.stm
»»http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/
asia-pacific/8460129.stm
»»http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_
censorship_in_the_People's_Republic_
of_China
»»http://io9.com/5558640/unlocking-the-
box-that-holds-the-secret-to-digital-
preservation?skyline=true&s=i
Cultivated Xerox
»»Thu Jul 01, 2010 12:11 pm
I don't think I understand your lack of understanding. The
internet is instantaneous and always available to us, and as 'us'
I mean Westerners, as of course that is all we can refer to, it
being the economic and social framework we exist in. Any art
that we produce and any mode that we proliferate it on will be
stuck within this construct. The internet does not play the
same role in Eastern or developing countries in the same way
that Western music or art or literature or theory over the last
century does not always bear much relevance to the
fundamental structures of their societies - of course, this is
changing, with the unfortunate worldwide Americanisation of
culture, but until a Western notion of democracy, equality or
freedom is rightly or wrongly installed in these countries
(brought about not by superficial works of art but by political
or economic radicalism) then all we can do is arrogantly talk
about our own in a universal manner, like you do talking about
the concept of bourgeois leisure pursuits. I am not saying that
you can't compare internet usage there to internet usage here
in a way to belittle my unavoidably middle-class, overdramatic
question - go ahead, that is the nature of an open forum - but
then have you ever tried to justify your own creative output
when comparing it to that of someone of a similar age in a
poverty stricken country?
And when you talk of DIY culture bringing a creative
apocalypse, do you see this as a bad thing? Are you of the
traditional Greenbergian ilk where art can only be proclaimed
as such when a few men chuffing on cigars have a collective
orgasm over another man's colourful geometric jism on a large
sheet of canvas? I take it as such by your uneducated,
conservative judgement passed over the expansive genre of
experimental music. But that is another argument entirely and
not something that needs to be discussed here.
Where the internet varies from this old structure of do-it-
yourself is the new uprising of the self-promotional rather
than the collective. Which I guess is maybe what I was
alluding to. And I say essentially virtual as the internet is not
real, ie people can create new lives and personalities for
themselves in a way that doesn't work in physical reality. And
it is basically free, both in monetary terms or content, although
of course you have to pay for access to certain elements of it.
George Kaplan
»»Thu Jul 01, 2010 7:38 pm
Ok perhaps that sentence about noise music was phrased
unfairly as a clumsy attempt to be provocative, the point I had
intended to make was that within this milieu, qualitative
judgements are irrelevant, redundant or at least entirely
subjective, and that its creation is as much a social and leisure
based pursuit as its consumption, to the extent that both could
perhaps be considered indistinguishable. The history of
experimentation with sound is as long and as complicated as
the history of human culture and I don't believe 'noise' music
or any other cultural form needs to be justified on any terms
beyond than those of any single person who enjoys it. I was
attempting to imagine what was insinuated by the phrase
'cultural apocalypse' as a negative counterpoint to the
possibility of a 'magical utopia' and my contention is that the
universe of experimental music could be seen in exactly the
terms you describe that of the internet (as could that of
contemporary art), essentially both conditions at the same
time. Again, I still don't quite get what you are asking, do you
mean to query whether the speed of delivery affects the quality
of the result? Or the depth? For example my attaching a
couple of web links rather than my own field research, or your
using a wikipedia entry as a shorthand for a much richer
argument. Does this undermine the relative position either of
us takes?
Certainly a degree of subtlety was lost in my own response. I
used extreme examples of poverty in Africa and censorship in
China in the hope that it would be made clear that the internet
is neither completely open or universally accessible, but to
varying degrees throughout society both globally and
domestically, my personal example being that I cannot access
YouTube as I cannot financially afford the new operating
system which would allow me to upgrade my browser. As for
being instantaneous and always available, you obviously have a
much better broadband connection than I do. To be more
serious, you use a few problematic terms such as 'developing
countries' and 'Americanisation' (which I approvingly note
you spell with an 's' rather than a 'z,' but is, some might argue,
'Europeanisation'), 'bourgeois' and 'middle-class.' When I
used the phrase 'middle class' (without a hyphen) I in no way
intended this to be pejorative, my intended observation was
that the development of the internet could not unequivocally
be considered to be some sort of quantum leap in the progress
of human culture, not until we are able to get some historical
perspective at least. The concept of virtuality is equally fraught,
and I will not attempt to go into it right now.
Your second post appears to revolve around issues of
justification and judgement, from my own perspective I find
that there is at least some degree of irreconcilability here. My
position is perhaps that any judgement is subjective, that is to
say personal, and this allows the possibility that therefore
justification is a question of personal integrity, perhaps even
dignity. Like DIY culture, this is all very well as a matter of
principle, but in my personal experience of music culture, DIY
hasn't turned out to mean that the most musically talented
have access to make music no matter what their social status,
it has come to mean that anyone with enough social status has
that access, no matter what degree of talent. I could easily trap
myself in a reductive discussion of my own conflicting
viewpoints on this matter but I find myself in the position
which I think was expressed by John Cage; "I have nothing to
say, and I'm saying it."
the_halsingean
»»Thu Jul 01, 2010 11:26 pm
I feel I have to question the use of the G word as a indicator
for cultural elitism in this instance. Although the term
Greenberg has become synonymous with a particular variety
of uncompromising art criticism he was principally active at a
time when there was an unprecedented expansion in the
number of practicing artists. It was arguably more the sheer
number and homogeneity of 8th St. style painters subscribing
to Greenberg’s opinions that spelt High Modernism’s doom
rather than any formal impasse suggested by notions of
opticality or flatness.
Furthermore these Greenbergians you speak of were not part
of a social elite but individuals with a lack of formal art
education compared with today’s standards. What little
education Americans had was frequently paid for by their
participation in the Second World War as part of the GI Bill
of Rights introduced in 1944. I think it would be dangerous to
separate a forum dealing with the cultural implications of the
internet from the great number of preceding devices that have
enabled substantial cultural development. It comes down to
the visibility of such activity as much as it’s volume. Just
because the countless hundreds of skiffle bands formed in the
1950’s didn’t have a myspace profile (unlike the swathes of
mediocre party noise acts that have succeeded them) doesn’t
mean they didn’t exist.
a_sense_of_freedom
»»Sat Jul 03, 2010 4:14 pm
I Digress
I’m bored so I thought it best to spend my time productively
online. I’ve read a lot of articles and seen a lot of things I’ve
never seen before, but I forgot to go to work and I lost my
jacket.
The open (to some) source that is the internet is shaping
production and the work force, creating creative capital,
immaterial labor, speculative investment - a series of word
combination I overheard on public transport.
The internet or indeed computers and telephones have
changed the way we work, by this I'm not specifically talking
about the work of art. I mean work in the general sense. The
majority of city jobs involve no physical work, you are eyes and
ears, whereas you use to be arms and legs, but neither give you
a head, of any real significance.
»» http://neuroethicscanada.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/how-is-the-
internet-changing-the-way-that-you-think/
I Digress, if we follow the DIY ethos then surely the internet
is the perfect forum as it doesn't cost rent to have a voice
online -well not in the same way it does in the physical world,
but yes it is a valid point to note that the continuous updates
render everyones browsers defunct eventually and then you
pay through the nose or http://lowtech.org/projects/n5m3/
"When bankers get together they talk about art. When
artists get together, they talk about money." - Oscar Wilde
»»http://www.goodreads.com/
quotesshow/173910
-
"The entertainment business was a distribution business, in
other words people who controlled pathways to people’s
eyeballs, where they sat in the movie theatre or how they
got cable, those people controlled the media business...What
makes the Internet a radical game changer is that it makes
distribution a commodity – in other words, anybody can
have a pathway to an eyeball – marketing becomes more
important but distribution is almost trivial."
»»Quotetaken from -http://www.
standardoslo.no/v1/sql/ex.archive.
php?shownews=47
To narrow this down to art, as I am under the impression that
we are not simply speaking about the technological revolution
in general but how culture has been affected by this,
predominantly the visual arts.
First I’d like to define the question – Is it - what is the internet
good for? - in relation to art? And art production? But I guess
you can’t ignore the internet's effect on everything, I mean
after all art like the internet has become an open forum in the
sense that ‘art can be anything’ - it is constantly feeding off its
others and absorbing everything as subject matter/ content/
resource/ form/ art as philosophy/ writing/ tv/ theatre/ dance
/ science/ music – am I being too vague? Is that the Internet's
fault? Am I distracted?
And I know it's not been mentioned here but I was interested
in an issue that came up before in other conversations, it’s
about professionalism and what is actually meant by this. And
is this related to the Internet in any way?
Then this takes it into Capital will capitalise on culture , and
cities will subsidise themselves with style. So everything is
linked unbreakably to the capital and I guess the DIY ethos
has always been to avoid being coopted (even this conversation
in to art into product into capital, if there is a will there’s a
way). The unavoidable constant is; to live in a city you need
money to get by so it's got to come from somewhere; funding,
private investment, a job, a second job etc therefore art is a
hobby, right? If not a profession, and what of the amateur, is
the amateur the DIY or is he/she a hack?
Another issue is the ‘do anything’ ‘do something’ issue. I guess
it could be argued that the Internet does promote a fast-
forward – what I mean is exactly what Kaplan mentions
above:-
“Do you mean to query whether the speed of delivery affects
the quality of the result? Or the depth? For example my
attaching a couple of web links rather than my own field
research, or you’re using a Wikipedia entry as shorthand for a
much richer argument. Does this undermine the relative
position either of us takes?”
This is evident in the ease with which people insult each other
online, say in chat rooms or online gaming. But also the speed
of delivery is reductive, e.g. text language. Lack of proofreading.
A desire for instant ‘success’ take the Xfactor model, skip the
learning and just BE. There are constant short cuts, like wiki
you don’t need to read a whole text just get the famous quote
online, forget the context/content etc.
But then there are examples of the web being used as a valuable
resource that questions copyright, authorship, and gives a
completely different format for distribution, but it becomes
about what is it that you want? What to look for and how to
find it? How you use it, not simply just the use of it, try harder.
A lot of people work in PR.
I’m avoiding speaking about social networking sites cause I’d
kind of like to try my best to narrow this conversation in to
specific issues that affect art; its production / marketing/
distribution etc so I’m interested to know how the internet has
affected people's viewing of art? I would say about 90% of art
i see is in jpeg format, but I feel art hasn’t really adapted to this
concern. If art is viewed predominantly online then what of
the physical form? Does that become a position against the
digital or does it exist along side as a support to the digital?
And why use the internet? Surely it is more than just a business
card and a virtual gallery?
The sort of negative side I see to all this is the overload, that
everyone can and do express themselves online. This ease of
showing means the forum comes before the content. It
shouldn’t be a question of ‘what should I do online/on canvas/
with this latex I bought the other day that cost a fortune?’ It
should be ‘This is the content and this is how it exits’ So rather
that being an artist because I studied art and have a website,
more working in/with art because it is the best outlet for what
one wishes to deal with/discusses. I’m not sure the internet is
the problem here, I think it could be art education and its
model of assessment by production, but maybe I’m digressing
as I don’t think this is about blame, it’s a conversation.
I Digress-
Why hasn’t everything already disappeared?
"It is for the same reason - because it became increasingly
merged with objective banality - that art, ceasing to be
different from life, has become superfluous."
»»p.28 Baudrillard
And...
“The last thirty years have seen the transformation of art’s
“expanded field” from a stance of stubborn discursive
ambiguity into a comfortable and compromised situation
in which we’re well accustomed to conceptual interventions,
to art and the social, where the impulse to merge art and
life has resulted in lifestyle art, a secure gallery practice that
comments on contemporary media culture, or apes
commercial production strategies, even as its arena
gradually has become, in essence, a component of the
securities market. This is the lumber of life.”
»» Seth Price
Cultivated Xerox
»»Wed Jul 07, 2010 1:54 pm
Everything is disappearing, at least in a formatively historical
sense.
@Halsingean, I admit my Greenbergian comment was made
in a postmodern haste, but the second point you raise is
important, and one I definitely wouldn't argue against - of
course all past movements or actions cannot help but bear
relevance on the present. But what is different now is I guess
we know exactly how all developments are made at the point
of their creation, rather than subjectively through the eyes of
an art historian 20 years later. We remonstrate at the already
out-of-date positing made when a writer chooses to formulate
a theory relating to contemporary (meaning the last 10 years
or so) art production, because we already know, observe and
have the faculties within us to come to the same conclusion,
albeit possibly less lyrically. We can monitor emerging and
established art activity anywhere in the world instantaneously
without even having to leave the comfort of our homes, with
an education provided by whatever research we choose to
peruse on Wikipedia. Which is great. But it isn't.
This criticism echoes the sentiment of Shirky's new book,
Cognitive Surplus; Creativity and Generosity in a
Connected Age. The book argues that the popularity of
online social media trumps all our old assumptions about
the superiority of professional content, and the primacy of
 financial motivation. It proves, Shirky argues, that people
are more creative and generous than we had ever imagined,
and would rather use their free time participating in
amateur online activities such as Wikipedia – for no
financial reward – because they satisfy the primal human
urge for creativity and connectedness. Just as the invention
of the printing press transformed society, the internet's
capacity for "an unlimited amount of zero-cost reproduction
of any digital item by anyone who owns a computer" has
removed the barrier to universal participation, and
revealed that human beings would rather be creating and
sharing than passively consuming what a privileged elite
think they should watch. Instead of lamenting the silliness
of a lot of social online media, we should be thrilled by the
spontaneous collective campaigns and social activism also
emerging. The potential civic value of all this hitherto
untapped energy is nothing less, Shirky concludes, than
revolutionary.
Unfortunately, I am precisely the sort of cynic Shirky's new
book scorns – a techno-luddite bewildered by the
exhibitionism of online social networking (why does
anyone feel the need to tweet that they've just had a bath,
and might get a kebab later?), troubled by its juvenile
vacuity (who joins a Facebook group dedicated to liking
toast?), and baffled by the amount of time devoted to
posting photos of cats that look amusingly like Hitler. I do,
however, recognise that what I like to think of as my
opinions are really emotional prejudices. But equally,
Shirky's prediction for Murdoch's paywall sounds
suspiciously like an emotional objection, rather than a
financial calculation. How, then, can he be certain his
entire analysis of the internet isn't just as subjective as my
kneejerk cynicism?
»»an
article in The Guardian with Clay
Shirky, internet guru, 05.07.10
Everyone is creative, everyone can take part and success is
guaranteed - what a wonderful, liberating state to be in. Aren't
we lucky. But if the pool of creativity is actually an infinite
chasm of reeking shit, who is gaining from this universal
happiness? People who would once have 'done' art as a hobby
now seek to be professional, because by professionalising they
become historical, or known, and gain worth in a society led
by status - the Xfactor syndrome expressed by a_sense_of_
freedom - pushing those who actually are artists away from
the possibility of turning it into a feasible career. This is, I
guess, what I meant as a creative apocalypse. And I'm not
judging the artist by the notion of talent, as talent is only craft
and not something that bears relevance to whether someone is
an artist (good or bad) or not. With the internet, the activity
of production becomes not about making but rather
aggressively marketing the idea of it, ie how well-designed
your website is can and will affect the interpretation of your
work.
The way in which we view and react to the imagery or artwork
hasn't really changed, with what Benjamin raised in 'The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' and
Baudrillard developed later in his theory of Simulacra still
pertinent to our cultural lifestyles. Art has lost its aura, its
authenticity, to a certain extent because it is no longer
mythological, it is a part of life, and it has been for some time.
This is not a good or a bad thing, it just is. What is changing
however, is the idea that we need or want art to exist physically
- just as printed matter is disappearing, and with our
neutralised reactions to the art object, will the internet render
the gallery space obsolete?
in a field of dreams
»»Sat Jul 10, 2010 10:55 am
-the logic of abandonment in a field of dreams-
ps: what is the internet good for?- in relation to art? And art
production?
sp: but what do we have here? > the digital image ( )
ps: so lets start on a serious note…..the still apparent possible
newness of digital art, and to be more precise and to move this
conversation into a more personal interest, work based solely
on the internet, is an obvious attraction to those seeking
further afield, claiming what is outside the museums walls
(boris groys)…. For example, downloadability as mode as art,
at first glance this can open a democratic space liberated from
the confinements of legitimization/walls , but does this
democratic sheen help our culture industry? Can it be a
possible place for an avant-garde ?/ radicality
sp: al I c here thou is an adolescent need for an unstuffy
approach, one that continues the present aporia, rather than
disrupting, walking backwards, or looking sideways, all of
which I must admit is a personal idea of requirement. !
ps: sceptically I say there is no new… Outside the museum and
in a space of radical possibility the internet provides a
possibility of new action in line with the movement to
biopower, and our growing politically conscious generation
sp: But what if this particular art is too diffused in the hum of
life. what if we are simply recapitulating Duchamp’s failed
attempt..
ps: we don’t need to see Duchamp’s urinal as a commentary or
condemnation on commodification but a celebration of it. But
this really is becoming about me,
sp: and yet I find myself fetishizing the formal characteristics…
ps: maybe we could follow Greenberg and recognise the ‘
involuntary tropism’ and applaud the riddance of ‘expendable
conventions’ in order to arrive at an ‘irreducible remainder’
consisting of its ‘essential conditions’, or maybe I could just
put it like the move to or difference between howard hodgkin
and tobias madison > > > > (http://www.facebook.com/note.
php?note_id=153730807014) (http://daskonkret.com/
madison/panda/Untitled.html) …
sp: its interesting , perhaps we have here an answer to the loss
of aura, a constant present..?!
ps: can you clarify though?.. doesn’t the cut & paste possibilities
simply end in a further pluralism unmanaged and open to
endless capitalisation?
 »» http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVoWW3uDZXk

»» http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5WNcRoCXCM

»» http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQzUsTFqtW0
»» http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvbL_5rH1QQ

»» http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjINHhbfqMI
Or, I wonder, if it is just a gesture posited in the post-fordist
conundrum of free speech.... ‘…there is a very thin line
between the critical gesture and the cynical recapitulation of
fashionably critical tropes as a method of career advancement.’
sp: tropes follow tropes
ps: ‘…is the avant-garde formalisation of radical subjectivity
the fate of all who seek to oppose the state of things.?’
(monsieur Dupont)
sp: it does seem very easy to provide anti- capitalist spectacle
ps: personally I find that often but not always proponents of
this mode of work/production/distribution, use certain reasons
to legitimize there practice that become or essentially always
were what the work is. e.g. anti capitalists making capitalistic
work,
sp: What about the internet as a vehicle for the fetishization of
images—or a feeder of our iconphilic culture. Where is the art
in this?
ps: Or maybe both- internet as iconphilia and iconclasm,…
sp: ‘but the goal is the same: to create a contrast between form
and historical background, to make the form look other and
new.’
ps: ive really lost caring
sp: to make a last point, or perhaps my first ,,,so you could say
that it continues this present pluralism in a very easy manner.
But this has been said before..i feel like its opening things out
though and then as if my present can slip further and further..
ps: like looking at animals in a zoo… I think I heard Baudrillard
mentioned
meatboy Luv
»»Wed Jul 14, 2010 6:56 pm
Web content is mostly a
chasm of reeking shit
but so is the rest of our world. When I don't want to see badly
drawn penis graffiti I just don't pop into toilet cubicles so
when I don't want to see shit image macros and animated .gifs
I just don't go to those parts of the web where they'll all be
waiting. When we exist as uploaded consciousnesses in some
node or other there will still be the shit stuff and the good stuff
out there and like we currently click in and out of where we
want to on the web, on email, etc., confronted by no more
unwanted experiences than we get walking around a city, I
can't foresee that existence being far beyond the spectrum of
freedom and repression that humans already exist within
because protocols that use the internet (or whatever equivalent,
historic or futuristic) only survive by people choosing to use
them. For now the internet's another augmentation of the
world and
as augmentations move from the pages of a science fiction
story to the pages of a catalog, something interesting
happens: they lose their power to disturb. They're no longer
the advance forces of the techpocalypse, they're the latest
manifestation of the fashionable, the ubiquitous, and the
banal. They're normal. They're human.
»»(http://m.io9.com/5533833/).
As to whether
the internet [will] render the gallery space obsolete
whatever new online alternatives there are (Cao Fei's RMB
City, youtube accounts, blogs, all already old) will lose their
appealing newness and things will end up getting used for
what they're good for and some people will keep making work
that's best in a gallery. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be actively
seeking out new ways to use the internet, just that the
advantages and limitations of the medium will appeal to some
and put others off.
The web cannot be held responsible for cheapening visual
culture. Visual culture's always been cheap because people
always want you to see their contributions in any format.
There's nothing about any medium or technology that in itself
strips people of their critical faculties and when it even looks
like there might be people step back and watch how others
less cautious get affected first. The principle change that the
internet seems to have brought about in visual culture is the
speed of influence and you'll get people dredging up old
arguments about colonialism, parasitism, illegitimacy and
reclaiming or protecting culture but people will inevitably
hold onto what is valuable to them and take what new things
they think might be useful to them however quickly or slowly
they come across them. Different people will benefit and
suffer from the internet being a significant factor in our lives
but that is the case with every form of communication,
transport or distribution network. There are important
considerations about this benefit and suffering but it will
always be a case of who and how much, not if it happens at all
and it will always have to be case by case so the speed can
affect that but policing can't be absolute and you've got to
hope that there isn't the seed of some apathy towards suffering
hidden away from everyone in all of this that will cause all
social self-regulation to collapse all around us.
And visibility, distribution and marketing. Just because the
web is mainly accessed through screens doesn't mean it bears
comparison to film and television. Yes, you get film, television
and other one-way entertainment formats on the web but it
would be hugely limiting to consider the internet in these
terms. You'll always have to market hard to have people come
see you do your thing or see that thing you made. Just because
the only place to see a film used to be the cinema can't have in
itself encouraged people to go see a film, it's because they
thought it would be a worthwhile experience because someone
told them it would be or it was good the last time. The kind of
entertainment that thrives on the web is the same kind of
entertainment that you go to the pub, parties, seminars or
whatever your taste dictates for, that happens when people get
together and want something to do where the beer, music or
discussion topic is just a starting point for people making their
own good time so it's probably better to model thinking about
the internet more closely on how you think about a city or
other busy network as an entirety rather than one aspect of it.
meatboy Luv
»»Thu Jul 15, 2010 6:00 am
Edit: Visual culture is not always cheap. That was a stupid
thing to say. But on the web and in the rest of the world there
are both freely and easily accessible parts and areas made
exclusive through the need to invest time or money or both in
them. Maybe the web leans more towards requiring time than
money but it is a significant investment either way.­
LOL_doggy=O.O=
»»Fri Jul 16, 2010 7:37 am
Art has lost its aura, its authenticity, to a certain extent
because it is no longer mythological, it is a part of life, and
it has been for some time. This is not a good or a bad thing,
it just is.
I have found that the conversation going on so far has veered
towards a conservative outlook and this statement is a prime
example of this. I think to even bring the idea of aura into this
discussion is strangely antiquated. I also think that it is
somewhat short-sighted and just not really true that having a
good website will lead to you being more successful
'professionally' as an artist. Cultivated Xerox - I would be
interested in your opinion on producing 'art', do you subscribe
to the rather tired and bourgeois notion that it should be done
by a 'tortured genius' struggling in their garret?
I concur with what meatboy is saying; there is shit everywhere,
always has been and always will be. The internet does not lead
to more, it just makes visible what would previously have been
hidden. I think we need to highlight the use of the term 'the
Internet'. An important distinction needs to be made here; the
'Internet' is a series of linked technologies, which deliver us
the 'World Wide Web', effectively the Internet is a 'dumb
pipe' and the WWW is what we engage with.
The ideas raised so far in this debate potentially stem from the
fact that the internet streams information in an unmediated
format, and information without meaning is an intensely
problematic territory. The over abundance of information
available can lead to option paralysis, you can now more or less
get information on anything in the world so what do you look
at? This leads to the problem of 'Cyberbalkanization' flicking
between the same 10 websites engaging with things and
people that bolster your specific worldview.
Do we not have a potential problem of holding a funeral for
the wrong corpse, for it is not quality that has died but
criticality? We have more information more readily available
to us than ever before we just don't know what to do with it?
We gaze in awe at all the goodies available to us but our eyes
dart from place to place never stopping long enough to take it
in?
The WWW should be praised for making this information
available and as a group of artists/curators/critics/writers we
should be grateful to have this resource available to us. For
every video of a skateboarding bulldog on Youtube there are
videos of Deleuze/ Baudrillard/ Zizek /etc and you are
presented with them on the same platform with a clear choice
of what you wish to engage in (George Kaplan you could
always install Linux on your machine for free and then be able
to run the latest FireFox).
This is only scratching the surface of what is out there, for
example you now have something like AAAARG which
could not exist without the WWW.
AAAARG is a conversation platform - at different times it
performs as a school, or a reading group, or a journal.
AAAARG was created with the intention of developing
critical discourse outside of an institutional framework.
But rather than thinking of it like a new building, imagine
scaffolding that attaches onto existing buildings and creates
new architectures between them.
or UbuWeb (http://www.ubu.com) where you can see an
extensive sample of artists films, listen to recordings and read
writings that previously would have only been available
through galleries and museums and therefore exclusive to
collectors, curators or historians, unless they happened to be
on display.
Both these projects question received power structures and our
relationship to copyright, granting access to anyone what was
previously entrenched within capital and academia and to my
mind delivering the 'magical utopia' that was promised with
the birth of hypertext.
the_halsingean
»»Fri Jul 16, 2010 1:47 pm
“This painting cannot be copied, reproduced, duplicated.
This painting is not copyrighted, not protected and may be
reproduced.”
»»Ad Reinhardt ‘Abstract Painting Sixty by
Sixty Inches Square’
We look at more images of work/exhibitions online than we
do in person. While this undoubtedly allows us a broader
notion of the range of artistic activity on a international scale,
it does not come without effecting a perceptible shift in what
models of artistic production we now favor. Work is almost
exclusively now mediated by first a camera lens, and then
subsequently uploaded to an online platform. This is a step up
from the reproduction of artwork in magazines because there
was never the expectation that a review or advert could replace
the experience of visiting the show. It is the degree of
completeness offered by online documentation problematises
this notion of the exhibition's actual site much more heavily.
It is inevitable that certain types of artwork photograph better.
I would be surprised if everyone hadn’t had the experience of
looking at an exhibition online that looks good only to recall
having seen the work previously in person and having found it
less than satisfactory. Would it be most pragmatic to then
make an argument for only producing work which reproduces
well, a studio practice that when you stand back to look at
something you quickly duck behind the lens of a camera to
check it’s appearance? Rather depressingly I can imagine the
growing prevalence for this mode of thinking.
 Around the short lived 1960’s fashion for optical painting,
artwork was still principally reproduced in art periodicals in
black and white. Bridget Riley’s early fame is in part related to
the factor, whereas the chromatic contrasts in paintings by
artists such as Michael Kidner, just as unsettling in actuality
were effectively relegated to the margins. The means of
dissemination have always had an intrinsic relation to artwork’s
critical apprehension. This is a factor you just have to live with
unless you want to integrate that layer of mediation into your
practice itself. Everyone has to make that choice for themselves.
On the other hand I don’t believe that any artwork no matter
how material it is exists until it has been exhibited, and here
we have a means of circumnavigating the established channels
of presentation. A very strange understanding of taste is all
that’s stopping us... I’m going to have to leave this post here.
It's with this certain kind of resignation I’ve got to go carefully
photograph some of my new series of spraypainted binbag
sculptures.
Cultivated Xerox
»»Sun Jul 18, 2010 2:03 pm
I'm afraid you've not caught my drift LOL_doggy - I'm not
surprised, with the amount of skim-reading I've been doing, I
can only presume the word aura caught your eye for a brief
millisecond and inflamed your inner 21st century opensourced
morals. Ah well, that's what will happen with all this
misdirected content proliferation and forum posturing. It's my
fault for starting this whole thing off quite badly. Whoops.
»» http://www.oneminutepresenter.com/2009/11/how-can-you-
improve-your-attention-span/
Anyway, as I was saying, the mythology of the artist as some
kind of cultural messiah no longer exists. It used to, for quite a
while in fact, but I certainly don't pine for its resurrection. Art
is an everyday activity, good, bad, indifferent. It doesn't matter
where, what or how it is produced by society, because it always
will be. Who cares? I don't.
Who's been talking about quality? So far all I can see is
consumption and production, the capital value of art and the
supposed Third Way of the internet. Criticality died the
moment art magazines started reviewing only the galleries
who held advertising accounts with them and people stopped
being taught or became too apathetic to learn how to question
the context of their own product. But of course this doesn't
apply to everyone.
»»http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=QKAZGsVU-Fc
Oh, and aaaaarg doesn't exist anymore having been shut down
by the likes of Faber and various other publishing companies
exalting the power of the copyright law on well-meaning
impoverished academics, and Ubuweb, despite the brilliance
of its being, is still a curated resource much like a museum or
gallery, often only streaming edited sections of audio and
visual work outside their original display methods.
Internet psycho-geography anyone?
The Prosumer
»»Sun Jul 18, 2010 6:02 pm
Techno
Bring on the final creative apocalypse.
It may be 28 years old but it has only affected our daily lives for
around 10 years. So we feel the techno jolt. Old enough to
have been told to produce slide documentation alongside
jpegs, this has the tendency to give even 20 something artists
an illusion of wisdom and lamentation. The fact that we are
now within It, we find it hard to comment with objectivity.
The debate here should perhaps not focus on whether these
changes are positive or negative, binary oppositions and
distinct polarities could be one of the positive losses of the
www structure, but rather on how it has altered the power
hierarchicies previously mentioned. There is an issue of
nostalgia rather than a more objective retrospectivity, a
yearning for the past which is emotional instead of analytical.
Another technology but what seems the most profoundly
significant one of the era, The Internet has produced the
World Wide Web. The distinction made by LOL_doggy=O.
O= between these two terms is important, defining the
difference between the technological innovation and its
ramifications. But @George Kaplan links The Web is not yet
fully wordly. Leaving aside the western guilt that must be cast
over those that are born into this geography as it is indeed not
instantaneous to all, I suppose we're talking about the effect it
has had on those to whom it is available i.e the majority in our
location. @Cultivated Xerox The fire and brimstone language
you use is interesting Eden, magical, apocalypse? And there
seems to be an assumption that we are dumb absorbers
without questioning faculties, bowing down to this “other”. Is
The internet and the wwweb not just reflecting us back in all
our complex and contradictory selves?
Which brings me onto @a_sense_of_freedom and the
concerns of self publication that you brought up. Everybody
expressing themselves online means visual artists have to shift
perspective. With the immediate annoyance that as an artist
putting your "thoughtful" video up on Vimeo means being
pitted against a visual feast of a narrative animation, comes a
kind of relief. You cannot compete against something that
purely strives for entertainment, you can be defiantly boring. It
is an interesting challenge to those of us engaged in the visual
arts. How we view it as a genre. If we propose that art and life
have merged we cannot simply keep commenting on and
reflecting upon situations. Is our previous position not now in
the hands of the “creatives”? Who will recycle aesthetics in a
much more efficient and pleasant manner? We could instead
move towards strategies of overidentification as BAVO
advocate:
"By radically refusing this role of the 'last of the idealists',
which, so we contend, enforces all kinds of self-limitations
and self censorship on artists and is nothing but a farce
anyway, the art of overidentification offers an uneasy
answer to the question of artistic resistance 'after' the end of
history. It asks of artists to ignore society's pathetic demand
for small creative acts and inversely, to uncomprimisingly
identify with the ruling order itself and act out its logic in
its most extreme dystopian form"
 »»BAVO 'Cultural Activism Today: The
Art of Overidentification'
@Cultivated Xerox - Why not let the hobbyists sell their craft
to those who enjoy craft, it does not necessarily mean that
those actual artists of whom you speak are squeezed out from
recognition. As meatboy Luv pointed out shit has always been
there, it is the mode of proliferation that has changed and now
it is more visible, and people revel in shit generally. Aura and
authenticity are the myths, tied up with divination, we don't
know if cultural messiahs did exist at the time, we were not
there. Are the people that are propogated as such, as such only
in retrospect? Belief in certain humans being able to create
forms of greatness which don’t take into accounts specific
conditions of context, geography, economics, materials
available etc etc. This links into @in a field of dreams,
Duchamp’s urinal was perhaps neither a condemnation or a
celebration of a commodity, as I see it, it is more valuable as
being about art and a challenge to those myths of high culture.
Perhaps fear of the artist's website is also tied to resistance to
openness and loss of mystery.
"Mike Kelley has written a lot about his work and that of
other people. He emphatically rejects the strategy of Warhol-
style silence, describing in detail the material, referential
and conceptual origins of his works. Paradoxically, that
involvement has to some extent castrated his critical
reception"
»»Anne
Pontegnie 'Educational Complex
Onwards 1995-2008'
Someone like Cosi Fanni Tutti can sound off about the loss of
the Underground and its lack of dark places, http://www.
friezeartfair.com/podcasts/details/is_the_underground_over/
"the most interesting people would be truly underground and
not on the internet" whilst proclaiming the (fan)tastic
possiblities of MySpace to get your stuff out there.
I think an interesting development has been that those who
are supposedly avant-garde are divided when it comes to the
most progressive of notions, copyright and the creative
commons. That when economics come into play understandbly
it is a threat. Musician Andy Falkous from Future of the Left,
post-hardcore punk band reacted to illegal downloading of
their album with this rant: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.
cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=62653487&blog
Id=485944356 His argument although hystrionic seems
justified; currently they make less money on record sales
because of people downloading their music for free so
therefore have less time and will be eventually forced to
become a part time outfit. Its straightforward. But only if they
refuse to adapt to a new model, to progress.
How does this affect visual art?
It is a paradox that as in our daily lives we all become necessarily
entrenched within neo-liberal accerleration of capital as that
is what it does http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/
jul/16/austerity-drive-billions-private-sector, our most
dominant technology is rendering our cultural lives free. As
cultural producers we want to be able to live from our
dalliances, are we entitled to do so? We consume more for free
but we are required to work more for free:
Role: Receptionist
Reports to: Office Manager, Administrator and General
Manager
The receptionist will support the Office Manager in general
administration and upkeep of the office, they will be the
first point of call for everyone entering the office and must
work well in a busy environment
General Duties:
Answering the door and phones, dealing with post
Welcoming staff and companies
Distributing staff and company passes
General upkeep of the office
Keeping up communication between staff and visitors
The job is on a voluntary basis and would be 10am- 6pm 6
days a week from 30th July until 30th August with a few
hours induction on 29th July. The receptionist will receive a
staff pass allowing entrance to any Assembly show which is
not sold out and giving various discounts on foods and
drinks within our bars. Joining Assembly for this
monumental year is a great opportunity and a fantastic
way to get involved with the excitement of the 2010 fringe.
»»job
advertisement taken from edinburgh.
gumtree.com
Pragmatics come into play and ideals must fade in order for us
to survive. It is how we negotiate them that is the interesting
possibility, how we deal with being constant hypocrites.
To follow on from meatboy Luv and LOL_doggy=O.O= we
have to assertain quality of content ourselves. It demands
more of us.
»»the_halsingean wrote:
and here we have a means of circumnavigating the
established channels of presentation. A very strange
understanding of taste is all that’s stopping us...
The web is a new kind of public, one which we have yet to deal
with to its full extent. The gallery will never disappear, the
same as aaaaaaaaarg will always reappear with another A. The
availability of resources, and communication possibilities it
offers us needs to be deftly navigated, avoiding
cyberbalkinisation and individualisation, perhaps more self
discipline in terms of concentration span will come when this
technology is no longer new.
Which brings me to the point.
Why are we printing this forum?
 Embassy invited a group of artists / curators / writers / theorists
to discuss their opinions on the effect the Internet has had on
visual culture. The discussion took the form of an anonymised
web forum. The results of these discussions are published here
as a starting point for a wider debate.

For the duration of the Edinburgh Art Festival (until 05.07.10)

the forum will be open to all at:

»» http://project.embassygallery.org/publication/

The results of this will then be published as a freely available

PDF on the Embassy website

Project initiated by Embassy on the occassion of the Edinburgh

Art Festival 2010

Supported through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh

Festivals Expo Fund.

Embassy is an Edinburgh based non-profit organisation for

the promotion of contemporary art run by a committee of
volunteer directors:

- Luke Cooke-Yarborough
- Benjamin Fallon
- Alexa Hare
- Shona Macnaughton
- Francesca Nobilucci
- Ashleigh Reid

Embassy is supported by Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh

University Settlement and Scottish Arts Council

EMBASSY GALLERY LTD is registered in Scotland

Company Number:259872
Charity No. SC035780

Embassy
2 Roxburgh Pl,
Edinburgh,
EH8 9SU

www.embassygallery.org