Art Attack
Tuesday 6 September 2011
Taking the magazine online
Monday 5 September 2011
Many hands make light work
Sunday 4 September 2011
Art in everyday spaces
Monday 29 August 2011
Internet and Interaction.
Julian Stallabrass, author of Internet Art: The Online Class of Culture and Commerce, suggests that ‘aside from being distributed data, Internet art has another feature that distinguishes it from much other art production - it is interactive’ (2003:60). After looking at the ways in which art is exhibited and traded in my last post, I had to consider the ways in which I myself, have experienced the participatory aspect of interactive Internet art.
One of the most ambitious collaborative Internet art projects that caught my eye is the Johnny Cash Project. This international project relies of crowd-sourcing to create a unique video of Johnny Cash’s “Ain’t No Grave”. Chris Milk, one of the organisers of the project explains that a unique tool for drawing and editing each frame of the video clip has been created for contributors, who are invited to be creative with their approach in order to pay homage to the album which deals with ‘with themes of mortality, resurrection, and everlasting life’. The ways in which users can interact with, and edit the various frames that form the completed Johnny Cash project echoes Stallabrass’ belief that ‘The spectrum of interaction on offer shades from the minimal choice involved in clicking through a set sequence of pages to permitting users to create the work themselves’ (2003:60), and illustrates the sheer simplicity involved in making a meaningful contribution to the collaborative work.
Direct link to this video can be accessed here.
What’s inspiring about collaborative works of art such as the Johnny Cash project is that it allows so many audiences to engage with the art world without a great deal of prior knowledge, experience or authority on art. Whilst the Johnny Cash Project represents the ways in which audiences can engage with online art on an international scale, I decided to explore what the Sydney art scene had to offer in the world of online art.
A brand new website titled The Canvas Project has given us new inspiration for our blog. Whilst unlike the Johnny Cash Project, it does not offer an opportunity for users to actually create digital art, it does present a forum for open communication about the Sydney art scene, as well as producing its own video channel that showcases the visions and practices of local artists. One of the goals of Art Attack will be to serve as an online hub for the art-interested, with a particular focus on the Sydney region, and The Canvas Project’s video-based website (promotional video featured below) presents an interesting model that has motivated us to further investigate art representation on a local level as well as on an international scale. Whilst the Canvas Project’s journalistic style employs the video medium, Art Attack will seek to vary the different formats in which content will be presented, to engage a broader audience and provide maximum interaction.
Direct link to this video can be accessed here.
References
Stallabrass, Julian (2003), Internet Art: The Online Class of Culture and Commerce, London, Tate.
Seeing is Believing.
They always say that seeing is believing, but how exactly are we to see art in today’s modern world? Are we to touch, feel, smell, or hear art too? Perhaps we are to make it ourselves? Do we participate or watch from a distance? These questions are important ones as we begin to consider the ways in which art is created, acquired and appreciated.
This month the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, released a statement about a release of an online collection of works that will compliment and existing collection. The 28 works that will be featured will form part of the ‘New Acquisitions in Context’ collection, and will aim to engage a broader audience through increased access to the gallery’s diverse collections. This presents a clear advantage to those who aren’t residents of the Sydney area, who will now be able to interact with the MCA’s collection from the comfort of their own homes. It seems that the MCA has followed a long list of galleries such as New York’sMuseum of Modern Art, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and London’s Saatchi Gallery.
Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, the Director of the MCA is pleased with the new online instalment, stating that the new-found accessibility of these works is vital as it ‘reflects the Museum’s ongoing commitment to providing high quality educative and accessible resources and the institution’s determination to disseminate the wealth of ideas encapsulated by artists in their work’. Indeed, there is a growing demand for such accessibility, and it is clear that the MCA is displaying a progressive approach to exhibiting art. The MCA has a well-established reputation for promoting new forms of digital art, and giving both net.art (a medium that focuses on programming and digital design) and locative art (art created through the use of gadgets, geo-positioning systems and mapping techniques) a place within the gallery space (Cubitt, 2007:1151-1152).
Image by Shaun Quinlan can be found here.
It would seem that with new forms of art comes a new online economy. The ways in which we traditionally view art are constantly changing, but what value does the museum space hold in today’s modern world?
References
Cubitt, Sean (2007), ‘Media Art Futures’, Futures, Vol. 39, pp. 1149-1158.
A Digital Direction
Art is one of the key facets of every culture, allowing individuals to create and negotiate the meanings attached to the world around them. Whilst art has traditionally be associated with a range of forms, it has, by default been associated with a presumed tangibility. With new emerging forms of online media and communication, art has been taken into a virtual simulacra of the Internet in which art can be created, distributed, modified, linked, shared and explored. With a plethora of new artistic opportunities, what then, is the role of digital art in our world?
Art has often been used as a means of social commentary. As Margaret Simons (2007:204-206) suggests, online publications provide a free way for users to engage and be informed about contemporary issues, and thus, we must look at the ways in which online art can become a vehicle for communication and political expression. Drew Berry, a biomedical animator uses scientific data to create medical animations in order to represent the ‘activities occurring within our bodies that could otherwise only be seen at a magnification of 100 million times’. Drew Berry uses digital art to educate individuals about the way the body works, whilst raising social awareness about diseases like malaria through powerful visualisations that deconstruct the disease and explain how it can be cured. Berry relies heavily on online communities to distribute his ideas, which are re-blogged and shared around the world by individuals and online communities.
TEDxCaltech - Drew Berry - Visualization: Biology and Complex Circuits: found here
Graham Meikle, who highlights the flexibility of online artistic expression through his analysis of Critical Art Ensemble, suggests that the many forms of digital art can be used to present criticism creatively by drawing on the construction of signs and symbols that pervade our modern world (2002:113-119). Digital artist David McCandless, uses infographics to synthesise a range of data, translating it into colourful and creative works of art that are relinked and redistributed throughout cyberspace. McCandless’ website, Information is Beautiful, uses online art to paint sharp, profound, and at times hilarious realities with the digital brush. For example, McCandless’ ‘Colours in Cultures’ graph (pictured below) allows audiences to questions their preconceived understandings of cultural symboles, whilst learning something new about how colour is seen within other cultures. Much like the work of Berry, McCandless’ art provides us with food for thought.
It would seem that through online art, we are heading in a new, digital direction that will allow us to better understand the world around us. Sharing our thoughts with online communities across the world presents a world of limitless possibilities, and this is only the beginning.
References
Meikle, Graham (2002), ‘Turning sings into question marks’, Future Active, New York, Routledge, pp. 113-139.
Simons, Margaret (2007), ‘The gift economy and the future’, The Content Makers: understanding the media in Australia, Camberwell, Victoria, Penguin, pp. 204-217.
Tuesday 23 August 2011
The Commons
The risk of copyright infringement online raises another question though – does it matter if copyright is infringed if your work of art is being enhanced, changed, being ‘created’ with or extended? This is a point which is raised in Lessig’s keynote from the 2002 OSCON. Creativity, as hard as it is to define, is often seen as the backbone of a progressing society, eras of art often go hand in hand with eras of enlightenment and progression. Copyright laws, according to Lessig, hinder creativity and innovation, since they are often actions which build upon the past.
Creative commons licences are a way of mediating this – that an artwork will be used or referenced in future artworks – by giving the copyright owner a chance to decide the level of interaction the public can have with his/her work.
Are creative commons licences enough to give artists peace of mind? What happens if an artwork is found to have been used in a way that the artist does not agree with even if it obeys the licence stipulations? Should an artist have control over copyright, or accept creative commons as a way forward?
The Tragedy of the Commons
Could this be the future of creative commons too?
Comic source: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1731