art.com
Internet Art and Radicalism
in
the New Digital Economy
Submitted as Requirement
For the award of
BA Fine Art Honours Degree.
By
At
Bath Spa University College
January 2000
Thanks to:
Rebecca Jackson, Persephone, all my various tutors throughout the course, Spanky, Lionel Blair, Bob Carolgees & Spit the Dog, Stephen J. Cannel, Scott of the Antarctic (without whom we wouldn’t know so much stuff about snow), Skeletor, Geoff Love and his Orchestra, Mr. Carver (the inventor of peanut butter), The Fantastic Mucus Boy, people with ‘lobster’ hands, my family & friends, the Baby Jesusä , Philip Michael Thomas (tubbs), my enemies (especially staff at British Telecom), certain sea creatures, crazy homeless people, Mr T. (for inspiration and positive motivation ALWAYS), The Dole (we’ll meet again), William Hootkins, the Red Hand Gang, the Badger-Faced man who visits me in my sleep, Chas ‘n’ Dave, Paul "ladyboy" Myers for printing the cover, Paul Daniels, Chorton from Chorton & the Wheelies, Benson the Bush-Muppet, the little paperclip guy in Word (no, I’m not sure I want to do anything. . .), Jimmy Tarbuck and Kenny Lynch (who were sent from the future to kill me), monkeys, Mothra, Cheetarah, Swimming Aces Duncan Goodhew & Sharon Davies, Huan, Neil Buchanan, Tony Hart, Rolf Harris, dinosaurs, robots, spaceships, The Beaver Elves, Suzie Quatro, Mumra the Ever Living . . .
And the various freaks and misfits who still make the Internet an interesting place to go, even after all this.
This study examines whether the Internet offers artists a unique freedom from commodity status and the traditional art institutions, and how and why this freedom calls for us to re-assess our understanding of art and its social role. Areas of investigation include modernist and postmodernist understanding of avant-garde and capitalist society, with a major focus on dialogue between members of the net community itself, critics, artists, journalists and others who have first hand experiences with the new technologies.
The conclusion outlines a precarious potential for radically redefining artistic practice.
Introduction – The Next Big Thing?
Part I
Teleportacia – The First Real Net Art Gallery.
I Made This! – The Grand Mouse-Click.
Part II
Modern Technology – Critical Theory and Looking Backwards.
Jodi – The Contradictions of net.formalism.
Who Made This? – The Cremation of the Author’s Corpse.
Part III
Actions <> Words – A Desire for True Art? 19
0100101110101101.ORG – The Emperor is Naked! 19
Up the Proletariat! – Mass Media and the Subversion Illusion.
Part IV
A New Avant-Garde? – What it Means to be Radical.
Independance Day – Government vs Humanity.
Digerati & Western Wealth – The Class Issue.
Cyber-Colonialism? – The World White Web.
Organizational Personalities – The Politics of Towing the Line.
Slack Reigns – Corporate Funding and the Subversion Buffer.
New Improved Recipe – Technology Delivers the Fatal Blow.
Ex-Teenage Rebel – Fame and Fortune "Not That Bad" Shocker!
Conclusion – The Next Big Thing!
Appendix
A – B92 Press Release.
B – Web Demographics.
C – Teleportacia FAQ.
D – Related Resources & Links.
The Next Big Thing?
Over the past century the art world has seen artists continually exploring new media. As time goes on, the new technologies become old, and the ‘cutting edge’ becomes a commodifiable step in the established history of artistic process.
Internet art, although it has existed now for the best part of a decade, has reached the pivotal point at which it becomes established enough to catch the attention of the art world. It has existed up until now as a relatively small but tight group of artists, exploring the medium for their own enjoyment. Now the time has come when it needs to be addressed by the establishment; they need to know where it fits into their precious model of creative investigation. They need to know what it is worth - it’s time to start making some money. Many of the artists, however, feel that the purity of their world is being threatened.
It is from within these opposing viewpoints, as the process of commodification unfolds before us, that vital contradictions, problems and concerns about art and society, some old, some new, are presenting themselves with a Millennial urgency.
This study will attempt to highlight the issues involved, and try to understand their significance. In examining the Internet’s relationship with society, capitalism’s relationship with the Internet and Art, the effects of each on the other, and an apparent tension between the modern and the post-modern, we will see how the roles of all involved are changing, and look at possible answers to the questions thrown up:
These issues are of utmost importance to both the art world and society at large, as they force us to re-assess what our roles as members of a globalised society are, and can help us to understand what the future may hold for both.
"One of the best challenges to the age-old autonomy of the artwork is the World Wide Web used by artists. I have seen signed copies of videotapes and even computer diskettes bearing the signature of an artist, but a website cannot possibly function as an original, unique and irreplaceable work of art."
- M. Bruinsma, ‘Website Graphics’, 1997.
PART I
The First Real Net Art Gallery
In July 1998, Russian net artist Olia Lialina employed her own model for instigating a commercial net art economy. She set up Teleportacia, a web site which she claimed was the ‘First real net art gallery.’ The gallery ‘opened’ with it’s first show, entitled ‘Miniatures of the Heroic Period’, which consisted of a web page with links to early, simple web-based artworks by various pioneering internet artists – Heath Bunting, Jodi, Alexei Shulgin, Vuc Kosic and Lialina herself – and a brief, (almost tongue in cheek) analysis of each by a selection of self proclaimed net art critics/journalists. None of these works were held on the Teleportacia site, all were links to other sites, usually the artists own. Each work was ‘for sale’, the prices ranging from $1000 to $2000. Many people thought Teleportacia to be a clever artwork itself, an ironic comment on both the nature of the net and the encroaching reality of commodity culture ( It seems tagging the word ‘ironic’ onto something these days can be an effective excuse for an artist to do just about anything! ) Lialina, however, insists that Teleportacia is a serious venture:
"I would say it's more critical than an art project . . . The gallery is meant as an experiment which can lead to a lasting structure."
The Grand Mouse-Click
Lialina attempts to address the obvious issues that this genuine Teleportacia throws up with the Teleportacia FAQ page. For potential buyers with concerns regarding the authenticity of such anonymous, transitory and infinitely cloneable things as web pages, she ambiguously assures us that Teleportacia has ‘a unique proprietary system, which ensures that the artwork you purchase is original.’ She continues with her only clue as to the nature of this system with:
"For example, one simple way to prove that an artwork is original: the URL in the location bar. It’s included as an important part of the performance of the artwork. One can copy HTML code and images of a simple net project, but the URL can’t be duplicated."
This, at least, is a hard fact. As yet, the URL of a web page can’t be reproduced or imitated. Indeed this fact seems to be both the solid theoretical foundation of Teleportacia and also the basket into which all it’s precious net art eggs must subsequently be placed. She expands on this idea in an interview with ‘net journalist’ Tilman Baumgaertel:
"This is what we are really after - not the removal of files from their original space, but to control access to them. Plus, the copyright advantages. The original location is an important part of an art work. It has its historical sense and it is simply more prestigious."
If we accept that the URL is in effect the equivalent of a painter’s signature, the stamp of identification and authenticity, and also an integral part of ‘the performance of the artwork’, we are also accepting certain modernist ideas about art which have since been seriously doubted (This is further discussed in Part 2). This idea that the meaning of a work of art is somehow dependant on the identity and presence of the Artist, the recognized mark of the Genius, has been contested by the artists themselves since at least Dadaism and Marcel Duchamps’ ready-mades, and further through to contemporary artists such as Sherrie Levine and Gavin Turk.
Further problems arise from this dependence on the URL as the data files of which the artwork consists must remain at the original web address, and stored on the original server, where the artist first put them. If that is the case, how can Teleportacias’ forward-thinking, cutting-edge, art-collector clients actually own the works they are being persuaded to buy?
"Art.Teleportacia, in alliance with the artists, sells access to the artwork. As soon as you buy an artwork, you can determine its accessibility. By the way, it’s the same as the off-line world: the owner of the painting has the right to choose whether this artwork is shown publicly, whether it remains only in private or company rooms, whether it is hidden in cellar. . ."
Lialina seems to be suggesting that access equates to ownership. Is this idea just a ruse to get around the intrinsic difficulties in selling a non-physical object, or is Lialina hinting at a future concept of consumerism? It sounds odd, and yet the idea of selling access instead of object is beginning to surface more and more within the strategies of consumer corporations. A good example of this is Sony Corporation’s strategy for its future Playstation 2 console. The machine comes equipped with a fast modem as standard, and future plans include the direct distribution of software, video and music products via Internet downloading. Will people be able to cope with the lack of ‘object’ upon purchasing a new album, for example? Microsoft boss Bill Gates enthuses about this subject in his 1995 book of techno-prophecy ‘The Road Ahead.’ :
"When you pay for entertainment by buying a tape or disc, your rights to reuse or resell it are restricted . . . The information highway will enable innovations in the way that intellectual property, such as music and software, is licensed. . . You, the consumer, won’t need compact discs, tapes, or any other kind of physical apparatus . . . ‘Buying’ a song or album will really mean buying the right to access the appropriate bits . . . Anyplace you go where there are audio speakers connected to the highway, you’ll be able to identify yourself and take advantage of your rights. . . This personal lifetime buyout of rights is similar to what we do today when we buy a music disc or tape, or book, except that there is no physical medium involved. It sounds comfortingly familiar."
This seems frighteningly similar to Lialina’s proposal for the distribution of art. It seems likely that artists associated with an underground background of hacking and subversion (as many net artists confess to being) will have a problem with art adopting a model from the world’s richest capitalist, head of the world’s biggest monopoly. That the sole or at least major benefit of owning an artwork might be the power to stop people seeing it will seem to many very precarious from the outset. Elitism and exclusion at the whim of the wealthy has been a significant aspect of Real World Art to feature in the decision of many artists to take their practice online. Alexei Shulgin, one of the artists in Teleportacia’s ‘Miniatures’ exhibition, made the transition from photography and video to the internet because of this:
"My first experiment with the Internet took place in 1994, when I set up an online gallery of Russian art photography. My motivation for doing this was political; it went against the existing practice of art curating and had to do with exclusion and inclusion. There had been a big show of Russian photography . . . some very interesting projects and series of works were not included because of the obvious ignorance of the curators."
British artist Heath Bunting, another of the exhibitors, said in an interview at the 1997 Documenta X show in Kassel, Germany:
"Accessibility has always been a big issue for me. And also, I’m not looking for recognition from the art world. I want to do things that have an effect on everybody."
Even Lialina herself writes in an article for Nettime:
"Now that everyone knows the Internet is our paradise on earth, the long awaited world without borders, visas, flights or hotels, it is the best way to make your event international."
Yet her gallery sells the right to erect borders in this borderless world, to shut off access to currently globally available artworks in exactly the same way as the curators referred to by her comrade Alexei. Of course, the actual availability of the Internet itself complicates this issue of access further, as we shall see in Part 4.
"It’s too complicated to in any way criticise or analyse postmodernism because it’s totally unclear what it is. But here we are, I’m looking at the positive effects of the introduction of this ideology. What it did was it levelled the unsustainable pluralism of before, unsustainable for the lazy. . . I think that absolute freedom of expression or appropriation got institutionalised and canonised and all possible meanderings, all possible developments in a linear history of development, somehow got sanctioned and a priori incorporated into the post-modern point of view."
- Vuk Cosic. ‘All Art is Useless’, 1999
PART II
Critical Theory and Looking Backwards
To equate the URL with a signature, as, we have seen, Olia Lialina attempts to do, points to an important, albeit problematic, aspect of Lialiana’s venture. Of course it is not meant to be literally taken to be the same, but the whole notion that the value of a net artwork depends upon an affirmation of a specific author’s involvement seems directly contradictory to current internet culture, theory and understanding. This brings into play difficult issues, which at root are based on the differentiation between the modern and the post-modern. While it would undoubtedly prove incredibly abstruse, and perhaps futile, to attempt to resolve these issues, (especially within the scope of this study) it is, however, vital that we are aware of the elements at work in creating this uneasy tension. The main reason for this difficulty is that Modernism, in artistic terms, was/is huge, covering a wide variety of styles and artistic ideologies, and that nobody seems to know for sure what Post-Modernism, in any terms, actually is. However, the crux of the issue is this: the model suggested by Teleportacia seems to be based, at least in part, on a modernist ideology, whereas the internet, mass media, digital technology in general, and, most importantly, most Internet art itself, is widely understood in accordance with the tenets of postmodernism. This is perhaps because the web seems seductively to exemplify certain postmodern notions – most notably the instability of ‘traditional’ identity highlighted by wide-ranging social critics from Baudrillard to Donna Haraway.
It is important to be aware, however, that just because these theories seem to fit the Internet, and vice versa, they are not necessarily perfectly or uniquely suited. They are ideas that were developed long before the Internet existed and they apply equally well to other ‘old’ media. Barthes ‘Death of the Author’ was about books. Multiple and false identities have always been created for the famous using T.V., radio and print. Both telephone and postal service have allowed communication devoid of race, class and gender for many years. It is possible that, in the same way that the content of ‘old’ media is always the first thing to be translated, however inappropriately, into ‘new’ media, we are simply using postmodernism to understand the Internet because we are yet to develop the new ideas required to more effectively do so, and in that respect the ‘postmodern net’ is the equivalent of the ‘film of the book’ – never quite as good because it was not designed to take full advantage of the new media’s potential.
Modernism’s wide scope, however, begins with ideals adopted from the ‘Enlightenment’, the belief, due to the discoveries of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, that science, and human reason, could uncover all the ‘truths’ of the universe, that human kind was entering a bright new age of prosperity, understanding and social harmony brought about by the power of the human mind. It was believed that, according to Professor of Art History Christopher Witcombe;
"Art and Architecture could serve in this process of enlightenment education by providing examples of those qualities and virtues that it was felt the enlightened mind should be guided by."
This idea that artists should, or indeed could, teach people, help enlighten them, is fundamental to the ideals of early modernism. This implies that the meaning of an artwork is somehow transferred from the mind of the artist, through the artwork, and into the mind of the viewer. The artist in this case is cast in his familiar caricature of genius, or at least of a superior moral position to his/her audience.
This history lesson may seem extraneous at this point, but it is helpful to understand the origin of a way of thinking which is seemingly still echoed by important contemporary ‘pioneers’ such as Olia Lialina in today’s post-modern world.
Modernist thought developed into a belief that reason alone was inhuman. It concentrated on keeping the enlightenment ideals of equality and freedom, transferring its education of the public and illustration of social wrongs into a subversive movement, constantly questioning the capitalist systems that reason-without-morality had allowed to burgeon around them. It was this area of politically oppositional freedom of expression that became known as the ‘avant-garde’.
After the two world wars, the science-and-technology based destruction of which naturally enough put a dampener on the whole ‘Age of Enlightenment’ thing, the focus of the avant-garde’s confrontations had quietly shifted from saving the world to a more realistic target – freedom from the academic institutions of the art world. This quest for freedom of expression, freedom of style and technique, then led to freedom from the demands of the public, (its audience) and thus to modernism’s much derided motto, ‘Art for Art’s Sake’, which Prof. Witcombe describes as:
" . . . a call for release from the tyranny of meaning and purpose."
Which anybody outside of the art world would naturally consider to be totally and blindingly stupid. It was an attempt to again thwart the artworld’s influence and deny any historical or social context for their work. This also elevated the status of their art, making it allegedly autonomous, a direct product of the artist, himself influenced by nothing but his ‘gift’ of artistry.
So Formalism was born, and the avant-garde began its slide away from modernism’s original goals of morality and social influence. To the delight of the powers that be, the formalist approach to analysis of art was adopted by both the artists and the art world, and such analysis belittled or ignored any possible social or political voice, removing the avant-garde’s cherished ability to highlight social wrongs.
The Contradictions of net.formalism
Internet art collaborative Jodi (another exhibitor at Teleportacia) which comprises of Dirk Paesmans and Joan Heemskerk, intentionally keep their personality from reaching the viewer of their art:
"We decide to put our work immediately on the screen, without our press release and without our bio. We don’t use our site to present information. We present screens and things that are happening in these screens. We avoid explanations . . . It makes the work stronger that people don’t know who’s behind it. Many people try to dissect our site, and look into the code. Because of the anonymity of our site they can’t judge us according to our national culture or anything like this . . . Our work comes from inside the computer, not from a country."
Jodi produce work which has often been discussed by critics in formalist terms. However, such associations invariably highlight the difficulty in defining something that exists within such a broad and ever-changing context. Their work is self referential, concerned with its own internal structure. Jodi make web-pages which explore the ‘aesthetic of computer error’. Viewers are confronted with apparently random, unformatted ASCII text, flickering screens, sometimes nothing at all appearing in the browser window. Critic Jon Ippolito shows concern regarding the effects of this approach on jodi’s audience:
"The important question, it seems to me, is whether displaying diagrams or computer code outside their original contexts will push viewers toward more radical--or toward more conservative--ways of looking at images . . . [The work] leaves viewers who can't imagine the code underneath jodi's digital larks little choice but to read them as formalist abstraction . . ."
Net journalist Saul Albert also seems to share this view:
"The re-presentation of the diagram . . . has caused us to re-evaluate [it] on different terms. It is no longer an explanatory illustration, it is an aesthetic and conceptual statement."
Indeed from jodi’s statement at the beginning of this section we can see that aspects of this seemingly formal approach are important to them. But their work immediately becomes post-modern, subverting these same implications of modernism with the fact that by its very nature, it acknowledges its context, as it is literally, physically and conceptually part of a larger structure and as a result its internalism resonates externally. It signifies its context, yet it allows interrogation of this context by carefully misusing the language of the surrounding environment. This contradicts the formalist concern of separating the work of art from everyday life. Where formalist art, via its autonomous non-interference into our real and actual lives, allows us a detached position from which to interrogate it, jodi’s work (and by extension other net art) ‘happens’ within the browsing experience, requires interaction, and is therefore fairly indistinguishable from, and instead part of, our everyday lives. Its relationship with reality is different than that of formalism or any other previous art movement. Here the roles of the artists echo (and amplify) the role of the author described in Roland Barthes famous (and possibly post-modern) essay ‘The Death of the Author’.
Barthes’ argument that the meaning of a text is independent of its author’s intention, that the words themselves create meaning, and that this meaning is dependent on the reader, the reader’s awareness of other texts, the readers experiences with language and the reader’s experiences within culture, has found a visible working example within the hypertexts and interrelations of the internet. Jodi seem to be acknowledging this with both their work and their disassociation from it. The anonymity they prize, it could be argued, places the meaning of the work directly into the audiences sphere of perception, thus debunking any modernist notions of direct communication between artist and viewer. There are aspects of the ‘artwork’ which are beyond Jodi’s control – the network itself, the commercial browser software used to view the site, the speed, specifications and preferences of the ‘viewers’ machine – the artists merely rearrange the language of the technology to present an alternative (one of many possible) browsing experience. There can be no ‘artistic gift’ or ‘enigmatic genius’ at work here, no ‘single truth’ bestowed upon the object from the creator’s hand - many of Jodi’s visitors believe what they see on their screen to be the result of a computer error, or some inept web designer’s uncorrected mistakes, and never have any idea that it is art at all. Does this uncertainty corrupt the value of art? Some would say this inability to inject meaning into something, a characteristic of the post-modern worldview, renders any attempts at expression pointless.
The Cremation of the Author’s corpse
Internet art extends this debate into new territories. The medium has characteristics that are new to art, and many of these further break down the traditional definition of ‘artist’ and also blur the line between author/artist and reader/viewer. Journalist Andreas Broeckmann explains:
" . . . sites on the network can be designed as collective realisation of projects between different artists, designers, programmers, as well as non-professional network users, a model which takes the creative process away from the single author concept . . ."
As well as this collaborative creativity, the viewers themselves are no longer passive. Mark Poster surmises in his essay ‘Postmodern Virtualities’:
"The shift to a decentralised network of communications makes senders receivers, producers consumers, rulers ruled, upsetting the logic of understanding of the first media age."
"There is no Genius isolated from the world and inspired by the Muse – culture is made by people exchanging information and re-working on what has been already done in the past, it has always been like that."
- ‘Luther Blissett’, 0100101110101101.ORG: art.hacktivism
PART 3
A Desire for ‘True’ Art?
Has the Internet then, in its clumsy fumblings for a new form of creativity, opened a potential gateway to a new era of ‘High Art’? With its empowerment of the masses, its ungoverned and decentralised (symbolically at least) nature, its heady mix of subversive and academic patriots, and its transient and unreliable (thus financially unstable) way of life, could the net offer a way to bypass the institutions and markets of the traditional art world? And after decades of claiming to despise these systems, gently nibbling the hand that feeds them, would any artists actually forego the ‘career option’ safety-net and embrace artmaking as a noble labour of love?
The Emperor is Naked!
On the 9th of June 1999, Luther Blissett, a pseudonym for a currently anonymous organisation or individual (the name of a Kevin Keegan era England football player), copied all the files that made up the Art.Teleportacia gallery, including the exhibits, and uploaded a new version at www. 0100101110101101.org. In an explanatory post to nettimes mailing list, ‘Blissett’ explains:
"0100101110101101.ORG cloned the gallery, manipulated the contents and uploaded it in a new ‘anti-copyright’ version, obviously without asking permission to anyone and violating the copyright of the original sight [sic]."
This act, according to Blissett, ‘. . .brought down all the presuppositions of the gallery, the contradictions which this way of thinking runs into became evident.’ In effect, the cloned gallery brought forward a good case against Teleportacia’s guarantee of originality. There is no way to prove that the URL is a vital part of the work – cloned works seem to be just as effective as art, to mean the same things, to look the same. Unlike a forged painting, which may look the same, still convey the same message, but can never actually be the same, these net reproductions can be absolutely identical files. Blissett continues:
"We must keep in mind that net.art is digital, it is binary code, everything is reproducible to infinity without losing quality . . . just numbers! – finally, we entered the ‘age of technical reproducibility’ – and every copy is identical to the ‘original’ one. The concept itself of an ‘original’ is now meaningless, and even the concepts of false and plagiarism don’t exist any longer. If it’s obsolete to talk about ‘originals’ in the real world, it becomes absolutely paradoxical in the web."
In a subsequent reply on nettimes, Olia Lialina suggests that rather than ‘bringing down the presuppositions of the gallery’,
". . . making a parody on Art.Teleportacia 0100101110101101.ORG brought new clients to the gallery and good publicity for itself. . . . You can make hundreds of Art.Teleportacia galleries, but next day they will be only hundreds of outdated pages with not actual information and broken links, because I will update only http://art.teleportacia.org. The same with all on line art and not art works. What is done on the net is not a book or cd or tape kind of product. It is not complete, not frosen [sic], but can be changed every moment. And this moment is a difference between copies and originals."
Unfortunately all the exhibits in ‘Miniatures of the Heroic Period’ do appear to be finished, and haven’t been updated or changed at all since they first appeared. We can see already that the argument for and against Teleportacia’s approach is basically completely theoretical. The issues of ownership and originality are conceptual and therefore relative. Buying one of the exhibits would have no real meaning or effect, other than to be able to say ‘I own that’, which in itself is empty.
Mass Media and the Subversion Illusion
Is commodification such an undesirable process for art? Many social critics throughout this century have strongly vocalised anxiety and warning against such a process. Two important voices who best illustrate these concerns are those of philosopher Theodore Adorno, and, more recently, art critic Suzi Gablik. Adorno believed that capitalism had replaced ‘true’ art with an easily digestible alternative which feeds us with a manufactured illusion of art, minus all the important qualities. Adorno’s rather difficult ideas are summed up in part by this extract from www.theory.org.uk:
"Adorno suggested that culture industries churn out a debased mass of unsophisticated, sentimental products which have replaced the more ‘difficult’ and critical art forms which might lead people to actually question social life."
This ‘art-lite’, which simply promotes the ideals of the dominant ideology, has permeated society deeply enough to convince people that the needs which it satisfied, the shallow, manufactured needs, are the genuine needs of the people in that society. The system responsible for the production of these false needs and solutions, Adorno named the ‘culture industry’. Therefore the ‘culture’ of a society is reduced to an effective tool for controlling the populace, keeping it happy and apathetic, accepting its role unquestioningly, whereas, Adorno believes:
"Culture, in the true sense, did not simply accommodate itself to human beings; but it always simultaneously raised a protest against the petrified relations under which they lived, thereby honouring them."
It is this loss of protest, of an oppositional or confrontational stance toward society in art which Adorno fears has been replaced with ‘neither guides for a blissful life, nor a new art of moral responsibility, but rather exhortations to toe the line, behind which stand the most powerful interests.’ Further than this, Adorno suggests that the culture industry has lost all the properties of ‘true’ art, becoming trapped in it’s own loop, needing to achieve nothing more than to maintain its own momentum and retain its hold.
This situation has arisen from the growing emphasis on the economic value of an art object, which in turn is a result of media and marketing industries creating a general ‘commodity-fetishism’, the belief in a high consumer-delight/cost ratio:
"The cultural commodities of the industry are governed . . . by the principle of their realisation as value, and not by their own specific content and harmonious formation. The entire process of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto cultural forms."
Here we can see how Adorno might appreciate the glimmer of hope provided by the apparent non-saleability of Internet art, and in turn despair at the aspirations of those such as Olia Lialina, seemingly intent on conceptually overriding this, perhaps the mediums most interesting and important quality. Wouldn’t a premature adoption of ‘Art World’ style bureaucracy consign Internet art to the same status as other media within the culture industry?
Suzi Gablik expresses a similar view to Adorno in her essay ‘Bureaucratisation: The Death of the Avant-Garde’ from her 1984 book, ‘Has Modernism Failed?’ Her primary concern is that:
"The steady displacement of radical consciousness by the forces of professionalism, bureaucracy and commercialism has caused avant-garde art to lose its power of rebellion and has crippled its impact."
The importance of the existence of an avant-garde lies in its ability to, in the same way as Adorno’s ‘true’ art, provoke an interrogation of the ‘mainstream’ through its adversarial but dependant relationship with it. Avant-garde art has traditionally been associated with, and contributed to, some of the great revolutionary movements of human history.
" . . . the subversive impulse of modernism has been our culture’s saving grace; the avant-garde functioned as the conscience of bourgeois civilisation, the only antitoxin generated within the body of our society to counteract the pernicious spread of secular, bureaucratic consciousness."
Gablik argues that rather than commodification stifling the voice of the avant-garde, the avant-garde has simply gone, everyone finally sharing the values of the dominant ideology and there no longer being any voice to stifle.
She believes this is due in part to the mass media’s ability to convince us that everyone believes the same things, strives for the same goals, and that society delivers, and in part due to the general prosperity of the Western world.
"After all, if everyone is happy with the rewards handed down by the system, why should anyone demand that things be different? Affluence is the great social tranquilliser."
avant-garde /'æva+~’ga:d/ n. & adj.
_n. pioneers or innovators esp. in art and literature.
_adj. (of ideas etc.) new, progressive.
avant-gardism n. avant-gardist n.
Etymology F, = vanguard
PART 4
What it Means to be Radical
Before the traditional art world business model is forced, however ill fittingly, onto the Internet, we should consider the implications; the potential that would be lost. More precisely, that the Internet could become the breeding ground for a new avant-garde.
Adorno and Gablik both maintain that a certain level of autonomy, a formal separation from social life such as that championed by modernism, is necessary to maintain an avant-garde. While Gablik’s view seems a more hard-line call for a clear black and white distinction between art and society, wistfully citing various examples of ‘alienated’ and martyr-like characters for whom artistic integrity was more important than food and clothing, Adorno’s understanding of art’s autonomy is more complex, subtle and realistic. For Adorno, autonomy is a quality that still exists within the framework of the social order which enables it. He acknowledges that the concept of aesthetics was developed within, and is therefore a product of, capitalist society, and that as such can never fully escape exchange-value. The autonomous artwork, for Adorno, is that which is presented as such, and its avant-garde properties derive from the inherent tension between exchange value and autonomy. The more ‘difficult’ the artwork, the greater it resists its commodity status, and the more apparent this tension becomes.
If we are to believe Suzi Gablik, the forces of commercialization have, at least in her eyes and in the Orwellian year 1984, made art into nothing but a commodity, and closed the doors to the possibility of an avant-garde in the way we have discussed earlier.
As if to confirm Gablik’s opinion, as I write this an ex-art student on television comments on the 1999 Turner Prize competition, ‘She’s [Tracy Emin] won it even if she hasn’t won it because if you look at what it [the notorious Bed installation] was worth when it came in, it’s now worth three thousand times that much money.’
Gablik blamed this state of inescapable conformity on the power of the mass media. How can the Internet set the stage for a chance for art to find freedom once again from the numbing apathy of the culture industry?
Government vs Humanity
In the writings of Adorno particularly, much significance is made of the controlling power of the ‘nation-state’. One of the greatest features of the Internet is that it is a distributed system, built by the US military to survive the disabling of any particular nodes via nuclear attack. This means that it has, contrary to almost every other model in the field of computer science, no central ‘hub’, or main processing unit, from which power is dispersed out through its branches hierarchically. The absence of any top-down filter is what has, up till now at least, kept the Internet essentially ungovernable. Any single country’s laws become inconsequential when applied beside the remaining majority of the net that exists outside of its jurisdiction. America in particular has tried to control it, its government feverishly inventing newer and newer bills, yet only at the same rate that the old bills are proving to fail. This failure, considering the US is both the most powerful country in the world, and that a huge amount of content and users originate there, can only be a good sign for those who are enjoying this new electronic freedom. It follows suite that theoretically, in the same respect, no singular national ideology can be dominant, no single culture or belief system can control the content that the medium carries, and this is possibly the first instance in the history of mass media where this is the case. A major example of the Internet’s power to bypass nationally localised authority arose during the recent ‘conflict’ in Yugoslavia. Independent Belgrade radio station B92 had their transmitter confiscated by Serbian authorities. With global support, B92 managed to continue its independent coverage of the war via the Internet, available to anyone with an internet connection, which in turn was also re-broadcast back into the homes of the Serbian people by the BBC world service satellite. An international support group, organised online, provided funding, equipment and publicity to help B92 continue broadcasting. (See Appendix A for the B92 Press release issued via mass email.)
Nevertheless, it would be naive to get too excited at this stage about the free future the Internet offers us. It is easy to get swept up in recent techno-utopian ideology, backed up by personal experiences of freedom of information online (Now we can watch people having sex, learn to build bombs and download CD quality pirated music, all from the comfort of our own homes). It is important to address the criticisms levelled at the net if we are to avoid its pitfalls.
The Class Issue
A common criticism is that despite claims that the Internet is a social equaliser, giving everyone the opportunity to express their views to the world, giving all of humanity a new voice, it is in fact an elitist medium. The net, it is argued, is only available to a relatively wealthy elite of the wealthy West. This is undeniably true, to an extent. The west is privy to the latest communications technologies, but the rest of the world, and the poorer people within the Western world, due to the devaluating effects of Moore’s Law, are catching on to the fact that much of the ‘obsolete’ technology which progress at the higher levels creates, is far from useless to people further down the social ladder. Cheap second hand, ex-government or simply low specification PCs are available at increasingly affordable prices.
Recently Prime Minister Tony Blair and USA President Bill Clinton announced their mutual backing for a scheme to get the world’s poor online. This, they believed, would be incredibly valuable, enabling them to educate themselves and develop job skills. (Many of the worlds poor, however, considered farming equipment and medicine to be of slightly greater value.) A proposal is also to be implemented in the UK to rent computers to low income households for £5 per week.
As well as the hardware issue, the sudden explosion of ‘free’ service providers (Freeserve etc.) is making access to the net available to anyone at the standard price of a local phone call. Gone are the days when we would pay AOL or CompuServe a monthly subscription and an hourly rate to use the net (although AOL and CompuServe themselves refuse to give up this model).
So although the criticism of the nets’ elitism has good grounding, the divisions between those to whom the Internet is available, and those to whom it isn’t, seems to be rapidly decreasing.
The World White Web
Another problem with the Internet is that it contributes to the ‘Westernisation’ of other cultures. English is the dominant language online. More often than not, people of non-English speaking cultures (Including Olia Lialina and most European net artists) produce their web sites and other electronic communications in English. However, English is also the real worlds’ dominant tongue, so it is only natural that this be reflected online, and most European countries teach and speak English as a second language anyway. It does not seem valid to suggest that in any way English is imposed upon these other cultures. The percentage of non-English web sites has remained steady, currently growing at a greater rate than English-speaking ones. If westernisation is a fault of the net, then it is a fault carried naturally over from the real world.
The Politics of Towing the Line
In ‘Has Modernism Failed’, Suzi Gablik refers to the ‘organisational personality’ as responsible for our social apathy, somebody who;
". . . lives in a condition of submission to a cultural and economic power system because of the rewards and prestige which are offered in return for such a submission. . . The ‘organisational imperative’ functions on the basis of the idea that whatever is good for the individual can only come from the modern organisation. . . The goal is security: to be part of the big, powerful machine, to be protected by it, and to feel strong in the symbiotic connection with it."
The Internet was the product of the most organisational of institutions – the Military. It was then passed to another – the education system. Now perhaps it is handing the reins to another – the corporation. The point is, the Internet is the technological child of these organisational constructs. How then can it genuinely oppose such things whilst remaining inextricably bound to them? Is it naive to suggest that artists can work independent of these systems? Vuk Cosic has doubts:
"There’s a school of thought [which believes] that money shouldn’t exist, that all human labour should be done for free and exchanged for services; err I do your website and you give me a bucket of beer. But somehow it’s a problem that it’s impossible to imagine a human being or a net artist who doesn’t interface with any of the networks or infrastructures that surround you, like economy, streets, public space, private space. Every instance of interaction with those systems is a loss of the same virginity that is being defended with the claims that ‘net art should not be sold’. . ."
Corporate Funding and the Subversion Buffer
The Internet structure and technology that exists now is a direct result of capitalist funding. Without corporate software giants, retailers and media companies, the Internet would more than likely not be capable of multimedia, and not be anywhere near as accessible, popular or useful. It’s hard to find a company not inviting us online .
Global capitalism, along with individual capitalist governments, have become a major part of the Internets infrastructure, supporting, both directly and indirectly, the technology that allows the public, the Internet artists, and the revolutionaries the freedom to utilise the medium themselves. This must lead us to question whether the Internet is actually a radical world of freedom after all. It is more than just possible that this freedom, in the same way as the ‘freedom’ of a capitalist democracy scorned by Adorno & Co, is also illusory – part of the great Spectacle – a direct tool of the culture industry itself. After all, why fund and maintain something that gives people the power to oppose you? We must acknowledge the culture industry’s ability to absorb subversion rather than fight it. Any martial arts enthusiast would explain that this is the most effective method of fighting – to redirect an opponent’s strength against them. The capitalist system is flexible, allowing a ‘subversion buffer’ to exist at its edge, into which oppositional subcultures fall, and out of which, with increasing rapidity, the culture industry dissects and repackages them, then offers them back to us as product. This process is applied to avant-garde art by the art worlds’ use of ‘Art History’. This way, new and different artistic practices have a history constructed for them, a path strewn together from all the possible paths, in the same way Barthes suggests a text is created, the language of art history being rearranged to place this ‘new’ thing at the end of a long line of already categorised developments. This proves that the ‘new’ thing belongs to the old things, belongs to ‘Art History’ and thus belongs to the traditional art world after all. Olia Lialina herself is concerned at this possibility:
"Net art meets only vulgar, one season interest from the outside world. This wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t make things cheaper and that in some months all innovative experiments, new art forms and language will be buried as a last-season fashion."
Even the most radical of the historical avant-garde have eventually become mainstream, falsely satisfying the constructed need for hollow subversion, a way to let off steam without really achieving anything. After all, does the Internet really offer us that much power? Pornography, software piracy? How harmful could these things really be to those in power? And so we must consider whether perhaps the Internet is the subversion buffer of the new global economy, and not a new technologically powered utopia of freedom after all .
Technology Delivers the Fatal Blow
Internet 2 is a planned second global network. Frustrated with the current state of the Internet, the bandwidth constraints and unreliability of certain nodes, the overburdening of the current infrastructure through an exponentially increasing user base, plans are afoot within the US academia, government and multinationals to implement a new, specially constructed network of the latest technology. Internet 2 will use fibre-optic cabling, capable of transmitting phenomenally greater data traffic than current telephone line technology. It will be used to create an environment of what Bill Gates has named ‘friction-free capitalism’. It will be used to supply high bandwidth interactive entertainment. It will be put in place via corporate sponsorship. And it will be private.
Internet 2 presents the greatest threat to culture, democracy and freedom since the original Internet took off. Organisations or individuals will not be able to simply attach a server to this new network. Content will only come from sanctioned sources, and the organisations responsible for this sanctioning will be huge multinational technology and communications companies. Home use will be restricted and not free. Traffic will basically be one way. Will it be in the interests of these corporations to give a voice to Belgrade Radio?
Basically the big players in the Internet of today will own the proposed Internet of tomorrow. Internet 2 will not have grown or evolved naturally like its predecessor, but its surface resemblance to the current structure will disarm the public against its usurping of the ‘real’ internet. Baudrillard will be in his element when the world is a new media simulation of an old media simulation of a long lost reality. The capitalist ideology of the new global economy will sit at the very top of an international media hierarchy. What chance of a new avant-garde then, when the culture industry truly is everything?
We can see the beginnings of this corporate encroachment now with the wealth of free ISP’s mentioned above. There is no such thing as a free lunch! With each different CDROM, we access the Internet through a portal of that company’s making. The interface becomes a diverting overlay, herding us away from the Internet’s real freedom. Click on the ‘Home Shopping’ icon and you are taken not to a neutral online mall, but to the providing company’s own online shopping venture. The net becomes the company’s own ‘version’ of the net. Some free service providers already have an in-built, non-overideable ‘protection’ against pornography – how long before ASDA.net blocks the pages of Somerfield.com?
When/if Internet 2 is in place, of course Internet 1 will still exist. But the technology companies will have jumped ship, as will most of the service providers, content providers and content. All that will be left is an archaic infrastructure, perhaps reverting to its original use as a communications tool for email and university to university transmission. Without its user base, its interaction with capitalism or innovative technology, the Internet’s power to subvert will be greatly disabled. Unfortunately it seems that this is the battle plan of the culture industry.
Fame and Fortune "Not That bad" Shocker!
Another potential threat to the formation of a new avant-garde is the mindset of the artists themselves. Artists exist who want financial success, a ‘career’, to be a ‘player’ in the art world. Many of these artists are now working with the Internet – not because of it’s revolutionary potential, but because it is a new medium to explore, and because Internet art is where the traditional galleries and institutions are finally turning their gaze. It has potential as a career move. Institutions are now offering commissions and projects to Internet artists. Whilst some are not interested, such as Heath Bunting, there are plenty of others who are. Vuk Cosic even suggests that the artists are more to blame than the art world for Internet art’s commodification:
"I think simply that it’s not the massive desire of museums to maintain prestige that’s going to draw net art into the collections successfully. It’s more the conformism on the side of the artists, who are going to create technically commodifiable pieces or a model for the accommodation of net art within the museum situation."
Fame beckons to the underground, offering to give it pride of place overground. This is happening elsewhere within the computer underground – famous hacker groups like L0hpt Heavy Industries, once the scourge of corporate network administrators everywhere, now offer there services as ‘security advisors’, their website (www.l0hpt.com) now indistinguishable in appearance from any of the corporate sites they once broke the law to subvert. If a new avant-garde did develop online, could its members resist selling out, now that the stakes are so high? Has this already happened?
The Next Big Thing!
It is very likely that Internet art will continue, and that it will maintain an extended radius of freedom in comparison to other media. The Internet needs the allure of subversion in order to draw in the punters. It is very unlikely that net usage would be so widespread without the element of freedom it suggests, real or illusory. And if nobody used it, it would be of no value to capitalism, and the years of investment would have been for nothing. Capitalism is relying on the net to capture the attention of consumers and as long as this is necessary there will remain a place for Internet art. The real issue is what relationship this art will, in turn, have with capitalism.
A vital problem with the approach of Adorno and Gablik lies in their belief that products of the culture industry are consumed passively, which is contestable even in terms of the media to which they initially referred, but finds itself floundering dangerously when faced with the nature of the net. Their opinions derive from a definition of art limited to very traditional practices, both texts being written before the internet became widely used. However, this view was perhaps first contested theoretically by Barthes, and is difficult to accept now within the collaborative, author/reader, interactive, synchronous, narrowcasting environment of the Internet.
Adorno’s championing of the necessity for distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art is also dubious. For one thing, it is more than suggestive of an intellectual elitism. More importantly, it often seems unnecessary. How true is it that ‘low’ culture is inherently passive? John Lechte writes:
". . . it is clear that exchange-value can be subverted as much by the very ‘low’ elements (obscenity) in social life, as by the highest . . . products of the avant-garde. Both can entail the distancing necessary to counter the ephemeral immediacy of consumer pleasure."
Finally, the ‘high’, ‘difficult’ art, claimed by modernism as autonomous, has in many ways less potential than the products of low culture. Without philosophy and without concepts, both of which come directly from and rely upon the social arena, ‘high’ art is unable to speak at all, its formal aspects unable to find recognition.
So, at least in terms of understanding Internet art, the Gablik/Adorno perspective has some important flaws, which leaves a little room for the development of some new ideas. The crux of the issue however, is whether Internet art is, or has the potential to be, radical. Can it question the dominant ideology/ideologies of the society/societies in which its users live, even though it is a product of both?
If we pose this question outside of the historical straightjacket applied by modernism (for which the Internet’s mass media status disqualifies it from any subversive potential) and postmodernism (for which any subversion would be futile and indulgent), then we can allow ourselves to see the Internet, due to the unique features we have outlined, as the most radical of all current media.
In terms of the threat of commodification, of the artists being subdued by economic rewards, Internet art still has the lowest exchange-value of any media. Even Lialina’s gallery can be seen, with goodwill, as a defensive mechanism – if net art does become saleable, at least the commerce will remain away from the corporations and with the artists.
Also, the diversity, fluidity and disbursed, organic infrastructure will hopefully always inject an element of uncontrollable unpredictability, enough so that no equilibrium or rigid system could ever take absolute hold.
What has become most evident during the course of this study are that we are living in an age of contradictions. Postmodernism has led us to question all that we once believed, and everywhere now are unresolved tensions between opposites. The real and the virtual, the consumer and producer, all have developed interchangeable relationships. It seems that a ‘pure’ avant-garde is no longer attainable, and yet it also seems that it never was. It seems that commodification is unavoidable, but that its threat is not as real as was once perceived. Internet art inhabits an unmapped space between these contradictions, a middle ground, a metaphor for both sides. It neither fits the values of Modernism or Postmodernism. It can neither be a commodity nor avoid being seen in those terms. After all, information is the new currency.
Perhaps the important issue isn’t whether any of these tensions can be resolved, but that these tensions are the vital, defining forces of our time, and that it might be in our interests to embrace them and build on them rather than trying to knock them down.
Offline
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Editors Casy, Dunlop, Selwood. Culture as Commodity. Policy Studies Institute. 1996. |
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Editors Robertson, Mash, Tickner, Bird, Curtis, Putman. FutureNatural. Routledge. 1996. |
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Editors Strengholt, den Boer, Velthoven. Website Graphics. Thames & Hudson. 1997. |
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Faber, L. Browser. Laurence King Publishing. 1997. |
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Fuller, M. 'Ten Reasons Why The Art World Loves Digital Art', MUTE issue 11. 1998. |
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Gablik, S. Has Modernism Failed? Thames & Hudson. 1984. |
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Gates, B. The Road Ahead. Viking. 1995. |
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Gibson, W. Idoru. Penguin. 1996. |
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Hertz, J.C. Space Invaders. The Face issue 144. 1998. |
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Holtzman, S. R. Digital Mantras. M.I.T. Press. 1994. |
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Kent, S. Shark Infested Waters. Zwemmer. 1994. |
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Levinson, P. Digital McLuhan: a Guide to the Information Millennium. Routledge. 1999. |
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Morrison, E. 'Ten Reasons Why The Art World Hates Digital Art', MUTE issue 11. 1998. |
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Ward, G. Teach Yourself Postmodernism. Hodder & Stoughton. 1997. |
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Baumgaertel. T. Interview with Heath Bunting. Nettimes mailing list. 1997. |
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Baumgaertel. T. Interview with Robert Adrian. Nettimes mailing list. 1997. |
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Baumgaertel. T. Interview with Vuk Cosic. Nettimes mailing list. 1997. |
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Blissett, L. 0100101110101101.ORG: art.hacktivism. Nettimes mailing list. June 1999. |
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Broeckmann, A. Art in the Electronic Networks. Nettimes mailing list. Oct 1996. |
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Christe, I. Webmasters, Not Old Masters. Hotwired culture archive. (www.hotwired.com) |
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NOTE: Some references in the text to books or essays do not include a page number. This is because the quote was taken from an online reproduction of the original text, minus page numbers, and will be listed instead in the ‘online’ section of the bibliography.
APPENDIX A – B92 Independent Radio Press Release March 24th 1999
>>Help B92 and the independent media in Yugoslavia Latest news
>>at http://helpB92.xs4all.nl
>>
>>Last night the transmitter of radio B92 from Belgrade was
>>confiscated by the Serbian authorities. The editor-in-chief,
>>Veran Matic, was held in custody in a police station for
>>well over 8 hours. Despite this intimidation the station
>>continues its independent news service. At De Balie in
>>Amsterdam a support group has been founded tonight, which
>>intends to support B92 and other independent media in
>>Yugoslavia where possible in the continuation of these
>>important news services.
>>
>>With the support of internet provider XS4ALL B92 also
>>transmits its signals via internet since december 1996.
>>These digital broadcasts are picked up by the BBC
>>Worldservice and retransmitted via satellite. Through a
>>network of local radio stations the programs of B92 can be
>>heard throughout Serbia, despite repeated attempts by the
>>authorities to silence the station. At this moment it is
>>still possible to follow the broadcasts of Radio B92 in real
>>audio on their website, at http://www.b92.net
>>
>>In light of the current tense situation it is very likely
>>that the possibilities of B92 to continue its independent
>>news service will be limited even further. The support group
>>therefore intends to take measures to distribute news by and
>>about B92 from Amsterdam. For that purpose a special website
>>has been opened at http://helpB92.xs4all.nl
>>
>>B92 is the backbone of the independent news service in
>>Yugoslavia. Without immediate financial support this last
>>source of independent news for the inhabitants of this
>>region is endangered. A fundraising campaign is being
>>started by the support group, in order to send money and
>>equipment to B92 and other independent radio stations in
>>Serbia and Kosovo as soon as possible.
>>
>>The founders of the support group are: B92, De Balie, De
>>Digitale Stad, Next 5 Minutes, Press Now, radioqualia
>>(Australia), De Waag (MONM) en XS4ALL.
>>
>>For more information or to send messages of support, please
>>e-mail helpB92@xs4all.nl. You can also digitally support this
>>initiative by copying the special logo onto your website and
>>linking to Help B92.
|
|
Internet |
%'age world online pop. |
Year 2000 (proj'd) (M) |
Total pop. (M) |
GDP ($B) |
%'age world economy |
GDP per capita |
|
|
1331 |
57% |
160 |
322 |
$10,780 |
32% |
|
| |
|
Non-English |
100.2 |
43% |
167 |
5,630 |
$22,930 |
68% |
|
|
|
European Languages |
67.53 |
28.6% |
|
1,089 |
$10,550 |
31% |
|
|
|
Czech |
0.27 2 |
|
|
10.3 |
$27 |
|
$11.1 |
74 |
|
5.5 3 |
|
7 |
20 |
$518 |
|
$20.7 |
668 | |
|
1.6 4 |
|
|
5 |
$151 |
|
$20 |
513 | |
|
9.9 5 |
4.2% |
16 |
72 |
$1620 |
4.8% |
$24 |
812 | |
|
14 6 |
5.9% |
25 |
98 |
$2240 |
6.6% |
$25 |
1621 | |
|
0.26 7 |
|
|
12 |
$96 |
|
$7.5 |
52 | |
|
Hungarian |
0.31 8 |
|
|
15 |
$35 |
|
$7.5 |
84 |
|
5.7 9 |
2.4% |
10.6 |
57 |
$1210 |
3.6% |
$20.5 |
349 | |
|
Polish |
1.0 10 |
|
|
44 |
$79 |
|
$2.5 |
109 |
|
4.1 11 |
1.7% |
|
170 |
$1088 |
3.2% |
$6.5 |
265 | |
|
Russian |
1.4 12 |
|
5 |
170 |
692 |
2.0% |
$5.2 |
166 |
|
1.7 13 |
|
|
5 |
$165 |
|
$22.6 |
280 | |
|
Icelandic |
0.38 13 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1.5 13 |
|
|
4 |
$154 |
|
$26.2 |
319 | |
|
3.9 13 |
|
4 |
10 |
$249 |
|
$20.8 |
534 | |
|
Scandinavian languages (total) |
7.5 13 |
3.2% |
8 |
19.25 |
$568 |
1.7% |
|
|
|
Slovak |
0.51 14 |
|
|
5.4 |
$46.3 |
|
$8.6 |
|
|
15.4 15 |
6.5% |
|
332 |
$2015 |
6.0% |
$6 |
510 | |
|
Turkish |
0.15 16 |
|
|
59 |
$388 |
|
$6.1 |
33 |
|
TOTAL EUROPEAN LANGUAGES (excl. English) |
67.6 |
28.6% |
|
1,089 |
$10,550 |
31% |
|
6328 |
|
ASIAN LANGUAGES |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
0.95 17 |
|
|
130 |
$638 |
|
|
| |
|
9.9 18 |
4.2% |
|
885 |
$4250 |
13.5% |
$3.5 |
476 | |
|
Hebrew |
0.8 19 |
|
|
6 |
$97 |
|
$17.5 |
98 |
|
19.7 20 |
8.3% |
23 |
125 |
$3,256 |
9.7% |
$22.7 |
1688 | |
|
4.3 21 |
1.8% |
|
75 |
$384 |
|
$14.2 |
186 | |
|
0.7 22 |
|
|
18 |
|
|
|
| |
|
Thai |
0.1 23 |
|
|
20 |
$525 |
|
$7.7 |
21 |
|
TOTAL ASIAN LANGUAGES |
36.4 |
15.4% |
|
|
|
|
|
2311 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TOTAL WORLD |
221 |
|
327 |
$33,700 |
|
|
|
Source: http://www.euromktg.com/globstats/index.html
Percentage of Population Using the Internet
Canada 38%
Australia 25%
Singapore 25%
USA 25%
New Zealand 24%
UK 15%
Germany 14%
Hong Kong 14%
Taiwan 12%
France 11%
Philippines 8%
Malaysia 7%
China 4%
South Africa 2%
Thailand 2%
Indonesia 1%
Source: ACNielsen NetWatch
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/demographics/article/0,1323,5901_225371,00.html#table2
APPENDIX C - Teleportacia FAQ. (http://art.teleportacia.com/office/faq.html)
Why Does Art.Teleportacia sell net.art but not paintings?
Today, the World Wide Web is widely used as a medium for buying and selling information, goods and services. A lot of off-line galleries come here to promote and sell their collections of photographs, paintings and sculptures. At the same time a new generation of artists appeared in 90-s: net artists. They create their stuff in the net and for the net. These works meet great interest - commercial success as well - from exposure at media art exhibitions and other off-line events and institutions. Net.art is exported from the net. We find it more natural to create a market for net.art inside the WWW.
Why did you start this gallery with 'Miniatures of the Heroic Period'?
We selected small early pieces of net.art by some of the most well-known internet artists for our first exhibition to stress that the spirit of the net is in details and that the weight of net.art can’t be counted in Kb. We wanted to come back to naive and brilliant experiments with net language. There’s a history behind each project. They really mark a new epoch in art history. (more analysis in the exhibition area)
Does it make sense to spend money for a net.artwork now?
This is your chance to invest in a new field of art. Prices will rise as demand increases and high returns can be expected. Whether you’re a private individual or a company, Art.Teleportacia will consult and support you in setting up your own collection of the most contemporary art on the market.
If you are seriously interested in the development of your virtual office and take it as seriously as a real one, you will not amuse your clients and guests with childish interactive games, but will turn to real net values and quality.
How can I really own the artwork I’ve bought?
Art.Teleportacia, in alliance with the artists, sells access to the artwork. As soon as you buy an artwork, you can determine its accessibility. By the way, it’s the same as the off-line world: the owner of the painting has the right to choose whether this artwork is shown publicly, whether it remains only in private or company rooms, whether it is hidden in cellar...
Who controls the access to the artwork?
Accessibility of a sold artwork is checked by a special script, which runs on the Art.Teleportacia server. When Art.Teleportacia arranges the purchase of the artwork, a special contract is signed which regulates further accessibility, and it guarantees to keep this contract.
How can I be sure that the artwork I buy is really the original and not just a copy?
Art.Teleportacia provides a special certification and a unique proprietary system, which ensures that the artwork you purchase is the original. For example, one simple way to prove that an artwork is original: the URL in location bar. It’s included as an important part into the performance of the artwork. One can copy HTML code and images of a simple net project, but the URL can’t be duplicated.
There are several ways to store and access the artwork. Which one would you advise to choose?
We wouldn’t like to exclude any possibility. Selling/buying net.art is a new field of art business. This system can definitely work in more than one way. We’re going to evaluate different strategies. Which one is the best depends on every single artwork, it’s specialities, the customer’s interest and view of the Internet.
It seems, the idea to exhibit banners as art projects is in the air...
Internet artists are starting to include banners with their projects, and even work with 468x60 images as a WWW genre. In fact this minimalist form gives as much chance to express yourself as huge web projects full of graphics and scripts.
For Art.Teleportacia the ‘office/banner’ section is not only a collection, but first of all a guest book, where people leave their impression and attitude not in words, but in the laconic style of a banner. It can say a lot. And also such messages reflect what their authors think about a situation in general. What they suggest is the best way to advertise the First Real Net Art Gallery.
Isn’t it a real gift to future web historians? :)
Related Resources & Links
Teleportacia Gallery – Olia Lialina’s online gallery. Contains exhibitions, theory & media coverage.
Irrational.org – Heath Buntings website. Contains his artwork, along with various other contributions and documents regarding ‘subversive’ activity.
Easylife – Alexei Shulgin’s website.
Vuk.org – Vuk Cosic’s website.
Jodi.org – Website of Dirk Paesmans and Joan Heemskerk, aka. jodi.
Nettimes mailing list – Archive of discourse between artists, critics and journalists regarding the Internet.
Eyebeam mailing list – Archive of discourse between artists, critics and journalists regarding the Internet.
Hotwired – Online companion to technology magazine Wired. Contains archived news and articles.
0100101110101101.ORG – Website of individual or group acting under the name ‘Luther Blissett’. Contains hacked versions of various art sites, plus documentation and related articles.
http://www.0100101110101101.ORG