I know, I know I'm starting to go a little out of order. Well that's just the way the class is designed. We wrapped up our little Blender 3d project last week, and now we're full steam ahead on to web design. We're not going too crazy just some Dreamweaver and Html action. For this very reason, my teacher chose to move us on in the text book to the chapter on Web art.
Bruce Wands begins by describing a little of the early history of internet technology. He explains how the advent of graphical browsers like Mosaic and Netscape led to a blossoming of digital art, that could be shared across space to anyone who should seek it out. Unfortunately browsers developed at such a fast pace that it was difficult for artists to keep up, by the time an artist was finished their work would often be obsolete. Since then much of the language that is used to build websites and web applications has been standardized. Even so, there are apparently museums with catalogs of older computers complete with older installations of this software to keep the old relics of Net art alive. After a bit, Bruce goes on to talk about the effect of GPS and art designed to anticipate the mobile internet.
Probably the most interesting line in the chapter to me discusses the place of Net art: "While it is apparent that net art will evolve and grow as an art form, its position in the traditional art establishment will remain in question until it finds a secure place within the broader field of contemporary art." There is no question, early art forms are always in that strange transition state between outsider art and traditional. So much of the work that is shown in Bruce Wands' book is surreal or bizarre in nature. They're like the hushed and diligent paintings of drug addled weirdos that later go on to command millions at auction. I wonder how much the world of art will just transition on it's own into this place.
Without regard for the needs and desires of bourgeoisie collectors, while shaping those needs as they parade through the market place laundering the ill gotten millions of so many. I mean, if something is worth money then it's meaning must be at least as large as it's valuation, right? So its valuation drives the exceptance of its meaning through to the conventional wisdom of contemporary art and over time the spectrum of the traditional. If that is then the case, then where do the free works of art go to live and die?
So much of the hype of the internet is based around these massive enterprises of freedom, where investors stash billions with no idea of how they will ever see a return. In many ways, we can look at any conventional tool on the internet (like Twitter, Google, or MapQuest) as an artistic instrument valued in the billions, but with no material worth. They each had to turn to selling ad space in order to figure out how to keep the lights on, but they also face hungry investors that view anything with less then a 100x yield as a failure.
Someday, someone, somewhere will make a piece of net art that transcends those international boundries. That scribbles across the folds of mentality the way all of these outsider artifacts have endeared the world of contemporary art, and it will be owned. And it will be sold. I think that it will probably own its self, but call into question everything that we believe about personhood, ownership and artistic expression. I'm just not sure if that will happen before or after all contemporary artists grow to accept and believe that it is them who is on the outside.
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