Internet Art

The tipping point of the Internet was around 1990 making it an everyday object for under 25's. Internet art is in its infancy a new interesting but difficult space because of the contradiction of being personal and public, micro and macro simultaneously.

Interaction on the internet involves users looking through the computer, 'through the 'windows'.'

'Kinect' is described as a Game Changer, you physically become a part of the game. With 360 degree mapping of the room it is not just restricted to games but is able to be used for other things. Moving towards a no interface-interface, no need to touch, a word or gesture is enough.

The interaction is the experience, digital art has to be an experience. what you do with the computer has to be part of this process.

"Text rain" text was falling and you could become part of the scene as you physically displaced the words.

Internet Art is about personal behaviour and experience, the better for not being edited. Virtual space is a part of our modern identity.

Stellark caused outrage when he showed how our relationship with the internet has changed. He had an ear grafted onto his arm so he could hear his ipod without any encumbrance around his head.

 The question is , Why is this Art? It provokes a thought about our relationship with technology and being like an android.

He set up a project on the web where his body was scanned for nerve nodes and published. Globally, people were able to make him dance by inputing coordinates. He said that it was the ultimate Facebook 'poking'.

Sound Theory - The Practice of Sound

W. Ong in 1971 wrote that "the world of sound is an event world while the world of sight is an object world." He was interested in orality within cultures and the sounds that connect us to our own. Even in the world of 'VJ', sound makes the best visuals.

Sound The Forgotten Medium


Because sound is developed prenatally, it is easily taken for granted and not appreciated for the fundamental effect it has on each one of us and our culture. To reflect upon Sound and what it does we can think about these questions.   


1. What is Sound?
2. How do we hear Sound?
3. How does sound imbue meaning?
4. How do we confront it in everyday life?
5. What can be done with it?


It seems that emotional intensity can increase hearing. 
Sound designer W. Murch talks about the opening scene of Apocalypse Now (1979) 

"You're looking at a character whose head is enveloped in flames, and then at slow-motion helicopter blades slicing through his body, superimposed upon a whirling ceiling fan, and strange sounds and music intermingling from different sources; you're probably aware you're watching a film, not an imitation of real life.




 Even dreams, despite their odd surreality, don't look quite like that. Inevitably, the superimposed images in Apocalypse Now betray a self-consciousness because they come at the very beginning and are intended to expose and explore Willard's inner state of mind. If there had been no resonance between that scene and the film as a whole, the opening would have been a meaningless exercise, empty virtuosity."




Another film that effectively manipulates sound for greater effect is 'Saving Private Ryan.' 

Gary Rydstrom - Since we hear all around us, while seeing only to the front, sounds have long been used to alert us to danger. In Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, the battle scenes are shot from the shaky, glancing, and claustrophobic point of view of a soldier on the ground. There are no sweeping vistas, only the chaos of fighting as it is experienced. The sound for this movie, therefore, had to set the full stage of battle, while putting us squarely in the middle of it. I can honestly say that this film could not have been made in the same way if it were not for the possibilities of theatrical surround sound. If sound could not have expressed the scale, orientation, and emotion of a soldier’s experience, the camera would have had to show more. Yet it is a point of the movie to show how disorienting the visual experience was. Sound becomes a key storyteller.




The Art of Foley is the creation of sound that is not real but it reproduces rich sound that sounds realistic. This effect is used in many other films and indeed in the creation of the sound in this film 'Saving Private Ryan.' Most people remember the sound of the tanks which was recreated using Foley. Foley artist Jana Vance dislocated three ribs while lugging heavy gear and military boots for a scene's sound effects.


Sound is:

• Vibration
• Context
• Changes in Pressure

Sound Qualities:

• It is 'immersive'
• Pervasive
• Depth
• No Directionality
• Cannot be frozen like an image

Sound as materiality:

• Body and mind are not easily dichotomised
• Sound is physical - eg. dubbing.
• The physiological and the physical cannot be separated

see."Discographies"by J Gilbert and Ewan Pearson and their research on 'fabrique' night-club.


Sound and Perspective:

• Figure   -   represents the voice as historically the most important sound

• Ground -   represents the melody  

• Field      -   the bass as the physical world around the listener

Clubland music ruins this perspective order as in this example of D'n'B music, the bass is the predominant sound and because this is like a corruption of the norm this explains the hypnotic feeling that is induced when listening.

Sound and Distance:

• Intimate / Distant
• Personal / Impersonal
• Formal / Informal

Sound Semiotics:

Marcel Duchamp himself made Sculpture musical  which avant garde composition was randomly generated,  a technique that would return 40 years later.

In 1952 John Cage give birth to an idea. The idea that sound could be conceptualised , that we can establish a relationship to sound. Although this event was very provocative, it helped the development of ideas applied to sound and noise. He wanted to provoke thoughts about our expectations of sound. That sounds should be loved for what they are.

Barthes semiotics apply to sound and noise -

                                        SIGNIFIER  >  SIGNIFIED  >  SIGN

Forrester notes that sound is important and special to us all as sound is the trigger that prompts our memories.

'Digital Immigrant' or 'Digital Native'

The last time society was as seismically shaken as this one, was during the Industrial Revolution. There is a debate about when it first began, similar to the disagreement over when this new Digital Age began. 

Change happens every two years. Of course this was a comment by Moore on the doubling of transistor densities, enabling technology to produce computers with increasingly better performance.  This has been true for 40 years, technological and social change in that time having been significantly driven forward, and that pace is expected to continue for at least another decade. 

A new IDC Digital Universe Study sponsored by EMC estimates data growing faster than Moore's Law to 1.8 Zettabytes of data in 2011 and predicts that enterprises to manage 50X more data and files to grow 75X in next decade. (2x-moores-law)

FIRST INTEL PROCESSOR

1984 APPLE MACINTOSH

FIRST SILICON CHIP

FIRST LAPTOP - 1982 Commodore Executive

 Amazon, Apple,  Facebook, Google, Sony,Twitter and YouTube are  the definitive game-changers in the Digital Age. These innovations have changed the way we interact and play, bringing technology into every sphere of our lives.





With two billion internet users worldwide, (United Nations International Telecommunications Union), the number of mobile phone users worldwide has breached five billion, with close to one billion of these 3G subscribers.


The Earth's population is 6.8 billion, so approximately one in three global citizens now access the web, while mobile phone ownership has skyrocketed.

This phenomenon is not restricted to the developed world, as 57% of internet users are in developing countries. Mobile phone usage is also mushrooming in poorer nations as comparatively low costs make it more affordable than a fixed phone line.


In December 1992 the first ever text was sent by Neil Papworth when he sent "Merry Christmas' to a friend. Texting is on the rise is proven by a new study by Nielsen which indicates voice calls are declining while data and app usage has quadrupled. 

200,000 text messages/per second and 50 million tweets a day. This particular statistic zeros in on the rapid spread of social networking, as Twitter launch was in 2007.








30 million Facebook usersin the UK (or half the population). Facebook’s popularity has accelerated sharply, highlighting changing trends in the way we use the internet and what propels us to go online.


72% of under 25's comment on TV shows via Facebook while 79% of students say a media blackout for a day would cause stress, confusion and isolation. There are three times as many smartphones activated every minute as babies being born according to H. Vestberg, CEO of Ericsson.


YouTube claims 3 billion videos are viewed every day, more video is uploaded to You-Tube than the three top US networks created in 60 years. In 2010 they achieved over 700 billion playbacks.

Add caption

Using these representational diagrams, the growth exponential of original communications can be visualised.


Sarnoff  was representational of the Analogue broadcasting to a niche audience.

The Reed Loop included the use of telecommunications.


Metcalf represents the phenomenal possibilities of this new interactive virtual space in which to play like MMS, Hashtag trends and statweestics.

Studies about social networking reveal a distinct generation gap. On average, a typical user under 25 years old would have an abundance of friends, usually about 1000 online friends. 

A mature user, however has a modest amount of friends which usually does not exceed twenty. 

There is marked difference between those 
people born around the coming of the 'WWW' after 1997 who could be termed as Digital Natives and those born before who have had to become 'adapted' as if immigrants to the Digital Age.

Behaviour and attitudes to technology can almost be defined by age and this is evident by the way younger people approach learning and communication. Even the way they think is defined by the technology they can access and use.


One 12 year old who embodies the notion of a 'digital native' is Thomas Suarez, a successful app designer. He is genuinely an able, confident young person who while he is without a doubt very gifted and intelligent.  




The question still remains however, is he actually a digital native?   He appears to answer this question himself, in his address by revealing the effort he had to go through in order to attain his goal of creating apps. 




App designing did not come naturally to him, but through determination and perseverance and most likely benefitted from a lot of help from adults who had the perception to realise the potential ability of this young man.






In the Postmodern era, possibilities seem endless and  it seems that now the internet is one huge playground in which to explore and play.
Jane McGonigle thinks reality is broken and society should invest in games in order to fix it. Her alternative reality games challenges society's negative view of games and claims that games can be world-changing and can function as an important tool to help fix whatever problems people suffer.


Jean Baudrillard comments on the notion of Virtual Reality. That virtuality is now so pervasive that reality is now secondary and that we all now inhabit a 'Simulacra". We lack the ability to tell the difference between the real world and the virtual world because of contemporary media, urbanisation, consumerism and our ideologies. These increasingly are tools which take us further and further from reality. 


As the line between reality and virtuality is blurred so the distinctions between the public and private have become undefined. This is clearly demonstrated by 'celebrity lifestyles' that many are eager to participate in as published in Facebook and other social networking sites. 

Thus, "Imagination is today a staging ground for action, and not only for escape"

Anthropologist Appadurai differentiates five dimensions of global "scopes";

  

         ethnoscapes -  the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world in which people live

  

        technoscapes - the global configuration of technologies moving at high speeds across previously         impermeable borders

        financescape - the global grid of currency speculation and capital transfer

        mediascapes - the distribution of the capabilities to produce and disseminate information and the large complex repertoire of images and narratives generated by these capabilities 

  

        ideoscapes - ideologies of states and counter-ideologies of movements, around which nation-states have organised their political cultures.

Appadurai explores how electronic media offer new everyday resources and disciplines for the imagination of the self and the world that imagination has broken out of the expressive space of art, myth, and ritual, and has become a part of the everyday life and practices of ordinary people, who formerly were excluded.





Time and space, according to I. Chambers in 'The Aural Walk' is also affected by the transformation of how and where we can listen.
He believes 'music on the move is being continually decontextualized and recontextualized in the inclusive acoustic and symbolic flux of everyday life”.

Questioning Modern Art and its influence in Postmodern Art.

The early twentieth century spawned the birth of many new ideas like Nihilism, Picasso's Cubism and the Anti-art revolutionary movement called Dada amongst others. Dada was opposed to the culture and values that had resulted in WW1 and WW2.

Marcel DuChamp in 1921, famously exhibited a signed urinal in the Louvre, suspended from the ceiling and along with other Dadaists established the idea that Art could be made from found objects, no matter how banal. The Dada movement and the use and assemblage of these everyday objects outside of their natural environment would later inspire innovative styles like Collage, Photo-montage, Surrealism and lead on to Pop-art, Neo-Dada and Installation art of Postmodern times.

This anti-establishment, anti-bourgeois and even anti-art movement challenged the traditions of art and society with their mission to shock authorities and the public. This anarchist movement  appealed to many of society who were disenfranchised and disillusioned after the world wars and Dada's nihilistic view of life and subversion of traditional values gained momentum.

Dada succeeded in forcing society to question many presupposed ideas about the traditions of Art.
What is Art?

According to Dada, Art grows from our everyday lived experience. KiKi as Man Ray's everyday experience

Are ideas as important as Representational Art?
In terms of Modern art, ideas are just as important. The Armory Show exhibited many new styles like Fauvism, Cubism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Symbolism and Post-Impressionism, Futurism, Orphism, Rayonism, and others. This move away from realism and the Representational Art School of thought towards abstraction and Conceptual Art was a characteristic. This was all highly challenging for many visitors, who were accustomed to seeing true to life pictures.abstract examples


How it is Displayed?
How a piece of art is exhibited  has changed. No longer is an objet d'art hung on a wall aloof and removed from reach but with the advent of Dada, Modern Art is very often touchable and like the 'Fountain' suspended from the ceiling with full access to interaction with the public. Duchamps-Fountain-The-practical-joke-that-launched-an-artistic-revolution.html


Is a gallery necessary?
Many Modern Artists have negated the need for a gallery. One of the first Dada exhibitions in May 1920 was an event held in the glass-roofed courtyard of a public house entered through a men's toilet.  R. Smitson a successful earthworks artist changes landscapes and his work can be seen on location or : earthworks


Ideas about where a place is, it's history and the object of art creates meaning and a symbiotic relationship. This is the concept surrounding Site-Specific Art. Examples of this type of art can be found. Jem Finer and his 'Score for a hole in the ground' is site-specific to the Stour Valley, Kent. scoreforaholeintheground

Other artists have works of site-specific art, like Susan Philips, winner of the Turner prize. A video of her work in London can be viewed on this link:  surround_me_video


A joint venture between our very own Paul Moore and Jem Finer here on the shores of Lough Neagh created 'Landscope' cosmolog.. 'The Lough is full of legends, stories, songs; a bowl, a focus, into which they flow. It's also full of eels. In the months of September, October and November, in the nights either side of the new moon, "the dark", they start their journey to the Sargasso Sea.

At the other extreme of scale it's a speck in the void of the universe, a small fish in a big pond.'

Modernism versus post-modernism

Modernists believe society is always moving forward and progress was crucially important to this movement. The period of 1900-1950 gave rise to many ideologies including Marxism and Cubism and the psychology of Freud. This time of collective self-examination brought about great change because especially after experiencing the guilt and deprivation surrounding events during the world wars and out of this time of tremendous flux postmodernism arrived from about 1960 onwards.

The Marxist Dialectic was that the dominant ideas that dominate society are then followed by anti-ideas as people begin to question all that preceded them. 
This then results in new ideas. Thus conflict is supposed to cause new ideas.

Mini was the epitome of a classless, modernist car

Before Porsche developed the 911, Bauhaus embodied technology for design, their motto, 'Function follows Form'.

"The building of the future" was their vision of a Utopian future, to combine all the Arts and crafts, providing specialisation for artists for a new technical civilisation.

Technology was important to this dogma as buildings were fabricated out of concrete and glass. Plastic was involved in the manufacture of home ware and clothes.

Modernism is still going strong as is evident by the same technology giving us yet more progress with the concept of girly concrete.

'The Fall' and the 'Myth of Sisyphus' by Albert Camus extols the notion that life is absurd and has no meaning. This in some way mirrors reflections by Zen Buddhists, 'The point is... there is no point'. All these new ideas are designed to make us question the Grand Narrative, our purpose in life here on earth.

Postmodernists question the supposed progress of man because of the Cold War and breakdown of beliefs. The Hippie movement in particular, questioned the importance of democracy to Vietnam in light of the atrocities.

Subjectivity is an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing;  on how seeing or reading or perception itself takes place rather than on what is perceived. An example of this would be 'big brother'-a reality based entertainment show.

A movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear moral positions giving rise to ‘Shallowness’ as a definition. The ‘Blair Witch Project’ is a good example.

This emphasises that style and looks matter, that everyone bases their assessment of who you are by how much time you have given to considering how you look and how much time and money has been spent to make sure you look completely different.


According to some commentators, ‘Katie Price’ exploits shallowness. This is in contrast with being judged on the way you dressed in the pre-1950's during the Modern era.

Inter-textuality is a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more like a documentary, e.g. T.S.Elliot or E.E. Cummings. Prose seems more poetic, as in Woolf or Joyce.
 In a Post-modern society, it becomes acceptable and perceptive to merge other people’s ideas into your work as long as you clearly show you are doing it. 

The Non-Linear Narrative is an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials. Pulp Fiction story is fragmented and starts at the end.

The 'Tree of Codes' by J. Foer .


Knowingness is a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.

Minimalism a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favour of minimalist designs and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories. Images are hyper-minimalist. Music by S. Wright. E. Satie. Robert Loewy 'Less is more.' 

New Mini is postmodern and minimalist. It and the VWBeetle ape the historical versions - this is intertextuality in play with the reference to 'Herbie' the film of the same name.










‘Anything goes’- A call to reject the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.

Richard Hamilton’s pop-art is an example of postmodernist art, that anything goes-no need for rules. Signalling a move away from the middle ground.

If 'TV' belonged to the modern age then the iphone belongs to the postmodernist society. It is without a doubt entirely intertextual and minimalist.