Dunja Kukovec,
Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, Slovenia

New Media: Their Aesthetics and Representations

Keywords: art, digital media, aesthetics

Disclaimer: an aesthetic is an ethic, a representation is a process, a criticism is a self-reflection.

Historical materialism and the methods of the Viennese art history school¹ are undoubtedly insufficient for exploring and understanding art practices in the 20th century. The incompatibility of the old methods becomes even clearer when attempting to interpret new media art [history].² On the other hand, new media art can more easily be assessed with the method that was introduced by non-academic art historians and critics of the society in the late sixties and early seventies. 'Their creative, interrogative, and critical scrutiny'³ which derives from Marxist and feminist studies was mirrored in the so-called radical art history.⁴ Nonetheless, contemporary art often seems better captured and reflected upon by philosophers, social scientists, cultural historians and creative curators.⁵ The best criticism of new media art still comes from the techno freaks, geeks and society critics that are often directly involved in these media.⁶

However, with the emergence of the concept that 'media is the message'⁷ and contemporary, post-Hegelian [de]structuralism certain practical shifts have occurred in the last decade. They necessitated a change of the value system in art history which is urgently demanding for social-, time- and place-based methodologies.

The role of the author

The postmodern state of mind rooted in contemporary philosophy has abandoned the concept of a Romantic genius.⁸ In art history studies and generally in modern thought of today's creative society this is still not properly acknowledged.

New media art is mostly the result of team-work of an artist [the owner of the idea/information⁹ ], a programmer [essential executor] and/or other technically skilled person. There are also artists who are highly skilled and their expertise allows them to work independently, to execute the work entirely by themselves. IMHO¹⁰ here lies the essence of the problem concerning evaluation.

The institutional art history was established in the 19th century at the time of Romanticism as well as Rationalism, when the concept of 'individualism and subjectivity was the key to art'.¹¹ Romantics were utopian in their orientation towards unity, e.g. in their utopian quest for a union with nature, and the same can be seen in a networked society.¹² They appreciated the artistic genius as much as a scientific hero. The Romantic concept of artistic genius continued with the Renaissance tradition which substituted the earlier view of art as craft. The strategy of art history of outlining the exceptional intellectual abilities, i.e. the genius, seemed an optimal operational tool for establishing the system based on individuals and styles. Art historians at that time easily adopted the same method to the study of earlier periods. They did not mind using the same method when studying the Gothic or even Romanesque period although it is almost impossible to talk about artists and names at that time. Instead they applied the same method to monks, monuments and places. They try to operate in the same manner within the 20th-century art.

The classical art history never recognised an individual or a workshop as a criterion. A workshop was identified with an individual or an individual with a workshop, but this has never been contra-positioned to artists that worked on their own. What I would like to suggest is a sort of a new value system that does not refers to the white male and his geniality. Instead it would emphasize team-work, process and expertise [''everyone is an expert'¹³] where authorship is diffused among many contributors. Suddenly, we loose the leading author, the hierarchy and superiority, all so well-rooted in Eurocentric and Western white male history, which is continuously taken for granted. Art history enables big characters and leading positions with the fake trust in one person's geniality, and this may lead, at a certain point, to an artist that manages to defend his/her position and uniqueness with a transparent strategy.

Another conception that is interrelated with the institutional art history manifested itself in institutional representation centres, galleries and museums. The term 'art world' that was clearly articulated in 1968 enabled a strategy and method for inclusion and/or exclusion. Artists could figuratively decide if they wanted to follow the rules and the trends, to be part of it or not.

Some characteristics of this issue are similar to that of feminism. The core of it represents the starting point itself that was long pronounced as the women issue, also misinterpreted as the women problem. This is how we are facing the issue of positioning roles, authorships and values. We can firmly say when the work is done by a certain artist while at the same time we are not bothered when the whole painting was done by his pupil. Such a position seems unacceptable from the perspective of defining today's new media art production and their dispersed expertise.

Much of new media creativity belongs to a programmer or some other technical person. Are we still prepared to consider the work of an artist as strictly his own? At that point it is necessary that input is properly argued. The discourse about the process itself looks like the logical outcome. Thus each part of the work has gained the same unadorned meaning! What I am suggesting is another click in our mind, a reflection on postmodernism. The method of postmodern relativists and contemporary feminists¹⁴ can easier render misinterpreted history, moral views of authoritarian approach in terms of the artistic uniqueness than just one of the repeating failures. Switch the mind and let us understand that the popular great artists were not so great after all; that the authorship represents just another issue in a proper postmodern value system.

At recent new media art events we are witnessing yet another interesting outcome: the recognition of the coding as a creative practice and not just as a skill.

Thus the new media art and its authorship is being questionned and placed alongside questions of identity, body, materiality and ownership — the keys of cybertheory. The art historian's author has been abandoned and replaced by avatars that are representing the majority of online art projects. Duchamp, Dadaists and conceptual artists were obviously not destructive enough, although they produced such work as A Piece That Is Essentially The Same As A Piece Made By Any Of The First Conceptual Artist, Dated Two Years Earlier Than The Original And Signed By Somebody Else.¹⁵

This is not destruction but a deconstruction that enables more appropriate attitudes in the newly reconstituted system. This system could easily adapt to a 'copyleft attitude'¹⁶ , or even further to the system of commons. This also leads to the de[con]struction of authority but not the deconstruction of an individual, his materiality and ideas. 'The artist is author. The author is information.'¹⁷ Because 'information presented at the right time and in the right place can potentially be very powerful'¹⁸ it has to be represented with all that awareness.

The positioning system in digital art history is requesting a change and so is the value system of references and credits. An author is a reference and a credit, not an authority, consistency and integrity, or a genius that can be sold. 'With everything is always shifting; consistency is not a virtue but becomes a vice; integration is limitation. Everyone is no one.'¹⁹ Above all 'an organism is most efficient when it knows its own internal order', with subversive words: when it acknowledges its [dispersed] standing point.

The role of a viewer

'What our age needs is communicative intellect. For intellect to be communicative, it must be active, practical, engaged. In a culture of the simulacrum, the site of communicative engagement is electronic media. In the mediatrix, praxis precedes theory, which always arrives too late. The communicative intellect forgets the theory of communicative praxis in order to create a practice of communication.'²⁰

After this introduction there is a practical and quite usual example of a certain adoptable practice:

'...ninety per cent of the people — would walk in, put their hands behind their back and walk around looking at the computers; they wouldn't even approach them and some just walked out. On the other hand, the younger generation came in and got totally engaged and the set-up worked perfectly. People were engaged in two minutes, and were there for hours against convention of the gallery where people are supposed to spend only fifteen minutes and than go to the next space.'²¹

According to new media practices and their representation we are often and still faced with fascination and sensation of an object, its provocative, engaged, mind-twisting or visionary message, so in those moments we are still putting hands behind our back and mediate. But we are also facing the art works [world] that are [is] not solely standing on its own, but needs interactivity in all its sense.

The term interactivity became a real buzzword in the last couple of years. It has acquired different meanings according to author and/or situation. In general it 'means that the user/browser/audience has the ability to act to influence the flow of events or to modify their form'²² and interactivity as 'creating versus consuming'.²³ After Wilson we can distinguish them by what kind of interaction is required (choosing, contributing, authoring, etc) and how intense in terms of time and control the interactivity would be (rigid, flexible, total, etc.).

In a figurative historical timeline we could extract following phases of interaction (without taking into account prehistoric art and psychotic or paranormal art practices):

• exploring²⁴
• acting/reacting
• communicating
• adding
• finishing (proposed by Brian Eno²⁵ in 1996)
• changing the content (proposed by http://0100101110101101.org in 2000)
• understanding
• engaging as political subjects.

The roots of interactivity are deep and widespread. In these roots many of the 'actions' are closer to 'interpassivity', where by today's understanding of interactivity means the simple ability to change the content and to co-author the work.

In the 1920s the Dadaists established cabarets and street theatre in which members of the audience were encouraged to participate as creators. The communist upheavals in Russia resulted in the Agitprop movement in which workers were expected to become active as artists. Berthold Brecht's street theatre in the 1930s linked politics, art and participation. In the 1960s and 70s the interactive art movement flourished all over the globe in such art forms as visual art, theatre, dance, music, poetry and architecture. Happenings, for example, created free form installation/theatre events in which the audience often participated inthe ongoing events.²⁶

On the other hand, recent activities [that are also shaping communities] present a huge step towards interactivity and 'making media'.²⁷ However, 'conversation that is shaped creatively by all its participants can be both a vehicle for cultural change and the social sculpture that results.' Besides 'the pleasures of conversation and the erotics of encounter' we can hope for better organisation between individuals, i.e. artists and viewers, who will then be able to partake and continue an active role in the society.

Today's technological creative derivatives do not present a movement or a group, their interactive 'spirit' can be traced in object-based contemporary art works. The level of interactivness varies also in the online works. 'What you see is usually not what you get.'²⁸ There are works that simply need a broader context that can be embraced only with active participation, emancipation and engagement.

All this 'interactivness' demands an active viewer. He/she has to known [or has to recall the simple Deleuzian-Guattari desire] how to act, react, where to continue and how to conclude. This position is opposed to passivity and demanding engaged and active collaborators; people who are ready either to educate, read manuals, to be individual, to search for solutions or explore. Many new media art works are presenting a challenge for a better and clearer comprehension of the new media tool itself and its creative possibilities.

For a while we have been talking about the process. Often everyone can take an active part in a final realisation, a representation and its perfect outcome. This is also where the issue of curating can be introduced. In curating new media art exhibitions the discourse about inability to present net.art in the museum or gallery has been going on for quite a while.²⁹

Fig. 1. Heath Bunting's BorderXing Guide website.

To present it correctly you have to fulfil as many layers as possible: formalistic objectives, content/context relation, intention and engagement. The majority of older net.art projects function most properly when you click on them by chance. Although this is not an essential characteristic (e.g. the recent art-act project, Heath Bunting's BorderXing Guide³⁰ does not have to be discovered online by chance, the project is based on research and is much better to follow it every now and then to check for 'improvements'). However, the early net.art functioned the best when you dropped 'there' by chance. At that time it was argued how impossible it was to incorporate a concept of chance in a 'systematically arranged' exhibition.

The active viewer is thus not only consumer of the art, but an explorer, collaborator with an open mind, interested in technology, its various uses and its progress. He would search the galleries not for high-tech fascination, but for a certain subversive use of technology, where technology itself is placed in another context and its use is diverted. When various theoreticians are already claiming there is no more difference between the artificial and natural, to side with technology means an ethical choice. The ethics are the reason to say ‘yes', to be involved, engaged, capable of reading so-called 'new media art'. It is not about technology, it is about freedom, society and direct democracy. The artist and the viewer are living in the newly defined art world: 'a platform to air viewpoints and promote discussions that are not supported by the mass media and offical government. Our choice of 'profession' gives us the freedom to say things that others fear to say in public, even if they think the same way or at least are curious to hear another viewpoint. If we are silent or don't contribute to the public discourse, who will?'³¹ The art history of details comes after.³²

The Ars Electronica Prize 1999 went to Linux OS.³³ This belongs to a curatorial practice of Duchampian 'claiming' the [in] art. A sociological phenomenon is proclaimed for a piece of art that at that very moment gains all its attributes. Linux is above all directly requestioning authorship and is provoking a corporate system of power.

 

Fig. 2. Linux OS, the winner of Ars Electronica 1999.

While we look at it from the art history perspective we can think of an architectural project, where many individuals worked, only that in this century they have worked voluntarily. This new media project can be seen as a Gesamtkunstwerk with slightly different characteristics: it [media] is a tool, content and a message at the same time. Another principle of Gesamtkunstwerk is the Frequency Clock³⁴, a recently released streaming schedule system that represents a convergence of media of such an importance that it can easily slip into the art field.

[]

Fig. 3. Frequency Clock

For some time women have not been solely cooks and reproduction machines. Why would then the viewer be just an observer and a slow passer-by with his hands behind his back?

Finally, the icononology of contemporary works is so multilayered that a viewer has to be at least so interested and detail oriented as the Middle Age's pilgrim to be able not to get just an impression but to live the meaning and the power of media-message.

November 2002

Notes

1. Established in 1852 by Eitelberger von Edelberg in Vienna.

2. Similarly with conceptualism, Minimal and Pop Arts in the sixties and seventies, in the institutionalised world that still idealised Clement Greenberg who in turn publicly abhorred Minimal and Pop Arts. Lippard, R. Lucy (1997) (ed.), Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object, p. 30. Berkley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

3. Harris, J. (2001), The New Art History. London and New York: Routledge.

4. The main ideas of Marxist art criticism and feminism in art history are discussed by Griselda Pollock, Lucy Lippard, John Berger, T.J. Clark and others.

5. The emergence of creative curating brought about such writers on contemporary art as Peter Weibel, Boris Groys and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

6. Geert Lovink, Pit Schultz, Joanne Richardson, Francesca da Rimini, Keiko Sei, Steve Deitz and many others.

7. After Malcom McLuhan.

8. Schaffer, S., ''Genius in Romantic Natural Philosophy'', in Cunningham , A. and Jardine, N. (1990) (eds.), Romanticism and the Sciences, pp. 82–98. For a recent discussion of genius and geniality see also texts by Martha Woodmansie.

9. Leopard, R. Lucy (1997) (ed.), Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object, p. 13. Berkley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

10. In my humble opinion, see: Hackers Dictionary at www.jargon.org (active 12 October 2003).

11. Coyne, R. (1999), Technoromanticism, p.6. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

12. ibid.

13. Florian Schneider paraphrasing Fluxus statement: Everyone is an artist!, http://make-world.org.

14. For example, Donna Harraway.

15. Eduardo Costa, 1970. Eduardo Costa's work is beside authorship, also criticising the quest for unreachable time — the notion of speed and time means succes and money .

16. For more information see http://www.gnu.org and http://artlibre.org/licence.php/lalgb.htm (active 12 October 2003).

17. The artist, musician and programmer, Luka Princic, 2002.

18. Hans Hacke in Lippard, R. Lucy (1997) (ed.), Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object, p. 13. Berkley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

19. Taylor, Mark C., Saarinen E., (1994), Imagologies, London and New York: Routledge.

20. Taylor, Mark C., Saarinen, E., (1994), Imagologies, London and New York: Routledge.

21. Tamas Banovich in Cook, S., Graham, B., Martin, S. (eds.), (2002), Curating New Media, Great Britain: Baltic.

22. Wilson, S., (1993), The Aesthetics and Practice of Designing Interactive Computer Events, http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/ (active 12 October 2003).

23. ibid.

24. 'For example, the reader of a novel or the viewer of a movie is constantly adjusting attention, internal references, identifications, emotional responses, and willingness to engage internal associations that come from personal experience, social/ ethnic/ gender positions, previous experience with the art form, etc. Some analysts would go so far as to claim there is no successful art or media without this level of engagement interactivity.', ibid.

25. Eno, B., (1996), A Year of Swollen Appendices: A Diary of Brian Eno, London: Faber and Faber.

26. This whole paragraph is after Wilson, S., (1993), The Aesthetics and Practice of Designing Interactive Computer Events, http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/ (active 12 October 2003).

27. Richard Barbrook, 2002.

28. Paraphrasing Lala Rascic, 2002.

29. Thus I find it highly important that museums are commissioning art works for the web. It is one of the best ways of supporting and acknowledging net.art.

30. http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/borderxingguide.htm (active 12 October 2003).

31. Tamiko Thiel, 2002.

32. For exclusive reading on new media art history language read Lev Manovich.

33. Linux, operating system, more information on http://www.linux.org/. About Ars Electronica Prize see http://prixars.aec.at/history/

34. Initiators Adam Hyde and Honor Harger, more information on http://www.frequencyclock.net/ (active 12 October 2003).