Chapter 5 Category of Net Art
The development of net art originates from the rising of net media generally. During the past two decades, Net art has overthrown the standards of traditional aesthetics, just like the conclusion given by Walter Benjamin that: “Technology and techniques restructure the human sensory apparatus”(Esther Leslie 2000, p. 42). Even though we can admire the unique aesthetics of net art as they appear in some post-modern art movements, net art is in such a multi-polar form that one cannot easily find a single point from which to admire it. Hence, I try here to discuss the characteristics of net art according to different categories in this chapter. There are some difficulties that I have encountered during the course of cataloguing my findings. First of all, the form of net art depends on technical media; as technology moves on, the forms of net art are getting more difficult to neatly organise. This is why David Ross describes net art as purely ephemeral (David Ross 1999, p. 37). Net art is a historical factor which is proceeding, and it is indeed difficult to determine the category of net art in the progressive tense. Yet, how can an uncategorized art be discussed as to its standard of value? I believe this question also bothers critics of post modern net art.
Rudolf Arnheim argues that in a period of transition from a “post-modern” era to an “information” era, aesthetics is no more regarded as a question of form or style, but of philosophy. It is not about disorder, structure or fracture, but to sense everything, reaching a status so that every thought connects to all human beings (Arnheim Rudolf 1996, pp. 117-120). When aesthetics meets philosophy, the discussion is not just limited to the reaction of vision and psychology, but reaches a higher level of concept and creation of concepts. Philosophy has components of logic and thought, and therefore includes a relatively rational argument. Tilman Baumgartel writes in the essay “Net Art. On the history of Artistic Work with Telecommunications Media” that Net Art is almost a type of new Jerusalem where that which is impossible in the “real world” should happen: global “herrschaft” – or free communication for all, consumers who become producers, social networking over and through geographical and social borders, direct information exchange beyond economic constraints and without filtration through the mass media. From an art-historical perspective, an important aspect of net art is that in the meantime not only texts but also the most diverse media (film, sound, graphics, animation sequence, photographs, 3-D simulations, etc.) are there in the Internet, next to each other, and can be transmitted. Everything that can be translated into bits and bytes can be brought online” (Weibel Peter, Druckrey Timothy & Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe 2001, p. 152). Therefore, net art is so broadly metaphysical that it is inappropriate to simply divine the movement according to its materials.
George Fifield, a curator at the Decordova Museum and Director of Boston Cyberarts, writes that, “Interactivity is the great question of this newest art form. What form of interactivity will most engage the audience and provide a lasting aesthetic experience - emotional, rich, and satisfying? After centuries of linear narrative and the painted square, artists are looking at ways that the art itself can engage with the viewer and modify the artistic experience.”(Foote Jessica 2003b). Dr. Amy Dempsey in turn says that: “Internet Art is democratic, and interactivity is its key feature. Images, text, motion and sound, assembled by artists, can be navigated by viewers to creative their own multimedia montages of which the ultimate 'authorship' is open to question. Viewers become users (Dempsey Amy 2002, p. 286) ”. In a kind of summary David Ross simply states that, “interaction is the nature of Net art” (David Ross 1999).
It is useful to turn to a practical industrial means of judging values by focusing on how awards are handed out. In Austria in 1997, the judges of the Global Electric Art Award stipulated eight rules for judging Net art works submitted in competition. These were: A). Use of technology: the technology application should be creative. B). Grammar: creativity in using language links. C). Structure: structural creativity in the texts. D). Public service: creativity about online public service in the work’s concept. E). Net-awareness or self-reflectiveness. F). Co-operation: coordination between text and components, and between human and network. G). Community and identity: creativity in the degree of Net communities’ interaction. H). Openness: the creativity of open texts (Spaink. 1997, pp. 4-6). This annotated list covers most forms of Net art works, and so I made use of these eight rules and the scholarship mentioned above to divide the categories of works I found by the interaction modes between the audience and works. Of course, there will be new modes of interaction as technological media provide more inventions, so I have also taken the narrower definition of net art by Steve Dietz who says that: “Internet art projects are art projects for which the net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/expressing/participating. Internet art can also happen outside the purely technical structure of the internet, when artists use specific social or cultural traditions from the internet in a project outside of it. Internet art is often, but not always, interactive, participatory and based on multimedia in the broadest sense” (wikipedia). In so doing, the range of discussion about net art can be confined, and also the influence of technology on the interaction modes of net art can be kept to its minimum level.
5-1 Email Art
Mail Art is an art movement that uses mail delivery as its medium. It proposes that art is an expression of dialogue and emphasizes that there are no standard regulations for participation in this art practice other than use of the mail service. Everyone can be a mail artist as long as one has ideas and sends mail. Obviously, this boundless mode of Mail art incorporates a spirit of Fluxus and Dadaism. The Fluxus movement, which developed during the 1960s, pursues artistic creation outside pure art and emphasizes that any action or object can be an artistic creation. This concept has made mail art, which communicates through mail and letters, a new member of the art history for a good reason. Fluxus’ influence on Mail art includes the construction of techniques and ideas, and, more accurately, it restores Friedrich Schiller’s and Immanuel Kant’s “Play impulse” theory regarding the origins of art.
Ray Johnson, the Father of Mail Art, established The Correspondence School of Art in New York in 1962, making efforts to represent and categorize art through the mail. In order to invent an exchange mode as a form of art, and to make communications pass from artist to artist and cross from country to country, Ray Johnson tried out many playful experiments in the art of message exchange. The most classic one was that Ray Johnson tore off pictures, attached them to different postcards and sent them to many people. Among the numerous receivers, some people sent back the postcards and added their opinions and drawings. Thereby, the postcards delivered by postmen became an interesting form of mail art with a lot of people’s contribution. Collage is most common form of mail art construction, which is similar to the ready-made art of Dadaism. The rubber stamp is another common component of mail art. Some artists like to create their own stamps while some like ready-made stamps or various types of stamps to decorate artistic mail. The repeating action of a single pattern matches the repeating creation of Dadaism. Writing design is another basic component of mail art. Some people use ready-made printed writing to do a collage, while others like to draw special handwriting with pen-and-ink. This expression of words in art is just like the conceptual artists’ metaphor of words, but the uniqueness of mail art is its’ postmark.
In the 1980s, a huge number of mail art exhibitions declared the peak of this art movement. Later, in the 1990s, following the introduction of Net media, artists competed using their creative talents on the Net, so, alongside snail mail postmen, Email becomes another deliverer, which also represents a special trope of net art creation. When the net just began to gain popularity, there was a short-lived electronic magazine, “Netshaker Online”, which discussed Email art. The form of Email Art is very extensive, including picture delivery, re-editing, language communication, ASCII expression, even attachments of music media, etc. – such a colourful art. The great difference between Email art and traditional Mail art is “immaterial”, but tangible material is the essence of traditional Mail art, hence there is a great gap between Email art and traditional Mail art; a gap waiting to be overcome. According to Tilman Baumgartel: “That mail art never really accomplished the cross-over into the art industry lies in its particular qualities, and in that it is also similar to contemporary net art. From its nature, mail art was a network matter and like the Internet, the Mail Art network had no central point and theoretically was open to all - which, paradoxically, did not increase its visibility. On the contrary, it was the network character that made mail art artists a closed group to which one either belonged or did not. The most important reason that the art industry never really became interested in mail art may be mainly due to the lack of works able to be exhibited or sold - similar to net art. The works were not more important than the communication process itself (Tilman Baumgartel 2001, pp. 154-155)”. Hence, even in this convenient net era, there are still many mail artists who prefer to send traditional analog mail to preserve its handmade beautiful touch.
Rudolf Arnheim argues that in a period of transition from a “post-modern” era to an “information” era, aesthetics is no more regarded as a question of form or style, but of philosophy. It is not about disorder, structure or fracture, but to sense everything, reaching a status so that every thought connects to all human beings (Arnheim Rudolf 1996, pp. 117-120). When aesthetics meets philosophy, the discussion is not just limited to the reaction of vision and psychology, but reaches a higher level of concept and creation of concepts. Philosophy has components of logic and thought, and therefore includes a relatively rational argument. Tilman Baumgartel writes in the essay “Net Art. On the history of Artistic Work with Telecommunications Media” that Net Art is almost a type of new Jerusalem where that which is impossible in the “real world” should happen: global “herrschaft” – or free communication for all, consumers who become producers, social networking over and through geographical and social borders, direct information exchange beyond economic constraints and without filtration through the mass media. From an art-historical perspective, an important aspect of net art is that in the meantime not only texts but also the most diverse media (film, sound, graphics, animation sequence, photographs, 3-D simulations, etc.) are there in the Internet, next to each other, and can be transmitted. Everything that can be translated into bits and bytes can be brought online” (Weibel Peter, Druckrey Timothy & Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe 2001, p. 152). Therefore, net art is so broadly metaphysical that it is inappropriate to simply divine the movement according to its materials.
George Fifield, a curator at the Decordova Museum and Director of Boston Cyberarts, writes that, “Interactivity is the great question of this newest art form. What form of interactivity will most engage the audience and provide a lasting aesthetic experience - emotional, rich, and satisfying? After centuries of linear narrative and the painted square, artists are looking at ways that the art itself can engage with the viewer and modify the artistic experience.”(Foote Jessica 2003b). Dr. Amy Dempsey in turn says that: “Internet Art is democratic, and interactivity is its key feature. Images, text, motion and sound, assembled by artists, can be navigated by viewers to creative their own multimedia montages of which the ultimate 'authorship' is open to question. Viewers become users (Dempsey Amy 2002, p. 286) ”. In a kind of summary David Ross simply states that, “interaction is the nature of Net art” (David Ross 1999).
It is useful to turn to a practical industrial means of judging values by focusing on how awards are handed out. In Austria in 1997, the judges of the Global Electric Art Award stipulated eight rules for judging Net art works submitted in competition. These were: A). Use of technology: the technology application should be creative. B). Grammar: creativity in using language links. C). Structure: structural creativity in the texts. D). Public service: creativity about online public service in the work’s concept. E). Net-awareness or self-reflectiveness. F). Co-operation: coordination between text and components, and between human and network. G). Community and identity: creativity in the degree of Net communities’ interaction. H). Openness: the creativity of open texts (Spaink. 1997, pp. 4-6). This annotated list covers most forms of Net art works, and so I made use of these eight rules and the scholarship mentioned above to divide the categories of works I found by the interaction modes between the audience and works. Of course, there will be new modes of interaction as technological media provide more inventions, so I have also taken the narrower definition of net art by Steve Dietz who says that: “Internet art projects are art projects for which the net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/expressing/participating. Internet art can also happen outside the purely technical structure of the internet, when artists use specific social or cultural traditions from the internet in a project outside of it. Internet art is often, but not always, interactive, participatory and based on multimedia in the broadest sense” (wikipedia). In so doing, the range of discussion about net art can be confined, and also the influence of technology on the interaction modes of net art can be kept to its minimum level.
5-1 Email Art
Mail Art is an art movement that uses mail delivery as its medium. It proposes that art is an expression of dialogue and emphasizes that there are no standard regulations for participation in this art practice other than use of the mail service. Everyone can be a mail artist as long as one has ideas and sends mail. Obviously, this boundless mode of Mail art incorporates a spirit of Fluxus and Dadaism. The Fluxus movement, which developed during the 1960s, pursues artistic creation outside pure art and emphasizes that any action or object can be an artistic creation. This concept has made mail art, which communicates through mail and letters, a new member of the art history for a good reason. Fluxus’ influence on Mail art includes the construction of techniques and ideas, and, more accurately, it restores Friedrich Schiller’s and Immanuel Kant’s “Play impulse” theory regarding the origins of art.
Ray Johnson, the Father of Mail Art, established The Correspondence School of Art in New York in 1962, making efforts to represent and categorize art through the mail. In order to invent an exchange mode as a form of art, and to make communications pass from artist to artist and cross from country to country, Ray Johnson tried out many playful experiments in the art of message exchange. The most classic one was that Ray Johnson tore off pictures, attached them to different postcards and sent them to many people. Among the numerous receivers, some people sent back the postcards and added their opinions and drawings. Thereby, the postcards delivered by postmen became an interesting form of mail art with a lot of people’s contribution. Collage is most common form of mail art construction, which is similar to the ready-made art of Dadaism. The rubber stamp is another common component of mail art. Some artists like to create their own stamps while some like ready-made stamps or various types of stamps to decorate artistic mail. The repeating action of a single pattern matches the repeating creation of Dadaism. Writing design is another basic component of mail art. Some people use ready-made printed writing to do a collage, while others like to draw special handwriting with pen-and-ink. This expression of words in art is just like the conceptual artists’ metaphor of words, but the uniqueness of mail art is its’ postmark.
In the 1980s, a huge number of mail art exhibitions declared the peak of this art movement. Later, in the 1990s, following the introduction of Net media, artists competed using their creative talents on the Net, so, alongside snail mail postmen, Email becomes another deliverer, which also represents a special trope of net art creation. When the net just began to gain popularity, there was a short-lived electronic magazine, “Netshaker Online”, which discussed Email art. The form of Email Art is very extensive, including picture delivery, re-editing, language communication, ASCII expression, even attachments of music media, etc. – such a colourful art. The great difference between Email art and traditional Mail art is “immaterial”, but tangible material is the essence of traditional Mail art, hence there is a great gap between Email art and traditional Mail art; a gap waiting to be overcome. According to Tilman Baumgartel: “That mail art never really accomplished the cross-over into the art industry lies in its particular qualities, and in that it is also similar to contemporary net art. From its nature, mail art was a network matter and like the Internet, the Mail Art network had no central point and theoretically was open to all - which, paradoxically, did not increase its visibility. On the contrary, it was the network character that made mail art artists a closed group to which one either belonged or did not. The most important reason that the art industry never really became interested in mail art may be mainly due to the lack of works able to be exhibited or sold - similar to net art. The works were not more important than the communication process itself (Tilman Baumgartel 2001, pp. 154-155)”. Hence, even in this convenient net era, there are still many mail artists who prefer to send traditional analog mail to preserve its handmade beautiful touch.
“Landscape Exchange” (http://98.to/pcd/) is a piece of mail art that combines electronics and tradition analog modes of production. The composer Mingda Xie invites artists all over the world through his website to participate in the creation of this Email Art work. First he held in his hand a postcard ready to send, standing at a scenic spot, and took a photo. He emailed this photo to a participant who also received the paper postcard. When the participant received the postcard, he could do the same thing: “taking a photo and posting the same postcard” on to someone else. With the idea of “Landscape Exchange” and the cooperation of participants, the same postcard will show up in two photos with different scenery in the background. This gives a record of the interlacing of time and space and also the wonderful application of conceptual art to mail art. The method of digital photos in addition to emails made this “Landscape Exchange” mail art flow in both virtual and real worlds, thus successfully overcoming the absence of touch in Email Art. Furthermore, it increased the multi-polarity of traditional mail art.
“The Rhythms of Salience”, carried out by Prof. Judith Donath and her students at MIT Media Experiment, is an experimental work that combines mail art and information aesthetics. Six scholars were invited for an online dialogue activity called “networks and mapping”. Through dissemination by email, these six scholars connected with eight other participants in 22 days with 30 emails. Judith Donath used the content and process of these emails to paint the social patterns of the “dialogue”, using a visual map mode. “The Rhythms of Salience” tries to give a method to describe “dialogue”, which, with images, makes the audience see a readable mode for complex and temporary “dialogues” in a single picture. Through the resonance of individuals and linguistic symbols, a pattern of dialogue was created cooperatively.
The slowLab, led by Carolyn Strauss and Julian Bleecker, was funded by rhizome.org in 2006 to start the project of SLOWmail (http://www.slowlab.net/slowmail.htm). It is a project worth reflecting on by artists in a high-tech and high-efficiency society. This project aims to develop a new emailing system, which will send email at a low speed and provide more time to reflect the experience of senders and recipients. It challenges mail art to be more artistic, more suitable for writing, and more meaningful.
While platforms such as IM (instant message) and SMS (Short message Service), increase the speed of delivering messages in modern society, SLOWmail aims to discover the possibility of less punctuality and more serenity in communication and to create a new tempo for social interaction. Perhaps it is true that as soon as a thing reaches its extremity, it reverses its course, just like the reverse course of modernism and post-modernism. SLOWmail tries to reverse the high speed of 21st century culture. But what is interesting is that developing this high-tech low-speed invention through high-tech software language indeed has a special meaning.
The “DIWO” (Do It With Others: E-Mail Art from NetBehaviour), exhibited in the HTTP Gallery in London in March 2007, is E-Mail art that stresses the customs of a digital net society. Net users, by registering for its mailing list, receive DIWO’s daily headlines. Then, inspired by the headline, users can pass personal works to everyone in the mailing list, and receivers can give responses to the work. These works include words, verses, images, cartoons or any other forms that can be seen or heard online. Those works as a contribution are collected on the DIWO website to be clicked, and are also exhibited in the HTTP Gallery. Here we can see that DIWO attempts to preserve the touchable characteristics of traditional mail.
The biggest difference between EMail art and traditional Mail art is “objects”. From postmark to letter paper, and even the attached material, are all characteristic of objects in traditional mail art. Yet, assuming that the net has no fixed shape or material, the aesthetics of Email Art also has undergone many fluid changes. As Walter Benjamin points out in relation to the mechanically produced representation of an “original”, context is central to the meaning of a work of art. The difficulty in making art for the net is foremost a problem of context (Walter Benjamin 1955). Artistic works produced by technology may have lost the “uniqueness" of traditional art because it is duplicable; therefore their “aura” has disappeared. Nevertheless, Walter Benjamin argues that the characteristics of technological duplication have increased the value of exhibition. When one is watching or admiring art, without the desire to own the piece or any part of it, one can be purely close to the pleasure and inspiration of art (Sean Hu 2005, p. 37), perhaps this is a factor in the new aesthetics of Email Art.
5-2 Non-linear narrative
From the beginning of human civilization, narrative works have doubtless been a basic mode of artistic expression across its’ eight great fields (painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, dance, theatre and film), or, to narrow down to the fine arts: painting, sculpture and architecture. However, “non-linear” characteristics have now overthrown the faith people have had about art for nearly twenty centuries, and the aesthetics of art has entered the period of Post-Modernism.
Post-Modernism, which began in the 1960s, does not have a traditional fixed form of expression. It can be called an anti-rationalistic aesthetic, emphasizing the “openness” of art works. From the aspect of technology, the birth of the “non-linear” mode of practice must be attributed to the rapid development of computer technology. The multimedia interactive CD title developed during the 1990’s could be seen as a test version for non-linear works. Following the maturation of net technology, a collective creation of internet works has become the latest version, which comprises interactive characteristics with readers/audience and represents a breakthrough in the concept of “open works”. The two complements of interaction and openness realized the concept of non-rationality in Post-modernism and the spirit of regarding the reader/audience as the subject. Roland Barthes, a French writer and theorist, proposed the theory of “the death of the author” in 1967. Barthes argues that although the structure of literature is given by the author, the author’s influence no longer exists when he has stopped writing; instead, it is replaced by the structural symbols of the text itself and the symbols from the reader’s personal experience while reading. Roland Barthes stated that the immortality of a work is not because the work gives different meanings to different people, but because the work implies different meanings to everyone – the time of reading is the time of writing. Thereby, the author and the text are born at the same time, and the work becomes an open text; readers become authors, and the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author (Barthes Roland 1977, pp. 142-148).
The theory of “the death of the author” by Roland Barthes corresponds with the notion of “collaborative creation on the Internet”. The notion of an author in a non-linear narrative falls apart as new meanings of the text are re-transmitted after collaboratively constantly being recreated or rewritten by its users in real time on the Internet. Roland Barthes proposed another philosophical statement, “From Work to Text”, in 1971: texts have extending meanings, which can be extended boundlessly. Texts have numerous meanings, which form an intertextuality of the text itself. A text does not make reading a passive process of receiving, but is a script for active play (Barthes Roland 1977, pp. 155-164). George P. Landow in his Hypertext 2.0: Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology mentions that “the Hypertext Theory has much in common with the Writerly Text Theory of Roland Barthes. They both have the textuality and intertextuality that dismiss hierarchy; they are the direct expression of poststructuralists’ textual theory” (George P. Landow 1997, pp. 4-5, 25). In “From Work to Text”, Roland Barthes foresaw the direction of development for the future, and outlined some of the implications of the aesthetic of non-linear works that would have an impact on postmodernism: Artistic works imply that the trend of the commercial market and the transmission of meanings is too narrow and closed. Yet the openness and multi-vocality of texts have surpassed the works – this is indeed what is envisaged in post-structuralism and net art culture specifically.
The non-linear fiction “Blindspot” (http://adaweb.walkerart.org/project/blindspot), combining words, voice, pictures and interaction with readers, by the New York writer Darcey Steinke, became an early classic net fiction work in 1999. The main structure of this fiction describes a housewife’s feeling of waiting for her husband to come home. The background colour of the pictures is mostly grey, like the elegance and tenderness of the language, which resembles the romantic but gloomy characteristics of noir novels. On each page of this work, there are many links to paragraphs or pictures pointing to branches of other episodes to describe the housewife’s mood, and some pages even allow readers to leave personal opinions or comments. So the readers become indirect authors who transform the story of this novel cooperatively. “Blindspot” joined the Ada exhibition project in 1990 as a non-linear fiction at an early stage. The work simply used the basic Hyperlink function of the internet, obviously so as to lower the influence of technology to a minimal level and preserve the writing style of Darcey Steinke in a logical way.
While platforms such as IM (instant message) and SMS (Short message Service), increase the speed of delivering messages in modern society, SLOWmail aims to discover the possibility of less punctuality and more serenity in communication and to create a new tempo for social interaction. Perhaps it is true that as soon as a thing reaches its extremity, it reverses its course, just like the reverse course of modernism and post-modernism. SLOWmail tries to reverse the high speed of 21st century culture. But what is interesting is that developing this high-tech low-speed invention through high-tech software language indeed has a special meaning.
The “DIWO” (Do It With Others: E-Mail Art from NetBehaviour), exhibited in the HTTP Gallery in London in March 2007, is E-Mail art that stresses the customs of a digital net society. Net users, by registering for its mailing list, receive DIWO’s daily headlines. Then, inspired by the headline, users can pass personal works to everyone in the mailing list, and receivers can give responses to the work. These works include words, verses, images, cartoons or any other forms that can be seen or heard online. Those works as a contribution are collected on the DIWO website to be clicked, and are also exhibited in the HTTP Gallery. Here we can see that DIWO attempts to preserve the touchable characteristics of traditional mail.
The biggest difference between EMail art and traditional Mail art is “objects”. From postmark to letter paper, and even the attached material, are all characteristic of objects in traditional mail art. Yet, assuming that the net has no fixed shape or material, the aesthetics of Email Art also has undergone many fluid changes. As Walter Benjamin points out in relation to the mechanically produced representation of an “original”, context is central to the meaning of a work of art. The difficulty in making art for the net is foremost a problem of context (Walter Benjamin 1955). Artistic works produced by technology may have lost the “uniqueness" of traditional art because it is duplicable; therefore their “aura” has disappeared. Nevertheless, Walter Benjamin argues that the characteristics of technological duplication have increased the value of exhibition. When one is watching or admiring art, without the desire to own the piece or any part of it, one can be purely close to the pleasure and inspiration of art (Sean Hu 2005, p. 37), perhaps this is a factor in the new aesthetics of Email Art.
5-2 Non-linear narrative
From the beginning of human civilization, narrative works have doubtless been a basic mode of artistic expression across its’ eight great fields (painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, dance, theatre and film), or, to narrow down to the fine arts: painting, sculpture and architecture. However, “non-linear” characteristics have now overthrown the faith people have had about art for nearly twenty centuries, and the aesthetics of art has entered the period of Post-Modernism.
Post-Modernism, which began in the 1960s, does not have a traditional fixed form of expression. It can be called an anti-rationalistic aesthetic, emphasizing the “openness” of art works. From the aspect of technology, the birth of the “non-linear” mode of practice must be attributed to the rapid development of computer technology. The multimedia interactive CD title developed during the 1990’s could be seen as a test version for non-linear works. Following the maturation of net technology, a collective creation of internet works has become the latest version, which comprises interactive characteristics with readers/audience and represents a breakthrough in the concept of “open works”. The two complements of interaction and openness realized the concept of non-rationality in Post-modernism and the spirit of regarding the reader/audience as the subject. Roland Barthes, a French writer and theorist, proposed the theory of “the death of the author” in 1967. Barthes argues that although the structure of literature is given by the author, the author’s influence no longer exists when he has stopped writing; instead, it is replaced by the structural symbols of the text itself and the symbols from the reader’s personal experience while reading. Roland Barthes stated that the immortality of a work is not because the work gives different meanings to different people, but because the work implies different meanings to everyone – the time of reading is the time of writing. Thereby, the author and the text are born at the same time, and the work becomes an open text; readers become authors, and the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author (Barthes Roland 1977, pp. 142-148).
The theory of “the death of the author” by Roland Barthes corresponds with the notion of “collaborative creation on the Internet”. The notion of an author in a non-linear narrative falls apart as new meanings of the text are re-transmitted after collaboratively constantly being recreated or rewritten by its users in real time on the Internet. Roland Barthes proposed another philosophical statement, “From Work to Text”, in 1971: texts have extending meanings, which can be extended boundlessly. Texts have numerous meanings, which form an intertextuality of the text itself. A text does not make reading a passive process of receiving, but is a script for active play (Barthes Roland 1977, pp. 155-164). George P. Landow in his Hypertext 2.0: Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology mentions that “the Hypertext Theory has much in common with the Writerly Text Theory of Roland Barthes. They both have the textuality and intertextuality that dismiss hierarchy; they are the direct expression of poststructuralists’ textual theory” (George P. Landow 1997, pp. 4-5, 25). In “From Work to Text”, Roland Barthes foresaw the direction of development for the future, and outlined some of the implications of the aesthetic of non-linear works that would have an impact on postmodernism: Artistic works imply that the trend of the commercial market and the transmission of meanings is too narrow and closed. Yet the openness and multi-vocality of texts have surpassed the works – this is indeed what is envisaged in post-structuralism and net art culture specifically.
The non-linear fiction “Blindspot” (http://adaweb.walkerart.org/project/blindspot), combining words, voice, pictures and interaction with readers, by the New York writer Darcey Steinke, became an early classic net fiction work in 1999. The main structure of this fiction describes a housewife’s feeling of waiting for her husband to come home. The background colour of the pictures is mostly grey, like the elegance and tenderness of the language, which resembles the romantic but gloomy characteristics of noir novels. On each page of this work, there are many links to paragraphs or pictures pointing to branches of other episodes to describe the housewife’s mood, and some pages even allow readers to leave personal opinions or comments. So the readers become indirect authors who transform the story of this novel cooperatively. “Blindspot” joined the Ada exhibition project in 1990 as a non-linear fiction at an early stage. The work simply used the basic Hyperlink function of the internet, obviously so as to lower the influence of technology to a minimal level and preserve the writing style of Darcey Steinke in a logical way.
Postmodern art digested the diversity of art while at the same time interlinked different categories of art. In the field of net art, there is no single art factor which exists alone, and those factors become the “text,” as it was called by Roland Barthes. Darcey Steinke presented a net text, “Blindspot”, that spoke across media with voice, animation, film and words. Each artistic factor had its own multi-meaning language, which intersected and formed intertextual episodes – the quintessence of non-linear narrative.
The young net artist Santiago Ortiz from Colombia is fond of visual creations that use word play. His recent “Spheres”(http://moebio.com/spheres), posted on rhizome.org in February 2007, represents a new form of word game and a dialogue of possibilities. Santiago Ortiz used 122 words as the base, allowing readers to link any two words and leave personal opinions about the words in the Pop-ups. With an increase in participants, the connections between these two words become more complex or elaborate. After a careful calculation, 122 words bring out 7381 linking lines, and each linking line may have several responses. After those users’ participation, a sort of narrative story is born from the text. However, all of the sentences are fragments, and each reader receives different messages, so the process of reading is like a jumping melody, which assembles poetry that implies the beauty of uncertainty often at work within post-modern literature. “Spheres” realized the concept insisted on by post-structuralism： Post-structuralists hold that the concept of "self" as a singular and coherent entity is a fictional construct. Instead, an individual comprises conflicting tensions and knowledge claims (e.g. gender, class, profession, etc.). Therefore, to properly study a text the reader must understand how the work is related to his own personal concept of self. This self-perception plays a critical role in one's interpretation of meaning (Wikipedia).
The young net artist Santiago Ortiz from Colombia is fond of visual creations that use word play. His recent “Spheres”(http://moebio.com/spheres), posted on rhizome.org in February 2007, represents a new form of word game and a dialogue of possibilities. Santiago Ortiz used 122 words as the base, allowing readers to link any two words and leave personal opinions about the words in the Pop-ups. With an increase in participants, the connections between these two words become more complex or elaborate. After a careful calculation, 122 words bring out 7381 linking lines, and each linking line may have several responses. After those users’ participation, a sort of narrative story is born from the text. However, all of the sentences are fragments, and each reader receives different messages, so the process of reading is like a jumping melody, which assembles poetry that implies the beauty of uncertainty often at work within post-modern literature. “Spheres” realized the concept insisted on by post-structuralism： Post-structuralists hold that the concept of "self" as a singular and coherent entity is a fictional construct. Instead, an individual comprises conflicting tensions and knowledge claims (e.g. gender, class, profession, etc.). Therefore, to properly study a text the reader must understand how the work is related to his own personal concept of self. This self-perception plays a critical role in one's interpretation of meaning (Wikipedia).
5-3 Online Performance art
Performance art, which began in the 1960s, is a public performance that individuals or groups perform for the public at specific times and locations. Due to the influence of Dadaism and Happenings, Performance art emphasizes creation of occasional and ad-lib acts; it is an avant-garde performance and an invention of an event. According to Wikipedia, performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience. There is no other restriction on the definition of Performance Art (Wikipedia). However, when Performance Art encounters Net Media, four simple factors will have complicated the interaction and transformation that results.
First of all, as for the factor of time, there is only a clock on the computer screen but no central standard time in the world of the net. For example, when a piece of work is exhibited online, from the beginning to the end is simply the change of link passage from new page to saved page. Time plays no more than the role of virtual setting in the pages. As for space, the concept of distance is zero in the net world, or one can say the only distance is from the computer to the plugs. In a net world, a gallery can be the balcony of one’s own house, or the highest building in the world (Taipei 101). This space is just the arbitrary actual place of the user. However, physical performances by performance artists on the net and participation of the audiences are factors difficult to assess. Because interaction is the basic route of communication with the computer, net performance artists and audience have to produce a connection by interacting with a computer first. In general, when Performance art encounters the Internet, the artists have to take control of the game rules at both ends, then they can make good use of the Internet media.
Prof. Jack Bowman from Kentucky in the USA, as a performance artist, poet, writer and performer, based on his research into and love for performance art, defined ten precise rules for performance art in the1990s; some of them are worth mentioning here for a comparison with Internet media. Bowman notes that, “performance art is usually immediate, which means the time of its being”. The ‘time being’ on the Internet refers to the time when a user is facing the software system, not the time for users at the two ends behind computers. So, the definition of “immediate” on the Internet has a gap with its definition in the actual world. Bowman also argues that, “performance art can involve the audience with taste, smell and sounds not available with electronic media and not practical with conventional theatre. This is due to the usually small audience” in attendance (Jack Bowman 1990, p. 1). The Internet on the other hand delivers a small performance for thousands of users, but it also makes the haptic barriers of taste and smell impossible to solve with current technology. Hence, when we discuss the characteristics of Internet media, Jack Bowman’s definitions are still worth considering.
Barbara Campbell, an Australian Performance artist, has done research on Performance Art in relation to New Media, especially the combination of video cameras and camera creation. “1001 Nights Cast”(http://1001.net.au/main ) is her most recent online art work to feature Internet media. Campbell uses is the newest net media and web camera technology to produce a serial Net Performance artwork. From June 21, 2005, Barbara read local papers in New South Wales in Australia and found a sentence she considered important. She painted it in light watercolour and uploaded it to the website of “1001 Nights Cast” for a net audience, who would find inspiration from the drawing, and post feedback about their own stories. At sunset, she would find inspiration from that feedback and used a webcam to perform an ad-lib performance for about two minutes before sun down. According to Campbell, the inspiration for this Performance art originates from the Arabic story of “1001 Nights”, but what is different is that the origin of this story is from personal experiences of online participants around the world. In a conceptual art twist the Net Performance art work will continue for 1001 days and perform 1001 stories.
Because the play on the website is in real time, the audience in front of the computer can always anticipate show time. When I was waiting for the ad-lib show at sunset, I was gripped by anticipation. This proves that interaction with this art form can be both creative and positive. Because it is a live show, that is impossible to watch again, I am reminded again of Jack Bowman who said that: “The Act is TRUTH. Nothing that was ever recorded is truth. Nothing that was ever said was truth. Only the Act” (Jack Bowman 1990).
Performance art, which began in the 1960s, is a public performance that individuals or groups perform for the public at specific times and locations. Due to the influence of Dadaism and Happenings, Performance art emphasizes creation of occasional and ad-lib acts; it is an avant-garde performance and an invention of an event. According to Wikipedia, performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience. There is no other restriction on the definition of Performance Art (Wikipedia). However, when Performance Art encounters Net Media, four simple factors will have complicated the interaction and transformation that results.
First of all, as for the factor of time, there is only a clock on the computer screen but no central standard time in the world of the net. For example, when a piece of work is exhibited online, from the beginning to the end is simply the change of link passage from new page to saved page. Time plays no more than the role of virtual setting in the pages. As for space, the concept of distance is zero in the net world, or one can say the only distance is from the computer to the plugs. In a net world, a gallery can be the balcony of one’s own house, or the highest building in the world (Taipei 101). This space is just the arbitrary actual place of the user. However, physical performances by performance artists on the net and participation of the audiences are factors difficult to assess. Because interaction is the basic route of communication with the computer, net performance artists and audience have to produce a connection by interacting with a computer first. In general, when Performance art encounters the Internet, the artists have to take control of the game rules at both ends, then they can make good use of the Internet media.
Prof. Jack Bowman from Kentucky in the USA, as a performance artist, poet, writer and performer, based on his research into and love for performance art, defined ten precise rules for performance art in the1990s; some of them are worth mentioning here for a comparison with Internet media. Bowman notes that, “performance art is usually immediate, which means the time of its being”. The ‘time being’ on the Internet refers to the time when a user is facing the software system, not the time for users at the two ends behind computers. So, the definition of “immediate” on the Internet has a gap with its definition in the actual world. Bowman also argues that, “performance art can involve the audience with taste, smell and sounds not available with electronic media and not practical with conventional theatre. This is due to the usually small audience” in attendance (Jack Bowman 1990, p. 1). The Internet on the other hand delivers a small performance for thousands of users, but it also makes the haptic barriers of taste and smell impossible to solve with current technology. Hence, when we discuss the characteristics of Internet media, Jack Bowman’s definitions are still worth considering.
Barbara Campbell, an Australian Performance artist, has done research on Performance Art in relation to New Media, especially the combination of video cameras and camera creation. “1001 Nights Cast”(http://1001.net.au/main ) is her most recent online art work to feature Internet media. Campbell uses is the newest net media and web camera technology to produce a serial Net Performance artwork. From June 21, 2005, Barbara read local papers in New South Wales in Australia and found a sentence she considered important. She painted it in light watercolour and uploaded it to the website of “1001 Nights Cast” for a net audience, who would find inspiration from the drawing, and post feedback about their own stories. At sunset, she would find inspiration from that feedback and used a webcam to perform an ad-lib performance for about two minutes before sun down. According to Campbell, the inspiration for this Performance art originates from the Arabic story of “1001 Nights”, but what is different is that the origin of this story is from personal experiences of online participants around the world. In a conceptual art twist the Net Performance art work will continue for 1001 days and perform 1001 stories.
Because the play on the website is in real time, the audience in front of the computer can always anticipate show time. When I was waiting for the ad-lib show at sunset, I was gripped by anticipation. This proves that interaction with this art form can be both creative and positive. Because it is a live show, that is impossible to watch again, I am reminded again of Jack Bowman who said that: “The Act is TRUTH. Nothing that was ever recorded is truth. Nothing that was ever said was truth. Only the Act” (Jack Bowman 1990).
Traditional Performance art includes Body Art, Fluxus, Happenings and action poetry, but now that the net has introduced a new platform media, how will these traditional art forms change? The best person to answer this question must be Arcangel Constantini who began to discuss the art value of net competitions in 2000. Constantini constructed an online competition in 2002, called “Infomera”(http://www.museotamayo.org/infomera ). The motivation of this project comes from the aim of creating an ephemeral net art work. The word “Infomera” is constructed by two Spanish words, “informacion” (information) and “efimera” (ephemeral), referring to the short-term appearance of information. “Infomera” was an online competition of two artist teams, each of seven members. Each game took 120 minutes. Within the time limit, two artists separately used webpage components, such as videos, voice, Java software, animation or hypertext, to kill the other one’s webpage. The screen was updated every minute, so every audience in the world could watch the progress online. In order to increase the participation level of the audience, Arcangel Constantini allowed every registered member of the audience to throw tomatoes or hiss at participants, and they could even join the judgment-making at the end of the game. The first game of “Infomera” was held on July 30, 2002, and then once each week for seven weeks. The last game was on September 11, in remembrance of the 9/11 attack on the USA.
With a similar idea, in the summer of 2004, Arcangel Constantini invited another net artist, Antonio Mendoza, to join the game. What was different is that this time, in addition to the visual battle in the virtual net world, the real battlefield was located in a Mexican city. The battle was happening simultaneously in the real world and in the net world. The battle field was decorated as a boxing room, and the two laptops in the room were the weapons of the artists. In order to make the audience understand what “sudden” means, and to accomplish the uniqueness and brief appearance of information, Arcangel Constantini designed a situation that, when the real battle came to its end, the virtual scenery online disappeared immediately. Apart from the souvenirs of flash photos, this event cannot be found anywhere in the net world. This strategy falls into line with Jack Bowman’s idea that “a performance art piece is unprecedented” (Jack Bowman 1990, p. 1).
From the creative expression of Arcangel Constantini, we can understand his concept that says that in new media art as in performance art , the artwork has been transformed into a structure that relies on a constant flux of information and engages the viewer/collaborator the way a performance might (Susan Morris 2001, p. 9). In addition, Mark Napier also thinks the definition of New Media is similar to that of performance art, since the software is something you basically perform on your machine (Susan Morris 2001, p. 10).It doesn’t matter if the online contest is one of Arcangel Constantini, or "Auto Portrait" of David Bouchard, or even "Tendril" of Ben Fry, they are all performance within the mode of programming language.
With a similar idea, in the summer of 2004, Arcangel Constantini invited another net artist, Antonio Mendoza, to join the game. What was different is that this time, in addition to the visual battle in the virtual net world, the real battlefield was located in a Mexican city. The battle was happening simultaneously in the real world and in the net world. The battle field was decorated as a boxing room, and the two laptops in the room were the weapons of the artists. In order to make the audience understand what “sudden” means, and to accomplish the uniqueness and brief appearance of information, Arcangel Constantini designed a situation that, when the real battle came to its end, the virtual scenery online disappeared immediately. Apart from the souvenirs of flash photos, this event cannot be found anywhere in the net world. This strategy falls into line with Jack Bowman’s idea that “a performance art piece is unprecedented” (Jack Bowman 1990, p. 1).
From the creative expression of Arcangel Constantini, we can understand his concept that says that in new media art as in performance art , the artwork has been transformed into a structure that relies on a constant flux of information and engages the viewer/collaborator the way a performance might (Susan Morris 2001, p. 9). In addition, Mark Napier also thinks the definition of New Media is similar to that of performance art, since the software is something you basically perform on your machine (Susan Morris 2001, p. 10).It doesn’t matter if the online contest is one of Arcangel Constantini, or "Auto Portrait" of David Bouchard, or even "Tendril" of Ben Fry, they are all performance within the mode of programming language.
5-4 Data Visualization/Information Art
Data Visualization can be traced to the development of electronic art or computer art, or more precisely, another form of art brought about by science. The composition of Data Visualization comes from a huge amount of resource materials, to categorize various sorts of data using the methods of science, mathematics, and logic, then to visualize the patterns of the statistical contents. Data Visualization of net art explores the subjective experience composed by net data, and expresses it in abstract and reflective visual forms. Generally speaking, Data Visualization works have a component factor reminiscent of Op Art that involves carefully calculated patterns and strongly contrasting colours. From the aspect of design, both Data Visualization and Op Art purely use visual stimulation and sensation to challenge traditional aesthetics of sense and sensibility.
Data Visualization can be traced to the development of electronic art or computer art, or more precisely, another form of art brought about by science. The composition of Data Visualization comes from a huge amount of resource materials, to categorize various sorts of data using the methods of science, mathematics, and logic, then to visualize the patterns of the statistical contents. Data Visualization of net art explores the subjective experience composed by net data, and expresses it in abstract and reflective visual forms. Generally speaking, Data Visualization works have a component factor reminiscent of Op Art that involves carefully calculated patterns and strongly contrasting colours. From the aspect of design, both Data Visualization and Op Art purely use visual stimulation and sensation to challenge traditional aesthetics of sense and sensibility.
The Op Art popular in the 1960’s emphasized creating an illusive space by non-physical invention, and uses meticulous methods of science to stimulate the visual nerves to produce a systematic art work. From the viewpoint of the contemporary world, there is neither weight nor shape to computer information – it is pure pattern. “The term ‘immaterial’ refers to a somewhat daring neologism,” said Jean Francois Lyotard in an interview about the Centre Pompidou, “It merely expresses that today - and this has been carried through in all areas - material can no longer be seen as something that, like an object, is set against a subject” (Tilman Baumgartel 2001, p. 153). So-called Data Visualization discusses how to make those “immaterial” things visual through precise science. Data Visualization uses elegant scientific lines to declare another form of new aesthetics, and realizes the theory of Paul Brown: “Science is evolving into a new science called art” (Stephen Wilson 2002, p. 28). I regard Data Visualization as the “New Aesthetic of Op Art” under the rhetoric of post-structuralism.
In the category of net art, a large part of Data Visualization explores the large amount of information exchange, such as users’ moving tracks on the screen, or searching the clues of hyperlinks to other websites. Visualization of a moving track which was originally invisible expresses the art of delivering information; this is what I will introduce in this section: trace and collect moving tracks of net users, then show this large amount of information data through the visual patterns of mapping.
In the category of net art, a large part of Data Visualization explores the large amount of information exchange, such as users’ moving tracks on the screen, or searching the clues of hyperlinks to other websites. Visualization of a moving track which was originally invisible expresses the art of delivering information; this is what I will introduce in this section: trace and collect moving tracks of net users, then show this large amount of information data through the visual patterns of mapping.
“Spider” ( http://www.deadpixel.ca/ ), made by David Bouchard, is a relevant example of Data Visualization. David Bouchard, while studying for his Master’s degree in the Ambient Intelligence Group at MIT in the United States, researched the potential aesthetics of computer statistics. “Spider”, which is small software in Java language, allows users to key in a website, then this software will start to collect the hyperlinked words from the very website to “Spider”. So, the number of words and the complicated and intersected hyperlink track will be explored. Each hyperlink word links to a new page, and this limitless linking system forms the source material of “Spider”. The most interesting aspect of “Spider” is the design effect of visual art. As its name shows, this visualized pattern of all linked data is exactly a spider. Users can draw the spider on the screen, whose feet are formed by Bezier Curves, and the eight feet draw on eight of the most popular hyperlinked words.
Lisa Jevbratt, a Swedish artist teaching at the University of California, U.S.A., was a pioneer in applying Data Visualization to net art. Her classic work was “1:1” (http://jevbratt.com/projects ) in 1999-2001. By using the software called Crawlers, she collected users’ computer IP as the data resource, and divided them into five themes of visualization, namely Migration, Hierarchical, Every, Random and Excursion. Through the data and visualized patterns, Jevbratt discussed the amount of information exchange during net browsing. This was a good example of a more poetic Data Visualization work.
In 2006, Lisa Jevbratt was chosen by The Swedish Public Art Council (SKR) to work on “The Voice”. This project will last for three years and uses the website of SKR (http://www.statenskonstrad.se/ ) to collect source material from 2006 to 2009. When users use the search engine of this website, “The Voice” ( http://jevbratt.com/projects )will record the page data which were connected successfully by users, including the connecting time and total time of being read. The data collected by “The Voice” will visualize the read record on the website: word size indicates the frequency of being searched for, colours and frames demonstrate the frequency of being read. The first and last words being searched are listed in the left-upward and right-downward corners of the screen. “The Voice” explores the moving tracks that people leave in the public space and collects the “quest” clues left by the populace through the action of net searching. It forms a collective consensus, collective identity and collective voice.
In 2006, Lisa Jevbratt was chosen by The Swedish Public Art Council (SKR) to work on “The Voice”. This project will last for three years and uses the website of SKR (http://www.statenskonstrad.se/ ) to collect source material from 2006 to 2009. When users use the search engine of this website, “The Voice” ( http://jevbratt.com/projects )will record the page data which were connected successfully by users, including the connecting time and total time of being read. The data collected by “The Voice” will visualize the read record on the website: word size indicates the frequency of being searched for, colours and frames demonstrate the frequency of being read. The first and last words being searched are listed in the left-upward and right-downward corners of the screen. “The Voice” explores the moving tracks that people leave in the public space and collects the “quest” clues left by the populace through the action of net searching. It forms a collective consensus, collective identity and collective voice.
The “Visual Rhizome” (http://switch.sjsu.edu/mambo/switch22/visual_rhizome.html ) by Aaron Siegel is also a Data Visualization consisting of net users’ moving tracks. The website rhizome.org is the biggest net media art centre in the world, a large store room of many new media art works, artist profiles, forum, and articles, and this store is still expanding. “Visual Rhizome” uses rhizome.org as its data base, visualizing the works saved in rhizome.org by the keywords set up by the artists who made the works and the art categories. Through images from “Visual Rhizome”, users can discover a new relationship between the data, just as Lev Manovich said: “Data does not just belong to the side of cognition. If, in our society, data streams move our brains and our bodies, perhaps informational aesthetics will eventually learn how to think about affective data as well” (Lev Manovich 2001, p. 12).
Mapping Data Visualization, coming from modern business of information, aims to present the context of complicated information and to present a visible pattern of originally invisible tracks through a mode of mapping. J.B.Harley- Who is credited with bring a cross- disciplinary approach to cartography- argued that maps are social construction of the world:" Far from holding up a simple mirror of nature that is true or false, maps redescribe the world, like any other document, in terms of relation of power and of cultural practices, preference, and priorites” (Janet Abrams & Peter Hall 2006, p. 12). If we admire the beauty of Data Visualization from an aesthetic angle, large and complex ever changing order in chaos flux is beautiful.
5-5 Game Art
Regarding art theories, we have discussed Friedrich Schiller’s and Immanuel Kant’s “Play Impulse” theory that art originates from the behaviour of art creation while playing; for example, painting came from daubing, dance from hop-scotch, and music from nonsense sounds. However, their original potential has been forgotten gradually by civilization, or it is said this essence as a hidden play characteristic has been forgotten by traditional art education. Among the series of art movements of the 1960’s, we see a play characteristic in art again. It is an interesting and amusing form of art that enters the populace again; art is not so lofty any more. The play concept of art shows the internal spirit of logical phenomena, the play characteristic representing a reflection of the time, expressing the crises and confrontations in the cultures of prosperous societies (Chen Yong Xian 2004, p. 434).
Following the development of technology, games become another invention, even a culture of beauty in another new media art. Lev Manovich in his book The Language of New Media mentioned discussions about the aesthetics of electronic games. Ars Electronica proposed to regard electronic games as a form of art in 2001. The movement of combining games and art was brought to birth silently, and in the waves of dispute of course it was blown into the field of net art. An American artist, curator, writer and gamer Anne-Marie Schleiner, described these possibilities in an interview in 1999: “As a curator I am interested in the notion of art as culture hacking, art with a critical agenda that seeps outside the boundaries of prescribed art audiences and engages itself with a broader public (ie. the gaming public). Art that finds cracks in the code and hacks into foreign systems. I also want to invite a cross-pollination of gaming and art strategies by providing artists with tools and techniques developed by game hackers and exhibiting game patches created by gamers as art” (Anne-Marie Schleiner 1999, p. 2). No matter whether it is net strategy or pure net art, interaction effects are the real motivation for net art (Chen yong xian 2002, p. 109).
Regarding art theories, we have discussed Friedrich Schiller’s and Immanuel Kant’s “Play Impulse” theory that art originates from the behaviour of art creation while playing; for example, painting came from daubing, dance from hop-scotch, and music from nonsense sounds. However, their original potential has been forgotten gradually by civilization, or it is said this essence as a hidden play characteristic has been forgotten by traditional art education. Among the series of art movements of the 1960’s, we see a play characteristic in art again. It is an interesting and amusing form of art that enters the populace again; art is not so lofty any more. The play concept of art shows the internal spirit of logical phenomena, the play characteristic representing a reflection of the time, expressing the crises and confrontations in the cultures of prosperous societies (Chen Yong Xian 2004, p. 434).
Following the development of technology, games become another invention, even a culture of beauty in another new media art. Lev Manovich in his book The Language of New Media mentioned discussions about the aesthetics of electronic games. Ars Electronica proposed to regard electronic games as a form of art in 2001. The movement of combining games and art was brought to birth silently, and in the waves of dispute of course it was blown into the field of net art. An American artist, curator, writer and gamer Anne-Marie Schleiner, described these possibilities in an interview in 1999: “As a curator I am interested in the notion of art as culture hacking, art with a critical agenda that seeps outside the boundaries of prescribed art audiences and engages itself with a broader public (ie. the gaming public). Art that finds cracks in the code and hacks into foreign systems. I also want to invite a cross-pollination of gaming and art strategies by providing artists with tools and techniques developed by game hackers and exhibiting game patches created by gamers as art” (Anne-Marie Schleiner 1999, p. 2). No matter whether it is net strategy or pure net art, interaction effects are the real motivation for net art (Chen yong xian 2002, p. 109).
Natalie Bookchin’s “The Intruder” (http://www.calarts.edu/~bookchin/intruder )is a standard net art work that regards games as [providing direction for] invention; this is a representative work discussing play art. Natalie Bookchin uses narrative stories as a structure and simple games, such as shooting, table tennis and tracing, to create play interaction with users. After users finish an action, such as shooting or picking a ball, the narrative voice-over will give an imperative for the next action. In order to see the whole story, users will try hard to meet the rules and requirements of the game. The playing process of this work consists of game history in one part, and another, larger, part of the experiment in applying physical relationships to words.
The “agoraXchang” (http://www.agoraxchange.net/ )is another net art work by Natalie Bookchin in a commission for the Tate Museum. Its essence is also play creativity, but the difference is that this project is more like the pregnancy of an idea. At first, the “agoraXchang” invited users to give feedback about a better game idea, expressing personal opinions in a mode like that of wikipedia, including comments about the game’s visual platform, game rules or users’ experiences relevant to the game. This project began in 2004, and is currently open to be edited by the public. The ultimate aim of this project is to design a play script plotted by the populace and then to use the script to produce an actual multi-user game. But looking at the present situation, the accomplishment of this goal is still distant just now. In fact, the procedure of this project is more like the situation of the net community in its relation to multi-user game. The only difference is: One involves participation before the production of the work, while the other involves participation after the work has been done.
The “Citysnake” by Jason Corace and Vicky Fang, which won the commission of 2005-2006 net art Project from rhizome.org, uses games as its invention to connect the two real cities of Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York, joining them in a competition. “Citysnake” is a large-scale game of creation, combining the two types of space – virtual net and actual cities – and the participants can choose to enter the battle field from the net or the actual cities. The public can join the judgment-making through cell phones or the net to decide the movement direction of participants. The greatest fun of this game is that it overturns the mode of traditional games that control the virtual by the real; in this project, the real game rules are controlled by the virtual net, and it makes all people in both cities actors in the game.
Another rhizome.org commission project of 2004-2005, the “Agonistics” ( http://hybrid.ucsc.edu/Agonistics/RHIZOME_RAW/Interface/agon245.html ) uses game methods to give users some roles in the game without their knowing it. This project by Warren Sack explores issues about net public space and public forum. It uses the email forum system in rhizome.org as its structure. When users post comments to the forum via email, users’ names and their topics will appear on both edges of the “Agonistics” page. Users gain one point as a reward after posting one comment, and the image representative of the person who gains the most points will be put on the centre of the screen automatically, indicating the current main actor of the game. Images used in the “Agonistics” come from medieval sculptures, and it is a political metaphor that this democratic forum, just like games and races, has rewards and punishments. The points collecting and rewarding systems are common games usage. In this project, Warren Sack manipulated the “winners’” psychology. If participants hope to gain the highest points, then they will post comments continuously to make personal images exist in the centre of the game, and this also contributes to the data base of rhizome.org.
Contemporary art had already begun to move toward fun and entertainment, with the tacit consent of the art community (Regina Cornwell 1996), which is especially true in an age of new media art. Artists before were afraid of being labeled as “playing” or “game-like”, but now we can answer loudly that “playing art is another form of aesthetics of new media art”. It is like Lev Manovich’s opinions about the two games of Doom and Myst; he argues that games bring people back to a primary world of fairy tales (Lev Manovich 2000, p. 245). Compared with the complicated real world, legends and fairy tales are indeed more attractive. The ultimate goal of art is to feed people with spiritual food, and playing art suits modern people of high technology, doesn’t it? When Anne-Marie Schleiner was asked her opinion about artists adding game-like into art works, she answered: “Artists can bring a critical and perhaps more diverse agenda in terms of age, gender, and politics to computer games. Artists are adept in approaching cultural artefacts in a manner that merges form and content with an attuned awareness to cultural belief systems that are embedded in aesthetics” (Anne-Marie Schleiner 1999, p. 4).
I remember when I was studying at Fushing Art School in Taiwan, one of my teachers often mentioned his philosophy that: “art creation is first simple then becomes complex, and then moves from complex to become simple. Yet the latter “simple” is no more simple in the end.” Perhaps Game Art will return to this principle form of creation, but the difference is that it applies high-tech tools to stimulate a visual reaction. The concept of playing looks simple, but its cultural meaning is quite complicated and never simple.
5-6 Collaborative creation on the Internet
Following the coming of the Web 2.0 Age, sharing and collaborative creation has become the developing mode of net resources; in twenty-first-century culture, collaboration seems the order of the day (Thomas M. Inge 2001). As the relationship between users and net applications moves from dissemination to participation, from the personal website of a single path to the blog of mutual feedback, and from the online Encyclopaedia Britannica to the Wikipedia co-edited by everyone, Web2.0 has become the name for collaborative wisdom and collaborative contribution. The Web 2.0 Age emphasizes the development of de-centralization, collaborative creation, re-mixability, emergent systems and other attributes of users’ experience (Lin xi zhan 2006), so users play the central role.
The concept of Web 2.0 seems to match Roland Barthes’ theories of the “Writerly Text” and “The Death of the Author”. The so-called “writerly text” refers to the decentralisation of textuality and intertexuality. When readers/audience are reading /watching the works, they can add their opinions to the works, such as open texts which involve co-editing or collaborative creation.
Following the coming of the Web 2.0 Age, sharing and collaborative creation has become the developing mode of net resources; in twenty-first-century culture, collaboration seems the order of the day (Thomas M. Inge 2001). As the relationship between users and net applications moves from dissemination to participation, from the personal website of a single path to the blog of mutual feedback, and from the online Encyclopaedia Britannica to the Wikipedia co-edited by everyone, Web2.0 has become the name for collaborative wisdom and collaborative contribution. The Web 2.0 Age emphasizes the development of de-centralization, collaborative creation, re-mixability, emergent systems and other attributes of users’ experience (Lin xi zhan 2006), so users play the central role.
The concept of Web 2.0 seems to match Roland Barthes’ theories of the “Writerly Text” and “The Death of the Author”. The so-called “writerly text” refers to the decentralisation of textuality and intertexuality. When readers/audience are reading /watching the works, they can add their opinions to the works, such as open texts which involve co-editing or collaborative creation.
Based on case studies of collaboration art projects and literature review studies, I have analysed four characteristics of collaborative creation within internet media: Playing participation; the growth of the art form; The Verbality of Art, and The Transferring of Authorship. According to the outcome of this research, a new way of appreciating the new form of net art has emerged.
Playing The Game: Important Net art Factors Attract User Participation
Interaction between works and users is a key factor in net art. The integral exploration of a work demands the default path of a creator and also the complete participation of users. Net works, which require interaction, ask for a certain period of time for the users to finish browsing and operating the work. Unfortunately, most people have limited patience toward art. According to America’s Harper’s Bazaar magazine, audience members at an exhibition only stayed for from five seconds to three minutes in front of each work (Yeh Jin Rui 2002, p. 109). So, the most important consideration for creators to think about is how to attract users to participate in interaction with net art works.
Interaction between works and users is a key factor in net art. The integral exploration of a work demands the default path of a creator and also the complete participation of users. Net works, which require interaction, ask for a certain period of time for the users to finish browsing and operating the work. Unfortunately, most people have limited patience toward art. According to America’s Harper’s Bazaar magazine, audience members at an exhibition only stayed for from five seconds to three minutes in front of each work (Yeh Jin Rui 2002, p. 109). So, the most important consideration for creators to think about is how to attract users to participate in interaction with net art works.
I found an interesting fact from examining numerous net art works of collaborative creation, that many works consisted of playing factors; it seems that the creators hope to attract participants through the inducement of games. In traditional art education, we learned how to admire a painting, how to see a sculpture or how to listen to a melody; this kind of education made people a passive audience. By contrast, in the field of interacting net art, the audience has to be the active agent, otherwise the admiration of art works cannot proceed. The question is: how to make a passive audience become positive participants? I think this is the reason why many net art works have the attributes of games. Through the inducement of games, passive audiences become participants in art creation voluntarily. In the process of the game, users spontaneously explore all messages delivered, so net art works can be displayed integrally.
The group of Sulake’s “Habbo Hotel” ( http://www.habbo.com/ ) is an online friend-making website exclusively for youth, and it hopes that youth can learn appropriate social life through this virtual social field. This website takes the game concept as its structure to create a big global hotel chain. Since 2001, there have been 19 virtual hotels built in the States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, China, Fenland, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Portugal, Singapore and Japan; it is the biggest virtual hotel chain in the world. Anyone can live in the “Habbo Hotel” after a simple registration online, and free membership is the reason why it is so popular. There are various facilities in the hotel, such as lobby, billiards, café, ballroom, cafeteria, game room, etc. Users can enter any facility to chat with other users, or join other people’s billiards racing, swimming, or even a dancing race. In this hotel, user can use fake names, false sex, or even shape a perfect person for themselves to meet. Because there is no identity validation, there is not the personality burden of real life, which is another reason why the website is very successful. The game structure and vivid virtual motions in “Habbo Hotel” drive users to spontaneously make a contribution to the website, and to accept the social experience acquired from this hotel; the integrity of this work has been achieved perfectly.
The group of Sulake’s “Habbo Hotel” ( http://www.habbo.com/ ) is an online friend-making website exclusively for youth, and it hopes that youth can learn appropriate social life through this virtual social field. This website takes the game concept as its structure to create a big global hotel chain. Since 2001, there have been 19 virtual hotels built in the States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, China, Fenland, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Portugal, Singapore and Japan; it is the biggest virtual hotel chain in the world. Anyone can live in the “Habbo Hotel” after a simple registration online, and free membership is the reason why it is so popular. There are various facilities in the hotel, such as lobby, billiards, café, ballroom, cafeteria, game room, etc. Users can enter any facility to chat with other users, or join other people’s billiards racing, swimming, or even a dancing race. In this hotel, user can use fake names, false sex, or even shape a perfect person for themselves to meet. Because there is no identity validation, there is not the personality burden of real life, which is another reason why the website is very successful. The game structure and vivid virtual motions in “Habbo Hotel” drive users to spontaneously make a contribution to the website, and to accept the social experience acquired from this hotel; the integrity of this work has been achieved perfectly.
The Growth of the Art Form: The Shape of Works Change with Users’ Participation and Contribution.
The net is an easy-to-use medium, and art works that take the net as their preferred medium must allow users to enter the work easily. Hence, the net becomes a public space, and art accomplished on the net also becomes a type of open public art. According to the definition from Wikipedia, so-called public art is art work exhibited in a public space, allowing the public to participate or touch the works. On the other hand, for net art works, interaction and audience participation are the main factors. If the works can reflect the users’ interaction as a contribution to the works, can they accomplish the ideal of public art itself? Or it should be called another kind of exhibition of online public art?
Jeffrey Shaw, a famous Australian new media artist states that now with the mechanism of the new digital technology, the artwork can become itself a simulation of reality – an immaterial digital structure encompassing synthetic spaces which we can literally enter. Here, the viewer is no longer a consumer in a mausoleum of objects; rather he/she is a traveller and discoverer in a latent space of sensual information, whose aesthetics are embodied both in the coordination of its immaterial form and in the scenarios of its interactivity manifest form. In this temporal dimension, the interactive artwork, in each time is restructured and re-embodied by the activity of its viewers (Foote Jessica 2003b). In other words, for an integral work of collaborative creation, the performance of its art form must change with users’ participation and contribution; the art form is not controlled by artists only, but is constructed as well by contributors to the work. If looking at the status of net collaborative creation from a psychological aspect, reflecting the footprint of participants directly on the actual works, it not only encourages users to visit the work again to find their own footprint, but also elevates positive emotions from participants having made a contribution.
The comic website “Renga” (http://www.renga.com/ )by Japanese artists Rieko Nakamura and Toshihiro Anzai, set in 1992, applied the principles of growth and change to their net collaborative creations. In Japanese, “Ren”= Linked and “Ga ” = images. As the name shows, it is a work using picture links as their primary mechanism for change. The interesting thing is that all picture links have associated metatabs with specific symbols within them. For example, the association of sun and moon or of light and petals. The “Renga,” considering users’ different personal experiences, allows participants to upload pictures in accordance with individual cognition, and to link to extant pictures on the website. The pattern of the whole page is like a climbing vine changing continuously so that no one can predict the final situation of the display.
The “Dialogue with No Word” is one of the projects designed by “Renga”. First an artist uploaded a picture, then a participant uploaded another relevant picture according to the inspiration he acquired from the first picture. There was a symbolic dialogue between the two photos and the two authors; a dialogue without words was accomplished through the process. There were more and more photos following the increased contribution from uploading users, and the links between pictures made the developing mode of the work change at the same time. This matches the art form of net collaborative creation, which grows and changes all the time.
The net is an easy-to-use medium, and art works that take the net as their preferred medium must allow users to enter the work easily. Hence, the net becomes a public space, and art accomplished on the net also becomes a type of open public art. According to the definition from Wikipedia, so-called public art is art work exhibited in a public space, allowing the public to participate or touch the works. On the other hand, for net art works, interaction and audience participation are the main factors. If the works can reflect the users’ interaction as a contribution to the works, can they accomplish the ideal of public art itself? Or it should be called another kind of exhibition of online public art?
Jeffrey Shaw, a famous Australian new media artist states that now with the mechanism of the new digital technology, the artwork can become itself a simulation of reality – an immaterial digital structure encompassing synthetic spaces which we can literally enter. Here, the viewer is no longer a consumer in a mausoleum of objects; rather he/she is a traveller and discoverer in a latent space of sensual information, whose aesthetics are embodied both in the coordination of its immaterial form and in the scenarios of its interactivity manifest form. In this temporal dimension, the interactive artwork, in each time is restructured and re-embodied by the activity of its viewers (Foote Jessica 2003b). In other words, for an integral work of collaborative creation, the performance of its art form must change with users’ participation and contribution; the art form is not controlled by artists only, but is constructed as well by contributors to the work. If looking at the status of net collaborative creation from a psychological aspect, reflecting the footprint of participants directly on the actual works, it not only encourages users to visit the work again to find their own footprint, but also elevates positive emotions from participants having made a contribution.
The comic website “Renga” (http://www.renga.com/ )by Japanese artists Rieko Nakamura and Toshihiro Anzai, set in 1992, applied the principles of growth and change to their net collaborative creations. In Japanese, “Ren”= Linked and “Ga ” = images. As the name shows, it is a work using picture links as their primary mechanism for change. The interesting thing is that all picture links have associated metatabs with specific symbols within them. For example, the association of sun and moon or of light and petals. The “Renga,” considering users’ different personal experiences, allows participants to upload pictures in accordance with individual cognition, and to link to extant pictures on the website. The pattern of the whole page is like a climbing vine changing continuously so that no one can predict the final situation of the display.
The “Dialogue with No Word” is one of the projects designed by “Renga”. First an artist uploaded a picture, then a participant uploaded another relevant picture according to the inspiration he acquired from the first picture. There was a symbolic dialogue between the two photos and the two authors; a dialogue without words was accomplished through the process. There were more and more photos following the increased contribution from uploading users, and the links between pictures made the developing mode of the work change at the same time. This matches the art form of net collaborative creation, which grows and changes all the time.
“Starry Night” (http://nothing.org/starrynight ), was created by three net art giants, including the founder of rhizome.org Mark Tribe, Alex Galloway and Martin Wattenberg. “Starry Night” is another example of net collaborative creation that metaphorically replicates the cosmos. This website connects with the link of rhizome.org: when users read the words on rhizome.org, a corresponding light spot of “Starry Night” will increase its light. With the words of more readers, the corresponding light spot shines brighter. Each star represents the reading frequency of the words on rhizome.org. Users can click on the stars of “Starry Night” to enter rhizome.org, and when more and more people join in, whichever topics have higher frequency (more shining stars) becomes brighter and so more popular. Those stars with little light in the dark sky are representative of pages with a low clicking frequency. The change in display of “Starry Night” depends on readers of rhizome.org, so the users leaving footprints casually are the contributors of the change in this work.
The Verbality of Art： Art does not bring mysterious colours anymore but experience sharing and dialogue instead. Art becomes a verb.
Due to development of modern digital technology, art now shows a multi-polarity, especially in those net art works relying on technology as a disseminating platform. There are many types of easily operated software available in the market, for users to create personal image works, animation, and even websites. Extremely intelligent creation can be produced by the fool-proof operation of this software – this is the biggest contribution of digital technology to art. Hence, art creation is no more the privilege of a small group in society, but an opportunity for everyone to create. As well as the interactive characteristics of the net, the definition of art creation becomes worth discussing. As Ben Davis said: “In a certain sense, the act of finding art on net is a net art activity itself…Net art is not something, but an environment…In the field of net, a thought field that different aesthetics can be proposed, different concepts can communicate with each other” (Chen Guang Da 1998, p. 81).
Szyhalski Ding, a net artist and Professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, claims that, “the Internet is a public space; it’s just a much more populated and busier public space. It has its own rhythm and logic.” (Foote Jessica 2003b). From the viewpoint of these scholars, the aesthetics of net art becomes an expression of conceptual art. The integrity depends on users traversing the art work to explore it. Hence, when users visit the work, both the work and the participants are conducting an art performance. In terms of collaborative creation, art creation brings no mysterious colours anymore, but experience sharing and dialogue instead. Art becomes a verb.
The “One Word Movie” (http://www.onewordmovie.com/ )by Philippe Zimmermann and Beat Brogle makes participating users create their own art work at the same time as visiting their site. “One Word Movie” borrows the function of a net search engine, turning phrases typed by users into keywords, searching for relevant pictures from the net, displayed picture by picture like frames in a film. The longer the searching time, the more pictures there are, and the richer the film is. “One Word Movie” turns users’ words into film and constructs a film with the pictures. The phrase typed first becomes the film title, and the user becomes the director. The contribution of the pictures comes from the vast Internet sources, and my or your photos may become the content of someone’s film. So, you and I are participating in someone’s net collaborative creation and becoming someone’s “actors”.
Andy Deck from the United States of America identifies himself as a “net public artist”, whose art works mostly discuss the possibility of net collaborative painting. He is a new media artist devoted to collaborative creation experiments, and “Glyphiti” is one of his more important works. This work is like a blank canvas put on the net public space, welcoming anyone to paint on it or change other peoples’ paintings. The big painting on screen is actually composed of 256 frames of 32 x 32 pixels, and users can choose to paint on any frame. Because Andy Deck did not set any topic for painting, the drawing styles and topics are varied in the extreme. According to Deck’s personal statement: “the beauty of it is watching people find ways to work around its implicit limitations” (Andy Deck 2001). So, when a user is drawing on “Glyphiti” (http://artcontext.net/act/06/glyphiti/docs/index.php ) with her mouse, she is experiencing the process of art creation at the same time. Experiencing and admiring art are in the mode of verbs.
Transferring Authorship: Artists of collaborative creations become the editors of projects, and users participating in the project become artists at the same time.
When art works are not physical objects any more, the boundary of authorship becomes more blurred (Foote Jessica 2003b). When works involve participants as creators beside or instead of authors, the relationship between authors and works starts to break down. Who created the work? Who finished the work? Who are the contributors behind the screen? Looking from the mode of net collaborative creation, we can see clearly that the works have been contributed by net users.
In fact, the artists themselves made the least contribution to the works. Julian H. Scaff argues, “For now to have to capacity to view the digital artwork means also to have the capacity to (re)produce it infinitely, and to change it endlessly. Not only is authenticity in question, but the idea of authorship is almost obsolete”(Julian H. Scaff, p. 2). As Shu Lea Cheng mentioned in an interview: “In the net art projects I have been doing, the characteristic of ‘mass participation/involvement’ has been emphasized a lot. The net is a media through which the world can ‘enter’ the artworks easily, and the artworks are completely within the ‘public domain’. Under this concept, I think so-called ‘authors rights’ are to some degree overthrown” (Shu Lea Cheng 2000). Hence, during the process of collaborative creation, artists become the editors of projects, and users participating in the project become artists at the same time.
The “Let’s Make Art” (http://www.yutseng.com/mart02/index.htm ) project by Taiwan’s new media artist Yu-Chuan Tseng in 2003 made the audience become contributors to the artwork, and artists of art creation as well. “Let’s Make Art”, exhibited in the Taipei Fine Art Museum, invited the audience to upload their own photo via the Internet. Then, they were asked to come back to the museum to print out the photos and finally frame the photos for exhibition in the museum. The uploaded photos became digital codes after a procedure of computer calculation, and the audience had to use the computers at the museum to see the original photos. From virtual net to physical exhibition, “Let’s Make Art” turned the audience’s participation into artists’ role in creation.
“Screening circle” ( http://artcontext.org/wire/art/2006/screeningCircle.html )by Andy Deck exhibited in the Whitney Artport in March 2006, is another net art work concerned with the transferring of authorship. Andy Deck writes on his website under the title “Public Art, Net Art”. Here we can see his ideal of regarding net art as public art. Most of his artworks satisfy the requirement of public art that: “exhibiting in a public area must allow a mass audience to participate in the artwork.”
“Screening circle” also applies the process of drawing with pixels. Users can draw personal images on the website, or change other people’s images. After users draw, then the images are displayed in whirling images around the screen. This creation concept is similar to film-making. Again, every image painted by users is like the frames of a film. When more and more people participate in image painting, the contents of the film become much richer. This use of collaborative creation says that users can make or change the artworks left by other people. So every participant who makes a contribution to this website becomes the artist-creator of “Screening circle”. Besides, “Screening circle” is fun – from the bright colors to adorable images, all conform to the aesthetics of computer games, which corresponds to the “playing participation” principle mentioned above.
Andy Deck, in an interview by Maia Mau, mentioned that: “I aim to get people to collaborate online who don't have exactly the same expectations about what they are doing together. People who are participating in my art projects sometimes generate ideas, and they usually contribute to the so-called ‘gift economy.’ We can debate the quality of the contributions and whether what is produced is coherent and sophisticated, but there's no question that it's a departure from the passive viewing of television and advertising. It's this calling forth of a more active subject that joins the art practice and the activism” (Andy Deck 2005).
The process of collaborative creation on the Internet is what actionists are pursuing: the value of an artwork is created simply in a short time (hour, minute, second) not in long-term preparation (a month, year or century). Andy Deck’s unpredictable action to invite net users to join in the process of creation realized the immediate creation style of actionists and realises the aesthetics of net collaborative creation.
The process of collaborative creation on the Internet is what actionists are pursuing: the value of an artwork is created simply in a short time (hour, minute, second) not in long-term preparation (a month, year or century). Andy Deck’s unpredictable action to invite net users to join in the process of creation realized the immediate creation style of actionists and realises the aesthetics of net collaborative creation.
5-7 Internet/digital community
A digital community is a social group convened by the dissemination of Net media; just as in the interaction modes of other communities in daily life, a collective goal gives birth to the communal relationship between the individuals. Peter Kollock in his book “The Economies of Online Cooperation” suggests that there are three motivations for digital communities to participate with each other: Anticipated Reciprocity, Increased Recognition and Sense of Efficacy. The so-called “anticipated reciprocity” refers to the reciprocal relationship between communities. People do not always get equal feedback when contributing to a digital community, but will receive respect from the community. For example, the engineer who publicizes the open source code always receives thanks and regards from the beneficiary. The idea of “increased recognition” refers to the fact that community members hope to be honored for making contributions, so as to gain identity or self-appreciation. For example, the ranking system of “Yahoo Answers” makes a member’s contribution recognized by the community. “Self-efficacy” means that individuals provide useful information to community members to influence the community and satisfy their self-image. For example, ordinary people as members participating in editing Wikipedia can acquire some sense of efficacy from doing it (Wikipedia).
Following the development of technology and changes in human society, net communities soon became a new form which is virtual but influential; even the field of net art has a record of being influenced. The Yearly Prix Ars Electronica from Ars Electronica Linz Centre in Austria, added the category of Digital Communities in 2004. Also, in the same year, “Blogs” – a word that originates from net communities – was chosen by Merriam-Webster Dictionary editorial committee as the “word of the year”. Digital communities have become a rising trend on the net and appear to be shaping the political and cultural nature of the web as an interpersonal and collective forum and meeting place.
A digital community is a social group convened by the dissemination of Net media; just as in the interaction modes of other communities in daily life, a collective goal gives birth to the communal relationship between the individuals. Peter Kollock in his book “The Economies of Online Cooperation” suggests that there are three motivations for digital communities to participate with each other: Anticipated Reciprocity, Increased Recognition and Sense of Efficacy. The so-called “anticipated reciprocity” refers to the reciprocal relationship between communities. People do not always get equal feedback when contributing to a digital community, but will receive respect from the community. For example, the engineer who publicizes the open source code always receives thanks and regards from the beneficiary. The idea of “increased recognition” refers to the fact that community members hope to be honored for making contributions, so as to gain identity or self-appreciation. For example, the ranking system of “Yahoo Answers” makes a member’s contribution recognized by the community. “Self-efficacy” means that individuals provide useful information to community members to influence the community and satisfy their self-image. For example, ordinary people as members participating in editing Wikipedia can acquire some sense of efficacy from doing it (Wikipedia).
Following the development of technology and changes in human society, net communities soon became a new form which is virtual but influential; even the field of net art has a record of being influenced. The Yearly Prix Ars Electronica from Ars Electronica Linz Centre in Austria, added the category of Digital Communities in 2004. Also, in the same year, “Blogs” – a word that originates from net communities – was chosen by Merriam-Webster Dictionary editorial committee as the “word of the year”. Digital communities have become a rising trend on the net and appear to be shaping the political and cultural nature of the web as an interpersonal and collective forum and meeting place.
The British Publisher Penguin publicized the creative project “a million penguins” (http://www.amillionpenguins.com/wiki/index.ph )in February 1, 2007 to call net communities together to compose an experimental novel by a million people. This six-week project takes the mode of Wikipedia and allows community members to edit any part of the novel freely. Everyone can write 250 words as a maximum, including modifying or deleting other’s people’s writing. Penguin emphasized that this experimental novel is not to discover new writers, but to test the community’s power and to explore the possibility of net collaborative creation. It is obvious that this project of “a million penguins” showed the great size and extent of the net community; as for the result of this collaborative creation, it is “humorous” at best, but has a long way to go to be a mature creation.
In a normal procedure, the first requirement for digital community participation is to register as a member; after acquiring a virtual identity, one can formally participate in interaction with the net community. Digital communities at an early stage made good use of the “Mailing list”, for example Nettim and rhizome.org delivering messages through their Mailing lists to let members all over the world exchange ideas and to discuss issues from different angles. However, following the improvement of net technology, the motivation for establishing digital communities comes from the issues’ inducement, and visual and interactive factors count as the reason for the digital community’s success.
“The World Starts With Me”(http://www.theworldstarts.org/ ), was the winner of Prix Ars Electronica in2004. It combined digital community interaction with computer game characteristics. This digital community’s members are mostly young people, so games with a fancy display are designed to attract the net community. “The World Starts With Me” is designed for a digital on-line school; it teaches youth about healthy sexual concepts and social life. Community members include teachers and students, and well-performing students have the chance to become teachers. It is a net community website with a positive sense of education and contribution to society.
Blogs are perhaps the best representative today of the digital community at work and play. Since the establishment of the first blog, simply called Blogger (Blogger.com) in 1999, within a few years, blogs multiplied into many millions. The power of Internet to rapidly adopt new technology is best seen with the uptake of blogs. Easily-operated blogs give people the possibility of both creativity and communication. Anyone can be the owner of a blog to write, post photos or compose any form of artwork in the virtual world of Net community.
“My Beating Blog”(http://turbulence.org/Works/beatingheart/blog/beatingblog ) is a project sponsored by New Radio and Performing Arts in 2005. It was publicized on the Turbulence website, to discuss the value of artists’ contribution to society. The author Yury Gitman invented his city net art with a “Magicbikes” installed with wireless Internet access, moving through New York City. “My Beating Blog”, using the dissemination mode of blogs, with the route of his wireless Net bike, sent back his moving track to “My Beating Blog”. Yury Gitman posts news in daily life like a diary, and through the net community of a blog, tries to record the role of an artist’s interaction with society.
“My Beating Blog”(http://turbulence.org/Works/beatingheart/blog/beatingblog ) is a project sponsored by New Radio and Performing Arts in 2005. It was publicized on the Turbulence website, to discuss the value of artists’ contribution to society. The author Yury Gitman invented his city net art with a “Magicbikes” installed with wireless Internet access, moving through New York City. “My Beating Blog”, using the dissemination mode of blogs, with the route of his wireless Net bike, sent back his moving track to “My Beating Blog”. Yury Gitman posts news in daily life like a diary, and through the net community of a blog, tries to record the role of an artist’s interaction with society.
Community has considerable power, but the community’s power via the virtual Net is even more amazing. Because users concealed in the net do not suffer from the social pressures of normal life, interaction between communities and the factor of being carefree are the source of the net community’s power, which also becomes a route to inspire art creation.
5-8 The Interaction of Artificial Intelligence
The research scope for Artificial Intelligence (AI) is generally divided into: Expert System, Natural Language Understanding, Computer Vision, Speech Understanding, Robotic Application, Artificial Neural Network and Intelligent Agent (The Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Senior High School). In the field of industry and commerce, the rate of using AI is on an increasing curve. Especially in virtual net space, it is difficult to judge if we are “communicating” with say, a real human or “Robert” AI.
The research scope for Artificial Intelligence (AI) is generally divided into: Expert System, Natural Language Understanding, Computer Vision, Speech Understanding, Robotic Application, Artificial Neural Network and Intelligent Agent (The Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Senior High School). In the field of industry and commerce, the rate of using AI is on an increasing curve. Especially in virtual net space, it is difficult to judge if we are “communicating” with say, a real human or “Robert” AI.
“Sensitiveness” refers to the personality of the artist. AI learns and memorizes the thinking and interaction of human interaction. This special interaction characteristic was soon applied to the art creation field. The ACMI centre in Melbourne (the Australian Centre of the Moving Image) committed a group of artists and engineers in 2003 to create the net artwork “Sodaplay”(http://www.soda.co.uk/ ), where they used some simple AI in part of the work to produce geometric creatures vivid as life. “Sodaplay” is constructed by simple geometric lines and points, allowing users to adjust the living indicator and moving indicator of this virtual creature. Users can create their own geometric creatures, and they can modify the models left by other users. When no external force from the mouse is imposed on the geometric creatures, they spontaneously imitate living beings’ moving postures to move casually on the screen. Once the users’ force is involved, the geometric creatures have vivid reflexes similar to those of real living beings, such as jumping, rotating or escaping. In “Sodaplay”, the interaction between human beings and virtual creatures is reflected, and an exchange platform for net collaborative creation is created to let users create together a virtual but active net creature.
The “ALICE”(http://www.alicebot.org/ ) is an AI chatting website produced by Richard S. Wallace of the AI laboratory at MIT, and constructed with AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language). It allows users to download the software and use it freely as a non-commercial act; it is a standard website for free software. “Alice” is a virtual woman with AI, having learned natural language, she can answer users’ questions with remarkable accuracy. Interestingly, when I asked Alice: “Do you speak Chinese?” She answered: “Yi diar. Ni hao ma?” (this is the Chinese pronunciation of the phrase “a little, how are you?” in English). In the process of talking with Alice, I am sometimes confused as to whether I am talking with a machine or a person. This virtual chatting reflects the high-tech of AI and the illusive art creation form in the virtual net world.
When art combines with AI, it requires complicated and difficult technologies, which makes it a more expensive creation. After the work is done, the AI learning character of the work itself brings up another question about the artist’s role as an author, as mentioned by Christian Paul in his book Digital Art: “While these projects obviously require the development of an artistic concept and quite complex programming, the artists in the end quite literally vanish behind and from their work, while their creation, an intelligent ‘being’, takes on its own life” (Christiane Paul 2003, p. 153). Therefore as the robot improves it’s identity the artist perhaps looses his or her role of artist as hero status.
5-9 Interaction with a Real Installation Combined with Internet
Gerfried Stocker, the Managing director of Ars Electronica, in an essay on the art of future writes: “The art of tomorrow is the art of the media”. Gerfried Stocker thinks that the possibilities of being able to communicate at any time and everywhere give rise to concomitant new prospects for social, and thus artistic, interaction. It is no longer the technological possibilities but rather the socio- cultural structures of the information society that are decisive in the context of an art of tomorrow. The internet as a cultural and commercial sphere is the basis and breeding ground of innovative, inspired modes of doing artistic work, which have an impact over an enormously expanded area due to the network linkages that are immanent in the medium (Gerfried Stocker 2005, pp. 27-28). Some artists regard the net’s virtual character as the new domain of Utopia, but some others still prefer analog artworks that are touchable. The latter combine physical installations with the net serving as a component to create a hybrid medium, and in so doing, demonstrate the net’s character of having no temporal and spatial gaps; they exhibit actual effects of the virtual net on the actual physical world.
Gerfried Stocker, the Managing director of Ars Electronica, in an essay on the art of future writes: “The art of tomorrow is the art of the media”. Gerfried Stocker thinks that the possibilities of being able to communicate at any time and everywhere give rise to concomitant new prospects for social, and thus artistic, interaction. It is no longer the technological possibilities but rather the socio- cultural structures of the information society that are decisive in the context of an art of tomorrow. The internet as a cultural and commercial sphere is the basis and breeding ground of innovative, inspired modes of doing artistic work, which have an impact over an enormously expanded area due to the network linkages that are immanent in the medium (Gerfried Stocker 2005, pp. 27-28). Some artists regard the net’s virtual character as the new domain of Utopia, but some others still prefer analog artworks that are touchable. The latter combine physical installations with the net serving as a component to create a hybrid medium, and in so doing, demonstrate the net’s character of having no temporal and spatial gaps; they exhibit actual effects of the virtual net on the actual physical world.
“Email Erosion” (http://www.emailerosion.org/erosion.html )by Tony Muilenburg and Ethan Ham is also a project combining the net and analog components. This project was commissioned by rhizome.org 2005-2006, and it explores the spatial relation between net and physical objects. “Email Erosion” invited all sorts of writing via email. When the analog installation at the Art Institute of Portland received emails, the installation was set off according to the content of emails to make sculptures of bubble plastic material by water-sprinkling or cutting. Net users could watch through the webcam the email’s effect and contribution to the sculpture made by the physical apparatus. It was a collaborative creation with analog installation setting to build upon the net culture.
The highlight of 2006 in Taiwanese in new media circles was the “Baby Love” (http://babylove.biz/ )project by Shu Lea Cheng. This net cultural installation work has been exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world since 2005, including Paris, San Jose, New York, Taiwan, Australia, Norway and China. The real installation used in the “Baby Love” is duplicated babies made of silicone gel, sitting in rotating cups of different colours. Net users can upload their favourite music to the database of “Baby Love” and interact with the live show. The audience in the museum can choose any song uploaded by net users and enjoy the fun of sitting in a rotating cup with a duplicated baby. Each rotation and bumping with other cups will cause the music to be mixed, reconstructed or restarted. All new musical combinations produced by exchanged data while duplicated babies bump into each other in the rotating cups will be returned to the net, so net users who uploaded the music can listen to their contributions again.
Artists have made good use of net cultural characters combined with real installations for interaction. Thereby, net users and gallery audiences, non-related initially, can cross the temporal and spatial barriers to produce an interesting connection on different levels of interacting relation. Shu Lea Cheng said, in my email interview about real installation works combining with the net: “The concrete/tangible display is the body of the work. I would not call them display. As installation, these works transcend gallery space with a net connection. Via the web, public wharf, public intervention, the work is not a self-enclosed, contained entity, but is ever-expandable in the part of software and human interaction”(Shu Lea Cheang 2006).
Hans-Georg Gadamer, a German philosopher, in his text “Truth and Method”, writes that: “The work of art is not an object that stands over against a subject for itself. Instead the work of art has its true being in the fact that it becomes an experience that changes the person who experiences it. The “subject” of the experience of art, that which remains and endures, is not the subjectivity of the person who experiences it but the work itself (Gadamer Hans Georg 1993, p. 102). From the example above, we realize that in the field of new media art, the interactive relationship established between artworks and audience is indeed communal and coexisting. It is especially true of installations involving the net, because a work without an audience’s interaction cannot awake the conceptual metaphor in depth, and in depth experiences can’t be expected to be felt by the audience.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, a German philosopher, in his text “Truth and Method”, writes that: “The work of art is not an object that stands over against a subject for itself. Instead the work of art has its true being in the fact that it becomes an experience that changes the person who experiences it. The “subject” of the experience of art, that which remains and endures, is not the subjectivity of the person who experiences it but the work itself (Gadamer Hans Georg 1993, p. 102). From the example above, we realize that in the field of new media art, the interactive relationship established between artworks and audience is indeed communal and coexisting. It is especially true of installations involving the net, because a work without an audience’s interaction cannot awake the conceptual metaphor in depth, and in depth experiences can’t be expected to be felt by the audience.
5-10 Conclusion and future work
According to the investigation and analysis of the appreciation and classification of net art, I have analysed four characteristics of the net art genre. They are:
1. Net art projects often combine the ideas of games.
2. The character of a net art project has its own digital aesthetic, involving conceptualism and interactivity.
3. The most important element of a successful net art project is the participation of Internet users.
4. Immediacy and global reach are key factors in the popularity of net art projects and have also brought about the changes in the way people participate in artworks.
After analysing these characteristics in relation to specific case examples there are certain definitions that can be sketched out here and will serve as a guide for my creative project:
◆It will be a purely net based art project. The essence of net art is different from traditional art forms. A net art project will include a highly interactive function between the user and the project itself, without any concrete displays in any existent gallery.
◆Time Art will be a significant concept in my creative project. Owing to the development of the internet, it allows user and artist to travel across space in an instant. The download and upload features in net art has brought out the flowing concept of time-based art.
◆It will be a form of collaborative creation involving public participation via the Internet. The form of the artwork will turn into a new piece by going through modification and transformation applied by different participants. The creation of a series of evolving images and animations will form the ongoing outcome of this research as a live website.
◆ The interface must be attractive to internet users while being easily to navigate. A net art project has its own master aesthetic, such as conceptualism and interactivity, it is not merely visual. In fact, the concept behind the net art project itself has to be driven and realized by the user’s participation. The user is the most important factor in a net art project; thus, enhancing the motivation for the user to participate in the net art project is the primary concern for making a net art project successful. In addition, the procedure of taking part in net art project must not be a difficult task for the user, otherwise it will discourage user from contributing to the project.
My creative project, which is fortune-telling in the reading manner of the I Ching, will broadly apply the characteristics of the above principles of net art. However there are four kinds of net art forms to be involved as the function of my creative project, namely Game Art, Collaborative Creation on the Internet, Non-linear Narrative, and Information Art. However, due to the correlation between the notions of the collective unconscious and collaborative creation, my main focus is on the net art form of Collaborative Creation on the Internet. Following are the four characteristics of collaborative creation on the Internet, which I have considered to be the main functions and features of my creative project.
1. Playing participation: Important net art factors attract user participation.
2. The growth of the art form: the shape of works changes with users’ participation and contribution.
3. The verbality of art: Art should focus on experience-sharing and dialogue instead. Art becomes a verb.
4. The transferring of Authorship: Artists of collaborative creation become the editors of the work, and users participating in the work become artists at the same time.
According to the investigation and analysis of the appreciation and classification of net art, I have analysed four characteristics of the net art genre. They are:
1. Net art projects often combine the ideas of games.
2. The character of a net art project has its own digital aesthetic, involving conceptualism and interactivity.
3. The most important element of a successful net art project is the participation of Internet users.
4. Immediacy and global reach are key factors in the popularity of net art projects and have also brought about the changes in the way people participate in artworks.
After analysing these characteristics in relation to specific case examples there are certain definitions that can be sketched out here and will serve as a guide for my creative project:
◆It will be a purely net based art project. The essence of net art is different from traditional art forms. A net art project will include a highly interactive function between the user and the project itself, without any concrete displays in any existent gallery.
◆Time Art will be a significant concept in my creative project. Owing to the development of the internet, it allows user and artist to travel across space in an instant. The download and upload features in net art has brought out the flowing concept of time-based art.
◆It will be a form of collaborative creation involving public participation via the Internet. The form of the artwork will turn into a new piece by going through modification and transformation applied by different participants. The creation of a series of evolving images and animations will form the ongoing outcome of this research as a live website.
◆ The interface must be attractive to internet users while being easily to navigate. A net art project has its own master aesthetic, such as conceptualism and interactivity, it is not merely visual. In fact, the concept behind the net art project itself has to be driven and realized by the user’s participation. The user is the most important factor in a net art project; thus, enhancing the motivation for the user to participate in the net art project is the primary concern for making a net art project successful. In addition, the procedure of taking part in net art project must not be a difficult task for the user, otherwise it will discourage user from contributing to the project.
My creative project, which is fortune-telling in the reading manner of the I Ching, will broadly apply the characteristics of the above principles of net art. However there are four kinds of net art forms to be involved as the function of my creative project, namely Game Art, Collaborative Creation on the Internet, Non-linear Narrative, and Information Art. However, due to the correlation between the notions of the collective unconscious and collaborative creation, my main focus is on the net art form of Collaborative Creation on the Internet. Following are the four characteristics of collaborative creation on the Internet, which I have considered to be the main functions and features of my creative project.
1. Playing participation: Important net art factors attract user participation.
2. The growth of the art form: the shape of works changes with users’ participation and contribution.
3. The verbality of art: Art should focus on experience-sharing and dialogue instead. Art becomes a verb.
4. The transferring of Authorship: Artists of collaborative creation become the editors of the work, and users participating in the work become artists at the same time.
posted by Giffen at
3:58 pm
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