Net Art 2.0: So what?

This presentation was created for a Curatorial Deathmatch

featuring Lindsay Howard vs. Marius Watz, Oct 8, 2011 at
Flux Factory in Long Island City, New York. This debate came
about as a result of a Twitter thread about the state of net art
and the emergence of a new generation of net artists.
Thanks to Christina Vassallo for hosting the Deathmatch as
part of the monthly Flux Thursday event series.
- Marius Watz
Links:
http://twitter.com/mariuswatz
http://twitter.com/lindsay_howard
http://fluxfactory.org

Net Art 2.0: So what?

Warning: The following is intended to be
an inflammatory, polemical and dialectical
response to specific utopian ideas currently
circulating in the (US) net art community.
Comments are not intended to dismiss or
harass any individual artist or art movement.
I apologize in advance to Brad Troemel for
over-quoting him, his texts were the most
readily available. But now: [flame: on]

Hi, my name is Marius and

Im an oldschool media artist
(and sometime curator.) My
own practice is formalist,
concerned w/ visual
abstractions through code.
twitter.com/mariuswatz
http://mariuswatz.com
http://generatorx.no

Mork/Pendry/Stenslie/Watz:
Sense:less (1996)

Detail (Field
Interactive
VR1)
installation

By oldschool I mean that Ive been

involved in media art since 1996,
which perhaps just means Im
old(ish).
Significance: Ive seen dozens of
hype cycles come and go.
Also, I first established a practice
through experimental web sites.

For reference, these words / terms

should be considered verboten:
1. Cutting edge
2. Paradigm shift
3. XXX is the new painting /
sculpture / gallery / blah
4. Rhizomatic

By media art I mean art

practices that engage in a
critical and material discourse
with technology and its social
and cultural effects.

Interactive installations,
experimental interfaces, virtual
spaces, augmented reality,
computational abstraction,
social media critique etc.
Also: Net art.

POLEMICAL CRITIQUE
1. New generation, new hype
2. Post-internet, so what?
3. Your Tumblr aint shit
4. Ooh, look. A kitten!
5. The 100 Year GIF war

Net art 1.0 (1994 - ca. 2003)

Political, anti-establishment,
anti-art commentary using
cheap ubiquitous media.
WWW, HTML, GIF anims,
<BLINK> tags etc.

Net art 1.0 (1994 - ca. 2003)

Olia Lialina, Vuk Cosic, JODI.
org, eToy, UBERMORGEN,
Alexei Shulgin, Heath Bunting
etc. etc.

Net art 2.0 (2007 - ???)

Political, anti-establishment,
anti-art commentary using
cheap ubiquitous media.
WWW, HTML, GIF anims etc.
New factors: Social Media i.e
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr etc.

1. New Generation, new hype

Net Art 2.0 covers the same
ground as 1.0:
Internet Kitsch, appropriation
of media, endless in-jokes and
tongue-in-cheek utopianism.

MATHWRATH: JSTNBIEBER
jstchullin.org, 2010

Parker Ito: parkerkooito.com

Parker Ito: parkerito.biz

The Most Infamous Girl in the History of the Internet /
Attractive Student / Parked Domain Girl

Dump.fm - online community

2. Post-internet, so what?
Post-internet argues that Internet
is no longer a novelty, but rather
an integrated part of the cultural
context in which art is made,
informing art practices as well as
human experience.
So what?

Utopian claims re: post-Internet

Digital images and other media are
endlessly copyable, thus notions of
aura and objecthood are void.
Art as social (post-)object for
remixing, challenging authorship.
Shift away from physical space as
primary venue.

Brad Troemel (semi-out of context):

Everything I make is equal on the
internet.
Artists have a hard time accepting
that images arent objects.
The most re-blogged image
becomes the best one.

3. Your Tumblr aint shit

Tumblr as democratizing tool? Ok,
maybe. But 90% of Tumblr content
is endless reblogging, 90% of the
remaining is recycled remixing.
What gets reblogged most is the
best art? Loss of accreditation is a
compliment? Really?

Brad Troemel: Free Art

Troemel argues against art as
capitalist commodity and the idea
of value through scarcity, positing
art as a luxury for the middle class.
Internet is presented as utopian
alternative.
(I agree w/ 80% of the capitalist analysis, BTW.)

Brad Troemel: Free Art

Internet as alternative channel
negating art world hierarchies. Postinternet, post-object artworks for
all viewers to see and reuse, without
authorship or capitalist notions of
property.
Tumblr blogs, dual sites and online
galleries are the new art world.

Brad Troemel: Free Art

Quick analysis: Lazy utopian thinking
that sounds like rehash of net art 1.0
polemic.
Actual result: Cliquey virtual
communities talking primarily to
themselves, w/ output seen by even
smaller audiences than mainstream
art and thus largely ignored.

Troemel: Dual Sites

Describes artist-run spaces that
also maintain an online exhibition
presence.
How is that any different from a
normal project space that has a web
site?

Forget new media - its already old.

Surf clubs, blogs, virtual communities,
reblogging, remixing, collaboration
and Open Source are all great tools.
But artists have been working this way
for over a decade, and the great art
revolution has failed to materialize.
Besides, most net artists readily trade in their radicalism for a
gallery practice. #justsayin

If art world top-down capitalism is

the problem, why not embrace Etsy,
Kickstarter etc. as a many-to-many
capitalist model? Or is money dirty?
Why not embrace communal
quilting, homesteading or
Unabombing instead? (jk, LOL)
And how do you pay for your health
care, anyway?

Finally: What about the problem of

mediated experience?
What about the body and visceral,
multi-sensory experience?
Post-Internet, are we nothing but
disembodied eyeballs?

Ryoji Ikeda: The Transfinite (2011)

I actually like a lot of net-related

art projects, by the way. I also enjoy
the occasional animated GIF, and
consider parts of the GIF canon to
to be truly innovative.
Some arbitrary examples of things I
think are good:

Aram Bartholl: Speed Show

Open Source curatorial concept

Aram Bartholl: Deaddrops

Aram Bartholl: Deaddrops

Rafael Rozendaal:
Art Website Sales Contract

Thanks for listening!

Cordial disagreements can be
continued over a beer once
presentations are over...
twitter.com/mariuswatz
http://mariuswatz.com
http://generatorx.no