More Net Art 2.0 Introspection

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An earlier post talked about the Web as "consumer's medium."

Characterizing it that way is sacrilege to the tech community gospel that TV and radio are "one way, passive" media while the Net is active and productive. But even old Rhizome.org hand Alexander Galloway talks in his book Protocol about how seductive roaming among hyperlinks is. (From his tone he seems more disposed to transgressive disruption of same in the manner of old school net artists jodi.org.)

Other artists encountering this flowing, sensational, “fascinating” (in the Baudrillardian sense) environment view it as a *success* of the post-dot com era, creating an inexhaustible pool of potential subject matter.

The best differentiation I've seen of late 90s Net Art and the present bunch: the former was interested in the mechanics of the network and made art about that. "What is a hyperlink and can we mess with that?" "What are the social implications of networks?" etc. The latter crew views the Net as a "medium that works across media" (Damon Zucconi's phrase) so that artists are dealing with the Net and its status as a medium but also all the content it touches (video, music, digital painting, photography, and emerging hybrid forms). The goals are larger and more ambitious but also more difficult.

The old Modernist ideal of working through past art to arrive at your own becomes especially troublesome within this suddenly exponentially expanded field.

The blog VVork exemplifies a new type of art "statement" based on endless, voracious consumption that has the (perhaps unintended) consequence of making the quest for originality seem silly. The curators scour the net for examples of conceptual-style art that is readily documentable in the form of photos and short video clips. Most of the accompanying one or two sentence explanations are lifted off the artists’ sites. They are posting several hundred artworks a year in this fashion. They consume and we watch over their shoulders. They don’t alter anything, they don’t editorialize, and their comment feature is rarely used. As “fellow consumers” we have to decide if the consumables have value.

The bloggers and surf clubs discussed at the Net Aesthetics 2.0 panel follow a similar model. But instead of stoically re-creating the art world online, they are opening themselves to a galaxy of experience that could potentially be considered art, while at the same time subversively slipping in their own content.

Net Art 2.0--What an Honor

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Some of the first generation Internet artists have knickers in twists about the term "Net Art 2.0" for online art in the era of blogging, YouTube, and social bookmarking.

"Art cannot be versioned!" cries one. "It doesn't really communicate anything except a suggestion that Net Art 2.0 is in some way an improvement over Net Art 1.0," wails another.

But... but... Historians do make value distinctions among movements. Monet's and Seurat's Impressionism benefited from increased understanding of optics and color theory, improving on the stale classicism of their peer William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Renaissance perspective leapfrogged over the crude schema learned in Gothic form books. Greek statuary grew more lifelike than Cycladic totems, and so on.

The first generation of Internet art consisted of a small inner circle furtively communicating on ListServs, doing online versions of Douglas Huebler style conceptualism, spouting Frankfurt School quotes at each other, and boasting about their programming skills. The current generation is trying to wrap its collective head around an ungovernable explosion of online content and doesn't have time to worry about grabbing history by the neck in the way of those earlier, frightened scolds.* The present movement is bigger, broader, more porous, and more generous. It uses "defaults" unashamedly, taking advantage of improved media platforms and increased bandwidth. With greater interconnection and connections to the world outside the art world, new hybrid forms are blossoming.

But... but... As far as naming this better, happier moment, "Net Art 2.0" can only be ironic. How often is a software upgrade a real advance over the prior version? Usually it's just minor tweaks because capitalism demands new models coming off the assembly line each fall.

Whereas the difference between first and second gen Net Art is more in the nature of a Kuhnian paradigm shift. More on this as we go.

*Eloquent descriptions have been made of the new work but until the present post they have lacked a movement-aware, defensive tone. The present post is the result of being put on a panel where mad dogs were expected to fight (we didn't) and a couple of horrible subsequent weeks trying to reason with the squawking on the Rhizome discussion boards. (Surf clubs called "teenage goth nerds," bloggers compared to George Bush because they aren't open source enough, etc. One member of the old guard offered this helpful suggestion--not an actual quote but how I translate it: "Net Art 2.0 makes me sound dated, but I like 'post-Net Art,' which you makes you sound late getting on the bus.")

A Happening Not By Allan Kaprow

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Sometimes Roger Ebert is the only critic that gets a movie. That's the case with M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, which resembles The Birds and Tarkovsky's Stalker in its mysterious apocalytic mood but has a small human story at the center and much wry humor. (George Romero's The Crazies also comes to mind.) It boasts a 24% (Rotten) on the Rottentomatoes "Tomatometer," a poll of print and online reviewer opinions. A score that low often means something's good because it's flummoxed reviewers who don't care about things like the mathematics of shots and hate to recommend a movie that upsets them.

You probably know from the endlessly repeated trailer that it's about an epidemic of creepy suicides. I won't reveal too much but one of the theories floated is it is plant life fighting back against our despoiling the planet by releasing toxins that unhinge the human "survival imperative." Here's Ebert:

Too uneventful for you? Not enough action? For me, Shyamalan's approach is more effective than smash-and-grab plot-mongering. His use of the landscape is disturbingly effective. The performances by Wahlberg and Deschanel bring a quiet dignity to their characters. The strangeness of starting a day in New York and ending it by hiking across a country field is underlined. Most of the other people we meet, not all, are muted and introspective. Had they been half-expecting some such "event" as this?

I know I have. For some time the thought has been gathering at the back of my mind that we are in the final act. We have finally insulted the planet so much that it can no longer sustain us. It is exhausted. It never occurred to me that vegetation might exterminate us. In fact, the form of the planet's revenge remains undefined in my thoughts, although I have read of rising sea levels and the ends of species.

What I admire about "The Happening" is that its pace and substance allowed me to examine such thoughts, and to ask how I might respond to a wake-up call from nature. Shyamalan allows his characters space and time as they look within themselves. Those they meet on the way are such as they might indeed plausibly meet. Even the TV and radio news is done correctly, as convenient cliches about terrorism give way to bewilderment and apprehension.

I suspect I'll be in the minority in praising this film. It will be described as empty, uneventful, meandering. But for some, it will weave a spell. It is a parable, yes, but it is also simply the story of these people and how their lives and existence have suddenly become problematic. We depend on such a superstructure to maintain us that one or two alterations could leave us stranded and wandering through a field, if we are that lucky.

The movie doesn't meander at all, it's tightly plotted and moves swiftly. The shocks continue right up to the end. I thought of Stalker because the suddenness of death, coming on a rippling gust of wind, recalls the dream logic of The Zone (a blighted spot left by an alien beam hitting the Earth from far away in space). Here the cause is even more unclear.

Shot mathematics: Cop greets cab driver. Cop suddenly puts gun to his own head, shoots. Cop's head hits ground with hole in forehead. Camera sweeps to gun, ground level view. Cabbie gets out of cab, legs visible only, walks to gun, picks it up, shoots (out of frame), falls to ground, also with bullet hole in head. Camera, still at ground level, follows gun as it comes to rest. As oozing blood from the cab driver (now out of frame) pours towards gun, a passing woman walks into frame from the center background, at an angle perpendicular to the camera's movement, legs and shoes visible only. She reaches the gun at the same time as the blood, picks up the weapon, fires... This is way intense, and formally flawless. (Very De Palma.)