New Media

Does Net Art have to be created using a computer software package to define it as Net Art?

I will look at a range of different internet sites that are used often by users on a regular day to day basis. Within them I will look at the ways that I see ‘internet art’ is incorporated.

This is my photography myspace site which features in several screen shots below.
www.myspace.com/sdonphotography

‘myspace.com’ is a popular internet community site that allows people across the world to communicate. It has many different features and applications. To many people this may appear as a simple communication and networking tool. However I have noticed many different forms of art happening beneath the surface.

I use ‘myspace.com’ as a place to communicate with friends but I also have another page within the site separate to my social circle. I created this at the time of my final degree show as a supplement to my business cards and postcards. It gave viewers a chance to see the full catalogue of my piece out of context in a quiet environment and to appreciate each piece on its own. This is a screen shot of the home page.

This is a screen shot of the home page. www.myspace.com/sdonphotography

This is a screen shot of the gallery function which allows you to view thumbnails of all the pieces at once.

“In little more than a couple of years MySpace.com has gone from zero to being a top five website which no self-respecting US teenager can ignore. Now, it's gaining ground in Britain.”

The MySpace Age, By Jonathan Duffy , BBC News Magazine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4782118.stm
Accessed 2/1/08

Many people use the site in the same way as I have done. It is a cheap and easy way of displaying and sometimes even advertising your work. Many people use the site as a platform to their main websites and sell work through it.

Originally ‘myspace.com’ started in America as an online community site, particularly aimed at teenagers. Today it is available all over the world with users ranging from 18 to 60+. Many music groups and bands along with clothing and food companies have now added themselves to the growing community as a form of advertising.

I decided to look at the standard use of ‘myspace.com’ and the gallery function because technically its ‘net art’ isn’t it? Its art on the internet!

I decided to have a further look into ‘myspace.com’ and to how I can see ‘new media art’ emerging in the corners of peoples personal pages.

‘myspace.com’ has the feature to allow you to design as create your own background. This can be done by using intricate html coding programs, or by simply copy and pasting codes for particular graphics from purpose built sites.

From my own experience I know that choosing a background can take quite a while, particularly if it is from a preset code. As the page background features alongside your chosen portrait it almost represents your character/personality. This can be hard as you don’t want to give your ‘friends’ the wrong idea about yourself. This is interesting, certainly with people you know to see what they choose. As you can make the decision yourself whether or not it is a true representation of themselves, or whether they have chosen something to create a slightly twisted version of themselves to appeal to others.

There are lots of different debates and interesting points about identity and representation of the self through the internet. However I am interested in the way that this site forces users to choose a graphic/photo based backdrop to represent themselves. Without these types of sites people wouldn’t generally think about such trivial things such as “do I prefer spots or stripes” or “is pink really too girly”.

However some people could argue that I’m looking too far into this and that it’s simply a routine part of the site. I see this as a creative choice that requires the internet for it to happen. Therefore does it qualify as a mew media art?

This is an example of someone’s page, I have deliberately scrolled down to leave out the persons portrait. From looking at the page’s background I can assume certain things from looking at the colours, shapes and their stereotypes.
The connotations of rainbows and bright sun along with the unusual creatures tell me that the person is quite young, fun, bubbly and generally quite happy. After reading the persons information I found out that this is quite accurate. This wouldn’t be the case if the page was dark dreary and used plain blocks of colour.

Whilst browsing peoples profiles I came across several traits that featured quite often in both female and male pages. People tend to have quite prominent profile photos. This also spans onto the gallery pages as well. Due to the rise and the availability of digital cameras the photograph can be taken and transferred onto the computer within minutes. Many sites such as ‘myspace.com’ have special uploading tools which make it even quicker and easier to upload to your own page. Due to the throwaway nature of digital photography people can take as many photos as they wish and simply delete the ones they don’t like. In my opinion this has caused many people to strive for the ‘perfect’ photograph. I have noticed from looking at people pages who I know, that these photographs are not always a genuine representation of themselves.

It has also caused people to become ‘photographers’ but with the purpose of photographing themselves to show their best features, to use as a profile image. This is obviously to do with attracting the opposite sex, although this would probably be argued. When searching for a person or browsing people from particular locations, you are faced with an image. This is what causes people to make up their mind about you. Without this type of community website people wouldn’t really photograph themselves in this type of manner. Maybe for the odd joke or self indulgent moment, however when researching ‘myspace.com’ I came across endless profiles where people had pages and pages of photographs of themselves, which you could clearly see were self portraits. The camera angles and poses were all signifiers of this. If people were taking self portrait photographs in this style and volume without this form of display in mind it would seem quite strange, unless they were someone like Cindy Sherman. A female photographer, taking on different roles and stereotypes photographing herself in a range of locations.

“It is, fundamentally, a bit of an ego boost to be told you look fit in your photos.”
What’s going on with my [space] generation? Is this new wave of internet blogging really having an effect on our [profile] nation?
Helz O'Hara
http://www.bbc.co.uk/essex/content/articles/2006/01/31/blast_web_blogs_feature.shtml
Accessed 2/1/08


People are documenting themselves without really knowing it. I can see this in several years to come, people in their twenties will have hundreds of photographs documenting their teen life, trends in makeup and fashion. They’ll fill online galleries everywhere. These photographs are being taken for use on the internet, they’re technically self portraits which is an art in itself, using new technologies (mobile phones/webcams/digital cameras) and the fact that they are created with the internet as its purpose – surely that defines it as ‘net art’?

I found this persons site, she had endless amount of photographs of herself. Taken by herself and often digitally manipulated to enhance her best features using different filters and colourings they are quite interesting to look at.

Another example of the same person and many more of her images.

I decided to look at ‘flickr’ an online photo management site, which allows you to collaborate and share images with other people.

“People like to ooh and ahh, laugh and cry, make wisecracks when sharing photos. Why not give them the ability to do this when they look at them over the internet? And as all this info accretes around the photos as metadata, you can find them so much easier later on, since all this info is also searchable.”
http://www.flickr.com/about/
Accessed 2/1/08

Whilst using ‘flickr’ it became apparent that it’s not just a photo album website. Its interactive, in the sense that people can comment and tag your photos. In this setting the images aren’t necessarily being taken with ‘flickr’ in mind but due to the volume of people using it I could see why people would.

This shows my images in the standard album form.
A feature of ‘flickr’ is that you can take images then tag them to the exact place that they were taken. This means that people can search for a particular place or area and be greeted with an album of images.

With the recent rise in popularity of Internet photo sharing sites like Flickr and Google Images, community photo collections (CPCs) have emerged as a powerful new type of image dataset for computer vision and computer graphics research.

http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/cpc/
Accessed on 2/1/08

When you upload an image onto ‘flickr’ you can add descriptions and tags. So that if you have an image of seascape you could tag it sea, ocean, water, holiday, etc. Whenever anyone searches for one of these words your image will be brought up. This is interesting as technically you could change the perception of a particular image and its meaning, by the word you attach to it and vice versa. All images I think are down to interpretation and when putting words against them and even titles it may be completely different to what someone else may relate to it. This is what makes the site interesting as with certain words for example happiness, anger, love, beauty etc are directly attached to people and their opinions of what they mean.

This was a simple search for ‘cat’ and no doubt it brought up a whole host of cat images.

Here I searched for ‘unusual’ and as you can see it’s a real mixed bag.

The photographs that appear on ‘flickr’ are generally quite artistic and creative. They are grouped together under certain tags, which when you view them as thumbnails almost appear as a collage. This wouldn’t happen without the internet, as one image could be taken in England and the one next to it could be taken in America. They wouldn’t be seen in the same location if it weren’t for the Internet. Can this be classed as ‘net art’, as it can only be viewed as a collection online?

I came across this whilst searching the internet to photo related art.

The site raises interesting questions about what is and isn’t considered as art. Which is similar to the question I’m asking about net art and what can be classed as net art.

What does it take for someone to be become an architect, artist, or filmmaker? Who decides how a museum collects and displays art?
http://redstudio.moma.org/about/
Accessed 2/1/08

The site was created by MoMa along with students and it looks at issues and questions about artists and what it means to be one in the present day.

I was quite intrigued by this piece of interactive art called ‘Remix’, it allows you to choose from several different preset images to create a photo collage. The tools at the bottom of the page allow the user to select a shape and place it anywhere on the page. This replicates the scenery behind it and allows you to move, rotate and alter the opacity. This shows that anyone can create a piece of ‘art’ and again challenges the conventions of what is art?

This is an example of how Remix works, if you work with it for a while and get used to the setting, you can come up with some successful results.

Conclusion

In my opinion whether something is classed as 'art' or not is down to the interpretation of the person who is viewing it. From simply looking beyond the surface at some of the everyday websites such as ‘myspace.com’ and ‘flickr’ I can see how elements such as self portraiture and representation of personality appear in a creative way. I would not class this necessarily as ‘net art’ but as internet art. I feel that the two are very closely related, if not almost the same. These types of websites are challenging users to do something creatively – not always every day but on a regular basis. When someone has a camera in their hands on a night out you can guarantee they will take a self portrait for their myspace page, or a moment of boredom with a camera phone. People are using photography specifically to post online, which on the outset might not seem like art but in the wider context I think it is. These types of community websites are changing every month and including more features. I feel that ‘net art’ doesn’t have to be created using a computer software package to validate it as ‘net art’. There are aspects of internet art/net art on even the blandest of web pages. I think that the popularity of community websites will change the future of the internet and how we use it. I would like to revist this subject in several years time to see how it has changed.

Books

Greene, Rachel - Internet art - London: Thames & Hudson, 2004

Paul, Christiane - Digital art - London: Thames & Hudson, 2003

Rush, Michael - New media in art - London: Thames & Hudson, 2005

Tribe, Mark - New media art - Köln: Taschen, 2007

New Media

Research/Presentation - Net Art Presentation


For this part of the module I have decided to look at the subject of Net Art. I am intrigued to find out its definition, history and to look at some examples. I understand that this is a vast subject matter to approach but I will look at it briefly to get an idea of what its all about, and then use it as a basis to look at a particular area related to my practise for my essay.

The term ‘Net art’ originated from when Vuk Cosic came across a scrambled email message where the phrase ‘net.art’ appeared in several places. The dot was removed but the term became popular among artists in the New Media scene. The term was officially used for the first time when Vuk Cosic arranged a meeting for artists called ‘net art per se’ in Trieste in 1996.

One of the first online galleries was Benjamin Weil’s ‘äda web’. This was an Internet space that featured work by both already established artists who were experimenting with the genre, alongside Net artists. At this time in the mid nineties Net art was still seen as an experimental genre, therefore the funding for this area was not always made available. Weils’ ‘äda web’ found itself fall victim of this and lost its financial support. Fortunately the galleries’ work was permanently archived by the ‘Walker Art Center’, and they continued to support Net art.

http://www.adaweb.com/


‘äda web’ has since been re-created, featuring the same artists from 1996 this is how it appears today. The site ‘jodi.org’ was created in 1993 by Dirk Paesmans and Joan Heemskerk, it is now known as ‘wwwwwwwww.jodi.org. This is a popular example of early Net art. When you first open the page you are met with a scramble of green letters and punctuation marks. It seems as if an error has occurred during the HTML setup or browser software. However if viewers look at the source of the page which shows the coding used for the site they will understand the meaning behind it.

http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/

The artists have carefully created a diagram between the correct HMTL tags for the page. It is made up of dots and slashes depicting a hydrogen bomb. When exploring past the home page it becomes clear that the page isn’t an error, it’s a continued look at the ‘glitch factor’ of the Internet.

http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/

Mark Tribe explains in New Media Art that their idea was to hide an image of a bomb within the source code of a Web page, so that the browser would try and read it as a HTML file blowing it up on the screen. It is interesting to see how this use of hidden coding was found so early on in the creation of Net art.

Jodi.org began to change the way people think about the internet proving that it wasn’t just an outlet to publish information to a mass audience, but it could also be an art medium in itself. The Internet had created a place where artists, critic’s curators and collectors could communicate internationally. The use of forums and email newsletters had been in place for a reasonable amount of time already but new dimensions were being created. Some artists used the internet as a means of documenting their work. For example to display a portfolio of images, whereas others embraced the internet as a medium in its own right, and used it to create art in its primary form.

THE ART OF SLEEP, 2006, has been commissioned by YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES for Tate Online. The page fills the whole of the computer screen and captures the attention of the viewer, using black text on a white background. The text is teamed with jazz music which compliments it well. The piece runs for 18 minutes and tells an amusing story. The piece runs on its own and only requires the viewer to initially open it.

THE ART OF SLEEP, 2006

THE ART OF SLEEP, 2006
http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/artofsleep/

“Characterized by classical and jazz scores, and rushes of HTML and textual surfaces it explodes the flatness of the web with literary propositions”
Rachel Greene, Internet Art, 2004

The piece is doesn’t require constant interaction from the viewer, which almost makes it seem like a piece of television or animation. It is available in a range of different languages. It could be argued that this piece of work doesn’t need the Internet to be exhibited all it needs is a screen and a loop setting. In my opinion it reflects the ‘flatness’ of the Internet in the sense that we see and do everything through a screen and is choosing that way in which to communicate, however we don’t just sit in front of an Internet page and expect it to navigate on its own. As a user we are required to do that ourselves.


Unfortunately I couldn’t get a copy of this particular piece in its original form, hence the screen shots. This doesn’t quite capture the essence of their work, therefore I have found another piece called ‘So So Soulful 2006’, this is very similar in its approach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPG1W0LE_xw

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES - So So Soulful

(unfortunatley this wouldn't copy into the blog space)

“Are we still reading, or are we looking at images that appear and vanish before we have had time to grasp their potential meaning?”
Rudolf Frieling, Internet Art


This is an interesting point to raise, are we just seeing internet art through another screen? Similarly to the way we watch television. The work isn’t viewed in an ‘art based space’ such as a museum or gallery. Does this alter the way in which we experience it and how we understand it?


This piece of work ‘Screening Circle’ created in2006, by Andy Deck uses the basis of the quilting circle and its traditions as its main influence. The piece is created by users entering the drawing area and composing sets of graphics. When opening the second page you are faced with around 140 tiny squares in a large square shape, after clicking on one of these its opens another four. Then you are able to choose one of these to manipulate. The user is able to choose from nine colours and has complete control over what design to create with the 256 squares. After finishing your square it is automatically saved and can be viewed instantly. The site obviously was set up by Deck but can contributed to, by anyone, internationally. The artist isn’t adding or updating anything themselves.

Screening Circle 2006

Screening Circle 2006

When you enter the web page you are required to enter a website of your own choice or to select one from the list. The Shredder then literally deconstructs the original site slicing and shaping the text, imagery and source code to form abstract compositions.

The Shredder Mark Napier www.potatoland.org/

It works by passing the code in which a web page is written through a Perl script a simple programme that rearranges original code before passing it through to your web browser. The code is written so that the results are relatively the same. Some elements of the original web site can just about be recognized. The shredded versions seem to resemble the non representational paintings of Hans Hoffman and Gerhard Richer.

Net art is relatively cheap to produce; HTML and Apache web are programs that are available freely online. To create a piece of Net art the artist needs to have access to a computer with a modem, an internet connection and basic technical skills. It could be argued that many people have this opportunity and therefore anyone could become a Net artist.

Net art allows people to view art without being restricted by geographical distance, gallery opening times etc. Many galleries and museums lie in busy town centres and can sometimes be difficult for people to get to. The artist takes on the role of the creator, curator and the exhibition space within a short space of time. This cuts down costs, for example some artists would have to pay a gallery to exhibit their work, whereas online the costs of setting up a website are significantly smaller.

Although many people have personal computers, not everyone has a home internet connection. This cuts down the audience significantly making Net art available to a certain class of people. This isn’t a good marketing point for Net art, as it could be argued that if it was in a gallery than everyone could have access to it if they wanted to. Net art is reliable on computers and the Internet to work properly. Technology is constantly changing and pieces of work created on certain software may easily go out of date and become unavailable. It is because of this that new media art is hard to preserve and archive

Books

Greene, Rachel - Internet art - London: Thames & Hudson, 2004

Paul, Christiane - Digital art - London: Thames & Hudson, 2003

Rush, Michael - New media in art - London: Thames & Hudson, 2005

Tribe, Mark - New media art - Köln: Taschen, 2007