Wow … Lev … not sure about the prozac suggestion - maybe get out onto the Hudson.
I admit that I saw your email and started chuckling at the memories circling back to numerous chats in LA in the early oughts … and here you are still twisted in a knot about spending a career framing and promoting the formal narrow bandwidth of digital “art” - of “abstraction” of art of new media - as you, yourself, were defining … and perhaps now attempting to redefine.
Should we interpret this as a sincere “mea culpa” ?
You may agree that the 1990’s were a contested time in New Media - it was new, exciting and the energy at times was explosive ( and I'm trying not to become enveloped by the nostalgia of it all.) Not surprisingly, I am running in parallel w/Steve’s pov. Many of the artists that he iterated below came to mind when initially reading Lev’s email - especially Mongrel/YoHa, Heath Bunting (irational), Konrad Becker (WIO), CLUI, Natalie Jerminjenko, and Trevor Plagin. Other than Trevor tat practice now somehow seems relegated to another era…. an era that valued and then extrapolated and co-opted their innovative practices - or perhaps and hopefully I am just not up-to-date! Other than Trevor who admittedly is from a different period, they did not align themselves with industry…in fact, their practices were antithetical.
I recall almost a clearly delineation of “that world” - those who align themselves with the industry during the onset of the golden age of predatory capitalism - and received the favored status of court patronage which morphed from industry into their counterparts entering the academy (primarily CS and engineering and the special effects film/video world) and those that did not. The creatives - the artists if you will - aligned themselves with cultural organizations and institutions. The shelf life - while exuberant and at times inspirational - wasn’t long for this world. As in any capitalistic union they, too, needed money to exhibit/host installations as the individuals couldn’t long shoulder the logistical burden. To my mind there was a pathos that underlined many of those needing their backing to set up departments and schools that were desperate for funding to underwrite their set-up infrastructure costs. There were so few, if any, foundation and/or granting agencies for seed funding. My recollection was that in the US the art schools/departments always seemed to be clinging for their lives - as their schools were accorded such scant resources. Parking their hopes in free floating $$$ coming from industry came with the proverbial price. That price was to play nice and advance their systems. Independent research and cultural practices were somewhat of an oxymoron.
And, of course, being a straight white man was de rigeur…. For a woman the choices revealed around embracing the conventional help-mate role or some version of Lisabeth Salander or some hybrid - it allowed for room to advance within the safety valves of the external millieu of tech and new media.
In the US following 9/11 things shifted right - way right ( Nixon wa beginning to be looked at as a leftist) and the industry’s prominence took on not only an insidious role - it became suffocating for many - not to mention out-of -reach for many. For me the predicable, scripted formal approach gave way to a subjective tedium almost as if was a suppression to one's spirit . Being asked by the DOD or DHS to twist one’s own practice to the service of governments directives was not what many artists signed up for. My own experience had my Dean instructing me to have my students saddle up ( collaborative classes- can you imagine?) with the DOD and DHS in order to have access to the technologies thought to be necessary for high level research and a subsequent drip-stream of funding.
What was fortunate was the market driven injection of software into other disciplines which then allowed for breath of practice that was not as narrowcast as to be wholly situated within the parameters of “new media” … so now is new media the predicate for the whole world?
Have to run as I've just learned that the notorious RBG has passed away … and somehow this feels a bit superfluous.
My best, Chris
Oh Lev, take some Prozac, you'll feel better. Sure, there is a lot of horrible art. That is mostly what the art world(s) produces, and new media has excelled at it because of its tight connection to a global industry that funds most of it on almost every level (as opposed to the patron system in the traditional arts that is slightly easier to game). However, a few more things to consider: 1. The roots of new media: Three significant sources were California entrepreneurs, new age leaning transcendentalists, and tech heads who only thought of tech as an end in itself. This combination is bad for any movement hoping to confront contemporary aesthetics in a meaningful, material way. Moreover, this bunch does not ask very interesting questions-it's more of practical problem solving or esoteric mumbo jumbo. 2. The media are extremely unstable (unlike painting which has remained pretty much the same for centuries). It's constantly evolving which makes this week's masterpiece next week's antique. So if the medium is the message, the past is going to look pretty "sad." 3. Here's one I signed onto: If an art work has the staying power of egg salad in the sun, who cares as long as it's powerful in the moment that it claims. A universal standard is absurd, and ultimately oppressive if not authoritarian. The public monument conflict now occurring in the US is proof of that. I have no problem with art that only has temporary value-which is true of all of it, unless it gets assigned historical/preservation value usually by arbitrary or nefarious means. With that said, I have no problem with the work produced in my little corner of the (new media) art world(s). I feel neither sad nor ashamed. It all looks dated, but all artwork does. No one looks at a rococo painting and thinks, "that could be made today and be completely relevant." If smart philosophical and/or political questions are being asked, thoughtful works will have a dimension of staying/inspirational power. Artists like Institute for Applied Autonomy, subRosa, RTMark/Yes Men, Ubermorgen, EDT, Mongrel/YoHa, Heath Bunting (irational), Konrad Becker (WIO), Eva and Franco Mattes (010), Carbon Defense League, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Natalie Jeremijenko, Marko Peljhan, Alex Galloway, Derek Curry and Jen Gradecki, Trevor Paglin, and VNS Matrix were asking those kinds of questions and trying to aesthetically express some potential answers, and I think successfully. I show this work to students, and it is inspirational to them. A work like RTMark's Simcopter intervention holds up even if the game does not-it's a manual for infiltration and disruption. So does a work like IAA's TXTMob, which is kind of useless now, but at the time was brilliant, and showed what a key role artists can play in resistant technological development (we can do more than make the master's tools out own). Most of these artists transcended the new media ghetto to be generally recognized as significant artists in many art worlds, and for good reason.
I should also add that these artists were pivotal in the transition out of the avant-garde as the sole cultural group able to ask about the relationship between art and politics to that of tactical media, hacktivism, artivism, culture jamming, interventionist art, guerrilla art, or whatever else you may want to label it. I'm happy when I look back on CAE's 30+ years of action, and feel lucky to have worked with such great colleagues in the struggle, and I don't even need Prozac to feel that way. SK
URL or not but this is too good, and too important for nettimers, not to read and discuss. These very personal and relevant observations come from a public Facebook page and have been written by Lev Manovich (who is "feeling thoughtful" as the page indicates).
-
My anti-digital art manifesto / What do we feel when we look at the previous generations of electronic and computer technologies? 1940s TV sets, 1960s mainframes, 1980s PCs, 1990s versions of Windows, or 2000s mobile phones? I feel "embarrassed. "Awkward." Almost "shameful." "Sad." And this is exactly the same feelings I have looking at 99% of digital art/computer art / new media art/media art created in previous decades. And I will feel the same when looking at the most cutting-edge art done today ("AI art," etc.) 5 years from now. If consumer products have "planned obsolescence," digital art created with the "latest" technology has its own "built-in obsolescence." // These feelings of sadness, disappointment, remorse, and embarrassment have been provoked especially this week as I am watching Ars Electronica programs every day. I start wondering - did I waste my whole life in the wrong field? It is very exciting to be at the "cutting edge", but the price you pay is heavy. After 30 years in this field, there are very few artworks I can show to my students without feeling embarrassed. While I remember why there were so important to us at the moment they were made, their low-resolution visuals and broken links can't inspire students. // The same is often true for the "content" of digital art. It's about "issues," "impact of X on Y", "critique of A", "a parody of B", "community of C" and so on. // It's almost never about our real everyday life and our humanity. Feelings. Passions. Looking at the world. Looking inside yourself. Falling in love. Breaking up. Questioning yourself. Searching for love, meaning, less alienated life.// After I watch Ars Electronica streams, I go to Netflix or switch on the TV, and it feels like fresh air. I see very well made films and TV series. Perfectly lighted, color graded, art directed. I see real people, not "ideas" and meaningless sounds of yet another "electronic music" performance, or yet another meaningless outputs of a neural network invented by brilliant scientists and badly misused by "artists." New media art never deals with human life, and this is why it does not enter museums. It's our fault. Don't blame curators or the "art world." Digital art is "anti-human art," and this is why it does not stay in history. // P.S. As always, I exaggerated a bit my point to provoke discussion - but not that much. This post does reflect my real feelings. Of course, some of these issues are complex - but after 30 years in the field, I really do wonder what it was all about) P.P.S. The mystery of why some technology (and art made with them) has obsolescence and others do not - thinking about this for 25 years. We are fascinated by 19th-century photographs or 1960s ones. They look beautiful, rich, full of emotions, and meanings. But video art from the 1980s-1990s looks simply terrible, you want to run away and forget that you ever saw this. Why first Apple computers look cool, cute, engaged? But art created on them does not? And so on. I still have not solved this question. Perhaps part of this has to be with the message that goes along with lots of tech art from the 1960s to today - and especially today. 19th or 20th-century photographs done by professional photographs or good amateurs do not come with utopian, pretentious, exaggerated, unrealistic, and hypocritical statements, the way lots of "progressive art" does today. Nor do their titles announce all latest tech processes used to create these photographs.
Christiane Robbins
"Every disaster shakes loose the old order. What replaces it is up to us."
~Rebecca Solnit
|