Manovich:
1. We have moved from media to social media. Businesses, government, nonprofits, community organizations, and individuals all have Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr accounts. In fact, it is rare to see companies without this on their web page:
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| from Southwest.com 11/14/11 |
2. The internet before shifted from most internet users accessing content produced by a small number of professional producers to content created by other nonprofessional producers. However, there was not a large increase in numbers of nonprofessional producers. Only .05-1.5 percent of users contributed their own content. And the long-tail phenomenon:
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| long-tail phenomenon graph from darwinsbulldog.com |
The long-tail phenomenon is basically this: no matter what your content is, the number of people that see your content will never be zero. And, the audience for low popularity websites will exceed the audience for the most popular sites.
2. To what extent is user-generated content driven by the consumer electronics industry?
Let's think on this question for a minute.
Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Canon, Nikon... is software included in this question? Then we can add Adobe. Electronics as in computers, cameras, video game consols? Or does he really mean digital products? So, there are a small number of professional producers creating templates for us to fill with our own information. We are not creating, just interacting in a way that has already been constructed for us (think Facebook, iChat, Google).
Since last semester, I have been thinking about this a lot in relation to self-portraiture. Self-portraits have always been taken, but now they have become pervasive. This could be because when you set up your new Apple computer, one of the first things it asks you to do is take a self-portrait. When you sign up for gmail, hotmail, iChat, Facebook, Tumblr, Myspace, or any other communicative website, it asks for a self-portrait. Point-and-shoot digital cameras have self-portrait settings. Camera-phones have self-portrait settings. Almost every computer comes with a built in camera and photo booth software. We see and take self-portraits constantly.
Does anyone remember mirror pictures on Myspace? We see those less now, probably because all of the consumer electronics adapted to the demand for self-portraiture. If this is true, then consumer electronics, software, and social media determine how we take pictures of ourselves. We have visual constructs for self-portraits based on the media we interact with, take the Myspace Mirror Picture for example, you had to have a picture of yourself in order for people to recognize you on the website and if you didn't have one, you were dismissed by other users. There was less self-portrait technology in our electronics at the time, but there were camera phones and digital point-and-shoots. People wanted to see themselves while taking a picture of themselves, easiest solution: Mirror Picture.
With that logic, the way we see ourselves today is determined by corporations. Apple (Photobooth pictures, self-portrait settings on iPhones), Canon/Sony/Olympus (arms-length self-portraits), and Facebook (cropping yourself out of group pictures for your profile picture), and all other companies that produce products that influence self-portraiture. I did a project in ex-tech appropriating profile pictures from Facebook in visual construction categories, 3 grids of 20 images, printed on mirrors. The categories were profile pictures taken with the Photobooth application on Apple, or similar technology, pictures taken at arms length, and portraits where the user cropped everyone else out of the image except themselves. Everyone takes the same pose, the same vantage point, the same facial expression for their profile pictures. This is all because the technology we interact with is prompting us to construct images of ourselves this way.
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| Photobooth, complete with computer glow |
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| Arms length, we can see the arm |
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| Classic Myspace Mirror Picture |
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| Cutting self out of group photo |
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| Cutting self out of group photo |
3. Tactics and Strategies, the government plans the city with roads
and buildings and official maps (strategies) and the citizen or
individual moves about the city in any way they like (tactics). This
relates to the internet in that social media sites create templates for
the user to fill with individualized content. How this is turned into
profit and capitalized upon: the creators of social media sites sell
your information to ad companies so they can target your interests, age
group, etc. This feels like a violation of privacy, but you put your
information out there to be viewed by everyone and anyone. I think
people need to be realistic about the internet and privacy because the
two cannot exist together.
4. Social media has made companies and the government more transparent, with blogs by CEO's, business owners, company representatives, and the White House, the initiative to give the public information and listen to the public response has been a major shift in consumerism. We want to feel good about the company we're buying from, and we have the ability to "connect" with them socially (as seen above in the screen shot of Southwest Airline's website).
5. The underground and subcultures that were once "an unmappable forms of subversion" are now marketed and sold to the subcultures that created them (think Etsy and Renegade and Urban Outfitters and Look at this fucking hipster among others). The transient and ephemeral becomes permanent and viewable. You can put as much or as little out there for the general public to view and at least one person will see it, according to the long-tail phenomenon. And that general public isn't just America, it's the world, as long as the sites aren't blocked by the government of the country you live in. Hundreds of millions of people upload their photographs and status updates and whatnot every day, multiple times a day, and really, they could do this constantly and some do. You can publicize your life on Youtube if you want. You can tell people where you are and what you're doing every moment of every day with Foursquare and Facebook's check-in.
6. While professionals created Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, iPhone, and other media, they also encourage users to create their own applications and programs. Constant change is the only constant in Web 2.0.
7. Appropriation is the norm, remixing and editing from various sources. This blog is a good example, I've taken photos from other blogs, friends Facebook pages, and I'm quoting and writing about Len Manovich's essay The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Consumption to Mass Cultural Production? and I'm also including my own ideas and opinions too, and potentially others could comment on this blog and so we have thoughts, ideas, photographs from various sources. Hood Internet, Girltalk (which give away their music for free on their websites) and other mash-ups became pervasive after the start of Web 2.0 with the constant sharing of media files through sites like MediaFire. Torrents and pirating are destroying the music industry, but for artists like Frank Ocean, Tyler the Creator and the rest of OFWGKTA, they use Tumblr (http://frankocean.tumblr.com/ http://oddfuture.tumblr.com/) to subvert the system and give their followers albums for free. Radiohead, when they were without a record label, put In Rainbows on their website for users to download for whatever price they wanted to pay, even $0.
8. Cultural significance has shifted,
things carry meaning now that either didn't exist before or did not
previously have meaning. Example: Facebook relationship statuses, it's
not official until it's "Facebook Official"... one could say that unless
you're ready to announce to the world that you're dating, it isn't a
real relationship. Unless you're subverting the system and foregoing
Facebook altogether.
9. Conversations have the possibility to last forever and not just through one form of communication, but multitudes. One can post a photograph, the photo can be commented on, others can comment on those comments, others can respond with another photograph, or a video, or and audio piece and then years later that same photograph or comment can be again commented on. Manovich goes on to talk about art conversations that were once between schools of thought without any response, just reactions. Those conversations are now simultaneous and constantly back and forth.
10. Do professional artist benefit from the accessibility and ease of distribution and Web 2.0, or because of torrents, pirating, and the like, is professional art irrelevant? Manovich says this question is irrelevant. Contemporary art has never been so commercially successful, it is open to way more participants than before, it's globalized, it has become a legitimate investment category, and the number of people that can view contemporary art has grown exponentially.
Take Google Art Project for example, if you have access to the internet, you can virtually go to museums, see their layout and design, you can contextualize the room and see what is next to that Max Ernst piece you love, and you can even see some of the paintings in finer detail than what our eyes can see (like with Van Gogh's Starry Night on MoMA's page). Any artist's website allows you to easily see their previous or current work, they can show you what they are doing right at this very moment through a Youtube or Vimeo video (as it is with Brooke Shaden). You can see performance pieces that are across the globe live.
Web 2.0 is certainly democratic, and allows billions of people access to art and each other. But, only if you have access to the internet, and in that way, the internet is not an equalizer, nor is it democratic. Only those with smartphones have the capability to constantly share and change their content on the internet, only those with internet access can look at and converse about art simultaneously. The internet is not free, at least in this country, and even if it were, you would need a computer to access it. Nothing in life is free. But the internet is cheaper and more easily accessible than going to your major art museum.
Interesting things in Jason Evans essay:
1. His notion that "beauty is not about perpetuity" and "In a society that discourages such behavior [referring to putting up one image per day and taking it down after 24 hours], I have owned and shared my happiness," which is ok, but it is a very generalized statement without a lot of support behind it. I really can't stand that he uses "I" in at least half of his sentences. However, this made me think of the Flat Iron building's exhibition last year or the year before in which they had many artists do a long, continuous wall mural, but each artist had one section and they could only see the section that came before theirs. This project took about a month and then they exhibited it for one night and then painted over it. This practice is also like Tibetan sand mandalas. Monks create the mandalas, sometimes for years, and they are intricate and beautiful works. They perform a short ritual with the mandala and at the end, they wipe the sand away.
So, those are examples of art in society that is not about perpetuity.
2. Best sentence of the piece: "If an audience is what you prefer...then the Internet is for you." This, along with Amir Zaki's response to Evans essay, made me think of these questions: Is it more important to be seen at all, or for someone to have the intention to seek out your work? (Zaki goes on about how people that see his work just stumble upon it because his name is the same as a guitar virtuoso, where as if it were in a gallery or museum, people actively seek out artwork). Also, while on the subject of Zaki, he says "it means more to me to have 10 people intentionally spend 20 minutes each seriously engaging with my photographic installations in actual space than it does to know that 100 people happene upon my website." First off, gallery or museum goers, on average, spends less than 30 seconds looking at one artwork. So, I don't know what fantasy world Zaki lives in, but it is EXTREMELY unrealistic to expect even 10 people to look at his work for 20 minutes. Also, Zaki went on and on about it "just isn't time yet" for innovation in art on the web. And how those "artists that choose to participate within [the gallery/museum] structure...are doing so because of a shared desire to be part of a language, a history..." and to that I say: fuck that shit. First off, we should be writing our own history, not waiting for someone else to do it for us. Innovators in art are innovators because they did something different, they created their own toolbox, they didn't use the one that was already there. Now IS the time, there is no better time than now. We're in this weird state where digital, social, and art collide, why not navigate that and use it to the best of it's ability. Or question it and turn it on its head. Let's be innovators, dammit. Fuck the gallery system.
The Donut Shop is an interesting web alternative to the gallery system.
http://thedonutshopprints.tumblr.com/
http://www.the-d-o-n-u-t-shop.com/
When you use any medium, you use it to the best of it's ability and that is what needs to be done with art and the internet. Brooke Shaden seems to be doing fine, and she's using the internet to the best of it's ability: Youtube videos, websites, social media, and yet she is still being shown in galleries. It doesn't have to be either/or, Zaki, it can be both.
I could rant on about his response, but I won't. For now.
4. Social media has made companies and the government more transparent, with blogs by CEO's, business owners, company representatives, and the White House, the initiative to give the public information and listen to the public response has been a major shift in consumerism. We want to feel good about the company we're buying from, and we have the ability to "connect" with them socially (as seen above in the screen shot of Southwest Airline's website).
5. The underground and subcultures that were once "an unmappable forms of subversion" are now marketed and sold to the subcultures that created them (think Etsy and Renegade and Urban Outfitters and Look at this fucking hipster among others). The transient and ephemeral becomes permanent and viewable. You can put as much or as little out there for the general public to view and at least one person will see it, according to the long-tail phenomenon. And that general public isn't just America, it's the world, as long as the sites aren't blocked by the government of the country you live in. Hundreds of millions of people upload their photographs and status updates and whatnot every day, multiple times a day, and really, they could do this constantly and some do. You can publicize your life on Youtube if you want. You can tell people where you are and what you're doing every moment of every day with Foursquare and Facebook's check-in.
6. While professionals created Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, iPhone, and other media, they also encourage users to create their own applications and programs. Constant change is the only constant in Web 2.0.
7. Appropriation is the norm, remixing and editing from various sources. This blog is a good example, I've taken photos from other blogs, friends Facebook pages, and I'm quoting and writing about Len Manovich's essay The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Consumption to Mass Cultural Production? and I'm also including my own ideas and opinions too, and potentially others could comment on this blog and so we have thoughts, ideas, photographs from various sources. Hood Internet, Girltalk (which give away their music for free on their websites) and other mash-ups became pervasive after the start of Web 2.0 with the constant sharing of media files through sites like MediaFire. Torrents and pirating are destroying the music industry, but for artists like Frank Ocean, Tyler the Creator and the rest of OFWGKTA, they use Tumblr (http://frankocean.tumblr.com/ http://oddfuture.tumblr.com/) to subvert the system and give their followers albums for free. Radiohead, when they were without a record label, put In Rainbows on their website for users to download for whatever price they wanted to pay, even $0.
Other master appropriators:
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| After the Dust, 2009, Curtis Mann |
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| Suns (From Sunsets) from Flickr, 2006-ongoing, Penelope Umbrico |
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| Share everything, or nothing at all |
9. Conversations have the possibility to last forever and not just through one form of communication, but multitudes. One can post a photograph, the photo can be commented on, others can comment on those comments, others can respond with another photograph, or a video, or and audio piece and then years later that same photograph or comment can be again commented on. Manovich goes on to talk about art conversations that were once between schools of thought without any response, just reactions. Those conversations are now simultaneous and constantly back and forth.
10. Do professional artist benefit from the accessibility and ease of distribution and Web 2.0, or because of torrents, pirating, and the like, is professional art irrelevant? Manovich says this question is irrelevant. Contemporary art has never been so commercially successful, it is open to way more participants than before, it's globalized, it has become a legitimate investment category, and the number of people that can view contemporary art has grown exponentially.
Take Google Art Project for example, if you have access to the internet, you can virtually go to museums, see their layout and design, you can contextualize the room and see what is next to that Max Ernst piece you love, and you can even see some of the paintings in finer detail than what our eyes can see (like with Van Gogh's Starry Night on MoMA's page). Any artist's website allows you to easily see their previous or current work, they can show you what they are doing right at this very moment through a Youtube or Vimeo video (as it is with Brooke Shaden). You can see performance pieces that are across the globe live.
Web 2.0 is certainly democratic, and allows billions of people access to art and each other. But, only if you have access to the internet, and in that way, the internet is not an equalizer, nor is it democratic. Only those with smartphones have the capability to constantly share and change their content on the internet, only those with internet access can look at and converse about art simultaneously. The internet is not free, at least in this country, and even if it were, you would need a computer to access it. Nothing in life is free. But the internet is cheaper and more easily accessible than going to your major art museum.
Interesting things in Jason Evans essay:
1. His notion that "beauty is not about perpetuity" and "In a society that discourages such behavior [referring to putting up one image per day and taking it down after 24 hours], I have owned and shared my happiness," which is ok, but it is a very generalized statement without a lot of support behind it. I really can't stand that he uses "I" in at least half of his sentences. However, this made me think of the Flat Iron building's exhibition last year or the year before in which they had many artists do a long, continuous wall mural, but each artist had one section and they could only see the section that came before theirs. This project took about a month and then they exhibited it for one night and then painted over it. This practice is also like Tibetan sand mandalas. Monks create the mandalas, sometimes for years, and they are intricate and beautiful works. They perform a short ritual with the mandala and at the end, they wipe the sand away.
So, those are examples of art in society that is not about perpetuity.
2. Best sentence of the piece: "If an audience is what you prefer...then the Internet is for you." This, along with Amir Zaki's response to Evans essay, made me think of these questions: Is it more important to be seen at all, or for someone to have the intention to seek out your work? (Zaki goes on about how people that see his work just stumble upon it because his name is the same as a guitar virtuoso, where as if it were in a gallery or museum, people actively seek out artwork). Also, while on the subject of Zaki, he says "it means more to me to have 10 people intentionally spend 20 minutes each seriously engaging with my photographic installations in actual space than it does to know that 100 people happene upon my website." First off, gallery or museum goers, on average, spends less than 30 seconds looking at one artwork. So, I don't know what fantasy world Zaki lives in, but it is EXTREMELY unrealistic to expect even 10 people to look at his work for 20 minutes. Also, Zaki went on and on about it "just isn't time yet" for innovation in art on the web. And how those "artists that choose to participate within [the gallery/museum] structure...are doing so because of a shared desire to be part of a language, a history..." and to that I say: fuck that shit. First off, we should be writing our own history, not waiting for someone else to do it for us. Innovators in art are innovators because they did something different, they created their own toolbox, they didn't use the one that was already there. Now IS the time, there is no better time than now. We're in this weird state where digital, social, and art collide, why not navigate that and use it to the best of it's ability. Or question it and turn it on its head. Let's be innovators, dammit. Fuck the gallery system.
The Donut Shop is an interesting web alternative to the gallery system.
http://thedonutshopprints.tumblr.com/
http://www.the-d-o-n-u-t-shop.com/
When you use any medium, you use it to the best of it's ability and that is what needs to be done with art and the internet. Brooke Shaden seems to be doing fine, and she's using the internet to the best of it's ability: Youtube videos, websites, social media, and yet she is still being shown in galleries. It doesn't have to be either/or, Zaki, it can be both.
I could rant on about his response, but I won't. For now.
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