towerofsleep:

Just saying.

In the 2008 essay The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life, Lev Manovich asks if art after web 2.0 is possible, or more specifically, if avant-garde art can survive the extreme democratization of media production. For Ryan Trecartin, whose status as a professional artist was brought forth through this democratization of media, this question becomes all the more pressing in his latest project, a user-generated video database operating out of the URL riverofthe.net. Should we even consider this art? Debuting the site in an interview on the New York art blog Art Fag City, Trecartin positions riverofthe.net as what he considers “a tool that could be used within the larger context of media being interactive.” However, even in light of the many ways the Internet increasingly displaces distinctions between high and low media, the debuting of this latest project on an art blog and its inclusion into a major museum show allow riverofthe.net to safely be discussed within institutional context of art—even if by Trecartin’s decree it is an online tool made in collaboration with Tumblr front man David Karp.

In Trecartin’s case, professional art can survive the extreme democratization of media through crowd sourcing. Connected through user-determined tags, the viewer is immediately confronted with a random full screen ten second video. When a video ends, the site is designed to follow one of the three tags to another video. Unfortunately, the site still experiences major glitches, presumably as production was rushed to accommodate the “Free” show which opened Oct. 20th at the New Museum. Instead of continuing on to the next video the site often freezes, but ideally this string of videos continue, rhizomatically lacing together the entirety of the site as a single, cohesive video piece with interchangeable components. The result is a compelling piece of video work entirely responsive to the web’s democratization of production and access. But, in order to operate as a tool, as Trecartin describes it, the site must have a function outside itself akin to that of the social networking utility of Facebook or even the user-generated data culling of Wikipedia. What exactly that function could be for riverofthe.net remains elusive. Restricted to ten seconds and three tags, the “random content” doesn’t appear particularly random–it looks much like a Trecartin customized Youtube channel or personal collection of source material. This, of course, could be a temporary issue stemming from it being publicized as a Trecartin headed site. However, even assuming the database of tags will grow and the site stops chameleoning as a Trecartin mood board, we should ask ourselves the following question: do ten second video extracts complimented by three tags really provide an innovative tool to web users? With the hope of giving each tag its own URL and consequently easy linkage to other websites, Trecartin seems to be taking his ten second time limit and 3 tag constraint as parameters that point toward something greater than his own video project. In a hope to tap into the collective consensus of the users of the site, through creating a URL for each tag, users of the site can watch the idea of the meaning of a word as a movie. Problematically, without any noticeable filters or regulation, the site is little more than a platform for subversion, where content and tags may have little or no affiliation to each other. A close up video of a woman’s cleavage in a sparkly red bra plays with the tag “New Jersey” and the next one, tagged “retard” is ten seconds worth of photos of a French manicure. As one reader already noted in response to Trecartin’s AFC interview, the site shows early signs of going in the dubious “Chatroulette direction” of nude footage. Either way, the result of such subversion, porn or no porn, is not a stream of video related to a single tag where free cultural associations are unleashed, but a conglomeration of footage no more organized than its existence prior to finding a new home on riverofthe.net.

In the same AFC interview, Trecartin states, “I feel like our ability to understand vibes and exchange intuition is growing, there’s a lot of ways to express a whole idea without using words, and its happening more and more as we invent new tools.” Undoubtedly, the web has provided an expansive new understanding of language that far exceeds text. But riverofthe.net is not a dialogue or a place of exchange like Youtube, a site whose video response capabilities are far more effective in the expansion of language than riverofthe.net is yet capable. To consider the site a research tool propelling media literacy into a new dimension where content exists unframed by an interface comes off as a premature distinction on Trecartin’s part. The project, up to this point, has neglected the inescapable truth that crowd sourcing allows contributors to subvert the site’s ability to provide any definitive service, which is why sites like Wikipedia have such comprehensive filtering processes to ensure its efficacy. But to conceive of the site as a video project headed by an artist for his own professional gain, riverofthe.net can provide a much more compelling response to Manovich’s question. As a single video work produced by thousands of unknown contributors in a non-linear format Trecartin has effectively bridged democratization with his apparent personal prerogatives. Most problematically, Trecartin seems insistent on branding this project as something greater than a single artwork in hope of turning it into a revolutionary tool to access media. But, doesn’t riverofthe.net exist best as a projection in a museum with his name on the wall text? Afterall, Trecartin’s work prior to this endeavor was more or less a post-millennial cultural exquisite corpse quite similar to this new site; the only difference here is a switch from actor to curator.

*originally posted to bien- pensant.com in the fall of 2010

   The internet offers a chance for art’s users to experience organizational models of viewership in ways that are non-dependent and non-hierarchical. Allowing institutions to dictate the function of the Internet, be it through copyright, privatization, and/or the commoditization of information, simply digitizes pre-existing modes of viewership built upon problematic power relations. Organizational art websites either mirror the dictatorial models of previous institutions (as is the case of the Rijkmuseum) or offer forms of user-defined participation (as is the case of Rhizome’s popular discussion board). By multiplying the potential for consumerist relationships the internet offers great chances for efficiency in viewership. However, the internet also introduces new social conditions that do not fit within characteristically modern organizations. This is to say that if we understand the internet solely as a device to retrieve art still at home in the modernist institution, we are still relying on an outdated, vertical model of information acquisition. We should instead encourage horizontally organized methods that decentralize information, as these are the models actively engage the radical new potential for information’s transmission. 

            Late-capitalism’s own design, the Information or Digital Age, is its own worst enemy. In shifting from an industry-based economy to one based on the manipulation of information our currency has become intangible. No longer living in a material production based society, but an information processing society has had exponential effects on the quality of information as well as one’s efficiency in acquiring and processing it.

           What does the current museum structure say to a Post-Industrial spectator? Nothing. The new economic model brought about by the Information Age drastically contrasts with the 18^th C. model museums still adhere to, where the institution sought to construct a civilized man. Late-capitalism’s construction of the Information Age and all the nuanced innovations that come with it, more specifically, user generated content, obliterate the modernist institution’s ability to realistically speak to the 21^st C. museumgoer. In a world of Twitter and Youtube, being told you are not allowed to take a photograph in the museum is a jarring experience. When the power to create media has been placed in the citizen’s hands, the museum, as a citizen forming institution, neglects the sensibilities of the individual curious enough to enter its doors. This is not an easily, or even I would argue possibly, remedied predicament. Museum boards need the 18^th C. model to make collections valuable and to establish cultural capital, whereas the 21^st C. museum would need to be interactive and reflective of the visitor’s ability to deal with living in a mix of virtual and physical realities. Should museums adopt a format of mixed realities, they would still reflect modernist components of power through the structure of their information’s dissemination. Restrictive cultural spaces bent on forming an ideal citizen become increasingly problematic as technology produces more globalized individuals. 

            Transnational capitalism has no borders, only networks and rapid information flow. The cultural program the museum is capable of representing is antithetical and unfamiliar to a rapidly moving contemporary culture. As Friedrich Jameson pointed out, culture is now on fast-forward, time and history have been replaced by speed, futureness, and accelerated obsolescence. Not only does information move through networks and evolve faster than ever, but smaller group identities of splintering interests produce products that are validated by their subculture, leaving behind the need for institutional accreditation. Contemporary art cannot be defined in readily canonical terms because the notion of ‘contemporary’ changes so rapidly. To this end, the semi-permanence of physical exhibition is simply impractical. Allowing a small geographically-bound group roughly a month to attend a venue cannot hold a candle to the efficiency of Internet exhibition. The qualitative differences in information physical viewership provides are dwarfed by the exponentially larger quantity of information available online.

            In an MIT lecture last year, Michael Mittleman stated that between 90 and 95% of an artist’s audience will see their work through documentation. Art cannot exist without an audience, as it relies on media for its existence as art. With today’s burgeoning potential for digital mass viewership, transmission becomes as important as creation. Contemporary online artists are aware of this fact and seek to actively make use of its potential. Dematerialization is not an oppressive suffocation of art but a possibility for art to flourish in disparate and progressive discourses. The web offers infinite room for expansion and participation unlimited by the more severe constraints of space and finance. Everyone can self-design their own exhibition space with no center; efficiently interconnected all the while.

            These possibilities are merely the product of web 2.0, if we continue to use the Internet as a space reflective of personal liberties the future for immaterial art has incredible, unfathomable potential to flourish. But for this to happen individuals must truly recognize what is at stake in sacrificing the current anarchic structure of the Internet. This is to say, we must remain vigilant and weary of possible returns to authority in web 3.0 and beyond.

*Originally posted to thejogging.tumblr.com in the spring of 2010