User:Jonas Lund/Trimster2EssayDraftyDraft

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The context and transmission of a net art work has changed over the last couple of years, from existing more in the periphery of the online communities to be presented and interacted with largely on the three big social media networks, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

By largely working within these social networks in close communities, relying on its feedback to validate the works produced an interesting feedback loop of peer review has come in to place. The typical reactions on Facebook when an artist posts a new work is either positive or nonexistent and never engaging in a deeper critical discussion as argued by Brad Troemel in the recent article “CLUB KIDS: The Social Life of Artists on Facebook” published on dismagazine.com, “…The ability to risk antagonism or criticize a peer becomes unnecessarily divisive on Facebook…Feedback, if any, is always on a scale ranging from positive to non-existent.”

In the article, it’s also argued that an artist needs to have an audience to produce works, granting a logical conclusion to relying on the community to validate the art and the feedback to be positive, an audience needs to be in place before any of those events can occur. Further extending the point made by Lauren Christiansen in ‘Redefining exhibition in the digital age’ “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.” As artists come to self-sort and form international communities based on mutual investigations, it is absurd to think of being able to act with any curatorial agency in selecting from the vast array of “contemporary artists” without being in some way tied directly to those artists' social networks. The methods of transmission these artists use become imbricated with the work they create, who accesses it, and the spaces they ultimately show in.” (Christiansen)

The (Facebook) net art community, which is both positive and largely uncritical becomes nothing more than a horizontal ponzi scheme with no benefactor. If the main focus is on the transmission and an uncritical, positive reception, the results is a perpetual feedback loop of positivism that won’t bring any critical discussions.

The lack of critique within the social network stands as a symbol of the fear of being exonerated from the community, as the artists themselves relies on positive feedback and the likes becomes the currency which validates the artwork. An artworks value was typically determined by a collection of players within the art world, “if the producer, the dealer, the curator, the critic, the institution, and the patrons all agree upon the mythical monetary value of an object and its significance in authorship the profitability of the work can only go in one direction, up." (Christiansen). However within the new digitally networked art world, the importance of the old established institutions as the validators of art is slowly withering, and the accreditation of an artwork’s worth happens within its own subculture. (Christiansen). As a result, the lack of critique within Facebook is in a way similar to how an artist doesn’t critique the ‘players’ of the art world, unless it’s a defined strategy.

In the Club Kids article and a recent talk by Troemel on the same topic, the conclusion is that the artist actions within the social network is to at the same time establish a community, a belonging to a certain clique, and to “broadcast your identity as a unquietly identifiable brand” (Troemel, PS1 talk), which in return will grant the artist a show in a real gallery, suggesting that there’s a lack of coherency beyond that of the communal belonging. “Thus, the strongest ties artworks in today’s group shows often share are the Mutual Friends the artists have rather than the work itself.”

Christoper Schreck points out in the article ‘MEDIUM: 2 – How To Internet’ that as the artists are occupied with establishing their artist brands, the lines between professional and personal life turns into a blur “our experience on these sites routinely blurs the lines between friend and audience, between offhand and professional. As such, it’s worth asking how and to what extent this “casual” activity influences the work we create, the way we present that work, and how it’s received by others.”. He raises a valid concern in regards to the self transmission, how can we critically look at each others work if we’re unsure in the position we take towards it, as a personal off-work consumer or as a fellow artist.

Tom Sherman writes in “The ‘finished’ work of art is a thing of the past”, “Works of art in the immaterial domain are never finished, they are simply introduced (initialized) and placed (contextualized) for participation and interaction: the audience may add to, alter, customize, pass on, subtract from the work, etc. The identity or address of the work is therefore shared by the artist and the audience. The artist, of course, may choose to revisit any or all of his or her own works for revision in such an interactive environment.”

The community, the positive feedback of works and the establishment of the artists identity as a brand in relation to Sherman’s notion that an immaterial artwork is never finished, stipulates that it’s not the value of the artworks but the value of the artist persona which generates an artistic careers currency. The immaterial artwork Sherman describes has become that of a self-lived, self-created one, it’s not the artworks which are never ending but the artist brand itself, and its value is measured by the success in the art world, and its ultimate critique is a lack of attention and ignorance.


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