First Paper - Draft

Title (maybe?): First Past the Post: An ecology of the computational condition

Abstract: Given the current state of networked existence, artists, theorists and media producers are faced with the challenge of quantifying meaning within these systems. To shed light on the ramifications of the hidden stack of processes that influence planetary life while traditional forms of politics, biology, and economics are breaking down along with the frameworks of spatiality and legality. Attempts have been made in this regard, and the following paper seeks to critique and link these ideas in a cohesive form that offers an idea of moving forward with work that aids in deciphering the times we live in.

In the spirit of the inexorable quest to identify an epoch in which we are currently living, a number of offerings have come up in critical discourse. Attempting to take the reigns from the naivety of the term new media, we have been offered postinternet (Olson, 2011) and the new aesthetic (Bridle, 2013) among others. Regardless of which moniker sticks as history looks back on this time, what is key is the thematisation of the network condition as our existence becomes digitised. There is something inherently novel about this epoch (though this can be argued about all of history) – the technology that permeates all cultures today offers an exponential paradigm shift towards an unknown that all invalidates all previous data sets that might have aided predictive models. The most troubling aspect of the current climate is that the illegibility of technology is leading to an internalisation of surveillance culture, where tacit acceptance of the corporate framing of our use of technology becomes expected. (Bridle, 2013) While it may be unrealistic to enable change in the tools at our disposal, a critical realisation that these tools form our relationship to technology is achievable. At best we can theorise and embrace the strangeness of these times to demystify the processes occurring around us.

In Hito Steyerl's widely read paper "In Defense of the Poor Image", the author posits that within the context of modern distribution networks, the "poor" image (one of degraded quality) exists as analog to the path the image has taken from its origins. This path is the internet, and despite the title of the paper, the poor image acts as a metaphor for the act of transmission, as opposed to a static image. Indeed, digital images are representations of ongoing processes, essentially animations on pause. (Bridle, 2013) Steyerl defines the value of an image in its ease of flow and distribution, the degraded digital image "mocks the promise of technology" (Steyerl, 2009). Digital imagery becomes infected with compression artefacts that multiply and intercede across the implicit data of an image and become apparent once the fractal decompression software decodes it and presents it to the viewing device. The poor image wrestles the aesthetic hegemony away from the cult of 35mm purity, and enables the masses to become production-consumers across the distribution networks of the web. There exists a class structure within the visual sphere, where crisp, high resolution imagery is on the top of the quality continuum, and degraded, out-of-focus visuals make up the proletarian class. While Steyerl's elucidates a number of key points in our relationship with technology, trends in contemporary art have mistakenly adhered to the aesthetic qualities described in the essay, while ignoring the key point -- that these images are a result of a process, the distribution networks that the data has travelled upon. (Steyerl, 2009) This has lead to a proliferation of work where artists are creating poor images and using this paper as a defence, which inherently obfuscates the meaning of the poor image, and places the concept into the well worn path of fetishisation. These "psudeo-poor images" lack the political implications of the network process and become objects ready for aesthetic consumption. Additionally, there is an apparent class distinction in Steyerl's essay that places a value judgement on being poor, a problematic classism. There is an implicit assumption that the so-called impoverished desire low-quality imagery, an unfounded claim as I would argue that the tools being used are merely massively available, and given the inevitability of higher quality technology, these people would produce rich images as a matter of course. The essay is highly technologically resident -- the techniques of poor-image creation are merely transitory, so where the argument lies on the side of tech it falls off in strength, as Moore's Law has shown no signs of slowing down since it started being quantified. Ultimately the strength of the argument lies in the possibilities of the network, how this process of transmission can change meaning, and contrary to Walter Benjamin's assertion, the aura of these images does not diminish with each reproduction, it in fact becomes heightened with each repetition and redisplay such that the performatory aspect of the image takes precedence over its content. At what point can the image become an object in it's own right, that then becomes a product of the other network-objects it encounters?

In viewing what has become to be described as post-internet art, a similar discord has become apparent, where this term has been used to describe work about the internet as well as work that investigates the realities of network culture, both online and off. Clearly the latter is rife with possibilities that can aid in our understanding of what it means for culture to be in this age, where the former is an aesthetic veneer that looks like youtube, instagram, or as a product of the tools of the web. Being a post-internet artist more relates to the ubiquitous set of conditions that are present in the networked self that permeates our lives currently. This implies that all work generated now can be classified as postinternet, regardless of whether it takes place online or not since these network conditions transcend the web. Contingent to this framework, an optimism about postinternet work could be that it seeks to nullify the staid and dogmatic practices of previous "eons" of art, where practice took the form much akin to the economic systems predominant on the planet. As opposed to critically engaging and attempting to dismantle these systems, artists played along in the class system in the hope of fame, stardom and wealth – ultimate individualism. The task of the postinternet artist (one would hope), given the possibilities of the networked condition, would be to critically engage societal tropes of gender, class, race, elitism, and the unbridled quest for self-optimisation in order to offer a posthistorical frame of reference to dislodge the capital-obsessed hegemony of the art world. This notion is the key revelation that differentiates this post epoch to previous ages, and elaborates on the necessity to engage with the politicisation of networked technology.

Another perspective to view the relationship between art and information can be seen within contemporary economic models, as outlined in the paper "Digital Provenance and the Artwork as Derivative" by McKenzie Wark. As with most other commodities (most pertinently low-interest mortgages), the financial value of art can be seen as a derivative that handles a relationship of monetary risk. Previous to the current information age, the key indicator of value for a work of art was its origin story, and its scarcity. Paradoxically, art as information now gets provenance through an abundance of copies of its self - this process in fact validates the work's existence. The network distribution of the copy belies the existence of the original. This relationship argues against the poor image signifier of the copy. As Wark states, taken a step further, if work is generated through algorithmic means, for example creating a partnership with a type of machine intelligence, it could be that the work changes every time it is accessed depending on the data set it is fed. The work is a simulation derived from a particular set of rules. The interplay between information and art is one of pervasiveness vs exclusivity. As the distribution of informational quality drives the value of the work, artwork becomes a derivative of simulated value. As Manovich stated in the early days of theorising on these notions, "the new media object is not something fixed once and for all but can exist in different, potentially infinite versions" (Manovich 2001, 49). Steyerl states that poor images have a particular potential of creating visual bonds as they articulate dislocated image communities in circuits of shared visuality. Once again we can find a value judgement where Steyerl ghettoises communities using these technologies throughout the world, and an ambiguity if we look to her or to many other postinternet artists that use the poor image in their work as a obvious way to be relevant within internet culture. The financial relationship reveals an uneasy cohabitation with the alleged liberating powers of the poor image when viewed as a derivative economy. An implication of the next phase of the networked reality could be the dissolution of the art worker, just as modernism dissolved the value of craft previously. With losing this cult of personality and individualism,would it not be great if artists used these new means as participatory methods to empower networked knowledge sharing.

There exists an overwhelming discord within our condition, where "critical disposition, symbolic gesture, political position and everyday life are completely dissociated" (Emmelhainz, 2016). Individual agency for effecting change has been kettled down to the echo chamber of your social media feed. At a coincident moment, vast amounts of data regarding individual agency transfer across unseen cables that conflate references to time and space. Throughout human history the gap between understanding and existence was filled with mythology. In doing so demanded a conceptual leap to occur that allowed for new pathways of thinking. While I am not positing that we create new sky gods of the internet, an opportunity exists in shifting thinking towards a non-human centred view, one that encapsulates all agents, (human and non-human), and the action repercussions that resonate through the computational, physical and conceptual spheres. In this space, foundational reference points can be uncovered to anchor the postinternet culture, and create work that asserts the tensions of contemporary being.

List of References/Bibliography:
Bishop, C (Sept 2012) Digital Divide, ARTFORUM Bridle, J (June 2013) The New Aesthetic and its Politics Demos, TJ (2016) Decolonizing Nature, Sternburg Press Emmelhainz, I (2016) Geopolitics and Contemporary Art, e-flux journal #69 Manovich, L (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press Olson, M (Winter 2011/2012) Postinternet: art after the internet, Foam Magazine #29 Pereira, PC & Harcha, JZ (2014) Revolutions of Resolution: About the Fluxes of Poor Images in Visual Capitalism, Triple C Rourke, D (Feb 2013) Falling into the Digital Divide: Encounters with the work of Hito Steyerl, AfterImage (Vol. 40, No. 5, 2013) Steyerl, H (Nov 2009) In Defense of the Poor Image, e-flux journal #10 Wark, M (Nov 2016) Digital Provenance and the Artwork as Derivative, e-flux journal #77 Zorbas, D (Jul 2015) Hito Steyerl and Ryan Trecartin: Video Art, Noise in the Signal, Dissect Journal 2