User:Joak/graduation/proposal

Proposal

..., artists are being led into a technological kindergarten the idea being that the artist
can amuse himself and some of the populace with the gadgetry of modern life.
G. Metzger

Introduction

In the last years, online platforms for distribution, sharing and production of digital art opened there doors for a public at large and picture them selfs as a "revolutionary new way to collect, share and trade art", claiming to "push the possibilities of creativity" or to "place the artist’s work in a broader global visual context free from the hegemonic monetary system" . However, in my gradution project I will focus on this recent developments and impacts of those art platforms. The most relevant question I will follow in my research is how to show the underlining networks and mechanisms of such platforms and through that answer how it will affect the conditions of an artwork.

Distribution and Destruction

The current model of an artist could be called "exhibition artist"(in German "Ausstellungskünstler") - a term coined by the Swiss art historian Oskar Broetschmann. The exhibition artist doesn't - like his predecessor the court artist - rely on commissions by his king, a lord or an aristocrat. As a distributor for this "free" artist comes the gallery market into the play and to say it in the language of the free market functions mostly as his and sometimes as her point of sale. Galleries in this case work as an agent for the artist by providing exhibitionspace and managing the costumer relation. The ideal customer is of course a ambitious collector interested in the artists aesthetic and supporting with his investment the identity of society in a healthy relation with the foresight of curators, the judgment of critics, the acceptance of the audience and contextualization by art historians.

Research points

• Historical dimension of art distribution in the digital age:
  • ARTEX(Artist's Electronic Exchange Network) 1980
  • "La Plissure du Texte: A Planetary Fairy Tale" by Roy Ascott 1984
  • The electronic gallery, 1993
  • In 2001 Ars Electronica Festivals topic was "takeover - who's doing the art of tomorrow". A symposium on the topic "The Undertakings of Art - Who will survive?" took place and discussed how the artsystem is situated "for the future, for the globalization of the art market, for the new digital forms of distribution, and, above all, for the demands of artists." It opens the question how was the vision for an artsystem 13 years ago?
• Current examples of art distribution in the digital age:
  • Distribution:
    • Seditionart "digital art at your fingertips" "...art that you love." "Watch your editions appreciate in value as other collectors move the market." "And take it with you wherever you go." http://www.seditionart.com/how-it-works
    • Electric Objects: "A Computer Made for Art" http://electricobjects.com/
    • FRAMED* — "A Revolutionary Platform For Digital Art" http://frm.fm/en/
  • Corporate art:
    • Google Devart https://devart.withgoogle.com/
  • Online gallery networks:
    • artsy "Discover, Research, and Collect the World's Best Art Online" https://artsy.net/
• Limitation systems:
  • DRM
  • HDMI

Previous practice

In previous projects, I focused on the unmasking of underling mechanism of the artsystem and artworks sometimes involved in a parodistic way and an exaggeration of a specific action. In piano for 3 seconds(2010) a specific intervention for an exhibition the artwork was destroyed before the opening. The remains were sent to a the archive of an "important" museum for art and media as a jump over of the normal states in the life of an artwork and to archive it there immediately. In the exhibition viewers could only see the conformation of the postal order. In the case of Gsell_1(2011) the artwork willl destroy itself by sawing on the own woodbranch. It is connected to the idea of auto-destructive art. The well known Artblockplus(2013) - was realized during my first year in the PZI - is an addon/extension for Firefox and Chrome internetbrowsers to help the user blocking art. In Analysis of 20 artworks on the assembly line(2013) I applying statistical analysis(in this case a computer vision object detection) to 20 images of artworks and presented the graphical outcome on a running assembly line.

References

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