First Paper - Draft

Abstract:

Hito Steyerl's widely disseminated 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 takes form in the planetary network of 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 object. Steyerl defines the value of an image in its ease of flow and distribution, the degraded digital image "mocks the promise of technology". 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 there is a key validity in Steyerl's thesis, 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. 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 ontologically places it in the realm of "traditional" imagery. These "psudeo-poor images" lack the political implications of the poor-image process and become high art objects, ready for consumption by the gallery-going strata of society. Additionally, there is an apparent class distinction in Steyerl's essay that places a value judgement on being poor, which is problematic to say the least -- also 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 higher quality technology, these people would produce rich images as a matter of fact. This leads to the next point, that 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 take 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 at looks like youtube, instagram, or as a product of the tools of the web. "The internet is less a novelty and more a banality, a presence that is now a given; a generally less phenomenal phenomenon" writes Gene McHugh, which describes the essential nature of what the ARPANET has become, and elucidates the critical vicissitude of investigation based solely on the 'this-ness' of the internet. 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 for the artist to get beyond aesthetic representations of how the joint photo expert group compresses an image. "we need to understand how photography works within everyday life in advanced industrial societies: the problem is one of materialist cultural history rather than art history".

Another perspective to view the relationship between art and information can be seen through the changing role of the artist within contemporary economic models. As with most other commodities, 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. 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. 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 relationship with the alleged liberating powers of the poor image when viewed as a derivative economy in the classic white cube gallery. "the new media object is not something fixed once and for all but can exist in different, potentially infinite versions". 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.