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“Happenings” in the New York Scene
Intro:
- Happenings: form of interactivity in art, media; performances and events organized by Allan Kaprow, others in 50s and 60s
- Notion of interaction that these events incorporated--whether large, small amounts-- "inspiring;" "increased responsibility of the observer..then abolishing the audience distinction between actor and spectator" components of this particular form of media (83)
- Presented before limited audiences; more known about Happenings through writings rather than viewings of them
- Works don't necessarily serve as platform for political, analytical thought/expression; also form of "community function"
- Today can serve as medium that can place new media into context
Happenings, According to Kaprow:
- "Happenings are events that, put simply, happen...they appear to go nowhere and do not make any particular literary point" (85)
- Free-flowing, organic, and extremely transient--one-performance only and are heavily affected by context
- Context: "place of conception and enactment;" no separation of audience and play, and has "changeable configuration" (86)
- Generated in action rather than first written
- Chance is major component of Happenings
o Vehicle of spontaneity
o "Implies risk and fear"--nature of media is uncertain
o "This is, in essence, a continuation of Realism" (87)
§ -mimics the element of surprise of life
- The melodrama, adventure, mythical nature of Happenings grow, despite their fleeting nature--check out the following link for a reinterpretation of two of Kaprow's happenings. Imagine how its execution and significance has changed over time!
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hzNKLx9jio
Questions to Consider:
1. When Kaprow mentions that "American creative energy only becomes charged by...a sense of crisis," what do you believe caused the increase of experimental and abstract art forms and media such as Happenings (87)? Why would such a form of media have such an impact during the 1950s and 1960s?
2. The paradoxical impermanence of Happenings has created a sense of myth that allows "the artist...a beautiful privacy, famed for something purely imaginary" (88). What sort of impact does the abstract nature of the Happenings Kaprow describes have upon its creator, besides what Kaprow calls privacy? Why should such impermanence have such an effect?
The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin
- Cut and Paste Editing: process based on earlier experiments of surrealists
- Involves simple cutting of words/phrases, and then the random rearrangement to create a poem, story, piece of art, photograph, or any other type of media that is “new”
- This process will help “produce the accident of spontaneity”
- Many artists say this helped them create their best work
- Spontaneity is something you cannot will to happen
- “Something to do” in an experimental sense—much better than just talking or arguing about something
- “Cut ups are for everyone”
- “All writing is in fact cut-ups”
- “Cut ups can be applied to other fields of writing”
- Examples: use of cut ups in game and military strategy, in processing scientific data (many discoveries made by accident), and in adding a “new” dimension to films
- Advocating cut and paste process as an “intermediate step in composition,” not as a means to generate texts directly to readers
- Tool by which the artist can create new ideas through spontaneity
Questions to Consider:
1. Do you believe that all writings are in fact cut-ups? What does Burroughs actually mean by stating this?
2. What are your responses and thoughts about the two cut-up paragraphs that Burroughs included at the end of his essay? Did it seem to have a “spontaneous” factor to it, and was it beneficial in creating new ideas?
Background on Ascott:
- London Roy Ascott advocates a connection between cybernetics and art
- Participation is the relationship between a spectator and an already existing open-ended art work
- Interaction is a two-way interplay between an individual and artificial intelligence system
- Ascott uses art as “an investigation of behavior, (of) creating situations for exploring behavior”
The Construction of Change:
- Art is not only intended to be discussed but is subject to change and human intervention
- Art is a form of instruction which is intended to give direction
- “Art shapes life” (128)
- Artists set out to find the unknown and unpredictable
o Through prediction artists attempt to reduce our anxiety of the unknown future
o Through control they reduce the contingent nature of events and uses them to our advantage
- Art is a matrix between the artist and the audience
- Cybernetics is the combination of many sciences which have brought about many changes in the human condition
- Because of cybernetics man is more of a controller and less of an effecter
- “Great art symbolizes our will to shape and change the world and also puts forth the particular aspirations of its time” (130)
- Founded the Ealing school of art: http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=163
o The first year of study the student is asked to solve problems with material limitations, creating abstract art
o In the second year students must create their own problems by creating a new personality, which is the complete opposite of their genuine personality
§ When finished with the experiment, they are able to see how unlimited they have become because they have taken on a new personality
Questions to consider:
1. How has art helped people to express their opinions on new media?
2. How has art evolved along with the evolution of new media?
Cybernated Art by Nam June Paik
Fun Facts on Paik
- Korean-born artist, very first “video artist”
- Part of the 60’s art movement called Fluxus (similar to Dadaism, Fluxus uses intermedia—crosses of media like poetry and painting, for example—to emphasize anti-art and criticize the seriousness of modern art)
- Well known for the incorporation of television sets into his artwork, especially when constructing robots
- Some of his work was considered quite scandalous
o TV Bra for Living Sculpture—this piece is pretty straightforward. Charlotte Moorman, a cellist, wore a bra made from two small television sets
o Same woman was arrested for being topless while performing in Paik’s Opera Sextronique
Cybernated Art
- “One tendency of video art, since the beginning, has been to be cybernetic…”
o Here, cybernetic means relating to the comparison of communication and control processes in both biological and technological systems
- Paik was a visionary in the 60’s world of experimental art
o The incorporation of television sets and the combination of video footage in his art pieces allowed for interaction between his work and the audience
- The nature of video art: to have a history before it was old enough to have a history
o “Video was being invented and simultaneously so were its myths and culture heroes…”
o Definitely deems media art to be “new media” for the time
- Martha Rosler’s take on video art and Paik himself:
o “…symbolically incorporating the consciousness industry into the methods and ideas of the cultural apparatus…”
o Acknowledges the sexism found in video art
- Video art which featured the objectification of men, or just male nudity in general, was created but is less noted in the history of this art form
- Paik references George Brecht:
o He was a conceptual artist in the 60’s who triumphed in the world of interactive art where a work can only be experienced when the audience participates
- Paik explains cybernetics by claiming it is, “the science of pure relations, or the relationship itself, [which] has its origin in karma.”
o Inclusion of Karma highlight the Buddhist aspect of this manifesto
- Check out some of Paik’s video art:
o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuaJAgx0x_4
o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kr4CoU3G04
o http://accad.osu.edu/~ayoungs/260/jpgs/nam-june_moorman.jpg
Questions to Consider:
1. Do you believe that Martha Rosler’s opinion on the sexist aspects of video art is justifiable? Where could you find sexism in new media or the modern art of today?
2. Hoping you viewed some of Paik’s work, what is your reaction to Paik’s video “art”? Art can be difficult to define and its meaning varies from person to person, so based on your own definition of art, how would you critique Paik’s artistic ability?
New Media Art - Introduction
Defining New Media Art
- New media art: using technology for artistic purposes
o Two artists, Heemskerk and Paesmans, collaborated on Jodi.org, which used HTML as the medium for their artwork
- 1994: the year which marked the mainstreaming of the internet
o We became a digital culture, computers accessible to most
o Virtual reality, web-based art, and interactive multimedia become known as “new media art”
§ New media art is based on cultural, political, and aesthetic possibilities of new technology
- New Media Art
o Combo of “art and technology” and “media art”
§ Art and technology: art which used technology that is new, but not media-related
§ Media art: art forms that use media-related technology that is considered old by the 90’s
Art Historical Antecedents
- New media art is influenced by early 20th century art movement known as Dadaism
o Dadaism was a reaction to industrialization of warfare and mechanical representations of text/images
o New media art is a reaction to the technological revolution
- New media art also similar to Pop Art from the 60’s
o Both use culture of the time as subject matter
- Conceptual art was a precursor to new media art as well
o Focus is more so on the idea than the visual
New Media Art as a Movement
- Artistic movements lost their momentum after the stock market crash in 1987
- New media art came to be found in museums and exhibits, replacing traditional pieces like paintings
- Online art scenes began to form, new media art becomes a worldwide artistic movement
o Both a result and cause of globalization
o Check out deviantart.com, it’s fantastic
Beginnings
- Causes for increased draw toward New Media :Rising global art scene, IT advancements, familiarity with computing
- Interest in the New Media form was present in varying art fields--"started to work with emerging media technologies in was that were informed by conceptual, formal qualities...of former disciplines"
- Computers granted access to a broader art world thanks to the popularization of the internet
- Art rooted in the internet was coined "Net art"--Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic encountered the term online in 1995.
o Inexpensive form of art; easily accessible to financially-strained artists
o Played integral role in the development of the New Media art movement
o Core technologies of early Net art:
· Apache Web Server
· HTML
Collaboration and participation:
- New media art often requires collaboration of artists from different technological and artistic backgrounds
- Many new media works involve audience participation; however, audience actions do not make lasting impact upon the work
From appropriation to open source
- Borrowing from other sources rather than creating "ex nihilo" arose in the twentieth century
o Easy access to various types of media allows for the appropriation of art to be achieved with much ease
o Cause for debate over intellectual property laws and policies--aim to restrict unauthorized copying and distribution; leads New Media artists to search for different means to share and author their works
- New Media art influences:
o Recycled forms of media
o Sampling/Remixing of popular music
- Criticized for lack of "historical knowledge...overlooking their work's relationship to precedents..." despite some forms of New Media consciously acknowledging art history.
Corporate Parody
- The web allowed websites to replace major news organizations as peoples source of information
- Allows people to easily mimic a corporate identity à stealing their logos, brand name and slogan
- The new type of theory, art, architecture, music, and life style, that is influenced by computers, can be defined as "Neen,"
- Hacking can be seen as an art because in order to be successful at it you must have a love and passion for computers, not merely do it for money.
- "Whatever code we hack, be it programming language, poetic language, math or music, curves or colourings, we create the possibility of new things entering the world.... In art, in science, in philosophy and culture, in any production of knowledge where data can be gathered, where information can be extracted from it, and where in that information new possibilities for the world are produced, there are hackers hacking the new out of the old."
-McKenzie Wark
- The Internet has enabled people to organize mass peaceful riots
- The internet has become a place to converse openly and artistically
- People can use the internet to express their identity (e-mail account, home page, facebook, myspace)
- The internet both bridges and gaps geographical differences (webcam) Many disputes over the invasion of privacy but at the same time it helps protect people against terrorism, crime ect.
Institutional Embrace
- Early 1970s video art was gaining critical and curatorial support
- Some exhibitions of computer-based art work appeared in mainstream museums on both sides of the Atlantic
- London, “Cybernetic Serendipity:” how computer-driven automatons and other technological devices were used in traditional art-making (poetry, painting, sculpture, etc)
- Mid 1970s the curatorial trend came to an end (counterculture associated technology with corporate capitalism and the Vietnam War)
- Early 1990s
- Robert Riley, curator, organized “Bay Area Media” (featured several works of computer-based art)
- Mid 1990s
- Dotcom-era enthusiasm for new media
- Net Art acquired by New York’s Dia Center for the Arts
- Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Gallery 9
- Documenta and “Hybrid Workspace”
- By late 1990s spread even more—Whitney Biennial (considered a barometer of trends in contemporary American art) included nine works of Net Art
Independent Initiatives
- Two groups of New Media artists: one who sought and received the institutional imprimatur of museum exhibitions, and others who rather worked within the communities and institutions of the Media art and Art and Technology fields
- Support in form of festivals and conferences devoted to Art and Technology had long existed in Europe (Arts Electronica festival, Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts, etc) and Asia (Inter-Communication Center and Museum of New Media)
- In US, non-profit organizations sprung up, and soon online communities (artnetweb, Rhizome.org, The Thing) popped up
- Physical spaces for New Media art in late 1990s and early 2000s
- Same time many government agencies started funding it (although many still did not)
- Many New Media artists skeptical of the art market
- They criticized capitalism, victory of the free-market ideology symbolized by the dissolution of the Soviet Union
- Rather distribute their art through free websites, email, etc
Collecting and Preserving New Media Art
- Unfamiliar aesthetics and technologies (which rapidly become obsolete and unavailable) posed a challenge to gallerists and collectors
- CD ROMs, produce works that take the form of physical objects
- Some strategies for preserving media art: documentation, migration (replacing outdated html tags with current ones), emulation (software that simulates obsolete hardware), and recreation
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