The author Joshua Sessions, writes this investigation in third person in an attempt to extract himself from the work and critically assess its place in context. In preparation of this artwork the artist examined different audience models that pre-existed social media and ways to communicate with new audiences via social media. Whilst this project is listed as his Final Major Project as an MA student at the University of Huddersfield, the writer and artist intends to develop this work further as a public art piece, apply the theories and findings to business models and possibly form a basis of future study.
This work is a result of research. It is created by informed observations, studies and reports of how society globally accesses, uses and creates content both in the 'Live' and 'Online' spheres for 'Audiences' and ‘Users', and attempts to not replace but enhance both experiences of the art work. It attempts to reflect, question and act as a catalyst for future work and research.
This investigation includes two main parts;
"I do not seek to undo, rather adapt and enhance how we live in the real and online”. (Sessions, 2017)
This is a written piece critically placing the work, examining the relevant theories, how the art work was developed and what conclusions were reached.
THE REPORT
REFLECTIONS OF THE ARTWORK
This will be a demonstration of the artist’s concept. Using five masks the artist will demonstrates how the theories that have been examined have been used to inform the process, and ask the question of how it could be multiplied into a much larger public artwork. Click on the mask for the resulting Video Blog the artist made to reflect the reasoning
Branding
The What and Why? - Contextualsing The Internet
Global society has seen an explosion of digital media, from the way we socialise with one another; make new connections; conduct business, and learn. The particular focal point of this study is the internet - a global network of computers that host information. Co Founder of Youtube - Chad Hurley;
The first developers and software engineers of this had intentions of it being a key to a democratic utopia as it brought all together to share information freely, without borders and capital. As Nicholas Negropinte - Founder of MIT media lab said;
“The internet is about connecting individuals or connecting individuals to information"
(Science Discovery, 2013)
"I do believe that being digital is positive. It can flatten organizations, globalize society, decentralize control, and help harmonize people in ways beyond not knowing whether you are a dog."
(Negroponte, 1994)
"It’s obvious now that what we did was a fiasco, so let me remind you that what we wanted to do was something brave and noble… The internet based on selling stuff was not the original plan "
(Zuckerman, 2014)
It was hoped the internet would bring about democratic change. While there is case to be argued on both sides of the discussion, one can reflect that in a ‘cruel twist’ of events we have seen a global society become increasingly disconnected with one another. For example at the time of writing, British negotiations to come out of the EU have begun. It can be argued that new media and a globalisation fuelled by the neoliberalist philosophy that underpins the internet giants -Google/Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon and Uber - played a key factor by appearing to promote fake news and social media echo chambers, ‘shouting’ rather than engaging in debate. It is important to note that while these ‘giants’ of the internet appear to be connecting the world together, creating virtual portals into our lives they are private companies who are harvesting data so that they can target advertising more efficiently at users. These giants also control the monopoly, buying out any potential competitors and new inventions, and restrain creativity.
On the positive side there is a lot of good to have come out of the internet, by connecting individuals together to create new partnerships and bringing distant parts of the world closer to the user (an individual accessing the internet). It has created new ways of entertainment and self publishing of work to reach a larger audience and most importantly a relatively free flow of information. Evidence of this is that the artist, and author, has gained all the information and sourced all of the materials for this work via the internet. He has attended lectures and tutorials in person to gain the physical interaction that you do not necessarily experience online. It would have been very possible to watch the lectures on the university's ‘Lecture Capture’ system, and conduct the tutorials by video-conferencing. Would this be good or bad practice? The answer is for the individual themselves to decide, but it is a clear demonstration of how the process of learning is developing.
It was hoped the internet would bring about democratic change. While there is case to be argued on both sides of the discussion, one can reflect that in a ‘cruel twist’ of events we have seen a global society become increasingly disconnected with one another. For example at the time of writing, British negotiations to come out of the EU have begun. It can be argued that new media and a globalisation fuelled by the neoliberalist philosophy that underpins the internet giants -Google/Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon and Uber - played a key factor by appearing to promote fake news and social media echo chambers, ‘shouting’ rather than engaging in debate. It is important to note that while these ‘giants’ of the internet appear to be connecting the world together, creating virtual portals into our lives they are private companies who are harvesting data so that they can target advertising more efficiently at users. These giants also control the monopoly, buying out any potential competitors and new inventions, and restrain creativity.
This is a rapid change in consumption and use. We are using technology and accessing information at a rate that we have never experienced before, and the change has been relatively quick in respects to how change usually happens. This will effect everything we do, how we do it, and raises the question do we need to do it at all? It could be argued that this change is similar to environmental change, it effects the global community in a near infinite number of ways and is incredibly hard to quantify and yet we must. We must develop a language that reflects our interactions and usage, and be open to the new norms for society.
In an artistic environment, how we present art installations and engage audiences should reflect these changing attitudes to online activity. Sessions the artist did not set out to fix a problem, rather to reflect how individuals adopt a mask through their digital screens to conceal and enhance their identities online, and to explore how interactive art can exist both in the real moment and online. This is not something to be tackled alone, and throughout this exploration the artist and researcher engaged with different interested parties including fellow artists, business leaders, architects and politicians.
(statista, 2017)
With the rise of the virtual world, there is a possibility of loss of some of the real. It is observed that people can create different identities online, gain a mask or avatar to enhance or conceal their true identities. While this is encouraged to protect against cyber crime - societies greatest threat- it also creates real problems in real lives. People struggle to form relationships with one another, instead preferring to play virtual, often violent on-line games together but remotely, instead of going to the park to kick a ball around. Similarly, instead of going to the cinema with a group of friends to see the latest blockbuster we watch them from the privacy of our own homes, tweeting our thoughts to our friends. As the graph demonstrates, legacy media - this includes television, films, and newspapers - are now being bypassed to new forms of media consumption.
Further more the consumption of online media globally has overtaken television, the US engaging for 12 hours a day with Europe just under 8 hours.
The Zenith Media Consumption Forecast published 30th May 2017, the report goes further to predict;
"will account for 26% of global media consumption in 2019, up from 19% in 2016...People around the world will spend an average of 122 minutes a day accessing the mobile internet via browsers and apps, an amount that has grown from just ten minutes a day since 2010." (Barnard, 2017)
(The Economist, 2017)
The first users of the internet in the early days were characterised as 'geeks and boffins', and capital market paid little interest to them, instead targeting the hardware manufactures - Intel, Apple and Windows. However in 1996 when two young developers fresh out of college formed a company called Yahoo and developed an algorithm to target internet users with advertising all this changed. Suddenly advertisers had a valid reason to be online to target their marketing, to sell, and in turn consumers had a reason to connect to one another.
Skipping forward to today’s world, users of the internet are consuming ever increasing amounts of information on a daily basis bypassing traditional outputs such as newspapers, libraries and shopping centers and migrating to the virtual online sphere of new media - blogs and Youtube, ebooks and Amazon/ebay for shopping. Ethan Zuckerman is the inventor of the pop up-ad and is now Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT;
The How? - The Artwork
A series of masks that are arranged at different heights and depths to create a crowd scene. The masks have digital content reflecting the artist’s interactions online, which is projection-mapped onto the front surfaces of the mask to hopefully bring them to life. The content itself is a digital creation by the artist, some abstract, some realistic, and some popular existing content that the audience of the time will recognise when viewing. The artist sets the boundaries of the work but invites the audience to take several active roles within the work, thus inviting them to be both users and co-authors of the work. There are several stages to this project;
Upon first viewing of the piece, the audience sees the arrangement of masks with the digital content on the masks, much like a painting in an art gallery. There will also be a subtle sound bed in the space.
Look, hear, the audience experience
Inquiry and participation
In front of the masks sits a control panel which controls elements that are projected.
The artist projects his internet interactions onto the masks posing the questions; does the internet ‘user’ wear the digital screens as if it is a digital masks? The screens are our contrived identities which the user takes an active role in shaping by the content they choose to upload and download from the internet that the user hides behind.
Inquiry and participation
There will be no visible boundaries to stop the audience from walking around the artwork, and look through the art work and so appear to wear the mask. It is hoped, that the other audience members participate in looking through the masks and taking selfies of themselves to upload to social media.
Theory - Masks
Masks surround our everyday lives both in the real world and online. They are the internationally recognised symbol of theatre, one sad one happy, they conceal, enhance, and change the wearers’ appearance.
Hana Kim of Chicago School of Media Theory tries to broadly classify all masks into four different categories;
"There are four broad ways of approaching the definition: masks as theatrical, figural, spiritual and/or utilitarian." (Kim, 2007)
Physiognomics by Artistotle, and Greater Hippias by Plato, both suggest that intelligence and morality are directly associated with the face, and to conceal it is to create a new identity as it makes new points of recognition, but obstructs the former primary recognition points. For instance onstage actors often wear masks to imitate a person they are portraying, while someone may wear a Spiritual mask as part of a ritual act. Make-up can even be considered a mask; by applying lip stick and eye-liner the wearer enhancers their appearance to increase self-confidence. By applying a mask new personas are easily created, possibly enabling the wearer to achieve acts that they might have found possible without.
"Hiding the face is also disguising a secret; it is also creating a world of mystery, of the hidden"
(Fanon & Chevalier, 2007)
It is also important to note the effective political impacts that masks can create. By obscuring the individuals identity you limit what surveillance can achieve. Masks have also been used in demonstrations to protect the identities of the individuals, but in the connected society we now have they also act of a way of branding and, ironically, identify different groups. For instance the hacking group Anonymous adopted a cartoon imitation mask of the Guy Fawkes character from the anarchists novel 'V for Vendetta'. Little is known of this group, and there are suspicions that they are not what they purported to be, certainly now, but by using the same mask whether that is online or in the streets for demonstrations, it unites all the group as one body while also making the group incredibly accessible by anyone, irrespective of their individual views;
"instead of being isolated by their identity, the mask allows for a new form of universalism, since the mask can be worn by anyone"
(Nail, n.d.)
Masks create new identities, they create confidence and bring unity to those who use them. As we migrate ever increasingly to the online sphere, what image do we ourselves want to portray? How do we want to enhance ourselves to be like someone else, so that we can hide who we really are? It could argued, given the internet is created purely by humans its is understandable that we find it appropriate to enhance and change our selfies by applying masks.
To now apply the theory of masks to how we currently use the screens of our digital devices. Screens have become an integral part of how we communicate information via the internet. Whether it is desktop computers, smart phones, televisions to more unlikely places such as refrigerators, windshields, watches or even eye glasses*. For much of the past century screens were used as a ‘destination’, they brought groups together to watch films or news, moving into living rooms where the ‘wireless’ radio once sat. With very limited channels, audiences were passive to what they watched, with very little input, except to turn the set on or off by hand, there being no remote controls then. In contrast the advent of the personal computer brought a highly personal experience, where once families would sit around the television together to watch ‘history’ moments such as the moon landings or the world domination by the Beatles, the PC meant the viewers could also be active participants. This very much intensified when touch screen technology was integrated to the mobile phone, making them a kind of meeting room, or cinema, with high definition cameras, game consoles and many varied capabilities never previously conceivable. The touch screens we carry in our pockets today act as commonplace portals, connecting wirelessly to an every expanding network of other users around the globe. This has created huge cultural shifts in how we communicate with one another, in our political culture, and in business operation. ‘The Guardian’ ran a series of Labs in conjunction with technology giant, Samsung which predicted we have a ‘screen-centric’ future,
“The revolutionary shift in the way people use and interact with screens has been happening for decades, but is picking up speed at an incredible rate….they make us lighter, more nimble, and more connected… This will present new opportunities, new challenges, and a new visual reality.” ("Samsung", n.d.)
"Though masks act as extension of the body in that they add layers to the skin, they are complexes of reduction in the they amputate a person's soul. Masks become both a medium of understanding and misunderstanding” (Kim, 2007)
"we should remember that, behind the masked figures that surround us, there are people as vulnerable, fallible, as real as ourselves" (Newman, 2015)
A screen is something that displays information for the viewer, but they also act as a barrier between users, possibly making them feel remote.
A massively popular use is the photographic selfie! The selfie concept is completely contrived and manufactured to portray a certain image of yourself. Using a smart phone or a digital camera the photographer is the main subject of the photo themselves, different filtered effects can then be added to the original photograph to change the lighting, conceal any blemishes or add a digital mask which is superimposed on top of the face. This is then shared on social media. I may add this form of self promotion has historical precedent. For example Henry XIII who had himself immortalised both larger and grander than real life painted portraits, so that he could project wealth and power to impress the world. A stark difference between the two examples is the increased speed from conception to broadcast, and the relative ease with which it can now be done. The much enhanced selfies are then used as profile pictures and viewed widely, but concealing the true identity of the person themselves. Often these are seen as nothing more than a bit of light hearted fun, but it can also lead to people being lumped together as stereotypes and so people fail to engage with other another directly.
Kim goes onto write;
The barrier that the selfie generates can act like an actor wearing a mask to conceal their true identity and can create a bunker like mentality. Individuals that may well be decent people in their real lives can easily adopt another persona online through the mask of their screen. One act online that seems to have been enabled online, is public shaming. Public shaming again has strong historical precedent. In the mid 16th Century punishments, usually for women, for apparent misdemeanours such as lying, spreading gossip, or harassment could lead to the person having a metal cage put over their face and taken into a public space where rotten vegetables, stones and insults could be thrown at them. A modern kind of public shaming still exists today, but without the actual cage and vegetables, insults are directed at individuals who are accused of being sexist, racist, or even feminist. This is often conducted by strangers and can cause an echo chamber effect where the verbal attacks become amplified to be vile, hate-fuelled and can escalate to both physical and even death threats. The abusers can feel enabled by having a mask to hide behind - the computer screen its self. But behind every masks there is an individual, as author Sandra Newman writes;
Theory - Interactions
When a painter creates a new painting, they consider carefully the type of paints they will use, the brush strokes, how large the canvas needs to be and what frame to use as a way to catch the viewers’ eye. But little consideration is given to how the audience will directly interact with the art work as they look, observe maybe ponder and move on. Compare this to how we now engage with our phones, social media and the flow of information, it is a constant interaction of upload and download, continually taking an active role in what we view and interact with. This can make the painting seem somewhat static. If we consider that there are two spheres of interaction, ‘Online' and ‘Live’. If we use the Victoria and Albert Museum as an example, there are several methods of interaction for an audience member to gain access to is collection;
Visiting the museum in person to look at the artefact and to choose what viewing angle to use, maybe if the situation permits, to handle and touch it.
Live
Online
Accessing the museums extensive digital archives online by accessing pre-recorded documentation of the artefact
Liking the artefact on the museums Facebook/twitter page, sharing this like with other friends online
"Creation
The pleasure participants get from having the power to create something while interacting with a work
Exploration
The pleasure participants get from exploring a situation
Discovery
The pleasure participants get from making a discovery, or working something out
Difficulty
The pleasure participants get from having to develop a skill or to exercise skill in order to do something
Danger
The pleasure participants get from feeling scared, in danger, or as if they are taking a risk
Captivation
The pleasure participants get from feeling mesmerised or spellbound by something, or of feeling like
another entity has control over them
Sensation
The pleasure participants get from feeling any physical action the work evokes e.g. touch, body movements, hearing, vocalising etc
Sympathy
The pleasure participants get from sharing emotional or physical feelings with something
Simulation
The pleasure participants get from perceiving a copy or representation of something from real life
Fantasy
The pleasure participants get from perceiving a fantastical creation of the imagination
Camaraderie
The pleasure participants get from developing a sense of friendship, fellowship or intimacy with someone
Subversion
The pleasure participants get from breaking rules or of seeing others break rules."
(Costello & Edmonds, 2007)
QuickSand are an interdisciplinary consultancy agency of artists based in Delhi, creating works using technology but with humans as the focal point to their designs. Their works often include video documentaries that observe and identify problems that they can develop for low technology dependant but high impact solutions for their users. Such works as 'Future of Smartphones', 'The Potty Project’, and 'Future of Retail'. Many of their projects do not present a final solution, but seek to observe, reflect, and communicate
Another example of HCD used in conjunction with technology is interactive art studio SquidSoup's various light cube creations. Thousands or OLED lights hanging in space for the audience to walk through with their footsteps ‘watched’ via infrared camera technology which determines the brightness of the lights and pace of the music. These pieces have been exhibited around the world, inviting audiences to move between the lights, to inhabit the space, some choose to walk, other sit still, but also impromptu parties have started with DJs and light performances. The audiences demonstrate an exploration of the unfamiliar, which in turn generates a reward of satisfaction as a result of their movement and the impact on the art thus driving further exploration and play. When talking about the work, the lead artist of the collective, Anthony Rowe explains;
“We wanted to create a digital world that inhabits space… it’s an experience not an object."
(Rowe, 2017)
By placing the participant at the heart of this framework we focus on Human Centered Design, bypassing the technology that may go into the creation of this experience. Although this art work is enabled by sophisticated employment of technology, the key design focus is on how the individual interacts with the experience as Rowe explains;
“I don’t want people to work out how it works, but experience it”
(Rowe, 2017)
As with all design, there is a level of control. The gamers ‘control’ their characters on screen, they are following a pre-plotted path that has been created by the game designers. The same could also be said of the audiences walking through SquidSoup’s light installations, as they are controlled within a preset area to inhabit. Online users have the feeling they are viewing in private, and while in a ‘Live’ setting they may well be, ‘Online’ nothing is hidden. The user is subtly influenced by what they seemingly choose to browse by cookies (small changes of code that are left on the user’s device that act like digital footprints tracking everything the the user does online) they influence the algorithms that are used when browsing. These ‘cookies’ can be controlled by certain businesses or governments.
In both cases, there is some form of interaction between the individual and the artefact. In both cases, we now see that this interaction is documented in a digital form to be shared with friends.
To focus on the ‘Online’ aspect and the internet; when an individual accesses websites or apps such as Facebook or Google they are described as the user. This interaction is not just one direction, but it is this constant exchange of information between the website and the individual who uploads and downloads content, whether that is updating a status of what they are doing, liking and commenting on a friend's status or uploading a selfie of themselves, and so all are described as users. Compare this to an audience that attends a theatre show where the individuals sit and observe. The 'talent' on stage do not need to receive any input from the audience for them to output their performance. When audiences watch television no longer do you find whole families sitting together simply watching one screen but will be 'Duel-screening' -where an individual is interacting with multiple screen at any one time. For example, in 2014 eBay published it’s first UK retail report which identified sales of specialist baking equipment raised significantly during the showing times of The Great British Bake off on TV. Perhaps more surprisingly flat-cap sales peaked with TV drama Peaky Blinders, in which the main characters wear prominent flat-caps.
Parallels of this level of interaction can be drawn when considering computer games which were facilitated by accelerated advances in technology and programming. From the early days of Pac-man and the Atari games to modern day ultra realistic shoot-them-up and racing games, the art work employed to illustrate expansive virtual worlds for the the participant to engage with, is definitely an art form in itself. Each cycle of computer innovation brings new possibilities of gaming, and whilst this is immensely enjoyable as a gamer it also creates a disconnect to the real world by creating a hyper fantasy world that gamers be addicted to inhabiting. By engaging the participant in an elaborate story, the game invites the participant to learn new skills to complete each level, with each new level completed gaining the gamer with a feeling of accomplishment and pleasure. By exploring the artistically created world further a reward of curiosity and new skills are added to the play. Using Human-Computer Design, game designers careful consider the level of input, interaction and reward to keep their gamers motivated to continue the game. This clearly demonstrates the compulsion loop which game designers have long perfected to keep their audience engaged and wanting more. But at what cost to that individual, the wider society and their interaction with it.
Taking this into interactive art and the consideration of a new design it is important to think about who is going to use it. Many models can be adapted and combined to create a process that is appropriate for the task at hand and act simply as labels but when thinking about interactive art, two central methodologies are important to examine; Human Centred Design (HCD) and Human Computer Interaction Design (HCI). Brigid Costello of The Creativity and Cognition Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney, identifies the link between pleasure and play by using the HCI model. In contrast Quicksand - a Studio collective based in India use HCD, also known as User Centred Design, in all their work when thinking about applying their technology-art to an audience with less access to technology. Costello examines the works of philosophers Karl Groos and Roger Callis, psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihaly and Michael Apter and game designers Marc LeBlanc and Pierre Garneau which resulted in thirteen categories of framework;
Theory - Content
Creation requires influence. Influence comes from what has gone before. Take the example of a biological meme, it is an organism that has evolved over a period of time by a series of copying, multiply and adaption, resulting in an organism that is then copied, multiplied and adapted. This process has taken place for millennia resulting in the world we have today. The same can be said for our culture. Artist, scientists and philosophers have copied, developed and re-imagined works of others that have gone before, which is then further copied. A 12th century French Philosopher said;
"we are like the dwarfs on the shoulders of giants'
which in 1675 Sir Isaac Newton then adapted to;
"We stand on the shoulders of giants"
In 1996 Steve Jobs was more explicit;
"Good artists copy; great artists steal"
Which is further adapted by film maker Kirby Ferguson 2015;
“Everything is a remix”
This is cultural evolution.
In all aspects of culture there is a long history of artists copying, taking inspirations and changing works to make their own. For example of the top one hundred highest grossing films of the last ten years, seventy four have been sequels or remakes of books, adaptations of comic books or graphic novels, or computer games - furthermore the films are made into computer games furthering the remake of a remake.
"Transforming the old into the new is Hollywood's greatest talent" (Ferguson, 2015)
"No landlords you fools, Spence's plan forever'
Taking this concept, Wikipedia employs Spence's idea of the common ground and apply it to information content in an online space which is a powerful and contested concept.
Instead of physical land being available to all, its shared ideas, shared knowledge and shared information free to access with over a thousand editors monitoring the exchange. It hosts 40 million different articles in nearly 300 different languages, the site is visited on average 18billion times every month. It is based on a utopian dream, but one it achieves, that every human can share the world’s knowledge through a network for all. This was the initial intentions of the internet. Self generated content, mixing with pre-existing content, culture clashing the old and the new to give the user instant access to whatever they may want to know at that moment. It demonstrates individuals working collectively to achieve a shared understanding without the need for capital. Free to access, free to use, free to upload, download, share; to not just consume it but to participate in.
"In practice it would seem impossible for such a model to work, that you could ask people to write some sort of common sense knowledge, come to a consensus on difficult issues, and that anybody could edit it? It was feared that it would fall prey to vandalism, or other problems. But the reality is, Wikipedia works, and it works remarkably well despite so many languages and so many enquiries from all over the globe. I think there is something in this ‘group-thinking’ that is indicates an optimism and generosity of spirit, that speaks to our better nature. In Wikiespeak I am an ‘Inclusionist’, i.e. to keep the platform expanding. I believe that the more things that we have that are freely available for people to learn from the more we represent of the truth of the world around us."
(Mar, 2017)
“an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations”.
With the rise of digital media and content being viewed and shared online via screens Greek artist, Miltos Mantos formed a movement called NeeN, derived from the word screen. Parallels with the Fluxous movement can be seen, by its anti-art nature, challenging favoured art of the day. In his purposefully unprepared recent talk at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Mantos explained why;
"I come from art, which you may or may not know is the most, the very super conservative, academic whatever, boring environment, that the existence of this place [ICA] proves it; the existence of all contemporary art exhibitions, museums… proves that. There is one thing that happens in the art world that puts together the attitudes of all the art people, the art curators, the critics, artists themselves, galleries - WE DO NOT WANT TO KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ANYTHING WHICH IS NEW! We really don't want to know nothing that will change our mind about things. We want to just hear again and again and again the old stories and gossip. Anyway, I was bored of all that and thought there must be something else”.
(Manetas, 2009)
Primarily NeeN exists on the screen, it comes in the forms of websites which host the art that may have been created somewhere else. The template of the website and the artwork it hosts can be copied individually, the NeeN happens in the moment the viewer or user of the screen accesses the work. This links directly to Duchamp who held the view that the audience 'completed the work'.
The term 'meme' itself has developed a different meaning;
In music, there is a dispute between what constitutes as a cover and what is a rip off. It is disputed that the English rock band, Led Zepplin ripped off countless songs by other artists, just changing a couple of melodies and lyrics to then claim the music as their own works, of which they now fiercely defend their royalties to. The tech industry is no different, tech giant Apple are key culprits, bringing together technologies and ideas as one and curating something new. However, when Google Android seemed to copy Apple's iPhone Steve Jobs threatened war to take back what he claimed Google had stolen, which is somewhat hypocritical given his history of Apple.
Content is power. Those that control the information for capital gain, control the power, for example Alphabet, the parent company of Google has a market value $600 billion whilst Facebook has a market value of $420 billion. In today's world companies and individuals seek to control information and ideas. But this battle for control by a few vs the many is nothing new.
Thomas Spence, an English radical and a leading advocate of common ownership of land campaigned against land owners holding exclusive rights to land, much like the advocates of internet freedom campaign for free information today. To spread his message, Spence counter stamped his motto onto thousands of King George's coins and sent them into circulation across the country;
Reflections of The Artwork
Examining the two works that the artist, Joss Sessions, created it is clear to see the struggles he had as he negotiated the different spheres of 'Online' and 'Live'. By channelling his anger, his fears and excitement about the possibilities of art, technology and the current social and political landscape the artist has focused his knowledge. A knowledge he has shared freely to the world, leaving it for the viewer to choose whether or not to access the work.
Examining the Video blog first; it verges on a rant and may be a manifesto of his present and future works. It is a work that is a clear result of extensive research, intended to be experienced on screen. He has absorbed the findings of the Zenith Media report, and NeeN, creating new content as a result and sourcing free to access content online and remixing it to further convey his message. By filming himself and applying post-production techniques to deconstruct the image of himself, he created an abstract image, a mask to conceal his identity. The high tempo, sometimes absurd nature and editing cuts can all be linked back to the talking head of fictional artificial intelligence character, Max Headroom 1984. As the viewer of the video blog you can see Sessions' rebellion, maybe even anger, at what Mantos describes as conservative art. By employing quick edits of different images that relate to the verbal language, Sessions careful negotiates the visual and verbal language to keep his viewer engaged, hoping to both entertain and educate.
Secondly, the prototype artefact of the masks. Looking at the artist's previous work in theatres and live events, this is something new, and this is seen in the rough edges of the work. Fabrication of the artefact is usually produced by another party, with the artist preferring to focus solely on the digital content, but here we see the artist experiment with different techniques, different ideas. It is a work not yet finished, a work that reflects the artists own interactions with the internet, and so it is suitable that he alone made the prototype to first explore and then to demonstrate his research. The advantage of thinking research is that the ideas are not proved, but by conducting the primary research of making the artwork and letting the research inform the practise, it taught the artist a new (to him) way of working. When it is scaled up to larger events, Sessions may want to consider other user’s interactions with their individual screens, projecting text message conversations, and real time twitter exchanges.
Both pieces of artworks can exist alone, but both are enhanced by one another respectively. It is a clear demonstration that we must not think of the 'Live' and 'Online' sphere being independent of each other, but supporting one another. The internet, is a tool, it enables the user to access knowledge like never before, offering a Utopia of common knowledge but with that comes a need for new understanding of how it impacts on our lives. Artists hold up a mirror to society to highlight topics to generate debate. Taking the studies of Costello, Sessions creates his own chart of engagement that negotiates the role of the "audience', 'live' and 'online' user as demonstrated.
The grey arrows are the user’s journey through the artwork with the orange text the key points of the user. Whilst the user may through the artwork, there are several layers of feedback loops rewarding the user, and creating a level of co-authorship.
By observing and studying how human society use their screens and digital devices, Sessions created a piece of Cyborg Anthropology Art, the very forefront of modern thinking, expression and entertainment. This it is to be hoped is just the beginning.
Referances
Barnard, J. (2017). Telecoms brands use video to engage on Facebook – Zenith. Zenith. Retrieved 7 May 2017, from https://www.zenithmedia.com/telecoms-brands-use-video-to-engage-on-facebook/
Costello, B., & Edmonds, E. (2007). A Study in PLay, Pleasure and Interaction Design. School of English, Media and Performing Arts University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Fanon, F., & Chevalier, H. (2007). A dying colonialism (p. 43). New York, NY: Grove Press.
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