Margaret Crane and Jon Winet

Jon Winet

America the Globe

Beyond Interface

The Art of Communication: Facetbook, Identity, and Shared Consciousness

“[Through electronic dimension,] art [can] reflect post-industrial society more accurately” (Gidney).

The distortion of communication through technology serves to be an issue of our times.  Liz Filardi confronts the complications and expresses how technology is changing the way we communicate.  Announcment greatly implicates the function of communication in society to individual expression of identity.  In the piece, she rides the bicycle (“freedom” symbol) with a sign stating, “Just Single.”  As Facebook can allow individuals to explore identity, it breaks down the psychological affect we experience when communicating in person.  Digital art acknowledges this impact as Eric Gidney suggests in 1991, “there is an urgent necessity for artists to enter into a dialogue with, as well as, a critique of, our technological culture.”  Now, several years later, Liz Filardi is one of many digital artists doing just that. 

Here is one of the models that reflect the interaction of two users of technology by Everett Rogers and Lawrence Kincaid, which suggests that the context or meaning behind the original “message” has the tendency to become distorted.  Also in regard to identity, Gidney suggests that philosopher, Jean-Francois Lyotard, observed the technology would break down the bridge between human identity and the material world.  That would create a “shared consciousness” between the users of the technology. I think Kutiman’s ThruYou is a good example of this evolving consciousness. Plus, he shows the creative advancement of technology into an artistic medium and how its interaction creates the new form of communication.  Many of these ideas developed in the 1980s before Facebook or other major forms of the current communication applications were created.  Now, artists are responding to these consequences of technological use. 

With the availability of computers for public use and the Internet, this new form of communication was able to evolve quickly and even unintentionally.  One example written by Merel Mirage, she discussed her cyber communication experience in Leonardo in 1997.  This communication began unintentionally when she was researching silkworms and came across a Chinese forum.  “Then casually, we started to email back and forth, and, from an anonymous source of information, this person I got used to and even started to appreciate.  It was an experience just like real life, in which you come across many people but like some more than others” (377).   For me, Facebook gives this experience, but in such a quick manner that we are not even conscious of the fact that we are making these distinctions. 

By Liz Filardi addressing “identity” in the cyberworld with Facetbook. I wonder what will come of our ability to communication and function as a society with technology absorbing us.  “Barriers are disappearing.  The machine penetrates us, we penetrate the machine and this knotting creates a cyborg ‘identity’ that is distributed and multiplied over information networks” (Dyens).   Dyen indicates that technology will evolve our consciousness into a new state that will include new perceptions, works of art, and emotions.  Facebook and Filardi’s response through Facetbook already show the signs of our loss over the ownership of our identities.  Through our responses of creating and destroying identities, perhaps this is the field where our cyborg identity shall rise.  Have we already given over our identities to the machine?  With my experience with the cyberworld and cyber communication applications, I admit that my identity of Cam rose and continues to develop from cyber communication.   

“Art maybe be a method of finding the true meaning of technology”

–Martin Heidegger, Philosopher

Dyens, O. (January 01, 1994). The Emotion of Cyberspace: Art and Cyber-Ecology. Leonardo, 27, 4, 327-333.

Gidney, E. (January 01, 1991). Art and Telecommunications: 10 Years on. Leonardo, 24, 2, 147-152.

Mirage, M. (January 01, 1997). Memories of a Virtual Butterfly: The World and the Screen. Leonardo, 30, 5, 377-383.

Subversive Imagination, Filters, and Future of Art

At first, the term, netizen also known as a cybercitizen or a person actively involved in online communities caught me off guard. Game warez? Music warez? Then again, there are several words that are foreign to me as I read through “Fluidities and Oppositions among Curators, Filter Feeders and Future Artists.” The idea of the artistic world seems to be quickly hacked by the explanation of the future of art exhibition. An interesting topic that is discussed by this author is “subversive imagination.” The author uses this term to discuss their approach to finding what they want to curator. In this case, the author takes up a persona of a Japanese teenager and applies themes with this character to create filters in her online environment. The approach seems to function like a chain reaction as one netizen influences another to build the world or exhibition they are looking for.

Second, the idea for the artist as well becomes more accessible. First, artists began by finding galleries or as indicated by the list: “New York” to make their career function. Here, the future artist is able to break into an art career without structuring their life around a traditional studio space. Basically, the main idea is to say that anyone can become an artist; although as described by the author, their approaches to how they do this will come about by different means. Then again any work of “digital” could face the satirical judgment of this article, because digital works of art would commonly require the use of technology.

Some past digital sites can be applied as a model with the article's, “Fluidities and Oppositions among Curators, Filter Feeders and Future Artists,” comparisons of artists. In particular, Jen Meagher’s Four Stories shows aspects of Future Artist Y’s scenario. In order for the work to be completed, the artist had to work with others to create the content for the work. The website was purposely left simple so that a broader audience could view it. Using basic HTML tags, tables, and some animated gifs, the 1998 work is still functioning. In comparison, I was not able to view several other works from years, such as 1995 and 1996 that used Netscape or even browsers that don’t exist anymore.

In contrast, I viewed the recent work,Prototype #44: Net Pirate Number Station by Yoshi Sodeoka. This work also is done in collaboration with different artists to complete audio, programming and the overall production of the website. The projects began in 1997 and they use various technologies as they arose, such as Shockwave, Flash, and the DVD. The version, Prototype #38 made it into the 2002 Whitney Artport. Being interested in guided missile systems and government surveillance, these themes appear in Prototype #44.  Even though Yoshi Sodeoka, as the artist, might not be using subversive imagination for the same purpose as the author of the article, the same control in the subject matter of the piece is expressed with lines, such as “If you are a drug dealer or the agent of a national security group or of some kind of watchdog group or human rights organization or if you are a practicing socialist/communist spy, you are in the wrong place. You will be disappointed and should leave now.”  This statement is a summary of many of the ideas of “Fluidities and Oppositions among Curators, Filter Feeders and Future Artists” from criticism of popular culture, sarcasm, subversive imagination, and filtering.

Media Art: Masaki Fujihata

     Bookchin and Shulgin define what Internet Art is while adding a humorous guideline on how to successfully achieve these listed standards.  After choosing your “mode” and “genre,” all the tools for navigating through the “self-defined” Internet Art world are ready to command you.  Specifically, these guidelines are created by “malfunctioning software.”  Is this where Bush and Benjamin Walter’s concluding statements about destruction as art come into play? “Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order” (Benjamin).

     Working at the same university that Murakami Takashi graduated from, Masaki Fujihata is a professor in the department of Inter Media Art. Naturally, he is a media artist and also known as a “pioneer of Japanese new media art.” He creates work through computer graphics and animation. Interaction and “the reality of existence” is one of the main focuses in his work. According to his interview with International Symposium on Electronic Art, he ”was one of the first artists to use stereolithography, a technique in which a laser polymerizes a liquid resin as it sweeps its surface” (Yvonne, Masaki Fujihata, Simultaneous Echoes,107).

     As for Musaki Fujihata’s work, his concept revolves around the function and meaning of technology in society and how it defines humanity and our reality of existence. Also, the use of interactivity in his pieces draws his audience to explore or even test this questionable reality. Themes that appears in his work, quoted as “uselessness,” “existence,” and “imperfection” can relate to several difference areas of Japanese culture and even appear in the well-known Japanese artist, Murakami Takashi’s work. These topics can be related to the Japanese aesthetic of wabi and sabi. Although Murakami Takashi’s connection to these terms is much more complex, they both relate, even though Murakami’s work focuses on a Japanese sub-culture known as otaku . One of his recent interactive installation works from 2009 is called “Simultaneous Echoes.” For the project, GPS devices capture data and the information then is sent to composite video images. The audience is then able to control and view the 3D imagery through touching a disc. For this project, he collaborated with Frank Lyons to compose and organize sound. During the 1980’s, he began creating sculpture through computer generated processes. By the 90’s, he realized the importance of interactivity in digital works of art. One of his well-known, early interactive pieces, was Beyond the Pages where viewers used a pen to explore visual and verbal language in a virtual book.

     Next, the Polish, Piotr Szyhalski studied in several different mediums at the Academy of Visual Arts in Poznan. Piotr Szyhalski has similar themes as Musaki Fujihata with the importance of interactivity and existence in his pieces. Piotr Szyhalski’s work goes further to explore what is beyond our conscious existence and gives his audience an opportunity to explore that. A piece entitled, Ding an sich was commissioned by Gallery 9. He claims that within the 10 canons of this project, there is a variability in perception. He views the interactivity between the viewer and artist as “communication.”

Digital Narrative

When speaking of digital narrative, I immediately think of keitai shosetsu (the cellphone novel). In 2003, a thirty-year old (“Yoshi”) in Japan first popularized the idea by publishing his novel, Deep Love, in book form. In relation to hypertext narratives, the cellphone novel plays a similar role that bridges the world of post modern idealization, but quickly commercializes it into a profitable market. Since 2003, the cellphone novel has spread into Western countries and creates a plane to which unconventional authors, such as Momo, can flourish outside the strict standards of a publication office.

Often keitai shosetsu offer the desired entertainment for “low art” that culturally dates back to the late 17th century when the vulgarity of Ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock print) began. Shelley Jackson’s My Body, Adrienne Eisen’s Six Sex Scenes, and Tina Laporta’s Distance express a similar theme; although their presentation is not merely meant as low entertainment, but instead are highly politically charged in their society. Japanese society tends to be accepting of such issues due to their “flattened” identity and Westernization, regardless of their strict societal hierarchy. In addition, vulgarity isn’t really identified as taboo, since it is an established cultural norm in contrast to the previous thought in Western culture.

Beginning with navigation, Chang Heavy Industry’s Dakota function in a similar way as the cellphone novel by being linear. More control is given to other digital narratives, such as My Body or Six Sex Scenes, but only because the reader is allowed to read at their own pace. No hyperlinks are presented in Dakota and distinguish the interactivity of the digital narrative experience. As a reader, I lost my interest at times, because I had no control over the text’s speed. Next, Dakota’s shortened sentence structure and framework of the story replicated that of a cellphone novel. In its origins, the cellphone only allowed 70-100 word chapters for each text. Six Sex Scenes and My Body tell their stories through a variety of sentence structures and length. Their navigation was more flexible and allowed the reader to choose the direction of the story. Jackson’s hypertext allows the reader to choose which part of the body that they want to read from, but I became frustrated when I felt I was stuck in the story’s armpits. Six Sex Scenes’ navigation followed a chronological structure. The different pathways of the story followed the main character as she grew older. This consistency kept me engaged. Overall, Six Sex Scenes gives the reader enough control in navigation that they will want to explore and read through the different story options as if it is a novel.

Moving onto the use of autobiography and fiction in digital narrative, I find that it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction, because these narratives are digital and posted on the Internet. The concrete nature of words published in book form clearly separate autobiography from fiction because of categories and genres they are placed in. Digital narrative doesn’t have to deal with defining itself. Another Japanese example is 2channel’s Densha Otoko (Train Man), where an individual created a thread on a bulletin board system and through various “characters” contributed to the story’s development about an otaku falling in love. Because the story took place in BBS, it is hard for its readers to absolutely know if the story was true or not. Six Sex Scenes and My Body cause an analogous dilemma; especially Six Sex Scenes. If the reader searches to find a concrete biography of the author, Adrienne Greenheart, they will only be sent in a loop of several fictitious identities to realize that Ms. Greenheart is most likely a mythological persona. Because My Body lacks the chronological structure of Six Sex Scenes or Densha Otoko, it is harder to believe that it more than just a fictional account. Dakota doesn’t face this problem, since it is easy to find that it is the remixing of Ezra Pound.

Even though the purpose of cellphone novels and artistic digital narrative differ, I think the line between literature and art are blurred. Both serve as representation of their current culture. The literature of a cellphone novel greatly deviates from its traditional form, because it is digital. Though widely popularized by digitized generations, cellphone novels are still too new to fit solely into literature and uphold an artistic character just like the digital narratives discussed. At the same time, digital narratives embodies literature and gives fiction the ability to become believable.